Sunday newspaper of the year
70 to subscribers
November 12, 2023 · Issue No 10,391 · sundaytimes.co.uk
Hate, intolerance and arrests
as thugs hijack Armistice Day
6 More than 120 held after
far right clash with police
6 Antisemitic chants heard as
300,000 march for Palestine
Caroline Wheeler, Harry Yorke,
Dipesh Gadher and Hugo Daniel
Rishi Sunak has told the Met com-
missioner he expects the far-right
“thugs” and “Hamas sympa-
thisers” who confronted police
during violent protests in the capi-
tal yesterday to face the “full and
swift force of the law”.
The prime minister said he
would meet Sir Mark Rowley again
in “coming days” and repeated his
threat to hold him to account for
his decision to approve the pro-
Palestinian demonstration on
Armistice Day.
It was the fifth to have taken
place since the October 7 massacre
perpetrated by Hamas in Israel and
by far the most violent, with 126
arrests made. Nine officers were
injured. Last Saturday the number
of arrests was 29.
Although the vast majority of
those arrested were far-right coun-
ter-protesters, Michael Gove, the
communities secretary, had to be
bundled into a police van for his
own safety after he was confronted
by dozens of pro-Palestinian activ-
ists while walking through Victoria
station in central London.
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Last week Suella Braverman,
the home secretary, accused the
pro-Palestinian demonstrators of
being “hate marchers” and “Islam-
ists”, while in an article for The
Times she said the Met was “play-
ing favourites” by failing to ban this
weekend’s event.
As tensions between the govern-
ment and the Met escalated, cabi-
net ministers privately lashed out
at Braverman again. Sadiq Khan,
the London mayor, said the clashes
were a “direct result” of her lan-
guage, and Neil Basu, a former
assistant Met commissioner, said:
“The last Conservative politician to
use this kind of rhetoric was Enoch
Powell, who made my parents’
lives and my childhood hell.”
Hundreds of far-right activists
descended on Whitehall shortly
before the two-minute silence
began at the Cenotaph at 11am.
Among them was Tommy Robin-
son, the founder of the English
Defence League, a far-right anti-
immigration group, who had
encouraged his followers to gather
to “protect” the Cenotaph from
pro-Palestinian marchers.
While the silence passed with-
out incident, the counter-protest-
Starmer’s election guru did not declare £730,000 donations
Gabriel Pogrund and
Harry Yorke
Sir Keir Starmer’s right-hand man
failed to declare more than
£730,000 of donations to the orga-
nisation which he ran and which
played a key role in the election of
the Labour leader.
Morgan McSweeney flouted his
responsibility to report funding
received by Labour Together, the
low-profile group which sat out Jer-
emy Corbyn’s leadership planning
to return the moderates to power.
It meant that party members
for all the family
Far-right demonstrators confronted police outside parliament before the two-minute silence at the Cenotaph. There were scores of arrests
ers briefly broke through police
lines beforehand. Some bottles
were thrown at police and some of
the crowd were hit with batons.
Dispersed by riot police, they
split into several groups and began
to spread out. Robinson was seen
leading several dozen people
towards Chinatown, where further
clashes took place.
and the public did not know of his
group’s activities. It was fined after
committing almost 30 offences
under his watch, with cash pay-
ments not disclosed or incorrectly
recorded. In one breach, the true
amount of a donation was underre-
ported by thousands of pounds.
McSweeney, 46, who will run
Labour’s general election cam-
paign, made no account of
£738,492 received from a small
group of millionaire backers
between June 2017 and April 2020.
The donors whose money was
not disclosed included Martin Tay-
Several miles away, 300,000
pro-Palestinian demonstrators
gathered from noon near Hyde
Park. While there had been no
reported arrests of supporters by
5pm, the Met said they were inves-
tigating at least five allegations of
hate crimes, including antisemitic
and racist chants and placards.
Footage uploaded on social
lor, a hedge fund manager whose
Cayman Islands firm invested in
the Russian oil giant Gazprom, and
Sir Trevor Chinn, a philanthropist
and friend of Sir Tony Blair.
McSweeney was Labour
Together’s full-time director and
company secretary: the person tra-
ditionally responsible for day-to-
day administration, including
compliance with regulations and
laws. The organisation was created
in June 2015, during the leadership
contest which Corbyn won, and
became a space for MPs to discuss
reuniting the party and returning it
media showed some demonstra-
tors shouting “From the river to
the sea”, a slogan deemed deeply
offensive by many Jewish people,
along with other more explicitly
antisemitic slogans. A handful of
people were seen wearing head-
scarves and headbands that
appeared to imitate those worn by
Hamas. Posters held aloft on the
to moderate control. Three of Ed
Miliband’s former frontbenchers
were directors. Rachel Reeves,
now shadow chancellor, and Wes
Streeting, the shadow health secre-
tary, were prominent supporters.
McSweeney was appointed to run
it in July 2017.
In 2019, Labour Together’s web-
site was relaunched and carried
the line: “You can find out more
about our donations on the Elect-
oral Commission’s website.”
Beforehand, MPs held a meeting
with McSweeney in Portcullis
House, Westminster, in which the
£4 · only £2.
(based on a 7-day subscription)
Jeremy Clarkson:
My life in cars
GUY CORBISHLEY / ALAMY
march included one that stated:
“Welcome to Gaza, twinned with
Auschwitz” and another had an
image of a swastika wrapped in the
Star of David.
Throughout the day, groups of
counter-protesters repeatedly
tried to intercept the pro-Palestin-
ian march, with officers forced
Continued on page 2 →
statement was discussed. Shabana
Mahmood, now the shadow justice
secretary, is said to have asked if
donors had been forewarned they
might face questions and another
MP asked McSweeney if donations
were being declared fully and
promptly. McSweeney assured the
MP they were. They were not.
Public filings show he initially
filed donation reports within 30
days as required by the Political
Parties, Elections and Referen-
dums Act 2000. But in December
2017, as he started raising more
money, funds stopped being
Magazine
City where
1 in 5 are
on NHS
waiting list
Tom Calver Data Editor
Southend is England’s NHS waiting
list hotspot, a new analysis reveals,
with almost one in five residents
awaiting treatment.
A combination of local ill health,
demographics and an underper-
forming NHS are to blame, accord-
ing to health workers, patients and
experts.
Demand in central and southern
Essex has soared since the pan-
demic, with the number of patients
being referred almost doubling.
The city has an ageing population,
while obesity rates in the wider
region are higher than average.
Almost 41,000 people are on the
list in the area, according to NHS
England data. Even adjusting for
the fact that some appear twice,
nearly one in five people appear to
be waiting for treatment.
Last week NHS England
announced that 6.5 million
patients — about one in nine — were
waiting for a total of 7.77 million
procedures.
In January Rishi Sunak pledged
that waiting lists would fall, but the
total has since grown by more than
500,000.
Dr Haroon Siddique, a local GP,
says he and colleagues feel “help-
less. All you can say is, ‘I’ll do
another letter to try to expedite
your operation,’ but at the same
time I’m thinking that my letter is
going to just sit in a pile.”
Matthew Hopkins, chief execu-
tive of Mid and South Essex NHS
Foundation Trust, said: “We are
working on a number of initiatives
with our system partners to reduce
the list as quickly as possible.””
Full story, page 9
reported altogether. It is not
known how the undeclared funds
were spent, but McSweeney
focused on deep research and poll-
ing Labour’s members — whose
support would be needed in any
future leadership contest. In 2020,
Continued on page 2 →
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2 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

NEWS

‘Trussonomics’ HOME STRAIGHT

SALLY ANDERSON / ALAMY

crusader has
peerage denied
A think-tank head has been removed from the former
PM’s honours list after a row with the charity regulator
Harry Yorke Deputy Political Editor
The head of a libertarian think tank
credited with influencing the policies of
Liz Truss’s government has been stopped
from receiving a peerage.
Mark Littlewood, the director-general
of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA),
was put forward for a peerage by Truss in
her resignation honours list this year.
Littlewood, 51, championed Truss’s
mini-budget and was seen by many as
having helped to inspire her programme
of tax cuts and supply side reforms,
dubbed “Trussonomics”.
In March it emerged that she had sub-
mitted a resignation honours list despite
having been in office for only 49 days. Her
list contained four life peerages and a
number of lesser honours.
Littlewood was nominated for a peer-
age alongside Matthew Elliott, the chief
executive of the Vote Leave campaign,
Jon Moynihan, a venture capitalist who
donated £20,000 to Truss’s leadership
campaign, and Ruth Porter, a long-term
ally and Truss aide.
After months of delay, Truss’s list has
still not been submitted to Rishi Sunak.
When he receives her list, he is then
expected, under convention, to forward
it to the King.
Truss’s list is now near to being signed
off. However, Littlewood is no longer on it
and it is understood that his proposed
appointment did not pass the vetting
process overseen by the House of Lords
Appointments Commission (Holac),
which is responsible for assessing and
advising the prime minister on the
propriety of nominated individuals.
Lesser honours are overseen by the Cabi-
net Office.
As part of its assessment, Holac consid-
ers whether a nominee “is in good stand-
ing in the community in general” and
with regulators, and whether their “past
conduct” risks bringing the upper cham-
ber into disrepute.
Its role is advisory and it does not have
the power to block peerages, although
Sunak has suggested previously that he
will only nominate peers that have
received Holac’s approval.
Holac refused to answer questions
about Littlewood or Truss’s resignation
list. However, a source familiar with its
After decision said members of Holac had
raised concerns about Littlewood relat-
months of ing to previous run-ins between the IEA
and the Charity Commission.
delay The commission wrote to the charity
Truss’s list regulator several months ago with ques-
tions about the IEA, to which it received
has still responses. Although Holac’s specific
not been objections remain unclear, in July 2018
the Charity Commission opened a
sent to regulatory compliance case into the IEA
because of concerns about its political
Sunak independence.
In February 2019 the regulator issued
the IEA with an official warning over a
report it had produced outlining a plan
for Brexit.
The regulator said the report and
launch event were breaches of charity
law and asked the IEA to provide written
assurances that it “will not engage in Vintage tractors were hauled out of the shed to compete in the East Lothian Ploughing Association’s annual match at East Fenton Farm in
campaigning and/or political activity that North Berwick yesterday. The perfect furrow is straight, regular and free of straw. Previous champions have gone on to represent Scotland
contravenes legal or regulatory require-
ments”.
It later withdrew its warning — while
maintaining that the think tank had
breached charity law — noting that the
IEA had promptly removed the report
from its website and complied with the
Hopes for cuts to inheritance tax and stamp duty
commission’s other guidance.
A source at the IEA insisted last night Caroline Wheeler disclosed that his headroom chancellor’s most important The warning comes days
that the withdrawal of the warning meant and Harry Yorke had grown to between fiscal rule: to get debt falling after the Bank of England
that it “is entirely false to suggest or imply £13 billion and £15 billion. as a percentage of GDP by warned the economy will be
that the IEA breached charity law during Tax cuts are back on the table The chancellor had been 2027-28, the last year of the on the brink of recession next
Mark’s tenure”. They added: “The IEA is for the autumn statement expected to wait until the forecast period. year, with four consecutive
in good standing with the Charity Com-
mission.”
after the chancellor was told
that improved public finances
budget in March to introduce
tax cuts, but worse-than-
Although additional
headroom means the Hunt quarters of zero growth in
GDP predicted if interest rates
A spokesman for the commission said:
“The Charities Act gives us authority to
have given him more fiscal
headroom than expected.
expected growth forecasts
are understood to have
chancellor is on course to hit
his target, being in the was follow the path expected by
financial markets.
disclose to any relevant information
about our regulatory work with other
Jeremy Hunt is considering
bringing forward plans to cut
encouraged him to
reconsider amid fears that
negative requires the inverse
response, including potential
warned Concerns that Hunt could
miss the chance to cut taxes
public bodies where appropriate. We
routinely respond to such inquiries
inheritance tax and stamp
duty in next week’s financial
any delay could mean his
headroom evaporated.
tax rises or spending cuts.
According to multiple
negative have also been fuelled by the
fact inflation is predicted to
providing this does not prejudice due
process.”
statement as the Treasury’s
independent fiscal watchdog,
Hunt is looking only at tax
cuts that are less inflationary.
sources, the OBR has told
Hunt it expects the economy
growth rise in January, with a “small
but significant” increase in
Littlewood, Truss and the Cabinet
Office declined to comment.
the Office for Budget
Responsibility (OBR),
The OBR calculates
headroom according to the
to suffer negative growth in
the first quarter of next year.
is ahead the energy price cap expected
as energy prices surge.

Labour set to do better than Blair’s

1997 election landslide, poll says
Caroline Wheeler
Political Editor
Sir Keir Starmer is on course
to win more seats than Tony
Blair did in his landslide
victory in 1997, despite
Labour being divided over its
leader’s refusal to back a
ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas
conflict.
Labour would win a 212-
seat majority if the general
election were held tomorrow,
according to an MRP poll of
12,128 people conducted by
Survation on behalf of the UK
Spirits Alliance.
The poll, based on the seat
boundaries that will apply at
the next general election, is
the first since the Hamas
terrorist attacks on October 7.
It recorded Labour’s
national support at 46 per
cent — 17 points ahead of the
Conservatives. This would
secure Labour 431 seats to the
Conservatives’ 156. In 1997
Blair won 418 seats and had a
majority of 179 seats.
The poll also found that
food prices, including the
cost of alcohol, are the
pressure most widely felt (by
90 per cent). A majority said
alcohol taxes should be cut or
frozen in the autumn
statement (55 per cent), and
33 per cent believed taxes
should rise in line with
inflation. The revelation
comes amid warnings that
the chancellor will announce
that alcohol duty will
increase by the retail prices
index (RPI) measure of
inflation on November 22.
With RPI inflation now at
8.9 per cent, it means
another big increase after
wine and spirit prices shot up
in August after a
restructuring of duty rules.
The poll took place from
October 31 to November 3.

Thugs for our freedoms. What we

have seen today does not
defend the honour of our
hijack armed forces, but utterly
disrespects them.”
Starmer’s anomalous £12,500 donation
from Chinn he filed in 2018.
The organisation’s formal
guru did response to the watchdog
made no mention of

Armistice Gove was forced to

Day events
→ Continued from page 1
to intervene regularly. Later
in the day, hundreds again
tried to force their way up
Whitehall and clashed with
dozens of police officers.
Sunak condemned the
violence, saying the “scenes
we have seen today from the
EDL and associated groups
and Hamas sympathisers
attending the national march
for Palestine” are “wholly
unacceptable.”
He added: “The despicable
actions of a minority of
people undermine those who
have chosen to express their
views peacefully.
Remembrance weekend is a
time for us to come together
as a nation and remember
those who fought and died
abandon his ministerial car
close to Victoria station
shortly after 4pm due to road
closures.
Attempting to walk the rest
of the journey, the housing
secretary was filmed on his
own being heckled and
followed down a street close
to the station by dozens of
protestors, who shouted
“shame on you” repeatedly.
A source said he was then
put into a police vehicle and
driven safely from the station.
They said that he was
“shaken but okay”.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of
London, accused Braverman
of stirring up the far-right,
adding that the “scenes of
disorder we witnessed” at the
Cenotaph “are a direct result
of the home secretary’s
words”.
Neil Basu, the former
assistant commissioner for
the Met, said the scenes of
violence “ were directly
related to her comments”.
not declare
donations
→ Continued from page 1
while still at Labour Together,
McSweeney led Starmer’s
leadership campaign. He
then took a full-time role as
his chief of staff.
The following year, the
Electoral Commission
became aware of the
donations after McSweeney’s
successor filed a series of late
reports and launched an
investigation.
Labour Together turned to
Gerald Shamash, the party’s
go-to lawyer. McSweeney was
consulted as Labour
Together’s new team
prepared a response. He was
asked to explain why
donations suddenly stopped
being reported. He was also
asked about a single
McSweeney. According to a
letter from the Electoral
Commission in March 2021,
Labour Together had instead
referred to “those involved at
the material time”.
It stated that “human
error” was responsible and
that “frankly it was assumed
that donations were being
properly reported as indeed
they had been so reported
up to late 2017 and early
2018”.
The watchdog said that did
not amount to a “reasonable
excuse” and issued a fine of
£14,250, the largest that year
bar one.
Labour Together said it
“proactively raised concerns
about its own reporting to the
Electoral Commission” and
“the outcome [was] made
public by the Electoral
Commission.”
McSweeney did not
respond to repeated requests
for comment.
Full story, page 15

Subscribe to trusted, 10am-1pm Sunday Morning the former BBC political

insightful journalism. with Kate McCann and
Choose from a range of Adam Boulton. Guests
print and digital options include the Tory MP Chris
Skidmore and Utilita Energy
thetimes.co.uk/subscribe chief executive Bill Bullen
1pm-4pm Alexis Conran,
including Sunday papers
roundup with Dom Joly and
correspondent Ross
Hawkins, plus the illusionist
Derren Brown remembers
the magician David Berglas,
who died last week
4pm-7pm Ayesha Hazarika
(Rick Kelsey sitting in) with
the Politics Panel
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 2GN 3

NEWS

Meet the real-life Del Boy whose wife has just been paid a £141m dividend
PHIL YEOMANS

Robert Watts
and Sam Chambers
An £8.99 watch bought
outside a pub has proved to
be a pretty decent investment
for Sarah Dawson.
More than 40 years later,
the cheeky market trader
who caught her eye on New
George Street in Plymouth
has given her a dividend of
£141 million.
She was in her teens and
working in a nearby
department store when she
came across Chris Dawson,
who would become her
husband, the father of her
two children and her boss.
The wheeler-dealer with
the suitcase brimming with
jewellery, watches and
perfume went on to build a
multibillion-pound fortune
through cut-price retail and
recently bought the high-
street discounter Wilko out of
administration.
Within a couple of years of
meeting in the late 1970s, the
pair married and have since
built up The Range, their low-
cost department store chain
often spoken of as “the poor
man’s John Lewis”.
Dawson, 71, is one of
Britain’s most successful and
colourful retailers, widely
known as “Del Boy”. The
number plate on his Rolls-
Royce bears the name of the
Only Fools and Horses
character.
Although he left school
without any qualifications
and still struggles to write, he
and his wife appeared on this
year’s Sunday Times Rich List
with their combined wealth
calculated at £2.025 billion.
Details of the vast dividend
payment to his wife, Sarah,
60, are laid bare in the
recently published accounts
of Norton Group, the parent
company of The Range.
Although she owns 100 per
cent of the company, and is
therefore the only beneficiary
of the dividend, it will not be
regarded as uncontentious
because she now lives in
Jersey. As a result, the
payment is unlikely to be
liable for UK tax, now levied
at up to 39.35 per cent on
such payments. If she were
resident in the UK, tax of as
much as £54 million might
have been due.
The ownership of The
Range has drawn parallels to
how the former Topshop
owner Sir Philip Green paid a
tax-free £1.2 billion dividend
to his Monaco-based wife,
Tina, in 2005.
When asked about the
dividend paid to his wife,
Dawson said it was “negative”
to concentrate on the money
being taken out of The Range.
“We’re passionate about
what we’re doing — creating
jobs and bringing low cost to
more people,” he said. “We’re
excited to be reviving Wilko —
The Range’s helicopter of a it’s clearly a name many
Chris Dawson billionaire but he people out there really love.”
may have the still loves greasy The dividend, he said, was
Rolls-Royce and spoons and pubs partly used to support the
development of a 1.2 million
sq ft warehouse near
Stowmarket, Suffolk, which
he hopes will help expand the
firm’s presence in the
southeast, and pay down
sums that the Dawsons had
borrowed from the company.
With a nose for a bargain
and a down-to-earth
demeanour, Dawson is more
likely to be spotted in the
greasy spoons and pubs of
Devon than Michelin-starred
restaurants. He remains
resident in the UK for tax
reasons, unlike his wife.
He has not had everything
his own way since his wife
shifted her residency to the
Channel Islands in 2016. His
hopes of opening one of his
shops on the island has been
frustrated by the island’s
government.
It’s a proudly family
business: the Dawsons’
children Lisa and Christopher
both work for it, and the head
office is named Elsie Margaret
House after Dawson’s mother.
The Range has more than 200
branches and employs over
11,000 people.
After paying £5 million for
the collapsed retailer’s brand,
Dawson has already
relaunched online sales of
Wilko and plans to have his
first Wilko-branded shops
open before Christmas.
Some 45 years after they
met, Dawson says his wife still
has the watch he sold her that
day. When asked if it works,
he replied: “Probably.”

A MODEL
MAJA SMIESKOWSKA/PA; CHRIS JACKSON/GETTY IMAGES
The King unveiled
a statue of his

MONARCH
late mother,
Queen Elizabeth,
at the Royal
Albert Hall last
night before the
annual Festival of
Remembrance.
Charles and other
royals including
the Princess of
Wales, and the
prime minister,
Rishi Sunak, and
his wife,
Akshata
Murty, led the
nation in
honouring
the fallen

Champion polluter China to host

William’s Earthshot green awards
The prince hopes to win
the country over to his
eco causes — despite the
King’s frosty attitude to
the communist regime
Roya Nikkhah and Ben Spencer
The Prince of Wales will take his annual
Earthshot prize awards to China in an
attempt to engage with the country and
accelerate change to its environmental
policies.
He will visit the world’s biggest
polluter despite severely strained
relations between China and the West,
a decision that is in marked contrast
to his father’s approach.
The King, who will be 75 on Tuesday,
has never visited mainland China
because of his views on the regime’s
treatment of Tibet and its human rights
record. His eldest son is said to believe
that you “can’t exclude a big chunk of the
planet when thinking about fighting for
its future”.
William, 41, discussed his plans for
China with the prime minister and presi-
dent of Singapore last week during his
three-day visit to the country, which
hosted this year’s Earthshot prize awards
ceremony.
Now in its third year, the £50 million
global initiative gives £1 million each to
five winners every year, which they use to
scale up projects providing solutions to
some of the world’s biggest environmen-
tal problems. The next two ceremonies
will be held in Africa and South America,
with China and India expected to follow.
Britain’s relationship with China has
deteriorated in recent years, with the
People’s Republic alienating the West
over its human rights abuses of the
Uighur Muslim minority; national secu-
rity threats including espionage and
cyberattacks; the erosion of the “one
country, two systems” policy in Hong
Kong; and its increasingly aggressive
approach to the sovereignty of Taiwan,
which China claims as its own.
The King’s animosity towards the Chi-
nese government is well documented. In
2005, diary entries made during his 1997
visit to Hong Kong for the handover to
China — in which he described the coun-
try’s communist leaders as “appalling old
waxworks” — emerged and caused a dip-
lomatic storm.
His meetings with the Dalai Lama,
Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, who
describes them as “very close ... the
best of friends”, including an event in
2012 when they were photographed
laughing and holding hands, further
strained relations.
A royal source said: “Prince William
believes that when it comes to the climate
and the environment, Asia is critical. He’s
of the view you can’t exclude a big chunk
of the planet when thinking about fight-
ing for its future. To fast-forward the
change and impact he wants, he knows
he has to engage with China and India —
two of the world’s biggest economies and
biggest emitters of carbon dioxide.
“This is not him commenting on gov-
ernment policy. This is about his
approach to the environment and ability
to create real global change. It is him
thinking, ‘Where can I deliver impact and
change not just here but around the
world?’ That is his longer-term view.”
A Kensington Palace spokesman said:
“Scale and ambition is something the
prince thinks a lot about. He wants to
make Earthshot truly global.”
At the G7 summit in May, Rishi Sunak
said China posed “the biggest challenge
of our age to global security and prosper-
ity”. In July, Oliver Dowden, the deputy
prime minister, described China as the
“largest state-based threat” to Britain’s
economic security.
William travelled to China in 2015 on
an official visit, when diplomatic rela-
tions were less fractious and David Cam-
eron’s government encouraged trade and
investment with the regime. While in the
People’s Republic, one of the world’s
William meeting President Xi in 2015
largest consumers of ivory, William met
President Xi and condemned the illegal
wildlife trade as a “vicious form of crimi-
nality”. Later that year, as Xi began a UK
state visit, William appeared on Chinese
television condemning the ivory trade.
Two years later China banned the trade.
Charles has made some efforts
to become more engaged with China.
In 2015 he hosted Xi and his wife at
Clarence House but steered clear of the
state banquet at Buckingham Palace
hosted by Queen Elizabeth, which
William and Kate attended.
This year’s Earthshot prize awards
ceremony will be broadcast today on
BBC1, with a film by Sir David Attenbor-
ough and performances from the bands
Bastille and OneRepublic.
The winners feature projects from
around the world, including Acción
Andina, an initiative that has planted
more than 6.5 million native trees in the
Andes, and GRST, a Hong Kong-based
company that has devised a way to
recycle lithium-ion batteries.
Finalists from the inaugural awards in
2021 have protected or restored 7,000
hectares (17,300 acres) of land and
almost 2.1 million hectares of ocean, and
removed, upcycled or avoided more than
40,000 tonnes of waste.
China is by far the world’s biggest pro-
ducer of greenhouse gases, accounting
for 29 per cent of global emissions last
year, compared with 11 per cent for the
US and 0.8 per cent for the UK. Xi
has pledged to peak emissions by 2030
and reach net zero by 2060. But in the
first six months of this year China
approved 52 gigawatts of new coal power,
the equivalent of two new coal-fired
power plants a week.
Tackling climate change plays a key
role in the country’s politics, partly
because of growing unease about the air
pollution in Chinese cities, which causes
about two million deaths each year. It has
invested billions in hydroelectric, wind
and solar energy, and earlier this year
passed the key milestone of having more
electricity-generating capacity from
clean sources than fossil fuels. It also pro-
duces 57 per cent of the world’s electric
vehicles. All eyes will again be on China at
the Cop28 UN climate summit in Dubai,
which the King will attend when it begins
at the end of this month.

Do I not like that! Graham Taylor outburst saved Elton
Liam Kelly
Arts Correspondent
Graham Taylor was well
known for his ferocious
temper, but Sir Elton John
credits a particularly
aggressive outburst for
stopping him drinking and
taking drugs.
“I’ve no doubt that
Graham saved my life.
Without him, I would have
been lost,” John says in a new
book, Watford Forever: How
Graham Taylor and Elton John
Saved a Football Club, a Town
and Each Other, to be
published on Thursday.
It was Boxing Day morning
in 1981, and Taylor, who
managed Watford football
club, and John, who owned it,
arrived at the Vicarage Road
stadium. The dishevelled
singer immediately poured
himself a whisky.
The next morning Taylor
arrived early for a board
meeting so he could speak to
John alone. As soon as the
singer sat down, according to
the book, Taylor grabbed a
bottle of brandy from the
boardroom drinks cabinet
and slammed it on the table
in front of him.
“That’s what you have for
breakfast, isn’t it?” said
Taylor, who became known
for his catchphrase “Do I not
like that” after a documentary,
An Impossible Job, aired about
his time as England
manager in the early
1990s. “What the
f*** do you think
you’re doing?
You’re letting
yourself down
and you’re
letting the club
down. If you ever
turn up looking
like this again,
that’s f***ing it
as far as I’m concerned.”
The singer told Watford
Forever’s author, John
Preston, who spent hours
interviewing him at his homes
in Windsor and the south of
France, that Taylor’s outburst
made him feel ashamed. “It
shook me to the core,” he
Graham Taylor with Elton
John after being made the
manager of Watford in 1977
says. “It was one of those
moments when all the
delusions that I’d surrounded
myself with, all the lies I’d told
myself, fell away. I was just left
there, stunned and mortified.”
Since Reg Dwight became
Elton John in 1969 and
rapidly achieved wealth and
stardom, nobody in the music
industry had spoken to him
that way. “I certainly
wouldn’t have taken it from
anyone else; I would just have
told them to f*** off,” John
says. “But because Graham
came from outside my world,
somehow that meant I
couldn’t ignore it. I may have
been the king of my
castle, but that was
completely
unimportant to him.
Graham just cared
about me as a
person. About the
fact that if I carried on
the way I was going,
then I was going to kill
myself. That was what really
shone through; behind his
anger, I could see that he
really loved me.”
From that day, John swore
off drinking and taking
cocaine. “Something took
root inside me that day,” John
says. “It launched me on the
road to recovery. Although
there were plenty of false
dawns along the way, lots
of setbacks and broken
promises, it gave me the kick-
start I needed. In effect,
Graham saved my life; I’ve
never had the slightest doubt
about that.”
After a few false starts,
John has been sober since
July 30, 1990.
A Watford supporter since
he was a boy growing up in
nearby Pinner, John took
control of the club in 1976
while it was marooned in the
fourth division. He appointed
Taylor, previously the boss of
Lincoln City, the following
year. Unprecedented success
followed for the Hertfordshire
club: it finished second in the
first division in the 1982-83
season and reached the 1984
FA Cup final.
Watford lost 2-0 to
Everton, and John said he
should have spoken to his
players before the game.
“Because I’d played there [at
Wembley] myself, I wished
that I’d talked to them
beforehand and told them
not to be intimidated,” he
told Preston.
After spending more than
£9 million to transform
Watford, John sold the club in
1987, but he is still a hero at
the club and a stand at
Vicarage Road is named after
him. It faces the stand named
in honour of Taylor, who died
of a heart attack in 2017 at the
age of 72.
Our friends electric:
£10,000 giveaway to
boost energy projects
Caroline Wheeler
and Harry Yorke
People living near new
energy projects will be
offered discounts of up to
£10,000 on electricity bills as
part of efforts to quell
opposition to them.
The payments are
intended to increase approval
for onshore wind farms,
sub-stations and pylons.
Jeremy Hunt, the
chancellor, and Claire
Coutinho, the energy
secretary, are negotiating
how the payments will work.
Households will probably get
discounts of up to £10,000
on bills, paid in annual
chunks of £1,000 for up to ten
years. Smaller discounts may
be offered to people living
further away.
The scheme is expected to
be the most eye-catching
announcement amid reforms
in the autumn statement to
hasten energy infrastructure.
Other measures will
include plans to help end
delays to grid connection. It is
estimated that projects worth
£200 billion, which would
create about 222,000 jobs,
are waiting for up to 15 years
to be connected because of a
lack of capacity. A five-point
plan will be introduced to
remove stalled projects from
the queue and reform the
process for new connections.
This will include accelerating
connections for the top ten
projects.
4 V2

MIDDLE EAST CRISIS

Far-right leader returns as thugs

attack police patrolling march
Tommy Robinson was in the front line as hooligans clashed with officers and pro-Palestine demonstrators on the capital’s streets
Nicholas Hellen, Dominic Hauschild,
Dipesh Gadher, Hugo Daniel
He didn’t make it as far as the Cenotaph
yesterday but Tommy Robinson was in
the thick of the action as several hundred
people rallied in Whitehall to protest
against the pro-Palestine march nearby.
There were chants of “England till I die”
and “we want our country back”.
The counter-protesters consisted of
men in face masks and people waving
Union Jacks and the St George’s flag. The
crowd shouted, pushed and threw cans
of beer at riot police, while police retali-
ated with their batons.
The chaos began just after 10.30am,
when a flood of counter-protesters broke
through a thin defensive line of police
officers and came within sight of the war
memorial, climbing on low walls and
crowding the pavement. A brief respite
came as Big Ben struck 11 and the crowd
marked a moment of silence.
Tension soon picked up, however, as
thugs in hoodies and masks clashed with
officers in Chinatown, in Parliament
Square and outside Westminster Under-
ground station. Near Vauxhall Bridge,
yobs threw missiles at those supporting a
ceasefire in Gaza before police charged
in. Robinson, the founder of the English
Defence League (EDL), left the area in a
black cab just before the violence began.
The Metropolitan police said officers
had faced “unacceptable violence” as
hooligans launched missiles at them.
Footage that emerged on social media of
the riots shows scores of men throwing
punches and aiming kicks at police. Many
of them were clutching pint glasses or
wearing balaclavas.
Outside the Duke of York pub near
Victoria station, police and stewards of
the pro-Palestine march had to step in to
separate 30 hooligans facing off with a
group of young Asian and black men. One
tattooed drinker repeatedly shouted
“scum” at the marchers, while others ges-
tured for a fight, saying “C’mon then!”.
Those who had gathered at another
pub near Vauxhall Bridge threw their
glasses into the main protest crowd
Men before riot police charged in, while offi-
cers hemmed in potential troublemakers
threw outside at least two other pubs along the
route. At the White Swan, police could be
punches seen searching drinkers for possible
weapons.
at police One female pro-Palestinian supporter
was taken away in a police van after argu-
ing with officers following a clash with
Hooligans led by Tommy 20 male counter-protesters who were
Robinson, top right, said to have punched members of her
clashed with police near group. Tom Peacock, 27, who was out on
parliament and later in a run, said: “A group of men, about 20,
Chinatown. At the main pretty obviously far-right, bumped into a
march, opposite, protesters group of the Palestinian contingent. One
with Hamas-style of the guys punched one of the Palestini-
headbands were seen. ans on the side of the head. Then the
Below, Michael Gove police turned up afterwards and the far-
was caught up in the right people just swanned off.”
march at Victoria By early evening, 105 people had been
arrested, according to police, the vast
majority of them counter-protesters.
Offences included possession of offen-
sive weapons, affray and possession of
drugs.
The return of the far-right to England’s
streets came a week after the return to
Twitter/X of Robinson. He used the plat-
form to urge like-minded individuals to
join Saturday’s demonstration, declaring
in a video: “It’s about our respect for our
armed forces — nothing else.”
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen
Yaxley-Lennon, was banned from Twit-
ter for five years and filed for bankruptcy
two years ago, though he never really
went away.
The grounds he gave for wading into
the Armistice Day dispute show a popu-
list touch running through almost 15
years of far-right activism, enabling him
to insert himself into a succession of con-
troversies in race relations. Along the
way, he has been jailed six times,
found guilty of libelling a fifteen-year-old
Syrian refugee and convicted of prejudic-
ing the trial of an alleged child-grooming
gang. He is also a convicted football
hooligan, having led 100 Luton Town
fans in a violent attack on rivals in 2011.
His pseudonym honours a prominent
hooligan and fellow Luton Town
supporter.
Robinson, 40, grew up in Luton,
where demographic change meant white
Britons had become the minority by the
time of the 2011 census. His mother
worked in a bakery and his stepfather
was employed locally at the Vauxhall car
plant. Despite passing 11 GCSEs at grade
A-C, he left school at 16.
His undoubted intelligence shone
He has through and aged 20 he beat off stiff com-
petition to win an apprenticeship as an
been aircraft engineer at Luton airport. This
career came to an abrupt end after he
jailed was convicted for assaulting an off-duty
police officer.
six times Bitter at his loss, he found somewhere
to channel his discontent when he dis-
covered Islamists were recruiting men

Away from the ugly

enemy territory. And targeted the Cenotaph, or I’ve just returned from a like a march for a free
LOUISE everyone was finding it when pro-Palestinian month of reporting in Israel Palestine and more like a
CALLAGHAN unbearably awkward. demonstrators surrounded and the West Bank for The march against the home

scenes, calmer voices

“Errr, after you,” said one Michael Gove at Victoria Sunday Times. I spend my secretary. Some protesters
of the far-right group, as a station, while others marched days talking to families of repeated antisemitic tropes
Muslim family stopped to let in Hamas headbands. Israeli hostages, or those that remain prevalent
them walk across their path. But the protesters and murdered by Hamas, and to across the Muslim world: that

make a plea for decency

On the escalators by Marble
Arch Underground station,
four far-right protesters were
doing their best to look
invisible. One had a can of
lager in his hand, another
wore a pin with an England
flag on. And all around them,
from the train doors to the
Pret around the corner, were
Muslims and leftwingers and
people with suspiciously pink
hair. They were deep in
“Thanks,” replied the
father, whose children were
carrying signs reading: Free
Palestine.
“Lovely day,” said a blonde
woman with a Union Jack,
who told me she had come to
“respect the fallen”,
presumably from the First
World War.
Suella Braverman might
have called it a hate march
and there certainly were ugly
scenes as the far right
counter-protesters I saw
walking through London on a
glorious autumn day all
seemed to have come
because they felt that the
people in charge were
ignoring the things that were
important to them. A right to
protest. A ceasefire in Gaza. A
two-state solution. Armistice
Day. British values, whatever
that meant. Kurdistan and
Congo and veganism, all of
which I saw signs supporting.
friends and colleagues in
Gaza who are living and dying
under the Israeli
bombardment.
When I first walked out of
Marble Arch station, the
protest, and the public
debate and narrative around
it in the UK, seemed as far
away from that hell as to be
about a different issue
altogether.
With each person I spoke
to, the protest seemed less
Jews control the media, and
that as a result the plight of
the Palestinians is ignored in
the West, or that Jewish
funding makes the US
government beholden to
Israel.
People who I guessed
might not have been able to
point out Gaza on a map five
weeks ago chanted, “From
the river to the sea, Palestine
will be free”, with no
understanding of how that
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
from his home town to fight for the
Taliban in Afghanistan.
He told the Daily Telegraph in an inter-
view in 2013: “I was like, they can’t do
that. In working-class communities, we
all know somebody in the armed forces.
I’ve got a mate who lost his legs. And
these lot were sending people to kill our
boys.”
He learnt the power of direct action
when he staged a demonstration that
prompted police to intervene. “I said,
‘Look, when we were at war with the IRA,
would we let the Irish stand in the middle
of the town and recruit for the IRA?’ No
we f***ing wouldn’t. So why are we let-
ting them?”
In 2009 he founded the EDL and for
the next four years travelled around Brit-
ain, staging demonstrations in trouble
spots, challenging what he regarded as
the Islamification of Britain and stoking
tensions with Muslims. He stepped down
in 2013, claiming the movement had been
infiltrated by extremists.
There followed a curious episode
where he befriended a reformed Isla-
mist, Maajid Nawaz, and apologised for
creating fear among British Muslims,
explaining that he hated extremism, not
Muslims. However, there were questions
about whether he had taken part in a BBC
television film that charted his journey as
a cynical ploy.
The decade since Robinson stepped
down from the EDL has been marked by a
succession of political stunts, legal skir-
mishes and unedifying disputes. In 2017,
he was convicted of contempt of court for
filming inside a crown court and calling
the defendants “Muslim child rapists”. In
2018, he was appointed grooming-gang
adviser to Ukip by Gerard Batten, its
short-lived leader, prompting Nigel Far-
age to quit the party.
In the same year he was jailed for
almost collapsing the Huddersfield
grooming-gang trial after live-streaming
outside Leeds crown court, and PayPal
told him it would no longer process pay-
might be seen as a call for
Israel to be wiped out.
“Resistance by repressed
peoples is always legitimate,”
shouted a blonde woman
with a cut-glass accent, who
said she didn’t want to talk to
Today of
the mainstream media.
“Suella Braverman, Tory
all days,
scum.” we want
Palestinian lives were,
again, being used as a an end
political football by both sides
— to slam Labour or the to the
Tories. I could have left at this
point, thoroughly depressed
bombing
about the state of the world.
But as the march wore on,
winding through Westminster
and towards the Thames, I
started speaking to those who
weren’t shouting so loudly.
Nadia Elwahabi, 39, who
works for the council in
Streatham, south London,
said she had come because
she wanted to call for a
ceasefire, to save the lives of
people in Gaza. “When does
calling for stopping the
murder of babies become a
bad thing?” she asked.
“British people are decent
and tolerant, I just wish
politicians would represent
us. Today, of all days, we
should be calling for an end
to the bombing.”
Like many British Muslims
I spoke to at the march, she
felt a deep emotional
connection to Palestine, and
believed that the failure by
the UK government to call for
a ceasefire showed that
politicians believed that the
lives of people in Gaza were
somehow worth less than the
lives of others.
Her friend Bilquis
Mohammedhosen, 35, an
engineer from Oxford, said
that, as a woman wearing a
headscarf, she had felt less
V2
ments on his behalf. He was again jailed
for contempt of court in 2019. In 2021, he
was hit with a five-year stalking protec-
tion order for harassing a journalist who
reported on his alleged misuses of dona-
tions.
After the defeat of Donald Trump in
the 2020 US presidential election, Robin-
son urged him to continue the fight, and
was in turn praised by the leader of the
Proud Boys, the white nationalist organi-
sation involved in the failed plot to keep
Trump in power. Robinson has a follow-
ing among anti-Islam groups in Germany
and Denmark.
The outbreak of war between Israel
and Hamas has presented Robinson with
an opportunity, and the signs are that he
has learnt from his previous miscalcula-
tions.
He has calibrated his commentary to
speak to the people he calls “the silent
majority”. In the statement he recorded
for Twitter/X, he said: “You’ve watched
the last three weeks . . . Terrorist organi-
sations, flags and banners are flying, call-
ing for jihad and no one gets arrested, but
they got someone holding a British flag
and an English flag.
“Our police and government go for the
easy option. The silent majority have had
enough in this country of the abuse and
the liberties that are being taken on our
sacred day. The 11th of the 11th, to us, is as
important as your mosque. It’s as impor-
tant as your Quran. As important as your
prophet. You come and you disrespect us
in such a way, on that day.”
He again trod a careful line, claiming
he was attending as a journalist, while
encouraging others to attend. It means
he cannot be held directly responsible
for any trouble. By mid-afternoon, the
police had arrested 92 counter-protest-
ers.
Robinson had said: “This is a call to
every one of you. Make your way to Lon-
don and be in London. But be calm and
be respectful. This isn’t about a political
party. It shouldn’t be about me.”
safe in Britain since the war
began. A man had shouted at
her on the street, she said,
and a friend had been
attacked on a night bus.
Farhat, 54, said she was
horrified by the idea that Jews
would feel unsafe at the
protest. “This isn’t about
Jewish people, Muslims,
Christians,” she said. “We feel
like we’re being gaslit on a
grand scale . . . we just want to
stop the killing.”
Near Westminster, as the
sun began to set, I met Aaron
Balick, 50, a psychotherapist
from the US who has lived in
London for decades. He was
standing by himself on the
side of the road, holding a
sign that read: “Another Jew
standing with Palestine.”
He’d been nervous, he told
me, about coming to the
protest. On the Tube he’d
covered his sign with a bin
bag because he was
concerned about his safety.
But when he arrived, and
uncovered it, he’d been
stopped every few minutes
by people thanking him for
his support. “On social media
it’s just thoroughly divisive,
with no nuance or
complexity,” he said. “It’s us
and them. And me being here
shows it’s not that.
“There’s a basic will among
protesters that I’ve
encountered to stop the
violence. It doesn’t matter
where you’re from. It’s the
antithesis of Braverman and
that hate.”
As he spoke, a young man
draped in a Palestinian flag
walked up to him. “I’m from
Palestine,” he said. “And I just
want to thank you.”
When he walked away,
they both had tears in their
eyes.
Braverman’s fiery rhetoric
leaves her out in the cold, but
could Rwanda save her career?
Left isolated in the cabinet after the policing row, the home
secretary’s job may depend on whether her migrant deal
is ruled to be legal, write Caroline Wheeler and Harry Yorke
Rishi Sunak was in his
Downing Street study on
Wednesday night when he
saw the article in The Times
by his home secretary that
accused police of “playing
favourites” with protesters.
Only hours earlier he had
had what sources described
as a “constructive meeting”
with Sir Mark Rowley, the
Metropolitan Police
commissioner, to discuss this
weekend’s pro-Palestinian
demonstrations. The
statement issued by the PM
afterwards, when he
defended the right to
peaceful protest, had been
jointly agreed.
Sources say Braverman’s
incendiary comments have
plunged relations between
her and the PM further into
the deep freeze.
Sunak, whose allies claim
he has a “professional
relationship” with
Braverman, did not speak to
her for 24 hours after The
Times article appeared.
A former cabinet minister
said: “It’s a dysfunctional
relationship. But he has given
her [Braverman] the benefit
of the doubt too often so it
must be a convenient political
one. He [Sunak] doesn’t trust
her. He put Robert [ Jenrick]
into the department to
oversee her and [Oliver]
Dowden has been chairing
the emergency Cobra
meetings on the protests.”
When Sunak gave
Braverman back her job as
home secretary in October
last year, it was universally
accepted that he had done so
only out of political necessity.
Securing her
endorsement, and that of her
backbench followers, was
what secured victory for
Sunak in the Tory leadership
contest and arguably denied
Boris Johnson a chance to
return.
A year on — and after
repeated clashes — the
wisdom of Sunak’s decision is
being called into question.
Since No 10 broke
established protocols to
reveal that it had not cleared
the article, not a single
cabinet minister has offered
Braverman their support.
Former home secretaries
are unimpressed. Labour’s
Charles Clarke said: “The
core principle of British
democracy is the sovereignty
of the rule of law, which both
police officers and
government ministers are
required to respect.
Braverman has demonstrated
that she neither understands
nor respects this central tenet
of our democracy, which
means that she can no longer
credibly serve as home
secretary.”
JOSHUA BRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES; JUSTIN GRIFFITHS-WILLIAMS/SHUTTERSTOCK;MIKE RUANE/STORY PICTURE AGENCY HOLLIE ADAMS/ REUTERS
Braverman’s attacks on the
police came despite her being
told Rowley’s position on the
protests was defendable. That
included legal advice,
understood to have been
drawn up internally by the
Home Office, which made
clear that the Met’s position
was reasonable. Similarly, the
home secretary had not
received security advice that
contradicted the Met’s own
assessment: that the march
on Armistice Day would not
cross the legal threshold
necessary to trigger a ban.
That Braverman
nevertheless attacked Rowley
publicly has angered a
number of her colleagues.
“It’s an irresponsible
position,” said one. “She’s got
herself into a position where
she is making public
statements but can’t back
them up with action.”
While acknowledging
tensions, one of Braverman’s
allies pointed out that the Met
had been notified in advance
of the article and the home
secretary and Rowley had
spoken on Friday evening.
The cabinet anger has been
compounded by the fact that
the article was published days
after she had prompted
criticism by claiming that
many homeless people
sleeping rough in tents did so
as a “lifestyle choice”.
Her comments were made
in defence of proposals —
rejected by the Home Office
last year — that were being
internally discussed as part of
a new criminal justice bill,
outlined in the King’s Speech.
They had not yet been fully
approved. Some in the
government believe that her
comments were an attempt to
“bounce” Alex Chalk, the
justice secretary, into
accepting the proposal.
Chalk has publicly
distanced himself from
Braverman’s comments and
raised his concerns with
colleagues including Simon
Hart, the chief whip.
A government source
suggested that Braverman
had agreed to the
provocative Times
article in an
attempt to
move the news
agenda on from
the tent row.
However, they added
that while the Home
Office team had
anticipated some
criticism, the scale
of the opprobrium
had taken them by
surprise.
However,
others believe
that Braverman
is looking for a
way out of
government. One said that
doing so would allow her to
escape the backlash that will
follow if the government’s
immigration plans unravel.
That could happen as soon as
Wednesday, when the
Supreme Court rules on
whether the Rwanda plan to
deport migrants is lawful.
It is understood that
Downing Street has a “low
expectation of success” and
the Home Office is drawing
up contingency plans in the
event it loses the case.
One option that has been
raised internally is to agree a
new deal with Rwanda.
Rather than a memorandum
of understanding, this would
be upgraded to a treaty to be
ratified by MPs. Advocates
believe this would make it
harder to challenge in the
courts.
However, sources say the
legal consensus in the Home
Office is if the policy was
She makes
statements
but can’t back
them up
with action
Suella Braverman leaving
home yesterday to attend
the Armistice Day
commemorations
found to be unlawful in the
Supreme Court, any attempt
to revive the policy would still
end up unravelling.
Another option is to add
more countries to the list of
“safe states” to which people
who arrive on small boats
could be automatically
returned. Last week Georgia
and India were added to the
list, but Jenrick, the
immigration minister, has
raised the idea of also adding
Iraq — a proposal that would
be likely to prompt sharp
criticism from human rights
campaigners and refugee
charities. The Home Office is
said to be prioritising Turkey
and Egypt. Either way the
government will face a big
backlog of people waiting to
be deported.
Many of Braverman’s
critics in the cabinet argue
that her rhetorical flourishes
are part of a longer-term
pattern in which she attempts
to brush over her failures by
resorting to ever more
inflammatory language.
Sir John Hayes,
Braverman’s closest
backbench ally, has been
circulating a letter to
colleagues backing her and
urging them to sign it. A
source said he intended to
send it to Sunak tomorrow.
After far-right groups
clashing with police in central
London and antisemitic
chants and posters were on
show at the pro-Palestinian
march, a cabinet minister
spoke out in Braverman’s
defence. “There is a lot of
anger in the country about
the protests last weekend,
especially the image of the
surrounding of poppy sellers.
I would suggest Suella has
latched onto that. There is
genuine disbelief on why
police don’t intervene
on this stuff.”
MPs and ministers
critical of
Braverman believe
her support on the
backbenches has
been overstated.
Downing Street
and the whips’
office are
understood to have
estimated her
supporters at between
six and a dozen,
including Lee
Anderson and Miriam
Cates. It has also been noted
that a drinks reception held
by the Common Sense
Group, which backs
Braverman, was attended
by only seven MPs.
Regardless of whether
Braverman’s support is
waning, Sunak appears to
have decided to play for
time. A source said there had
been discussion about
5
whether to sack her on
Thursday, but that calmer
heads had prevailed.
However, some in No 10
believe there is a possibility
that Braverman could resign.
Several former cabinet
ministers believe that she
wants to break her links with
a government veering
towards electoral defeat, in
turn bolstering her chances
as a “clean slate candidate” in
any contest to become leader
of the opposition.
Critics of the prime
minister, who believe he
should have sacked
Braverman on Wednesday
night, fear delaying his
decision could open him up
to attacks by the opposition.
Labour is planning to exploit
the PM’s perceived weakness
by mobilising a campaign
warning voters that if the
Tories get a hung parliament
or a small majority, the
“ghosts of the Tory party”,
including Braverman, Liz
Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng and
Jacob Rees-Mogg will hold the
balance of power.
Nadine Dorries’s new book
The Plot: The Political
Assassination of Boris Johnson
has not helped. House of
Commons officials are so
appalled by some of her
revelations, including claims
an MP stored a laptop
containing indecent images
of children on behalf of a
relative and that the Tory
whips’ office is in possession
of a video of a minister having
sex, that they have formally
made a request to the chief
whip asking for details of
what the party knows of these
alleged incidents.
Such is the disillusionment
in the party that a tranche of
veteran MPs are thought to be
poised to announce plans to
quit the Commons in January
after No 10 asked them to
delay their announcements
to the new year.
For those who are
intending to remain as MPs,
the question is turning to who
will lead the party. According
to an exclusive MRP poll,
potential rivals Grant Shapps,
the defence secretary, and
Penny Mordaunt, the leader
of the Commons, are
predicted to lose their seats.
Claire Coutinho, the energy
secretary, who is believed to
be Sunak’s preferred choice
to replace him, has told
friends she has no aspiration
to become the next leader.
However, some in the
party claim the talent pool is
so shallow that the next
leader will be “someone
people have not even thought
about yet”.
Robert Colvile, page 24
Camilla Long, page 25
6
MIDDLE EAST CRISIS
‘I don’t care about my life at all. As a
Staff say Gaza City’s
biggest hospital has
no electricity and
3,000 are trapped
Louise Callaghan
Middle East Correspondent
Anshel Pfeffer Jerusalem
From al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City,
medic Mohammad Hawajreh can hear
shooting and the crash of artillery as Isra-
eli forces draw closer. Patients lie on the
floor: there is nowhere to treat them and
nothing to give them. There is no electric-
ity. Nothing is safe here.
The largest hospital in Gaza City has
collapsed. Patients in the intensive care
unit are being kept alive manually — some
have already died. Staff had been ration-
ing fuel to keep the generators going, but
now that has gone. The 3,000 patients
and displaced people sheltering there, as
well as the 50 medical staff, many of them
volunteers, are trapped. Yesterday morn-
ing there was a direct hit on the fourth
floor, witnesses said. Outside the walls,
Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen
fought in the streets.
“We are on a battlefield,” Hawajreh,
33, who works for Médecins Sans Frontiè-
res (Doctors without Borders, MSF), said
in a phone call from the hospital. “It’s a
catastrophe.
“There’s bombing, bullets, fire on the
street,” he added. “Everyone is anxious
they’ll be targeted. They’re scared,
everyone is scared here.”
Still, Hawajreh will not leave. He and
his team are doing what they can: stitch-
ing wounds, bandaging. They will be
there until the end.
“I don’t care about my life at all,” he
said. “I’m here doing humanitarian
work, supporting and trying to save lives.
That’s my aim. My aim in my life. I can’t
leave them.”
Dr Marwan Abu Sada, head of the
department of surgery at al-Shifa hospi-
tal, said in a voice note that the situation
in the hospital was “very dangerous” and
that people who had tried to escape that
day had been shot and killed. He said that
he had been unable to bury many of the
dead because of the Israeli attacks.
On social media Robert Mardini, the
director-general of the International
Committee of the Red Cross, declared
that the “unbearably desperate situa-
tion” at al-Shifa must stop. Martin Grif-
fiths, the UN humanitarian chief, posted
that “there can be no justification for acts
of war in healthcare facilities, leaving
them with no power, food or water”.
An Israeli officer, Colonel Moshe
Tetro, acknowledged the fighting outside
the hospital but denied that al-Shifa was
under siege or direct attack. He said that
safe passage in co-oordination with the
Israel Defence Forces (IDF) was available
for anyone wishing to leave. On Friday,
some of those sheltering in the hospital
managed to flee south, past Israeli tanks
and checkpoints.
Children waved white flags or scraps
Everyone of paper with their names on, in case
they were killed or separated from their
here is parents.
Last night, the Israeli military said it
anxious would help evacuate babies from al-Shifa
today following a request from the hospi-
they’ll be tal administration.
Most of the medical facilities in Gaza
targeted City have shut. The Indonesian hospital,
one of the biggest, was partially working
on Friday, when witnesses said that the
area close by was bombed at least once.
The patients who remained in al-Shifa,
Hawajreh said, were suffering from their
wounds, but also the lack of medical
equipment. Staff were almost out of pain-
killers, and even bandages were in short
supply. They had run out of places to put
the injured on the ground.
“Patients with wounds on their faces …
infected wounds as well because of the
infection that comes from the rockets
inside their bodies, it makes the wound
not clean,” he said. “I saw worms coming
out from the wounds. Hundreds and
thousands of patients. The majority of
patients are suffering, in pain.”
The medical staff are exhausted. Many
have lost family members. They have not
been paid for months, and some of them
do not have the money to move south.
Because there is almost no humanitarian
aid coming in, they would have nothing
when they arrived.
International pressure is mounting on
the Israeli government to call off the
offensive against Hamas that has killed
more than 11,000 Palestinians, most of
them women and children, according to
the Gaza health authorities.
On Friday President Macron broke
ranks with the US and other western lead-
ers to call for a ceasefire, telling the BBC
there was “no justification” for Israel’s
bombing campaign.
The Arab League and Organisation of
Islamic Co-operation held an emergency
joint summit in Riyadh and called for an
immediate ceasefire.
Among those attending were Presi-
dent Assad of Syria, who was responsible
for the deaths of hundreds of thousands
of civilians during the civil war in his
country, and President Raisi of Iran,
whose regime backs Hamas, making the
first visit by an Iranian leader to Saudi
Arabia in 11 years.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman,
the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia,
accused Israel of waging a “barbaric war
against our brothers in Palestine” that
highlighted the failure of the UN security
council “to put an end to the flagrant Isra-
eli violations of international laws”.
However, despite talk of the Arab
DOAA ROUQA/REUTERS
A little girl, left,
had her wounds
stitched without
anaesthetic; lack
of fuel means
surgery is by
torchlight. Right:
Palestinians
search for
survivors after an
Israeli strike on a
house in Rafah
world taking a unified stand, the hosts
and at least two other members who have
relations with Israel refused to vote on a
resolution, endorsed by 11 members, call-
ing for the freezing of all ties with Israel,
closing airspace to Israeli aircraft and
prohibiting the use of US bases in Arab
countries to supply Israel with arms.
Senior Israeli commanders are aware
that the mounting calls for a break in hos-
tilities are reducing the time available to
achieve their objectives.
In recent days, more ground forces
have been sent in, comprised now of
three armoured divisions (two regular;
one of reserve brigades) and most of an
airborne division.
These units, working in “combined
arms” brigade combat groups that
include tanks, infantry and combat-engi-
neering battalions, have been encircling
Gaza City’s “security quarter”, where
Hamas’s main offices and headquarters
are based.
The Israeli forces have two main mis-
sions. First, in the shrinking perimeter in
the centre of the city, they are trying to
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 V2 7

medic, I can’t leave the wounded’ HATEM KHALED/REUTERS

isolate locations, including medical facili-
ties, where they believe Hamas senior
commanders are sheltering in under-
ground bunkers. Most of the attention
has been on al-Shifa, which has been
identified by Israel as concealing one of
the main Hamas strongholds, a claim
denied by Hamas and by hospital staff.
There has also been fighting around
other hospitals.
According to Major Shai of the IDF’s
Givati Brigade, his unit surrounded the
al-Rantisi Hospital for three days, calling
on the staff and patients to leave, but they
were prevented to do from doing so by
Hamas fighters inside.
On Thursday the force opened an
entrance on the side of the hospital so
that they could leave. “We could see
Hamas terrorists coming out among the
civilians,” he said. “We didn’t fire because
we didn’t want to cause panic among the
civilians and it was hard to accurately
identify the terrorists among them.” The
IDF claims later to have later on tracked
down the Hamas commander from the
hospital, Ahmed Siyam, at a nearby
school building, and killed him in an air-
strike.
The second objective is to locate tun-
nel exits and destroy as much of Hamas’s
subterranean network as possible.
Israeli intelligence officers say they
have been surprised by the relatively low
number of Hamas counterattacks and
ambushes they have encountered as they
go from building to building in Gaza City
and surrounding towns. “They’ve tried
to ambush us many times but we
expected much more of that,” said one
officer. Hamas’s fighting forces are in the
tens of thousands and Israeli defence
sources believe that they are mainly hun-
kering down in their tunnels. “Hamas
thought that this round would end like
the previous ones, with Israel only going
to the outskirts of the city,” says one intel-
ligence analyst. “The Hamas leaders are
both very surprised and have trouble
now communicating with their under-
lings.”
On Friday the Israeli government
accepted the Biden administration’s
demand for “humanitarian pauses” in
the fighting. Israeli officers said that they
had already been halting fire in various
parts of northern Gaza to allow civilians
to leave.
But not everyone can get away. Despite
promises of humanitarian escape routes,
those sheltering in al-Shifa said that they
had no way out. “There’s shooting every-
where,” Hawarajeh said. “There are chil-
dren, women here. Please send a mes-
sage: these people aren’t safe.”
“We decided from the beginning to be
in the front line. That we will keep going,”
he said, as explosions sounded in the
background. “I have a message: stop kill-
ing people. Protect medical staff. Stop
killing the children, stop killing the
women. It’s enough, it’s enough.”

In balmy Tel Aviv, nervous civilians My son is one of

the forgotten Thai
pack rifles for a trip to the bakery hostages of Hamas
have become a common reserve. The military assault share videos taken from outside parliament. Sitting Buddhist Thais believed they
MATTHEW sight, even in bars. on Gaza was “not about security footage and GoPro under a tent near the Knesset
Philip Sherwell Udon Thani
were not at serious risk from

CAMPBELL “Us army reservists are

Tel Aviv
Early-morning joggers plod
along the seaside promenade.
A man arranges plastic
loungers in rows, a game of
beach volleyball is under way
— and the first bathers are
venturing into the limpid
shallows.
On the surface all looks
normal in sunny Tel Aviv,
Israel’s commercial and
cultural capital, whose balmy
weather, pristine beaches
and bustling restaurants are
usually a Mediterranean
tourism magnet. Now,
though, the advertising blurb
seems out of date. A distant
rumble wafts across the sea,
the thud of artillery in a war
just over 40 miles away in the
Gaza Strip.
Thousands of people,
many of them children, are
reported to have been killed
in the assault on Gaza, which
followed the slaughter by
Hamas fighters last month of
1,200 of Israel’s citizens —
mostly civilians — in the most
savage attack in its history.
One month on, there is not
a tourist to be seen in Tel Aviv.
Images of some of the 241
kidnapped Israelis, including
women and children, are
plastered on walls — as well as
on beach lamp-posts.
“It makes me so sad to
think of them, frightened,
suffering,” said Leah
Feldman, a teacher in a
tracksuit and T-shirt drinking
a cappuccino at a beachside
café. “I hope we can negotiate
their release.” As I paid for my
coffee a waitress said: “I’m so
glad to hear English being
spoken. It makes me think it’s
not the end of the world.” In a
bakery nearby, a man in
sneakers, shorts and a tank
top carried an assault rifle
over his shoulder as he paid
with one hand for a croissant
while holding his bichon
frisé’s lead with the other.
Men and women wielding
weapons in civilian clothes
allowed carry our guns
because of the situation,” said
Mikhail Mereryakov, 40, a
lorry driver carrying a rifle as
he walked along a street in
shorts and flipflops with his
wife and two children. “We
need more people carrying
weapons to keep us and our
families safe.”
My introduction to Israel at
war began at the airport
when, having just stepped off
a flight from London,
passengers were greeted by a
siren signalling incoming
rockets. Police shouted
“hurry!” as they led us to
shelter behind a reinforced
door. Muffled detonations
sounded above as missiles
fired at Ben Gurion airport
were brought down by
Israel’s interceptor system.
A Hasidic Jew standing
next to me in black jacket,
trousers and large hat began
murmuring prayers. Two
young Israeli women
returning home from London
hugged each other, crying.
After a few minutes, the
emergency was over. We
went on to passport control.
In Tel Aviv, though,
reminders of the
conflict come
daily, thanks to
Home Front
Command, a
mobile app
that sounds an
alarm on the
user’s phone
signalling
imminent “rocket
and missile fire in
your area”. You then
have one-and-a-half
minutes to get to a
“protected room”.
The Gazan
missiles have been
largely ineffective,
thanks to Israel’s Iron
Dome defence, but they
are adding to the trauma
in the wake of the
slaughter on October 7.
“It was the most Jews to
die in a single day since the
Holocaust,” said David
Baruch, 60, a bank
manager in his old army
uniform after returning to
duty in the national
revenge”, he added. “It’s
about making sure what
happened on October 7 never
happens again.”
Nothing in the long-
running conflict has had so
traumatising an effect on
Israelis. “There are
kindergarten classes
decimated,” said Shlomi
Codish, 56, director of the
Soroka Medical Centre in
Be’er Sheva, southern Israel,
where most of the injured
were taken on October 7. “It’ll
be years before we recover
from this.”
Tal Hayom, 46, a lead
operating theatre nurse,
looked back with horror on
the “hurricane” of some 600
patients brought in for
treatment that day. “I can’t
sleep, every night, the sights,
sounds and smells come back
to me,” she said.
Among some families of
the dead, the kidnapped and
injured, grief is turning to
anger — not just against
Hamas, but against Israel’s
own government: for years,
Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s
longest-serving prime
minister, had
presented himself as
a guarantor of
public security —
“Mr Security” was
the jingle of one of
his many political
campaigns. How
could he have
allowed such a
calamitous
enemy
incursion? “A
lot went
wrong,” admitted
Colonel Peter
Lerner,
international
spokesman for the
Israeli Defence
Forces.
A protest
camp has
sprung up in one
of Tel Aviv’s
main squares
near the defence
ministry, where families
have assembled while
waiting for news. A
long dining table has
been set for dinner for
241. Family members
cameras of dead Hamas
fighters.
Ricardo Grichener Meitar,
56, took out his phone to
show a video of his missing
nephew, Omer Wenkert, 22,
lying in the back of a Hamas
pick-up truck as fighters
punched him. “You can see
he is still alive, I hope he can
be returned to his family.”
Nearby was Alon Adar, 24,
an electrical engineering
student. He held up a photo
of his grandmother Yafa, 85,
saying: “They grabbed her
out of her bed, she’s not very
well, she needs medicine,
she’s in a lot of pain.”
On Tuesday evening, when
he and other family members
held a vigil to mark the one-
month anniversary of the
kidnappings, a speaker
complained that the Israeli
There are no parliament, the Knesset, had
tourists but not displayed photographs of
plenty of guns the missing, prompting cries
on the streets of “shame” from the crowd.
of Israel’s The next day, another
second city protest tent had sprouted
OLIVER MARSDEN FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
gates was Jakov Godo, 75,
whose son, Tom, 52, was shot
dead in the Hamas assault. “I
never agreed with this
government and now we feel
real anger against it,” he said.
Netanyahu was blamed for
a policy of supporting Hamas
to the detriment of the rival
Palestinian Authority in the
West Bank. He had allowed
an inflow of funds to Hamas
from Qatar in the hope of
deepening division between
the two administrations to
prevent the emergence of a
single Palestinian state.
“This plan blew up in his
face,” said a former
government official
supporting the protesters.
In a square down the road
from the Knesset, a West
Bank settler with a kidnapped
son was peddling an
alternative narrative. The
massacre on October 7 was a
“gift from God”, said Kiriat
Arba, as he stood with a rifle
slung over his shoulder next
to a poster saying: “Eliminate
the terrorists. Clear the land.
Full control.” The killing,
Arba went on, had helped to
“rally” the nation in the
greater cause of reclaiming
the Palestinian territories.
Teenage girls from a
religious school sat listening
as he explained why he was
not concerned about the
safety of his son: “When
there’s war the individual has
to be prepared to give himself
up for the greater good.”
Such rhetoric terrifies the
country’s liberal, secular
elite. “I’m horrified by what
happened,” said Tomer Ben
Yosef, a Tel Aviv wine bar
manager who also “aches” for
Gaza’s civilians.
Eitan Amrami, a
documentary developer,
believes his country is
blighted for years. “It is as
though we’ve been engulfed
by a cloud of volcanic ash
which will bring years of
darkness,” he said. “They
won’t change our minds, we
won’t change their minds,” he
added, referring to Israel’s
rival political camps. “There
is no hope.” He is taking his
wife and two small children
to New York.
Manee Jirachart was making
his daily phone call home to
Thailand early on October 7
when the first Hamas missiles
roared over the kibbutz
where he worked, close to the
Gaza Strip.
“I told him, ‘Be careful, go
to the bunker if needed, don’t
go outside’,” his mother,
Buasri, recalled last week at
the family’s smallholding in
Udon Thani province,
northeastern Thailand. “But I
wasn’t too worried. Why
would Thais be a target?”
Her husband, Chumporn,
was equally relaxed. He spent
five years doing the same job
as Manee in the maintenance
team at the Re’im kibbutz.
Hours later, images
broadcast by a Hamas-
affiliated “military media”
channel were forwarded to
her phone. They showed five
men, arms tied behind their
backs, seated against a wall in
what appeared to be a tunnel,
guarded by a captor in black
uniform wearing a green
headband with Arabic script.
He was training an automatic
weapon on the group.
Looking down the sights of
the gun was her son.
Manee, 29, was among
about 30,000 Thai migrant
workers employed in Israel —
the largest labour force in its
agriculture sector. Thais
make up the highest number
of non-Israeli victims of the
attacks — 39 dead, 19 injured
and 25 abducted, according
to Thai government tallies.
Parnpree Bahiddha-
Nukara, Thailand’s foreign
minister, recently travelled to
Qatar and Egypt, and leaders
of the country’s Muslim
community met Hamas
representatives in Tehran to
discuss the hostages. There
has been no sign of progress.
For generations, men from
Isaan, Thailand’s poorest
region, have travelled abroad
for work. Contracts in Israel
were among the most desired
— relatively well-paid and
better treated than jobs in the
Gulf or East Asia. Manee was
sending home about 40,000
baht (£900) a month and
saving to build a house.
The predominantly
the hostilities between Jews
and Muslims. “The Israelis
treated us well. But I also
worked with people from
Gaza. They were our friends
too,” said Chumporn. “We
were working peacefully
together.” He has spent most
of his adult life working
abroad, including in Israel for
five years (the maximum
allowed under agreements
between the two
governments). “There are no
good jobs here,” he said.
Most Thais working in
Israel have stayed on after the
attacks, often saying they
cannot afford to leave. Many
borrowed money to pay
recruitment fees in the
expectation of five years’
work. Back in Thailand, they
are jobless and in debt,
although the government has
said they will receive about
£1,500 in compensation.
Families of those confirmed
dead will receive larger sums.
Among the 8,000 who
have been repatriated is
Withawat Kunwong, who was
left for dead with deep knife
wounds in the October 7
attacks. He had moved to
Israel four years earlier when
he was newly married with a
baby daughter. “I knew there
was a conflict but I just knew
other Thais were making
good money there,” he said.
The workload was heavy —
ten-hour shifts, six days a
week — but in good months
he sent home 50,000 baht
(£1,140). The Thailand
minimum wage is £7.50 a day.
One day he hopes to find
work abroad again. “But
maybe not Israel.”
Manee Jirachart is being
held hostage by Hamas
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 2GN 9

NEWS

Southend, the NHS waiting list capital

41,000
PETER TARRY FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES

People in the city are facing huge delays
for treatment, staff vacancies aren’t
being filled — and 15,000 patients were
added to the list in just one month
TOM
cash injection into the NHS, waiting lists
were rising, and consultant productivity
was falling. “On its own, that told me
investment wasn’t the answer,” he says.
His government introduced financial
incentives for trusts to complete more
Number of procedures for which
patients are waiting in Southend
operations, and the concept of patient
choice, which allowed patients to choose
where they wanted to be treated.
they’ve got their own challenges: they’re This principle is being used for new
the sort that want everything done today, hips and knees in Southend today: many

CALVER or they’ve done their research and they

want to see a certain specialist”.
patients are being sent to the nearby
Spire Hartswood hospital in Brentwood.
Today, the acute side of the NHS is Demand for treatment This time, Milburn thinks the invest-
managed well, he says: it is rare, for has surged across the ment profile should change to incentivise
example, that cancer patients suffer sub- UK since the end of the keeping people out of hospital, rather
Data Editor stantial delays. And if there is any doubt, pandemic. Southend in than in it. This is the principle behind
it pays to be pushy. particular is struggling community diagnostic centres, three of
Rose Brown, 82, could tell something which are planned for south Essex over
“Him: knee. The one over there, on the was off with her partner Peter Moore, 80. Yet for chronic conditions, Siddique levels in the trust are above average. Responsibility (OBR) suggests that cut- the next two years.
left, he has a heart thing, needs a proce- “He’s always been a good driver, but he laments that he and his colleagues can- Being just outside London has its disad- ting the NHS waiting list in half over five Two new levers should help: better
dure. Man on the right: hip.” had been driving in the gutter,” she says not offer the care they need. “All you can vantages: medical staff can earn 5 per years — with the aim of returning it to its data and genomic science. “Between the
This is not a waiting room at Southend outside Southend University hospital. say is, ‘I’ll do another letter to try to expe- cent more by moving ten miles down the mid-2015 level of 3.5 million — would two, we should predict and prevent ill
University hospital — or even one of the His doctor in Hornchurch told him there dite your operation’, but at the same time road to Basildon, which qualifies for reduce working-age inactivity only by health instead of just diagnosing and
city’s GP practices — but The Last Post, a was probably nothing wrong. I’m thinking that my letter is going to just “fringe” London weighting, and 10 per about 25,000. This is partly because only treating it,” he says.
pub by the high street, where one punter Moore began talking “like he was sit in a pile because there are probably cent more if they move to London. around four in ten people on the waiting Back in The Last Post, Doherty, from a
is providing a study of his fellow drinkers. drunk”, so Brown drove him to South- 100 letters asking for the same thing.” Britain has seen a huge rise in eco- list are of working age. family of miners near Sunderland, would
Pete Doherty, the man on the left, has end’s A&E, where he queued with 100 The local hospital is rated “requires nomic inactivity since 2019, with the Alan Milburn, health secretary under go private if it was a “matter of life or
been waiting for an ablation, a same-day others last Thursday. Scans confirmed improvement” by the Care Quality Com- majority being driven by ill-health. The Tony Blair, realised just how bad waiting death” — but the thought kills him. “I’m
procedure that would cure his irregular the couple’s worst fears: a tumour on his mission. Last summer several nurses quit number who are unable to work because lists were in the late 1990s, when a friend 69 and I’ve paid the government all my
heartbeat. “My doctor warned me at the brain. Three days later, they are back for the trust due to what they said were they are “long-term sick” has risen from died at the age of 39 having been on a car- life. I deserve to get mine on the NHS.”
time that I had to wait a bit longer than another scan. “I can’t speak more highly “toxic” working conditions, partly 2.1 million to 2.6 million. diac waiting list for about 15 months.
usual — maybe around 16 weeks,” he says. of this cancer department,” she says. brought about by short-staffing; vacancy Yet research by the Office for Budget Yet 18 months after Labour’s first big Editorial, page 22
“That was 18 months ago.”
Doherty, 69, has been fit all his life, but
until he has the procedure he must
endure beta blockers and blood thinners
that slow his heart rate, both of which
leave him exhausted. He misses playing
tennis. “I’d still be working but I can’t do
anything physical any more,” says the
former market trader.
Two tables away, Chris Lynch has been
luckier. The 64-year-old has a new hip,
provided by the NHS but with the opera-
tion taking place in a private hospital,
after an official wait of a few weeks.
However, getting on the waiting list to
begin with was a struggle. “I think they
delay saying you need the op,” he muses.
“I had a scan, and was told they would
ring me in six weeks. I waited — delay,
delay, delay — until I rang them and they
said ‘Oh no, you were supposed to call
us!’” He could barely walk by the time of
the operation.
Welcome to Waiting List England.
There are 6.5 million people needing Are you on an
nearly 7.8 million operations between NHS waiting
them, a figure that has grown every list?
month since Rishi Sunak pledged to cut
waiting lists in January. Many more are Have your say at
waiting to be added to it. sundaytimes.
In the NHS locality of Southend, there co.uk/poll
are 41,000 procedures planned, out of a
population of 181,000, a figure which
represents the highest rate in the
country.
The scene at the pub is no coinci-
dence: even accounting for the fact that a
small minority are on the list twice, it sug-
gests that if you assembled five people
from Southend at random, one would
probably be on an NHS waiting list.
The local trust says that Southend’s
hospitals take patients from other parts
of the wider Essex region. Yet the Mid and

My doctor
warned me I
had to wait a
bit longer than
usual. That was
18 months ago

South Essex Integrated Care Board —

which manages Southend’s NHS health
needs — also has the highest waiting list of
any care board in England. Whichever
way you cut it, this is a hotspot.
What, therefore, can Southend teach
us about the crumbling healthcare sys-
tem? Since the pandemic eased, demand
for treatment in Southend has surged, in
a manner that many predicted would be
replicated across the country as a whole.
The number of new patients being added
to the local NHS waiting list was nearly
15,000 in September alone, double what
it was four years ago. Treatment levels
have risen, too, but not quickly enough to
keep up with demand for care.
Averaged out, incomes in Southend
are similar to the rest of the country, but
this figure masks huge gaps in earnings
between those who live in its richest and
poorest areas.
Some 21 per cent of the city’s children
are living in poverty, compared with 15
per cent in the rest of the east of England.
Health and income go hand in hand.
Between the most and least deprived
wards, there is a life expectancy gap of
nine years for men and ten years for
women. Air quality readings on the sea-
front are some of the best in the country;
nearer the airport they are some of the
worst, according to Aston Line, the
Labour councillor vying to replace the
Conservative’s Anna Firth as the next MP
for Southend West.
Dr Haroon Siddique, one of South-
end’s most experienced GPs, moved to
the city in 1997, and works from two prac-
tices: one in Thorpe Bay, a rich part in the
east of the city, and another three miles
away in the more deprived centre.
His central practice helps run a service
for the homeless. There are also commu-
nication barriers, with many patients
from Eastern Europe or Afghanistan.
In Thorpe Bay, he says, things can be
“a little bit easier” because a lot of people
can be self-funded or use insurance, “but
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 11

NEWS

‘If I can plant seeds with my feet, you can dig deep too’
Rebecca Myers
Sue Kent has a list of things
she wants to achieve — such
as to meet King Charles and
Pierce Brosnan, to appear on
BBC2’s Gardeners’ World and
to star in Strictly Come
Dancing.
But she has had to revise
the list since getting a job as a
presenter on her favourite
horticultural programme.
She was working as a
massage therapist, using her
feet not her hands, when she
first appeared on Gardeners’
World. It was in June 2020,
the Covid lockdown was
under way, and viewers had
been asked to send in videos
of their gardens. Shot on a
beautifully sunny day, the clip
showed her weeding with her
toes and planting a cucumber
with her feet. As she moved
the soil, she lamented that
the “one drawback” to
gardening this way was that
nobody sells foot gloves.
The video triggered such a
positive response from
viewers that the BBC brought
her on to the regular roster,
alongside stalwarts Monty
Don, Adam Frost and Carol
Klein.
If someone had told her
five years ago she would have
had a new career as a
presenter on her favourite
programme in her sixties, she
would not have believed
them. “I’d think they’d been
drinking far too many
margaritas,” she says.
Kent, who lives in
Swansea, was born with
upper limb disability,
including short arms and no
thumbs, after her mother
took the drug thalidomide for
morning sickness.
She gets “beautiful” letters
from viewers, such as those
who have had strokes or are
struggling with sight loss.
“They think: if you can do it, I
can do it. When they see me,
they think, ‘Well, I’ve got no
excuse’,” she says.
Kent, who has long been
an enthusiastic amateur
gardener, has about three
hours’ help a week from a
local gardener, and ropes in
her husband, son and son-in-
law to help with heavy lifting
and mowing, but otherwise
she tends her three-quarter
acre plot by herself. An
episode last month showed
her harvesting giant beetroot
and planting the flower
Akebia quinata, or chocolate
vine, with her feet, while
wearing latex socks that she
buys on eBay. Even after she
became a regular face on
Gardeners’ World, she knew
the most important thing was
to “keep it real” and
showcase something viewers
would see as achievable. “I
want to show people: this is
what I can do,” she says.
“That’s what inspires
people.”
In return, she gives viewers
helpful tips. Her Hampton
Court show garden last
summer was designed with
only basic tools to show
visitors what they could
achieve with a trowel and
Kent grows giant beetroot on her three-quarter acre plot normal garden equipment
such as secateurs. “I wanted
to show: I’ve done this, it’s a
good idea, I’m sharing it. But I
didn’t think about how many
people it would help,” says
Kent, who will appear in the
Gardeners’ World Christmas
special this year and is an
ambassador for the Royal
Horticultural Society.
Last month, she published
her first book, Garden Notes,
which is part-manual for
helpful horticultural tips and
part-logbook for people to
plan their pruning and note
down varying success with
seeds.
The can-do attitude was
installed in her from an early
age. Her parents, Peter and
Fay Carter, were some of the
first to campaign for support
for children born with
thalidomide damage. The
Sunday Times campaigned
for proper compensation and
fought an injunction at the
European Court to report
that the drug’s developers
had not met basic testing
requirements.
Kent says there was a
“huge amount of goodwill”
towards thalidomide babies.
At her convent school,
teachers were “fantastic”. “I
had to play netball, hockey,
swim, there was absolutely
no excuse for not doing
anything. They thought,
‘We’ll find a way’.”
As for the final dreams on
her hit list, she still hopes to
meet Brosnan, and she has
started taking dance classes.
“You’ve only got one life,
haven’t you?” she says.

Robbie was so needy he once Sycamore

Gap stump

leapt into my bed for a cuddle.

may shoot
back to life

Even though my wife was in it

As the pop star’s documentary series hits
No 1 on Netflix, Guy Chambers recalls the
madness of their songwriting partnership
Jonathan Dean
In August 2000 Robbie Williams took his
songwriting partner, Guy Chambers, to
the south of France. It was a summer of
villas, paparazzi and fizz — plus three
companions: Chambers’s wife, Emma,
their baby and the former Spice Girl
Geri Halliwell, who was going out with
Williams.
Footage from the trip is a highlight of
the Netflix documentary series Robbie
Williams, and it looks wonderful. “It was
stressful,” sighs Chambers. “Rob was
demanding, so I wasn’t spending time
with my wife or our baby. So Emma left.
She thought, ‘F*** this!’ . . . ordered a
helicopter and went home.”
Six years later, now with three young
children, the couple flew to Williams’s
house in Los Angeles for a summer break.
“It was bizarre,” says Chambers. “He had
all these dogs — massive dogs. There was
shit everywhere in the garden, and we
had four, five and eight-year-olds. Rob got
into the bed with me and Emma — to give
me a cuddle. There were real strains on
my marriage, being in this rock-star life.”
Chambers, 60, is spilling the beans
after being very much a silent partner. In
the past week Robbie Williams has been
the most-watched show on Netflix, the
latest self-produced documentary follow-
ing offerings from stars including Lewis
Capaldi and David Beckham. Williams
has said of his own addition to the canon:
“There were no rules. I’m more likely
than most people to leave everything in.”
Chambers is in his mews home in
north London. It is the house that Angels
bought, the soaring ballad that is the big-
gest hit he wrote with Williams. They also
came up with Let Me Entertain You and
Rock DJ. At the turn of the century they
were a modern-day Elton John and Ber-
nie Taupin — and Chambers is still the
friend who knows Williams best despite a
bitter falling-out when the lifestyles of the
rock star and the family man diverged.
The mild-mannered Chambers spent
his early career as a musician, notably as
the frontman of the Lemon Trees, a
prototype Britpop band that did not
quite make it. “I was desperate in 1997,”
he says. “I was 34 — quite old in pop. I had
a leaking roof and was struggling to pay
the mortgage. I was very close to a regular
job as a teacher. But then I met him — and
he saved me, basically.”
Liam Kelly
Arts Correspondent
When the Sycamore Gap tree
was felled, people were
appalled that such a beautiful
icon of the natural world had
DAVE BENETT/GETTY IMAGES been cut down in an
apparently senseless attack.
It has emerged, however,
that there is hope for the
celebrated sycamore next to
Hadrian’s Wall to come back
to life. Andy Beer, operations
director of the National Trust,
which owns the site near Crag
Chambers first spotted Williams just Lough in Northumberland
after the singer was kicked out of Take where the tree stood, said the
That in 1995 — Williams was at a radio remaining stump would be
event in the midst of his drink and drug allowed the chance to regrow
addiction. “I remember he looked in- before any attempts were
secure and I wanted to know why,” Cham- made to replace it.
bers says. “He didn’t look well.” He said: “We still have the
A couple of years later they met prop- stump of the tree. It should
erly when Williams, then 23, was scrab- regrow. You never know.
bling to forge a solo career. “He asked, “It has been coppiced quite
‘Can you write dirty pop?’ ” Chambers brutally. We won’t know until
recalls. “I said yes and he said, ‘I’ll see the spring, because it’s a
you on Tuesday.’” Chambers knew what deciduous tree and it’s not
Williams wanted: Oasis but with humour. growing now. And really, we
“We both wanted to turn him into a won’t know until another
superstar,” he says. summer. By the second
Their debut record was 1997’s Life summer, you normally get a
Thru a Lens — featuring Angels. When did sense [if it will work].”
Chambers realise the partnership would Speaking to The Sunday
work? “Second day, when we wrote Times at the charity’s annual
Angels.” But it was hard going. general meeting in Swindon,
“I wanted to help him not go mad. He Wiltshire, Beer added: “We
was the first person I worked with long want to see what happens in
term who was in full-blown addiction. It the spring. If the stump
was very difficult. We’d wait three days doesn’t regrow we’ve got one
for him to turn up at a studio. People set of decisions to make; if it
would go around pubs trying to find him. does then we’ve got another
He would turn up drunk. We’d go out and set of decisions to make. We
he would disappear on some mission. will just have to wait and see.
That happened in Robbie-world.” In this job, there is a lot of
Did Chambers succumb to the same waiting.”
temptations? “I was drinking too much, Even if it did regrow, Beer
smoking too much dope,” he admits. Guy Chambers, pictured with Robbie Williams So who now advises Williams? People said it would probably look
“But I never did cocaine — it in 2019, says a holiday with the erratic star do try to help, he says, but there’s a prob- different, perhaps with more
makes people selfish.” By 2002, and his then-girlfriend Geri Halliwell drove his lem: “You cannot say no to Robbie Willi- than one trunk coming out of
though, “I was bloated. I wasn’t wife, Emma, below, to catch a helicopter home ams. There is no point. I learnt that the same stump.
well.” quickly. There were teams trying to help The National Trust has
That was the year, after creating him, and still [are], but if he’s got it in his been inundated with
five albums, the men stopped work- head to do something, he won’t listen. He thousands of ideas about
ing together. Cracks had appeared has a self-destructive side.” what to do with the timber
when Williams moved to LA to flee The two are in touch sporadically — from the original tree — from
the British press. “As soon as he Chambers says Williams has an idea for using it to make benches or
moved there, things deteriorated,” an album that Chambers would produce, pencils, to medals for the
Chambers explains. “I had children: it but he is focusing on reworking Lemon annual Great North Run, the
wasn’t ideal for me to go away.” The rela- Trees songs for a record due next year. world’s biggest half-
tionship reached its nadir when Williams The hardest part of the Netflix series marathon, which runs from
then wrote his brutal dissection of fame, for Chambers to watch is about their Newcastle to South Shields.
Come Undone, and Chambers made split; but his favourite bit? When they Lord Sumption, the former
changes. “He went apeshit,” Chambers wrote Life Thru a Lens in nine days. Supreme Court judge, was
says. “He has big trust issues and thought Chambers composed Angels while suffer- among the unsuccessful
I was a close friend who now couldn’t be ing from an awful sinus infection, which candidates for election to the
trusted. Things unravelled.” is why its lyrics seem to run out towards National Trust’s council,
The duo reunited a decade later but the end — he wanted to go home. “That endorsed by a rebel group.
problems Williams once had under con- for me is the best bit, right at the begin- He said the result was
trol resurfaced, and on tour in 2017, ning,” Chambers grins. “Rob needed “exactly what I was
troubled by a bad back, he became redemption back then. He was lost, frus- expecting” because of the
addicted to pills. “It was horrible,” Cham- trated, had all this energy. He needed voting system, adding that
bers recalls. “I’d be behind him thinking somebody to support him, and I was the trust’s governance was
he could keel over. He could die on stage.” good at that — for a while.” “discreditable”.

Bravery award for ex-bouncer who saved US spy from knife terrorist
Hugo Daniel
After putting his two young
sons to bed at about 7pm,
Steve Bunn looked out of the
window at the cold wet March
night and briefly considered
cancelling his plan to go to his
local gym for a sauna.
The fitness instructor
usually had one earlier in the
day but it had been a long day
at work and he had an early
start the next morning.
The decision to have his
first late-night session at the
Cheltenham leisure centre
saved a woman’s life — and
nearly cost his own — after he
walked out of the sauna into
an unfolding terrorist attack,
tackling the man and talking
to him until police arrived.
“I’m a relatively big guy,
6ft 2in, shaved head — I could
almost see the fight go out of
him,” said the former
bouncer, who can bench
press 145kg.
Bunn’s actions during the
next 30 minutes were to save
the life of an American spy
and have led to him being
given a judge’s
commendation and on Friday
picking up a police award for
bravery. A second man, Alex
Fuentes, was commended for
his intervention when the
attack began in the car park.
Last month, the attacker,
Joshua Bowles, 29, was jailed
for life with a minimum of 13
years for the “politically
motivated” knife attack, three
miles from GCHQ, where the
victim, known only as 99230
to protect her identity,
worked for the US National
Security Agency.
At Bowles’s sentencing,
Mrs Justice Cheema-Grubb
said the victim, who had been
playing netball at the leisure
centre and was walking to her
car when she was attacked,
escaped fatal injury by “mere
chance”, because the knife
“fortuitously missed any
major organs”.
Bowles stabbed her three
times in the thigh, chest and
abdomen.
“It’s miraculous, really. I
normally go to the [leisure
centre] sauna much earlier in
the day and had never been
before that late at night, I
don’t know what made me
go, to be honest,” said Bunn,
44, who lives in Cheltenham.
“It freaked me out — and
still does — that if I hadn’t
walked out at that exact
second, she’d be dead and I’d
have walked out to a
bloodbath, with her laid on
the floor.”
Bowles had been a
software coding developer at
GCHQ for three years until
resigning in November last
year, unhappy with his career
progression. He had
developed “anger and
resentment” towards his
former employer, and women
Steve Bunn did research on 99320, including
not realise the obtaining her netball team’s
attacker had a fixture schedule and phoning
knife until after the leisure centre to ask if he
he intervened at could look around without
a leisure centre being a member.
in Cheltenham Armed with two knives,
Bowles waited for his victim
in the car park on March 9
this year and pounced on her
and a friend as they walked
into the car park, punching
her repeatedly.
He was interrupted by
Fuentes, who was on his way
to play football and asked:
“What’s going on?” Bowles
punched him in the face but
the intervention allowed the
two women to run back to the
leisure centre, where Bunn
in general, after being was walking through
“ghosted” by another reception.
American former co-worker, He said: “I saw two females
who was 99320’s predecessor entering the building. One
in the job, the Old Bailey was bleeding badly from the
heard. Bowles carried out mouth, her friend was
carrying her and they were
screaming: ‘Help us. We’ve
been jumped.’”
Out of the corner of his
eye, he saw Bowles running
in. “He ran straight to the
victim and started what I
thought was quite frenzied
punching,” he said. “I
grabbed the guy by the
shoulders to pull him off the
girls, and as soon as I grabbed
him I saw the knife. It was like
a 9in, thick kitchen knife. I
immediately thought, ‘I’m
about to be stabbed here’.
“I’ve seen the knife going
under my arm, frenziedly,
still trying to get towards the
girl. The girls managed to
back away behind me and get
away, as I’m pushing the guy
in the other direction, and in
the mêlée I must have
grabbed his hand or wrist or
something, because within
seconds I heard what I
thought was the knife
dropping to the floor.” Bunn
said he thought he was going
to die. “It was terrifying at the
time. In that split second I
thought about my kids. I
thought about bleeding to
death on the floor with my
children not near me.”
After Bunn had disarmed
Bowles, the pair were
“staring at each other” in a
30-second “stand-off ”. Bunn
said: “I could almost see the
fight go out of him. I just said,‘
Are you all right?’ and he
said, ‘Well, no I’ve just tried
to kill her.’ ”
Bunn has received
counselling, blaming himself
for not intervening sooner,
but the reaction of his sons
Dexter, 5, and Jackson, 2, has
meant most to him. “Dexter
keeps saying, ‘Daddy’s a
hero’, which is quite
endearing,” he said.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
NEWS
AI helps rugby
star speak again
in his own accent
Rob Burrow, who has
motor neurone disease,
can host a podcast thanks
to technology based on
his post-match interviews
Louise Eccles Consumer Affairs Editor
Listening to Rob Burrow interviewing
Wayne Rooney on his new podcast last
week, you might forget he has been un-
able to speak for the past three years.
In his thick Yorkshire accent, the rugby
league player was able to quiz the footbal-
ler, coaxing Rooney to open up.
Burrow, 41, is thought to be the first
non-verbal person to present a podcast,
made possible by several small British
businesses harnessing artificial intelli-
gence to help people, like him, with
motor neurone disease (MND).
He plays his voice through a tablet
computer which he controls using his eye
movements. It has, he said, freed “a still-
sharp brain stuck inside a rusting cage”.
“I can talk to my children, control the
television, message friends on WhatsApp
and now even do a podcast,” said Burrow,
who had MND diagnosed in 2019, two
years after retiring from rugby. His voice
“gradually disappeared” in 2020.
The technology used by Burrow is a
long way from the monotone computer-
generated voice used by Professor Ste-
phen Hawking.
To create Burrow’s new voice, the
Edinburgh-based voice technology
business SpeakUnique listened to
hours of his post-match interviews
from his time as a rugby player at
the Leeds Rhinos. Some of the audio
was discounted because Burrow was
too breathless. In others, there was
too much noise. In the end only one
hour of clear recording from his
post-game conversations was used
to create a realistic voice. It was
then paired with a tablet computer
that converts the words he types,
letter by letter, using his eyes, into
speech. An infrared camera attached to
the computer recognises when his gaze
lingers for approximately one second on
an individual letter on a keyboard on the
screen.
It is a time-consuming process, with
most people able to type only 12 to 20
words per minute this way. To avoid long
pauses during the podcast interviews,
Burrow wrote them in advance.
“It is particularly special to have my
own voice,” he said. “Although the great
Doddie Weir did use to tease me that I
should have got a Scottish accent
instead.” Weir, a close friend, was a Scot-
tish rugby union player who died last
year from MND, aged 52.
Burrow uses a Grid Pad 15, a tablet
costing £6,000 to £7,000 created by
Smartbox, a family-run firm in Malvern,
Worcestershire. It can offer predictive
text to help Burrow choose commonly
used words to communicate, and
remembers phrases that the user types
frequently to make it quicker for them
next time, such as “How was school?”
The tablet also has apps for Netflix, for
Rob Burrow, with wife Lindsey, can
control the computer with his eyes
13
RACHEL ADAMS FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
example, and can use infrared technol-
ogy to bring up the entire homepage of
his television so he can choose what he
wants to watch without any help from his
wife, Lindsey, or their three children.
The Motor Neurone Disease Associa-
tion, the charity of which Burrow is
patron, has funded 584 banked voices for
people this year, with a total cost of
£80,000, which can now be used with
eye-gaze technology.
The work is being undertaken by a
think tank at the association that includes
senior innovators at companies including
Rolls-Royce, Dell, Intel, Google and
Microsoft, as well as people with MND.
It was the brainchild of Stuart Moss,
48, head of IT innovation for Rolls-Royce,
whose father Brian, 67, died on Christ- Danielle Kemp says she puts her dirty pots and plates in one of her machines and takes her clean ones out of the other
mas Day in 2014, 17 months after having
MND diagnosed. One in 300 people in the
UK will get MND.
Moss imported eye-gaze technology
Double bubble — twin dishwashers
from America, and the pair would
exchange texts while he was at work. “We
were having the usual conversations we
are the new middle-class must-have
had always had. Then I would go to see
him that night and he would be in bed,
completely unable to move except for his Louise Eccles “During the week we Savills in Surrey, said: dishwashers sit either side of
eyeballs, and I couldn’t equate that with Consumer Affairs Editor barely need to unstack the “[Those] with large families, a sink. Richard Jewkes,
the person I had been texting,” he said. dishwasher, we live out of the or who entertain frequently, managing director of the
“This is the disease that stops you talking When Danielle Kemp moved clean one,” said Kemp, 36, a find having two dishwashers company, said: “It isn’t an
and we need to stop that.” into her four-bedroom home credit controller, who lives extremely practical when extravagance. It is a practical
They are working on technology that last year, she had one with her partner, Liam Smith, cleaning up after larger solution for busy family
will enable people to speak with different requirement for her new also 36, and their daughter meals, or when they have homes or even couples. We
emphasis and emotion in their voice kitchen: it had to have two Luna, 5, in Grays, Essex. “I friends staying for a have five children and two
depending on whether they are address- dishwashers. have wanted two for ages and weekend.” dishwashers — this morning,
ing their spouse or child. Crucially for While those with huge everyone thought I was The trend has grown with my breakfast pots were going
British banter, they are also working on houses have long embraced a mental, but we use it all the the rise of open-plan into the second dishwasher
ways for people to be able to select a lilt brace of the appliances, time. Last night when I was kitchens, since people can no because the first one had
to their synthetic voice. including celebrities such as cooking dinner I had one dirty longer shut the door on their already started the cycle.”
Burrow’s Rooney interview was the chef Jamie Oliver and the one to put all my pans in and a dirty pots and do not want to For many first-time buyers,
the first in a seven-part podcast broadcaster Ben Fogle, who clean one to take my stuff out stare at their leftover dishes or those renting small flats,
series, Seven: Rob Burrow, named has four, the double of. I just keep rotating.” while sitting on their sofa. the idea of having just one
after the number on his rugby shirt, dishwasher is appearing in The estate agency Savills KC Design House, a kitchen dishwasher is a dream. A full-
released every Wednesday on BBC more “normal” kitchens too. said houses at the upper end company in West Yorkshire, size dishwasher can cost
Sounds. Other guests will include Fans say it means the end of the market might have a said about 35 per cent of its between £500 and £1,000,
the former England rugby union of dirty pots sitting on the “show” kitchen and a customers requested a depending on the brand, but
player Jonny Wilkinson and kitchen counter while you “catering” kitchen, but this double dishwasher. Some can be a struggle to fit into a
the double-Olympic gold wait for the last cycle to trend was “filtering down have three. In some of the small kitchen.
medallist runner Dame finish, and even removes the into the middle market”. displays in its showroom,
Kelly Holmes. need to empty the machine. Simon Ashwell, head of near Huddersfield, two Editorial, page 22
14
COMMENT
Rod Liddle
A brilliant till innovation that reduces
theft and increases happiness: a human
A
recent hobby of mine is to
stand near the self-service tills
in my local supermarket and
watch the skanks nicking stuff.
The usual trick is to waft
whatever item — bottle of
Archers, family pack of
Monster Munch, job lot of
frozen pies made from recovered meat
by-products — past the scanner but with
the barcode facing in the other
direction. Nobody cares. Certainly not
the poor, harassed checkout assistant,
who has to oversee about ten tills and is
probably averse to being glassed in the
middle of her shift.
It is not just the absence of
punishment that has made shoplifting
effectively legal in this benighted
country; it is also the absence of people.
Of human contact. One supermarket has
recognised this — Booths, a posh chain
operating in the northwest of England,
which has decided to dispense with the
self-service tills and reintroduce a
concept called “people”.
It says it is doing this in response to
customer demand, and I have no reason
to doubt that. It would be wholly wrong
to suggest that the footballers’ wives of
Alderley Edge who make up its clientele
are more prone to kleptomania than the
rest of us. Whatever the reason, Booths
is to be commended.
However, this is not simply about
supermarkets and their giant profits,
disdain for the shopper and
determination to make the experience of
shopping as barren and soulless as
possible. The removal of proper human
interaction has accelerated in the past
20 years, mostly to save companies or
the government money. My suspicion,
though, is that it may end up costing us
all a lot more in the long run — and not
just as a consequence of supermarkets
putting their prices up to cover the cost
of skanking opportunism.
Quite a few of the ills of society are
born of a lack of communitarianism, of
the feeling that we are not each part of a
society but a kind of avatar in a video
game, in which other people are either
to be defeated or ignored. Isolated from
other human beings, we feel we have a
right to get away with whatever we can.
The ties that once bound us are
loosened or have withered away
entirely.
We meet fewer and fewer people.
Our lives are more transient; we move
home more often and thus are less
inclined to put down roots, as they say.
A survey last year found that only a
minority of us now know the names of
our neighbours. The places where we
used to interact with other local people
are either gone or in steep decline: the
church, the pub, the post office. I
suppose you might argue that these
days we meet down the gym, but, while
our wish to remain in the peak of fitness
until one day we drop dead from sheer
boredom may be admirable, pounding
Many of the
ills of society
are born of
the feeling
that we are
just avatars in
a video game
away on that cross trainer is an
essentially egoistic and narcissistic
occupation.
The banks close their branches.
Increasingly we shop online so we don’t
even have to see other people, let alone
interact with the bastards. Our
communications with the sinister
institutions that run our lives — energy
companies, insurance firms and so on —
are more often than not conducted via
(fairly stupid) robots.
I realise that there are certain benefits
to doing things this way. There is
convenience and economic efficiency,
for example. But it is what we are giving
up as a consequence that worries me.
The loss of human contact has played a
part in the huge rise in antisocial crime,
mental illness, drug use, shoplifting —
and, of course, loneliness. Loneliness is
a killer. The more lonely you are, the
younger you are likely to die.
Am I overstating the case here; just
revelling in nostalgia for an earlier,
simpler time? I don’t think so. Direct
contact with other human beings,
especially human beings who are part of
your local community, is not merely
important but, I would argue, vital. It
bestows upon us a sense of
responsibility to others and it serves to
moderate our behaviour.
Let me give you a simple example of
this. Venture onto Twitter (or X, if you
must), or for that matter Facebook. You
will immediately be struck by the fury
and spite that abounds. You will witness
arguments that descend, after two or
three sentences, into apparently rational
people calling each other Hitler. You will
discern a vicious polarisation of opinion
in which each side will brook no
argument.
It is inconceivable that this kind of
solipsistic, psychotic rage would develop
if the two people talking were doing so
face to face, as we are meant to do. The
absence of direct personal contact
encourages us to shed our civility and
inhibitions. It does so at the supermarket
till and it does so everywhere else.
Confectionery bar faces axe
PHOTOBUBBLE: NICK NEWMAN
The perils of minority rule
A chap next to me at a dinner
a week or so ago remarked
that Suella Braverman was
“the most hated woman in
Britain”. I asked if he had
done an audit and then told
him that there were many,
many women in the country I
hated much more and
proceeded to list them. I
suppose it was patient of
him to wait until I had
reached No 214 (a tie
between Katya Adler and
Miriam Margolyes, since you
asked) before making his
excuses and leaving.
It is true, however, that
Braverman seems to be
thoroughly hated by a certain
section of the parliamentary
Conservative Party, much as
was Priti Patel.
The Tories rightly eschew
the patronising approach
adopted by Labour that
treats all people who are not
white as victims in need of
help. By contrast the Tories
give people of colour top
jobs ... and then get rid of
them, sharpish. Count the
fallen: Patel, Kwarteng, Javid,
Zahawi and soon Braverman,
we are told. If I were Sunak,
I’d watch my back.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
If Suella
Braverman can
survive, there’s
hope for us all!
Clobbered for trunk-driving
Last Monday at 4.30 in the
afternoon I drove into a tree,
wrote off my car and radged
my shoulder. I was conveyed
by ambulance to hospital,
where an admitting nurse
appraised me with visible
irritation and said: “You’ve
come in on the busiest day of
the week.” I apologised and
said that henceforth I would
endeavour to drive into a tree
on a Tuesday, or any other
day that suited.
Since then I’ve been on a
diet of codeine, naproxen,
paracetamol and alcohol,
and I worried that this
Chinese scientists have
created a chimeric monkey
with fluorescent green eyes
and glowing yellow
fingertips. This is terrific
news for all of us, and the
scientists are delighted.
Previously they had
inserted human brain genes
into monkeys and brought
forth a creature that spent
all day watching reruns of
Cash in the Attic and voted
for Reform UK. Next?
Perhaps a fully glowing
monkey that can recite
aphorisms from Chairman
Mao’s Little Red Book while
invading Taiwan.
Unless, at some point,
the scientists suddenly look
at one another in the
middle of sewing a heron’s
head onto the body of a
panda and say, in the
manner of that famous
Mitchell and Webb sketch:
“Are we the baddies?”
might adversely affect my
writing. My wife laughed and
said: “The readers will either
not notice or marginally
prefer it.”
Meanwhile, my bosses
here thought I should write
about the possible lessons
learnt from such direct
experience, that being the
job of a columnist. Fair
enough. Here goes:
I would strongly advise
you not to drive into a tree. It
is a painful, costly and
dispiriting experience, and
the tree will not thank you for
it either.

INVESTIGATION
The secretive guru who
plotted Starmer’s path
to power with
undeclared cash
Morgan McSweeney, 46, spent much of Jeremy Corbyn’s reign researching how moderates might regain
control of Labour and turn it into a party of government — but failed to declare donations that paid for it
GABRIEL
POGRUND
AND
HARRY
YORKE
D
uring the dog days of Jeremy
Corbyn’s leadership, a little-
known figure within Westmin-
ster approached Sir Keir
Starmer, then shadow Brexit
secretary, with a proposal. The
gist of the conversation in sum-
mer 2019 is said to have been:
“When this is over, we need to rebuild
the party. I think you might be the man
to do it.”
The proposer was Morgan McSwee-
ney, who ran a secretive group called
Labour Together. McSweeney had spent
much of Corbyn’s reign conducting
research on how the moderates might
regain control of Labour and, in his eyes,
turn it into a party of government again.
Given the factionalism of the Corbyn
era, Labour Together operated under the
radar. Supported by moderates such as
Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting, for
several years it did not even have a
Twitter account or website. It conducted
clandestine research and polling on
Labour’s half-a-million members that
might one day be useful to a moderate
leadership candidate. For McSweeney,
that person increasingly appeared to be
Starmer, who already had a high profile
among the party’s grassroots.
What followed was one of the most
successful political alliances in recent
party history. In the leadership contest
after Corbyn’s 2019 general election
defeat, Starmer appointed McSweeney
his campaign manager. Today, Starmer,
61, is consistently ahead in the polls and
appears destined for Downing Street.
McSweeney, 46, is in charge of the party’s
general election campaign and remains
his closest adviser. Labour Together has
emerged from the shadows as the party’s
“policy shop”, generating ideas to popu-
late the next manifesto.
There is also a parallel story. McSwee-
ney failed to declare the hundreds of
thousands of pounds in donations he
used to pull off his mission. The money,
provided by millionaire venture capital-
ists and businessmen between 2017 and
2020, amounted to £730,000. He under-
stated and misreported other payments.
For much of this period, Labour
Together’s website claimed its donations
were reported to the Electoral Commis-
sion, as required by law. In January 2019,
the group held a meeting in parliament
and MPs asked McSweeney if donations
were being declared fully and promptly.
He said they were. This was not the case.
When the Electoral Commission
launched an investigation in 2021,
McSweeney was working for Starmer. His
name did not appear in Labour
Together’s response to the watchdog,
a response that blamed the failings on
an “admin error”. The regulator said the
group had not provided a reasonable
excuse, found almost 30 offences under
electoral law and issued a fine. McSwee-
ney was never linked to the
failings.
By then, money at a scale rarely seen in
Labour politics had already changed the
party’s future, setting Starmer on the
path to Downing Street.
UP AND RUNNING
Labour Together was set up as a company
in June 2015, weeks after Ed Miliband
resigned as party leader, having lost to
David Cameron in the general election.
Its founder was John Clarke, an Irish citi-
zen married to an influential moderate
councillor in Islington, north London.
Clarke had served as director of Blue
Labour, a group that advocated a blend of
left-wing economics and social conserva-
tism to propel the party back to power.
Clarke resigned less than a year after
setting up Labour Together, giving way to
three MPs who had served on Miliband’s
front bench. The first was Jon Cruddas, a
central Blue Labour figure. He had fought
the British National Party (BNP) in his
Dagenham constituency and believed
Labour had to become the party of ordi-
nary patriotic people, not metropolitan
Britain. He was joined by Lisa Nandy, the
Wigan MP, and Steve Reed, who, before
becoming Croydon North MP led Lam-
beth council, transforming it from a
redoubt of the Trotskyist “loony left” into
an award-winning borough with a strong
emphasis on public services.
The three were united in their desire to
reconnect the party with working Brit-
ain. Their mission appeared even more
critical after the shock of September
2015, when Corbyn was elected party
leader by 250,000 people, many of them
trade union members or “registered sup-
porters” who paid £3 to gain a vote.
To get up and running, the MPs
needed funding. They approached Mar-
tin Taylor, a Mayfair-based hedge fund
manager who had just announced his
retirement, at 46. Taylor had founded
Nevsky Capital, a £1.5 billion fund
launched in the Cayman Islands known
to invest in Russian companies such as
He was Gazprom. A month after Corbyn’s win,
he gave Labour Together an initial dona-
the real tion of £40,000, followed by payments
taking his contribution above six figures.
unsung Also committing money was Trevor
Chinn, 88, a Jewish community leader,
hero Labour donor and friend of Tony Blair,
knighted in the 1990s for his services to
Great Ormond Street Hospital. No
INSIDE LABOUR TOGETHER
FUNDERS
Martin Sir Trevor Lord Clive Lord Paul Sean
Taylor Chinn Hollick Myners Wadsworth
SUPPORTERS
Lisa Rachel Steve
Nandy Reeves Reed
stranger to antisemitism, in 2008 he had
appeared on an al-Qaeda hitlist in a land-
mark terrorism trial. Chinn donated
£10,000 and was appointed director.
Over the next year, the group served as
a safe space for “soft left” MPs trauma-
tised by Miliband’s defeat, Corbyn’s vic-
tory and Brexit. Its members met in par-
liament and at the House of St Barnabas,
a private members’ club in Soho.
TESTING GROUND
In the summer of 2017, McSweeney was
appointed Labour Together’s full-time
director, reporting to a board including
Reed, Nandy, Cruddas and Chinn.
His route into Labour politics was
unorthodox. He grew up in Macroom, a
small town in Co Cork, southwest Ireland
and at 17 moved to London, where he
worked on building sites before studying
politics and marketing at Middlesex
University. In 1997, inspired by the Good
Friday Agreement, he joined Labour.
At first a receptionist at party head-
quarters, by 2001 he had moved to its
attack and rebuttal unit in Millbank,
Westminster. He soon pivoted into
campaigns, working with two of the MPs
who later created Labour Together.
£700,000
Never
declared
LABOUR TOGETHER
Director (2017-20):
Morgan McSweeney
Wes Shabana
Streeting Mahmood
The first was Reed. In 2006, McSwee-
ney helped him defy disaffection with
Labour over Iraq and win Lambeth coun-
cil back from no overall control. While
running Reed’s campaign, McSweeney
himself failed as a council candidate in
nearby Sutton, winning just 149 votes.
In 2008, he had another formative
experience. He went to Dagenham, in
east London, where Labour was facing an
insurgent BNP, which, under Nick Griffin,
had won a dozen council seats and was
targeting MPs such as Cruddas and Mar-
garet Hodge. McSweeney worked closely
with Cruddas and David Evans, a Blair
official and later Starmer’s general secre-
tary, to focus their campaigning efforts
on patriotism and crime. Labour routed
the BNP at the 2010 general election.
“He was the real unsung hero of the
whole thing,” Cruddas later told the New
Statesman. “It got pretty tasty, but
Morgan was key in terms of organising
discipline, sorting out communications
and systematically analysing the voters.”
In September 2015, McSweeney ran
the leadership campaign of Blairite Liz
Kendall, who came last in the contest
with 4 per cent of the vote. After a period
in local government, he joined Labour
Together in 2017, becoming its first full-
time director and serving as company
secretary, the role traditionally responsi-
ble for a firm’s day-to-day administration,
including compliance with regulations.
By this point, Corbyn had been in
office for almost two years and appeared
more powerful than ever. Yet McSweeney
believed many of those who had voted for
Corbyn were well-meaning public-sector
workers and progressives who had lost
faith after Iraq. When the time came to
elect Corbyn’s successor, he thought it
would be possible to peel these members
— the soft left — away from the more fac-
tional “hard left” and unite them with
centrist members behind a single candi-
date. McSweeney needed to understand
who they were, what they wanted and
what kind of language appealed to them.
Then he could identify a leader they
would be prepared to back. He created
four projects. Each began with the
phrase: “What do Labour members think
about ...” followed by, in turn, “the econ-
omy”, “work”, “belonging” and
“power”.
McSweeney ran
Starmer’s leadership
campaign and is
now his top aide
SIR KEIR
STARMER
All now in Starmer’s
shadow cabinet
Bridget Lucy
Phillipson Powell
15
DONATIONS QUESTIONED
ILLUSTRATION: TONY BELL
McSweeney also turned his eye to fun-
draising. In his first few months he raised
tens of thousands from Taylor and Chinn.
McSweeney reported these contribu-
tions to the Electoral Commission, just as
his predecessors had done. As a group of
party members, Labour Together was a
regulated entity and required to disclose
all donations within 30 days. Failure to
do so, or to file reports correctly, is an
offence that can lead to civil and, in cer-
tain cases, criminal proceedings. Such
laws are based on the idea that the public
have the right to know who is paying
money to influence public life.
Yet in December 2017, McSweeney
stopped reporting donations to the
watchdog. That month, Taylor gave his
biggest sum to date: the first of several
lots of £50,000. Chinn donated the first
of several lots of £12,500. Labour
Together was starting to raise money on a
scale and at a speed rarely seen in British
politics. Yet to an outsider, it would have
seemed donors, whose money had
always appeared on the Electoral Com-
mission’s database, had stopped giving.
The omissions were not a one-off. In
early 2018, more wealthy businessmen
started opening their wallets. Many had
given to Owen Smith’s leadership chal-
lenge to Corbyn the previous year. Lord
Myners, a City grandee and former minis-
ter under Gordon Brown, made a dona-
tion of £25,000. Lord Hollick, a Labour-
supporting banking and media tycoon;
Simon Tuttle, a private equity executive
involved with the campaign group Hope
Not Hate; and Sean Wadsworth, owner of
a communications firm, all gave £10,000
each. Richard Greer, another donor to
Miliband, gave the same.
In January 2019, McSweeney hosted a
meeting of Labour Together MPs in
Portcullis House, Westminster, to discuss
the relaunch of the group’s website and
the publication of a series of articles. The
site was going to say: “You can find out
more about our donations on the Elect-
oral Commission’s website here.”
According to a source, Shabana Mah-
mood, the Birmingham Ladywood MP
and now shadow justice secretary, asked
if donors had been forewarned they
might face questions. McSweeney said
they had. Another MP asked if donations
were being declared as required by law.
In the words of a source, the MP wanted
to check if the group was up-to-date and
in line with its obligations. McSweeney
assured them they were.
In fact, the only money he reported
over two years was £12,500 from Chinn in
August 2018, months after Labour
Together stopped reporting funds.
Neither McSweeney nor Labour Together
will explain this anomaly.
In total, McSweeney failed to report
more than £700,000 in funds. That
easily exceeds the amount Unite, the
biggest single donor to Labour MPs, gave
to parliamentarians between the last
general election and this year. Yet
Labour Together’s project to recapture
the party from the hard left remained
under the radar.
ENTER STARMER
Sources say McSweeney and Starmer
started speaking over the summer of
2019, when Labour remained split over
the issue of Brexit.
Starmer had only been in parliament
since 2015 — the result of gentle encour-
agement by Miliband, when leader, and a
well-oiled campaign to install the former
director of public prosecutions as candi-
date for Holborn and St Pancras, a Lon-
don safe seat. Despite resigning as a
shadow immigration minister during
Smith’s leadership challenge against
Corbyn in 2016, Starmer returned to the
Morgan shadow cabinet weeks later and was
McSweeney, who rewarded with a promotion. He became
ran the secretive shadow Brexit secretary.
Labour Together In September 2018, Starmer endeared
group, has been himself to the pro-EU grassroots by using
key to regaining a conference speech to raise the idea of a
control of the second referendum. He declared: “No
party and setting one is ruling out Remain as an option.”
Sir Keir Starmer That line, which drew a spontaneous
on the road to standing ovation in the conference hall,
Downing Street was met with fury by Corbyn’s office.
They viewed it as a deliberate attempt to
sabotage their delicately crafted and
unpopular fudge: negotiating a left-wing
version of Brexit and leaving open the
question of a second referendum.
What they could see — what allies say
McSweeney could see too — was that it
also fired the starting gun on a future
leadership campaign. Remainers were
looking for a like-minded hero and they
seized upon Starmer, despite his lawyerly
Morgan and diffident mien.
According to sources, McSweeney and
was Starmer’s initial conversations were
informal. The pair agreed that, when the
key to time was right, they might work together.
McSweeney had the research and the
analysis ideas. He also had the money: Labour
Together banked £45,000 after his
arrival in 2017, £190,000 in 2018 and
£295,992 in 2019.
The opportunity came in December
2019, when Corbyn led Labour to its
worst defeat in almost a century. On
January 5, Starmer launched his leader-
ship bid. Three days later, it was revealed
he had appointed McSweeney as cam-
paign manager. He was able to help
Starmer in three distinct ways.
The first was his knowledge of the
parliamentary Labour Party, vital for
gathering the signatures required to
become a candidate. Starmer secured the
support of 22 MPs before any of his rivals
— by no means a foregone conclusion for
the relative Westminster newcomer.
The second and most significant was
his knowledge of the party’s members,
the result of Labour Together’s years of
detailed research. McSweeney helped
Starmer deliver a pitch-perfect campaign
that captured the soft left’s imagination
by combining idealism with a profession-
alism that Corbyn had lacked.
Lastly, McSweeney brought in money.
Not only did Labour Together raise
Continued on page 16 →
16
NEWS
Bean-counter
boss behind
revival of M&S
Stuart Machin, who went from stacking shelves to the boardroom,
has helped the share price double in a year. His attention to detail
involves sizing up butter beans — and he adores his own menswear
Sam Chambers
Chief Business Correspondent
Marks & Spencer’s boss Stuart Machin
had two things at the top of his in-tray on
Friday: lingerie and butter beans.
After a morning spent poring over next
season’s “shapewear” with one of the
company’s lingerie designers, the model
Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, he headed
off to try some of M&S’s new butter bean
samples. He was worried the existing
ones were too small.
This nitpicking is very much “on
brand” for Machin, the chief executive
who preaches the mantra of being “posi-
tively dissatisfied” in everything he does.
“Rosie loves my saying. She has started
using it with her kids,” he laughed.
Machin, 53, has a lot to cheer about.
Last Wednesday, M&S wowed the city
with bumper profits and strong sales in
its much-lauded food business, as well as
its formerly much-laughed at clothing
business. The stellar progress has led
shares in M&S to almost double, to 246p,
over the last 12 months, and returned the
high street stalwart into the FTSE 100.
The decline of arguably the finest
retailer Britain has ever produced had
been so long and painful, so littered with
false dawns, that seasoned observers
cannot quite believe what they are see-
ing: a turnaround that looks built to last.
The two people who have contributed
more than anybody are Machin, the one-
time Saturday boy who has risen from
shelf stacking to boardroom, and Archie
Norman, the M&S chairman revered in
the City after steering Asda away from
bankruptcy in the 1990s.
On a high street that is being deci-
mated, how on earth have they done it?
“We have gone back to our roots and
heritage: products at exceptional quality
for the price you pay, which equals value
and that equals trust,” said Machin. “I am
not saying we are great at all of this
because we are not. In a way, I think we
are only at the beginning”.
M&S reported pre-tax profits of
£360 million in the six months to Septem-
ber, a jump of 75 per cent on the previous
year. Sales in clothing and food rose by
5.7 per cent and 14.7 per cent respec-
tively. It even restored its dividend, albeit
at the modest level of 1p per share.
The roots of this success can be traced
back to the appointment of Norman in
2017. The former Tory MP for Tunbridge
Wells swept away M&S’s entitled culture.
Paintings by Monet and Lowry were
removed from the executive floors in its
head office near London’s Paddington
246p
The price of an M&S share on
Friday, up 97 per cent in a year
£3.80
Hourly amount Stuart Machin earned
as a shelf-stacker. He now earns £2.7m
Everyone in head
office has to work
seven days in a
shop, including me
station, which was renamed the “store
support centre”. It was all designed to
ram home the message that what hap-
pened on the shop floor, rather than in
corporate meeting rooms, would deter-
mine whether M&S survived.
The chaos of the pandemic gave Nor-
man, 69, the cover he needed to cut 7,000
jobs, a brutal but overdue cull. Today,
M&S employs about 72,000 people.
Since being promoted to chief execu-
tive 536 days ago (yes, he counts the days)
in May last year, Machin has built on Nor-
man’s cultural revolution. He has stipu-
lated that none of the 3,800 workers in
the head office can attain a rating of
“meets expectations” in their annual per-
formance review without putting in the
hard yards on the front line of retailing.
“Me and every single person in the
store support centre has to work seven
days a year in a store. That’s not just pop-
ping in, saying hi and doing your shop-
ping — it’s proper work,” Machin said.
Staff are required to identify a problem
and resolve it. After an HR manager got
chatting to a shop floor worker whose
baby was born prematurely, she con-
vinced management to introduce a policy
offering up to 12 weeks’ paid leave to any
new parent, so they don’t have to use up
their parental leave while their baby is
in hospital. “It is critically important
that we are ‘sleeves rolled up’ and
close to colleagues who serve cus-
tomers,” Machin said.
As a teenager in Gillingham, Kent,
Machin earned £3.80 an hour stacking
shelves at Sainsbury’s in nearby Hemp-
stead, and abandoned plans to go to uni-
versity in favour of a career in retail.
Now, earning a total of
£2.7 million a year, Machin still
spends every Saturday morning
in the aisles of M&S stores scouring
for imperfections. He proudly
declares there is literally nobody in
the country who buys more M&S men-
Secretive guru who plotted
Starmer’s path to power
→ Continued from page 15
£160,000 for its own use
during the contest, none of it
declared, its supporters also
gave to Starmer — a total of
£205,000 from Taylor
(£95,000), Chinn (£50,000),
Hollick (£50,000) and Myners
(£10,000), amounting to 30
per cent of Starmer’s cash
donations during the
campaign. Starmer refused to
disclose such details at the
time, instead staying within
the rules but waiting until
after his election.
Publicly, the group claimed
not to back any candidate. On
13 February 2020, Mahmood
wrote: “Labour Together is
not supporting any particular
leadership campaign, and the
data from our survey is not
and will not be shared with
any campaign.”
It was only after Starmer’s
victory that its position
changed. It has since
published statements that
still appear on its website,
such as: “In 2020, Labour
Together helped to rally the
party membership behind
Keir Starmer: the candidate
who could bring together a
divided party.” It also quotes
Reed saying: “In 2020,
Labour Together played a key
role in Keir Starmer’s
leadership campaign.”
But in 2020, with Covid
raging, these inconsistencies
went under the radar. In
April, Starmer won the
contest with 56 per cent of
the vote. He immediately
appointed McSweeney as
chief of staff, making him the
most senior adviser in the
Labour Party. McSweeney in
turn left his post as director of
Labour Together and got to
work on his three-step plan to
get Starmer elected: reform
the party; expose the failings
of the Conservatives; and
offer a vision for the country.
GUILTY VERDICT
After McSweeney’s
departure, Labour Together
continued to operate as a
kind of Starmerite think-tank,
Rosie Huntington-
Whiteley is a fan of
Stuart Machin’s
generating ideas to re-
energise the centre ground
and, in due course, promote
the basis for a Labour
manifesto. Its administrator
was now Hannah O’Rourke, a
former adviser to Tristram
Hunt, Miliband’s shadow
education secretary. In late
2020, she realised that for a
period of almost three years
Labour Together had not
declared hundreds of
thousands of pounds to the
Electoral Commission. In
December that year, she filed
a series of “late” donation
reports, with one reported as
late as 1,292 days after the
30-day limit. Dozens of
donations — including more
than £730,000 when
McSweeney was in charge —
had not been disclosed. She
could give no explanation.
The next month the
Electoral Commission
launched an investigation
into offences under electoral
law. Labour Together quickly
retained the services of
Gerald Shamash, a solicitor
who had represented the
Labour Party in moments of
crisis since the days of Neil
Kinnock. McSweeney was
consulted by email and
phone and asked to explain
why donations suddenly
stopped being reported and
why the £12,500 was
anomalously disclosed.
On February 20, 2021,
Shamash sent the watchdog a
response. It did not refer to
McSweeney’s personal role or
even mention him by name. It
simply said those involved
believed money was being
declared all along, and
blamed “human error and
administrative oversight”.
Shamash wrote:
“Enquiries have been made
of those involved at the
material time and frankly it
was assumed that donations
were being properly reported
as indeed they had been so
reported up to late 2017 and
early 2018.” He added there
was “absolutely no intention
... to fail to report” and that
his client had been as “open
2GN The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
PHIL WILKINSON
swear than him — he had his team check
the numbers — and the slim-fit Italian
stretch chinos (£49) are a favourite.
mantra of M&S is reaping the benefits of shutting
“positive old stores and opening brighter, modern
dissatisfaction”, shops. In 2017, it had 305 larger stores
a policy that selling food and clothing. Today it has
has pushed up 244 and in four years it expects to have
food sales just 180. The majority, Machin said, will
be smaller outlets on retail parks, where
parking is free and it is easy to pick up
online orders. The plan is that any lost
trade will be recouped through higher
online sales.
One of the key reasons investors are
enthused is a turnaround in clothing,
which yields fatter profit margins than
food. M&S is slowly shedding its reputa-
tion for frumpy frocks after bosses belat-
edly realised its core customers, women
in their fifties and sixties, still want to
look like they did in their thirties. Design-
ers are moving in that direction, without
being too edgy for middle England.
“We haven’t gone premium and we
haven’t gone ‘high fashion’. The team
knows what’s on the catwalk and what’s
on trend. We don’t follow all of it but we
follow the direction,” said Machin.
However, M&S’s big strategic play in
food, buying half of Ocado’s retail busi-
ness, has been something of a disaster.
Dire performance at the online super-
market, which switched from Waitrose
products to stocking M&S’s ranges,
dragged M&S’s group profits down by £23
million over the past six months.
“Buying Ocado was the only way we
could go online in food. I thought it was
the right decision then and I think it is
now,” said Machin, predicting it would not
reach its potential for at least three years.
“When I took this role Archie gave me
one bit of advice: take decisions for the
lifetime of M&S,” he added. “That’s what
we have got to keep remembering.”
Editorial, page 22
and transparent” as possible. period of three years.” The
He offered to fine-tune the watchdog can technically
group’s processes and draw a issue a fine of £20,000 per
line under the matter. offence, which, in this
The Electoral Commission instance, would have
rejected this offer. By then, it exceeded £500,000,
had evidence of other although that rarely happens.
failings. It not only expanded News of the decision
the number of donations appeared in a single online
under investigation but found publication, Business Insider,
evidence of disclosures with but was otherwise ignored as
incorrect information. In the nation focused on Covid.
June 2017, McSweeney had Today, McSweeney is
under-reported a donation leading preparations for the
from Taylor. The paperwork next general election. The
said the sum was £18,000; in MPs credited with creating
fact, it was £20,000. It had Labour Together — Reeves,
also reported a donation was shadow chancellor; Streeting,
“cash” when it was “non- shadow health secretary;
cash” — in effect, a payment Mahmood, shadow justice
made by a donor directly to a secretary; Reed, shadow
third-party supplier. Labour environment secretary;
Together had also failed to Bridget Phillipson, shadow
appoint a “responsible education secretary; Lucy
person”: a requirement of Powell, shadow Commons
electoral law giving a person leader; and Lisa Nandy,
formal responsibility for shadow international
declaring funds. development secretary — sit
In September 2021, the in Starmer’s top team.
watchdog delivered its Labour Together is seen as
verdict. It said Labour the incubator of the next
Together’s claims did not manifesto and unveiled a star-
amount to a “reasonable studded advisory board,
excuse”. It found the including the Cambridge
organisation had committed professor Helen Thompson,
almost 30 breaches of the law former health secretary Alan
involving more than Milburn and pollster Andrew
£700,000 of donations, and Cooper, who previously
issued a fine of £14,250. A worked for David Cameron.
spokesman said this was This is the first time the
“towards the high end of [the] story has been told of
scale” and was the largest Starmer’s path to power, the
penalty issued that year bar man who got him there, and
one. They said: “This the undeclared money that
reflected the multiple allowed Labour Together to
offences committed by transform British politics
Labour Together over a under the cover of darkness
and in breach of the law.
This investigation is drawn
from interviews, analysis of
public filings and leaked
documents. The Electoral
The Electoral Commission documents were
made available by Paul
Commission Holden, an investigative
journalist whose book,
found almost Keir Starmer, Labour Together
and the Crisis of British
30 breaches Democracy, is published
next year and is the basis
of the law of a series of upcoming
articles published by the US
journalist Matt Taibbi
WORLD NEWS
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 17

WORLD NEWS

Democrats are worried and Trump’s

surging. But Biden’s backing Biden
Although he’s behind in five swing states, the president — 81 next week — believes his economic record will keep him in the White House
TANNEN MAURY/UPI/ALAMY

David Charter Washington Only two fringe candidates have regis-

As President Biden addressed car work-
ers at an Illinois community centre last
week, he was startled by the sound of an
audience member falling over.
“You OK?” the president asked,
adding, to laughter: “I want the press to
know that wasn’t me.”
The last thing Biden needs is another
pratfall to add to the clips of stumbles and
muddles that are mercilessly replayed
by his Republican opponents on social
media and are eating away at his credibil-
ity with voters. Two recent opinion polls,
for The New York Times and CNN, put
him well behind Donald Trump, his likely
opponent in next year’s election,
prompting some big names to join calls
for him to step aside.
Nevertheless Biden was in a jovial
mood during a week when election
results around the country showed his
Democratic Party performing well, and
he tried to make light of concerns about
his age and ability to serve another four
years, even as he approaches his 81st
birthday this month.
“I’ve never been more optimistic
about America’s future than I am today.
And I know I only look like I’m 30, but I’ve
been around a long time,” he said.
This raised another laugh, but Biden’s
“actuarial” problem — as David Axelrod,
a former senior adviser to President
Obama, put it — is no joke for many Amer-
icans nervous that the man who blocked
Trump in 2020 might now be about to let
him back in.
Andrew Yang, the entrepreneur-
turned-politician who endorsed Biden
after losing in the 2020 Democratic pri-
mary but has since left the party,
summed up these feelings, saying: “If Joe
Biden were to step aside, he would go
down in history as an accomplished
statesman who beat Trump and achieved
a great deal. If he decides to run again it
The pressure on Biden would have
been intense had the party not per-
formed well in last week’s elections,
when it took back full control of the
Virginia legislature, and Andy Beshear,
a popular moderate Democrat, held the
prized governor’s mansion in Republican
Kentucky. Abortion rights were backed in
Republican-controlled Ohio, in line with
a pattern of votes across the country
rejecting hardline restrictions imposed
by red-state legislators.
Days earlier, however, the New York
Times and Siena College poll put Trump
ahead of Biden in five crucial swing
states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan,
Nevada and Pennsylvania. It found 71 per
cent of voters thought Biden “too old” to
be an effective president. Axelrod called
it a cause for “legitimate concern” and
urged Biden to think hard about whether
Young it was “wise” to run, because “his biggest
liability is the one thing he can’t change”.
voters Biden’s 2020 coalition appears to be
crumbling, exacerbated by discontent
are over his support for Israel, with growing
numbers of young, black and Hispanic
drifting voters drifting away from the Democrats.
30 said no, as did 64 per cent of those
aged 30 to 44. A CNN poll put Trump on
48 per cent among 18 to 34-year-olds
and Biden one point behind on 47 per
cent. He won the youth vote by 24 points
in 2020.
The window for changing course in the
Democratic primary contest is rapidly
closing. By the end of the year it will be
impossible for a challenger to register in
enough state primary elections to stand a
chance of replacing Biden.
While social media echoes with calls
for him to drop out, the president is
serenely planning for a second term,
according to those who know him. “He is
going to stay on. He is going to run,” said
Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic con-
sultant who has worked with Biden and
has an inside track. “Tuesday’s elections
told us there are some issues that actually
motivate people to vote for Democrats —
abortion is one, threats to democracy is
another. They showed that there was an
issue base for Biden to campaign on. All
we have to do is watch the Republicans
try to wriggle around on abortion. They
don’t know what to do.
their damnedest to make sure that we
win the election.”
Biden argued on Thursday that the
media was obsessing about unrepresent-
ative polls, telling a journalist: “You don’t
read the polls. Ten polls. Eight of them,
I’m beating him in those places. Eight of
them. You guys only do two. CNN and
New York Times. Check it out.”
The RealClearPolitics average of all
recent polls has Trump on 45.6 per cent
and Biden on 44.5 per cent. It has Trump
up 3.6 points on average in Arizona, 1.2
points up in Pennsylvania, a point up in
Michigan, 2.5 up in Nevada, 5 points up in
Georgia. Biden is up 0.5 on average in
Wisconsin. So it was not clear which
alternative polls he had in mind.
But the age problem is beginning to cut
both ways ahead of an election likely to
be between the two oldest candidates in
history. Trump, 77, has started to back
away from attacks on Biden’s age and
infirmity after making a few bloopers of
his own. At a rally in Iowa he once again
said, incorrectly, that Hungary has a bor-
der with Russia. Last week, in Florida, he
mixed up the Chinese and North Korean
tered in the Democratic primary contest
to take on the president. Unless a heavy-
weight emerges in the next few weeks,
and barring a health crisis, Biden is
almost certain to be the party’s nominee.
Biden loyalists have been out in force
to try to quash dissent in the party.
Donna Brazile, a former chairwoman
of the Democratic national committee,
told ABC News: “Since age is going to be a
factor in this election, let me tell you my
age — I’m old enough to remember when
Reagan was trailing in 1984 for his elec-
tion. I’m old enough to remember when
Bill Clinton was trailing and Barack
Obama was toast right before the 2012
re-election. Don’t count out Joe Biden.”
Meanwhile it is full steam ahead at
Biden campaign HQ in Wilmington, Dela-
President Biden ware, where they are preparing highly
puts on a car targeted ad campaigns to send messages
workers’ union to the particular groups of voters the
T-shirt before party is trying to keep on board, such as
speaking in ethnic minorities and the young. Biden
Belvedere, continues to out-fundraise Trump and
Illinois, last week other Republicans, recording $71 million
in the third quarter.
Quentin Fulks, the principal deputy
campaign manager, dismissed concerns
about Biden’s age as “Beltway chatter”,
referring to the ring road around politics-
obsessed Washington.
The campaign instead has faith voters
will reward Biden’s economic record. He
is spending billions on infrastructure and
is completing the job of recovering from
the pandemic and war in Ukraine —
growth hit 4.9 per cent in the third quar-
ter and unemployment has been below 4
per cent for 21 months.
Trump’s “People don’t care when you’re lower-
ing their healthcare costs or making their
made lives more affordable if that’s being given
to them by someone that’s 80 or by some-
bloopers body that’s 25,” Fulks told The Run-Up
podcast. “At the end of the day people
of his care about kitchen-table issues. The wis-

away
may go down as one of the great over- A CBS News poll asked last week whether “The age thing is obviously a real con- leaders, saying: “Kim Jong-un leads 1.4 dom that comes with President Biden’s
reaches of all time that delivers us to a the US should send weapons and sup- cern. But I’m in the camp that says Biden billion people and there’s no doubt about own age is precisely what we need to get
disastrous Trump second term.” plies to Israel: 59 per cent of those under is going to run and Democrats ought to do who the boss is.” things done.”

A new foe for Argentina’s chainsaw-wielding Volcanic eruption

‘rock star’ of the hard right: Taylor Swift’s fanbase
Harriet Barber Buenos Aires
Earsplitting screaming, the
rumble of thousands of feet,
homemade costumes; at two
shows over three weeks
Argentinians have greeted
two very different heroes
with near-messianic levels of
adulation.
At one event, Taylor Swift
emerged from billowing pink
parachutes to open her Eras
Tour in Latin America before
glitter-covered megafans,
some of whom had been
camping outside the stadium
for weeks.
At the other, Javier Milei, a
hard-right presidential
candidate with a rock-star
image, stood in front of
videos of bombs and
exploding buildings and led a
sea of men in fervent chants.
Since October’s first round
of presidential voting, in
which Milei came second to
qualify for a run-off election,
an unlikely thread has joined
the world’s biggest pop star to
the libertarian economist
with the wild hair and
penchant for wielding
chainsaws on stage: her fans
have been working to bring
him down.
Swifties, as they call
themselves, have rallied
against Milei because of his
social policies. They say that
his proposals to revoke access
to abortion, shut the ministry
for women and loosen gun
laws are a “danger to
democracy”, and have
criticised his denials
of crimes committed
by Argentina’s 1976-83
bloody military
dictatorship.
“Milei is against:
equal pay, legal
abortion, equal
marriage. A vote for
Milei is like voting for
Trump,” the fan group
Swifties for the Country
wrote on social media
last week. In another
post viewed 1.5 million
times, they issued a
two-page missive
calling on each other to
vote against him. In a nod to a
comment by Swift in the 2020
documentary Miss
Americana, it noted: “As
Taylor said: We have a need
to be on the right side of
history.”
On Thursday fans
plastered homemade anti-
Milei posters outside Estadio
Mâs Monumental, where
Swift was playing. “Swiftie no
vota Milei” some read,
followed by a hashtag “Milei
is Trump”. Other showed a
stylised stencil portrait of
Swift holding a tray of biscuits
of different shapes with the
words “Massa 2023”, a
reference to Milei’s
opponent, the centrist
economy minister, Sergio
Massa.
Attempts had been made
to tear down the posters —
whether by image-conscious
security staff or disaffected
Milei supporters was unclear
— but fans could buy a
pristine copy by the gate from
an opportunist street vendor.
Milei said he had shaken
off the comments and the
Swifties could express “what
they want”.
Yet the youth vote has been
decisive in Milei’s unexpected
rise from a relative outsider to
a candidate near the top of
the polls. A third of voters are
under 29, while an October
survey showed that nearly
27 per cent of Milei’s
support came from
those aged 17 to 25,
compared with less
than 9 percent for his
competitor Massa. “What is
new in this election is the
impressively clear age
segmentation in electoral
preferences,” said Dr Julio
Montero, an associate
professor in political theory
at the University of San
Andrés. “People between 16
and 30 years old support
Milei, people between 30 and
50 tend to support Peronism
[Massa’s party].”
The cover band singer-
turned-economist-turned-TV-
pundit-turned-politician
mobilised Argentina’s youth
through rampant social
media campaigns and the
support of Argentina’s TikTok
influencers. “Above all, his
party is a gigantic army of
tweeters, bloggers and
YouTubers supporting his
candidacy, defending his
‘libertarian’ ideas and
attacking his political
adversaries,” Montero said.
“Like Trump, Milei puts on a
very attractive show for social
networks and the media.”
The country is facing an
economic crisis, battling
inflation of more than 100 per
cent, while four in ten people
live in poverty. The 53-year-
old presidential candidate
has pledged to replace the
Argentine peso with the US
dollar, close the central bank
and slash government
spending, while Massa’s role
as incumbent finance
minister has led many to
question his role in the crisis.
Yet in the first round of
the election on
October 22, Milei’s
social proposals
outweighed
economic concerns
for many voters.
“I can’t vote for Milei,
even if economically he
would be better,” said
Lucia, a 29-year-old. “He
is too extreme. He is
crazy.”
Milei won 30 per cent
of the vote compared with
Massa’s 37 per cent in the first
round. Polls are showing an
increasingly tight race. The
two candidates are a week
away from finding out which
of their vastly different
visions Argentinians will pick.
off Iceland could
NATACHA PISARENKO/AP
cause plane chaos
Ed Halford Reykjavik
An “explosive eruption” off
the coast of Iceland that
would lead to its main airport
being shut could take place
“within a matter of hours”,
the Icelandic Meteorological
Office (IMO) has warned.
A series of earthquakes
that shook the southwestern
Reykjanes peninsula and
were felt 25 miles away in the
capital, Reykjavik, led the
national police chief to
declare a state of emergency
on Friday night. Thousands
of householders in the town
of Grindavik were forced to
leave their homes.
Since October 25, Iceland
has experienced heightened
seismic activity around
Mount Thorbjorn on the
Reykjanes peninsula, with
more than 2,300 quakes
recorded.
The pattern has
accelerated in the past 24
hours, with 800 quakes
recorded in the area where
magna intrusion is occurring,
the IMO said.
Sara Barsotti, co-ordinator
for volcanic hazards, said that
“things were changing so
quickly” that a worst case
scenario, involving the
closure of Keflavik airport,
was being considered.
At IMO headquarters in
Reykjavik, pizza bags lay
scattered around tables in an
eating area as workers settled
in for a long shift. Staff
monitored four radars
looking for ash that could
indicate a significant eruption
on land or at sea.
“The possibility of an
explosive eruption taking
place off shore needs to be on
the table,” Barsotti said.
“What we are observing is a
much larger event than we’ve
seen in the last ten to 20
years.”
Such an eruption offshore
could create an ash plume
almost ten miles high and
“might have a huge impact on
the airport”.
The eruption of
Eyjafjallajokull in 2010
Fans of Taylor Swift, who once implored a crowd to make sure they were “on the right side resulted in the largest closure
of history”, are mobilising against Javier Milei, calling him a “danger to democracy” of European airspace since
the Second World War, with
ten million travellers affected
and losses estimated at
between €1.5 billion and €2.5
billion.
One of the reasons the
eruption proved so disruptive
was the northwesterly wind
that drove the ash towards
Europe. There is no similar
weather pattern at the
moment.
An offshore eruption
would therefore be unlikely
to affect aircraft in British and
continental European
airspace, Barsotti said.
Fears of an eruption have
led to the closure of the Blue
Lagoon, a geothermal spa
southwest of Reykjavik, until
Thursday.
Helga Arnadottir, manager
of the Blue Lagoon, said:
“The guests were naturally
worried and aware of the
situation, but the majority
were very calm.”
President Johannesson
praised Icelanders’ readiness
to evacuate. During a
televised news broadcast, he
said: “We are a small nation.
It can be good in a pretty
harsh world. We can turn our
smallness into strength.
Sometimes we are like a small
family. I think most of us
know someone from
Grindavik. We have friends,
acquaintances, relatives.
Then we find the collective
power.”
Thorvaldur Thordarson, a
volcanologist, told Channel 4:
“I don’t think it’s long for
an eruption, hours or a few
days. The chance of an
eruption has increased
significantly.”
A 2021 eruption on the
Reykjanes peninsula
18 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

WORLD NEWS
SUPERSIZED DRIVE-THROUGH 2 out of 3
fast-food purchases
$113 billion
Annual US
Díaz case stirs fear
2024 in the US are made
in drive-throughs
fast-food revenue
Colombia’s kidnap
scourge is returning
Stephen Gibbs Caracas
Joshua Collins Bogotá
The
proposed As the helicopter swooped
drive-through down to the hilltop clearing
in Atlanta offers where he had been brought
multiple options for by his kidnappers, Luis
taking orders, including an Manuel Díaz knew his ordeal
app to order in advance, with was finally over. His usual
four lanes to pick up food reserve gave way to tears.
“It was a cry for the feeling
of freedom,” said Francisco
1948 Ceballos, a Catholic bishop
aboard the UN chartered
First US aircraft who was one of the
drive-through first to speak to Díaz, and
opens reassure him that he was safe.
The 56-year-old father of
Liverpool’s star winger Luis
Díaz was “emaciated, tired,
lame”, said Ceballos. He had
been held hostage in the
rugged Serranía del Perijá
25 cents mountains for 13 days. Just
Cost of an In-N-Out burger walking to the remote pick-up
in the 1950s. It is $3.15 today point nominated by his
M-19. Petro, the country’s
first left-wing president, had
said before his election last
year that he would bring
“total peace” to the country.
The campaign has had scant
success, with violence in
rural areas increasing since
he took office last year.
Kidnapping is the threat
that millions of Colombians
particularly dread. More than
38,000 people are known to
have been abducted in recent
decades, mostly by rebel
groups who have used the
strategy to raise funds.
The scourge appeared to
have slowed after the historic
2016 peace deal, which ended
Colombia’s more than half-
century civil war with its
main foe, the Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia,
or Farc. But the ELN never
signed up to that peace

Mega drive-throughs
captors had taken two days.
The end of the nightmare —
he is expected to travel to
England in the coming days
as a guest of Liverpool
football club — has brought
mixed emotions to Colombia.
arrangement. In August, it
agreed to a six-month
ceasefire, which government
negotiators say included
pledges not to engage in
kidnappings.
Despite that, the first ten

cater for teens with no

Relief that an innocent
man is free. But fear that the
country may be returning to
its darkest past, when
kidnappings for ransom were
common, and no one,
especially those known to
months of this year have led
to a sharp rise in abductions,
with 70 per cent more than in
the same period last year. The
ELN is believed to be still
holding about 30 hostages.
Relatives of the famous

taste for conversation

Young Americans’ dislike of human interaction is inspiring outlets that can serve 75 cars at a time
Keiran Southern Los Angeles
When Harry Snyder opened the first
In-N-Out hamburger stand close to
Route 66 in 1948, he helped to consum-
mate the love affair between two of
America’s favourite things — the car and
fast food.
A year earlier, Red’s Giant Hamburg in
Springfield, Missouri, had become the
first restaurant to feature a drive-up
window where customers could order
without leaving their vehicles.
But Snyder took the concept further,
promising food with “no delay” at his res-
taurant in Baldwin Park, California,
thanks to an innovative two-way speaker
that he built in his garage.
It was the right vision for the right
moment: soon, in the postwar glow of
1950s America, leather jacket-clad teen-
agers would be rolling up to food stands
in gleaming Cadillacs, placing orders
over the crackle of transistor radios play-
ing a new genre of music called
rock’n’roll.
Then in the 1970s Wendy’s, McDo-
nald’s and Burger King brought drive-
through culture to the American masses,
leading eventually to a backlash in the
early part of this century.
Today, 75 years after Snyder had his
visionary idea, the popularity of the
drive-through has surged to record
levels, fuelled by younger consumers’
habits, new technology and a preference
for less human interaction following
the pandemic.
Fast-food chains including McDonald’s
and Taco Bell are building ever larger
drive-throughs to accommodate the
growing demand. The biggest, a Chick-
fil-A due to open next year in Atlanta,
Georgia, will be able to handle 75 cars at a
time across four lanes.
Artificial intelligence chatbots are tak-
ing orders at American chains including
White Castle, Carl’s Jr, Hardee’s and Del
Taco. New technology can identify cus-
tomers by their cars and display offers
based on previous purchases.
The innovations are delivering grow-
ing profits for the $113 billion-a-year
fast-food industry.
Drive-throughs account for two-thirds
of all US fast-food purchases, according
to a report by Revenue Management
Solutions, and traffic rose 30 per cent
from 2019 to last year.
The In-N-Out chain, which has a
fiercely committed fanbase in California
and a presence in six other western
states, is still owned by the Snyder family
and has been valued at $3 billion by
Forbes, the wealth publication.
Meanwhile the number of customers
sitting down to eat at a fast-food restau-
rant in the first half of the year fell by 47
per cent compared with the same
period in 2019.
Teenagers and young adults are a
large part of the shift. Jay Bandy,
president of the Goliath Con-
sulting Group, which offers
strategic advice to restaurant
chains, said it was unsurprising
they preferred to eat on the move.
“Those kids grew up in drive-
throughs — drive-throughs have
always been prevalent for them,” he
said. “It’s kind of like how they
grew up with cellphones. They
would prefer to deal with people in
a less direct way, they prefer to be on
social media, or on Zoom calls,
as opposed to being face-to-
face with some-
body.”
The pan-
demic hastened
the decline of
indoor din-
Drive-thru fast ing. Many restaurants were closed for
food soon caught extended periods, which broke the con-
on after Harry sumer’s habit of sitting at a table to eat,
Snyder, above, Bandy said. The drive-through was ready
opened the first and waiting for them.
In-N-Out burger The first restaurants arrived roughly a
outlet in 1948 decade after the end of the Great Depres-
sion, when many Americans were still
scarred by the deprivation of the 1930s. A
cost-effective treat proved irresistible.
“The drive-through was a way for food
to be more affordable than the drive-in
[restaurants],” according to Adam Chan-
dler, the author of Drive-Thru Dreams: A
Journey Through the Heart of America’s
Fast-Food Kingdom.
“The old drive-ins had wait staff, they
had bigger real estate, they had plates
and cups and utensils and things that cost
money. You had to hire a dishwasher.
“What the drive-through model did
was basically eliminate all of that and
just give you your
food through a window,
wrapped in paper with
no plates and no staff to
wash up.
“They passed the sav-
ings on to the customer
and made it
accessible
to a new
group of
people who
were din-
ing out.”
Cheaper cars and
urban sprawl also fed demand. “Once
the suburbs were built, commuters
wanted places to stop for dinner on the
way home,” he said.
“Southern California is where the
drive-through really became part of the
American experience in terms of
dining and it’s where the car culture
became iconic.
“The drive-through facilitated that
way of being in American life that hap-
pened after World War Two.”
In recent decades some American
cities have attempted to curb their prolif-
eration, citing concerns about conges-
tion and obesity as well as long-held com-
plaints that America is too car-centric.
Drivers, however, seem to be winning.
The next generation drive-through
restaurants cropping up across the US are
a sharp contrast to the humble kitchen
that launched the concept.
In classic Los Angeles style, the
original In-N-Out was demolished to
make space for a freeway, but a replica
was then built about 75 yards down
the road.
Manned by Kenny, an employee
dressed in the same pristine white uni-
form that those who helped Snyder flip
burgers in the 1950s wore, the restaurant
takes up barely ten square feet.
It does, however, contain an original
Coca-Cola-branded fridge. Nearby there
is a retro cigarette machine offering a sin-
gle Lucky Strike smoke for a penny and a
packet for 20 cents.
A price board offers another stark
reminder of how times have changed. In
the 1950s an In-N-Out burger cost 25
cents, a cheeseburger 30 cents and
French fries 15 cents (today those prices
are $3.15, $3.50 and $2.15).
Despite the stand’s obviously retro
look, it still confuses the odd passer-
by. One day last week a car pulled up
and its driver approached the counter
slowly with a slightly quizzical look on
his face.
He glanced at the price board, then at
the cigarette machine, and asked: “Are
you open?”
Kenny directed him around the corner
to the modern-day In-N-Out. “I get that a
lot,” he said with a smile.
have money, was safe.
On October 28 Díaz — an
amateur football coach — and
his wife, Cilenis Marulanda,
were approached by armed
gunmen on motorcycles at a
petrol station near their
home in Barrancas, in
northeastern Colombia. They
had stopped to buy some
watermelons. The gunmen
drove off with the couple,
later abandoning Marulanda.
Authorities initially
believed local criminals were
the culprits. A $40,000
reward for information was
offered and a search began.
But on November 2 the
government said that the left-
wing rebel group the Ejército
de Liberación Nacional
(ELN), was responsible. The
group issued a public
communiqué promising to
free Díaz, claiming,
implausibly, that he had been
abducted “by mistake”.
Negotiations began.
The ELN’s involvement
was seized on by critics of
Colombia’s president.
Gustavo Petro, who in the
1970s and 1980s was a
member of another armed
guerrilla movement, the
Luis Manuel Díaz, released after 13
the father of the days held in the
Liverpool star mountains of
Luis Díaz, was Colombia
have long been easy, lucrative
targets. The Díaz kidnapping
is not the first time the
criminal underworld has
intersected with the world of
Colombian footballers.
In 2000, Andrés Estrada, a
midfielder in the national
team, was abducted by ELN
after attending a Good Friday
service. He was released after
national outrage.
Andy Chelini, a Caracas-
based security consultant,
said the border area with
Venezuela was so dangerous
that any relative of someone
known to have money “really
shouldn’t be there”.
The Díaz case has
sharpened public criticism of
the ELN — whose claims to be
fighting a popular revolution
are met with deep cynicism
by many — as well as of the
Petro administration, which
appears to have hit a wall in
its declared plans to end
conflict in the country.
Díaz has avoided mention
of politics. In a statement
after his release, he thanked
the public for their support.
“I love you all,” he said. “And
I am deeply grateful to all of
you for the love and support.”

Jews hide skull caps in France, while Le Pen tries to march away from her party’s history
Peter Conradi Paris
A few days ago Julien
Bensimhon, a Parisian
lawyer, was talking to a
Jewish neighbour: she
wanted to know if it was safe
to display a mezuzah, a
traditional decorative case,
on her front door. “She is
really worried that people
will attack her,” he said.
Bensimhon understood.
He, too, is Jewish, and family
members were among the
70,000 Jews deported from
France during the Second
World War and murdered by
the Nazis. “Everyone is really
terrified that one day
antisemitic massacres could
start again,” he said.
Today tens of thousands of
people are expected to march
through Paris to protest
against an alarming rise in
incidents directed against
France’s Jewish population,
which at 500,000 is the
largest in Europe.
Since October 7, when
Hamas terrorists murdered
1,200 people in Israel,
including about 40 French
Jews, there have been at least
1,247 antisemitic attacks on
French soil, compared with
436 in the whole of last year.
Among the most shocking
was the stabbing last
weekend in Lyons of a Jewish
woman, whose front door
was daubed with a swastika.
Bensimhon, who
represents Jewish groups,
says his conversation with his
neighbour is being played out
across the country. Many of
those who wear kippahs now
hide them under caps,
remove their nameplates
from doors or give false
names when ordering online.
His seven-year-old son is
the only Jewish child in his
school. “I went to see his
teacher and the head and
asked them to watch out for
him,” he said. “It’s something
I would never have done
before October 7.”
Alarmed at the potential
consequences for a country
whose Muslim population, at
five million, is also the
continent’s biggest, President
Macron has taken a tough
line. “The Republic ... will be
ruthless against those who
carry that hatred
[antisemitism],” he said last
week. “Any attack on a Jew is
always an attempt to harm
the Republic”. Some 10,000
police and soldiers have been
deployed to protect
synagogues, Jewish schools
and community centres.
The march has been
engulfed in controversy since
Marine Le Pen, of the right
wing National Rally, said she
and leading members of her
party planned to take part.
Jewish organisations
accuse Le Pen, a contender
for the presidency in 2027, of
hijacking the protest for her
own purposes. They point to
the irony of a party, some of
whose founders had links to
the Waffen SS, participating
in such an event.
Equal consternation has
been prompted by the
decision of Jean-Luc
Mélenchon, head of the
far-left France Unbowed
party, to boycott the march. A
supporter of Palestinian
causes, he has been
condemned after denouncing
the event as a “meeting of the
friends of unconditional
support for the massacre” [of
Palestinians by Israeli forces].
Macron disappointed
organisers by saying he
would not take part. His
prime minister, Élisabeth
Borne, will be there, as will
leaders of other parties and
former presidents.
Antisemitism in France has
a long history, which peaked
at the end of the 19th century
Everyone is
terrified
massacres
could start
Alfred Dreyfus, accused
by antisemites; Marine Le
Pen’s party had SS links
with the trial of Alfred
Dreyfus, a Jewish army
captain wrongly jailed for
passing military secrets to
Germany. One of Dreyfus’s
accusers was Édouard
Drumont, an antisemitic
writer whose ideas
anticipated much of Nazi
thought. Marshal Philippe
Pétain, who led Vichy France
from 1940 to 1944, was
complicit in the persecution
of the country’s Jews.
Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie,
95, who founded the National
Front, as the party was
known, is firmly in that
tradition. He was convicted
several times of hate speech,
including dismissing the Nazi
gas chambers as a “detail of
history”, and for inciting
racial hatred.
A study by the Foundation
for Political Innovation found
that men over 65 are far more
likely than the population as a
whole to harbour prejudices
against Jews. This is
especially true of National
Rally supporters.
More alarming, according
to Dominique Reynié, the
foundation’s director and co-
author of the report, is a
“new” antisemitism that has
emerged in France this
century.
This is based, in part, on a
strand of thought prevalent
among parts of the French
left since the late 19th century
that regards Jews as part of a
globalised financial elite
whose loyalty to the French
republic is questionable. It
has been reinforced by a
growing identification with
the Palestinian struggle,
especially among those of
north African origin, which
has intensified since the
second intifada, the uprising
against Israel in the early
2000s that prompted attacks
on synagogues.
French Muslims are three
times as likely as the
population as a whole to
admit to antipathy towards
Jews, according to Reynié’s
report. They also appear to
be largely responsible for the
surge in antisemitic attacks.
Laurent Nuñez, the prefect
of Paris, said cases that had
come to trial showed no
typical perpetrator. “We find
all profiles, young kids who
say very serious things,” but
also “people more rooted in
the defence of the pro-
Palestinian cause who get out
of hand”.
Much of the hatred plays
out in social media: a former
model named as Warda
Anwar was arrested after
joking about a disputed story
of an Israeli baby “burnt alive
in an oven by Hamas”.
Russian mischief-making
may also play a part: French
officials are investigating
claims that pro-Kremlin
forces were involved in
inciting the stencilling of 250
stars of David in Paris last
month and spreading images
of them online.
Nabila Ramdani, an
academic born in Paris of
Algerian descent and the
author of Fixing France, said:
“Many French Muslims are
linked to former French
colonies such as Algeria,
which went through an
occupation that was every bit
as horrific as the kind going
on in Gaza and the West
Bank. Their support for the
Palestinians is rooted in calls
for justice, not antisemitism.”
Benjamin Haddad, an MP
for Macron’s centrist
Renaissance party, disagrees.
He says previous
governments were slow to
acknowledge the rise of
antisemitism among Muslims
due “to a form of denial or
political correctness”.
Although wary of Le Pen’s
attempt to “instrumentalise”
the march, Haddad believes it
is important not to lose sight
of the big picture: “The main
issue,” he said, “is to have as
many people as possible turn
out to tell French Jews they
are safe and not alone.”
NEWS REVIEW
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
NEWS REVIEW
The drug transformed the sex lives of millions. But with anxiety and porn addiction on
the rise, is it now being used as a sticking plaster for deeper problems, asks Matt Rudd
O
nce upon a time in a research
laboratory in Sandwich,
Kent, eight young men were
not responding well to the
angina drugs that were being
tested on them. The chem-
ists monitoring them in the
ten-day medical trial were
disappointed. This was a
last-ditch attempt to prove
the efficacy of a compound called
UK-92480 and it was failing. A nurse had
noted, by the by, that five of the eight
human guinea pigs had happened to
experience “very hard erections”, but
how was that going to help with angina?
What became one of the most lucrative
accidental discoveries in medical science
was nearly overlooked. The Pfizer chem-
ists were all young — they didn’t think
impotence was an issue. It was only when
patients showed reluctance to give the
drugs back — hiding the packets or lying
about how many they had left — that they
decided to redirect their research.
A few years and several more trials
later, that compound, now called sildena-
fil, was approved for use in the UK and
Europe as a treatment for erectile dys-
function. Under the brand name Via-
gra (so-called perhaps because it
rhymes with Niagara or because the
Sanskrit word vyaghra means tiger),
Pfizer’s little blue pill hit the market in
autumn 1998. It was a watershed moment
for sex, drugs and rocking and rolling.
Twenty-five years on, Sandwich has a
little blue plaque commemorating that
moment of lift-off, the chemist leading
the project has a knighthood and the
Pfizer patent has long since lapsed. Since
2017, in an attempt to reduce the amount
of fake Viagra being sold on the internet, a
scandal explored in ITV’s new documen-
tary, The Great Erection Deception, the
drug and other cheaper generic varia-
tions have been available over the coun-
ter at chemists or online without a pre-
scription. On television, adverts featuring
Monty Python-esque rockets, chimneys
and big, strong trees are as inescapable as
Did Somebody Say Just Eat?
Unsurprisingly, use of sildenafil has
grown and grown — the amount dished
out by doctors in the UK more than tri-
pled between 2006 and 2016. In 2021,
there were 4.29 million prescriptions, a
record 182,000 of which were issued to
the notoriously randy over-80s. In 2022,
it was 4.35 million and the oldest popper
of pills was one year off his telegram from
the King. But is the unstoppable rise of
Viagra unalloyed good news? Or are the
downsides being rather underplayed?
What was once seen as an old man’s
affliction (Bob Dole was the 75-year-old
face of Viagra’s US launch commercial) is
now also a common recourse for much
younger men. Of course, Hugh Hefner
took it (in such quantities, his former
Playmate wife Crystal revealed after he
died at 91, that it made him deaf in one
ear). And of course Michael Douglas, 79,
and Jack Nicholson, 86, have taken it.
But so have Ben Affleck, 51, Ash-
ton Kutcher, 45, and Zac Efron,
36. Cricketer Andrew Flintoff,
45, once told how he was run out
while batting for England because he
could only “hop” due to the effects.
Alex, a 38-year-old who works in tech,
first took Viagra at university. He is part of
a growing group of younger men who
take the drug recreationally. “It became a
bit of a lads’ thing — who could last the
longest and have the most sex,” he says of
his university days. “We grew out of it
pretty quickly, mainly because if you do
take some and then don’t end up getting
laid, it can be a pretty long night. None of
us really needed it.”
He returned to it recently, in an
attempt to revive his sex life and improve
his libido. “I was actually a bit disap-
pointed by the results,” he says. “It’s not
as good at stimulating the libido as I
thought.” He didn’t tell his partner — “It’s
quite embarrassing to need it when
you’re young because it raises questions
about desire and performance that are
difficult to address.”
Viagra has taught us something inter-
esting about sex. Because sildenafil
My journey
through
airport
security
with a giant
stash of Coke
After 17 years of maddening restrictions,
the 100ml liquid rule is being phased
out thanks to 3D scanners that can spot
dangerous substances. Katie Gatens
relishes her new flying freedoms
19
VIAGRA
ing pandemic of anxiety — hasn’t helped.
And Viagra can’t fix mental health.”
Of the six times Brian, 27, has used Via-
gra, he says it has helped “a little bit” four
times. A marketing consultant by day, he
has not been diagnosed with erectile dys-
function, but when faced with the
prospect of sleeping with “someone I
really liked”, fear of failure to launch sent
him to the chemist. “I had been drunk
on a previous occasion and hadn’t
been able to perform,” he says. “That
scared me.”
Wasn’t he worried about potential
side-effects? Headaches, nausea, indiges-
tion and dizziness are common and
there’s a one in 1,000 chance of some-
thing more drastic such as cardiac arrest
or, worse, priapism, a never-ending
tumescence. “No,” says Brian, “but my
face did go red, which was annoying.”
Despite the red face, Brian’s partner
was “enthusiastic” about the Viagra. But
there is still plenty of stigma around the
ILLUSTRATION: PETE BAKER
drug, and other men I’ve spoken to are
reluctant to share the underlying reasons
for their own enthusiasm — “My partner
would think I don’t find her attractive any
more,” one of them explained.
A
nd what about women? How have
they fared? Though some have
reported some positive effects after
taking Viagra, there is no equiva-
lent drug for women — though work
continues on an injection and a pill that
can help with low libido.
The designer Diane von Furstenberg
once described Viagra as “the worst thing
to happen to women in the last 15 years”,
arguing that the struggle men face to “get
it up” in later life used to make it easier for
women to come to terms with their own
drop in fertility.
Some older women concur. Sinclair
remembers a septuagenarian couple
who came to see him when he first
became a GP. “He was very keen to have
Viagra but she wasn’t,” he says. “I think
she just wanted to be left alone. Perhaps I
shouldn’t have written that prescrip-
tion.” After the hurly-burly of the chaise
longue and the deep, deep peace of the
double bed, not everyone is delighted by
the prospect of the chaise longue again.
It’s not hard, not hard at all, to make
jokes about Viagra. But as we mark its 25th
birthday, a note of caution is also in order.
An estimated one in ten men now regu-
YEARS OF
larly medicalise their sexual experience.
What we should really be asking is why?
Mary Sharpe, chief executive of the
Reward Foundation, a relationships and
sex education charity, draws a link
between the growth of erectile dysfunc-
tion and streamed pornography. “This is
the first generation who’ve had access to
THE
unlimited adult content from a young
age,” she says. “They’ve become desensi-
tised. They can’t get aroused with a real
partner because they’re overstimulated
by what they see on the screen. So it’s an
arousal dysfunction rather than an erec-
tile dysfunction.”
Sharpe cites a 2020 study of young Bel-
gian and Danish men by Gunter de Win, a
LITTLE
Belgian professor of urology, which
doesn’t increase desire — it only potenti- usual recommended dose, each time he ence”. By 2003, it was more than 34 per found a correlation between porn con-
ates your natural desire by relaxing the planned to have sex. cent and in 2013, it was 41.6 per cent. The sumption and erectile function. “There is
blood vessels in the penis. In other “If it helps people get their confidence next survey has been delayed by the pan- no doubt that porn conditions the way we
words, you still have to be up for it to be back, great, but half the problem is demic but is unlikely to be any less bleak. view sex,” said de Win. “Only 65 per cent
up for it. This, says Murray Blacket, a psy- they’re so focused on getting an erection, Are we in the midst of an impotence of men felt sex with a partner was more
chosexual therapist, is a common mis- it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy. We crisis? “Not necessarily,” says Ben Sin- exciting than watching porn.” For these
conception. “Before Viagra, erectile dys- need to work on removing the pressure clair, founder of Dr Finlay’s Private Prac- men, at least, cutting out the porn will
BLUE
function was thought to be up to 90 per on the act.” tice in Birmingham and a specialist in remove the need for Viagra, says Sharpe.
cent psychological and 10 per cent Couples often come to Blacket because men’s health. “The definition of erectile John, 52, tells me he doesn’t watch
organic. With everything put out by the the woman, rather than the man, has dysfunction has weakened in order to porn but he does take Viagra. “I’ve been
drug companies over the years, that’s decided they need help. “And often, the broaden the market. It used to mean married for 20 years,” says the lawyer.
now reversed. It’s seen as mostly an women aren’t that keen on Viagra as a being unable physically to have inter- “For the last five, I’ve not been the red hot
organic, physical problem.” solution,” he says. “They want the man to course. Now, it can just be dissatisfaction lover I always thought I was. My wife was
When Viagra first arrived, it was get help rather than drugs.” Men, on the with an erection. We’re in such an image- very understanding and tried not to take
mainly older men who used it. “Then the other hand, want a quick fix. “They based culture now, people expect to be it personally. It was just age — we called it
PILL
patent stopped and all the other versions become uber-logical and go for the medi- able to perform like a Trojan all night.” the manopause. But I got very depressed
came along,” says Blacket. “With all the cation, but it’s not like getting your phone It’s no surprise, in our pill for every ill about it and that only made things
marketing and advertising, it soon fixed. You have to do the work.” society, that Viagra is still booming, he harder. Or softer, I suppose. Two years
became more widely used among According to the National Survey of adds. “But we ignore all the lifestyle stuff ago, I took the plunge and popped the
younger men. That’s not to say younger Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, the rise of at our peril. We need to look at sleep qual- pill. And, wow. It was like being 25 again.”
men don’t have difficulties, they do, but Viagra has coincided with a rise in the ity, diet, mental health, exercise — all Will he still be taking it when Viagra
there’s a recreational side too. I have cli- number of men suffering from some form those things. Young people today are turns 50 and he turns 77? “I don’t know. I
ents who ‘preload’ before going out. One of erectile dysfunction. Fifty years ago, very aware of the importance of mental can’t imagine stopping right now, but ask
of them — a young man in his twenties — less than 5 per cent of men in relation- health but they can be emotionally frag- me again nearer the time.”
was taking 100mg of Viagra, double the ships had “problems with sexual experi- ile. The pandemic — and its accompany- Some names have been changed
I
t is 6am at London City millions of people every year. “The next attack won’t come announced a deadline of next
airport, and I am shuffling After almost two decades of at us where we are prepared June for the switch to the new
forward in the security line queues, rows over forgotten for it, where we have built technology. Some airports
trying not to seem shifty. suntan lotion and discarded layer upon layer of redundant are ahead of the curve.
Sandwiched between bottles of Evian, passengers security.” Amsterdam Schiphol and
sharp-suited businessmen, I will break free from the One might argue that this Shannon airport have them
am painfully aware that tyranny of the little plastic stringent security has been a already, and Teesside
there’s a large quantity of bag. price worth paying for safer International was the first in
coke in my bag. Well, in theory. As my bag flying. But the real problem is the UK to make the switch,
Not that kind of coke — a journeys through the the industry has been slow to spending £1 million on two
1.75-litre bottle of the brown scanner, it is flagged for apply technology to meet our scanners. Belfast has spent
stuff. I am here to put the search, and the contents heightened security needs. £6 million for six. Others,
airport’s new liquid rules to emptied. My jumbo Diet Coke “There is no doubt that it’s such as Heathrow, Gatwick,
the test. Since April this year, raises a few eyebrows and is going to be a relief from a Stockholm Arlanda and
passengers have been whisked off for testing. The passenger’s point of view,” Barcelona, have them in
allowed to carry through up businessmen are tutting. says the air transport some lanes only.
to two litres, thanks to CT After a few minutes’ wait, the consultant John Strickland. There are about 60 UK
scanners to be introduced to bottle gets the all clear to Katie Gatens brandishes her gigantic bottle of Diet “When the 100ml rule was airports, meaning the bill for
all UK airports by next June. come with me to Edinburgh. Coke after triumphantly arriving at Edinburgh airport introduced it was a huge the new scanners will run
The scanners, which cost My experiment may seem a aggravation — not just for into the hundreds of millions.
about £250,000, create a 3D little stuntlike, but we could the world fell into line. Shoes 100ml rule, which was passengers but for airports For Heathrow, Gatwick and
rather than a 2D image and be at the beginning of a new became a problem in brought in shortly too.” other big airports, this cost
can measure the density of dawn for flying. December 2001, when afterwards, runs to the many The scanners at London will be absorbed by the
liquids. The rather draining reality Richard Reid hid bombs in his billions. With about 100,000 City can process 550 trays per number of passengers, but
This gives them the ability we live with now is a product boots on a flight from Paris to passengers departing every lane per hour, increasing by regional airports such as
to differentiate between of the early 21st-century wave Miami; he was restrained by day from Heathrow alone, 30 per cent the number of Southend are struggling.
liquid types to decide
whether there is a possible
of global terror. Before 9/11,
airport security was fairly lax.
passengers and crew before
he could detonate them.
millions of hours are wasted.
Many have wondered
passengers that pass through
security per hour.
These costs all add up.
Sadly, I had to part from
threat and flag it using “smart In the US, passengers waltzed Liquids came later, in 2006, whether the cost of the To fully reap the rewards, my trusty Diet Coke in
algorithms” that identify an on to internal flights. But after after a failed plot to construct checks is worth paying. however, you have to fly Edinburgh, as there were no
ever-expanding list of 9/11, sharp items were bombs from peroxide-based “The thing about 9/11 is somewhere that also has one new scanners, but we’re
dangerous goods.
It promises to improve the
banned from the cabin. Full-
body scanners and bag
liquid explosives (such as
hair bleach).
that it took us by surprise,”
wrote Gerard Baker in his
of the scanners. In December
last year, the transport
planning a trip together in the
summer. I’ve heard Belfast is
airport experience for checks were introduced, and The economic cost of the Times column this month. secretary, Mark Harper, lovely at that time of year.
20 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

NEWS REVIEW

The storm hit our cruise ship. I went somersaulting through the air
After 100 passengers were injured in the Bay of A lot had walking sticks. They provided reassurance but no The following morning, my paid about £4,000 each.
wouldn’t be very mobile on medical help, because quite a back had seized up and it was Another couple had saved up
Biscay, Peter Wellington, a retired head teacher the street, and as the ship few people had been more excruciatingly painful, for the trip as a celebration
from Basingstoke, tells what it was like on board rocked it became very severely injured than I. After making me cry out. I was because the husband had

O
ver the course of a few
days, the sea had been
growing progressively
more choppy. The
further north we
headed, the worse it got.
From our balcony on D deck
we could see the waves
swelling. Some were five
metres high, I was told.
While it was certainly
dramatic, funnily enough I
wasn’t scared. I had faith in
this modern ship, the Spirit
of Discovery, taking us on a
14-day Saga cruise around the
Canary Islands.
The storm had been
forecast for days, so we knew
it was coming, and many of
the events we were looking
forward to were cancelled,
such as ballroom-dancing
classes. The swimming pool
had been closed because it
was too dangerous. We were
clutching on to handrails as
we walked around.
Given the forecast and the
heavy weather, many of us
were baffled by the decision
not to stay in Gran Canaria
and move onwards to A
Coruña, in northern Spain, to
stay ahead of the storm. As
the seas became rougher,
some passengers asked to
dock in Lisbon. Owing to the
weather conditions, the port
at A Coruña was closed, so we
attempted to head back to
Portsmouth.
I consider myself pretty
sprightly for 73, but many
passengers on the ship were
in their eighties and nineties.
difficult to walk.
By last Saturday, the ship
had been battered by the
storm for several days. I was
in the North Cape bar, trying
my best to relax in one of the
small armchairs, reading a
novel. My wife, Pamela, was
sitting opposite me.
With my focus firmly on a
Benjamin Myers’ The Offing
(heartwarming), suddenly I
was thrown backwards,
somersaulted in the air and
landed firmly on my back
several metres away. The
chair landed on top of me. To
say I was shocked was an
understatement. Everyone
rallied round to help me off
the floor but I was in
considerable pain.
We later learnt the ship
had lurched to the left and
Waves five metres high forced the Spirit of Discovery to
return to Portsmouth. Below, Peter and his wife Pamela
been halted by the liner’s
safety system, activated by
the treacherous conditions.
Tables in the grand dining
room were thrown over and
cutlery and crockery and
bottles sent crashing to the
floor. In the library, people
were thrown out of chairs and
books fell on top of them.
Fellow passengers fetched
a member of the crew, who
about an hour, I was taken to
the medical centre in a
wheelchair. Chairs slid up and
down the corridor as I waited
to see the doctor. I was given
an ice pack because there
were so many injured. I was x-
rayed eventually but it was a
struggle. Medical equipment
was thrown from the shelves
and crashed to the floor while
I was examined.
By this point, we had been
told to stay in our cabins and
not move. At one stage, we
were told to sit, hang on to
something or lie on the floor.
All events and entertainment
was cancelled and our meals
were brought to our cabins.
The food was always lovely
but chateaubriand in your
bedroom on a paper plate is
not what you want.
given painkillers and muscle
relaxants. While in our room,
we had to wedge the coffee
table between the armchair
and the bed so they wouldn’t
slide about. I stood up to get
something at one point and
was thrown across the room
and on to the bed.
Even some of the crew
were scared. Passengers who
had been on dozens of
cruises and crossed the Bay of
Biscay many times had never
experienced anything like it.
Later, a statement was read
out over the loudspeaker that
basically said the captain had
done the right thing. A lot of
people felt it minimised what
had happened.
We had really been looking
forward to the holiday. After
all, a cruise is not cheap — we
overcome cancer, so it was a
big deal for a lot of people.
What next? Some
passengers have been offered
counselling. We weren’t sure
whether we would get a
refund, but on Friday evening
we were told that we would,
after the chief executive of
Saga Cruises visited the ship
and said he had gained a
“greater understanding of
how traumatic this was”. That
restored my faith in the
company.
Saga estimates that 100 of
the ship’s 1,000 passengers
were injured. So it’s probably
not a surprise that some were
saying they would never go
on a cruise again. I think we
would. We might give the Bay
of Biscay a miss, though.
As told to Glen Keogh

Models, spliffs and stolen buses

inherit the title, or the stately home, and
struggles to find his purpose is a familiar
fate. Beaufort describes Prince Harry’s
memoir, Spare, as “ghastly and saccha-
rine”. Did he read it? “No, but I read the

— meet the Duke of Disorder

extracts in the papers.”
A life-long party boy, the duke first
tried marijuana (“a genuine life-en-
hancer”) as a teenager when the actor
Peter Sellers, a fellow guest on a country
weekend, gave him a joint. There was a
later period of “rather more cocaine than
ADRIAN SHERRATT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES ideal”, as he writes, but now his drug
A memoir reveals the high-class shenanigans of one of intake seems to be weed and “very occa-
sionally” ecstasy. He always told his chil-

O
our last true aristocrats. Laura Pullman joins him for tea
nce the butler has served
tea, I ask Harry Beaufort,
also known as the 12th Duke
of Beaufort, or Bunter to his
chums, about his one-night
stand with Jerry Hall. In his
new memoir, The Unlikely
Duke, Beaufort recalls sleep-
ing with the Texan model in
her London hotel in the
early 1980s. Afterwards, discretion was
required but Bunter couldn’t resist blab-
bing and word got back to Hall. “If that
boy’s cock was as big as his mouth, he’d
be one hell of a lay,” she reportedly
quipped.
Four decades later, at his ancestral
home, Badminton House, lounging in the
library beneath a brace of Canalettos,
Beaufort mumbles: “I’m very fond of
Jerry. She’s still a friend.” Did he get her
blessing to brag again? “I sent it to her
saying, ‘Is this all right?’ She didn’t actu-
ally answer, but she didn’t say no either,”
he says, chuckling.
Being welcomed into 116-room Bad-
minton House by one of Britain’s last true
aristocrats offers a precious glimpse into
a world of upstairs-downstairs hierarch-
ies, snifters and shoots, the likes of which
is usually only seen on Sunday night telly.
Bridgerton, incidentally, was filmed at
Badminton. So how do our aristocrats
live today?
Beaufort is certainly an unlikely duke;
even at 71, he prefers Ibiza raves to coun-
try hunts, and Glastonbury festival to
grouse shooting. Unlikely, too, because
he inherited the title only because his
father’s cousin, the 10th duke, had no
children. Tall (6ft 6in) and twinkly-eyed,
he’s been the lead singer in rock bands
called Guzzling Porter and Planet Potato,
but now fronts the Listening Device, who
have supported Rod Stewart and the
Who. Think Bill Nighy’s old rock star
character in Love Actually but far posher.
Decades ago, while signed to Peter String-
fellow’s record label, he believed that
superstardom beckoned. “In recent
times, the music is much better but per-
haps not appreciated by such a wide pub-
lic,” he says.
Nevertheless, his silver-spoon life
has been one of gigging and gam-
bling, golf and girls. His memoir is a
jolly romp through Eton mishaps,
Mayfair members’ clubs, and shoul-
der-rubbing with rock royalty and
actual royalty. There are tales of
his car breaking down en route to
Royal Ascot as a personal guest
of Queen Elizabeth (he ran the
last mile in his top hat and tails),
dren, Bobby and Bella, now in their thir-
ties, that they should take drugs only in
moderation. “But, funnily enough, they
The Duke of and of playing rounders with Elizabeth hardly do it at all. It’s a terrible, terrible
Beaufort with Hurley, who galloped around “like an disappointment,” he grins. “They’re not
wife Georgia at attractive but demented gym mistress”. caners by any stretch of the imagination.”
Badminton. He is One escapade involved his friends He also chuckles at the memory of
on friendly terms leaping onto an idling double-decker bus, Ronnie Wood (another acquaintance)
with the King, full of Japanese sightseers but minus the being chastised by one of his sons for
whose family driver, who’d nipped to the loo, and snorting cocaine off a mantlepiece mid-
home is nearby drunkenly driving through London, conversation. “Dad, please! Not in the liv-
crashing into parked cars as the terrified ing room,” the complaint went.
tourists screamed. “Nowadays, I think Beaufort ponders why the younger
you probably would go to jail for that,” generation seem more restrained in the
Bunter reflects wistfully. sex, drugs and rock’n’roll stakes. “Cer-
In 2017, Beaufort’s life became margin- tainly they work harder. I think also that
ally more serious when his father died in all this sort of MeToo era, you have to
and he became the 12th Duke of Beaufort. be incredibly careful so maybe that
He inherited an estimated £315 million means less ...” he says, trailing off.
fortune, moved into the vast Badminton Both Beaufort’s father and Beaufort
House and its 52,000-acre Gloucester- himself during his first marriage regu-
shire estate, with his gorgeous new wife, larly cheated. “In my parents’ generation
Georgia Powell, 17 years younger, a ... a lot of people had extramarital
former obituary writer and the grand- affairs. Whereas jumping two genera-
daughter of the novelist Anthony Powell. tions, my son would be horrified if that
Beaufort’s ex-wife, the actress-turned- was going on,” he says. “Maybe I was
environmentalist Tracy Ward, occupies lucky enough to be caught in the middle
another house on the estate. generation.” It was in the midst of his
The duke’s name-dropping is top- divorce from Ward that he met Georgia,
drawer. At his 1987 wedding to Ward, now 54. Was it love at first sight? “I could
Princess Diana and Prince Charles caused see there was something fairly special
headlines because Di danced “maniacally there, but I think we were both vaguely
with a succession of young men”, he tied up in other things.”
Diana writes. The princess visited Badminton
various times but didn’t click with Beau-
The duke whizzes me on a tour
through one wing: ballroom, dining
danced fort’s father, David Somerset. “He was the room, study, sitting room, bigger dining
maniacally slayer of women,” Georgia recalled, “but
he never got anywhere with Diana
room, vast hallway where the game of
badminton was invented. Countless por-
with a because he found her too child-like.” traits look down — “various relatives”,
succession Another anecdote involves a teenage
Prince Harry throwing a succession of
Beaufort mutters. Among the art, armour
and antiques, dotted chamber pots col-
of young girls, fully clothed, into the swimming lect leaks. Georgia appears for lunch with
men pool at an 18th birthday party at Badmin-
ton. Bunter and the fellow guests were
her two King Charles spaniels, Vinnie and
Frankie. Cue apologies that we’re having
too stunned to stop the prince. “Luckily “posh fish fingers” (goujons with celeriac
my father’s butler was around,” Beaufort chips), gossip about billionaire friends
recalls. “He took Harry by the scruff of his (“we’re rich, they’re very rich”, says
neck and told him not to do it.” Beaufort) and a frankly unprintable story
In the book, Prince Andrew is about Hugh Grant and piles.
described as full of “very bland stories The duke presses a buzzer and a butler
about ‘Mother’” but Beaufort is on appears with a meringue roulade. Cue
friendly terms with the King, whose fam- apologies for a “really puddingy pud-
ily home, Highgrove House, is nine miles ding”. Some guests pay a pretty penny for
down the road. “I’m definitely a royalist. the full toff Badminton experience. Some
There’s always going to be problem peo- children of the US media billionaire Ted
ple in it,” the duke says. “There’ll proba- Turner recently shelled out for a shooting
bly be another scandal of some kind weekend, which costs around £50,000 to
quite soon.” £60,000, including food and wine. How
Beaufort has a difficult younger very Succession. “I think they only drank
brother of his own. Lord Edward Som- three bottles of wine between them,”
erset was addicted to heroin and Beaufort says, incredulously. “And I sud-
cocaine for years, and was jailed in denly realised I must have drunk about
2014 for beating his wife. “He’s two of those myself.” Cin, cin.
sort of now on a level. He’s liv-
ing a sensible life,” says Beau- The Unlikely Duke by Harry Beaufort will
fort vaguely. The life of the be published on Thursday (Hodder &
younger brother who doesn’t Stoughton, £25)

Burning rubber: why tyre pollution is speeding us to disaster

T
Every driver knows his was the year we all
learnt the acronym
about the danger “Ulez”, as time, emotion
of exhaust fumes. and vast political capital
were spent in an ill-
But we may have tempered effort to clean the
overlooked the air we breathe. Yet what if in
effects of wheel wear our obsession with exhaust
fumes, we have neglected
and tear, writes another environmental
Nicholas Hellen disaster in the making?
This time the finger is
pointing at tyres and brakes,
which, according to a report
from Imperial College
London, accounted for
more than half of
small particle
pollution
from road transport in 2021.
The report said that the
chemicals had a devastating
effect on wildlife, and
accumulated in the food
chain.
Vehicles globally generate
about six million tonnes of
tyre waste, running from
visible pieces of rubber to
nano-particles that are small
enough to harm health.
Worse, there are minimal
controls on the composition
of the chemicals used to form
high-endurance rubber,
which include zinc, lead, and
polyaromatic hydrocarbons.
These contribute to cancer,
damage the reproductive
system and cause heart
problems.
Even more worrying is the
suggestion that electric
vehicles (EVs) may make
aspects of the
problem worse.
A test carried out in March,
on a circuit near Oxford,
found that the tyres of a Tesla
Model 3 were notably more
worn than that of a
comparable hybrid, the Kia
Niro, driven in convoy for
460 miles. To be precise, the
fully electric car had lost
26 per cent more tread than
the hybrid.
The implications of the
test, conducted by the British
firm Emissions Analytics, are
potentially enormous.
The problem with the
current generation of fully
electric cars is that the weight
of their batteries makes them
considerably heavier than
their petrol or diesel
equivalents, thus forcing the
tyres to work harder — and
increasing the release of
particulates. In the test, the
Tesla weighed 1,718kg, 32 per
cent more than the Kia.
Nick Molden, chief
executive of Emissions
Analytics, suggested that tyre
emissions rise “pound for
pound” in proportion to the
weight of a vehicle.
Of course EVs are not the
only cars with a serious
weight problem — according
to Jato, a motor industry data
firm, the average weight of a
car sold in Europe today is
1,600kg, up from 1,328kg in
2001, and this has largely
been because of the rising
popularity of the sport utility
vehicle.
There is, however, a
further problem with electric
cars because they are capable
of astonishing bursts of
acceleration. Molden tested a
conventional VW Golf “driven
as crazily as you could, really
pushed it, but within the
law”. The tyre wear was
“about 1,000 times greater”
than when it was driven
conservatively.
Molden is the first to
concede that this sort of
research represents only the
first steps to understanding
the problem. There is
anecdotal evidence that real-
world EV drivers tend
towards caution, so anxious
are they to conserve the
range of their batteries.
Environmental
campaigners are worried
about raising the tyre-based
pollution, because they fear
that climate sceptics will
weaponise the problem in
their fight against electric
vehicles.
“These problems are real
but we don’t want to provide
ammunition to the enemy,”
says Leo Murray, co-founder
of the climate charity
Possible. “There’s a chilling
effect of the constant
critiques of moves towards
net zero. Slowing down the
transition to EVs would be a
disaster.”
Matt Finch, UK policy
manager for Transport &
Environment, a campaign
group, agrees. “Pollution
from tyre wear is a massive
problem that no one is talking
about. EVs are way better
than their fossil predecessors
because they don’t spew out a
toxic cocktail from a tailpipe,
but they are not perfect.”
Electric cars do have one
clear-cut advantage. Dr Euan
McTurk, consultant battery
electrochemist at Plug Life
Consulting, points out that
EV drivers use their brakes
much less than their petrol
and diesel counterparts,
because most braking is
carried out not via pads and
discs, but via regenerative
braking, reversing the motor.
The solution to this
problem may well be more
innovation and there are
welcome signs that this
process is under way.
Last week, the Earthshot
Prize, created by the Prince of
Wales to find solutions to the
world’s greatest
environmental challenges,
named as a finalist a London
firm, Enso, which aims to
manufacture a million low-
emission tyres annually by
2026. It is already testing its
product on black cabs in
London and has carried out
trials with the Post Office and
DPD, the logistics firm.
So rather than more strict
regulation and bans, the hope
is that ingenuity will see us
through.
Or, as the Earthshot judges
put it: “It is possible to
reinvent the wheel, and make
air cleaner for all.”
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 21

NEWS REVIEW

Gaza strife in La-La land for the

catwalk star and Wonder Woman
Bella Hadid and Gal Gadot have become unlikely lightning rods for hate and abuse, writes Charlotte Ivers

T
hey are two of the most
famous and beautiful women
on the planet, equally adept
at selling lush fantasies. Gal
Gadot is Wonder Woman,
the corset-wearing, sword-
wielding, cinema-filling DC
Comics heroine. Bella Hadid
is the face of luxury fashion,
appearing on catwalks and
Vogue covers, along with her similarly
celebrated sister, Gigi.
Yet over the past month, reality has
come crashing in around these two
women, with family ties drawing them
into the ferocious and toxic battles being
fought online over Israel and Gaza.
Instead of fronting advertising cam-
paigns appearing at movie premieres,
they have become poster girls for the
global infowars, magnets for vicious trol-
ling and hatred, attacked by their own
side as well as the other. In this bitter nar-
rative warfare, there are no real winners.
Neither woman has flinched from step-
ping into the breach. Gadot, 38, is used to
drawing febrile crowds outside Holly-
wood screenings. But on Thursday night
in Los Angeles, a screening organised by
Gadot — in the ironically named Museum
of Tolerance — of 47 minutes of footage
provided by the Israel Defence Forces
(IDF) showing the atrocities committed
by Hamas during the October 7 massacre,
led to fighting on the street. Outside, foot-
age showed protesters carrying Palestin-
ian flags clashing with others carrying
Israeli flags. Punches were thrown.
Gadot is a former Miss Israel and
national icon, voted the world’s sexiest
woman by FHM magazine in 2017. Born
just outside Tel Aviv, the granddaughter
of a Holocaust survivor, she served, like
almost all young Israelis, in the IDF, in her
case as a combat fitness instructor before
her modelling career drew her to Holly-
wood. Her first big break was in the 2009
action blockbuster Fast & Furious, the
fourth film in the long-running franchise.
Hadid is one of the most famous
Palestinians alive and has long been an
activist for Palestinian rights. Her father,
the property developer Mohamed Anwar
Hadid, was taken as a baby from Palestine
to Lebanon when his family fled the
1947-49 war. They eventually settled in
Syria before moving to the US. His daugh-
ter, raised in Washington DC and Beverly
Hills, showed promise as an equestrian
before becoming a model aged 16.
Both women have vast social media
followings. In recent weeks, Gadot has
posted pictures to her 109 million Insta-
gram followers demanding the return of
the 240 Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Until a couple of weeks ago, Hadid’s
Instagram looked exactly as you would
expect from the account of arguably the
world’s most famous supermodel. Hadid,
angular and striking, on the red carpet.
Hadid, tanned and wistful, in a tiny dress,
staring out at the sunset.
Yet for the past month she has
dedicated her account to highlighting
to her 61 million followers the devasta-
tion in Gaza. On October 26, the 27-
year-old posted a video of herself wear-
I’m sent ing a Palestinian keffiyeh, with
accompanying text that begins: “Forgive
death me for my silence. My heart is bleeding
with pain from the trauma I am seeing
threats unfold. As well as the generational
trauma of my Palestinian blood ...
every I mourn for the Israeli families that have
been dealing with the pain and aftermath
day of October 7th.”
Her posts have been more carefully
considered than her father’s. Late last
month, the millionaire real-estate devel-
oper posted an infographic on Instagram
that compared Israel to the Nazis. He
later deleted the post.
Why should you care what a super-
model and a movie star are saying on
social media? Because the war in Gaza is
not just a battle fought with rockets and
tanks. It is an information battle for
hearts and minds that consumes and cor-
rodes all who take part in it.
For most people, particularly those
under 40, these two women — and other
celebrities like them — are one of their
primary sources of information about the
conflict. This immense power has not
gone unnoticed by those on either side of
the conflict, both of which have
advanced digital propaganda operations.
Hadid’s supermodel sister Gigi
recently posted on Instagram that “there
is nothing Jewish about the Israeli govern-
ment’s treatment of Palestinians. Con-
demning the Israeli government is not
antisemitic and supporting Palestinians
is not supporting Hamas.”
Israel’s official Instagram account
soon responded: “Have you been sleep-
ing the past week? Or are you just fine
turning a blind eye to Jewish babies being
butchered in their homes? Your silence
has been very clear about where you
stand. We see you.”
For Hadid and Gadot, this is not an
abstract culture war. Both have family
and friends who have been deeply
affected by recent events. Both have paid
a considerable personal cost for speaking
out, receiving a torrent of abuse.
“I’ve been sent hundreds of death
threats daily,” Hadid wrote on Instagram.
“My phone number has been leaked, and
my family has felt to be in danger.”
A cursory scan of social media reveals
that Gadot has been experiencing some-
thing similar. “I’m 100 per cent con-
vinced all Israelis are mentally ill. Also
f*** Gal Gadot she’s a soulless bitch”
reads one tweet. Another: “I hope Gal
Gadot falls off the face of the Earth and
rots in hell what an evil bitch.”
Such is the divisive nature of this con-
flict that some of the vitriol has come
from their own side. In the days following
October 7, Gadot posted on Instagram:
“Killing innocent Palestinians is horrific.
Killing of innocent Israelis is horrific. If
you don’t feel the same, I think you
should ask yourself why that is.”
Ofira Asayag, an Israeli television host,
responded: “Keep quiet, it’s better for
There
all of us. You live in some Hollywood
movie, and whenever you feel like it,
were you’re Israeli again.” The actress was
forced to issue a clarification that she sup-
fights ported Israel.
Naturally, both women have also been
outside subsumed in the torrent of falsehoods
and fake news that has been generated by
her film the conflict. A few weeks ago a photo-
graph of Gadot in uniform during her
national service, taken about 18 years
ago, went viral on Twitter/X, alongside
erroneous claims that she had joined the
IDF to fight in the current conflict.
Last week, another fake news story cir-
culated to the effect that Dior had
replaced Bella Hadid with an Israeli
model as a result of her recent activism.
Social media exploded in outrage. In fact,
Hadid’s contract with the fashion house
ended in March last year.
Of course celebrity activism is nothing
new — think of “Hanoi” Jane Fonda’s 1972
trip to north Vietnam. But conflict in the
Holy Land has the ability to divide and
outrage like little else. Hadid and Gadot
are the most prominent faces of the con-
flict online, but they are far from alone in
making their voices heard. In a culture
where “silence is violence”, everyone
feels under pressure to speak.
And so battle lines have been drawn in
Hollywood and beyond. On one side,
actors such as Tilda Swinton and Steve
Coogan were among 2,000 people to
have signed an open letter organised by
Artists for Palestine calling for a cease-
fire. On the other, Jewish celebrities such
as the songwriter and record producer
Mark Ronson and the comedian and
actress Amy Schumer have used their
social media accounts to campaign for
the return of the Israeli hostages.
Families have been divided too. The
actress Angelina Jolie recently shared a
social media post in which she said that
Israel was “deliberately bombing chil-
dren, women, families, deprived of food,
medicine, and humanitarian aid” in vio-
lation of international law. Her father, the
actor Jon Voight, 84, declared himself
“disappointed that my daughter ...
has no understanding of God’s honour,
God’s truths.”
Until now, celebrity PRs have at least
been comforted that the writers’ and
actors’ strikes that have cut their clients
off from awkward media questions. But
those are over now, so expect plenty
more rows.
Yet for Hadid and Gadot, this is about
far more than image and positioning.
This is about family, tribe, identity and
peoplehood. And as is so often the case
when it comes to Israel and Palestine,
part of the tragedy is how much they have
in common.

Harry Potter and the boy

Hertfordshire, at full pelt. “I the friends took Holmes’s — his father and friends, and
was imagining snitches and Mercedes SLK to the Lake Greg Powell, the Potter stunt
dodging quaffles, and by the District, gunning it up the co-ordinator — have taught
end of the day Chris motorway at 100mph, going him that “accountability” and

he wouldn’t leave behind

Columbus [the director] was walking and having pub tenderness is what makes a
whooping and hollering,” he dinners. “I was able to man. “These men have loved
says. They had their boy — provide an environment me into being,” he says. His
and he could fly. where he could grow as a childhood friend, Tommy, is
Holmes would appear as young man and explore his carer today. “There is no
Radcliffe’s stunt double in six himself,” says Holmes. “It was truer service to a best friend
films, swinging on wires, safe.” Until the accident. than what he has done for me
David Holmes was Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt The Boy who Lived, the title a breathwork therapy, sliding down roofs and Holmes, 25 at the time, was in my life. He is family.”
nod to the first chapter of the meditating by holding his hanging off windowsills. “I’ve rehearsing for a scene in Last year, after 12 years
double until he was paralysed in an accident first Harry Potter book, breath underwater in a pool — probably got more which Harry is struck by the being single, Holmes met his
on set. Now his ‘little brother’ has made him produced by him and his record is 4 mins 25 broomstick air miles than any snake Nagini when it girlfriend, Rosie, who is
the star of a new film, he tells Megan Agnew Radcliffe. It is a story of a man seconds. other human being on the happened. In the moments quadriplegic. He was renting

T
wice a week, sometimes
three, 11-year-old Daniel
Radcliffe would go to
the stunt department on
the Harry Potter film
set. He would find his stunt
double, 16-year-old David
Holmes —“the coolest person
I’d ever seen” — and they
would start to play.
The two of them practised
judo, swordfighting and
boxing. They would jump off
portable cabins, dive on to
mats and do flips on
trampolines. A new Potter
film was made almost every
year, making Radcliffe one of
the most famous children in
the world. As the
decade went on, he
and Holmes became
“like brothers”.
And then, in January 2009,
he was rehearsing a “jerk
back” for the penultimate
film in the series, Harry
Potter and the Deathly
Hallows: Part One — being
pulled backwards on a wire,
as if blown backwards by an
explosion. But the weight on
the pulley was miscalculated
and his body hit a padded
wall at speed. His colleague
later said he hung there “like
a puppet with its string cut”.
He had broken his neck.
Since then, Holmes, 40,
has been paralysed from the
chest down; his left arm is
mobile but he has reduced —
and ever-reducing —
movement in his right. “I am
hopeful and optimistic, and I
will be until the very end,
because life is a gift,” he says,
sitting at home in Essex, in
front of a fire and a bookshelf
filled with JK Rowling’s Potter
books. “But 15 years ago, I
learnt that life also takes.”
Now, for the first time,
Holmes is telling his story,
which has been made into a
documentary, David Holmes:
trapped by and trying to live
with his own body, and the
tale of a friendship between
two boys that has endured
through trials neither of them
could have envisioned.
“I always wanted an older
brother,” Radcliffe, 34, told
The Sunday Times. “And
Dave was one of them. He was
someone that really looked
out for me as I grew up and
has continued to and I knew I
could trust him. That’s
something that hasn’t
changed.”
The two friends’ lives have
been entwined for two
decades. Their daily realities,
however, look very different.
Radcliffe is getting rave
reviews in a Broadway play,
Merrily We Roll Along, living
in New York with his partner,
the actress Erin Darke, 39,
and their baby son. But every
so often, he will get a “Dave
Holmes bollocking” over the
phone, all the way from
Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
“I call him out,” says
Holmes. “Tell him to eat well,
sleep well, do all the right
things. You’ve got to love
yourself and love your body
because you only get one of
them. So don’t take the piss
out of it.”
It takes Holmes more than
two hours to get out of bed.
He has physiotherapy three
times a week, two massages,
hospital visits and
I’ve got more The only way to describe
paralysis, he says, is “being
broomstick wrapped tightly in linen, then
buried in sand, with a car
air miles than battery plugged into your
feet. I’m just constantly trying
anyone else to not let the bad thoughts
creep in, not dial into the
on the planet pain. I look for the beauty in
all things. That’s all I’ve ever
been able to do.”
Holmes was born in
Romford, the youngest of
three brothers. At 11, after
being scouted at his local
gymnastics club, he became a
stunt double on the sci-fi
movie Lost in Space.
At 16, he auditioned for
Daniel Radcliffe Potter — sitting on a bike
with his former saddle stuck on to a
Harry Potter broomstick stuck onto on the
stunt double back of a lorry driving down
David Holmes in the runway at the Warner
the new film Bros Studios in Leavesden,
planet,” he says.
The cast became “a
family”, Holmes acting as a
big-brother figure to the
young cast, and to Radcliffe in
particular. “Dan’s not a tall
man,” says Holmes, who is 5ft
1in to Radcliffe’s 5ft 5in. “But
being surrounded [in the
stunt room] by small men [in
the stunt room] that were
confident, that owned it,
probably helped him accept
the fact that, yeah, small men
are cool.”
Radcliffe says: “I had a
really unusual childhood. I’ve
missed out on some
experiences but I’ve also had
really cool other experiences
because of people like Dave.
That stunt room was an
amazing escape. And Dave
was a guide.”
In a break between filming,
HBO
afterwards he lay on the floor
of the studio, conscious and
in agony, unable to feel the
stunt co-ordinator pinching
his legs.
Radcliffe stuck with his
friend throughout, visiting
Holmes at the Royal National
Orthopaedic Hospital and
watching movies projected
on to the ceiling in between
tests and operations.
“It’s taken a really long
time for us to recognise the
full impact of what
happened,” says Radcliffe.
“And we’re still realising.”
Once the Potter films
ended, “there was definitely a
period where I didn’t know
what was important to me,”
the actor adds. “I’d been
doing this thing really
consistently and had all the
structure and then suddenly
that was gone and I very
quickly went into a kind of
freefall. It was something I
talked to Dave about and he
was, as he always had been,
a ... guiding star in all that.”
Holmes says he mourned
the loss of his ability to walk,
but also to dance, drive fast
cars and have sex. “For a long
time, I identified masculinity
as sexual prowess. And when
it’s taken away from you, like
it is with me ...” He pauses. “I
remember saying to my dad
in hospital, ‘I just feel like I’m
not a man any more’.”
Instead, the men in his life
her fully adapted villa in
Spain and they started
emailing, “moaning about it”.
After some FaceTime dates,
she came down from
Sheffield to stay with him.
“Everything we get together
means more,” he says. “Every
time we’re next to each other.
Every time we can just
embrace in whatever way we
can. It means more. It’s a
tragic love story. I wish it
weren’t ours. I really do.”
Recent tests have found
that, due to a cyst on
Holmes’s spinal cord, his
neurological level is rated as
C1, the most severe spinal
injury, which is likely to lead
to full paralysis, making
independent breathing,
speech and swallowing
impossible. “So I’d like to use
my voice now before I lose it,”
he says. “I’m still fighting, not
giving up yet.”
From his home in Essex,
his support — and bollockings
— of Radcliffe continue. “I can
vicariously live through his
achievements, knowing the
commitment and friendship
that we had together has had
a knock-on effect for him. I’m
very proud,” says Holmes.
“Breaking my neck made a
man of me — of all of us.
That’s the truth.”
David Holmes: The Boy Who
Lived will be on Sky and Now
from Friday
22
COMMENT
ESTABLISHED 1822
A day to forget — not a police
failure but a political one
I W
t is a sad fact that Armistice Day, the
annual commemoration of sacrifices
made by British soldiers in the name
of western freedom, was marked by
abuses of that freedom. Ugly scenes
broke out in central London yester-
day as groups of far-right protesters
brawled and clashed with the police.
Meanwhile some pro-Palestinian protest-
ers, having defied pleadings not to march,
chanted antisemitic slogans and hounded
the levelling-up secretary, Michael Gove.
More than 100 people — mainly from the
far-right mob — were arrested. The Metro-
politan Police and supporting officers
drafted in from around the country
deserve praise for largely separating the
two sides and preventing even worse vio-
lence. But the disorder was a worrying
glimpse of what can happen when there is
a gulf of political leadership and populist
voices fill the vacuum.
A drumbeat of Westminster bickering
heightened tensions leading up to the
event. Rishi Sunak described the timing of
the planned pro-Palestinian march as
“provocative and disrespectful”. Suella
Braverman, the home secretary, branded
it a “hate march”. Mark Rowley, the Met
commissioner, asserted his force’s opera-
tional independence, saying the thresh-
old for a ban had not been reached,
according to the available intelligence. In
truth any member of the public attempt-
ing to make sense of events last week
would have been left utterly confused by
the directionless rhetoric emanating from
those who seek to lead us.
Braverman’s intervention on Thurs-
day, when she used an article in The Times
to accuse the Met of a “double standard” —
treating left-wing protesters more leni-
ently than right-wing ones — was incendi-
ary. It was an apparent thumbing of her
nose at the prime minister, as well as a
jeopardising of the Met’s independence,
and it stirred up an already febrile situa-
tion. We will never know how Armistice
Day would have gone off without Braver-
man’s comments, but after the turmoil
that unfolded, the recriminations flowed.
Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, said
the unrest was “a direct result of the home
secretary’s words”. Braverman’s shadow,
Yvette Cooper, said it was “the responsi-
bility of all of us to bring people together
over this weekend, not divide and
inflame”. This is clearly political point-
scoring by Labour — which is exactly what
the Tories were engaged in all week.
As the NHS waiting list keeps
growing, our leaders keep quiet
Thursday’s news that the NHS waiting list
had hit yet another record high, with
6.5 million patients needing 7.8 million
operations, was the latest data point on
the road to a dystopian reality. But, as we
have noted before, it was barely acknowl-
edged by a political class that has long
since switched off when the subject of
healthcare reform is raised.
Our data editor, Tom Calver, visited
Southend, the conurbation in England
with the highest number of operations
needed per capita. His report includes
comments from a 64-year-old man who
could barely walk by the time he got a hip
operation on the NHS. “I think they delay
saying you need the op,” he said. “I had a
scan, and was told they would ring me in
six weeks. I waited — delay, delay, delay —
until I rang them and they said, ‘Oh no,
you were supposed to call us!’”
The degradation of trust in the NHS,
which consumes almost 40p in every
Double dishwasher jeopardy
A dishwasher can be a dangerous thing.
According to some surveys, “dishwasher
etiquette” is the biggest single cause of
domestic arguments. Marriages have
foundered on upward-pointing cutlery,
overstacked bowls and inverted mugs.
So news of the latest domestic trend is
troubling. As we report today, growing
numbers of kitchens feature not one but
two dishwashers. Hardcore devotees say
they never use the cupboards at all,
Braverman’s allies insisted that yester-
day’s events were in fact a vindication of
her warnings and proof that the march
should not have been allowed to go ahead.
Consider how all this looked from any
reasonable distance. Sunak, a prime min-
ister at the head of a splintered govern-
ment, stopped short of demanding that
the Met ban protests. He found himself
unable to censure his home secretary
when she threw down the gauntlet to him
and, in effect, went to war with the people
charged with keeping London’s streets
safe. The King’s Speech on Tuesday,
mostly a collection of low-key policies on
matters ranging from smoking to tenants’
rights, had long been forgotten by the
time 300,000 people massed in the capi-
tal yesterday.
Sir Keir Starmer, bruised by Labour’s
internal ructions over Israel’s war on Gaza
in response to the Hamas atrocities of
October 7, has his own problems. Imran
Hussain, MP for Bradford East and a mem-
ber of Labour’s front bench, has resigned
over Starmer’s refusal to back calls for a
ceasefire. The party’s fragile unity will be
tested again this week when the House of
Commons votes on a Scottish National
Party amendment demanding one.
Reports suggest that up to a dozen shadow
ministers could resign over it; Labour
whips are said to have spent the past few
days ringing round MPs, trying to per-
suade them to abstain rather than rebel.
This was a depressing weekend for
Britain’s Jewish and Muslim communities,
and for politics in general. War in the
Middle East has exposed fissures in both
main parties. Sunak and Starmer are
struggling to enforce discipline. The
Tories look intellectually exhausted after
13 years in power. A complicated inter-
national crisis that tugs on long-standing
left-wing allegiances is casting a fresh light
on Starmer’s refashioning of the Labour
Party after the Jeremy Corbyn years.
The fighting in Gaza looks set to grind
on with more loss of life. We must avoid
more demeaning incidents such as the
ones that marred yesterday’s remem-
brance. The Tories should remember
their role as traditional defenders of law
and order. The police must go about their
work without political interference. If
laws need to be changed to allow them to
be tougher on protests, then ministers
should propose them for debate and a
vote in parliament. That, after all, is what
our democracy is for.
pound spent on public services, is danger-
ous. We are tacitly moving towards a sys-
tem in which the wealthy pay to go private
for scans or surgery while the less well-off
are left to suffer in silence.
Steve Barclay, the health secretary, has
been preoccupied with procuring more
beds in care homes to ease the strain on
hospitals, setting out a much-delayed NHS
workforce plan and holding the line in pay
disputes with striking doctors. Wes Street-
ing, his opposite number, speaks sense
about boosting primary care, preventing
illness instead of simply treating it and
reform rather than blank cheques.
But both parties are falling well short of
providing the detailed answers Britain
needs. Another data point arrived on Fri-
day, showing the economy was flat in the
quarter to September. With little growth
and the tax burden already so high, the
pips are squeaking. Creative thinking will
be needed.
simply taking clean dishes from one and
putting them in the other after use.
Far-sighted readers will already have
spotted the risks of this method. It relies
on both partners agreeing on which is
which — adding yet another opportunity
for marital discord. We fear a wave of
double-appliance divorces.
Still, look on the bright side: at least
they won’t have to argue about who gets
the dishwasher.
Dominic Lawson
Just Stop Oil love to cry
‘fascist’. It’s laughable
The group is anti-democratic, yet it likens itself to the suffragettes
hile the politicians concern
themselves with the effect on
Londoners of pro-Palestinian
marches claiming that Israel, and
not Hamas, is “genocidal”, there
is another protest group that
plagues the capital weekly. It is
one that accuses our own
government of genocide, of “knowingly
planning the murder of hundreds of thousands
of British citizens”. Not only that, it informs
said British citizens: “Either you are actively
supporting [our] civil resistance ... or you are
complicit with genocide.”
This is Just Stop Oil, which staged yet
another of its “slow marches” last week,
including “lie-ins” across main roads. This one
closed Waterloo Bridge for two hours. An
exasperated driver of a blocked ambulance, its
blue lights flashing and siren screaming, told
The Daily Telegraph: “I am responding to a life-
and-death emergency — I am going to pick up a
team from Guy’s Hospital to save someone’s
life at another hospital but can’t get through.”
At about the same time the Metropolitan
Police put out the following plaintive tweet:
“The bridge is blocked because your activists
are laying [sic] in the road, as your video
shows. If the people who are under arrest
worked with us, got up and moved to the
pavement we could have reopened the road to
release the traffic.” My guess is most Londoners
would rather the police gave up asking nicely.
No matter how delicate the Met is in its
procedures, Just Stop Oil will accuse the force
of brutality. Earlier this year this offshoot of
Extinction Rebellion put out on Twitter some
footage of three Met officers arresting one of its
members. It declared: “Content warning:
police brutality”, and added that it was “not
uncommon for fascist regimes such as ours”.
The film actually shows the officers arresting a
Just Stop Oil demonstrator near Downing
Street with elaborate courtesy, and when he
complains that the cuffs being put on him are
painfully tight, the female police officer
loosens them and asks, “Is that better?” Like so
much of Just Stop Oil’s communication, this
complaint of “fascist brutality” displays a
comical lack of self-awareness.
In fact, it is one of the characteristics of
fascism that it prefers direct action, even
involving physical destruction, to the less
exciting procedure of discussion, debate and
democratic elections. The last of those,
though, did not work out well for the co-
founder of Extinction Rebellion Roger Hallam:
Hadley Freeman
Love Actually: one thing
we really should cancel
Richard Curtis’s nadir is turning 20. How has it become a festive classic?
B
y now, pretty much all pop culture
from the (aptly named) Noughties has
been retrospectively denounced: the
sitcoms were too white, the female
celebrities were treated
horrendously, and let’s not even get
started on the TV presenters. But
there is one relic from that era that
has remained astonishingly impervious to
cancel culture. Love Actually turns 20 this
week, and it is the one product of that time
whose reputation has grown with age.
Back when it was released, Love Actually was
generally seen as fine, if not a patch on Richard
Curtis and Hugh Grant’s earlier (and much
funnier) films, Four Weddings and a Funeral
and Notting Hill. Since then it has become a
bona fide Christmas film, overtaking other (far
superior) ones such as Die Hard and Trading
Places. It is now widely seen as up there with
the heretofore unassailable king of Christmas
films, It’s a Wonderful Life. When I was still
living in the US a decade ago, I heard that one
TV channel showed Love Actually on a loop for
the entire Christmas week. Rumours that this is
why America then went collectively insane and
soon afterwards elected a reality TV star as
president are still being investigated.
It shouldn’t be like this because, unlike the
too-white sitcoms and the dodgy TV
presenters, Love Actually was, even to us
unenlightened troglodytes in 2003, quite
obviously a wrong ’un. At The Times and The
Sunday Times Cheltenham Literary Festival
last month Curtis conceded that he had some
regrets about the film, mainly that it suffered
from a lack of diversity and that the frequent
jokes about Martine McCutcheon — who plays a
tea lady in 10 Downing Street — being fat “aren’t
any longer funny”. Yet that isn’t because
people have become more sensitive about fat
jokes in the past 20 years — although they have
— but because McCutcheon wasn’t fat in the
first place, so the jokes about her thighs were
never funny, just weird.
But then, nothing in Love Actually ever made
sense; after all, the film opens with Grant
when he stood in the 2019 European
parliament election for the London
constituency, he won 924 of the 2,241,681 votes
cast (or just 0.04 per cent of the total).
Thus, Just Stop Oil declared last week,
“Deeds, not words”, under a release
headlined, in capital letters: “SUFFRAGETTE
PAINTING SMASHED”. It went on to boast how
two of its supporters had “smashed the Rokeby
Venus — slashed by Mary Richardson in 1914”.
The Rokeby Venus is a painting by Velázquez in
the National Gallery, which indeed had been
attacked by that suffragette over a century ago:
Just Stop Oil, which smashed the glass covering
the painting, presumably wanted to show itself
as acting in the spirit of Richardson.
What perhaps the organisation doesn’t
know is that Richardson went on to become, in
the 1930s, a member of Oswald Mosley’s British
Union of Fascists. And quite a senior member:
responsible for the BUF’s Women’s Section in
the south of England. That slight
embarrassment aside, there is something
distasteful in Just Stop Oil’s identification with
those whose resort to direct action could at
least be defended with the point that they did
not, as women, have the power to vote.
While Just Stop Oil claimed that its attack on
the Rokeby Venus was a response to the
government’s plan, set out in the King’s
Speech, to issue more licences for oil and gas
exploration in the North Sea, the fact is that the
Labour Party has repeatedly said it will not
issue any more such licences, should it become
the government. So, the party that now seems
overwhelmingly likely to win power at a
general election next year is actually proposing
what is purportedly the raison d’être of Just
Stop Oil (its spokesmen have repeatedly said,
“We won’t stop until our genocidal government
ends new oil and gas”).
It could hardly improve the mood of that
infuriated ambulance driver to know that not
only was his vital work obstructed by these
Has there ever been
another protest
group so enraging?
musing, “Whenever I feel gloomy about the
state of the world, I think about the arrivals
gate at Heathrow.”
Record scratch! Sorry, I’m gonna have to
stop you there, Hugh: to cheer yourself up, you
think about people with long-haul-flight-
induced bad breath searching in vain for their
lost luggage and a minicab driver who went to
the wrong terminal? Because that is what every
sane person associates with that nightmarish
hellhole. But Grant, ie Curtis, sees Heathrow as
proof that “love actually is all around”. If,
perhaps, not your luggage, which is now en
route to Laos. Truly, only someone who flies
first class, as I assume Curtis does, could have
happy associations with an airport.
As you might have gathered, I am not a fan of
Love Actually, and this is not because of any
intellectual snobbery. On the contrary, I am
American (therefore a sucker for Curtis’s
Oxbridgey version of Englishness) and Jewish
( Jews love Christmas movies, and that’s a
scientific fact). Love Actually should be so far
up my boulevard that I live in it. But I don’t,
because it is a film in which none of the
plotlines work, which is almost impressive,
given there are eight. Plus, it’s a rom-com in
which “love” is depicted as a powerful man
(Grant playing the PM, Alan Rickman playing a
boss of a generic trendy company, Colin Firth
playing Colin Firth) sleazing over a woman who
works for him (respectively, the tea lady, his
secretary and his cleaning lady who doesn’t
speak English).
In this film, sexual
harassment and
stalking pass for love
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
unbearably self-righteous “slow marchers” but
that the ostensible aim of the demonstrators is
already the official position of His Majesty’s
Opposition. In that sense, there is no
democratic deficit being met by direct action.
At least the Met felt able to carry out arrests
on Waterloo Bridge last week. It was last month
that police, for the first time, invoked section 7
of the Public Order Act 2023, allowing them to
break up any action “which interferes with the
use or operation of any key national
infrastructure in England and Wales”. The
police had sought such a measure, having been
humiliated by a decision of the High Court that
the Met had unlawfully invoked section 14 of
the old Public Order Act when bringing to an
end Extinction Rebellion’s London
demonstrations in 2019.
Still, the public lose out twice, first because
they suffer from actions that masquerade as
the exercise of “freedom of speech” but are
wordless obstructions of their own freedom of
movement; and second because they, through
their taxes, are compelled to pay the
incremental costs of policing these stunts.
Football clubs contribute to the policing
costs at their stadiums, but the same principle
doesn’t apply to the equally regular, but less
popular, “events” staged by Just Stop Oil and,
formerly, Extinction Rebellion (which between
them receive many millions of pounds from the
Climate Emergency Fund, a US charity set up
to fund what it calls “disruptive” campaigns).
Perhaps the law should treat such
organisations as it does football clubs: with
some proportion of financial responsibility for
the policing costs they impose on the public.
Similarly, the fines imposed on those
“climate demonstrators” for criminal damage
(from paintings to office buildings) are typically
a fraction of the real costs of repair. For
example, the Extinction Rebellion co-founder
Gail Bradbrook will never have to pay the
£27,500 replacement cost of the large pane of
reinforced security glass at the Department of
Transport that she smashed in 2019. A fortnight
ago she was belatedly convicted for this, after
the court decided not to accept her argument
that she “had permission from nature” to
demolish it.
Has there ever been any other protest group,
in the whole history of this country — or indeed
of the planet they claim to represent —
possessed of such enraging pretentiousness
and self-importance? Although there is some
consolation in the fact that they are, just as
obviously, bonkers.
Or perhaps you prefer the touching love
story in which a man (Andrew Lincoln) secretly
films his best friend’s wife (Keira Knightley),
and when she finds out, he murders her, skins
her and wears her as a costume — sorry, I
mean, she thinks it’s sweet and kisses him.
Incidentally, Knightley was 18 — 18! — when the
film came out, while Lincoln was 30, just in
case that storyline wasn’t sufficiently creepy
for you.
As for Kris Marshall shacking up with three
hot American women because “American girls
seriously dig a cute British accent”, well, let’s
just say international wars have started over
lesser insults, Curtis.
But arguing with Love Actually is the
equivalent of Grampa Simpson shaking his fist
at the clouds. While plenty of other (better)
films have been deemed “problematic”, Love
Actually merrily sails on, even though it was
widely agreed in the MeToo era that workplace
sexual harassment and stalking are bad, and
those two activities are what Love Actually
thinks are actually love. And this causes a
conflict for me, because while on the one hand
I think cancelling pop culture from the past for
not adhering to today’s attitudes is stupid, on
the other I wish Love Actually would be buried
at sea. Really, it’s almost as confusing as a Love
Actually plotline.
Why has Love Actually avoided cancellation?
Two reasons, I think: first, it’s such a deranged
film that it evades any kind of criticism, like a
hyperactive toddler in a school nativity play
who falls off the stage. No one’s going to
complain about lack of acting talent there, are
they? Second, I think the generation that
generally does the cancelling (that is,
millennials) have such fond childhood
memories of this film that they have given it a
light pass. They’ll tut at the fat jokes but they
won’t kill the film, just as they’ll tell off their
parents for using dated terminology but won’t
disown them.
Silly millennials, says this Gen X-er. Thank
heavens I’m more mature and therefore prefer
The Muppet Christmas Carol.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
COMMENT
Matthew Syed
A cure for the short-termism that’s
ruining us could lie in a sundial
Our very conception of time has been mutated by digital technology. We need analogue thinkers
O
ne of my editors recently told
me that readers don’t like
journalists who merely carp at
the latest policy; they much
prefer to hear about
constructive ideas for the
future. In this spirit here’s a
suggestion for a future Keir
Starmer government hoping to arrest
the long-term decline of the UK.
My idea isn’t a specific policy or
strategy, but rather a change to the
structure of government that might give
us a chance of shifting the “ethos” of
decision-making. What I have in mind is
a minister for the future, a position in
cabinet (or perhaps an independent
post), leading an interdisciplinary
department full of the brightest
thinkers, who would ponder not just
tomorrow’s headlines or focus group
findings but what will happen next year,
next decade and, in certain
circumstances, next century.
I know what you are thinking: it won’t
work. It can’t work. Politicians can’t
organise a proverbial in a brewery, so
they are never going to be able to think
sensibly about long-term change.
Besides, we know that humans are
terrible at projections — one thinks of JK
Galbraith’s admonition to economic
forecasters, whose only function, he
said, “is to make astrology look
respectable”.
But bear with me for a moment. What
I’m proposing here is not someone who
comes up with forecasts, but who seeks
to change the texture of decision-
making. When Tony Blair says: “We
need to topple Saddam”, the minister for
the future will say: “Yes, but what
happens next?” When David Cameron
says that the money flowing into
universities from China is terrific, the
NEWMAN’S
WEEK
Minister for the Future will say, “But let’s
consider China’s long-term intentions.”
In other words, this would be a ministry
that not only thought about climate
change, AI, pensions, social care,
housing and the other critical issues that
have been pushed down the road for so
long, but offered a challenge to the
chronic short-termism that has become
endemic in Westminster, Whitehall and,
if we are being honest, ourselves.
The ancient Greeks had two concepts
of time, chronos and kairos. “It’s as if”,
the media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has
said, “they understood that time is
simply too multifaceted to be described
with a single word.” Some of the
difference between these concepts can
be glimpsed in the contrast between an
analogue watch (or sundial) and the
digital equivalent. With the former, you
see the whole day mapped out on the
face: how 5 comes before 6, and 6 before
7, the present nesting within a broader,
unfolding whole. Digital clocks are
different: they convey the time in the
here and now; time as a freeze-framed
moment rather than a flow.
We often think of digital as superior to
analogue, and in many senses it is. But
when it comes to time, the shift has been
corrosive. The digital conception of time
is deeply embedded in most of the
Projects
consumer products of the internet age.
Communication and relationships, for
end up half
example, used to unfold organically in
the stream of time; today they have been
built, like an
replaced by clicks, retweets and swipes,
all focusing on instant gratification.
impatient
Attention spans have plummeted.
This mindset has infiltrated British
child’s
politics, too. Read the great political
biographies of the 18th and 19th
Lego set
centuries and you see leaders who
implicitly thought in analogue time;
their job wasn’t just to win the next
election but to wisely position the UK for
the next decade, perhaps even the next
century. In the Victorian age — at the
height of our powers — we built 1,100
miles of sewers from which Londoners
still benefit; the Underground remains a
marvel of the modern world. These
projects were possible only because we
were willing to delay short-term
gratification for long-term gain.
Today we see the diametric opposite.
For the past four decades the UK has
consistently ranked lowest in the G7 for
investment in fixed capital (long-term,
non-financial assets), a problem that
bedevils both the private and public
sector. Too many business leaders are
obsessively focused on the next
quarterly results, too many of our
politicians on the next trend on Twitter.
Read a political memoir and you glimpse
leaders whose noses are pressed up so
close to the 24-hour news cycle that they
can’t see either the wood or the trees.
And this is why our infrastructure
projects flop. Examine the grotesque
fiasco of HS2 and you will note problems
with “contingency planning” and
“contracting”, but it ultimately all comes
back to short-termism. Politicians love
infrastructure projects at the outset (all
those photos in high-vis jackets) but
cower from unpopularity whenever
pylons or railway lines are built near
people’s homes. So they outsource these
difficulties to the courts, which become
bogged down in weighing incompatible
trade-offs on the environment and
human rights. This leaves us with the
worst of all worlds: expensive projects
that end up half built, like the Lego set of
an impatient child.
It would be easy to put all these
problems at the door of the Tories and,
to be frank, the past 13 years represent
arguably the nadir of political
competence in our nation’s history. But
it is also worth recognising that short-
termism isn’t just a Tory disease; it has
infected our body politic from Whitehall
to special advisers. We suffer too,
struggling to lift our eyes from our
devices, from the next trend, the next
like, the next headline. Digital time has
infiltrated not just our institutions but
our consciousness.
Could a minister for the future
address all this? Of course not. Like you,
I can see a future where a minister is
sidelined for criticising the latest short-
term wheeze or sacked for asking
difficult questions of a prime minister
that brown-nosing colleagues won’t. So
let me offer a couple more suggestions.
It should be a five-year appointment,
providing stability of tenure. They
should work “across the aisle” with the
shadow minister for the future, offering
at least the chance of cross-party
consensus on long-term challenges. It
would also be useful if the post were
launched by the prime minister and
leader of the opposition together, so
both parties had skin in the game.
Isn’t it worth a try? For my money, it
offers a better way of addressing the
epoch-defining problem of short-
termism than longer election cycles
(imagine Liz Truss or Donald Trump
with a ten-year term) or abolishing
elections altogether. Either way, perhaps
we can all agree that a shift back towards
the analogue conception of time — as a
flow rather than a succession of discrete
moments — would be a blessing for not
just the UK but western civilisation as a
whole. As Shakespeare put it: “Like as
waves make towards the pebbled shore,
so do our minutes hasten to their end.”
23
Simon
Barnes
With a flash
of ginger, the
dormouse is
gone — pray
not for ever
D
ormice have always been
famous for their charm and
their sleepiness. Now they’re
becoming famous for
extinction. They’ve already
disappeared from 20 counties
in England; since 2019 they’ve
gone from Hertfordshire,
Staffordshire and Northumberland. The
UK hazel dormouse population is down
70 per cent this century. The People’s
Trust for Endangered Species is
campaigning to have them reclassified
from vulnerable to endangered.
One of the reasons for their decline is
what was always considered their
greatest asset: sleep. Hibernation is an
extreme strategy. It’s about going as
close to death as you dare without
actually dying. The heart and breathing
slow right down and the body
temperature drops. Electrical brain
activity goes down by 90 per cent. A
hibernating animal doesn’t respond to
an external stimulus: you can hold one
in your hand like a dead thing.
It looks wonderfully cosy and safe,
but hibernation is as risky a venture as
the long-distance migration of a swallow.
Dormice spend the autumn loading up
on seeds, berries and nuts, building up
the fat layer that they hope will see them
through to spring. Many don’t make it,
but for the survivors spring is the grand
awakening.
In normal circumstances they wake
after a good six months of slumber, and
with an urgent need to renew their
drastically depleted resources. They
feed first, charmingly, on blossom, and
then rapidly shift to invertebrates,
especially caterpillars. They escape the
austerities of winter and wake to the
bounty of spring. That, at least, is plan A.
But with warmer winters they’re
increasingly prone to waking up before
the grand buffet of spring has been set
out. They mistime their waking, and that
can be fatal.
Other reasons for decline include the
loss of understorey in woodland. Areas
of bramble, hazel and other plants in
clearings and between trees are being
browsed by an expanding population of
deer, which have no natural predators in
this country. And there’s less light in
woodland when it’s no longer busily
Hazel dormice hibernate for six months
managed by humans, which means that
the understorey can’t grow.
Three species of dormouse live in this
country. The hazel dormouse is native;
the garden and the far larger edible
dormouse have been introduced.
Edible? Dormice were delicacies in
Roman times. You could eat them as a
savoury snack, perhaps with pine nuts,
or roast them and dip them in honey as a
sweet treat. Dormice are still savoured in
Croatia and Slovenia.
But they’re even more winning when
they’re alive. “You know I’ve always
longed for a dormouse,” says Linda in
Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit of Love. In
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland the
Dormouse keeps falling asleep at the
Mad Hatter’s tea party, even though they
pour hot tea over his nose and stuff him
into the teapot.
But a wide-awake dormouse is a
creature of all-out action. I visited a
dormouse reintroduction scheme run by
the Suffolk Wildlife Trust. Dormice had
been trapped for monitoring: the instant
the trap was opened, it was as if the
dormouse had been fired from a gun: up
the arm, into the branches and away into
the canopy: a streak of ginger lighting.
Woodland is where they live, but you
can walk through a dormouse-filled
wood every day of your life and never
see one. They’re either asleep or way up
there. Best way to establish their
presence is by examining hazelnuts, a
favourite food. If they’re nibbled with a
smooth round rim, then rejoice: your
wood has dormice in it.
Much of the wooded heartland of
dormice is now fragmented. In some
places connecting lines of vegetation
have been planted. I’ve visited elephant
corridors in India and dormouse
corridors in Suffolk and it’s all the same
idea: holding on to wildlife in a world
with ever-increasing human demands.
You can do your bit for dormice by
supporting local campaigns to save
woodland and by joining organisations
(like your local county wildlife trust,
and, yes, there’s one for London) that
run dormouse projects. So one question:
what’s the point in saving an animal
neither you nor anybody else will see?
The answer is that it’s not about you
and me; it’s about dormice.
24 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

COMMENT

Robert Colvile
To the fury of the left, a ticket to Rwanda
is suddenly all the rage across Europe

T
his was always meant to be the
week Suella Braverman hit the
headlines — but for a very
different reason. The home
secretary’s freewheeling
freelancing on the homeless,
policing and “hate marches”
has drawn everyone’s attention
away from a hugely important date for
both Braverman and Rishi Sunak: the
Supreme Court’s verdict, due on
Wednesday, as to the legality of the
Rwanda scheme.
With their very different characters, it
is easy to see the prime minister and
home secretary as polar opposites. On
this reading, whether to keep or ditch
her is purely a question of political
calculation. As I noted last week, the
Tories have lost two diametrically
opposed groups of voters since 2019: the
ones who think Braverman is the worst
thing to happen to the modern
Conservative Party, and the ones who
think she’s the only good thing about it.
Hence the gasps of horror at her
firebrand speech to last month’s party
conference — but also the rapturous
applause in the room.
If the PM sacks Braverman, he sets her
up as a queen of the back benches, able
to distance herself from the government
and get a head start on her leadership
bid. He also annoys a chunk of his MPs
and those voters who share the home
secretary’s robust approach to policing,
protest and immigration.
Yet there is a key point to grasp. The
prime minister may be riled by his home
secretary’s language and way of
working. But on policy she is not a rogue
operator. Because the Tories’ tough line
on crime and illegal migration is
something that comes as much from him
as from her.
Many of the same people who would
love to see the back of Braverman have
argued that the hardcore line on asylum
she embodies is a mistake, not just on
humanitarian grounds but in terms of
raw politics. By promising to stop the
boats, you reveal yourself as powerless
when they keep coming. All you’ve done
is raised the salience of the issue and
then created more disillusionment. And
in the process, with proposals like the
Rwanda scheme, you’ve ratcheted up
the repressive (and repulsive) nature of
the asylum system ever further. What
next — leaving the European convention
on human rights (ECHR)?
But there are four counter-arguments
to this. The first is that voters really do
care about the increase in small boats.
There’s a reason Nigel Farage started
filming videos of himself defending the
Dover coast. The second is that without
anyone noticing, and indeed without the
Tories bothering to tell anyone, there
has actually been significant success in
bringing the figures down: the number
of crossings is down by a third year on
year. In particular, the deal Sunak
reached to return arriving Albanians to
their homeland has reduced their
numbers almost to zero. Proof, says
No 10, that deterrence works.
The third point is that immigration
and asylum is one of the few genuine
dividing lines with Labour. Keir Starmer
has made tough noises about smashing
the gangs that run the crossings, but it is
excruciatingly hard for him both
personally and politically to address the
pull factors that draw illegal migrants to
the UK. Notably, he has promised to
scrap the Rwanda scheme even if it is
proving a success — a point the Tories
intend to make again and again.
Which brings me to the fourth point.
Under the Rwanda scheme, those
illegally crossing the Channel would be
processed and if necessary housed in
that country, with places in Britain
reserved for those applying via safe and
legal routes (which would increase in
number).
For most on the left, this is an awful,
illegal, inhuman scheme that will make
Britain an international pariah. But our
continental friends don’t seem to agree.
Italy, Germany, Austria and Denmark are
all interested in their own versions. You
might even describe it as global Britain
leading the way in Europe.
In the view of the Home Office and
No 10, Rwanda or something like it is
vital to bringing the number of crossings
down further, and also to helping Britain
(and Europe) cope with a historic surge
in migration over the coming years,
driven by climate, conflict or simply
New migration
statistics later
this month
will deepen
Tory divisions
aspiration. Asylum claims in Germany
this year are on track to be the highest
since 2015, while the Canary Islands are
becoming a second Lampedusa. Last
month Britain and Italy pushed for
illegal migration to be on the agenda at a
European summit in Granada. It turned
into one of the liveliest sessions at the
event, with leader after leader sharing
their concerns.
That’s why it will not just be Britain’s
government paying close attention to the
Supreme Court on Wednesday. But that
verdict, while of huge significance, is still
only a staging post in the story. If the
court finds for the government, there
will still be a huge amount of legal and
operational work. Before flights can
begin (probably in late February or early
March), there will be endless attempts to
use the courts to thwart either individual
deportations or the process as a whole,
not least by appealing to the European
Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
The working assumption in No 10,
however, is that the Supreme Court will
rule against it, at least on some of the
points raised. Given that Rwanda pushes
the present human rights framework as
far as it will go, the only option left (if the
scheme can’t be adjusted to meet the
court’s objections, or moved to another,
less objectionable country) might then
be to change the framework, for
example by leaving the ECHR or
legislating for some kind of carve-out.
Almost any kind of response will
cause another almighty row, especially
with the government’s more timorous
members. But Sunak has promised to do
“whatever it takes” to stop the crossings.
He has no intention of meekly accepting
a reversal in the courts (a decision that
would also give Braverman the chance to
quit as a martyr).
Rwanda isn’t the only migration
flashpoint. Those who worry about
illegal immigration also tend to be
sceptical of the legal kind: 61 per cent of
voters, and 90 per cent of Tories, think
migration has been too high over the
past decade. The release of fresh
migration statistics later this month
is likely to be another moment of
political pain — and another cause of
bitter Tory divisions.
But on the matter of the Channel
crossings, there is a feeling in No 10 that
whatever the home secretary’s personal
future, this is one of the few areas where
the public mood is on the Tories’ side.
However the court rules — indeed,
whether or not Rwanda itself is the
ultimate destination — the principle of
offshoring asylum is becoming
mainstream not just in Britain but across
Europe. And suddenly it is Labour that
finds itself wanting to diverge.

LETTERS POINTS
The Sunday Times,
1 London Bridge Street,
London SE1 9GF

TO THE EDITOR
Johnson was overwhelmed by lockdown zealots
Jonathan Sumption rightly
criticises the Covid inquiry
for having decided the
outcome before proceedings
began (News Review, last
week) — but then does the
same himself in deciding that
Boris Johnson was not
competent or diligent before
he has given any evidence.
He misunderstands the
nature of the prime minister’s
office. This is not a
dictatorship: the prime
minister is only first among
equals. Much though Johnson
tried to get a hearing for the
downside of lockdown, he
was faced by an NHS and a
scientific establishment
promoting it.
Johnson did his best for
common sense but was
overwhelmed, as any prime
minister would have been.
We now know that his view —
that the harm caused by a
lockdown would be likely to
outweigh any benefits — was
right, but that was no help to
him then. He was simply
outnumbered.
Michael Tyce
Waterstock, Oxfordshire
Truth before blame
Sumption’s excoriating
dismemberment of the Covid
inquiry suggests that it is
more criminal prosecution
than search for the truth.
For nearly 40 years my job
as a criminal prosecutor was,
Israel has a duty
to rebuild Gaza
The utter devastation of
Palestinian homes in Gaza is
appalling. The Israeli
hierarchy may consider this a
necessary evil to ensure the
country’s survival, but the
root cause of the conflict is
the failure of politicians to
have any vision for the future.
Izzeldin Abuelaish’s call for
reconciliation (News Review,
last week), despite the
enormous personal tragedy
he has been through, is a
reminder that there are
people on both sides who
desperately want a long-term
resolution. When the present
conflict is over, the Israeli
government has a chance to
make a start. Alongside
international agencies, it
The inquiry grilled Dominic Cummings over his language
perhaps surprisingly, not to
obtain a conviction but to
seek out the truth, using the
available evidence. This
should also be the primary
aim of the inquiry. Sadly it
seems to be playing second
fiddle to the job of
apportioning blame.
Nigel Duckworth, Dartmouth
Revenge drama
A meaningful inquiry would
have been mundane and low
key: interrogating the data,
assessing the efficacy of
measures and recommending
lessons for future.
Instead this inquiry has
been turned into a media
circus, where everyone lines
up to take potshots at
Johnson, Matt Hancock et al
(not that they don’t deserve
should pledge to help rebuild
Palestinian homes in Gaza.
Michael Segerman
Caister-on-Sea, Norfolk
The good fight
Dominic Lawson is right:
Hamas is a genocidal
organisation, with a clear
intent to eliminate not just
Israel but all Jews, and
genocide is an international
crime (Comment, last week).
He is right, too, that Israel
is not genocidal. However, in
three other areas of
international law — crimes
against humanity, war crimes
and ethnic cleansing — Israel
has cases to answer.
That Hamas itself has
committed numerous war
crimes is neither disputed
nor the issue. Despite the
horrors of October 7, Israel
does not have the right to
it). The rest of the time is
devoted to the expensive
catharsis of public anger. The
only people celebrating this
charade are the lawyers.
Thilla Rajasekar
Ashford, Kent
Predictable ending
We could save money by
cancelling the Covid inquiry
now, as it has obviously
already reached its
conclusions. One: it was all
Boris’s fault. Two: lockdowns
are good — we should have
had more of them.
Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Northwood, London
Corridors of chaos
Sumption is right to say that
we need to know more about
the collateral consequences
breach international
humanitarian law at will.
Those who, like me, want
to see Israel thrive must insist
on adherence to that law. It is
not just the right thing to do;
it is the sensible thing to do.
The law recognises that, even
in war, our adversaries are
human too; any sustained
peace settlement will need
that recognition in spades.
Colonel Simon Diggins
(retired), Rickmansworth
Mutual destruction
The declared intention of
Hamas is to destroy Israel.
The declared intention of
Israel is to destroy Hamas.
Neither is likely to succeed.
All that is certain is that in
their attempts countless
ordinary people will pay a
terrible price.
Richard Weldon, Folkestone
of actions taken to deal with
Covid, and learn how we
might plan more effectively
for future pandemics. But
that does not mean the
inquiry’s methods are “a
programme for failure”.
Even if we had been better
prepared in 2020, what we
have heard so far suggests
that chaos at the heart of
government might have
obstructed the utility of that
preparedness.
Farces are supposed to be
funny. I have not yet found
anything to laugh about from
the appalling standards of
behaviour the inquiry has
revealed, and the obstacles
such behaviour causes to the
proper discharge of public
business.
Roy Harrington, Woking
Freedom surrendered
Sumption is right, but it will
make no difference.
Challenge lockdown and you
challenge the whole drift
away from freedom. This drift
is not a conspiracy but a
wider societal trend. That
makes it no less grubby and
depressing.
Ben Rapp, London N10
Destined to implode
Tim Shipman says, “Boris
Johnson’s legacy could be
torched by the Covid inquiry”
(News, last week). What
legacy would that be? The
Help to die is not
‘playing God’
How dare Alfred Cannan, the
Isle of Man’s chief minister,
say that assisted dying is
“playing God with other
people’s lives” (News, last
week)? Quite the opposite: it
is giving people autonomy in
their own life, to decide when
they wish it to be over. We
have to stop thinking we have
the right to decide for others.
Jo Rees
Winchcombe, Gloucestershire
Safety button
My lovely husband died in
July. He had mesothelioma, a
particularly nasty lung cancer
caused by asbestos. His final
months were horrendous. He
was in pain, lost a quarter of
his body weight and could not
routine lying; the inability to
master a brief? The tragedy of
Covid was compounded by
having a man of so little
integrity at the helm.
Gary Cornall, Rochford, Essex
Cummings and goings
What on earth prompted
Johnson to recruit the foul-
mouthed ranter Dominic
Cummings to be his adviser
(“I’m no fan of rude men like
Dominic Cummings, but I
swear he was right about
moron ministers”, Camilla
Long, Comment, last week)?
He must have been aware of
the nature of the beast and
appointed him regardless.
Johnson’s downfall was the
inevitable result, and he is
now paying the price for this
disastrous decision. Good
riddance to both of them.
Peter Lake
Rochechouart, France
Man of action
Cummings may be foul-
mouthed but he had more
sense of urgency than others
in government. When the
Titanic hit an iceberg, he
would have been screaming
at people to abandon ship —
whereas Helen MacNamara,
the deputy cabinet secretary,
would have been trying to put
a committee together to write
a manual on how to leave a
sinking ship.
Ian Shepherd, High Wycombe
stand without my help. He so
wanted an end to this
existence.
His last two days were
spent in hospital. He told a
nurse, “If you gave me a
button now, I would press it.”
It’s really time we were all
offered that “button”.
Sheila Elliott
Bridlington, East Yorkshire
The right words
Words are so important in
this debate. It is not voluntary
euthanasia or assisted
suicide. It is assisted dying,
for those whose life is already
ending. Banning such
compassionate help is not
saving a life: that person is
going to die soon anyway. It is
simply ensuring they do not
suffer a painful, undignified
and inhumane end.
Merryn Myatt, Manchester
Email: letters@
sunday-times.co.uk
BIRTHDAYS
Mariella Frostrup,
broadcaster, 61
Ryan Gosling, actor, 43
Dame Katherine Grainger,
chairwoman, UK Sport, 48
Anne Hathaway, actress, 41
Booker T Jones, musician, 79
Eddie Mair, broadcaster, 58
Amanda Platell, journalist, 66
Neil Young, musician, 78
Anne Hathaway is 41 today
ANNIVERSARIES
1912 Search party recovers
bodies of Captain Scott and
two of his South Pole party
1984 Nigel Lawson, the
chancellor, announces that
£1 note will be phased out
1992 First episode of
Absolutely Fabulous aired
1997 Brazil rejects UK
request to extradite Great
Train Robber Ronnie Biggs
AI is better than
no intelligence
Oliver Dowden, the deputy
prime minister, says artificial
intelligence is being used to
speed up decision-making in
government (“Switching up
the red box for a bot”, News,
last week). This is welcome.
After the past few years, any
form of intelligence in
government will make a nice
change.
Gordon Lethbridge
Sherborne, Dorset
Human failing
Matthew Syed ably points out
the problems with regulating
AI and is “optimistic” that we
will be able to call a
moratorium (Comment, last
week). I fear his optimism is
misplaced. As with climate
change, any meaningful
moratorium will depend on
global co-operation — which
is something our species is
demonstrably bad at.
Malcolm Miller, Grays, Essex
Clarkson’s court battle
I can save Jeremy Clarkson a
battle with the planning
department: he does not
need to build a pickleball
court of his own (News
Review, last week). If he
comes to New Beaconsfield
Hall in Shipton under
Wychwood — just five miles
along the A361 from Diddly
Squat — we run pickleball
sessions on Monday and
Friday, 1pm to 3pm. We’re
very friendly, and the timing
means you have the added
advantage of missing lunch —
thus losing more weight.
Jeni Smith, Shipton under
Wychwood, Oxfordshire
From subtitle to ridiculous
I was intrigued by your article
on Gen Z using subtitles on
TV (Culture, October 29). As
someone who relies on them
because of hearing loss, I find
that in news and weather
broadcasts they are often
impossibly mangled. A recent
weather forecast at first gave
“Isa Byers”; then stuttered on
to “eyes of buyers”. It never
managed “isobars”.
Sylvia Harman, Norwich
Yeomen, no women
I watched the state opening of
parliament last week, and
wondered: in our society of
equality and difference, why
is it that the King’s Body
Guard of the Yeomen of the
Guard is made up entirely
of white men? Are we to
assume they cannot recruit
anyone else?
Tod O’Brien, York
Microsoft heard
watchdog’s bark
What made the difference in
our decision to clear the
Microsoft-Activision deal was
not lobbying or political
influence, but a change in the
facts (“Brexiety has made our
watchdogs vulnerable to
political meddling”, Oliver
Shah, Business, last week).
Microsoft’s decision to give
up the rights to stream
Activision games on the
cloud, handing those rights to
a significant competitor in
Ubisoft, was a long way from
just a “tweak”. It was a major,
game-changing concession
that addressed the concerns
we had. As a result, we let the
merger go ahead. The rest
was just noise.
Marcus Bokkerink, chairman
Competition and Markets
Authority, London E14
Greek myths
Robert Frazer thinks civil
servants are innumerate but
fluent in Greek (Letters, last
week). I spent nearly 30 years
in the civil service, where my
colleagues included
engineers, scientists,
accountants and commercial
officers. They were all literate
and numerate. I don’t think
any of them spoke Greek. Sir
Humphrey is fiction.
Steve Unsworth, Hayling
Island, Hampshire
Inn love
John Ratcliffe (Letters, last
week) mourns the decline in
the number of pubs because
that is where he met “every
one of my girlfriends/
partners/wives”. I wonder if
they feel the same way.
Andrew Leslau, Henley-on-
Thames, Oxfordshire
Cold calling
You report that personnel at
McMurdo research station in
Antarctica now have fast
internet to stay in touch with
loved ones (World News,
October 29). I spent 28
months in Antarctica from
1969 to 1971. My girlfriend was
in Finland. No phone or
internet then: we were
allowed just 100 words of
communication a month, in
and out. Next year we will
celebrate our 50th wedding
anniversary. I wonder how
many of the present Antarctic
winterers will still be married
in 50 years’ time.
Robin Walker
Swanage, Dorset
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exclusive to The Sunday Times
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Some arguments seem to
hover off screen, ready to be
rekindled by one loose word
in a comment. Covid is often
that word, but it wasn’t masks
or jabs that caught Bryan
Stark’s eye in Matt Rudd’s
account of his brush with the
latest variant: “What’s the
‘mongoose’ reference?” Matt
Rudd replied: “I’m hoping it
was just a hallucination.”
Deepak Puri had suffered
something similar: “Mine
involved trekking to the
South Pole, pulling a sled
behind me. My wife asked me
what I was doing with my
upper body, and I responded,
‘Trying to beat Amundsen to
the pole.’” Mrs Overton “had
hallucinations too. Not a
mongoose, but a man-sized
blue Burmese cat walking on
his hind legs that kept talking
to me, singing to me and
telling me off.”
Perhaps she had been
listening to late-era Beatles.
The band’s “new” song did
not impress Elizabeth
Shayler, who thought it “at
best a weak B-side”. She was
missing the point, insisted
Fred Walski: “If you could
have one last drink with a
friend who passed, would
you complain afterwards that
‘it wasn’t the best drink’ or
would you cherish the
moment? That is Now and
Then.” “Blimey, Fred,” wrote
D Kelly, “that’s brought tears
to my eyes.” Another who
liked it was Jonathan Dean:
“Wish I’d included that in the
article — really well put.”
Our tales from the early
days of the ST Wine Club
brought a rip-roaring
recollection of the beaujolais
run from Revel Barker: “I
was a member of the winning
team in 1984. The rule was
that nouveau could not be
thesundaytimes.co.uk
READERS’ POLL
exported until after midnight Last week we asked:
on a certain date. We cheated Is the Covid inquiry a good use of taxpayers’ money?
by persuading the skipper of
the 11.45pm Channel ferry to
delay sailing. Another team YES NO
used a Harrier jump jet,
which landed in the coalyard
44%From a poll of 28,439 Times and Sunday Times readers56%
at King’s Cross.” Do you ever
suspect they used to have This week’s question:
more fun in the old days? Are you on an NHS waiting list?
Rob Nash Have your say at sundaytimes.co.uk/poll
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 25

COMMENT

Camilla Long
These marches should have been a dream
for the Tories, then Braverman stepped up

N
ot a great week for Tory
women, was it? First there was
Nadine Dorries, who wrote a
book. In it, the palpitating,
silk-scarved former culture
secretary tried to present
herself as both so stupid that
she was frightened of a menu
at a smart restaurant but so clever and
perceptive that she had single-handedly
cracked a shadowy, deep-state plot run
by Michael Gove.
Sample sentence: “‘You’re a writer.
You should write the truth about this,’
said one aide in No 10.” (Italics: author’s
own.) It was House of Cards written by
Harriet the Spy.
Then there was the home secretary,
Suella Braverman, who also wrote
something — an article. In it, she said
that the Metropolitan Police were
playing “favourites” with “protesters”,
giving lockdown objectors “no quarter”,
while Black Lives Matter demonstrators
could “break rules”.
The pro-Palestinian marches, she
said, were the same as the old IRA
protests in Northern Ireland. Some
poppy sellers had been “mobbed”.
Police were threatened with
“fireworks”. Oooh. And what else?
Water pistols? We were later told Rishi
Sunak hadn’t approved some of it and
now the prime minister might be
planning to sack her. Will he, though —
really? What’s the truth of any of this?
I’ve reached the point where I don’t
trust a single thing that’s said, or even
leaked, or tweeted, by any Conservative
politician. Point of fact, though: the
Whitehall marches should be a dream
for the Tories, an opportunity for them
to point to an outside threat, rile
everyone up and then rush to the
rescue, telling us they will save us, one
poppy seller at a time.
Which is what Braverman was trying
to do, to bolster her craven “shot at the
leadership”. Only she blew so hard on
her dog whistle in publishing her article
that thousands of far-right football
thugs turned up yesterday, piling onto
the Cenotaph, shouting, “England till I
die”, like drunk zombies. As someone
who has actually been urinated on at an
EDL march, I can tell you there’s one
thing these people don’t turn up for, and
that’s debate.
How can one person be so selfish and
stupid? If you read the article she wrote,
you will see it is filled with mistakes and
failures of logic (since when should
something be banned simply because
people are “mobbing” poppy sellers?). I
didn’t think it was possible for this once-
successful party to present us with
someone more chaotic than Liz Truss,
less subtle than Dorries. But it turns out
Braverman is what you get if you dig
down past all the ninth-rate Etonians,
the Nadines, the tractor porn-ers and
secret rapist MPs: a home secretary
without a single redeeming feature, who
is, despicably, using this serious clash on
our streets as a showcase for herself.
I don’t even agree with the marches: I
think they are frightening and
antisemitic and wrong. Marauding the
families of war dead is beneath
contempt: it reminds me of the protest
planned by Anjem Choudary, a terrorist,
in 2010. He wanted to march 500 fake
coffins through Wootton Bassett to mock
fallen British soldiers. It is obvious
Jewish people need protecting. But why
is it this artless, self-promoting
mediocrity who has to do it? Haven’t
they suffered enough?
Scan any one of her speeches,
articles, reports, and you will find it
littered with intemperate, incendiary
images and appalling language: she
speaks of “invasions” (of immigrants,
naturally) and of “dreams” and
“obsessions” — this is not the language of
Thatcher, but of a 16-year-old girl — and
of Trump (she’s even named after
someone in an American soap:
Sue Ellen in Dynasty). She is the perfect
politician for our age: she believes in
nothing except what strikes her as useful
at that moment.
Anything comes out of her mouth.
You might think that, having a husband
who’s a “proud Jew and Zionist”, she
understood what might or might not be
an antisemitic trope. You might think
wrong. In 2019 she used the phrase
“cultural Marxism” in a speech: it is a
term that suggests Jews and progressives
conspire to control our cultural life, of
which “Jews control the media” is just
one example. The Board of Deputies of
British Jews rebuked her, but later said
she had not been “intentionally
antisemitic”. Translation: she’s not evil;
JOE GIDDENS/PA
Spoilt stars
always get the
girlfriend and
the PA at war
Who’d be a celeb PA? If you’re
not changing sheets or
scratching backs, you’re being
sued.
But when Robert De Niro
accused his assistant, Graham
Chase Robinson, of watching
too much Netflix, she sued right
back. In an attempt to defend
himself from claims he was
“disrespectful”, De Niro shouted
at her in court. “Goddammit, I’m
sorry,” he said afterwards.
It has, frankly, been bliss.
I’m pleased that Graham (lol)
has now been awarded nearly
$1.3 million for dealing with him
and his foul-mouthed girlfriend
Tiffany Chen: some might say
this case was, in fact, a ruling
against her. It’s often difficult to
see who’s more unlikeable: the
spoilt big baby celebrity, or his
rude, insecure fourth/fifth wife/
babymomma.
Take John Lennon and Yoko
Suella Braverman‘s choice of words has landed her in trouble before: in 2019 she was rebuked by the Board of Deputies Ono for example: we are told by
Lennon’s former PA, May Pang,
that Ono was difficult. Ono
she’s just thick. Hmmm. A Jewish friend her, facts simply do not matter: she is would phone her at 2am with a
told me: “We’re embarrassed by her.” happy to liken pro-Palestinian marches to-do list: “something to do with
There are people who will see this as to those in “Ulster”, without realising ... bongos for a Jerry Lewis
simply a bit of Westminster jostling: that in Northern Ireland it’s the Tory- telethon”. She planned to make
Braverman thumbing her nose at Rishi. supporting loyalists who traditionally a dress that she told Pang she’d
They will say she is a lone operative, an
outlier, when in fact she is far more
She believes march? I mean: this is basic history.
As for the police, well, it’s quite a feat
have to model, with the breasts
and vagina exposed (she never
dangerous than that: the chief symptom
of a party that has so lost its grip on
in nothing, to make them look like the calm,
reasonable ones. It’s true they haven’t
did). When Ono and Lennon
split up, her solution was to
power it now operates only as a loose
collective of reckless, self-interested
except what really been policing these demos: a week
ago 1,300 officers on duty at one protest
offer up Pang as a kind of decoy.
“Why are you doing this?” wept
mini-emperors while the Visigoths pant
at the gate. Braverman is as ideas-free
strikes her as made just 29 arrests. This seems low to
me, given the number of videos of
Pang as they had sex. Bizarre.
It’s clear Ono would do
(and as clomping) as any late Roman
general; why should we be put at risk by
useful at that people chanting racist songs or flying al-
Qaeda flags, but they claim they’re
anything to keep Lennon’s
attention, but who’s really the
anyone as messy as this? Her stances are
all opportunistic: she’s an Erasmus
moment “outnumbered” and can’t arrest
everybody. Yet instead of tackling this
villain in all this? The truth is
that it was Lennon, like De Niro,
scholar who backed Brexit; the daughter shocking, crucial detail — the fact that who had all the power, and got
of immigrants who said carting people we cannot police our own streets — her to do his bidding. Who’d be
off to Rwanda was her “obsession”. To Braverman has made it all about herself. a celeb wife?

Aasmah Mir
God, I love The Morning
Show. I don’t mean the one
I work on at Times Radio; I
mean the one that Jennifer

Week ending
Aniston’s character, Alex
Levy, works on in Apple’s
hit series set at a New York
TV channel.
Yes, it’s a bit niche, but I
gratefully take it out of the
chocolate box once a week
and enjoy it like a delicious
truffle.
I don’t watch it for the
glamour, or the storylines
about hacking or takeovers
or US Supreme Court
decisions. I watch it for the
delicious and weird
relatability.

In my dreams, Darren the pensions Levy’s disgusting alarm

adviser chases me with a portfolio
What keeps you up at night?
A letter from the doctor
asking you to come in for a
test that stays safely out of
sight in a drawer? The email
you still haven’t sent that
means your child might get
into a good school, even
though they’re still in your
tummy?
I’ll tell you what cha-cha-
chas across my brain every
night. My pension. Or lack of.
How have I got to this grand
old age without one? I have a
mortgage; I have savings; for
goodness’ sake I even have an
Isa. But a pension eludes me.
A teenage drip — but,
About 20 years ago my
wise mum started regularly
mentioning pensions to me,
but they seemed irrelevant,
complicated. Thirty seemed a
world away from 65. I also
planned to work till I was
much older — maybe 70 or 75.
Of course, now we are likely
to live a lot longer than we
used to.
I know all this, and yet I’ve
been paralysed by it in recent
years. A big “P” for pension
springs from every cupboard
I open; it peeps over the
shoulder of everyone I speak
to. I’ve never been employed,
always freelance, so I need to
get a private pension. But
there are so many types, and
you need a financial adviser, a
stranger to look at your
financial affairs and shake
their head gravely over your
lack of planning.
So I will probably ignore
pensions for another year or
so before I bite the bullet and
inevitably choose the wrong
one. Hooray.
Aasmah Mir co-presents the
breakfast show on Times Radio
with Stig Abell, 6am to 10am
Monday to Thursday
NEWMAN’S
shrieks at 3.30am (a
slacker’s lie-in) and then
she jogs through the streets
of New York to work (a hard
no from me).
The show brilliantly
captures the upside-
downness of working on an
early morning show — the
siege mentality, the sugar
rush of working when you
should be sleeping,
followed by a massive
slump for the rest of the
day as you stumble about,
not quite here or there, not
really living in the moment,
waiting for the day to end
too early so that it can start
again, too early.
Sickly sweet
memories
An elderly neighbour

boy, I made up for it at 25 VIEW occasionally goes through an

“Did you have fun?” That’s
the question I ask my
daughter most days when I
pick her up from school and
after every birthday party
she goes to. Because if we
don’t have fun, what is the
point?
A poll last week claimed
that 55 per cent of us
prioritise fun in life. Barbra
Streisand has said in her
memoir that she wishes she
had had more fun. And that
could have been me.
In my teens I devoted
myself to studying in a weird
monastic way, eschewing
any frivolity. There were no
cinema trips and certainly
no drawing on eyeliner in
old address book and notes
the names of people who are
the girls’ loos and heading no longer alive. He observes
into town to meet boys. But the passing of time in this
don’t worry, dear reader. I way; for me time is marked in
made up for it in my a less sad but still affecting
twenties: 1997 was officially way. The things that we clung
my best year. I went on to as children, that we
clubbing every weekend, thought would never go, are
never used my oven and, at inevitably disappearing.
one point, dated three Just this year the fizzy
gorgeous men at the same drink Lilt left us; then dark
time (I really hope my mum chocolate Bounty bars were
isn’t reading this). no more. And now time’s up
And now, in my midlife for the Caramac. Yes, it was
years, when the fun is thin sickly sweet, but there was
and the dating threadbare, I something about the thin
always hark back to 1997. I snap of that butterscotch-
remember worrying that coloured bar, slowly melting
maybe I was finally going off on the tongue, that made me
the rails. But actually I was so happy in a way that no
just storing up a lifetime’s other confectionery ever
worth of fun. really has.
26 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

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The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 27

NEWS REVIEW

W
Jeremy
PR/THE AND PARTNERSHIP
e learnt last week that bigger signpost than a British accent.
British women are the This was all part of Hollywood’s
heaviest binge determination to create a world in its
drinkers in the world. own plastic-perfect image, and it

Clarkson
And our men did worked. Twenty years ago all my friends
pretty well in the
survey too, finishing
smoked. Today almost none of them do.
And now Hollywood is doing the same
In TV shows now,
in third place behind with alcohol. Out of professional if someone drinks
It might be the
the Romanians and curiosity I watched an Amazon Prime
the Danes. I’m not
sure how the Finns failed to win.
show called Gen V the other day. It’s as
racially diverse as a modern-day car
you know they’re
They’re usually the hot favourites in any advert, and there is one character who is one of the bad guys

bitter end for

drinking contest. Maybe they were all both male and female, so it’s very
completely unable to remember what obviously aimed at young adults. And I
they did last night. couldn’t help noticing that those who minefield. One wrong pronoun or the
However, while the people in most drank were the bad guys. slightest whiff of cultural appropriation

alcohol. Even
western countries continue to enjoy a You see it on social media too. If it had and you’re in the waste basket with
healthy relationship with alcohol — apart been around when I was growing up, it Laurence Fox and JK Rowling.
from the Italians, who limped home in would have been filled with images of So it’s now cool to be healthy and
last place — there is evidence to suggest girls having their hair held back while mentally sharp, and that’s a good thing, I

I’m brewing
that times are changing. they vomited and men with traffic cones suppose. But, speaking as someone who
Figures just out show that in the UK a on their heads. Instead, however, it’s all owns a brewery, I also find it a bit
third of people under the age of 25 do about surfing and hiking and having a worrying.
not drink alcohol at all. If you peer into liver that is pinker than Barbie’s pink Sales of low or zero-alcohol beers

booze-free ale
the gloom at a party these days, you will
notice that in every corner there’s a gang
of fresh-faced young adults drinking
nothing more intoxicating than
elderflower-flavoured electrolytes.
I have many friends of my age who
don’t drink either, but this is usually
because they grew weary at some point
of waking up in the middle of the Earls
Court Road in a Team America-sized
puddle of their own sick. Our kids,
however, have not been through this
rather undignified portal. They’re just
not drinking.
I’ve tried this a number of times over
the years and it’s tricky. Because, as I see
it, there are two reasons for ingesting
liquid. You’ve just spent a day in the
sunshine chopping logs and you’re
thirsty. Or you want to get pissed. So if
you’re in a sober period and a barman or
waiter asks what you’d like, you’re
stumped. You can’t have alcohol, and
you haven’t been chopping logs, so
there’s no point having a bitter lemon
either. This means you have to stand
there, in full view, with no glass in your
hand. Which makes you feel exposed
and vulnerable, like you’re suddenly not
wearing trousers.
And yet, despite all this, huge
numbers of young people are happily
breezing into pubs and bars and parties
and proudly asking for some water.
Which raises a question: why? It’s not as
if drink-driving is as issue, because
they’re all in Ubers. And it’s not as if
they’re worried about not being able to
perform in the bedroom, because
another recent study found that modern
kids aren’t having sex either. So what’s
going on?
Well, in the recent past you knew that
when someone lit a cigarette in a movie,
they were the baddie. It was an even
bits. There’s one girl out there who
spends all day skipping, which is not
something anyone can do when they’re
To beer or not to pissed. Then you have Andrew Tate,
beer, that is the who, before he went in a prison, was
question for endlessly banging on about the
Jeremy Clarkson importance of being healthy. It’s
relentless.
A boffin cropped up on my TikTok
feed only this morning to explain which
drink does you the most harm. I was
expecting him to be specific and say
absinthe or moonshine or a Burmese
whisky called Hankey Bannister, which
once did Richard Hammond a great deal
of harm. But no: he said the No 1 worst
drink was “alcohol”. Yup. All of it.
One of the reasons the Italians don’t
drink very much is that they consider
losing control to be ugly. And I think
there’s some of that going on with
today’s twentysomethings. You need to
be sharp and in control of your faculties
when you’re permanently in a social
have more than doubled since 2019. And
in the past year alone they shot up by an
almost unbelievable 23 per cent. This
certainly backs up the figures that show
the under-25s now want to be sober. And
it means that if my Hawkstone brewery
wants to remain in rude health, we need
to stop developing beers that can blow
your head clean off and stick our foot in
the low-alcohol lake.
It’s not easy. Just ask Peroni. Making a
beer taste like beer when it has
infinitesimal amounts of alcohol is like
making a tomato juice taste like tomato
juice when it has no tomatoes in it. But
our brewer is now locked away in a cellar
with his pipettes and his special yeast,
and he’s been told he can’t come out till
he’s solved the problem.
Because relying on an ageing client
base for business is never a good idea.
Just ask Rover. It thought it’d be fine, but
it woke up one morning and all its
customers had died.

TEASER 3190 “Spade” squares it; “Heart”

halves it; “Club” changes its
sign; “Diamond” divides it
Stuck in the jam in the Smoke
at rush hour, John’s children
were missing Andy’s party.
but each score was
unchanged. Four different
suits were still showing.
WEATHER
Stephen Hogg by the other card’s face
value. Players score their
Playing Mods-In-Suits for
amusement led to one
Give Jo’s final hand. AROUND THE WORLD TODAY’S WEATHER
Mods-In-Suits modified values’ sum (or unusual game. Jo’s initial Send your solution to: The Sunday
Times Teaser 3190, PO Box 29, Amsterdam 8C f London 9C r
In single-pack card game zero if there is a matching score was a positive whole Colchester, Essex CO2 8GZ or email
Athens 20 f Los Angeles 26 s
Mods-In-Suits, players are pair of face values). Players number, Bo’s its negative. puzzle.entries@sunday-times.co.uk.
The first two correct solutions opened Auckland 21 s Madrid 18 f
dealt two cards. Each card’s may exchange their second Four different suits and face after next Saturday each win a £20 Bangkok 32 th Mexico City 23 f
face value (Ace=1 to K=13) is dealt card for a fresh card values were dealt. Both Waterstones voucher. Open to 18+ UK &
Barcelona 20 f Miami 28 sh
modified by its suit, thus: from the pack. exchanged their second card, ROI residents only.
Beijing 7 s Moscow 5 sh 26
5
CHESS BRIDGE
Belgrade 13 f Nairobi 23 th
rough
David Howell Berlin 8 sh New Delhi 29 s
Sally Brock
Bogota 18 sh New Orleans 23 f
Boston 6 f New York 9 f
I recently faced a dilemma. I Here, however, White was Sometimes the effect of an get a ruff. He underled his
Brussels 10 sh Oslo 2 sl
was eligible to play in the 2023 seduced by a tactical trick. 24 opening lead is far-reaching. ace of hearts, but declarer 6
Budapest 10 f Panama 28 th 6
FIDE Grand Swiss as a member Bxh6? Tempting but flawed. What would be your choice as won, drew trumps,
Buenos Aires 24 th Paris 14 sh
of the world top 100. In the past White now falls victim to a West from the following hand: discarded a heart on the moderate
Cairo 31 sh Prague 8 f
two editions of this event, I had memorable swindle. 24 Be5 clubs and took a diamond
Calgary 7 f Rio de Janeiro 34 f
come within a point of would have maintained a long- Both vulnerable, Dealer South finesse for an overtrick.
Cape Town 23 s Rome 18 sh
qualifying for the Candidates. term edge. 24…gxh6 25 Qd4 West North East South At the other table West 9
Caracas 26 th San Francisco 17 f
Alas, time catches up with all “LPDO”, or Loose Pieces Drop 1♣ * found the superficially
Casablanca 25 f Santiago 18 sh
of us. Chess continues to Off, as the saying goes. It Pass 1♥ * Pass 1NT * worse lead of a low
2♥ * 2♠ Chicago 14 s Seoul 6 s
change. It is no coincidence appears that White will win Pass Pass diamond. Declarer won in
Pass 3NT Pass 4♠ Dubai 30 f Seychelles 28 th
that the majority of prize back the sacrificed piece with hand with the nine, and
All Pass Dublin 10 sh Singapore 29 th 8
winners from this year’s Grand interest. 25…Qa1! A nasty played trumps. West won the
Geneva 12 sh Stockholm 6 r 11
Swiss were young, backed by shock. The threat is 26…Rc1. One club was the normal third round of trumps (East
Gibraltar 25 f Sydney 29 f
significant sponsorship, and Some calculation is required, opening on all balanced discarding diamonds both
Guatemala 24 th Tel Aviv 27 sh
thus able to employ a large but it soon becomes clear that hands; one heart showed times) and led a heart to the
Helsinki 6 r Tenerife 24 f
team of coaches. For players Black is simply winning. 26 four or more spades; one ten and king. Declarer now
based in the UK where chess is Qd2 If 26 Rxa1 Rxa1+ 27 Bf1 e5! no-trump showed 18-19 needed to get to dummy to Hong Kong 24 sh Tokyo 11 r 20 10
Istanbul 19 sh Toronto 6 f
not yet recognised as a sport, it White suffers on the back rank: balanced; two hearts was a draw the last trump. All he rough
Jersey 14 sh Trinidad 29 th 13
is becoming ever harder to 28 Qxc5 (28 Qh4 covers h3, but transfer back to spades. In could do was try his top clubs,
Johannesburg 33 sh Tunis 26 s
compete at the very top level. 28…Rcc1 29 Qxf6 (or 29 Kg2 the final part of the auction but West ruffed the second
La Paz 17 th Venice 13 f 30 moderate
I ultimately chose to Kg7) 29...Bh3 wins for Black) South was offered a choice and was able to cash two
Lagos 29 th Vienna 10 s
commentate on the Grand 28...Bh3 and Black’s point is between three no-trumps heart tricks.
Lima 22 f Warsaw 8 f
Swiss, a role that allowed me to revealed. 26...Qa3 Black’s extra and four spades. What would UK and Ireland forecast
Lisbon 21 sh Washington DC 11 f
enjoy the spectacular chess on piece decides the game. 27 you lead from: This week’s problem A band of thick cloud and rain will move northeastwards
show in the Isle of Man. Rbb1 Kg7 28 g4 Rac8 29 g5 Key c=cloud, dr=drizzle, ds=dust storm, f=fair, fg=fog, g=gales, h=hail, across the British Isles throughout the day, heaviest across
♠ A732 ♠ 76 m=mist, r=rain, sh=showers, sl=sleet, sn=snow, s=sun, th=thunder, w=windy
White: Denis Lazavik Ng8 30 Qd4+ Kf8 31 gxh6 ♥ A976 ♥ A953 southwestern areas through the morning and Northern
Black: Radoslaw Wojtaszek Nxh6 32 Ra1 Qxb3 33 Qh8+ ♦ Q 10 7 4 ♦ K Q 10 5 2 Ireland and central Britain by the afternoon. Northern
♣6 ♣ 73
FIDE Grand Swiss, Ng8 34 Rd3 Rc3 White resigns Britain will be mainly dry with sunny intervals and one or
Douglas 2023 Spot the Move 1401:
White to play.
One West looked no further
than his singleton club. This
♠5
♥ K842
W
N
E
EUROPE two showers in eastern Scotland. Light to moderate east to
southeasterly winds for most, perhaps fresh in places
♦ A6
was the full deal: ♣ AKQ652 S

♠ KJ864 West North East South 4

♥ J42
♦ KJ3
♣ 10 5
♠ A732 N ♠ 10
♥ A976
W E
♦ Q 10 7 4
♣6
S 13
♠ Q95
This middlegame favours ♥ K53
White. The bishop pair Predke-Kuzubov, Douglas ♦ A9
combined with the potential of 2023. What is the only move ♣ AKQ73
the passed b-pawn should that gives White a decisive
guarantee the upper hand. advantage? The six of clubs was covered
by the ten, jack and ace.
Send your solution (first move only), to Sunday Times Spot the Move 1401,
Declarer played trumps and
The Sunday Times, PO Box 29, Colchester, Essex CO2 8GZ, or email to
puzzle.entries@sunday-times.co.uk. The first correct answer drawn after next West won an early round,
Saturday wins a £20 Waterstones voucher. Open to 18+ UK & ROI residents only. hoping to put his partner in to
2♣ Dble Pass
All Pass
♥ Q 10 8
You lead the king and ace of
♦ 8652
♣ J9842 clubs, partner playing the
four followed by the eight.
What now?
Solution next week.
The best way to improve
your bridge is to play with
an expert. If you are
interested in online playing
sessions with Sally, email her
at sally@sallybrock.net.
REGIONAL FORECASTS
1♠ London, SE England
4♠ A day of bright intervals and patchy rain. Light to moderate
southeasterly winds. Max 10C. Cloudy with showers. Min 7C
6 7
Midlands, E England
Patchy cloud and rain in the afternoon. Light to moderate
southeasterly winds. Max 9C. Mostly dry and misty. Min 6C
11 Channel Is, SW and Cent S England, S Wales
11 Thick cloud and outbreaks of rain. Light to moderate
12
16 18 southeasterly winds. Max 13C. Cloudy with heavy rain. Min 7C
15 15
N Wales, NW England, Isle of Man
20
Bright periods and widespread rain. Light to fresh east to
15
22 southeasterly winds. Max 10C. Dry with mist and fog. Min 5C
Cent N and NE England
Bright spells and rain through the afternoon. Light to fresh
¬ A day of sunny intervals ¬ Bright spells and a few southeasterly winds. Max 8C. Mist and patchy rain. Min 3C
and one or two isolated patches of heavy rain across Scotland
showers across Spain, France, the Low Countries, Largely dry with showers in the east. Light to moderate

LAST WEEK’S SOLUTIONS GENERAL KNOWLEDGE JUMBO CROSSWORD 395

Across: 1 Anticyclone, 7 Cockboats, 12 Electronic point of sale, 13 Spawn, 14 Orphean, 16 In cuffs,
17 Otto, 18 Ballasting, 19 LA Law, 21 Kyiv Opera, 22 Yootha Joyce, 25 Sugar Sugar, 26 Ring of Fire,
Portugal and the Balearics
¬ Bright periods and showery
Germany and the Alps
¬ Thick cloud and a few
southeasterly winds. Max 6C. Patchy cloud and rain. Min 1C
N Ireland, Republic of Ireland
outbreaks of rain in Italy, scattered showers in Poland, Cloudy with outbreaks of rain and showers. Light to moderate
27 Suffragette, 29 Aaron Paul, 31 Macer, 33 Blue Orchid, 35 Ovid, 37 Potoroo, 38 Caisson, 39 Lined,
SUDOKU WARM-UP CODEWORD 40 Scandinavian Peninsula, 42 End is near, 43 Tigst Assefa Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica and the Baltic states, Ukraine, southeasterly winds. Max 11C. Patchy fog and rain. Min 4C
Down: 1 Ayers Rock, 2 The Last King of Scotland, 3 Catena, 4 Chocolate fudge brownie, 5 Obi, Malta, heavy at times Moldova and Slovakia
6 Expressly, 7 Chianti, 8 Cutting the Gordian knot, 9 Bifocal, 10 An awfully big adventure,
11 St Elsewhere, 15 Pull apart, 20 Horror, 23 Oligarchs, 24 Jaffna, 25 Sesame paste, 28 Erotic art,
30 Lady Diana, 32 Reredos, 34 Uncover, 36 Elands, 41 Pug
¬ Patchy cloud and outbreaks
of rain and showers across
¬ A cold day with outbreaks
of rain, sleet and snow across THE WEEK AHEAD
the Balkans, Turkey, Greece, Scandinavia, heaviest in
MEPHISTO 3297 Croatia, Slovenia and Cyprus southern Finland and Sweden
Across: 4 Hesychast, 10 Parol, 11 Telegas, 12 Plumbago, 13 Raik, 14 Usher, 15 Turn to, 17 Gag-rein, 25 23 24
20 Creepie, 23 Alms-fee, 27 Alchera, 28 Troked, 29 Jager, 31 Cane, 32 Classism, 33 Spelter,
34 Nisse, 35 Thrasonic Down: 1 Oppugnant, 2 Walsall, 3 Pruh, 4 Homers, 5 Statice, 6 Clouted, 7 8 9

SUN, STREETLIGHTS & MOON

7 Herry, 8 Aganippe, 9 Saith, 16 Open-armed, 18 Gammoner, 19 Effects, 21 Relearn, 22 Ivresse,
24 Phasic, 25 Graph, 26 Akela, 30 Gism
11 11 11 12 10 10

SUDOKU 1560 KENKEN CROSSWORD 5084 Sun Sun sets/ Lights Moon Moon
Across: 1 Vitamin, 5 Siberia, 9 Nag, 10 Carpathians, 11 Rational number, 13 Toolroom, 15 Tattie, 14 13 11
rises lights on off rises sets
17 On edge, 18 Websites, 20 Castles in Spain, 23 Acknowledge, 24 Ebb, 25 Foresee, 26 Rosette
Down: 1 Veneration, 2 Tightrope walker, 3 Micro, 4 Narrator, 5 Stains, 6 Bohemians, Aberdeen 07:43 16:01 07:45 06:34 15:25 34 21 15
7 Real-estate agent, 8 Apse, 12 Reasonable, 14 Righteous, 16 Reminder, 19 Reglue, 21 Steps, 22 Calf
Belfast 07:47 16:27 07:49 06:41 15:51
Monday Tuesday Wednesday
Birmingham 07:23 16:19 07:25 06:17 15:42
SPOT THE MOVE 1400 CONCISE CROSSWORD 1859 Bristol 07:22 16:26 07:24 06:16 15:49
Patchy cloud and Bright periods and Bright intervals
1 Qxa6! wins: 1…Rd8 (1…Rxa6 2 Re8 mate) Across: 1 Borne, 4 Cash cow, 8 Uninterrupted, outbreaks of rain, scattered showers, and outbreaks of
9 Sycophant, 10 Pal, 11 Eccentric, 15 Ask, Cardiff 07:25 16:28 07:26 06:19 15:51
2 Qxc6 Bxg5 3 Bxg5 (3 g4 is also strong) heavy at times. heaviest in the rain and showers.
3…Qxg5 4 Qxc7 with two extra pawns 16 Flagstone, 17 In high spirits, 19 Shyster, 20 Dolly Cork 07:47 16:48 07:49 06:43 16:11
Down: 1 Bruise, 2 Rain check, 3 Ectopic, Max 14C west. Max 13C Max 11C
Dublin 07:44 16:33 07:46 06:38 15:57
TEASER 3189 4 Curtain-raiser, 5 Squat, 6 Cut, 7 Widely, 10 Pictorial,
12 Rescind, 13 Habits, 14 Feisty, 16 Fight, 18 Hay Glasgow 07:46 16:15 07:48 06:38 15:39
1, 2, 7, 8
London 07:13 16:16 07:14 06:06 15:39
KILLER SUDOKU TETONOR 24 10 33
TODAY’S SOLUTIONS Manchester 07:28 16:17 07:30 06:21 15:40
7 7 9
Newcastle 07:31 16:08 07:33 06:24 15:32
88 76 21 11 SUKO CELL BLOCKS POLYGON Norwich 07:11 16:06 07:13 06:04 15:29
4 x 22 19 x 4 15 + 6 7 + 4
beer, bevel, blouse, blue, blur, boer, Plymouth 07:25 16:35 07:27 06:20 15:58 9 9 9 10 12 9
20 10 28 64 bole, bolero, bolo, bolus, boor, bore,
boule, bourse, breve, broo, brose, burl,
NIGHT SKY
10 10 10
The Milky Way arches overhead from the SW to
10 + 10 5 + 5 4 x 7 8 x 8
burse, lobe, lobo, lube, obelus, obese,
26 84 25 23 oboe, obol, observe, obverse, the NE as darkness falls tonight. Saturn shines 26 15 17
overblouse, rebel, rebus, robe, rouble,
lower in the S and Jupiter is prominent climbing
22 + 4 12 x 7 5 x 5 4 + 19
rube, ruble, sleb, slob, slub, sober, sorb,
90 16 100 19 urbs, verb, verbose in the E. Venus is brilliant in the SE before dawn, Thursday Friday Saturday
6 x 15 8 + 8 10 x 10 12 + 7
The Leonids meteor shower peaks on Saturday A day of thick Mainly dry with Cloudy with rain
morning. Its few swift meteors diverge from the cloud and showery sunny intervals in the north and
Winners Crossword 5082 N Finlay, Thames Ditton, Surrey, J Brassey, Framlingham, Suffolk, E Brunyee, Sandbach, Cheshire, P Cook, Purley, Greater London Mephisto 3295 west, dry in the
J Peart, Heybridge, Essex, E Davies, Amersham, Buckinghamshire, B Neville, London N10, R Rougvie, Glenrothes, Fife, P Tozer, Mobberley, Cheshire Teaser 3187 SD Hodges, Sickle of Leo which climbs from the NE horizon outbreaks of rain. and one or two
Kenilworth, Warwickshire, R James, Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire Chess 1398 G Anthony, Forest Row, East Sussex Sudoku 1558 D Hughes, Gelli, Mid Glamorgan at 11pm to high in the S at dawn. Alan Pickup Max 10C showers. Max 10C southeast. Max 12C
November 12, 2023 · thesundaytimes.co.uk/business thesundaytimes.co.uk/money

BUSINESS
DATING APPS HOW RESTAURANTS
NEED SOME LOVE ARE BUYING
PAGE 4 YOUR LOYALTY
PAGE 6

&MONEY
WILD WEST OF
FINANCIAL
COACHING
MONEY
PAGE 9

Big retailers brace for a rise in business rates Metro Bank on

Oliver Gill, Harry Yorke,
Sam Chambers
Britain’s biggest retailers
will be slapped with a
£400 million increase in
business rates next year as
Jeremy Hunt looks to
prioritise corporate tax reliefs
that promote investment.
The chancellor is
understood to have decided
against freezing rates for
larger retailers despite
warnings that an increase
would cost jobs and push up
prices. Business rate bills for
larger retailers could rise by
6.7 per cent in the spring,
Whitehall sources indicated.
The Treasury is finalising
details of the announcement
before the autumn statement
on November 22. The
chancellor is said to be still
considering calls to freeze
rates for smaller companies.
Hunt froze business rates in
last year’s autumn statement
at a cost to the exchequer of
£14.6 billion. But his focus is
now on a flagship scheme for
“full expensing” that would
extend the policy beyond its
current expiry of 2026. Full
expensing allows companies
to deduct the cost of
qualifying investments from
taxable profit.
Larger firms warned the
chancellor against raising the
business rates “multiplier” in
September, saying it would
amount to a £400 million hit.
“An increase to costs at this
level could lead to upwards
pressure on prices, just as
shop price inflation has
begun to ease,” 44 business
leaders, including the bosses
of Asda, Sainsbury’s and
Boots, wrote. Supermarkets
are likely to be hit hardest by
the rise, the property adviser
Altus said.
Pubs and brewers are also
threatening price rises if Hunt
refuses to freeze alcohol duty.
The industry reported that
the number of pints of beer
drunk between July and
September had sunk to
record lows as consumers
tightened their belts.
Some 1.9 billion pints were
sold in pubs and shops in the
third quarter of 2023, the
lowest volume since records
began 23 years ago, according
to the British Beer and Pub
Association (BBPA).
The chancellor used his
budget this year to unveil a
new alcohol duty regime that
increased the levy in line with
inflation starting in August.
The next increase is expected
to take place in February.
Paul Davies, boss of
Carlsberg Marston’s, which
also brews Kronenbourg
1664, said the recent duty
increase had already cost the
sector £225 million.
Emma McClarkin, chief
executive of the BBPA, said:
“At this acutely sensitive time
for our sector, the
government plans to increase
our costs hugely through a
brutal business rates cliff
edge and the second increase
in beer duty in six months.
This will leave brewers and
pubs with no choice but to
charge customers more.”
FCA’s financial
crime watchlist
Jill Treanor
Metro Bank has revealed that
it is on the Financial Conduct
Authority’s “watchlist”
relating to financial crime.
The high street bank said
that on June 6 it “received
confirmation of its position
on the FCA watchlist for
financial crime compliance”.
Companies on the
watchlist are required to
a long-running investigation.
The prospectus is part of
its efforts to secure fresh
financing after its shares
collapsed in October when it
emerged it needed to bolster
its financial position. That led
to outflows of deposits, but
confidence has now been
restored after it secured a
£600 million refinancing of
its debt and announced plans
to raise £325 million from

Royal Mail ZARA FLIGHTS ‘FUEL CRISIS’ address regulators’ concerns
through what is known as
“enhanced supervision”.
ZARA/EMILY KNECHT The bank said the FCA was
looking at the “management
of financial crime within the
shareholders. The deal goes
to a vote on November 27.
Being on a watchlist does
not imply financial
implications for Metro and
the bank said it “continues to

rival kicks
group’s back book [existing
customers] as well as specific
concerns over the
effectiveness of financial
controls over the group’s
online account provisions”.
engage, update and co-
operate with the FCA”. The
bank has to disclose details of
regulatory matters that may
affect its performance in the
prospectus.

off £600m
The embattled bank made
the disclosure in a 217-page
prospectus urging
shareholders to support a
£935 billion rescue deal
announced last month. It will
It warns shareholders that
if they do not back the
fundraising, the Bank of
England could impose an
alternative plan.
Gilinski’s investment

legal fight
Postal giant is accused of
forcing Whistl to abandon
plan for final-mile delivery
raise the stake of Colombian vehicle Spaldy will be entitled
billionaire Jaime Gilinski from to nominate three non-
9 per cent to 52.9 per cent. executives to join the board.
Metro disclosed in its The bank is subject to
annual report in March that restrictions on dividends it
the FCA was “undertaking can pay to shareholders and
enquiries” into its financial bonuses it can pay to senior
Whistl’s plans uneconomic and led to
it suspending rollout of “final-mile
crime systems and a source
confirmed that this had been
managers, thought to include
chief executive Dan Frumkin.
delivery” in 2015.
Whistl complained to Ofcom, claiming
it had been a victim of anti-competitive

Oliver Gill
Royal Mail is facing a £600 million legal
claim that it abused its monopoly
position to force a competitor out of the
market.
The former FTSE 100 postal giant is
bracing for a High Court showdown with
rival Whistl, which was forced to scale
back operations nearly a decade ago with
the loss of 2,000 jobs.
The civil proceedings follow the con-
clusion of a protracted legal wrangle
that led to Royal Mail paying a record
regulatory fine of £50 million for illegally
abusing its monopoly position.
The spectre of a major financial claim
practices. Ofcom agreed and slapped
Royal Mail with a £50 million fine. A
years-long appeals process followed until
Sunak investment
the Supreme Court sided with Ofcom in
July last year.
Lawyers for Whistl are now pushing
summit attracts
for a preliminary hearing in the High
Court next year. Sources close to Royal
Mail said any proceedings were unlikely
Wall Street giants
to begin until 2025.
Royal Mail and IDS made references to Jill Treanor the “government is 100 per
the Whistl proceedings in its annual cent focused on making the
report without referencing the £600 mil- Wall Street bosses will flock to nation truly highly
lion quantum of the claim. The report London this month for a investable”. The peer
said: “Royal Mail believes Whistl’s claim summit hosted by Rishi co-founded Somerset Capital
is without merit and will defend it Sunak to attract billions of with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the
investment into Britain. Conservative MP.
Jamie Dimon, boss of Since the last event, the

will heap pressure on its new chief
executive Martin Seidenberg as he sets
out his plans to turn the company around
after a bitter industrial dispute. Seiden-
berg will provide the first glimpse of
his vision for the Royal Mail parent
International Distribution Services (IDS)
at the company’s interim results on
Thursday.
The Supreme Court last year upheld a
ruling by the postal regulator Ofcom that
Royal Mail had engaged in anti-competi-
tive practices in 2014 by squeezing out
Whistl, then called TNT UK.
Whistl planned to deliver business
mail — which included items such as debit
and credit cards on behalf of banks — to
millions of households after trials in a
handful of cities had proved successful.
The company intended to introduce
the deliveries to 42 per cent of UK homes
using its own posties and pay Royal Mail
to deliver to the rest of the country.
Shortly before Whistl expanded its
operations, Royal Mail increased the
prices it charged third parties to deliver
on their behalf. The move rendered
£50m
Royal Mail fine by Ofcom
robustly.” A spokeswoman for the com-
pany declined to comment further.
Whistl’s claim is being bankrolled by
Vannin Capital, the London litigation
funder that was sold to US private equity
firm Fortress in 2019.
Nick Wells, executive chairman of
Whistl, insisted that he was “very
confident as to the merits of our claim”
and said interest on the £600 million of
damages was accruing at a rate of £50 mil-
lion a year.
Amsterdam-listed PostNL retains a
12 per cent stake in Whistl. PostNL’s
largest shareholder is Vesa Equity, the
investment vehicle of Czech billionaire
Daniel Kretinsky — who also owns more
than a quarter of International Distribu-
tion Services.
Sam Chambers
Inditex, the owner of Zara, has
been accused of fuelling the
climate crisis by sending
clothes around the globe by
air rather than by sea.
A report by Public Eye, a
Swiss lobby group, said
Zaragoza airport handles
1,600 cargo flights a year for
Inditex. Moving textiles from
Asia to Europe by air produces
39 times more carbon
emissions than moving them
by ship, Public Eye said.
The practices appear at
odds with Inditex’s claims to
be an “agent of change” that
wants to take its commitment
to sustainability to “a new
level”. The company has
committed to more than halve
its total emissions by 2030
and reduce them by at least
90 per cent by 2040.
Air freight, which is also
used by the fast-fashion
retailers Shein and Boohoo,
adds to the industry’s toll on
the environment. The
greenhouse gas emissions
produced by clothing
production are equivalent to
those generated by the UK,
France and Germany
combined.
Inditex, which uses aircraft
to allow it to respond faster to
trends, cut its use of air
freight by a quarter in 2022,
but has no plans to eradicate
the practice. The company
said it prioritised sea and road
transport and that most of its
air freight was shipped in the
belly of passenger flights.
Inditex reported underlying
profits of €4.7 billion on sales
of €16.9 billion the six months
to July.
JP Morgan, David Solomon,
head of Goldman Sachs and
Steve Schwarzman, chief
executive of Blackstone, will
attend the prime minister’s
global investment summit on
November 27. Ignacio Galán
— chairman of the Spanish
energy business Iberdrola,
which owns ScottishPower —
will also attend.
The event, co-hosted with
Kemi Badenoch, the trade
secretary, will also attract
British business leaders,
including Amanda Blanc,
chief executive of Aviva, and
Anya Hindmarch, the fashion
entrepreneur.
Boris Johnson held an
investment summit in 2021,
which the government said
resulted in £9.7 billion of
investment. Lord Johnson of
Lainston, the investment
minister, said the ambition
was to exceed that and show
government has rowed back
on net-zero ambitions, while
an auction for offshore wind
projects failed to attract any
bidders in September. Data
from the UN has shown that
foreign direct investment into
Britain collapsed in 2021 but
has since rebounded.
Sunak is expected to be
provided with upbeat news
this week as data shows that
the consumer prices index
was 4.8 per cent in October,
allowing him to claim that he
has achieved his goal to halve
inflation this year.
America could lose its top
credit rating after Moody’s
warned about the cost of
paying its debt and “political
polarisation”. Fitch and S&P
have already stripped the US
of its AAA rating.
Meet the new masters of
the universe, pages 2-3

Consultants work free of charge to stay busy Don’t ban petrol cars, says BMW green chief
Laith Al-Khalaf
Management consultant
giants are offering their
services free of charge to keep
staff busy during a downturn
in corporate activity.
McKinsey and Boston
Consulting Group are not
charging some clients for
projects, according to people
familiar with the situation.
The firms are also understood
to be accepting more “fees at
risk” payments, where the
pay of consultants is
correlated with how well they
perform, rather than at a pre-
agreed rate. The hope is that
waiving fees will foster a good
relationship with clients and
lead to paid work when
demand increases. “They
would rather keep their
people busy than have them
sitting around because you’re
paying their salaries anyway,”
one consultant said.
Another source said: “It is
seen as an investment in a
client so they will be more
likely to hire you when things
look more positive.”
Consultants have used the
tactic in previous downturns
and it has been used by other
professional services firms.
The firms are believed to only
deploy the tactic for a limited
number of clients.
McKinsey and Boston
declined to comment.
Management consultants
were in high demand during a
boom in deals just after the
pandemic. McKinsey, for
example, advised clients on
potential targets for
acquisitions and drew up
plans of how different
divisions would fit together
after a merger. However, with
the downturn in corporate
activity, consulting work is in
short supply. McKinsey and
other advisers have also
announced job cuts. Last
week PwC said that about
600 consulting staff would
go. But industry sources said
firms were wary of cutting too
many jobs as they expect a
flurry of deals next year.
McKinsey is also believed
to be redeploying some staff
to internal projects,
essentially doing consulting
work on itself.
Oliver Gill
Banning the sale of new
petrol and diesel cars is not
the answer to addressing the
global climate crisis, BMW’s
sustainability chief has said.
Thomas Becker also
insisted that Rishi Sunak’s
decision to delay the UK’s ban
on the sale of new petrol and
diesel cars until 2035 would
not change BMW’s electric
vehicle production plans.
“We are critical towards
banning,” he said. “We want
people to spend a lot of
money on our products
because they say, ‘It’s the best
product for me.’ Because they
want it and not because they
have to.”
Becker, BMW’s global head
of sustainability and mobility,
said that policymakers should
focus on incremental targets
rather than imposing a ban
that was more than a decade
away and could be reversed.
He added: “Why is there
this total focus in the policy
debate about ‘When do I
force the last customer who
may buy an ICE [internal
combustion engine] car to go
for an electric or take one of
the ICE cars that are already
there?’ Wouldn’t it make
more sense to say: ‘How can
we get from 30 to 40 [per
cent of sales, for instance] the
fastest way possible?”
The prime minister
angered environmentalists
and some carmakers in
September by pushing back
the UK’s ban on the sale of
petrol and diesel cars from
2030 to 2035. The move
means Britain is in line with
the EU, although Brussels is
allowing sales of internal
combustion engine vehicles
beyond 2035 if they run on
synthetic fuels.
Three years ago BMW
adopted a target that every
second car that rolled off the
ramps would be fully electric
by 2030. “[The target] is
grounded in a market
assessment of what we get
from our customers and we
will stick to that. So there is
no revision of this objective,”
Becker said.
Irwin Stelzer, page 7
2 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

BUSINESS

LABOUR PAINS
BULLETS FIRED BY BIG FOUR SHORTAGES AREN’T A GOOD LOOK
6 The pandemic threw Britain’s jobs market into disarray, with 6 For Jenny Holloway, staff shortages
workers quitting in droves, others retiring early, and still others are more acute than ever. She is chief
being laid low by poor health. Staff shortages were executive of Fashion Enter, a clothing
widespread — but that may be easing. Last week, PwC, chaired maker with sites in north London and

FOR BRITAIN
by Kevin Ellis, became the latest “big four” accounting firm to Wales producing garments for brands
announce redundancies, letting 600 people go because not such as Asos. “Finding staff is like
enough of them were leaving of their own accord. Experts finding hen’s teeth at the moment,” said
suggested that a drop in “natural attrition” — the departure Holloway, who claimed that other
rate of staff — was a sign that workers were nervous about the manufacturers had even been camping
economy and so staying put in their jobs. EY, KPMG and outside her factories to try to poach the
Some sectors are cutting roles but others Deloitte have also launched redundancy programmes. Most of tailors and stitchers who work for her.
the cuts have been in their consulting departments, whose To attract and retain workers, Fashion
can’t find staff. What is going on in Britain’s services were in high demand just after Covid when City deals Enter has put up its bonuses by an started to automate some tasks, such as
jobs market? Laith Al-Khalaf reports were rife, but where work has since dried up.
It’s not just professional services facing upheaval. Ahead of
average of 25 per cent.
The firm, which was founded in 2006
certain types of fabric-cutting, which is
now done by machine. “We have had to
fresh unemployment figures this week, how is Britain’s labour and has nearly 50 staff, is increasingly take matters into our own hands,”
market coping? using apprentices to fill roles and has Holloway said.

The latest wave of mega hedge funds is luring talent with $10 million golden hellos. By Oliver Shah
ven on Wall Street, the sums lion) for its investors last year — a return

E The new
being thrown at talent by a new of 38.1 per cent and the biggest annual
breed of hedge funds inspires gain in hedge-fund history. Millennium
shock and awe. “I’ve never Management, run by New Yorker Israel
seen anything like it,” said a Englander, made $8 billion, or 12 per
senior figure at a bulge-bracket cent. Steve Cohen’s Point72, previously
investment bank. “They have a scandal-hit SAC Capital, made $2.4 bil-

bunch of people that just spend
their time meeting for coffees,
lunches, dinners, with any
trader who will take their call. They know
every person, from the first-year analyst
to the partner … They have an insatiable
appetite and they’re bidding up talent to
a crazy, obscene level.”
Masters
lion, or 10.3 per cent.
Their growth has stoked a ferocious
war for talent. Danilo Onorino, a former
portfolio manager at hedge fund GLG,
said it was “perfectly normal” for new
recruits to be paid a signing-on bonus of
$10 million, “just to work on the floor”.
Golden hellos of $50 million are not

Asked whether this was a headache for
the old big beasts of finance — the likes of
Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan
and Morgan Stanley — the banker replied:
“Oh, it’s way more than a headache.
They’ve gutted the street.”
This apex predator is the multi-
strategy hedge fund. Whereas the tradi-
tional hedge fund features a team of port-
of the
unheard of. In June, Bloomberg cited a
headhunter claiming that a big New York
fund had given a senior portfolio man-
ager $120 million in guaranteed payouts.
Sir Paul Marshall, co-founder of the Brit-
ish hedge fund Marshall Wace and leader
of Griffin’s Telegraph consortium, told an
investment conference in Hong Kong last
week: “Everybody wants that Cristiano

folio managers and analysts trading
around a particular style — going long and
short on European equities, say, or trying
to profit from corporate activities such as
mergers and acquisitions — the multi-
strategy variety can have hundreds of
“pods” with different goals. The pods,
each of which comprises a team trading a
different strategy — equities, macro,
quantitative — are plugged into a sophisti-
cated tech system and risk-management
function. “If a typical hedge fund is a car,
these things are Transformers,” said
Andrew Beer, an industry expert.
The diversification, along with lash-
ings of “leverage” — the use of borrowed
money to magnify returns — has deliv-
ered astonishing results. Citadel, run by
Florida-born Ken Griffin, who is support-
ing one of the bids for the Telegraph
newspapers, made $16 billion (£13 bil-
Ronaldo on their team, but there aren’t
very many Cristiano Ronaldos. What’s
happening is everybody’s getting paid
the same as Cristiano Ronaldo.”
Millennium, based in New York,
opened offices in balmier Palm Beach
and Miami in 2021 as part of its offer to
staff. Although it is also due to occupy a
new skyscraper on Park Avenue in Man-
hattan, Griffin moved Citadel’s head-
quarters from Chicago to Miami last year,
saying there was “something very special
about the government in Florida and
their focus on delivering traditional val-
ues”. (No state income tax and a low cor-
poration tax rate may also have helped.)
The flipside is a ruthless culture.
Underperforming pods are sacked en
masse the moment they are “stopped
out” — that is, when they lose a certain
amount of money. “You have to cut the
Universe
tail very quickly, otherwise it gives you a
bloated expense ratio,” said an invest-
ment banker who often does business
with multi-strategy funds. “Every Citadel
employee has to take a deep breath before
they go into the office, because they don’t
know if it’s going to be their last day.”
Perhaps the most remarkable thing is
that the bill for the lavish pay deals — plus
for tech, office rents and even client
entertainment — is picked up by inves-
tors. Under the old hedge fund model, “Multi-strategy” funds
investors paid a set 2 per cent manage- led by the likes of
ment fee, plus 20 per cent of the perform- Israel Englander, left,
ance above an agreed benchmark. The and Ken Griffin are
new masters of the universe ask investors making astonishing
to pay for all their costs — between 3 per returns by splitting
cent and 7 per cent of assets on average traders into pods,
last year, according to Barclays. This is each pursuing
known as the “pass-through” model. On different objectives
top of that, multi-strategy funds take up
to 30 per cent of any outperformance.
Will England, boss of Minnesota-based
Walleye Capital, said in September that
investors were, in effect, giving such
funds a “blank cheque”. He explained
how a theoretical 15 per cent net return
was produced, giving the example of a
firm with $10 billion under management
and 50 pods, each tasked with producing
a return of at least 3 per cent. Applying ten
times leverage would magnify the gross
return to 30 per cent. About half of that —
$1.5 billion — would go to investors. The
other $1.5 billion would be snaffled by the
hedge fund and its staff. “That’s jus-
tified because of the benefits
of putting all these different
strategies together,” said England.
The funds argue that charging such
generous fees allows them to maintain
the resources needed to produce extraor-
dinary results. One of the factors behind
Citadel’s blowout performance in 2022
was its hiring of about 20 weather NET GAINS SINCE LAUNCH
experts, including Nicholas Klingaman,
formerly of the UK’s National Centre for Citadel and Millennium are among the world's most successful hedge funds
Atmospheric Science. Their forecasts,
which turned out to be more accurate Citadel (launched: 1990) $65.9bn
than those of most meteorological offi-
ces, helped Citadel’s traders ride the vol- Bridgewater (1975) $58.4bn
atility in commodities such as gas after
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
DE Shaw (1988) $51.9bn
nvestors were prepared to let multi-

I strategy funds pass through huge costs Millennium (1989) $50.4bn

when interest rates were close to zero
and their pods were outperforming. Soros Fund Management (1973) $43.9bn
But in a world where cash in the bank
earns more than 5 per cent, fees are com- Source: LCH Investments data from January

Fund goes green Drugs giant cuts

with £750m pot
Laith Al-Khalaf
The asset manager Gresham
House is planning to raise
£750 million to invest in new
green projects across the UK.
The company intends to
launch its third “British
Strategic Investment Fund”
(BSIF) in the new year.
The fund has previously
raised money to invest in
Fischer Farms, which
operates the world’s biggest
automated vertical farm in
Norfolk and grows leafy
greens and herbs.
Peter Bachmann, fund
manager of the BSIF, said that
the fresh money would go
towards expanding the
existing businesses the fund
invests in as well as backing
new firms. He hopes to grow
proteins at the vertical farms
and develop projects to
conserve water. “We have to
be building these new
solutions that allow us to live
in a more sustainable way,”
he said.
The fund is also trying to
provide internet access to
underserved regions. It put
£50 million into Wildanet, a
company connecting Devon
and Cornwall with high-speed
broadband.
Bachmann said that the
various companies it invests
in employ about 2,000
people. Most of the fund’s
capital comes from the Local
Government Pension
Scheme. The £450 million
raised in the last BSIF round
included funds from eight
local pension schemes.
A £469.8 million takeover
of Gresham House by the
American private equity
house Searchlight was given
shareholder approval in
September.
hundreds of jobs
Laith Al-Khalaf
Hundreds of GSK scientists
are set to lose their jobs as the
drugs giant embarks on a
major restructuring of its
research arm.
The redundancies will be
focused on staff in the FTSE
100 company’s research
department, which
specialises in earlier-stage
science before passing
promising treatments on to
development teams.
The pharma company is
splitting its research unit into
teams embedded in three
specialist areas: vaccines and
infectious diseases,
respiratory and immunology
and oncology. It insisted that
only a limited number of staff
would lose their jobs as a
proportion of the research
workforce. A spokesman said
it had grown its R&D spend
significantly over the past five
years and the restructuring
was not about cutting costs.
“We are making changes to
improve the productivity of
our research organisation,
creating new, dedicated
teams and building in new,
advanced technologies to
accelerate drug discovery and
research,” he said.
The majority of staff that
have not had their jobs
eliminated are in a “pool”
with colleagues to compete
for roles that will remain. In
some pools six staff members
are competing for two roles.
Headcount at the company’s
animal testing unit will fall
from 60 jobs to 12.
This month the company
upgraded its profit forecasts
after strong sales of its
vaccine for RSV, a respiratory
illness common in small
children and the elderly.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 3

BUSINESS
CHRISTMAS NOT WRAPPED UP RECRUITMENT ISN’T PRETTY AT SALON DRIVERS ARE BEING DELIVERED
6 ’Tis the season for hospitality venues to gear up 6 For Shimayne Smith, who runs Head Shed, a Bournemouth hair salon, 6 Perhaps no sector better illustrated
for Christmas. Eric Snaith owns a number of it is proving hard to find workers. “Recruiting has been very, very tricky,” the tight labour market than logistics. A
Norfolk-based pubs and fish-and-chips shops, as she said. “We offer a competitive package but it doesn’t seem to make shortage of 100,000 HGV drivers in 2021
well as a pizza restaurant. He looks to employ 50 any difference.” She has two staff but is trying to find two more pushed the government to intervene by
people normally and up to 90 in the festive to meet customer demand. “We have people ringing up changing the laws on visas and
period, but said that attracting and retaining staff wanting an appointment for the following week, bolstering training programmes. But
was proving tricky. “Sometimes you need a bit of but we can’t meet that.” Smith, 34, said there Reiss Newport, director of Nuneaton-
luck to get through Christmas hiring.” were only six slots available in the salon based Lesters Logistics, said the
Since Covid, Snaith, 43, has had to put up pay before Christmas. “As a business, it crisis had abated. “Shortages are
by an average of 8 per cent a year to hold on to constrains you. Clients may go not an issue for us,” he added. “We are
staff. “It is a nightmare to recruit, especially for somewhere else, and we aren’t able to finding people and keeping them for
chefs,” he said. grow as quickly as we would like.” a long period.”
Part of the problem is a lack of housing in rural There are signs, though, that cost of living Lester Logistics operates eight country. Newport said the situation had
areas, forcing him to buy a four-bedroom house pressures are enticing workers back. Smith articulated trucks and six larger trucks improved on a few years ago, when the
that some of his staff rent from him. “It is almost a said many of those applying for roles in her salon that it uses to distribute clothing and external delivery firms on which Lesters
necessity; if we didn’t offer that, we would had been out of the industry for a long time but other goods from its Midlands had relied were unable to recruit and
struggle to attract people at all,” Snaith said. were now re-entering the labour market. warehouse to retailers across the train drivers for deliveries.

ILLUSTRATION: TONY BELL

IHOW
beat the construction
ship with Millennium. Several observers house money into a business,
said Schonfeld could prove the canary in it’s never going to fail. I
the coalmine as the higher-rate environ-
ment takes its toll on the industry’s I HOW I HOW I believed in what I was doing
so much.”
weaker players.
Multi-strategy funds arguably came of
age as a result of the Volcker Rule, which
boys
MADE IT atMADE
theirIT own
MADE IT game Westbury differentiated
itself from rivals by being
more flexible, said Murton. In

— just by playing fair

ing under greater scrutiny. “The moment
cracks start to appear in performance,
clients will start to question, ‘Why are
you paying traders so much?’ ” predicted
Mario Unali at Kairos Partners, which
invests in hedge funds.
Most of these funds lock up their cli-
ents’ money for several years, meaning
they cannot suffer a stampede of with-
drawals. Citadel and Millennium are in
any case up more than 13 and 8 per cent
respectively so far this year. But the
underperforming Schonfeld, despite
having half its investors’ capital locked
up until the end of next year, has been
pushed into talks over a possible partner-
stopped big Wall Street banks from practice, this meant doing
trading on their own accounts after the refurbishment projects and
financial crisis. While hedge funds irri- refits, as well as emergency
tate banks by poaching their star traders, call-outs for floods and other
the two have a symbiotic relationship disasters. And rather than
(Citadel also competes directly with only offering contracts that
banks in market-making via its securities
arm). One industry veteran said that after SONIA MURTON, HOW I FIVE
HIGH tied customers into monthly
payments, she also offered a
Volcker, banks had, in effect, outsourced
their proprietary trading desks to multi- FOUNDER AND MD OF MADE IT “pay as you go” model.
Another point of difference
strategy funds. My hero … [American was her vow to treat sub-
“It’s a big circle,” he said. “There’s an
unwritten rule where the big multi-strats
WESTBURY FM author and life coach]
Tony Robbins. I listen to
contractors, known in the
trade as “subbies”, fairly —
do loads of business with the banks Hannah Prevett she sold ladies’ fashion. That his podcast and it’s so something surprisingly rare
and pay them loads of money. The banks Deputy Editor, Times was until a recurring chest uplifting because he’s in the construction industry,
give all these guys preferential service ... infection led to doctors always so upbeat. where Murton said it was
The whole thing just goes round and
round.”
HOW I
Enterprise Network
Someone Sonia Murton knew
HOW advising her to work inside.
She picked up a part-time job
My best decision …
taking a bet on a new
common for building firms to
“make them wait longer for
US regulators are now shining a light
on an opaque and potentially risky part
MADE IT I MADE
tried to put her off starting
her own business in the male-
at upmarket shoe brand
Russell & Bromley, where she
office in Sidcup, in Kent,
during Covid. It was
payment to keep them
hungry”. When she started
of this picture. A trade favoured by multi-
strategy funds involves exploiting tiny
dominated construction IT
industry. “He said to me, ‘You
thrived on a commission
model: “For every pair of
about 15 times bigger
than our old one and I
out, most of her team were
sub-contractors, but since
differences in the pricing of US Treasury won’t be successful because shoes I sold, I’d get £3, and I’d thought it would take us then, “I’ve been able to
futures and the underlying government it’s an old boys’ network. And get £5 for handbags. And I got for ever to fill. We’re now attract my subbies to come on
bonds. This is known as the “basis trade” you’ll pay everybody [on £40 for working [the shift]. bursting at the seams. permanently because I give
because the gap is often just a fraction of a time] — that’s where you’ll go This was top money.” My worst decision … them the same money, four
percentage point. The funds, which sell wrong,’ ” she recalled. Later she worked in sales was to try factoring weeks’ holiday, and I also pay
futures and buy bonds, make it worth Fortunately, she ignored for an IT firm, where she [borrowing against for their training and give
their while by magnifying the return him. The firm she founded in joined as a trainee and left 18 money owed by a them a vehicle.”
using up to 100 times leverage. 2016, Westbury FM, repairs years later as a director. By customer to help with That extra commitment
America’s Securities and Exchange and maintains buildings, then she had wanted to try cashflow] through my was almost her downfall
Commission (SEC) has tightened disclo- does larger refurbishment her hand at something more bank because I needed a when Covid hit; she had more
sure rules on basis trading, concerned projects, and now employs a creative and set up an couple of hundred mouths to feed and vehicles
about the reliance of hedge funds on team of 70. She took it from interior design business. grand to start a to pay for as trade dried up.
short-term borrowing and their exposure sales of £1.9 million in 2021 to She worked with clients job. I resented “Most of my business was in
to swings in the prices of Treasuries. The £5.5 million in 2022, with a including the Royal paying them a retail and hospitality and they
SEC may crack down further. “Every sin- profit of £300,000. Sales Opera House in Covent cut of my literally closed overnight,”
gle time I speak to every single regulatory reached £4.7 million in the Garden, and then took earnings and Murton recalled. With failure
body, one of the first five questions they first six months of 2023, a job at a London- I didn’t like not an option, she pivoted to
ask is about this,” said the banker who Murton said, and should hit based buildings the service. servicing distribution and
deals with multi-strategy funds. £9 million for the year. maintenance and In the end, I healthcare clients, and
Unsurprisingly, tycoons such as Griffin Customers include the Priory projects firm. She went to my demand for cleaning services
are pushing back. Citadel’s founder, who Group, the mental health stayed for three customers to also rocketed, with the boss
started out trading convertible bonds care provider; Evri, the years before see if we mucking in. “I was out there
from his Harvard dorm room using a courier firm; and pub chains deciding to set could cleaning for 12 hours a day
satellite dish, argues that basis trading Greene King and Fuller’s. up shop on change the [across] three different sites.”
injects liquidity into the government And Murton, 54, says she her own. payment Today, Westbury is a family
bond market because funds need to buy has always paid all her sub- Murton terms to affair, with sons Jack, 31, and
Treasury bills to pair with their short contractors on time. Rather was all-in. make it work Max, 27, working in the firm,
futures positions. than being her downfall, that Not only for us. I’ve as does Murton’s younger
“If the SEC recklessly impairs the approach has helped her was she giving never looked brother. Dad John, 73, helps
basis trade, it would crowd out build a thriving business. up a secure, well- back. out with delivery driving. But
funding for corporate Amer- Murton has an inside track paid job, but it took Funniest getting younger people,
ica, raising the cost of on what her publican £300,000 — the moment … women in particular, into
capital to build a customers want; she grew up proceeds of selling donning a construction remains a
new factory in the Belvedere Hotel, a pub her home in hazmat suit to concern for Murton, who has
or hire more in Abbey Wood, which she Chislehurst in clean six apprentices in plumbing,
employees,” Griffin describes as a “rough” part of Kent — to get alongside my electrics, drainage and
told the Financial southeast London. “There Westbury team during administration.
Times this month. were fights in the pub and it started in 2016. Covid, while She said the government’s
“It would also increase the cost of issu- was an area with lots of “If you’re also wearing a apprenticeship levy
ing new debt, which will be borne by US skinheads. But none of it prepared to headset and programme works well for
taxpayers to the tune of billions or tens of fazed me,” she recalled. put your trying to run the her, but that she tops up the
billions of dollars a year.” At the age of 12 or 13, she company. wages. The national
Giants such as Citadel and Millennium started her first venture, Sonia Best business tip minimum wage rate for an
would be able to cope. Analysis by Bar- selling tubs of cockles, clams Murton … Stick to your apprentice is £5.28 per hour
clays shows that bigger, more established and jellied eels on a stall quit a high- values – even if it — “I would never ask
and even more expensive multi-strategy outside the pub at weekends. paying job means turning somebody to work” for that,
funds have performed better than others. Her parents would pay for and sold work away. I she said. “Historically,
If a typical If a shake-out comes, it is likely to be the
smaller ones that suffer.
her stock upfront, and she
worked out what she would
her house
before
recently said
goodbye to two
apprentices used to be
treated as cheap labour, but I
hedge fund is And many believe a shake-out is inevi-
table. “The space is too crowded,” said
need to charge for each tub to
make it worth while. “Then I
setting up
on her
clients –
contracts worth
want to treat people fairly. I
want people to feel engaged.”
a car, these the banker who complained about
poaching. “Returns will fall on the things
could give my mum and dad
their money back and I would
own about £250,000
a year – because
Murton’s work so far has
attracted the attention of
things are they’re doing because there’s too much
money in the space. Finance is doing
have the profit.”
Murton found school
they didn’t treat
us like proper
larger rivals, which, she says,
are regularly knocking on her
Transformers what it always does when it finds some-
thing very attractive — it takes it to its
“boring” and left at 15, first
working in east London on
partners. People
said I was mad.
door with offers to buy the
business. “It’s flattering, but
boundary limit until it topples over.” Roman Road Market, where I’m just not interested.”

Richard Harpin
Three tips for avoiding wrong turns on road to success
ave you ever tried to find a someone with a good-sized kitchen table when you are not getting repeat business would guarantee repairs. The first in a different industry. Study it, learn

H
plumber on a Friday night in
Newcastle? That conundrum
was the starting point for a
£4 billion business — though it
didn’t feel that way at the time.
It was the early 1990s. My
business partner, Jeremy
Middleton, and I had decided to strike
out on our own. We had met as brand
managers at consumer goods giant
Procter & Gamble and bonded over our
shared entrepreneurial zeal; both of us
ran side-businesses buying, refurbishing
and letting out properties in Newcastle.
Pooling our efforts, we created a
property investment business that
pivoted to become a property
management service for other local
landlords. Then we embarked on an
audacious recruitment drive for our first
employee to run it; audacity is an asset
for an entrepreneur without assets.
Aside from talent, we needed
that could be used for weekend
company meetings, and a welcoming
living room that could double up as a
place to showcase properties for home-
seekers. So we interviewed candidates in
their own homes to get to know them
“properly”. Jane Dixon landed the job
and was perfect — as was her table.
What wasn’t perfect was a plumbing
emergency or a broken boiler in our
properties, because on a Friday night,
Jane couldn’t find a Geordie plumber for
love nor money. Spotting a gap in the
market to offer an emergency service to
homeowners and landlords, we pivoted
again, setting up a company with two
plumbing and heating engineers, using
the Yellow Pages to reach people.
We were on our way … until realising
we had made two crucial mistakes. First,
individual customers needed that kind
of help only every few years; second,
advertising is expensive, especially
and are competing with many others.
With losses growing, we had soon run
out of our £50,000 start-up capital and
desperately needed an investor to keep
us going. We convinced ourselves that
Britain’s newly privatised water firms
were crying out for a couple of ambitious
young entrepreneurs with a brilliant
plumbing service. They weren’t — except
one, South Staffs Water, which in the end
gave us £500,000 for half the business.
It seemed we were in the clear — yet
failure struck again. We were still using
the flawed Yellow Pages-based model of
pay-per-job and, as the business grew, so
did our losses — up to £50,000 a month.
In retrospect, we should have tested the
model before expanding it.
We were down to our last £10,000,
with friends and family urging me to give
up on my entrepreneur dream and
return to Procter & Gamble. Then, by
chance, we spotted a small water
A pivot should be
celebrated — there
is always a better
way of doing things
company in the south called Sutton
Water, which ran a successful plumbing
insurance business. At last, here was a
model that worked.
With South Staffs’ backing, we
pivoted, copied the bits of this business
that worked, improved what didn’t,
added some new ideas and HomeServe
was born — a subscription model that
mailshot of 1,000 letters generated 38
members — an impressive 3.8 per cent
take-up rate. I stood in front of our 23
staff, leapt on a desk with arms raised
and shouted, “We’ve made it!”
Earlier this year, HomeServe was sold
for £4.1 billion — but that success was
never guaranteed. In my 40-odd years as
an entrepreneur, I have made plenty of
mistakes, and each one has provided a
valuable, if painful, lesson on how to
improve — because it’s very often out of
mistakes that you find success.
In my experience, wrong turns, dead
ends and failures are just steps closer to
winning. Dust yourself off, see what is
working elsewhere, and then have the
courage to pivot, copy and do an even
better job. So, learning from our Geordie
plumber farrago, here are some tips to
avoid the mistakes we made.
First, don’t be afraid to copy
something that already works, even if it’s
from it, improve on it, and then test and
launch your product or service. And
keep learning and improving. It never
ends — here I am, still fiercely ambitious
and still seeking nuggets of wisdom.
Second, no matter how confident you
might feel in your idea, approach or
business model, don’t grow too big until
you have truly found what works. When
it does, light the blue touchpaper and
never lose focus.
Third, persevere no matter what. A
pivot should be celebrated rather than
avoided because there is always a better
way of doing things — something that
hasn’t been tried or perfected yet. As
long as you stay nimble, you will find it.
Take it from me, it can’t be as difficult
as finding a plumber on a Friday night
in Newcastle.
Richard Harpin is founder and chairman
of HomeServe and Growth Partner
4 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

BUSINESS

Why crypto refuses to die

The king has been dethroned, investors have lost billions and the US regulator thinks it’s illegal. So why do believers still believe?
ILLUSTRATION: PETE BAKER
betting that it is very much the latter. A models, is more uncertain than ever. In
DANNY New York bankruptcy court last week
approved a plan to revive Celsius, a
June, the Securities and Exchange Com-
mission, under chairman Gary Gensler,
FORTSON crypto lender that went under last year sued two of the world’s biggest crypto
TECH TALK stranding nearly $5 billion (£4 billion) in trading platforms, the California-based
customer funds. A group of investors
want to transform Celsius into a profita- Fifteen Coinbase and Binance, an overseas oper-
ator run by billionaire Changpeng Zhao.
ble mini crypto conglomerate including
crypto mining and investing. years on It alleged that both are operating illegal
securities exchanges, which by extension
San Francisco Celsius was led by Alex Mashinsky, a
Ukrainian-American businessman who from means that, in the SEC’s view, most cryp-
tocurrencies are “securities” such as
ven as Sam Bankman-Fried said, famously, that Celsius was “safer
bitcoin’s stocks or bonds. In other words, in the

E
wallows in a New York City
prison after being found guilty
of overseeing a multibillion-
dollar fraud at his defunct
crypto exchange FTX, moves
are afoot to piece his empire
back together.
And not just his. Indeed, 18
months on from the cryptocur-
rency market collapse of 2022 — which
vaporised $2 trillion in value and
exposed the schemers and scammers in
one of the great manias of financial his-
tory — opportunists are scooping up the
assets of dead companies with the prom-
ise not just that they will return all the lost
money. Maybe, just maybe, they can also
revive the crypto dream of borderless
digital money, liberation from the banks
and a remaking of just about everything
from art and real estate to the web itself.
However, as with everything in crypto,
making sense of where this is all headed is
not easy. Yes, former crypto millionaires
and billionaires are getting ensnared in
global manhunts and being put behind
bars, yet bitcoin’s price has surged: as of
lunchtime yesterday it traded at $37,015,
up nearly 50 per cent since March. Yes,
the value of OpenSea, the premier online
bazaar for NFTs (non-fungible tokens),
has been slashed by 90 per cent as trading
in digital art has slowed to a trickle. But
speculation is mounting that any day
regulators will approve a host of bitcoin
exchange-traded funds (ETFs), which
would lend a new air of legitimacy to the
digital currency.
So was the crash simply a necessary
clearout, like the dotcom collapse that
swept away a generation of bad ideas but
left the world with a handful of good
ones, such as Google, Amazon and eBay?
There is no shortage of people who are
than a bank” and promised to pay people
double-digit rates on their assets by
investing their crypto smartly in other
projects. As it turned out, he invested
very un-smartly in projects that would
soon collapse — and take users’ money
with them.
The bankruptcy court was flooded
with letters from punters who spoke of
suicide, losing their homes and broken
marriages. “What has happened to the
stakeholders of Celsius is an absolute
tragedy,” said Michael Arrington, whose
Arrington Capital was part of the winning
Fahrenheit bidding group. His plan is to
“make stakeholders whole”.
Mashinsky was arrested in July on
multiple fraud counts and has had his
assets frozen. Mashinsky’s lawyers called
the charges “baseless.” Separately, New
York’s state attorney general has sued
him for lying to investors about Celsius’s
precarious financial health.
TX filed for bankruptcy four months
F after Celsius, in November 2022. For
crypto sceptics, the meltdowns were
the final nails in the coffin of the
crypto movement, which promised
to sweep away “too big to fail” banks and
replace them with decentralised, trans-
parent, borderless systems to move
money and assets.
At the heart of their vision were block-
chains — digital public ledgers that exist
on thousands of computers around the
world and record every transaction for all
to see. By replacing trusted third parties
with software, the possibilities for
rebuilding industries by directly connect-
ing sellers and buyers — thus obviating
middlemen such as banks, art dealers
and music labels — led to a frenzy.
Thousands of cryptocurrencies were
spun up out of thin air. In the era when
interest rates were near zero and people
were awash with Covid stimulus
cheques, values soared. But when central
banks raised interest rates to kill infla-
tion, money got tight and people lost faith
in what suddenly appeared, quite clearly,
to be worthless digital ephemera. Prices
collapsed and took down countless
crypto companies with them. Ewan Kirk,
a Scottish tech investor and former hedge
same way that a share is an ownership
birth, its slice of a company, the SEC deems digital
currencies to be ownership stakes in a
purpose given crypto project.
Coinbase, Binance and the rest disa-
remains gree, and this will be fought out in the
courts. In the meantime, the SEC is fining
unclear and suing countless companies in the
industry. It is, in short, a mess.
hich begs the question: does it
W make sense to rebuild a crypto
exchange in America when the
key regulator is of the view that
the very essence of the business
is, in fact, illegal? This is, after all, why
Bankman-Fried based FTX in the
Bahamas. The SEC, however, has failed to
provide clear guidelines, opting instead
for a “regulation through litigation”
approach. James Koutoulas, a lawyer and
crypto hedge fund manager, said: “You
can’t comply with laws that don’t exist.”
In Britain, for example, only 43 com-
panies are approved crypto asset provid-
ers. The Financial Conduct Authority this
month added more than 140 companies
to a “warning list” of firms that may be
violating its rules, and introduced new
guidelines about how services can be
advertised. Dan Dolev, an analyst at
Mizuho bank who follows Coinbase, is
sceptical not just of America’s biggest
fund manager, told The Sunday Times exchange, but the industry in which it
last year that the crypto bubble was noth- operates. “There is no crypto economy.
ing more than “a giant fleecing of ordi- It’s a farce,” Dolev said. “The shysters
nary people”. were it. That was the real stuff.”
And yet the story is far from over. It Dolev has set a price target for Coin-
emerged this month that three bidders base of $27 per share — a 70 per cent drop
are in the running for the assets of FTX, from its already-depressed share price.
which collapsed owing $16 billion to cred- And yet, builders keep building, and
itors and its nine million customers. believers keep believing. Clinton
Among them is Proof Group, a member of Bembry, 29, is the founder of Slingshot
the Fahrenheit consortium that nabbed Finance, a San Francisco developer of a
the Celsius assets. It is unclear what digital trading service that, unlike FTX
Proof, which did not return calls seeking and Coinbase and Celsius, does not take
comment, plans to do with FTX if it wins. possession of punters’ crypto. It facili-
Which gets to the crux of the crypto tates trading through a user-friendly app,
conundrum. Fifteen years on from the but assets remain in each person’s own

GENERAL CLASSIFIED bitcoin white paper that started it all, the

purpose of crypto currency, beyond
price speculation, remains unclear.
Changing the digital plumbing of indus-
tries has proved far harder than the
boosters had bargained for. And the
regulatory status of digital currencies,
the lubricants of these new operating
With Sam Bankman-Fried in jail for
fraud, a race is on to snap up the
assets of FTX, the exchange he
founded, which collapsed owing
billions to creditors and customers
digital wallet — so if Slingshot disap-
peared tomorrow, customer assets
would be entirely unaffected.
Bembry is sure, despite the recent tra-
vails, that the revolution is coming.
“There’s no future where the financial
system isn’t running on decentralised
finance. I’m absolutely convinced.”

Dating apps in need of love

Investors are
cooling on the
business of online
matchmaking. By
Laith Al-Khalaf
Gary Kremen had tried
everything to find love. He
met women in bars and
through friends and placed
countless personal adverts in
newspapers, but he could
never find “The One”.
“It drove me crazy … I felt I
was missing out,” he said. So,
armed with a computer
science degree and an MBA,
he took matters into his own
hands. In 1995, he launched
Registration Numbers PPP 1 Match.com, the world’s first
dating website, with modest
£175,000 02077303095
andrew@moonplace.co ambitions: “I wanted to get
more dates for myself.”
The hopeless romantic
went on to found a love
empire. Today, Match Group
is worth $8 billion (£6.6
billion) and caters for about
16 million paying users of its
brands, which include Tinder
and Hinge. Kremen has also
inspired others to make
millions match-making. But
last week, one of the leading
entrepreneurs in the sector,
Whitney Wolfe Herd, stood
down as chief executive of the
female-focused dating app
Bumble. Although she will
stay as chairwoman, her exit
from the top job comes at a
tumultuous time for the
sector. Valuations are falling
and the industry leaders,
Bumble and Match, have
downgraded their revenues
in recent weeks. Curtis Nagle,
an analyst at Bank of
America, said there were
question marks over dating
apps: “The big debate is
whether this is still a growth
industry or in decline.”
Globally, dating apps made
about £4 billion last year, with
£2.5 billion of that coming
from Match Group, according
to figures from Business of
Apps, a site that analyses data
from apps. The number of
users sits at about 300 million
but is expected to reach 500
million by 2027.
At Match.com, one of the
first paid-for services on the
internet, Kremen said he
understood that for a match-
maker to be truly powerful, it
had to have scale. So, during
an intense growth period, the
company let people use the
service for free. Then it
started charging about $30 a
month. The business
expanded rapidly: at one
stage, traffic was growing at 3-
4 per cent a day. Match went
through a series of owners
before listing on Nasdaq in
2020. While interest in its site
has generally waned, it has
also bought rivals OKCupid,
Plenty of Fish, The League
and, crucially, Tinder, which
now makes up more than half
of Match’s $3 billion
revenues.
Tinder, started in 2012, was
an immediate hit. Anh Luong,
a business professor at
Warwick Business
School, said its
accessible “swipe
right” motion for
connecting with a
possible date was
perfectly designed
for the smartphone
era. “It
benefited from
the growth of
social media ...
It’s just very
easy, very
convenient, and
that’s why it can
take on an
entertainment,
and possibly
addictive,
value.”
While its
platform may
have been
revolutionary,
its business
Whitney Wolfe
Herd: love lost
model was similar to
Match.com before it. Tinder
makes most of its money from
monthly fees. Users can buy
subscriptions to Tinder Plus
(£19.49 a month in the UK),
Tinder Gold (£29.49 a month)
and Tinder Platinum (£38.99).
The more expensive the
subscription, the better the
exposure to possible dates.
That exposure comes via
perks including “boosts”,
which allow your profile to be
seen before others in your
area; “passports”, which let
users engage with others in
different countries; and the
ability to message people
before they “match” and
accept their advances.
Tinder is not alone in
punting digital extras: Hinge,
also in the Match stable,
charges users $2 for a “rose”,
which can be sent to others
on the app and is meant to
convey a keen compliment.
Despite all these extra
features, in its third-quarter
results at the end of last
month, Match Group
reported a 6 per cent
drop in Tinder’s paying
customers in the US.
The company is now
eyeing up a plan that
would cost
consumers $6,000 a
year — “a jarring
amount of
money”, said
Nagle. It is
not clear
exactly what
people
would get
for this VIP
option.
Other apps
are already
pursuing the
high-end
customer. The
League is a dating
site that targets
more selective
users, charging up
to $100 a week. Its
motto is: “High
standards? Keep it
that way.” But the market has
also fragmented and dozens
of personalised apps are now
available, which could mean
users are less likely to pay for
any premium perks.
Righter is the dating app
for conservatives, Salams is
for Muslim daters and Kippo
is marketed towards people
who play video games. The
most famous and successful
competitors to Tinder are
Hinge and Bumble, which try
to style themselves as more
female friendly than their
rival, which soon attracted a
reputation for being “the
hook-up app”. Bumble only
allows women to approach
men first.
Experts believe the sector’s
big players need more
innovation to woo users.
Unlike other platforms such
as Netflix, dating apps have to
keep regenerating new
customers every few years.
Hinge bills itself as “the dating
app designed to be deleted”.
Some expect that artificial
intelligence, inevitably, could
play its part — helping craft
profiles to maximise the
chance of securing a date.
For its part, Tinder is
trying to move towards a
weekly subscription model,
which would cost users more
money. Bumble has also said
that it is gearing up for more
expensive bundles for “high
intent” users.
The chase for revenues is
no longer a concern for
Kremen, whose own
relationship with Match.com
was not built to last. By 1996,
he had been booted out of the
company after the board
disagreed with him that
Match should broaden its
offering to LGBT people.
Kremen is now a tech
investor in California, and is
happily settled with his
partner of seven years, whom
he met online — though he
won’t say on which app. “I’ve
created some love and that
feels good,” he said.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 5

BUSINESS

Hollywood
CHRISTOPHER L PROCTOR FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
1998 Wasserman moved into sport, buy-
ing the Los Angeles Avengers, an Ameri-
can football team that competed in the
indoor Arena Football League. The team
went out of business in 2009.

super agent
Wasserman rose to some prominence
in the UK in 2006 when he bought SFX, a
talent agency that represented Gerrard,
Michael Owen, Alan Shearer and rugby
stars including Jonny Wilkinson. Struan
Marshall, Gerrard’s agent, says the chief
executive immediately impressed the

targets the
SFX team with his ambition and ability to
fit in as “one of the boys”.
Wasserman says there was “scepti-
cism” that an American business could
operate in English sport but it worked
out. European football, and England’s
Premier League in particular, has grown

Premiership
rapidly. In 2006, the Premier League’s
record transfer fee stood at £30.8 million;
today, several players have transferred
for more than £100 million. With bigger
transfers and bigger player salaries come
bigger fees for agents.
Wasserman is not the only US investor
to have taken an interest in football. Half
of the Premier League’s 20 clubs have
major American shareholders. Wasser-
man names many as friends, and says he
Casey Wasserman is eyeing up A-list footballers and informally advised some of them on their
investments.
actors as his LA talent empire expands in the UK When he claims “you can’t fault” what
US investors have brought to the league,
I, as a Chelsea season ticket holder, tell
him the jury is still out on Todd Boehly
WILLIAM TURVILL and his consortium. Wasserman says it’s
too soon to judge his friend and adds: “If
in ten years they’re still 15th in the table,
and don’t have a new stadium, that’s a
fair assessment.”

W
hen Steven Gerrard left
Liverpool for LA Gal-
axy in 2015, fans could
be forgiven for forget-
ting about how this
upheaval might affect
his family. Millionaire
footballers rarely make
for good sob stories.
“They’re just human
beings — sometimes we forget that,” says
Casey Wasserman, the founder and boss
of a global talent agency, called Wasser-
man, that represents Gerrard and is paid
to care about such things.
In exchange for their fees, Wasser-
man’s agents — known collectively, and
rather toe-curlingly, as TeamWass — offer
clients a wide range of services, many of
which go above and beyond what you
might expect.
Footballers, for example, can expect
help with transfers, contract negotia-
tions, sponsorship deals, social media
and PR. But they are also offered diary
management, restaurant bookings and
relocation services.
“Stevie Gerrard and Robbie Keane [the
former Tottenham striker] moved to LA,
and guess what? They had young kids
who had to get into school,” says Wasser-
man, explaining how “unsettling” such
obstacles can be.
Wasserman, 49, is a busy man. He is
president of the Los Ange-
les Olympic Organising
Committee, which is
responsible for staging
the Games in his home-
town in 2028. His com-
pany is growing fast.
Since starting out as a
sports management and
marketing agency in 2002,
it has made more than
40 acquisitions to
build its reach. Over
the past couple of
years, Wasserman
has expanded into the
realms of music and
entertainment. In 2021 it bought the live
music arm of Paradigm, whose clients
include Coldplay and Billie Eilish. And in
September it acquired Brillstein, a TV
production and talent agency that repre-
Casey sents Russell Crowe, Brad Pitt, and
Wasserman’s Florence Pugh. Last month, Wasserman
staff helped bought CSM, a sports and marketing
Steven Gerrard agency based in the UK and chaired by
move to Los Lord (Seb) Coe, the former Olympian.
Angeles to play It seems that Wasserman’s private
for LA Galaxy. equity backer — Providence, which
Other clients bought a minority stake last November
include Billie from RedBird and Madrone Capital
Eilish, centre Partners — is keen to accelerate growth.
below, and Wasserman, who retains a controlling
Florence Pugh stake, suggests that it is a coincidence
that his firm has just completed two big
deals: “We’re opportunistic.”
As a result he now controls a sprawling
empire with 3,500 employees, including
agents, marketing special-
ists and media production
professionals. The idea is
that having all these
businesses under one
metaphorical roof offers
clients — sports stars,
actors, musicians and
businesses — new
and improved
opportunities to
build their “brands” and make money.
Coe, a longstanding friend of Wasser-
man who advised him on his Olympics
work and is now part of the company,
explained the rationale from a sports-
man’s perspective: “When agents are say-
ing, ‘I’ve got you a shoe contract and I’ve
got you an extension to an existing con-
tract or a better relationship with X, Y, Z,’,
they’re saying: ‘Yeah, great. What about
podcasts? What about my social media
numbers?’”
It is the CSM deal that brings Wasser-
man to the UK, where he has 1,000
employees. We meet in a cramped con-
ference room at the Connaught hotel in
Mayfair. In appearance, Wasserman is
everything you’d expect from an LA
mover and shaker. He has film-star looks
— great hair, neat beard, toned forearms
exposed by rolled-up sleeves — and the
outfit of a jetsetter, complete with a
zip-up gilet. He is engaging — no
mean feat given that he’s
recently touched down from LA
— but guarded. When I ask him,
for this interview’s “Life Of ”
section, to tell me how much he is paid,
his response is: “God, no.”
In the Hollywood Hills, which Wasser-
man calls home, his name precedes him.
His grandfather, Lew Wasserman, was a
talent agent who became the head of the
film conglomerate MCA Universal. The
New York Times dubbed him “the last of
the legendary movie moguls” when he
died in 2002.
For Wasserman, the family heritage is
a blessing and a curse. Although it has
opened some doors, he seems a touch
THE LIFE OF
CASEY WASSERMAN
Born: June 28, 1974
Status: Divorced with a
son, 20, and daughter, 18.
Has a partner, Jenny, an
artist
School: Brentwood School,
Los Angeles
University: University of
California, Los Angeles
First job: Working for the
investment company of the
billionaire Ron Burkle
Pay: Not declared. “God,
no.”
Home: Hollywood Hills
Car: Electric Porsche
Taycan
Book: The Catcher in the
Rye
Film: The Bourne series. “If
I were BS-ing you, by the
way, I would have said ET
because my grandfather
made it”
Music: “A band that is true
to my heart is the Beastie
Boys”
Drink: “The thing I drink
most of is sparkling water”
Last holiday: “Sardinia this
summer with my kids”
Watch: Rolex GMT
Gadget: iPad
Charity: The Wasserman
executive of Wasserman
wakes up at 6am, has
coffee with his partner,
turns on the television “to
see what’s going on in the
world” and tries to get
through emails before
starting the day. Usually
hehas a breakfast meeting
at about 8am. The working
day consists of internal and
external meetings in
offices or over Zoom. “I’m
one of those people who
believes being in the office
is valuable and important.”
Wasserman goes to sleep
at about 10pm at the latest,
unless out. He tries to be a
“home body” when in LA.
DOWNTIME
Watching TV, sport or films,
entertaining friends and
exercising. “I work out
every day. I don’t consider
it downtime but it’s good
for my mental health and
my physical health. When I
have downtime I do a
whole lot of nothing. I
actually enjoy being at
home on a weekend. If I
don’t leave the house from
Wasserman and his friends believe
that there is more to come from “global
football”, as he calls it. He expects the
2026 World Cup in North America to fuel
more US interest and revenue opportuni-
ties. Beyond that, he’s convinced that the
business of all sports will continue to
grow because “it’s predictable and
unique in a world where nothing else is”.
And if this vision doesn’t work out, well,
at least Wasserman has investments in
music, entertainment and beyond.
What next for Wasserman, the man
and the company? It is just 12 months
since Providence bought in, which prob-
ably means some stability of ownership
for a few years. The company’s expan-
sion shows no sign of abating. A week
after the CSM deal, it announced the
acquisition of another marketing agency,
J1S, based in Dallas.
The boss is confident that his Olympics
role will not disrupt his work. Because LA
has hosted the Games before, he says, it
has much of its infrastructure in place. “I
don’t think if my day job wasn’t in and
around the Olympics, I could do both,”
he says. “I can do the job.”
Days after my meeting with Wasser-
man, Hamas terrorists attacked Israel on
October 7, sparking a conflict that has
claimed thousands of lives. As a Jewish
man with close friends in Israel, Wasser-
man says he feels a “deep connection”
with the country.
Catching up with him by phone,
Wasserman adds that he has been dis-
turbed by antisemitism he has seen since
on social media.
“It’s amazing how brave people are
when they can say things anonymously
with no consequences,” he says. Wasser-
man adds that, while he encounters
antisemitic abuse most often online, he
also experiences it in his day-to-day life.
He chooses not to go into detail, but adds:
“It’s not unique to me, obviously. It’s a
sad state of affairs.”
Shortly after the Hamas attack, Was-
serman was due to deliver a speech at an
International Olympic Committee meet-
ing in India. He chose to focus some of his
address on the plight of Israeli and
Palestinian victims of the conflict. In an
emotional speech, Wasserman spoke of
how his family had fled Ukraine to
move to America because of the
“pogroms that eliminated much of the
Jewish population”.
Wasserman tells me he felt compelled

Sport frustrated that he still faces questions

about his grandfather’s achievements.
Foundation, a family trust Friday night until Monday
morning, I’m
to speak out, saying it was “important to
me, as one of, I think, two Jewish people

is unique “There’s nothing I’m more proud of than

being Lew Wasserman’s grandson,” he
WORKING DAY
If in Los Angeles, the chief
good with
that.”
in the entire room, to not let this go
unspoken”.

in a world says. “But that’s not who I want to be.”

After attending Brentwood School in Wasserman’s
“At its worst, the Olympics is a
platform for evil,” he says, refer-

where Los Angeles Wasserman studied political

science at the University of California,
most recent
holiday was in
ring to the 1972 Munich massacre
of members of Israel’s Olympic

nothing Los Angeles. He remains politically

engaged, counting the Clintons as
Sardinia, while
his move-mogul
team by Black September, a Pales-
tinian terrorist group. “But at its

else is friends, and recently attended a state din-

ner at the White House. Wasserman
grandfather
was involved in
best, it’s an opportunity to
show the world, in the face of
began his career at the investment com- making ET unspeakable evil, the power of
pany of the billionaire Ron Burkle. In the human spirit.”
6 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

BUSINESS
ILLUSTRATION: PETE BAKER

OLIVER
GILL

B
ackstage in May 2010, Ed
Sheeran was preparing to
perform as a comparative
unknown. The singer-
songwriter began freestyling
with Example, the rapper
and main act for the night at
the Waterfront in Norwich. A
PIZZA EXPRESS

£5m
grainy video of the pair
singing Nando’s Skank would
later go viral after being posted on You-
Tube. Sheeran, 19, was making his first
steps towards stardom. And singing “We
eat chicken for free, / cause he’s got a
black card you see” put him on track for
free peri-peri chicken. Amount of loyalty benefits
Nando’s “High Five” or black card — customers built up in first
Example claims to be one of the first five year of chain’s scheme
holders — allows the bearer, and four
MCDONALD’S NANDO’S

£20m
friends, to eat free. The entitlement cri-

10m
teria is shrouded in mystery.
“Asking for one is simply the
biggest taboo — a definite no-no,”
the chain said.
Is it a publicity stunt? Probably.
But it is working. The black card
may just be for the select few, but Value of loyalty benefits
Nando’s also offers a loyalty scheme Number of loyalty scheme that customers had not
for the masses. Customers can earn members just over a year claimed by end of last year
“Chillies” every time they spend £7 or after it was launched
more at its restaurants. It has been so suc-
cessful that customers were sitting on up

How a Pizza
to £20 million worth of unclaimed
chicken, chips, soft drinks and other loy- McDonald’s, admitted that
alty benefits at the end of 2022, according “maintaining a strong value propo-
to filings. sition has been challenging”. The new
Nando’s fans are not the only ones. loyalty scheme would allow the Ameri-
Pizza Express customers built up neys. Pizza-Express Club combines free- can fast food giant “to accelerate our digi-

Express gold
£5.2 million of loyalty benefits during the bies and discounts with a classic loyalty tal business, allowing us to learn more
first year of the chain’s scheme, accounts scheme to encourage returning custom- about our customers and their purchas-
revealed. Others are jumping on the ers. Free dough balls are the reward sim- ing habits”, Howcroft added. In other
bandwagon. ply for signing up to the restaurant’s words: McDonald’s is watching you.
“This is a golden age of loyalty. More revamped app. More rewards are McDonald’s now has ten million mem-
schemes are being launched than we’ve triggered as stamps are collected and bers signed up in the UK, little more than

card became
ever seen,” said Adam Daniels, chief customers pass from bronze, to silver a year after launching its scheme. At
executive of IAG Loyalty, which runs and then gold levels. Customers need 12 Burger King, the loyalty scheme means
British Airways’ air miles scheme, Avios. stamps to reach gold status over a nearly one in five of its customers now
Why? For starters, restaurants were 12-month period. This guarantees them pay through the app. It enjoyed its best
desperate to wean themselves off dis- the status for the following year. week ever in loyalty sales earlier this
counts. The Nineties and Noughties were Somewhat paradoxically, gold status month. KFC, meanwhile, has followed

a must-have
marked by a proliferation of casual din-
ing chains popping up on Britain’s high
streets. Amid fierce competition it was
not long before vouchers became the
main weapon to steal rivals’ customers.
“People generally have a repertoire of
eight or nine restaurants that they will
think of going to when they are going
out,” said Eleanor Scott, hospitality and
leisure partner at PwC’s consulting arm
Strategy&. She added that restaurants
Dining chains have swapped discounts for loyalty
“just want that next visit to be them,
rather than the one down the road”.
schemes to reward regulars, while digesting their data
Groupon exacerbated matters. A play
on the words “group” and “coupon”, sub-
scribers signed up to the company and
could buy deeply discounted goods and
services in return. The money from cus-
tomers is passed on to the restaurants,
after Groupon takes its cut, in advance.
Such was Groupon’s popularity that in
2011 it launched the biggest stock market
float by an American internet company
since Google seven years earlier.
Groupon would quickly flop. While still
listed in the US, its $300 million valuation
is a shadow of the $12.8 billion it com-
Ed Sheeran can
enjoy free food
manded on debut 12 years ago.
“The whole voucher thing was, is and
at Nando’s with
his black card
will continue to be a complete disaster,”
said Hugh Osmond, the millionaire res-
taurateur and pub tycoon. “It is one of
the things that has led to the destruction
of the casual dining industry. I can’t over-
emphasise how big a mess that was.”
The problem with vouchers and dis-
counting was twofold. First, discounts
were supposed to make customers more
loyal to a certain brand or chain, as had
proved to be the case with retailers, such
as Tesco or Boots. But applying retail
logic to the hospitality sector is flawed,
according to Osmond. Because eating out
is discretionary, discounts attract diners
to the cheapest option rather than engen-
dering loyalty because they enjoy the ser-
vice, food and all-round experience. “You
are doing exactly the opposite of reward-
ing loyalty. You are rewarding people for
shopping for vouchers,” he added.
Second, there was an issue that dis-
counts “reset” customers’ expectations
on price. People would turn up to a res-
taurant and think nothing of searching on
their phone for a discount code when it
came time to pay the bill. Once this hap-
pens for “six, twelve, twenty-four
months, it becomes the base price people
expect to pay”, said Ed Bignold, head of
hospitality and leisure at the consultancy
Alvarez & Marsal.
Scott said: “It took a long time for them
to unwind that because they had reset the
value expectation of customers.”
Hence the switch to loyalty schemes as
a means of driving repeat business. Such
programmes usually require long-term
commitment from shareholders to bank-
roll the proposition.
Pizza Express is a relatively recent
entrant in the field. Allan Leighton, the
City grandee and Pizza Express chair-
man, hired the loyalty guru Arslan Sharif
in April 2021 to spearhead its new
scheme. Sharif is credited with oversee-
ing the digital transformation of the likes
of Costa Coffee, British Gas, and E.ON
and is also advising the board of First-
Group on how to improve the way it uses
the data it collects from passenger jour-
triggers a reward of a Pizza Express cook-
book. Other benefits include children
eating for free between Monday and
Thursday and a free Romana base
upgrade when ordering a normal pizza.
Other dining chains are following suit.
The Ivy Collection unveiled a scheme this
year that will have 200,000 members by
the end of the year. Bill’s is also consider-
ing the launch of a loyalty programme.
Nando’s scheme is based on the simple
collection of a stamp every time custom-
ers spend £7. Ten stamps qualifies for a
whole chicken meal. Extra benefits such
as attending menu launches and brand
events engender loyalty. Nando’s fans
also get exclusive access to merchandise
and competitions.
Now 25 years old, Nando’s scheme
boasts three million members. Pizza
Express, by comparison, has grown
quickly since its launch in December 2021
and this month hit two million members.
Last year, the burger chains hit back,
with the launch of YourBurgerKing and
MyMcDonald’s in the UK. Both compa-
nies seem intent on banishing vouchers
on the back of bus or car park tickets, or
coupons in newspapers and magazines.
Both offer a free cheeseburger just for
signing up. At McDonald’s, spending £15
equates to 1,500 points, entitling mem-
bers to their choice of a mini McFlurry,
hash brown, small fries, side salad or
drink. Alternatively points can be
exchanged for donations to charities
including the BBC’s Children in Need.
Kat Howcroft, director of digital at
the success of Nando’s black card with its
own version that gives holders — who
include Holly Willoughby and Joey Essex,
the reality TV star made famous by The
Only Way Is Essex — up to £200 of free
food every day. And last week Domino’s
Pizza unveiled plans for a loyalty scheme.
Loyalty schemes are not just about
repeat custom. In a digital world, per-
sonal data is more valuable than ever.
With the customers’ permission it can be
sold or used to commercial advantage.
For instance, every time a customer
makes a purchase online or through an
app , that sale can be compared with his-
torical averages, Scott said. This is part of
sophisticated measuring of a customer’s
worth to any given company.
“You can also look at it in terms of
response to marketing to loyalty,” she
added. “If you are signed up to a loyalty
programme and they send you a trigger
email or notification on an app, you can
The then measure a direct impact of whether
the customer turns up.”
whole Osmond remains wary, however. By
offering giveaways, loyalty schemes can
voucher quickly morph into discount clubs. Like
Sheeran and Example, however, he is a
thing big fan of Nando’s. “People are trying to
copy the really successful chains like
was a Nando’s, whose loyalty scheme uses data
really well and really does reward people.
total Their black card scheme is legendary,”
Osmond said. “They created a whole
disaster aura with celebrities who pushed
Nando’s — and what do you get for a black
card? Some free chicken. It’s genius.”

LSE chief ’s
standing behind trillions of top 20 best-performing Redburn Atlantic, said the Workspace. Schwimmer
trades in euros after Brexit. stocks in the index this year. business was “entering the hinted at more changes.
That fear, for now at least, has At the same time, while second stage of its growth “There are desktop offerings

date night to
proved unfounded.
Within a year of joining,
Schwimmer had given up on
dreams of merging Lseg with
talking up the health of the evolution. The acquisition of out there with roughly the
London market, Lseg Refinitiv was a real shift in the same user interface that
surreptitiously played down revenue mix.” people have been using for
the “London” bit of its name The key now is to prove 20 years or so,” he said. “The

woo sceptics
other exchanges, and instead
began the £20 billion
takeover of Refinitiv, a firm
that provided data on shares
in a recent ad campaign, that growth in earnings can opportunity we have is to be
which focused on its be accelerated when Lseg sets the disruptor in this space
expertise in foreign markets. new three-year targets. and build a product that is
The pressure is on to keep Analysts at Bank of America easier to use.”

of tech vision
David Schwimmer is trying to convince
investors that he can create a financial
data powerhouse to rival Bloomberg
Jill Treanor
Just over 100 analysts and
investors will gather for
dinner on Thursday in the
City of London to be
entertained by David
Schwimmer — not the actor
who played Ross in the US
sitcom Friends, but the
former Goldman Sachs
banker who runs the London
Stock Exchange Group.
Rather than trying to raise
a laugh, the softly spoken
American will be giving his
pitch for the future of the
business he calls “Lseg”.
Schwimmer, 54, is on a
mission to prove that his
company is not just the
owner of the London Stock
Exchange, home to the FTSE
100 index, but a fast-growing
provider of data to financial
dealers on the biggest trading
desks around the world — in
short, that Lseg is a tech firm,
not a stock exchange. That
might seem a tall order when
the City is in the midst of soul-
searching about its future as a
financial centre — after the
UK’s exit from the EU and
amid a drought of flotations.
But the New Yorker is
growing used to his role as a
mouthpiece for his adopted
home’s post-Brexit fightback.
“London is a great place to do
business,” he says from his
office, which offers a bird’s-
eye view of St Paul’s
Cathedral. “We’re a great
example of that.”
Schwimmer has
transformed the business
since arriving in 2018 during a
period of turmoil. Brussels
had just blocked its merger
with German rival Deutsche
Börse, and it had been rocked
by Sir Christopher Hohn’s TCI
hedge fund, which was
agitating for board change.
There was also uncertainty
over whether the London
Clearing House, in which
Lseg has an 82 per cent stake,
would be stripped of its role
and bonds, offered risk
management systems to big
financial firms and was a
challenger to Bloomberg.
That 2019 deal made a huge
difference: in the first nine
months of 2018, Lseg had
generated £1.7 billion of
revenue; in the first nine
months of this year, it made
£6.2 billion.
Fees at the stock exchange
were a small proportion of
Lseg’s turnover in 2018, and
that share is now even
smaller: just £171 million of
revenue in the first nine
months of 2023, compared
with £3.9 billion from
providing data. There is some
merit to Lseg’s claim to being
a data company.
The Refintiv deal has had a
rocky reception. At first
investors loved it, sending the
shares rocketing to almost
£100 in February 2020 —
before knocking them back to
about £56.18 months later on
concerns about the costs and
complexities of integrating
the business.
Schwimmer has been
trying to convince investors
that their concerns are
overblown, with some
success. This year, the shares
are up 20 per cent —
outperforming the FTSE 100,
which is largely flat — at
£85.10, giving Lseg a market
value of £46 billion. It is in the
the momentum going and
maintain, even speed up,
growth without the help of a
deal the size of Refinitiv. Over
two days of presentations this
week, Schwimmer also needs
to address lingering anxiety
about who will replace the
finance director Anna Manz,
who is joining Nestlé in May.
The new head of the data
division, Satvinder Singh, will
also deliver a closely watched
presentation. He arrived just
three months ago, succeeding
the former Bloomberg
executive Andrea Remyn
Stone, who left in July 2022.
Schwimmer took control of
the arm personally in the
interim.
Russell Quelch, an analyst
at equity research firm
hope for a rise in the annual
growth rate from up to 7 per
cent to closer to 8 per cent.
The market wants
evidence of how a deal with
Microsoft, announced last
year, will boost performance.
The tech giant took a 4 per
cent stake in Lseg and has
hundreds of people working
there to find ways to design
products for customers using
generative AI.
The Microsoft tie-up might
be how Lseg steps up its
competition with Bloomberg,
whose terminals are
prominent on traders’ desks.
Refinitiv has a rival data
platform called Eikon, which
is not nearly as popular as
Bloomberg but has been
overhauled and renamed
Schwimmer,
who began the
exchange’s
transformation
with the
£20 billion
takeover of data
firm Refinitiv,
is hosting a
dinner in the
City this week,
where he will
outline his plans
for the future
The word “disruption” also
gets to the heart of
Schwimmer’s push to show
Lseg can be treated by
investors less as a “stock
exchange”, often with volatile
revenues, and more as a type
of more highly valued data-
provider company.
The shareholder register
has changed dramatically as
the Blackstone consortium,
which owned 34 per cent of
Lseg as a result of the
Refinitiv deal, has sold down
its stake to just 11 per cent.
Nick Train, co-founder of
the fund management group
Lindsell Train, which owns
about 3 per cent of the stock,
recently pointed out to his
investors how well Lseg’s
shares had held up despite
such a large sale. “It should
be much less of an overhang
to share price performance
going forward,” he said.
For Schwimmer, this
week’s event is about
convincing investors what
Lseg is about. “It’s a really
good opportunity to talk
about what the future looks
like, [to] help our investors
really understand the
business.”
As he sets out targets for
the next three years,
Schwimmer says he is in no
rush to leave. “I am very
happy ... and we have a lot
more to do.”
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023
BUSINESS
Oliver Shah
Scandals show we need a new kind
of boardroom diversity — dissent
W
e are living through a
golden age of boardroom
misjudgement. At
NatWest, the directors
who initially tried to cling
on to Alison Rose as chief
executive after the
indiscreet dame admitted
to being the source of an inaccurate BBC
story about Nigel Farage’s finances have
now decided to confiscate most of her
outstanding pay and bonuses. BP is
searching for a successor to Bernard
Looney, having neglected to do due
diligence on the upstream oilman’s
personal life before appointing him.
Barclays is mired in headlines about
Jeffrey Epstein’s links to its former boss
Jes Staley, after backing him during
numerous mini-scandals, including his
efforts to unmask a whistleblower.
Rio Tinto’s head miner Jakob Stausholm
continues to apologise for his
predecessor’s detonation of ancient
Aboriginal caves — which also blew up
his career.
Boards are increasingly confronted by
non-financial issues as boundaries
between the corporate world and real
Hunt gets tax boost, but faces
difficult spending decisions
David Smith Economic Outlook
T E
hings have returned to some
kind of normality after Covid,
during which big fiscal
announcements came thick and
fast, sometimes involving tens
of billions of extra government
spending. Now we are back to
two fiscal events a year, and the
second is soon — Jeremy Hunt’s autumn
statement on November 22.
I have chosen this weekend to do a
curtain-raiser, not least because the
Sunday before the actual event will be
thick with the detail of the chancellor’s
forthcoming announcements — to the
point where there will be few, if any,
surprises revealed on the day. I am old
enough to remember when such details
were closely guarded secrets and there
was kudos to be won for extracting them
from the Treasury.
The nearest I came to a genuine scoop
recently was just over a year ago, when,
a few days before it was delivered, I
heard the full details of Kwasi Kwarteng’s
September 23 “mini” budget — the one
that blew up the markets due to
measures including, most notably, the
short-lived abolition of the 45 per cent
very top rate of income tax.
Unfortunately, Sunday had already
happened, though it appears I got to
know about it a few days before the Bank
of England did.
The backdrop to this month’s autumn
statement is that inflation is on the cusp
of a significant fall, as figures this
Wednesday should show, while growth
has stalled. However, Hunt does not
want to take the expected further drop
in inflation for granted, and the
chancellor certainly does not want to
risk a repeat of last year’s disaster, which
is why he has ruled out tax cuts for now,
if not for next year.
The pressure on him to cut taxes now
— from Tory MPs who appear to have
short memories — has intensified
following last week’s lacklustre set of
King’s Speech announcements, even if
Rishi Sunak’s legislation to phase out
cigarette smoking, by ensuring that no
one born after the start of 2009 will ever
be able to legally purchase them, will
have a longer-lasting impact than most
things governments do. Whether the
chancellor can hold out against the
pressure will be a test of his resolve.
The narrative leading up to this year’s
statement — from the Resolution
Foundation think tank, the Institute for
Fiscal Studies (IFS) and others — is that
while most of us have been reeling from
the impact of high inflation, the
government has been benefiting from it.
There are two ways of describing
gross domestic product (GDP). The first,
which forms the basis of
announcements on how well or badly
we are doing, is in real terms — and,
using this measure, the performance
over the past 18 months or so has been
disappointing, close to stagnation. But
GDP in so-called nominal or money
terms has been rising strongly because it
includes the impact of inflation. And
nominal GDP is what matters in the short
term for the public finances.
Higher inflation and faster wage
growth — even if real wages are falling —
boost tax revenues, and this is what has
been happening. In the first six months
V2
life melt. Half of all chief executives
ousted from big American companies
last year went due to allegations of
personal misconduct, according to the
Conference Board, a business think
tank. Yet directors seem as ill-equipped
to deal with them as they were before
the advent of the #MeToo movement,
Black Lives Matter and the culture wars.
Other than the Barclays board of 2018,
which stood by Staley despite fines from
regulators on both sides of the Atlantic
over the whistleblowing affair, all the
companies listed above met the most
obvious diversity requirement — women
made up at least a third of the non-
executives. BP did not have any directors
from an ethnic-minority background in
2019, although it does now. Overall,
these appeared to be boards with a
governance-friendly mix.
The FTSE 350 has made good
progress on both fronts. Women
occupied 40 per cent of board seats as of
last year, although the proportion in
senior executive roles was slightly lower.
The latest update to Sir John Parker’s
review found that 96 per cent of FTSE
100 boards had at least one ethnic-
The chancellor
does not want to
risk a repeat of
last year’s disaster
of the current fiscal year, government
borrowing, while still over £80 billion,
came in almost £20 billion lower than the
official forecaster, the Office for Budget
Responsibility (OBR), expected. One of
the reasons for this was the big stealth
tax increase from freezing income tax
and national insurance allowances and
thresholds at a time of high inflation.
Thus, most of the undershoot,
£15 billion, was due to tax receipts
coming in more strongly than expected,
according to the Resolution Foundation.
It expects stronger receipts to be a
feature of future years, not because
inflation will stay as high as it has been
but because it will take time to fall back,
leaving the economy larger in cash terms
than previously expected. Taken on its
own, this inflation-linked boost to tax
revenues would leave the public
finances in a much healthier state.
Unfortunately, the boost to tax
receipts cannot be taken on its own.
BORROWING IS UNDERSHOOTING FORECASTS ...
Cumulative public sector net borrowing
Net borrowing - ONS provisional estimate
£140bn
120
100
80
60
40
20
0 0.2 per cent in September was
Apr May Jun Jul
Source: ONS, OBR
... BUT DEBT INTEREST WILL INCREASE
Central government debt interest (net of APF)
Outturn OBR (March 2023) Updated projection
5% of GDP
4 per head, probably a more relevant
3 third quarter, making three declines in
2 GDP per head is in fact lower in these
1 2021 and in the first half of 2022. A
0 as a whole. The opposite is happening,
2018-19 2020-21
Source: OBR, Resolution Foundation
Alison Rose was ousted from NatWest
minority member. The argument is that
as well as being a moral imperative,
diversity leads to better decision-
making. It isn’t clear that the latter is
materialising, though. Another dame —
Helena Morrissey, founder of the 30%
Club campaign — says: “I thought that if
we introduced more women and shook
up the cosy club of the boardroom, that
would in turn shake up the thinking. In
all honesty, the jury’s out on that in a
fairly major way.”
Class is the missing element in the
Higher inflation and the rise in
government bond yields — though they
have fallen back from their highs —
increase the government’s debt interest
bill. In March, the OBR predicted that
the debt interest bill would average
nearly £90 billion a year over five years.
Its new projections are likely to be
higher than that and Hunt and his
Treasury officials know there is not a lot
they can do about that.
What the chancellor does think,
though, is that there is something he can
do about public spending. The
Resolution Foundation is blunt,
describing the apparent increase in fiscal
headroom due to stronger tax receipts as
an “illusion”, because “it assumes higher
inflation increases taxes but does not
drive up public service spending”.
The IFS had a similar message in its
green budget last month, saying: “UK
public finances are still in a parlous
state, and the case for tax cuts at this
time remains exceedingly weak —
particularly as the government’s ‘true’
fiscal position is almost certainly weaker
than official forecasts suggest.” The
public spending projections for the
period after the next election “look tight
— perhaps implausibly so”, it added.
This is not the only issue for the public
finances. Current projections assume
Hunt will reverse the 5p-a-litre cut in fuel
duty announced by Sunak in response to
the cost of living crisis, and also increase
the duty in line with inflation. There is
zero chance of that happening.
The chancellor, however, sees a path
Net borrowing - OBR forecast
Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb
2024
Forecast
2022-23 2024-25 2026-27
diversity puzzle. It usually has no visible
markers and is difficult to quantify —
sometimes even to discuss. There have
been attempts to tackle the effects of
workplace imbalance, though: a report
by the City of London Corporation last
year claimed that people from non-
privileged backgrounds progressed
25 per cent more slowly and earned up
to £17,500 a year less than their peers in
financial services.
Putting a (theoretical) woman of
colour educated at a top public school
and Oxbridge on to a board of white men
who went to the same seats of learning
will probably not produce radically
different thinking. Until boards are
prepared to recruit non-executives from
a far wider gene pool, including people
whose upbringings reflect those of
customers and workers, they are likely
to continue suffering from groupthink.
(To be fair, though, outsourcer Capita’s
appointment of employees to its board
has done nothing for its share price.)
There is also the broader point that
boardrooms can be intimidating places
to outsiders. Standard etiquette steers
participants away from challenge and
to healthier public finances through
making the public sector more efficient
and productive, and limiting the size of
the state’s workforce. Higher public
sector productivity would make
“implausibly” tight public spending
plans look much more realistic. Hunt’s
Treasury colleague, John Glen, the chief
secretary, has been conducting a review
of public sector productivity.
A programme designed to achieve this
could allow the chancellor to claim that
his increased room for manoeuvre is
genuine. It might even enable him to
offer some modest crowd-pleasing tax
cuts next year. To be fair, it is a better
thing to do than pour more and more
money into unreformed public services.
Public sector employment, at just under
5.7 million, is up by about 400,000 on
pre-pandemic levels.
Experts, it should be said, are sceptical
about the scope for delivering public
sector productivity improvements in a
way that will make much difference to the
outlook for the public finances. There
have been plenty of efficiency reviews in
the past, and none has successfully
delivered sustained savings.
There is also a phoney element about
all this. The next proper spending
review is not due until autumn next year.
That is also the most likely time for the
general election, suggesting it is likely to
be postponed. The issue of mending the
public finances and dealing with
spending pressures will be top of the
next chancellor’s in-tray.
PS
It was a relief to see, in Friday’s figures,
that UK GDP was unchanged in the third
quarter, in line with the Bank of
England’s expectations — rather than
falling by 0.1 per cent, as many analysts
had feared. It was a relief because a
0.1 per cent decline would have
triggered a thousand headlines about
the economy sliding into recession
rather than just stagnating. In fact, there
is very little practical difference between
the two. The economy is flatlining, as it
has done since early last year.
It was quite a close-run thing. Some
will have been surprised that a monthly
GDP sequence of down 0.6 per cent in
July, up 0.1 per cent in August and up
consistent with flat GDP rather than a
small fall. This was because the starting
point for July’s fall, the June figure, was
high, and above the second-quarter
average.
As it was, GDP did decline a little in
the third quarter, by £163 million in
inflation-adjusted terms. But this fall,
0.02 per cent, was not enough, on
rounding, to be counted as a drop.
Otherwise, there was not too much to
celebrate in these figures. If we take GDP
figure, it did fall by 0.1 per cent in the
the past seven readings.
latest figures than it was at the end of
flatlining economy is not delivering any
meaningful progress for the population
as you might expect.
david.smith@sunday-times.co.uk
dissent. You can see how someone might
arrive determined to change the status
quo and end up being assimilated by it.
Obviously, chairs should be braver in
their choices of headhunters and
candidates. Effectiveness reviews should
be done by independent third parties,
not the search firm that installed the
directors in the first place. And investors
should rattle boards’ cages a lot more
vigorously. I am sure that part of the
problem is the shrivelling of active
equities. These days, corporate raiders
and hedge funds are often the only ones
impolite enough to speak up on
underperforming companies’ registers.
Stiff drinks needed at Diageo
There may be rapid rewriting of scripts
at Diageo Towers before a capital
markets event on Wednesday.
A sudden warning that sales would
plunge by a fifth in Latin America and
the Caribbean — read Brazil and Mexico
in particular — sent shares in the maker
of Don Julio tequila and Johnnie Walker
Scotch crashing last week. It was a
nightmare induction for Debra Crew,
who previously ran the FTSE 100 giant’s
Wheels come off
green revolution
Irwin Stelzer American Account
ight years ago, 194 nations plus
the EU agreed in Paris to adopt
policies to limit the rise in the
planet’s temperature to 1.5-2C
above levels existing before
industrialisation took millions
out of poverty. Now, a reckoning.
Later this month, the world’s
oil and gas big wheels will trundle to
Expo City, Dubai in the United Arab
Emirates — which accounts for 21 per
cent and rising of global production of,
er, natural gas — to attend Cop28. King
Charles will deliver the keynote address,
an embarrassingly short time after
reading out a King’s Speech that
included parliament’s decision to shed
much of his nation’s green clothing.
America and most other industrialised
countries promised in Paris to sharply
curtail, or better still, eliminate the use of
fossil fuels; get ICE (internal combustion
engine) vehicles, which produce 29 per
cent of US greenhouse gas emissions, off
the roads; and increase reliance on solar
and wind power to generate electricity
for a nation already running short of
electric power.
Alas, each of those policy pillars
proved more ornament for politicians
than support for sound policy. President
Biden did his best to rid America of its oil
industry by denying permits for drilling,
and discouraging investment in the
sector. But US oil production has risen
by 40 per cent to a record level since
Paris, and the world’s big oil producers
plan to extract twice the amount of fossil
fuels by 2030 as would be consistent
with stopping further warming. Cop28’s
host, the UAE, is planning a 25 per cent
rise in oil production capacity by 2030.
A necessary adjunct to a less-oil policy
has been to encourage an alternative
means of transport. Enter electric
vehicles (EVs), along with a variety of
taxpayer subsidies to encourage people
to abandon their gas-guzzling vehicles,
and auto manufacturers to produce the
emissions-free vehicles. In the US, there
will be subsidies of $12 billion
(£10 billion) to get auto companies to
switch factories to the production of
EVs, still more to subsidise the
production of batteries. Consumers will
receive $7,500 for buying an EV made
largely of US materials.
There are three problems. First, EVs
rely on some of the most
environmentally damaging materials on,
or under, the earth. If the environmental
costs of mining and processing materials
such as cobalt and lithium, and the toxic
effect on groundwater from battery
disposal, are counted in — as serious
environmentalists now insist — EVs may
prove more damaging to the planet than
ICE vehicles.
Second, China dominates the
production of batteries and materials
needed to make them, as well as solar
equipment. Increased dependence on
that country is not exactly a strategic
goal of western democracies.
Third, consumers suffering from
range anxiety don’t want these vehicles,
at least not in large numbers. Dealers are
offering deep discounts of as much as
a third off the list price for EVs, which
linger on lots twice as long as
conventional vehicles. Ford, GM, Tesla
and Honda recently scaled back plans to
7
North America business, its most
important, and succeeded Sir Ivan
Menezes as chief executive before his
untimely death in June.
Diageo had reassured the market in
late September that everything was on
track. Either consumers in that part of
the world have abruptly cut their
spending or Diageo’s regional team has
dismally failed to manage expectations.
This is a big early test for Crew, a
former US military officer who has
worked at consumer brands such as
PepsiCo. “I would expect her to be
applying significant grip, very quickly,”
says someone who knows her.
Investors will want answers. The real
worry will be whether this foreshadows
a slump in America, whose drinkers
guzzle more of Diageo’s premium tipples
than anyone else.
The last-minute award goes to …
Don’t let me put you off. There’s still
time to nominate a colleague for our
2024 Non-Executive Director Awards,
organised by Peel Hunt. Go to
nedawards.co.uk before Friday.
oliver.shah@sunday-times.co.uk
invest in EV factories. It seems that early
adapters were not representative of the
broader car-buying population: the
typical owner of a taxpayer-subsidised
Tesla is a white male homeowner with
an annual household income over
$130,000.
Which brings us to the final policy
failure. EVs are powered by, no surprise,
electricity, and about 60 per cent of US
electricity is generated from fossil fuels,
making EVs partially reliant on those
greenhouse gas emitters — which is one
reason why green policy aims to
increase reliance on wind and solar to
generate electricity. But those sources
are proving more costly than originally
thought. Billions of dollars are being
written off as uneconomic offshore wind
projects are cancelled, and the Biden
administration is adding billions of
Policy made with
unwarranted
certainty and in a
panic can be costly
dollars of new tax breaks to the failing
solar industry’s tariff protection.
In addition, existing electric grids —
needed to carry power from wind and
solar sites to consumers — are not up to
the job. BloombergNEF experts estimate
that $160 billion will be spent by utilities
this year to “green” and fortify the
present grid, with billions more to come
to create a stable, reliable system with
sufficient capacity to meet consumers’
needs. Construction will require
overcoming environmentalists’ use of
the courts to prevent the building of the
20ft tall towers needed to carry the
wires, with some litigation consuming
more than a decade.
That is where the war on climate
change stands. Fossil fuel production is
rising rather than falling, EVs are not top
of consumers’ wish lists, the grid cannot
move power from some wind and solar
installations to consumers, battery
manufacture and disposal are damaging
to the environment, and the high price
of many green consumer products, at a
time of inflation-straitened finances, is
mitigating against their adoption.
Policy made with unwarranted
certainty and in a panic can be
expensive. At times, it’s best to take
Ronald Reagan’s advice: “Don’t just do
something, stand there.”
irwin@irwinstelzer.com
Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser
8 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

BUSINESS

Laith Al-Khalaf

Haves and have yachts

DAVID M. BENETT/
of what it paid for them. It was
Intrepid retail Patience key at FUNNY BUSINESS
GETTY IMAGES

Knight Frank that slapped

sail into choppy waters
Superyachts are meant to be a
source of pleasure, not pain.
Spare a thought, then, for the
banking dynasty scion Nat
Rothschild, and other wealthy
folk who fell foul of a boat
maker a decade ago.
Rothschild, along with the
property tycoon Robert
Tchenguiz, was a client of
Monaco Yachting &
Technologies, run by the
German businessman Peter
Landers. It fell behind on
building yachts, triggering
lawsuits. In 2015, the High
Court ruled that Landers
owed Rothschild’s
Swallowfalls firm €17 million
for Nato, a 73m (240ft) boat
duo’s top effort such charitable valuations on
CBI conference
High street luminaries
the properties two years ago.
Sources close to the estate An update on the CBI’s non-
gathered last week for an agent were keen to point out annual conference, now
2020, an international arrest evening of fizz and gossip to that the homes weren’t vacant dubbed the “general election
warrant was issued for him. celebrate the 12th anniversary when they were valued. countdown”.
Last year, Swallowfalls filed of the headhunter Clarity. Prufrock isn’t sure that just The event in Westminster
a petition for bankruptcy There was a warm embrace that can explain the huge on November 20 was missing
against him in the UK. The between the former decline in their value. a “political keynote” speaker
saga reaches a crescendo this Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe after the business secretary,
week with Landers due in
court in Monaco on charges of
and his successor, Simon
Roberts. Peter Williams, once
BESTSELLING BOOKS Kemi Badenoch, was said to
have turned down an invite.
forgery, fraud and fraudulent of Selfridges, particularly The CBI says a “senior cabinet
bankruptcy, according to the caught the eye in a lurid minister” will speak. Rather
1
The Diary of a CEO HB
Journal de Monaco. yellow suit. But it was the Steven Bartlett than the morning slot, as first
Ebury Edge (14,241)
He is not expected to show attendance of the White Elon Musk
billed, they will speak at the
up and is believed to be on the
run in Europe — so Rothschild
Company boss Mary Homer
and Cheryl Potter, the newest
2 Ashlee Vance
Profile Books (5,859)
end. That’s one way to ensure
delegates stay for the drinks
3
The Diary of a CEO PB
may never get his €17 million. addition to the board of Marks Steven Bartlett reception, at the unusually
But at least he took delivery of & Spencer, that was Ebury Edge (4,465) early time of 16:40.
the yacht, which featured in particularly noteworthy. The Going Infinite
4
Fund will have to TWITTER POLL
Michael Lewis
the film Tenet. Rothschild pair had only recently Allen Lane (4,254)
briefly put it on the market for returned from a trek to the The Coming Wave
$100 million but, alas, it is summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. 5 Mustafa Suleyman & Michael Bhaskar
The Bodley Head (2,987) stick or twist Yes No

with a helipad and spa pool.
Landers did not pay up. In
6So long Dominic Burke, former chief executive of the
55% 45%
apparently no longer for sale. Prufrock doffs its cap to them.
The Psychology of Money
“He loves it!” a source said. Nat Rothschild, with his wife Loretta Basey, is owed €17m
6 Morgan Housel
Harriman House (2,773)
Keep an eye on Wednesday’s
shareholder vote at the
JUST SAYING . . . Knight Frank When McKinsey Comes to Town European Opportunities

comes up empty 7
insurance company Jardine Lloyd Thompson, who Walt Bogdanich & Michael Forsythe Trust. The blackjack-playing
Vermilion (2,721)
announced last week that he would be stepping down as a Chip War American hedge fund
director of the troubled investment manager St James’s Place.
The company’s shares have been on the slide since the
It has been challenging to watch Prufrock suspects that there
were red faces inside the
8 Chris Miller
Simon & Schuster (2,402)
manager Boaz Weinstein is
pushing the fund to launch a
regulator pressured it to overhaul its fee structure. from the sidelines. I believe that ... a imposing, glass-sheathed
9
Start With Why
Simon Sinek bigger-than-expected
With the heat rising, Burke has chosen to leave his role after
just a year. The press release from St James’s Place
reorganisation will enable WeWork offices of the estate agency
Knight Frank last week.
Penguin (2,349)
Technofeudalism
buyback of shares. His Saba
Capital has stakes in about ten Northern supermarket
announcing the change attributed it to Burke’s commitments to emerge successfully Home Reit, the scandal- 10 Yanis Varoufakis
The Bodley Head (2,222) trusts. The vote could chain Booths is axing self-
elsewhere, including to Aptia, a pension administration plagued social housing determine just how successful service tills and returning to
business that he founded in June. But the geniuses at SJP seem Adam Neumann, ousted founder of the company, auctioned off 153 Bestseller List prepared by Nielsen using Weinstein’s campaign to manned checkouts. Should
data supplied by and copyright to Nielsen
to have sent the note out a day early, judging from the date on office space provider, reflects on its largely empty homes for BookScan, taken from the TCM for the
make money from the usually its rivals follow suit?
the release. Would you trust them with your money? filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last week £24.4 million, just 35 per cent four-week period April 30 - May 27, 2017 sleepy sector will be. @TimesBusiness

THE TIPSTER
LUCY TOBIN THE WEEK IN THE MARKETS THE ECONOMY
Consumer prices index current rate prev. month
FTSE 100 FTSE 100 DOLLAR

It’s worth
7,360.55
benchmark — by 10 per cent Unlike many rivals, PPHE USD > GBP 6.7% 6.7%
$1.2229
to £136. That compared with owns a big chunk — over 8,000
CPI including housing current rate prev. month
an average figure of £120 for 80 per cent — of its portfolio,
booking a trading over the first nine
months of PPHE’s year, and
and many of these hotels are
prime sites in big European
7,800 V 0.0151
12-month high: $1.3142
6.3% 6.3%

long stay at
low: $1.1149 Retails prices index current rate prev. month
was also well ahead of pre- cities. “Its property is worth 7,600
pandemic levels. considerably more than the EURO 8.9% 9.1%
Inflation is still taking a bite balance sheet suggests, and V 57.18 H: 8,047.10 EUR > GBP

this hotel
7,400 Average weekly earnings prev. month on last year

€1.1445
V 0.77% L: 6,864.13
out of the hotels sector, but we believe the value of the
not as voraciously, and PPHE assets is under-appreciated at
£661 V 0.5% U 6.9%
7,200
paid a confident interim the current share price,” said FTSE 250 V 0.0087 Unemployment current rate prev. month

17,853.09
2023 12-month high: €1.1773
It’s been a busy checkout dividend of 16p — up from Jack Cummings, an analyst at Source: Factset
low: €1.1126 1.44m 4.2% 4.2%
desk for PPHE Hotel Group only 3p a year earlier. The Berenberg bank.
YEN Manufacturing output on the year on last month
— not just at its properties, company is also nearing Less positive are PPHE’s RISERS FALLERS
which include the Park Plaza completion on a £300 million near-£700 million debt and a Lancashire Holdings: 654p, U 11.2% on Diageo: £28.50, V 10.74% on results YEN > USD
0.1% 0.1%
¥151.55
U U
high returns Marks & Spencer: Flutter Entertainment: £121.55,
brand, Arena hotels and the investment in new properties net debt to ebitda ratio of 246.4p, U 10.74% on result Digital 9: V 12.33% on forecast 4imprint Group: Retail sales on the year on last month
art-inspired chain art’otel, and sprucing up older ones, 5.6 per cent, though this is
but for investors. Its shares with openings including forecast to fall to 3.7 per cent V 130.75 H: 20,614.77
50.8p, U 9.96% on volatility Associated
British Foods: £23.30, U 9.7% on gains
£43.95, V 13.31% on weak demand
Ceres Power Holdings: 198.8p,
U 2.15
12-month high: ¥151.55
V 1.4% U 0.4%
low: ¥127.23
are down 19 per cent on this art’otels in London, Belgrade by 2025. “I think PPHE is a V 0.73% L: 16,866.23 Source: Factset V 13.57% as fall extends UK trade latest 3 mths prev. 3 mths latest 12 mths

time last year and a third and Rome. two-year play,” said Neil Shah OIL
balance (£bn)
-5.97 -13.10 -50.33
cheaper than they were five Half-year results in August of investment research firm DOLLARS/BARREL Gross domestic latest quarter prev. quarter annual change
years ago, now standing at
£10.40. While stock in some
industry rivals, such as
showed operating profits up
166 per cent to £45.2 million,
and PPHE reckoned on a
Edison Group. “It did very
well to survive the pandemic,
and now demand looks set to
DOW JONES
34,283.10
HANG SENG
17,203.26
FTSE EUROFIRST
1,755.62 $81.86
V $3.37
product

Budget deficit
U 0%
last month
U 0.2% U 0.6%
prev. month year to date
U 221.78 H: 35,679.13 V 460.86 H: 22,700.85 V 3.33 H: 1,758.95
InterContinentalHotels further £25 million in profits increase further, plus there U 0.65% L: 30,206.28 V 2.61% L: 14,597.31 V 0.19% L: 1,016.04
12-month high: $98.57
low: $71.84
(PSNB) in £bn
-14.3 -11.4 -81.7
Group, have stormed well from four new hotels opening are new openings on the
ahead of their pre-Covid over the coming months. horizon. The company NASDAQ SHANGHAI SENSEX GOLD
price, PPHE is still suffering. should see a rerating.” 13,798,11 3,038.97 64,904.68 DOLLARS/TROY OZ
Is it worth investors PPHE Hotel Group Backing PPHE involves U 319.83 H: 14,446.55
U 2.4% L: 10,207.47
U 8.17 H: 3,418.95 U 540.90 H: 67,927.23
$1,937.95 10-YEAR BOND YIELDS %
booking a stay? The firm’s betting that demand will stay U 0.27% L: 2,885.09 U 0.84% L: 57,084.91
V$54.57
most recent trading update, strong, energy prices won’t
for the three months to
£14
soar again, and that annual
S&P 500 CAC 40 ALL ORDS 12-month high: $2,085.40
low: $1,631.10
variation 12 months

September 30, showed property revaluations will

4,415.24 7,045.04 7,176.60 high low

U 57.00 H: 4,607.07 V 2.46 H: 7,581.26 U 1.50 H: 7,779.40 BITCOIN UK 4.332 U 0.039 4.760 2.900
positive trends: revenues rose 12 continue to drive up net asset DOLLARS
U 1.3% L: 3,647.42 V 0.03% L: 6,183.41 U 0.02% L: 6,964.10
9 per cent to £141 million and
higher occupancy, as well as
slightly higher prices, helped 10
values. It’s a punt, sure, but
PPHE has strong brands, a
strategic partnership with
NIKKEI
32,568.11
DAX
15,234.39
S&P TSX
19,600.30
$37,015
U2,246.30
US

JAPAN
4.623

0.857
U 0.104

V 0.059
5.022

0.916
3.262

0.190
lift revenue per available 2023 hotel giant Radisson, and U 618.22 H: 33,772.89 U 45.14 H: 16,528.97 V 224.55 H: 20,843.21 12-month high: $37,015.70
low: $15,508 GERMANY 2.719 U 0.071 3.027 1.735
room (RevPAR) — the industry Source: FactSet growing RevPAR. Buy. U 1.93% L: 25,661.89 U 0.30% L: 13,022.64 V 1.13% L: 18,692.06 Price at 12.15pm Saturday

TOP 200 COMPANIES

Market cap ranking PricePrice Change 52-week
Change 52-week Mkt Cap Market cap ranking PricePrice Change 52-week
Change 52-week Mkt Cap Market cap ranking PricePrice Change 52-week
Change 52-week Mkt Cap
Mkt Cap Market cap ranking PricePrice Change 52-week
Change 52-week Mkt Cap
Mkt Cap
Yield Yield Yield Yield
V on week
on week high high low low (£m) V on week
on week high high low low (£m) V
V on week
on week high high low low (£m)
(£m) V
V on week
on week high high low low (£m)
(£m)
104 Abrdn 165.8 –2.8 236.7 150.9 3107.7 126 Direct Line Insurance 171.3 +13.2 235.3 133.9 2246.4 80 Kingfisher 226.0 +3.5 291.5 201.2 4267.2 191 Savills 826.5 –9.0 1055.0 763.5 1193.4
48 Admiral 2550.0 +59.0 2550.0 1881.5 7810.8 171 Domino’s Pizza 343.8 –23.4 424.6 256.6 1386.1 156 Lancashire Holdings 654.0 +65.0 664.0 524.5 1595.8 63 Schroders 388.0 –5.1 506.8 361.4 6255.0
81 Airtel Africa 113.5 –4.8 133.7 103.7 4265.5 194 Dr Martens 118.8 –4.4 292.4 114.7 1161.1 76 Land Securities 599.8 –16.6 743.2 559.4 4467.6 43 Segro 774.0 –9.6 920.2 679.2 9501.6
18 Anglo American 2018.5 –189.5 3672.5 1970.0 26999.0 150 Drax 422.5 –15.9 708.5 401.5 1624.8 34 Legal & General 220.5 –2.2 265.8 205.8 13183.1 148 Serco 150.0 +3.2 172.6 136.9 1655.3
35 Antofagasta 1299.0 –58.5 1805.0 1297.0 12806.3 86 DS Smith 294.1 +4.5 368.5 263.7 4051.1 19 Lloyds Banking Group 41.8 –0.7 54.0 39.8 26535.1 47 Severn Trent 2635.0 –58.0 2975.0 2265.0 7880.9
192 Ascential 268.2 –6.0 281.0 188.3 1192.3 131 Dunelm 1047.0 +9.0 1275.0 939.5 2113.9 12 London Stock Exchange 8554.0 +260.0 8774.0 7104.0 46295.0 127 Shaftesbury Capital 114.0 –1.9 131.3 100.7 2226.6
190 Ashmore 168.4 –8.8 286.4 166.3 1200.3 105 EasyJet 394.1 +2.9 528.0 324.6 2987.3 138 Londonmetric Property 175.7 –4.1 207.0 156.4 1914.4 1 Shell 2629.5 –23.0 2772.5 2200.5 173487.4
22 Ashtead 4926.0 –32.0 5874.0 4444.0 21566.7 85 Endeavour 1651.0 –90.0 2184.0 1498.0 4063.1 155 LXI Reit 93.6 –1.9 126.4 82.8 1603.9 45 Smith & Nephew 989.0 +7.4 1314.5 896.2 8637.9
30 Associated British Foods 2330.0 +206.0 2330.0 1505.0 17829.1 163 Energean 848.0 –49.0 1529.0 808.0 1518.4 115 Man 216.7 –12.2 286.8 202.0 2605.4 68 Smiths 1633.0 +4.0 1797.5 1526.0 5675.3
179 Assura 44.2 –1.1 58.6 39.5 1312.3 67 Entain 925.6 +6.0 1587.5 884.4 5912.6 70 Marks & Spencer 246.4 +23.9 246.4 118.8 4860.8 135 Smithson Investment Trust 1231.0 +7.0 1485.0 1170.0 1982.8
145 Aston Martin Lagonda 205.4 –6.6 395.4 121.8 1691.8 20 Experian 2683.0 +34.0 3160.0 2390.0 24649.7 56 Melrose 515.0 +25.2 543.2 260.3 6899.7 52 Smurfit Kappa 2826.0 +28.0 3596.0 2554.0 7357.6
2 AstraZeneca 10090.0 –180.0 12294.0 10082.0 156386.4 185 Fever-Tree Drinks 1076.0 +5.0 1456.0 963.5 1255.5 71 M&G 203.6 +1.0 219.3 177.8 4807.6 118 Softcat 1288.0 –17.0 1534.0 1071.0 2570.3
64 Auto Trader 682.0 +56.8 682.0 515.6 6229.0 23 Flutter Entertainment 12155.0 –1710.0 16725.0 11200.0 21487.7 178 Mitchells & Butlers 225.0 +2.4 236.2 128.1 1344.9 102 Spectris 3291.0 +64.0 3841.0 2935.0 3351.5
38 Aviva 404.3 –3.0 462.4 369.2 11072.1 186 4imprint 4395.0 –675.0 5350.0 3900.0 1238.2 168 Mitie 104.8 +3.2 106.0 72.0 1400.5 60 Spirax-Sarco 8536.0 +60.0 12350.0 8058.0 6296.7
130 Babcock International 419.0 +14.4 419.0 269.0 2118.4 94 Frasers Group 835.0 +15.5 899.0 672.0 3782.1 58 Mondi 1382.5 +29.0 1601.0 1180.0 6712.8 29 SSE 1680.0 –11.0 1900.0 1508.0 18359.2
16 BAE 1103.5 +21.5 1117.5 714.0 33538.6 93 Fresnillo 516.6 –42.4 968.0 509.2 3806.8 165 Moneysupermarket 271.6 +2.4 280.4 185.5 1458.1 160 SSP 195.8 +2.1 281.2 179.5 1559.6
143 Balfour Beatty 315.8 –4.2 393.4 295.4 1735.9 98 Games Workshop 10500.0 +70.0 11700.0 7065.0 3456.0 14 National Grid 984.4 –12.4 1162.0 932.0 36306.4 96 St James’s Place 650.2 –18.6 1304.5 610.8 3567.0
152 Bank of Georgia 3535.0 +90.0 3730.0 2370.0 1619.8 172 Genus 2094.0 –190.0 3272.0 2008.0 1382.7 31 NatWest 197.1 +10.1 309.9 176.1 17385.2 32 Stand Chartered 621.8 +2.6 790.8 562.8 16571.3
25 Barclays 135.6 –0.8 189.7 129.2 20437.6 11 Glencore 427.1 –12.5 578.1 411.5 52469.2 133 Network International 392.2 +1.6 397.0 238.8 2089.4 119 Tate & Lyle 636.0 –4.0 831.5 612.0 2554.6
77 Barratt Developments 444.1 +1.7 506.4 392.3 4328.1 153 Grafton 780.0 –7.3 988.7 751.0 1609.3 44 Next 7382.0 +52.0 7424.0 5508.0 9415.3 84 Taylor Wimpey 117.1 +2.8 128.2 99.6 4136.5
92 Beazley 569.5 +30.5 687.5 503.0 3829.9 140 Grainger 249.6 –7.4 271.8 217.6 1850.9 162 Ninety One 168.0 –0.1 220.0 156.8 1528.3 164 TBC Bank Group 2730.0 –40.0 2995.0 2060.0 1512.2
112 Bellway 2220.0 +16.0 2500.0 1861.0 2651.7 116 Greggs 2538.0 +26.0 2904.0 2196.0 2595.2 82 Ocado 514.6 –27.6 976.4 343.4 4261.6 182 Telecom Plus 1592.0 –54.0 2500.0 1448.0 1265.8
75 Berkeley 4242.0 +15.0 4504.0 3696.0 4500.7 8 GSK 1398.4 +2.8 1535.8 1316.0 57264.9 176 Onesavings Bank 347.2 –5.8 568.5 280.8 1367.1 27 Tesco 277.7 +1.9 284.6 222.3 19696.3
134 Big Yellow Group 1034.0 –24.0 1290.0 910.0 2028.7 17 Haleon 325.0 +4.6 353.5 277.5 30007.8 200 Oxford Instruments 1938.0 +26.0 2855.0 1712.0 1121.4 26 3i Group 2026.0 +33.0 2109.0 1237.0 19719.3
69 B&M European 523.8 –14.2 590.6 357.2 5252.4 53 Halma 1931.5 +35.5 2498.0 1810.5 7332.9 175 PageGroup 416.6 +10.0 491.6 365.0 1369.0 109 3i Infrastructure 305.0 –12.0 346.0 276.7 2813.2
177 Tp Icap 174.7 +6.3 199.5 141.0 1365.1
199 Bodycote 587.0 –6.0 715.0 554.5 1123.8 189 Hammerson 24.5 –0.2 30.5 20.9 1223.7 57 Pearson 969.6 +16.6 995.2 754.0 6815.6
170 Trainline 291.0 +10.8 340.7 216.4 1387.3
6 BP 477.9 –12.0 567.6 450.0 81265.0 100 Hargreaves Lansdown 713.4 –37.2 949.6 690.4 3383.8 139 Pennon 724.0 –28.5 1000.0 551.0 1892.0
159 Travis Perkins 738.6 –38.0 1082.5 715.8 1569.6
158 Bridgepoint 198.1 +3.7 256.0 166.9 1581.3 157 Hays 100.4 –0.3 130.7 92.6 1593.2 95 Persimmon 1149.0 +33.5 1531.0 960.4 3670.1
110 Tritax Big Box Reit 145.7 –6.1 168.3 123.6 2773.8
10 British American Tobacco 2477.0 –49.5 3430.5 2403.0 55395.7 91 Hikma Pharmaceuticals 1752.5 –52.0 2205.0 1334.5 3874.4 147 Petershill Partners 147.4 –5.0 201.5 142.0 1671.1
125 Tui 444.0 –2.4 704.4 369.6 2253.0
107 British Land 313.7 –12.0 471.4 291.8 2908.8 169 Hill & Smith 1734.0 +32.0 1810.0 1092.0 1390.2 167 Pets at Home 302.0 +1.6 397.6 263.4 1438.8
4 Unilever 3949.0 +94.5 4443.5 3821.0 98741.4
132 Britvic 840.0 –20.0 936.0 751.0 2106.8 99 Hiscox 984.0 +20.5 1193.0 938.0 3415.6 72 Phoenix 464.2 –8.4 647.0 441.6 4649.1
83 Unite 954.0 +2.0 1053.0 847.0 4157.4
36 BT 121.5 –2.7 160.4 110.7 12082.1 97 Howden Joinery 645.6 +5.0 759.2 560.4 3542.2 184 Playtech 408.0 –16.4 634.5 370.0 1261.9
54 United Utilities 1068.5 –12.0 1102.5 900.8 7286.0
40 Bunzl 2921.0 +3.0 3225.0 2687.0 9873.0 3 HSBC 599.2 –3.0 659.0 470.2 116515.5 195 Plus500 1439.0 +19.0 1951.0 1286.0 1150.5
197 Vesuvius 416.8 –2.0 454.2 372.4 1130.4
66 Burberry 1677.5 –43.0 2641.0 1677.5 6014.6 124 IDS 240.0 –15.0 272.4 196.1 2294.9 181 Primary Health Properties 94.9 –4.4 120.1 85.5 1269.0
180 Victrex 1501.0 +16.0 1913.0 1326.0 1306.2
188 Bytes Technology 512.0 +5.0 541.5 360.6 1226.2 117 IG Group 664.0 +1.0 836.5 611.0 2588.3 21 Prudential 882.4 –17.0 1371.5 829.6 24294.4
129 Virgin Money 163.6 +4.8 197.9 138.1 2190.2
141 Caledonia Investments 3335.0 +60.0 4065.0 3110.0 1823.0 89 IMI 1521.0 +19.0 1680.0 1287.0 3967.7 136 QinetiQ 341.4 –1.0 379.8 297.2 1975.9
114 Vistry 759.0 +14.5 946.0 596.0 2624.2
173 Carnival 902.6 –11.2 1356.5 566.2 1381.0 33 Imperial Brands 1754.5 –48.0 2185.0 1580.0 15666.6 187 Quilter 88.0 –0.9 107.2 71.3 1235.6
24 Vodafone 76.4 –2.3 105.8 70.1 20681.6
46 Centrica 152.1 –1.2 172.5 82.3 8308.1 111 Inchcape 651.0 –41.0 941.0 645.0 2688.7 146 Rathbone 1548.0 –26.0 2220.0 1458.0 1672.2
174 Watches Of Switzerland 574.5 +43.0 1037.0 486.0 1376.3
193 Close Brothers 783.0 –25.0 1131.0 734.0 1178.2 142 Indivior 1293.0 –318.0 1998.0 1293.0 1783.6 13 Reckitt Benckiser 5492.0 +80.0 6570.0 5412.0 39382.4 73 Weir 1787.0 +36.5 2021.0 1644.5 4639.3
198 Coats 70.6 –0.2 80.8 63.7 1128.1 41 Informa 711.8 –6.8 776.0 552.6 9807.8 149 Redrow 498.4 –13.1 545.0 427.4 1648.6 151 WH Smith 1240.0 +34.0 1714.0 1160.0 1623.3
49 Coca Cola HBC 2085.0 –30.0 2565.0 1910.0 7679.4 42 InterContinental Hotels 5858.0 +112.0 6298.0 4675.0 9651.2 9 Relx 2955.0 +120.0 2955.0 2235.0 55802.1 62 Whitbread 3264.0 +13.0 3678.0 2467.0 6258.4
15 Compass 2082.0 +30.0 2235.0 1788.5 35625.3 87 Intermediate Capital 1387.0 –30.5 1511.5 1104.0 4030.8 128 Renishaw 3048.0 –6.0 4232.0 2950.0 2218.6 144 Wizz Air 1655.0 –171.5 3158.0 1546.5 1710.2
106 Computacenter 2592.0 –28.0 2662.0 1880.0 2958.5 51 International Airlines 151.6 +1.1 173.6 123.8 7449.4 37 Rentokil 446.5 +4.3 655.2 406.4 11263.1 50 WPP 701.2 –42.8 1051.5 681.2 7536.8
79 Convatec 208.2 –3.4 248.6 196.2 4267.7 122 International Public Partnerships 124.8 –0.6 158.8 115.4 2385.2 183 Rhi Magnesita 2680.0 –12.0 3060.0 2050.0 1262.7
137 Cranswick 3592.0 –62.0 3654.0 2906.0 1935.9 65 Intertek 3807.0 –67.0 4528.0 3755.0 6144.2 90 Rightmove 481.7 +11.7 615.4 462.9 3885.0
61 Croda 4508.0 –50.0 7218.0 4076.0 6294.8 103 Investec 496.2 +11.7 546.4 406.1 3201.3 5 Rio Tinto 5259.0 –71.0 6377.0 4559.0 85323.4
120 Darktrace 349.4 +0.3 420.0 210.2 2446.6 121 ITV 59.7 –7.1 90.1 59.7 2420.1 28 Rolls-Royce 232.0 +11.1 232.4 84.8 19526.7
74 DCC 4603.0 –50.0 5024.0 4030.0 4546.4 166 IWG 144.0 +2.8 197.7 127.4 1449.6 113 Rotork 306.4 +4.8 342.2 279.4 2637.8
78 Dechra Pharmaceuticals 3782.0 –4.0 3820.0 2544.0 4307.4 55 JD Sports 133.9 +2.6 186.6 113.2 6942.8 101 RS Group 709.6 +17.0 1035.0 660.4 3359.7
123 Derwent London 2052.0 –4.0 2726.0 1779.0 2304.2 108 Johnson Matthey 1540.0 –25.5 2373.0 1446.5 2825.2 154 Safestore 737.0 –18.0 1074.0 653.0 1606.9 52-week highs and lows are intra-day figures, not end of day.
7 Diageo 2850.0 –343.0 3847.0 2850.0 63924.2 196 Jtc 694.5 –22.0 820.0 627.5 1149.6 39 Sage 994.0 +24.0 1039.0 732.2 10207.7 Excludes exchange-traded funds. nc = no change. — = not applicable.
88 Diploma 2986.0 +18.0 3308.0 2584.0 4002.3 161 Kainos 1232.0 +52.0 1740.0 1087.0 1541.7 59 Sainsbury’s 267.0 –7.5 289.6 210.9 6322.9 Source: Morningstar
MONEY
November 12, 2023

GRANNY I DRESSED UP
DAY CARE: AS A DUTCH
‘I’M 55 AND GIRL TO SELL
BRINGING UP EDAM
ANOTHER 4 CAROLINE
CHILDREN’ QUENTIN
PAGE 10 PAGE 14
Follow us on Twitter @TimesMoney

Unregulated and often unqualified

— would you trust a financial coach?
A
s money worries mount up,
more people are seeking pro-
fessional help with their
finances — but they may not
realise the dangers of taking
cut-price advice.
Those looking for gui-
dance may turn to one of
many so-called financial
coaches, but will find that
they offer “guidance” rather than advice.
These words might sound like one and the
same thing, but there’s a crucial differ-
ence: one is regulated and one is not.
A financial coach cannot advise you on
exactly what to do with your money, or
recommend specific products, instead
they show you various options for what
you could do. For example, they could tell
you about tax-free saving in an Isa
whereas a qualified financial adviser
could pick one for you that paid the best
rate.
Financial coaches have become wide-
spread — a search on social media sites
such as TikTok is likely to leave you inun-
dated with influencers offering financial
tips. One financial coach offered to pray
for clients to have a “financial break-
through”, others told followers that
investing would let them “get rich quick”.
Financial advisers have to be registered
with the Financial Conduct Authority, the
City regulator, but there are no regula-
tions governing financial coaches — any-
body can set themselves up as one.
This lack of regulation could mean that
thousands of customers are getting poor
information, experts say.
“You can train to be a financial coach in
the same way you can train to be a life
coach. It’s a Wild West where you have
regulated advisers alongside unqualified
coaches telling people about products
that most advisers would not touch with a
barge pole,” said Ian Millward of the regu-
lated advice firm Candid Financial Advice.
“But financial advice can be prohibi-
tively expensive, so financial coaching is
potentially a really valuable service to give
people guidance and offer a sounding
board. However, like anything, there are
some massive pitfalls if people who are
unregulated and unqualified provide
financial information.”
Tom McPhail from the financial con-
sultancy the Lang Cat said: “There are
some really good regulated firms offering
financial coaching and guidance. The
problem is that not all firms are regulated.
Some have only been operating for five
minutes and don’t know what they are
talking about.”
One financial coach, who is an expert
in foreign currency trading, charges cli-
ents £9,800 a year to learn his techniques.
He has no formal qualifications in teach-
ing or investing, but told Money that he
had spent “many years in an institutional
trading environment”, and was studying
to take A-level maths. He said that finan-
cial coaches offer a wider range of options
than more traditional advisers. “We sit cli-
Shaheen-Zaffar learnt about budgeting
from a financial coach. She started comb-
ing through her subscriptions and cancel-
‘MY COACH OPENED THE DOOR
ling the services she no longer used. “Lots TO A RETURN OF 19 PER CENT’
of people struggle with money, whether
More people are seeking cheaper it’s impulsive spending or getting to 50
and not having a pension,” she said.
Jessica Lorimer
bought her husband,
invested about
£14,500 in wine
alternatives to advisers, but experts warn Owen, online financial
literacy classes as a
through a platform
called Oeno, and says
that they may be entering a new Wild West, FINDING A RELIABLE COACH wedding present last her portfolio is up
A number of regulated firms offer finan- year. “We learnt how about 4.5 per cent.
reports Lily Russell-Jones cial coaching services along with full-
blown advice. Many ensure that their
to work out our net
worth, how to budget
She has invested
£4,400 in the
coaches have undergone training or have and invest in different cryptocurrencies
formal qualifications. areas. It was amazing,” bitcoin and ethereum
The investment platform Bestinvest Lorimer, 34, said. through the platform
offers a free 45-minute session with a After their six Zoom Kraken, and said her
financial coach. All its coaches are quali- sessions of 60 to 90 stake has grown
fied financial advisers, it said. Alice Haine minutes each, 19 per cent.
from Bestinvest said: “There are qualifica- Lorimer decided to Lorimer would have
tions that coaches can get which are manage her £38,000 been unlikely to hear
accredited by industry bodies so, as a pension pot without about unregulated
minimum, you would want your coach to a financial adviser products such as
have one of these.” and also started cryptocurrency from
Customers who use Octopus Money’s putting money into a regulated financial
digital advice service pay a fee of 0.75 per alternative adviser.
cent a year and get free coaching sessions. investments such as Millward said:
It then costs £299 for a personalised finan- cryptocurrencies and “Most advisers will
cial plan. Its coaches complete an eight to wine. recommend
twelve-week course accredited by the “I didn’t know it was regulated products
London Institute of Banking & Finance. an option before. such as Isas, Sipps
The investment platform Hargreaves When I learnt you and investments in
Lansdown is trying out a coaching ser- could invest in stocks, shares and
vice. The wealth manager Charles Stanley tangible assets like bonds. A good
offers customers a free 15-minute coach- watches, wine, art and financial coach would
ing session and one-hour sessions for property, that was be likely to talk to you
£150. really interesting to about the same types
“There is a real danger that if a me so I started of products. If
coach steers somebody wrong that looking at higher- someone starts telling
can have a big impact on their risk things,” you about
finances. That is one of the Lorimer unregulated assets
reasons we use qualified said. this is normally a red
advisers,” Lisa Caplan She flag.”
from the firm said.
ents down, ask about their risk appetite,
what kind of yield return they need. We
THE ADVICE GAP
advise them in a broad way and educate Part of the problem is that millions of peo-
them on the current climate,” he said. ple are falling through the so-called advice
“We are a bit more nimble and smart gap. Most financial advisers only take on
than the cookie-cutter advice you would wealthy clients — some insist that they
get from an independent financial have at least £250,000.
adviser. They play to the bland and to the Holly Mackay from the financial educa-
safe. You can’t rely on that.” tion site Boring Money said: “There is a
If you are misadvised by a regulated clear need for a solution like coaching and
adviser you can complain to the Financial digital advice, but the industry is new and
Ombudsman Service, which can award still evolving. Some bigger brands do
compensation. This is not normally the really rigorous training, but you also have
case with financial coaches. individuals who do coaching and there is
The FCA has promised a review into the a vast range of quality out there.”
boundary between financial advice and Yasmin Shaheen-Zaffar, 52, has ADHD
guidance. At the moment personalised and dyslexia and struggled to manage her
recommendations involving specific money before getting help from a finan-
products, such as a fund to invest in, cial coach. In 2021 she signed up for
counts as advice, whereas general gui- coaching after bailiffs came to her home
dance suggesting that you invest in funds to demand she pay a congestion charge
is not counted as advice. fine that had grown to £489.
“The difficult thing is making sure that “Trying to navigate the congestion
firms can give good guidance without charge website was really difficult
opening the door to bad actors who use it because of my dyslexia. I tried to pay and
as a licence to flog inappropriate prod- sent a letter. I felt terrible that I’d been
ucts,” McPhail said. careless by not paying on time,” she said.

Johanna Noble Money Editor

King Charles didn’t mention
pensions in his speech, so I will

I
f a pension were an athlete
it would not be doing the
100m sprint or skiing
down the French Alps.
Instead the race it would
be most likely to take part in
is the marathon. Slow and
steady with plenty of
endurance before finally
reaping the reward.
Saving for retirement is a
race you need to run for
decades to get a decent
result. Sadly, it looks as
though it’s the same when it
comes to pension reform.
Pension simplification —
which included allowing
savers more options for
accessing their pension —
began in 2006 but was only a
fraction of what was needed
to plug the retirement savings
gap.
Auto-enrolment,
introduced in 2012, got
millions of employees saving
into a company pension
scheme. The minimum
contribution to a worker’s
pension is now 8 per cent of
earnings, of which employers
must pay at least 3 per cent.
Yet although more people
are saving for their
retirement, it is not enough.
Someone over 50 now is
predicted to have an average
pension pot of £78,623 when
they reach 66, according to
the pension company
PensionBee.
But the Pensions and
Lifetime Savings Association,
an industry body, suggests
that you need a pension pot
of £248,000 to buy an
annuity that would give you
enough income on top of the
full state pension for a
moderate standard of living
in retirement.
The pension industry has
If you would like the free
weekly Money email bulletin,
visit thesundaytimes.co.uk/
moneybulletin. The bulletin
is exclusive to digital
subscribers.
been trying to address these
issues with more changes.
In July the chancellor,
Jeremy Hunt, announced the
Mansion House reforms,
which included a voluntary
pledge by nine of the biggest
defined-contribution pension
providers (the type of scheme
most employees are now
enrolled in, where what you
get is based on what you pay
in), including Aviva, Legal &
General and Phoenix, to
invest at least 5 per cent of
the assets in their default
pension funds in unlisted UK
firms by 2030. These higher-
risk investments should offer
a higher chance of growth,
and Hunt claimed that
average earners would be
more than £1,000 a year
better off in retirement as a
result of these reforms.
It was highly anticipated
that pensions would be
included in the King’s
Speech, which outlines the
government’s priorities for
the year ahead — but the
word was not mentioned.
I don’t necessarily agree
that the Mansion House
reforms will be able to deliver
on the chancellor’s promises
— the £1,000-a-year figure felt
plucked out of thin air when
it was bandied about in July,
and putting workers’ lifetime
savings into illiquid, high-risk
investments rings a lot of
alarm bells.
However, while driverless
cars and a phased ban on
smoking, which were
included in the King’s
Speech, make better
headlines and get the
government in the news, it is
concerning that retirement
planning, which affects all of
us, didn’t make the cut.
There is an onus on savers
to save more and for longer.
But for the pension dream to
be attainable, we need an
urgent reform of our pension
system. If not, the next
generations of pensioners
face a bleak future.
@JohannaMNoble
10 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

MONEY

‘I’m 55 and bringing

after the children over half-term and
Prunella will stay overnight once a
fortnight.
“We are doing a lot of childcare but I
don’t see any alternative, and we like

up another four
having them,” she said. “I think you have
to support your children in every way
possible — if you can, then you should.”

PENSION SQUEEZE

children’: welcome
Some grandparents may choose to retire
early to spend more time with their
grandchildren. Some 14 per cent of
grandmothers and 5 per cent of grand-
fathers ended their careers early, accord-

to granny daycare
ing to research by the insurer Royal Lon-
don, but this could leave them with less
money for later life because they are
reducing their pension contributions.
A 55-year-old earning £40,000 a year
with a £100,000 pension pot could
expect their pot to grow to £244,700 by
the time they hit state pension age (which
will have increased to 67 by then), assum-
ing total monthly contributions of 10 per
cent, 2.5 per cent annual wage growth
Grandparents are having to juggle their own jobs with and investment growth of 5 per cent.
But if they halved the amount of hours

I
raising the next generation, writes Lucy Alderson
f there was a prize for supergran of
the year, Carla Bertans would be a
strong contender. The 55-year-old
from Milton Keynes spends three
days a week looking after her four
young grandchildren — and juggles
two jobs as well.
Between 7.30am and 5.30pm
every Monday, Tuesday and
Wednesday, she will be changing
nappies, doing the school run, making
lunches, playing with the children and
dealing with toddler tantrums.
Bertans, who works for a finance firm
and does shifts at a pub, has two daugh-
ters who live nearby, Hayley and Tayla.
Hayley, 31, is a neonatal nurse and has
two children, Inessa, three, and Brianna,
nine months. Tayla, 28, is a primary
school teacher and has two children,
Luke, four, and Miley, nine months.
“I have a very good bond with all four
of my grandchildren,” Bertans said. “But
sometimes I get tired, I’m not 20 any
more — I’m 55, and bringing another four
children up is difficult sometimes.”
But without their mother, Hayley and
Tayla wouldn’t have been able to work
because of the crippling cost of childcare.
The nursery nearby charges £11.48 an
hour for each child.
“I think it’s appalling that parents have
to pay so much to put their children in
nursery,” Bertans said. “I don’t know
how families without grandparents
cope. I enjoy having the children. But it
shouldn’t be expected of me — and it’s not
age of two typically costs more because
there are more teachers per child.
You can get extra help from the
government once your child turns three.
All children aged three to four years old
are entitled to 15 hours of free childcare a
week. This increases to 30 free hours a
week if both parents are in work or on
shared paternity or maternity leave, and
each earn less than £100,000 after pen-
sion contributions and other deductions.
This scheme is being slowly expanded
so that children get the 30 free hours
from nine months, with two-year-olds
getting 15 free hours from April 2024,
nine-month-olds getting 15 hours from
September 2024 and all children aged
nine months and over getting 30 hours
from September 2025.
But the help only goes so far. The free
hours are only available during term time
for 38 weeks of the year, and you may
have to pay extra for meals, nappies and
trips. It means that many families are
still struggling to afford the childcare
they need.
There is also a separate tax-free child-
care scheme for working parents. For
every £8 you pay into the account, the
government will add an extra £2 to pay
for approved childcare, including child-
minders, nurseries and nannies or before
and after school clubs.
You can get up to £500 every three
months (up to £2,000 a year) for each
child, which goes up to £1,000 every
three months (up to £4,000 a year) if
your child is disabled. This is available
until your child turns 11 (or 16 if your child
is disabled). You are not eligible if you
earn more than £100,000 after pension
contributions and other deductions.
But even with the help, many parents
are still left to foot childcare bills worth
Prunella, Poppy
and Mason with
their gran Pamela
Williamson.
Above, Carla
Bertans with
Inessa and
Brianna
hundreds of pounds a month. With such
high fees, many are left with no choice
but to drop out of work. This particularly
affects women, who are often left to bear
the brunt of childcare responsibilities.
According to the careers website Total-
jobs and the Fawcett Society, a women’s
charity, one in ten (nearly 250,000)
working mothers have given up their job
to care for children.
GRANNIES AS NANNIES
It often falls on grandparents to step in.
More than half of grandparents are
looking after grandchildren during the
working week, standing in for 22 hours
and saving families about £13,000 a year
on average, according to SunLife, an
over-50s insurance specialist.
In total grandparents provide £96 bil-
lion a year in free childcare.
Younger grandparents are taking up
the most slack but even grandparents in
their seventies are lending a hand. Some
71 per cent of grandparents aged between
adds up. On average grandparents are
spending £45.96 a week on grand-
children aged under one, which goes
up to £113.19 for those aged between one
and three.
“Unfortunately it seems inevitable that
grandparents will continue to provide
support because for many there is simply
no other option,” said Mark Screeton
from SunLife.
Pamela Williamson, 75, from Biggin
Hill in Kent, spends about £60 a month
on treats and trips out for her three
grandchildren, Poppy, 11, Mason, eight,
and Prunella, three. Before Prunella
turned three and got 30 hours of free
childcare a week, Williamson and her
husband, Peter, 78, used to contribute
half the cost of Prunella’s £176 a month
nursery fees.
Williamson does the morning school
run every day, and says that grandpar-
ents account for about 40 per cent of the
adults dropping off the children at
school. The grandparents often look
they worked to help out with childcare,
their pot would only grow to £212,400 —
about £32,000 less. If they stopped work-
ing altogether, they would miss out on
about £65,000.
“This is an age and stage of life when
they would normally be paying the most
into their pension,” Clare Moffat from
Royal London said. “This can leave them
with significantly lower retirement sav-
ings. This particularly affects women,
who are more likely to take early retire-
ment to care for loved ones than men.”
CREDIT FOR CARE
If you care for a child or grandchild you
can apply for childcare credits, which
can boost your state pension if you don’t
get the full amount because you haven’t
made enough national insurance contri-
butions. You need 35 years of contribu-
tions to get the full state pension, which is
£203.85 a week.
You need to be under the state pension
age (66 years old) and care for grandchil-
dren under 12 to qualify. You can back-
date a claim to April 2011, but you must
have been under state pension age while
providing the childcare to be eligible.
To get the credit the parents must be
registered for child benefit, even if they
are not eligible for it. The parent who is
registered for this benefit must sign a
form agreeing to pass the national insur-
ance credits over to you.
You don’t have to be a grandparent to
claim these credits. Other family mem-
bers, such as siblings (if they are over 16),
aunts and uncles, can too.

my daughters’ faults either.” 40 and 50 help out with childcare, then
about 56 per cent of those aged between
50 and 60, some 52 per cent of those aged
THE RISING COST 60 to 70, and 37 per cent of the 70 to
Nurseries charge £47.59 a day on average, 80-year-olds.
according to the Office for National Statis- It’s not only free labour that grandpar-
tics, up from £44.26 in 2022. A nursery ents are providing — the extra cost of
place for babies and children below the essentials like nappies, food and toys also
£96bn
The annual value of the childcare
provided by grandparents
Many grandparents have no idea that
the scheme exists. Almost two thirds of
people aged over 50 don’t know that they
can apply for childcare credits, according
to a survey of 4,000 adults by Royal Lon-
don. Fill out the CA9176 form on gov.uk,
print it and post it to HM Revenue & Cus-
toms. The address is listed on the form.

The latest investment

trend: luxury student digs
Ali Hussain
Property developers have
turned to luxury student
accommodation as university-
goers no longer content to live
in cramped and grotty digs
seek gym access and parking.
The promised returns are
high. But should investors
wade in or steer clear?
Knight Knox, a Manchester-
based developer is offering
“assured” returns of up to
8 per cent from purpose-built
student accommodation. It
has sites near universities that
plan to have parking and
gyms. One has a cinema room.
Knight Knox is one of many
property developers offering
buy-to-let investment in
student accommodation as
private landlords leave the
sector in droves because of
tougher regulations and more
demanding student tenants.
Listings for student housing
by private landlords have
fallen 45 per cent since 2019,
said the estate agency
Hamptons. In Medway, Kent,
they are down 85 per cent,
and in Sheffield, Dundee and
Salford they’re down more
than 70 per cent.
This is despite huge and
growing demand for student
accommodation, particularly
from a higher number of
overseas applicants who are
willing to pay much more than
their domestic counterparts.
There were 2.18 million
domestic students in the
2021-22 academic year, up
15 per cent over five years,
according to the Higher
Education Statistics Agency.
Over the same period the
number of non-EU students —
most overseas applicants
come from outside Europe —
increased 79 per cent to nearly
560,000. The number of
students from the EU fell
13 per cent to about 120,000.
In 2022 there were a record
767,000 applicants through
the Universities and Colleges
Admissions Service (Ucas).
Ucas predicts there will be a
million by 2030.
StuRents, a student
accommodation analyst, said How to invest
there was already a lack of Hamptons said more
supply, helping to push up developers are offering
rents about 10 per cent over a investments in student
year. It estimates a shortfall of housing — particularly in the
490,000 beds by 2026. north of England, where
Universities are building more property prices are lower so
housing, as are developers, the yield tends to be higher.
but there are significant risks If you google “investing in
to investing in them. student accommodation”
Knight Knox is the first
How demand is changing sponsored ranking. It sells
With students now used to student apartments from
taking on debt to pay fees, it about £80,000, offering
seems they have become “assured” returns of 7-8 per
reluctant to accept lower cent a year after costs over
standards of accommodation. three to ten years. The
Over the past decade there developments being built in
has been renewed interest in Sheffield, Huddersfield, Stoke-
the “quality and impact of the on-Trent and Salford will have
accommodation experience”, amenities such as private
according to a survey of gyms, coffee shops, parking,
20,000 students by the estate concierges and study areas. All
agency Knight Frank and are within walking distance of
Ucas. The average annual cost the university campus.
of private purpose-built Investment in the
student flats is £7,865, developments is not
according to Knight Frank and regulated, and there is no
Ucas. This compares with protection from the Financial
£6,160 for university-run Services Compensation
housing and £6,860 for private Scheme if the firm holding
house shares. your money goes bust. The
scheme protects up to
Why are landlords £85,000 if a regulated
leaving the sector? organisation you invest with
Since 2018 landlords need goes under. You may also
licences to let property where struggle to sell your
five or more people from at investment since it cannot be
least two different households traded like shares.
live. Houses in multiple The Knight Knox website
occupation (HMO) licences states: “Guarantees and
cost about £1,000 every five protections when investing in
years. Before 2018 they were property can come in the form
only needed for properties of of things like rental guarantees
three storeys or more. All for a set number of years or
rooms now have to meet build warranties to name a
minimum size requirements. few.” Knight Knox was
approached for comment.
Huddersfield University, where new flats are being built
Another option is to buy
property. Places where
property prices are higher
tend to offer a lower return, or
yield on your investment. The
lowest yields are in areas such
as Cambridge where the
average rent is £1,760 a month
but the average property is
£513,040, according to
Hamptons, giving a 4.1 per
cent annual yield before costs.
In Nottingham the average
monthly rent is £1,180 but the
average property price is
£195,630, meaning a 7.2 per
cent yield.
Buying properties directly
has its own risks.
Aneisha Beveridge from
Hamptons said: “In some
cases what can look like a very
promising gross yield on
paper for these types of
properties can quickly turn
into an average net yield or
profit after energy bills,
maintenance, finance costs
and taxes.”
Emma Wall from the
investment platform
Hargreaves Lansdown said:
“With direct property
investment there is little or no
diversification, and they aren’t
easily bought and sold. It is
also one of the least tax-
efficient ways to invest.”
Another way is buying
shares in established student
accommodation firms such as
Unite, a real estate investment
trust (REIT). These are
investment companies that
are listed on the stock market,
making them easier to trade.
Unite is a FTSE 100 company
with a portfolio of 157
properties across 23 cities, and
has been around since 1991. Its
share price is up about 9 per
cent over five years (compared
with 4.3 per cent for the FTSE
100), with a dividend yield of
3.62 per cent.
Another REIT is Empiric
Student Property, a FTSE
250 company that has been
around since 2014 and has
about 80 properties. Its share
price is down about 6.5 per
cent over five years (compared
with 6.8 per cent for the FTSE
250) and it yields 3.9 per cent.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 11

MONEY

Ian Cowie Personal Account

India’s economy is growing far more
strongly than Britain’s. Happy Diwali!

R
emembrance Sunday and
the start of Diwali, the Hindu
festival of light, coincide
today, and will be marked by
millions of people of many
faiths in Britain and India.
Both events remind us about
the possibility of peaceful
coexistence despite all the
violence elsewhere.
India has overtaken Britain as the
world’s fifth biggest economy, according
to the International Monetary Fund.
More importantly for investors, the Bom-
bay Stock Exchange (BSE) has beaten
London’s FTSE 100 index over the past
decade, five-year and one-year periods.
Share prices on the BSE soared 233 per
cent, 85 per cent and 6.2 per cent respec-
tively, while the FTSE 100 followed far
behind with 59 per cent, 5 per cent and
cent discount to their net asset value
(NAV) compared with JII’s, which are
wealth manager Evelyn Partners, said:
“Unlike China, which has an ageing popu- Pandemic
lockdowns
priced 19 per cent below the NAV. lation and a shrinking workforce, India
Neither investment trust pays a divi- has a positive demographic profile.
dend, but both may benefit from rising “The average age in India is 28.7 years,
tensions between America and China.
Multinational companies have reduced
and almost 35 per cent of the population
is under 20, which should help drive sent WeWork
WeBroke
their reliance on hostile regimes since growth for decades.”
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine underlined Many investors already have substan-
important differences between doing tial exposure to the subcontinent
business in dictatorships and democra- through shares listed in London or
cies. elsewhere in Europe because the under-
India is the world’s biggest democracy lying businesses are global. For example, What can investors learn from the
where human and property rights are the consumer goods giant Unilever collapse of WeWork, the global office-
protected by an independent judiciary. (ULVR), the world’s biggest food busi- sharing giant that filed for bankruptcy
None of those advantages applies in ness, Nestlé (NESN), and the drinks on Tuesday? How did it plunge from a
China, and some of the world’s largest group Diageo (DGE), which happen to $50 billion value a few years ago to less
companies are reallocating their resour- be my sixth, seventh and tenth most than $50 million on Friday? Who
ces accordingly. valuable shareholdings, have big Indian produced these property valuations,
For example, as reported here last subsidiaries. Donald Trump?
year, the technology giant Apple (AAPL) Perhaps the most extreme example of The first point to make is that the gap

0.6 per cent. So investors keen to maxi-
mise returns should consider exposure
to the subcontinent.
Perhaps this small investor had better
’fess up to personal bias because India is
home to my first ten-bagger — a stock
whose price soared tenfold. In 1996 I paid
63p a share for an investment trust that
was then Fleming Indian, but is now
JPMorgan Indian (stock market ticker: JII)
and which cost £8.54 on Friday.
To be fair, you would need £1.92 today
to buy what £1 bought in 1996, according
to the Bank of England. But India’s econ-
omy is growing more strongly than Brit-
ain’s, and this fact is reflected by stock
market valuations.
Unfortunately for this long-term share-
holder, JII’s performance for the past
decade has been poor. While the Associa-
tion of Investment Companies’ Indian
subcontinent sector delivered average
returns over the standard three periods
of 173 per cent, 49 per cent and 4.2 per
cent respectively, JII lagged behind with
156 per cent, 38 per cent and 0 per cent.
Fortunately, I began turning paper
profits into real ones as long ago as 2006,
so I really musn’t grumble, and more
recently diversified into the India Capital
Growth fund (IGC), where I paid £1.21 a
share in September 2021. IGC’s focus on
medium-sized and smaller companies is
paying off, and the shares cost £1.64 at
close of play on Friday.
That valuation follows total returns
over the usual three periods of 359 per
cent, 94 per cent and 21 per cent. No won-
der IGC shares trade at a modest 7 per
£8.54
this is ULVR, which has a London stock
market value of £97 billion. More than a
third of that consists of a 60 per cent
stake in Hindustan Unilever, whose BSE
shares are worth a total of £57 billion.
India has become an increasingly
important consumer as its middle class
trades up to premium brands. This can
mean forsaking local firewater in favour
of DGE products such as its single malt
Godawan, which is named after the great
The price this week of shares Indian bustard, an endangered bird that
in JP Morgan Indian that the distiller is paying to protect.
Cowie bought for 63p in 1996 But a profit warning on Friday
knocked DGE back by 15 per cent, so I
topped up at £27.41 and also bought some
is transferring the production of more ULVR at £39.64.
iPhones from China to India. India consumes nearly half the whisky
Gaurav Narain, the IGC fund sold on the planet. That is why our
manager, said: prime minister Rishi Sunak discussed
“Apple is local tariffs on the drink with his opposite
already number Narendra Modi at the recent
exporting G20 economic summit in Delhi. Both
over $1 billion men happen to be Hindu and neither
of phones out drinks alcohol.
of India every Investing internationally is an effective
month. way to diminish risk by diversification.
“Motorola [MSI] Whether that is through global emerging
has also shifted part markets funds or single-country shares, it
of its phone manufac- makes sense to consider India, which is
turing from China to now the world’s biggest nation, with a
India. This has hap- population of more than 1.4 billion — or
pened for several rea- nearly a sixth of humanity.
sons including India’s
labour costs being one
third of those in China ST DIGITAL
today.” For a breakdown of
Jason Hollands, man- Ian Cowie’s “forever fund”
aging director of the thesundaytimes.co.uk/cowieholdings
between what buyers and sellers know
about any business is never greater than
it is with start-ups or stock market
flotations. Put bluntly, if the private
equity spivs are selling, why would we
want to buy?
I like to be able to examine a
company’s revenues, profits and
dividends over many years. Ideally,
I also like to see a business that has
survived the world wars and the Great
Depression. By contrast, WeWork
began offering trendy offices with
free beer in 2010. Many institutional
investors started to question the
emperor’s new clothes only when
WeWork sought a stock market
listing in 2019.
Second, beware asset valuations
produced by professionals who are
paid to produce desirable numbers
rather than the open market where
people put their own money where
their mouth is. Property developers
sometimes joke: what’s the difference
between a consultant and a
supermarket trolley? The trolley has a
mind of its own, but you can get more
food and drink into the consultant.
Third, expect the unexpected.
WeWork might have worked if the
worldwide web and the pandemic had
not enabled and then enforced working
from home.
Sad to say, for many company
pensions stuffed full of commercial
property, the saga of how WeWork went
to WeBroke will not be the last casualty
of WFH.

As interest rates reach a peak,

investors play it safe with bonds
David Brenchley
Investors are moving money
out of the stock market and
into risk-free government
bonds for the first time in
four years.
UK government bonds,
known as gilts, have become
more attractive as interest
rates have risen. Those who
believe that rates will fall in
the near future may want to
snap up more of these “safe
haven” investments while
they can.
throughout their terms, and if
the price of that bond falls
and you buy it at £96, the
yield (often known as the
yield-to-maturity) rises to
5.2 per cent, because the
interest that you get (still £5) You can
is larger as a proportion of the
price you paid for the bond.
SHOULD I BUY THEM? income
Whether you invest in gilts or
not depends on which way
you think interest rates will
go. If you think that they are
likely to come down over the
many bonds in case interest
rates have not yet peaked.
Even if rates are set to fall,
“the best-performing area
will still be equities”, he said.
If interest rates are cut
sooner than expected,
lock in a however, it could be because
the UK has fallen into a
decent recession. This would
probably be bad for the stock
market and potentially good
for bond prices. “Having a
and look mix of bonds and stocks in
your investment portfolio will
forward help reduce volatility in this
instance,” said Sam Benstead

WHAT ARE GILTS?

Government bonds are
essentially IOUs issued when
governments want to borrow
money to pay for public
spending. In return for
lending cash to the
government, investors get
regular interest payments
(usually every six months)
and then their initial
investment back when the
bond matures.
Gilts are seen as one of the
safest investments because
the UK government is
next year or so, then gilts look
like an attractive investment.
Many people are
forecasting this. Gilts were
the most popular fund sector
for investors in September,
according to the trade body
the Investment Association.
A net £237 million was
invested in gilt funds during
the month, taking total net
investment to £1.6 billion
since April. Tom Stevenson
from the investment firm
Fidelity International said:
“The best time to buy
to a gain
government bonds is when
interest rates are relatively
high and are expected to fall,
which is exactly the situation
we find ourselves in.”
Investors trading in bonds
can buy them while they are
cheap and sell them if prices
go up, which should happen
if interest rates fall. “This is
one of those quite rare
opportunities when you can
lock in a decent income and
from the investment platform
Interactive Investor.
HOW TO INVEST
You can buy gilts directly on
an investment platform.
Some are available to buy
online, others only through
telephone dealing.
However, regular investors
can’t buy government bonds
at issue, meaning that the
price you pay for a gilt may be
higher or lower than its par
value of £100. How much you
pay for your bond will affect

unlikely to default on its
debts. However, that safety
means that they tend to
provide lower long-term
returns than riskier
investments such as
company shares or funds that
invest in stocks.
Once inflation is factored
in, gilts have returned 2.4 per
cent a year for the past 50
years, while UK equities have
gained 4.5 per cent,
according to figures from
Barclays. Over 20 years gilts
produced a zero per cent
return after inflation, versus
3.8 per cent for stocks.
The yield is essentially the
return that each bond
provides. The yield moves
inversely to the bond’s price
— when the bond price falls,
its yield rises and vice versa.
When issued, each bond
costs £100 (this is known as
par value). If the yearly
interest payment is £5, then
the yield is 5 per cent. Bonds
are bought and sold
£1.6bn
then look forward to a capital the yield you get, and the
gain as well. The potential gains or losses you make if
total return from government you hold it until maturity. For
bonds is as good today as it example, if you buy a gilt for
has been in a long time,” £102 and hold it until
Stevenson said. maturity, you will get £100
Steven Hay from the fund back, giving you a capital loss
The net investment in house Baillie Gifford is of 2 per cent. But this may be
gilt funds since April cautious about buying too worth it if you have made a
decent income along the way.
Bonds are complex, so
SEARCHING FOR SAFETY most investors would be
Money flowing in and out better using a bond fund
Gilt funds UK equity funds rather than buying directly. A
passive fund will track a
£0.5bn diversified basket of bonds
for a low cost. Sheridan
0 Admans from the investment
platform Tillit suggested the
-0.5 L&G All Stocks Gilt index
fund, with a 0.15 per cent fee.
-1 To further diversify, you
could consider government
bonds from other countries
-1.5
such as the US, Stevenson
said. He highlighted the
-2 Colchester Global Bond
Sep Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep fund, which is run by a
2022 2023 government bond-specialist
Source: Investment Association asset manager.
12 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

MONEY

The simple admin

and 6 per cent bonds while de-risked
funds were made up of 33 per cent stocks
TAKING LESS RISK
and 42 per cent bonds. How your money is invested in the build up to retirement
Isio said that someone on a starting sal-
ary of £25,000 at 22 who retired at 65 and 20 years from retirement At retirement

mistake that could

saved 8 per cent into their pension
throughout their career could expect to Equity Bonds Equity Bonds
have £283,000 in their pot if they were 83.3% 6% 33% 42.4%
de-risked 15 years before retirement. If
their money stayed in the growth fund,
they would have £308,000. It assumed

hurt your retirement

salary increases of 2 per cent a year.
Moving away from equities too early
can dampen your investment returns. In
2019 the insurer Aviva estimated that a
typical pension saver could expect
£4,000 less in their pension at retirement Cash Other Cash Other
age if their target date was set three years
too early. 0.4% 10.3% 10.3% 14.3%

£6.9k
Source: Isio

De-risking your portfolio too early can take thousands off SHOULD WE JUST to get a beter annuity rate. Selby added:
STICK WITH RISK? “If you are planning to leave your pen-
the value of your pension pot, warns Lily Russell-Jones

M
illions of savers risk being
worse off if they don’t tell
their pension firm when
they plan to retire.
Most pension schemes
move your money away
from stocks and shares
and into assets that are
considered safer, such as
government bonds, as
you approach retirement. This is known
as a lifestyle strategy or de-risking. The
idea is that stocks are more volatile than
bonds, so moving your money can help
to protect the value of your pension when
you do not have as much time for invest-
ments to recover from a sudden dip.
Pension firms choose when to de-risk
your money based on your expected
retirement age, with most asking new
customers when they hope to retire.
However, many savers are not keeping
their pension scheme up to date about
this and don’t know how their money is
being managed.
A survey by the wealth manager Inter-
active Investor found 65 per cent of over-
55s did not know whether their money
was being moved into less risky invest-
ments in the build-up to retirement.
“At 50 it can be difficult to know when
you plan to retire, but one of the most
Bonds are seen as a hedge against stock sion invested, however, moving towards
market movements because they tend to bonds could leave you in a whole heap of
go up in value when share prices fall. This trouble, as we saw last year.”
important things to get right is to make and so they are considered very safe means that moving your money into Bond prices fell dramatically last year
sure your pension scheme has your tar- investments. bonds can protect you from stock market after the government’s mini-budget. Over
get retirement age so that de-risking Isio analysed the performance of volatility. However, turmoil in both the the year, the price of gilts fell about 24 per
begins at the appropriate time,” said 13 pension schemes. It said that in the stock and bond markets last year served cent, according to AJ Bell and FE Fun-
Mark Powley from the consultancy Isio. three years to October, growth funds gen- to undermine this long-held theory. dinfo.
“Otherwise you won’t get the full bene- erated average returns of about 8 per cent Powley said: “In 2022 conventional The annuity income available
fits of the investment growth phase and
will end up with less money than you
a year, while de-risked funds returned
about 3 per cent. It found that growth
thinking about de-risking was blown out
of the water. The Ukraine invasion meant
for a 65-year-old with a pension
pot of £100,000
HOW TO FIND OUT WHAT
were expecting.” funds typically held 83 per cent stocks that stock markets suffered, there was a YOUR PENSION IS DOING
spike in inflation and the mini-budget Information about how your money will
caused the bond market to suffer. This be de-risked should be available from
WHAT IS DE-RISKING? was an outlier. De-risking works for the AJ Bell said that lifestyling strategies were your pension firm’s website. If you can’t
Many pension schemes will start to majority of people the majority of the outdated and worked best for customers find it, give them a call or fill out an online
move your money from a growth time. If you invest in riskier assets who planned to buy an annuity with their query form.
fund, which is mainly made up of such as stocks in the final years pension pot when they retire. Annuities You should also check that your target
stocks and shares, to a consoli- before retirement, you have are insurance products that pay a fixed retirement age is up to date — some
dation fund where the less time to recover.” income in exchange for a lump sum up schemes allow you to do this online. If
dominant asset is bonds, Alistair McQueen from front and their prices are linked to the you don’t want your investments to be
about five to 15 years Aviva said: “Last year was yield of long-term government bonds de-risked, you could ask for your money
before you are due to anomalous. The power of (gilts). A bond’s yield is found by dividing to be moved out of the scheme’s default
retire. Bonds are basi- the lifestyling option is its price by the amount of interest it pays. fund and into an alternative fund that will
cally loans issued to that it takes the heavy A £100 bond which paid £5 of interest a not be lifestyled.
governments or com- lifting by moving their year has a yield of 5 per cent. When bond “Everyone’s retirement needs and risk
panies in return for a life savings from a prices fall, the yield goes up. tolerance are different. A one-size-fits-all
fixed rate of interest. more volatile environ- He said: “De-risking is a one-size-fits- lifestyling approach may not align with
The rate on the level ment to a safer all approach and may not suit your risk your financial goals and circumstances,”
of risk you take — gov- environment so that appetite. If you are planning to buy an said Myron Jobson from the platform
ernment bonds typi- you are not facing annuity then lifestyling works perfectly Interactive Investor.
cally pay less because shocks and surprises.” well because you are shifting towards If you want even more control over
there is little to no risk Not everyone bonds.” A rise in bond yields will push up your money you could set up a self-
of the borrower agrees. Tom Selby from annuity rates, which means that even if invested personal pension (Sipp) and
defaulting on the debt the wealth manager your bond is worth less, you will be able manage your own investments.

Best Buys WH
AT’S

I N G
N D
CURRENT ACCOUNTS FOREIGN MORTGAGES
R E
CURRENCY
T
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Provider Account name Account fee Reward Balance (for reward) Contact Lender Rate Scheme Deposit Fee Notes Contact
Interbank rates at 5pm on
Coventry BS 5.17% Fixed to 30.04.26 35% £999 LV 0800 121 8899
THE TOP FIVE
Halifax Reward Current Account None £5 a month – 0345 720 3040 Friday, which show where
TSB Spend & Save Plus £3pm £5 a month – 0345 975 8758 the market is trading. They Nationwide BS 5.5% Fixed for 2 years 15% £999 PV 0800 302 010
Nationwide BS FlexDirect None 5% AER Up to £1,500 0800 302 010 are not indicative of the
rate you could get.
Yorkshire BS 6.29% Fixed to 28.02.26 5% £0 PV 0345 166 9510
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GBP>EUR
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1.14
First Direct 1st Account None 39.9% £250 0345 600 2424 TSB 5.39% Fixed to 31.12.26 15% £995 PV 0800 056 1088
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1
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Source: moneyfactscompare.co.uk
Lender Rate Scheme Deposit Fee Notes Contact Our sister website Times
First Direct 4.87% Fixed for 5 years 40% £490 LV 0800 482 448 Money Mentor has guides,

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M&S Bank Shopping Offer Plus MC 0% for 18 months 23.9% Yes 0800 997996 Nationwide BS 5.39% Tracker + 0.14% for 2 years 40% £999 ELV 0800 302 010 your money
SWITZERLAND Skipton BS 6.25% Tracker +1% for 2 years 5% £995 EPV 0345 850 1755 The government’s
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1.10
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Barclays 5.85% Tracker +0.6% for 5 years 40% £999 ELV 0333 202 7580
Provider Card type Introductory purchase Transfer fee 2 APR 1 Contact year included customer
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Barclaycard Platinum Balance Transfer V 0% for 29 months 3.45% (no min) 24.9% 0800 151 0900 protections and rental
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HSBC Balance Transfer V 0% for 27 months 2.99% (min £5) 23.9% 0345 7404 404 how they will affect you.
TSB 6.39% Fixed to 31.12.25 5% None FPV 0800 056 1088

2
CASHBACK CARDS AUSTRALIA HSBC 5.64% Fixed to 31.12.28 5% None FDPV 0800 494 999
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GBP>AUD

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American Express Platinum Cashback Everyday 31% 0.5%-1%. Intro 5% for 3 months 0800 917 8047 artificial-intelligence
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chatbot capable of
Halifax Cashback MC 22.9% 0.25-0.5% 0345 944 4555 Leeds BS 5.52% Fixed to 28.02.26 40% £1,999 LV 0345 045 4049 answering questions and
1
APR = annual percentage rate, dependent on credit rating. 2 Fee charged on the amount of each balance transfer during the introductory period.
Source: moneyfactscompare.co.uk
HSBC 5.39% Fixed to 31.12.28 25% None RS 0800 121 8899 writing essays has been
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A new online
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Metro Bank Variable Cash Isa £500 5.11% Yes metrobankonline.co.uk

4
Oxbury 180 Day Notice Account Issue 15 180 days £1,000 5.59% oxbury.com
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United Trust Bank 200 Day Notice Account Issue 2 200 days £5,000 5.58% utbank.co.uk Cancelling
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wood, says Martyn James,
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5
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1
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Source: savingschampion.co.uk — 0808 178 5354
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 13

MONEY

Any chance you can persuade

When Ms X called SLC to query her
repayment, our team was only able to
advise based on the information on her
account, provided to us by the University
of Bristol.”

Virgin Money to have a heart?

After several phone calls by a very
proactive press officer, the Student
Loans Company has been able to
establish that your course was
intercalated, and the £1,368 in loan
payments incorrectly deducted from
your salary has been refunded to you.
This does make you wonder why all the
people you have spoken to during the
past year at the Student Loans Company
couldn’t do the same.

Widow hit with mortgage early repayment charges and other bills after her Sucked into a Dyson
husband’s sudden death finds that some firms are more compassionate than others vacuum repair vortex
Dyson took my vacuum cleaner at the
beginning of October for repairs. I was
in July 2022, then started my first job in phoned three days later to be told it was
QUESTION September 2022. This means I should
have started paying off my student loans
unrepairable. Dyson offered a
refurbished upright for £99 or a new
OF MONEY in April 2023. However, I started having one. I was unsure of what to do because

JILL INSLEY
payments taken from my salary for both
my bachelor’s and post-graduate loans as
soon as I started working last September.
I have contacted the Student Loans
my vacuum cleaner was in working
order when it left me; it just had an issue
with the seal on the head.
I replied saying that I would accept the

M
Company on numerous occasions trying refurbished one. However, I’ve since
to resolve this but have got nowhere. rung and been left on hold countless
Every time I call I speak to someone times. When someone does answer, they
y husband took his life in different and often get different advice. give you a case number — I’m on my fifth.
October 2021, leaving Recently the Student Loans Company I’m promised call backs from a
two young children and told me to ask the university for an complaints department but that has not
quite a raft of challenges. “electronic change of circumstances” happened.
His sudden suicide has (the first I had heard of this after several When I contacted the Dyson chat line I
had a huge impact on our calls). When I asked the university for was told that the refurbished vacuum
family and the whole this, the relevant people said they had cleaner I had been offered was out of
community because he never heard of it. After lots of back and stock. I asked for a similar one and it
was highly respected and forth with the university and with several seems that everything is out of stock. I
in the prime of his life people involved, they managed to then asked for my Dyson upright to be
when he sadly couldn’t see a way out. He provide student finance with the sent back. I was put on hold and
was receiving mental health support as necessary paperwork, and yet the issue miraculously some equipment was
an inpatient at a local secure psychiatric is still not resolved. found in the warehouse. When I said that
unit when he was allowed out for an A total of £1,368 has been deducted would be acceptable and could I
unescorted walk. He was found dead on from my salary towards repayment of my purchase it, they couldn’t arrange that.
the morning of our son’s 13th birthday student and postgraduate loans between This has been going on now for nearly
party. It was the most shocking, sad September 2022 and March 2023. Your a month. It’s an appalling way to treat
birthday and, despite umpteen sessions assistance with getting this resolved customers. I wondered if you could help.
with Child Bereavement UK, we are a would be very much appreciated.
broken family. Jill replies
I have been supporting our two boys Jill replies I asked Dyson to honour its original offer
with their grief along with trying to Approximately one third of medical of a refurbished vacuum cleaner, which
juggle running a family home, adjusting students intercalate and some you were more than willing to pay for. It
to being a widow and single mum universities make it compulsory, so the was horrified by the treatment you had
overnight and taking over my husband’s Student Loans Company should be received, apologised and told you it
buy-to-let hobby. completely up to speed with how this would provide feedback to all relevant
I have worked most of my career in
administration roles in General Electric
back to say that “after careful
consideration” this would not be
demanding business at the best of times,
which this so clearly isn’t. Student loan payments system works.
You had been struggling to sort out
teams. More importantly for the state of
your floors, it sent you a brand new
for over 26 years. Sadly, my husband’s
death has triggered trauma-based
possible.
I understand the rules around early
You stated plainly in the letters you
sent to Virgin that your husband had
kicked in too early this mistake for more than a year when I
asked the Student Loans Company to
vacuum cleaner free of charge.

depression and anxiety and I have had to

go on sick leave while I try to recover
from the desperate situation we have
been left in.
So getting to the point of my request, I
decided that I needed to scale back my
husband’s property portfolio. I could not
manage all the properties as they are in
Liverpool and I live in London. Rents are
low and maintenance and mortgages are
increasing, so I decided to sell two of the
buy-to-lets to lighten the load of dealing
with tenants, insurance, gas certificates
and maintenance.
My husband had a mortgage in his
sole name with Virgin Money for the first
property I sold in March this year. The
amount borrowed was £46,323, but as
the early repayment penalty period
didn’t end until July 1, 2024, an extra
charge of £2,025 was added to this.
I wrote to Virgin Money to outline my
tragic case and ask for compassion or
repayment charges but other lenders
have agreed to waive charges given the
circumstances. I would so appreciate
your guidance.
Jill replies
What a devastating situation for you and
your children. To make matters worse,
you have been left in limbo, as the
inquest into your husband’s death has
been postponed several times and you
are still awaiting a new date to be set
some time next year.
On top of this, you are having to deal
with running your husband’s property
portfolio — a complicated and
taken his life and that you were
struggling to deal with the aftermath. UK
I need help regarding my two student
loans. I intercalated — took a year out in
look into your case. It told me that
although you considered your course to CAN WE HELP YOU?
banks can deal sensitively with such the middle of my bachelor’s degree to be intercalated, the information Please email your questions to Jill
situations; your husband’s other lenders complete a master’s — an option that provided to the Student Loans Company Insley at questionofmoney@sunday-
acted generously straight away. many universities offer to medical, by the University of Bristol in your first times.co.uk or write to Question of
Sainsburys Bank wrote off a £7,626 bank dental and veterinary students. academic year (2016-17) did not confirm Money, The Sunday Times, 1 London
loan in full, Godiva Mortgages and You cannot graduate from your it was an intercalated course. “As a Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF.
Coventry Building Society both repaid master’s until you have completed your result, based on the information Please send only copies of original
£125 mortgage exit fees (the mortgages bachelor’s degree, and you are meant to provided by the University of Bristol, we documents. Letters should be
were already out of their early start repaying your student loans from treated Ms X’s study as two separate exclusive to The Sunday Times.
repayment charge time frame), and the April following your graduation. courses. This resulted in two separate Advice is offered without legal
HMRC cancelled all late penalty charges I graduated from both my bachelor’s repayment dates, instead of the one responsibility. We regret Jill cannot
for your husband’s tax bills. and master’s at the University of Bristol repayment date she believed she had. reply to everyone who contacts her.
Reading the letters sent by Virgin
Money, I was certain that you were being
dealt with by a very junior member of
staff not wanting to come off script, or
were facing a case of “computer says
no”. Both letters used the same wording,
even apologising “for any inconvenience
that this may cause you”.
Inconvenience? I despair.
I suggested to Virgin Money that your

I was certain
leniency for the early repayment charge. request had not been passed up high
It wrote back to say that after enough, to someone with the authority

you were being

management consultation it has decided to make a sensible and humane decision.
that the early repayment penalty should I asked it to look at your case again to see

dealt with by a
still apply. if a different stance was possible.
I decided to offload one more The next day you emailed me to say:

very junior staff

property. The £53,899 mortgage on this “I can’t thank you enough for your
one was in joint names, and when it was intervention with Virgin Money

member not
sold in August there were just 58 days regarding the two early redemption
until the early repayment penalty period penalties. This evening I had a call from

wanting to
ended. Virgin Money added a charge of Virgin Money and after your input they
£2,153 to the final balance. have decided to fully reimburse me for

come off script

I again wrote to Virgin Money to see if both property early redemption penalty
it would waive or negotiate the early fees. You have worked your magic for me
repayment penalty but it swiftly wrote and I am extremely grateful.”

If you don’t think child benefit is

fair, here’s how to call for reform
Ali Hussain
A petition that would force
the government into a debate
about reforming the broken
child benefit system has one
month to gain 100,000
signatures before it closes.
The petition on the
parliamentary website is
calling for the government to
increase the income level at
which child benefit is
withdrawn to take account of
inflation and to assess
eligibility based on
household income rather
than just the highest-earning
parent. These goals align with
the Sunday Times campaign
for an overhaul of they
system — although we are
£24
The income threshold at
Play fair on which the benefit is clawed
back has remained the same
child since 2013. If it had risen in
line with inflation it would
benefit now be about £67,000.
The petition has had more
than 2,000 signatures, but
needs at least 10,000 to force
the government to respond to
it and 100,000 for it to be
considered in a debate in
parliament. The petition will
close on December 15.
The government has
already said it will make
two of the changes to
child benefit we began
campaigning for in January.
The first change will stop
stay-at-home parents from
losing out on their state
retrospectively claim back
national insurance credits if
they had not registered for
the benefit.
You need 35 years of
contributions to get the full
state pension (worth £203.85
a week, or £10,600 a year in
2022-23). One year of
claiming child benefit is
worth one credit, equal to
one year of national
insurance contributions.
One credit is therefore
worth roughly £300 a year
in state pension at the
present rate.
The government has also
said that it will scrap the
requirement to pay back
child benefit using a tax
return. It said it is exploring

calling for the reforms to go
further.
Child benefit, which is
worth £24 a week for a first
child and £15.90 for others,
stopped being a universal
benefit in 2013. If one parent
in a family earns more than
£50,000 a year they start to
lose child benefit entitlement.
Once they earn £60,000 or
more the family is entitled to
nothing. It means that two
parents earning £49,999 each
can keep the full benefit while
a single parent earning
£60,000 will get nothing.
The weekly amount
you get for one child
pension if they choose not to
get child benefit. Some
families simply don’t register
for the benefit because they
earn above £60,000 and
would just have to pay it all
back. However, those who do
not register are at risk of one
parent losing some state
pension because they will not
get the national insurance
credits that are automatically
granted to non-working
parents who register for
child benefit.
The government has said
that it will let parents
ways to “streamline” the
system. For example, parents
may be able to repay the
money via adjustments to
their tax code, so that the
money was automatically
taken from their income.
The Sunday Times’s final
demand is for the
government to soften the
blow so that there is a wider
gap between the income at
which you start to lose the
benefit and the point at which
you get nothing.
The petition is online at
petition.parliament.uk
14 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023

MONEY

FAME AND FORTUNE CAROLINE QUENTIN In association with

I was sacked
ANTHONY HARVEY/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
always done property. I almost own my
property — I still have a mortgage. I’m
trying to teach the children to be better
about money than I am. They should
teach our children at school. Tax,

from a filing
mortgages, bill paying — it’s basic, isn’t
it? Tell people to put a percentage of the
money away when you get paid.

What has been your best investment?

job. I had just

My children and my garden. The first
thing I did when we moved into our
house was put a large pond in. It’s like
half a lake really, it’s so beautiful. I
planted about 20 ornamental cherry
trees. I just love it. That’s about three

put all the

acres, and then I have a vegetable
garden that’s about a third of an acre. It’s
my downtime, my hobby, my passion
and my sanity. The garden is what keeps
me going. I draw and paint the garden

files behind
too. Maybe one day I’ll sell my pictures —
I like the idea of having some small
exhibitions. I’ll never really make any

I was a cheese rep,

money at it, but people do ask me on
Instagram if they can buy my pictures.

dressed as a Dutch

a cabinet
And your worst?

girl, handing out

I’ll spend money on a coat or
something, far too much money,

bits of edam
Caroline Quentin, above, in an
The Jonathan Creek actress says money sense advert for Philadelphia cream cheese
and, below, with Alan Davies in
isn’t really her thing — her weaknesses are plants, Jonathan Creek, and Johannes
hundreds of pounds. And then it will sit
in my wardrobe and I’ll stare at it, but I
won’t get rid of it because it cost me so
much. I’ve stopped doing it now. My
daughter buys all her stuff from second-
hand and vintage shops and I’ve started
to do that a lot more, because spending
money on clothes, there’s just no point

C
theatre tickets and black cabs, writes Holly Mead
aroline Quentin found fame
playing the long-suffering
Dorothy in the BBC sitcom
Men Behaving Badly. She’s
a self-confessed theatre
addict — “You’re going to ask
me where my money goes
aren’t you, and I’m telling
you right now it’s theatre
tickets” — and her stage
career began in the chorus of Les
Miserables in 1985. More recently she has
hosted a Channel 4 documentary series
exploring the UK’s national parks, and
this month resumes her role as Wes in
the Sky TV sci-fi series The Lazarus
Project. Born in Reigate, Surrey,
Quentin, 63, now lives in Devon with her
second husband, Sam Farmer, who was
a TV runner working on Men Behaving
Badly (she was previously married to the
comedian Paul Merton). She and Farmer
have two children, Rose, 24, who last
month appeared with her mother in the
stage show Infamous about the life of
Emma Hamilton, and William, 20.
How much is in your wallet?
About $70 — I just got back from a trip
to New York with a friend. We saw the
opening night of Merrily We Roll Along
and we saw Sweeney Todd. I have zero
sterling though. I rarely carry any cash,
like most of us now. But I have some
dollars because in New York I found that
tipping is still done in cash.
What credit cards do you use?
I don’t know what they’re called, let me
have a look. I have a Mastercard, is that
an answer to that question? I have a
Lloyds card, a Nationwide Building
Society card, and an old Barclays one.
I try not to use credit cards because I’m
not very good with money and I have
in the past got into a bit of a mess with
them. Money is really not my thing.
Are you a spender or a saver?
A spender, spender and a spender, and
then a spender. I spend on my garden,
on plants, theatre tickets, my children
and soft furnishings — I like the house to
look nice. At the moment I spend it
paying the bloody heating bill. And art
supplies because I draw and paint a lot.
How much did you earn last year?
I don’t know exactly, but it wasn’t a
big-earning year. I did mostly theatre
and not much telly, so that’s always
a low-earning year for me.
Have you ever been hard-up?
Oh yes. My parents separated and my
mother was very ill. I was 16 and we
were in a rented flat, and we lived
without electricity and heating for a
year and a half. We had a meter but
didn’t have enough money to put in it.
We were proper, proper broke. And that
went on for quite a long time. There
wasn’t any money around. I was broke
for years. I don’t think I earned a proper
wage until I did Men Behaving Badly, or
when I got a role in Les Misérables for
£300 a week, which was a lot of money
at the time. The wages haven’t come
on much since: they’re still only giving
you about £500 a week for theatre.
Are you better off than your parents?
Yes, I think so. My mum was a stay-at-
home parent and my dad, when he was
young, was in the RAF. They managed to
buy their own house but it was never
easy, and there was never a lot of money
floating about. So yes, I’m better off —
now at least. Until Les Mis I was doing
temp work. I was trying to break into
acting and they kept giving me jobs in
places where I was expected to be able
to add up. I worked as an edam cheese
sales rep. I was dressed as a Dutch girl,
in clogs and a big white-winged hat,
handing people bits of edam on a stick
in a supermarket in Lincolnshire that
doesn’t exist any more. I’d stand there
saying: “Have you tried edam, have you
tried gouda?” I was the Dutch cheese
girl. I got about £7 a week. And then
I worked for Securicor. I got sacked —
I was meant to do filing, and
it was writing all the
numbers, blocks,
quantities — and I just
can’t understand
numbers. So I’d just put
them behind the filing
cabinet. And my boss, he
was so sweet, he said:
“Caroline, you’re so great,
we have a lovely time, but
I’m going to have to sack
you.” Then he pulled back
the cabinet and there were
all these files on the floor.
Do you remember
the first time you
felt wealthy?
When I was in the chorus
of Les Mis. It was at the
Radebe in Strictly Come Dancing
Barbican theatre and then in the West
End, and I’d never earned a regular
wage before. I remember being out with
girlfriends and thinking I had to go and
get the Tube and then I realised, actually
no, I don’t have to get the Tube or a bus,
and I hailed a cab. And for years that was
my big extravagance — getting a London
black cab. I still get an enormous buzz
out of getting into one. I’d done little bits
in BBC dramas but they were one-offs,
and with Men Behaving Badly you got
paid for rehearsals and paid to go into
the studio. It felt like untold riches.The
discrepancy between theatre and telly
money was huge. With telly you’d get a
couple of grand in your paycheque, and
that was amazing.
Do you invest in shares?
No, I don’t. I invest in my garden
and theatre tickets. I should
probably do it one day. But the
thing with me is I either have
money or I don’t. If I do
theatre for six months
I don’t have money, then if
I do telly I have money and
then I live off that while I do
theatre again. And when I’ve got
money I just like to enjoy it.
What’s better for
retirement,
property or pension?
I think pension is
better, but I’ve
for me. A lot of it ends up as landfill.
Your most extravagant purchase?
I bought my mother a Cartier
wristwatch. It probably doesn’t sound
much to some people, but it cost £7,000
and this is going back a while. She loved
it and wore it every single day. She
adored it. I don’t remember the reason
I bought it — maybe we were just going
past and she saw it and loved it. My
daughter will wear it one day.
What’s your money weakness?
Theatre tickets. The children, obviously.
They’re not spoilt but they still cost a lot
of money to run. The animals — I’ve got
two dogs and four cats, and the vet bills,
particularly as they get older, really eat
into my finances. When I was younger
I bought a lot of art and pottery but
I don’t do that any more.
What if you won the lottery?
I don’t think it would change much.
I’d pay off the mortgage and probably
put a bit aside so I didn’t have to worry
about bills and tax. I don’t think it
would change my life though, I want to
keep working. I’m not a car person or
anything like that. I suspect it would
just buy you more time, more time with
my husband just chilling out, I’d like
that. I’d probably just give it to people —
I have friends who don’t have two brass
farthings. I’d help the kids out — my
son is at university and my daughter
is a fledgling actress and works in retail
the rest of the time. What did I say
when she told me she wanted to be
an actress too? “Thank God, you were
born to do it.”
The most important lesson you’ve
learnt about money?
When people say that money doesn’t
matter, they have never been poor — it’s
one of the most idiotic things people
say. On the other hand, huge amounts
of money doesn’t make people happy.
But having enough to feed your family
and pay your bills does. Having zero
money is shit.
Series two of The Lazarus Project is on
Sky Max and Now from November 15.
Caroline Quentin is on Instagram
@cqgardens

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Hair-raising surge in curler claims
Ali Hussain
Shoppers have been warned
to be on their guard after a
surge in the number of
insurance claims made after
electrical beauty products
caught fire.
There was a 50 per cent
rise in fires caused by
hairdryers, straighteners and
damage claims involving
electrical equipment, hair
products, make-up and
perfume has increased 25 per
cent since the start of 2022 to
almost £2,300 per claim on
average, according to the
insurer Admiral.
A recent house fire was
caused by a device that had
been switched off and put on
a pile of laundry. The Admiral
customer, who did not wish
to be identified, said that no
one was hurt in the fire but if
it had been another 90
seconds the outcome could
have been “totally different”.
In other examples people
have caused damage by using
hairdryers to blow debris off

email paul.douglass@news.co.uk
or call him on 07917 598422
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50%
curlers in the 12 months to laptops.
the end of May, according to Admiral recommended
data collected from 27 fire buying products from
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most fires. Rise in fires caused by carefully and always

The cost of accidental electric hair appliances following the instructions.

CHART OF THE WEEK WHO WORKS THE HARDEST?

The average sum lost by
cryptocurrency scam
victims this year, according
to Lloyds Bank, up from an
average of £7,010 over the
same period last year
Average working week for employees in 2022 The average working
week in the EU was
Greece 41 hours 37.5 hours last year,
according to the
Spain 37.8 hours European Commission,
which only counted
time spent at a main
France 37.4 hours job. Office for National
Statistics figures for the
UK, which included
Italy 37.4 hours main jobs as well as any
second jobs, still put
Germany 35.3 hours our average hours at a
lower 31.7 a week.
The longest working
Britain 31.7 hours weeks were in Greece,
Source: ONS; Eurostat Poland and Spain.
 November 12 2023

Toy story
Jeremy Clarkson: my life in cars,
from Dinky models to The Grand Tour
 After the guns on the Western

THIS WEEK IN Front finally fell silent on

November 11, 1918, marking

1918
the end of the First World War,
people took to the streets to
celebrate in Piccadilly, central
London. This picture has
COVER: TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. THIS PAGE: TIMES NEWSPAPERS LTD / JORDAN J LLOYD

been restored by the expert

colourist Jordan J Lloyd.

18 Secret weapon 44 Driving

12.11.2023
7 Matt Rudd
Alex Miller reports on a new
project to end mass shootings

26 Intensive care
The Mercedes-Benz GLC — an
unsung hero, says Nick Rufford

46 Health and fitness

Help! I’ve found a bald spot Yasmin Butt on the fight to Simon Usborne debunks the
save her premature twins male menopause and Rosie
8 Relative Values Stockley’s balance exercises
The Libertines’ Pete Doherty 32 COVER Drive me crazy
and his film-maker wife, Jeremy Clarkson: cars I have 58 A Life in the Day
Katia deVidas, on turning the loved, lost and lusted after The broadcaster and former
camera on his addiction

10 Interview: Nadine Dorries

Boris Johnson’s champion talks
10 39 Table Talk
Skye McAlpine’s one-dish
wonders, Charlotte Ivers hits
footballer Jermaine Jenas

© Times Media Ltd, 2023. Published and

licensed by Times Media Ltd, 1 London
Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782
posh boys, Tory sleaze and Keir Starmer’s local and Will 5000). Printed at Walstead Bicester Limited,
that peerage. By Nick Rufford Lyons breaks out the beaujolais Oxfordshire. Not to be sold separately

The Sunday Times Magazine • 5

 MAT T
Thanks to my barber’s mirror,
I now know the bald truth
have been going to the same barber for years for
I
two simple reasons — he’s not chatty and he’s
quick. I’ve found quick, chatty barbers and I’ve
found slow, monosyllabic ones, but quick and not
chatty is very rare. Unique perhaps. And I love it.
I turn up, I say “The usual” and I settle into our
comfortable silence. I don’t have to tell him where
I’ve been for my holidays. He doesn’t have to tell
me how business has been. Chop, chop, chop,
“Would Sir like some wax?” and out ten minutes
later with shorter hair. Perfect.
Except it all went wrong on Saturday morning. It
wasn’t his fault. Well, it was. He forgot that I have no
interest in seeing what the back of my head looks like.
It would have been nice if he’d remembered. I’d been
quite clear about it in the past. But he forgot and
there, for the first time in three or four years, was
the back of my head.
“Great,” I said because what else can you say? And
then it was all a bit embarrassing because I’d hate to
think he thinks I think the back of my head is great.
That’s the main reason I thought we’d agreed he
wasn’t going to show me the back of my head —
to avoid this sort of social discomfort. I could have
said “Great job” to make it clear I was talking
about his work rather than my head, but by the
time I’d thought of that it was too late.
“Very nice,” I added as he moved the mirror
from left to right. “Very … oh bum.”
He’d got carried away. He was doing little ta-da
flourishes, like a matador with his muleta, and that’s
when it happened. Somehow he got the mirror
angled to show me the top of the back of my head.
And there it was, bold as you like, bald as you like,
a bald patch.
“A bald patch,” I said, the colour draining from
the front of my head.
“No,” he stuttered as he quickly ditched the
mirror and started fiddling with a brush. “No, it’s
just the crown.”
He wasn’t fooling anyone. It was a bald patch. It is
CHARLIE CLIFT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE
a bald patch. I have a bald patch.
I got out of there fast. Obviously I can’t ever go
back. I’ll have to become a hairdresser nomad again.
Wherever I lay my toupee, that’s my barber.
Every bald person I know
suits being bald. I don’t.
I have a rugby ball for a head
RUDD
But what about the rest of my life? Shoe polish?
Maybe. The full Rooney? Too painful. Superglued
pubes? No. Bald ancient Egyptians rubbed burnt
hedgehog prickles, honey and alabaster on their
pates, but alabaster is very expensive. Julius Caesar
used ground mice, horse teeth and bear grease, but
bear grease is even more expensive. Perhaps I’ll just
never sit down if other people are standing? I’m six
foot four. A person would have to be at least seven
foot tall to see the top of my head, and if they’re
seven foot tall they have their own problems.
So that’s what I’ll do. I’ll be the last man standing
while I try to come to terms with this new affliction.
“Lots of men have bald patches,” Harriet says
when I take her to a nice restaurant to break the
news that she’s married to a bald man. “They don’t
refuse to sit down.”
It’s different for me. Every bald person I know
suits being bald. I don’t. I have a rugby ball for a head
and a pencil for a neck. The one and only time I had a
buzz cut, I didn’t look like Bruce Willis in Pulp Fiction
or Stanley Tucci in that Whitney Houston biopic.
I looked like Ming the Merciless an hour after his
doctor has given him six weeks to live. And this is
worse. A receding hairline might have been OK
but I’ve got a monk’s tonsure. Maybe, once
Harriet has inevitably left, that’s what I’ll do.
I’ll join an order. It’s not a bad life — early
starts, chastity, quite a lot of gardening, sure,
but at least there’s no talking.
A lot of academics have spent a lot of time
studying baldness. Some of them have even tried
to conclude that a bald head is the equivalent of
a peacock’s plumage, signalling to our peahens
that a) we’re male and b) we’re up for it. This
feels like balderdash.
More convincing is the study that found that
bald men are consistently ranked as less attractive
than non-bald men. That’s just a cross us baldies
have to bear. But the same study concluded that bald
men are also seen as more intelligent, influential
and knowledgeable. We are considered socially
mature. So nerr.
This is the silver lining on my unhairy cloud.
I must forget the bear grease and hedgehog prickles
and embrace my new status. I must act like the
distinguished, sophisticated man my bald spot will
make people think I am.
“OK, but can you just sit down now please,” Harriet
says, looking up from her menu. “No one cares.”
“In a minute,” I reply, on tiptoes in case of seven-
footers. And I wish I’d brought a baseball cap after all n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 7
 RE L ATI V E
Pete Doherty and Katia deVidas
The Libertines frontman and his film-maker wife on finding love amid addiction
Pete
When I first met Katia in 2008, I didn’t really see her
face. She’d been commissioned by a French music
paper to film gigs with my band, Babyshambles, and
she was always hidden behind the camera. I’m not
saying I fell in love straight away; it was more a case of
wondering if someone so wonderful would ever want
to share her life with an addict.
Relationships have been ruined by my desire for hard
drugs. It wasn’t that I’d given up on love, but I tried to
make love work in tandem with drugs. That was never
going to happen with Katia. As we spent more time
together and became good friends, I could see that she
had no interest in drugs or fame. Being with her made
me feel safe. It was a refuge.
When we finally fell in love, I was still in active
addiction but there were periods of clarity that allowed
us to have conversations about whether I might be able
to stay clean for a few weeks. It was like a huge tug-of-
war in my head. I’ve never considered myself the poster
boy for drugs but I did feel a certain loyalty to crack and
heroin. I’d got so much from them.
Katia didn’t put pressure on me. I just found that as
time went on, the more difficult it became to go back
to my old ways. As clichéd as it sounds, this beautiful
flower was blossoming and I didn’t want to let it die.
Was I nervous about Katia turning all that candid
film she’d got into a documentary about me and
addiction [Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin]? Of
course, but my gut told me I could trust her. That’s the
key word: trust. I’d finally found someone who wasn’t
going to f*** me over. I could depend on her as a friend
and maybe my wife.
The idea of getting married came into my head long
before it actually happened. I held back because I know
what I’m like, making rash decisions. When I did
propose, I did it as a joke in case it went wrong. I was
frightened by how much marriage and a family meant.
We had a baby in the summer. I don’t want to say too
much about my other kids [Doherty has a son, Astile,
and a daughter, Aisling, from previous relationships],
but fatherhood is different this time. I’ve been clean for
three years and that’s allowed me to be fully immersed
as a parent. I can look into Billie-May’s eyes and feel
connected to her. I’m the master nappy changer.
Blindfolded, one-handed, no problem.
Do I miss heroin? At the moment, I’m still in the
early stages of recovery. I’m still fragile. Does it seem
like it was all part of somebody else’s life? No, it feels
horribly close. Maybe when it does seem like someone
else’s life, I’ll find it easier to watch the scenes of me
shooting up. I do wonder why I allowed Katia to use
8 • The Sunday Times Magazine
VA LU E S
that, but I can’t even remember it happening.
If I’m being brutally honest, there were many
years when I couldn’t imagine it would be possible
to live without drugs. I talk about addiction in the
film and some of my spiel sounds very profound, as if
I understand it. I don’t and I don’t have any answers.
Moving to France has made things easier. No one
gives a f*** who you are. Unfortunately, alcohol is cheap
in France and that is a problem. I used to have a morning
Bloody Mary but Katia gets me to wait till after lunch,
then a bit longer. Suddenly, I don’t want one. She’s made
me cut down the smoking and lose a bit of weight too.
Meeting Katia was life giving me another chance.
In the Jack Nicholson film As Good as It Gets he says to
Helen Hunt, “You make me want to be a better person.”
I’m in tears every time I watch it. That’s me and Katia.
Katia
I am not a music fan. When I first met Peter I had no
idea who he was. I only learnt about his life as I started
filming. Yes, I saw drugs. So what? They are a rock band.
But the longer I witnessed Peter’s behaviour, the more
I realised that we weren’t talking about recreational
drug use. This was addiction. I couldn’t just ignore it,
so it became the subject of the film.
“Amy Winehouse told us, ‘You two
will get married and have babies.’
Aϰţ¾łϰŊüÿěĐÿě÷μϰ)
ľãϰũĢŏϰÙľ¾űũςϞϭϜ
Main: Pete, 44,
and Katia, 41, at the
Kooples flagship
store in Paris last
month. Right: the
couple in Thailand,
where Pete was in
rehab, in 2015

This is not something completely new to me; there
have been addicts in my family. Addiction can happen
STRANGE
to the loveliest people in the world. When you meet HABITS
Peter, you quickly realise that he is one of those lovely
people. He is charming, kind and makes me laugh. Pete on Katia
At first it was just friendship but when I saw how She gives
hard he was trying to fight his addiction, I started to fall inanimate
in love. There was a period where Peter was losing one objects
friend to drugs every month and I actually said to him, personalities.
“If you are not careful, you are going to be next.” If the car has
There is a scene in the film where Peter was a flat tyre, she
supposed to catch a plane to rehab in Thailand. He says it’s lost one
kept missing the plane and that pissed me off so much of its slippers
I could no longer just be a film-maker. “Will you get on
the bloody plane! Why are you trying to mess it up?” Katia on Pete
Sometimes I wondered if he was showing the same He is the world’s
behaviour that you see in small children. Where they biggest Columbo
test boundaries, waiting to see if you rescue them. fan. He goes
I don’t want to sound too arrogant by saying that online and wins
I helped Peter, because it wasn’t just me. There were all the trivia
other good people around him like his manager, Jai competitions
Stanley, and Carl [Barât, co-founder of the Libertines]. under an
In the end, it has to be the addict who makes the assumed name
decision. We were fortunate that, once we got to
Thailand, everything came together. There was one day
PORTRAIT BY ROBERTO FRANKENBERG
where he was catching butterflies with a net and it
made me think that he was doing the same thing in his
life. The real Peter was the delicate butterfly; you must
catch him before he flies away.
Those first two years of being clean were the hardest.
Lockdown helped. It wasn’t so easy to visit a dealer and
drugs became three times more expensive. I did my
best by trying to provide love, a comfortable home,
a healthier diet. We moved to France, away from the
places and people he associated with drugs.
My own family were a bit nervous at first but they
have fallen for Peter in a big way and see that he is an
amazing father. Like everything else, having a baby
had to be planned. It was only when Peter felt strong
enough. Will I let Billie-May see the film? Maybe when
she’s 30 and she’s had lots of preparation!
In the early days of filming, before we fell in love, we
went to Amy Winehouse’s home to pick up a guitar. As
we were leaving she said, “You two will get married and
have babies.” Peter was laughing but I was thinking,
“Not a chance. Are you crazy?” Amy, you were right ■
Interviews by Danny Scott.
Peter Doherty: Stranger in My Own Skin is in
cinemas. The Libertines release a new album,
All Quiet on the Eastern Esplanade, next March
The Sunday Times Magazine • 9
What drove Nadine Dorries to pen an assassination of her Tory
colleagues? Was it love for Boris Johnson — or revenge for a
denied Lords seat? Nick Rufford gets the uncensored lowdown

Was I
worthy of
a peerage?
I was absolutely
worthy

PORTRAIT BY
STUART McCLYMONT
10 • The Sunday Times Magazine
The Sunday Times Magazine • 11
 own council house. She went to Halewood Grange
Secondary Modern and trained as a nurse before
starting a childcare business, which she sold to a
blue-chip company in 1999 for an estimated £2 million.
Entering politics in 1997 as a party worker, she was
elected MP for Mid Bedfordshire in 2005 and went on
to be awarded a clutch of ministerial jobs before
becoming culture secretary.
Now she may be about to blow apart her 26-year
political career with a much-hyped book that reveals
what she says are the “political dark arts” behind a
conspiracy to force Johnson from Downing Street in
the summer of 2022, hence the melodramatic title:
The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson.
In it she claims that a small group of high-powered
Conservatives — including senior members of the civil
service, Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s former chief
adviser, and Michael Gove, the secretary of state for
levelling up — conspired to bring down the former
prime minister as soon as he had delivered Brexit.
The Plot is based on interviews with more than
adine Dorries learnt the importance of keeping up Below right: with 50 “insiders”, Whitehall officials, Johnson, the former
appearances from her Irish grandmother. A few weeks Boris Johnson and Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, an unnamed former
after watching her former parliamentary seat of Mid Michael Gove, a man prime minister, cabinet ministers both former and
Bedfordshire disappear to Labour, the largest Tory who has “done real current, and, she hints, at least one member of the
majority it had overturned in a by-election since 1945, damage to the Secret Intelligence Service. She describes it as part
she arrives for work in Gucci shoes, Frame jeans and country”, Dorries political exposé, part airport thriller (which you’d expect
carrying an Alexander McQueen jacket. “I do look a bit says. Bottom: from Dorries, who is also a prolific writer of historical
dolled up today,” she muses, checking herself in the watching Carrie sagas). She quit as an MP to write it, which makes it, she
mirror of a lift of the News building in central London, and Boris Johnson says, a labour of love. Or is it revenge? Or both? Her
home of both The Sunday Times and Talk TV, on which on the day of his infatuation with Johnson seems to have no bounds. And
she hosts a weekly chat show. “Maybe too much lippy?” final speech as PM, the “dark forces” that brought down Johnson were the
Her grandmother always kept the outside lav of September 6, 2022. same ones, she claims, that stole her peerage from her.
the family’s shared rented home spotless for visitors, Opposite: Dorries Dorries has skin in the game and it’s a very sore
she explains. Guests who had to traipse through the refers to Dominic subject. “I’ve had such a torrent [of negative comments]
backyard to use the facilities were at least greeted by Cummings as on the internet and in the media about ‘should she be
gleaming porcelain and a polished wood seat. Dorries, “Oddjob” after entitled to a peerage?’” she seethes. “I was a nurse in
66, started poor as Nadine Bargery, brought up in what the Bond villain the NHS for ten years. I started my own business from
was then the run-down Anfield district of Liverpool.
She had hoped, of course, that her rags-to-riches
story would have culminated in a peerage. Having risen
to the rank of secretary of state for digital, culture,
media and sport in Boris Johnson’s government, she
was one of his staunchest allies and most vocal
cheerleaders. She stuck by him while his leadership
crumbled in June last year, and he promised her a place
in the Lords — the prerogative of departing prime
ministers. But when the honours list was published this
June, her name was mysteriously missing.
The shock news was delivered in a phone call from
Steven Swinford, the Times political editor. “I was
walking the dog and it was a lovely summer’s evening,”
she says. “Steven rang me and said, Nadine, I’ve seen
the list that’s going to be announced and you’re not on
it. So I rang Boris, who was in Egypt doing a speech, and
he said, bollocks, Steven Swinford’s just winding you
up. It’s absolute bollocks. I’ve been in to see Rishi.”
So certain were her TV production staff that she was
about to be honoured that they stocked up on Baroness
Nadine wine (a brand of chardonnay), to be served on
air. She warned them the celebrations were tempting
fate. Had she considered what her title might be?
Baroness Dorries of Anfield? She hadn’t. “I stopped
them doing it because somewhere inside of me I knew
all along that was never going to happen. I had a sixth
sense, perhaps because people from my background
think it’s never going to happen to them.”
Her loyalty to the Conservative Party stems from the
Thatcher era, when her family were allowed to buy their

12 • The Sunday Times Magazine

 an original idea — an incredibly successful business.
I’ve sold almost three million books. I’ve served at
every ministerial level and as secretary of state. Was
I worthy of it? I was absolutely worthy.”
She met her sources and informants clandestinely
at a private members’ club in Hertford Street, west
London — her “Mayfair nook”. In the book she has
awarded them Bond-themed names such as M and
Moneypenny — to protect the identities of some and
to stop her being sued by others. Its publication was
stalled until now because of legal issues. The room was
accessed by two sets of stairs so she could usher visitors
in and out without them bumping into each other.
The principal villain is “Dr No”, a political veteran
and “a key player in [Conservative] Central Office and
No 10”. Allegedly this figure once nailed a dead rabbit,
mafia-style, to an ex-girlfriend’s door. His chief offence?
According to Dorries, he is the arch manipulator who
engineered the plot to oust Johnson and install Rishi
Sunak. “When Dr No says ‘jump’, Rishi says ‘how high?’”
Time will tell whether the contents are as “seismic”
as its publishers claim. Unquestionably it’s a rattling
read — a page-turner with the intrigue of a Jack
Reacher. She refused Cabinet Office demands to vet its
contents and remove any confidential material, which
gives it the added allure of the illicit. But the dark arts
she describes sound like, well, politics. Michael Gove
comes off particularly badly. He’s depicted as
treacherous and fond of “dancing in an Aberdeen
nightclub with teenage revellers in the early hours of
the morning”. She confesses he’s someone she can
“only ever visualise as Brutus — the first person to stab
Boris in the back in 2016”, she says, referring to the
moment Gove, who was justice secretary and Johnson’s
campaign manager at the time, ambushed him with a
surprise entry into the Conservative leadership battle.
Dorries burst into tears when Johnson made his
announcement that he was quitting the leadership race
and later described the events as more dramatic than a
Game of Thrones episode — “but with more blood”.
“He’s the man who’s done real damage to the country
over and over again,” Dorries says of Gove today,
pursing her lips. “The Conservative Party is — will be
— a much better place if he resigns the day after this
PREVIOUS PAGES: STUART McCLYMONT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. HAIR AND MAKE-UP: STEFANIA D’AGOSTINO
book comes out. He’s a very complex, tragic character.
Even Boris describes him as this brilliant orator and
debater [but] he keeps shooting himself in the foot.”
Cummings is “Oddjob” to Gove’s “Goldfinger”
(or “Govefinger” as Boris christens him). The former
is portrayed as weaselly and cunning. Sunak is another
“posh boy who went to Winchester and Oxford”, a
second-rater like “Major, May and Brown”. In cabinet
she claims Sunak would fix her with an “unnatural grin,
the bleached dental white of his teeth almost blinding
me in reflected light”.
When Sunak is tested at the ballot box the results will
THESE PAGES: GETTY IMAGES, ALAMY, PETER JORDAN / THE SUN
be calamitous for her party, Dorries predicts. “We’re
definitely going to lose,” she says. “Even though there
is no love for Keir Starmer out there, none whatsoever,
which actually makes it worse. We’re going to lose badly
against someone — Starmer — that the country are
going to turn to because there’s nobody else.”
“The Conservatives will have to reinvent
themselves,” she says. “If the party wants to win the
only person that it could have [as leader] is Boris.”
Which seems unlikely, but Dorries remains fiercely
loyal to the former PM. She has, she tells me, been a
guest on more than one occasion at the Johnsons’
grade II listed Oxfordshire mansion.
She believes that after Johnson’s departure the
rest of the old establishment closed ranks on her, the
working-class girl. She also blames snobbery and
misogyny for the way she was treated. There are others
who claim she may not have been considered peerage
material because of her appetite for publicity, a
propensity to speak her mind only to change it, the
unhelpful lobbing of incendiaries on Twitter/X, which
earned her the nickname Minister for Culture Wars
when she was in the cabinet, and her occasional gaffes.
She once complained that the BBC needed to “be more
accessible to people from all backgrounds, not just
people whose mum and dad worked there”, but
neglected to mention she had once employed two of
her daughters in secretarial roles in her private office.
As secretary for culture, while discussing the future of
Channel 4 she wrongly claimed the channel was “in
receipt of public money”. Her plans for selling it off
were later ditched.
Certainly her political career hasn’t followed the
usual path. After becoming an MP in 2005, she didn’t
land her first ministry until 2019, when Johnson made
her his minister for mental health. The fact that her
cousin had taken his own life had given her an insight
Her TV crew were so certain she was about
to be made a peer that they stocked up on
“Baroness Nadine” wine to be served on air
into the dangers of depression, she said. During Covid
she oversaw vaccine procurement and in 2021 Johnson
handed her the culture job, a promotion that dismayed
the arts establishment, which didn’t regard her canon
of chick lit as “culture” and argued that her media
experience consisted mainly of her appearance on
2012’s I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here! in which
she ate an ostrich anus and a lamb testicle.
She stuck up for herself in cabinet, where she was
surrounded by colleagues better schooled in debating
and public speaking. “I’m a Scouser so I could hold my
own,” she says. “I’d be utterly terrified about speaking
in cabinet, but then when I did I was always glad that
I had and I always tried to do it with humour. I was
fortunate to be sitting between Jacob Rees-Mogg and
Alister Jack, who were the two nicest men in cabinet
and probably the wealthiest. I used to joke with them,
‘Look at us three. We’re all from estates but only mine
was owned by the council.’ ”
She doesn’t hide her disdain for an “inbred” elite
that dominated No 10. She has described David
Cameron, the former prime minister, along with
George Osborne, his chancellor of the
exchequer, as posh boys who didn’t know the
price of a pint of milk. Does she? “It’s £1 in the
Co-op.” And a loaf of bread? “I make all my own
bread,” she says, and grows her own tomatoes
and celery. Yet she seems to have unending
admiration for Johnson, who was an Old Etonian ➤
The Sunday Times Magazine • 13
 member of the Bullingdon Club, the notorious elite
dining society at Oxford.
After receiving the news in June that her peerage
wasn’t happening, she announced she was standing
down as an MP “with immediate effect” — only to then
hang on for another 78 days. She says she wanted to find
out more information about whether Sunak had
intervened to block her nomination.
“I actually wanted to go,” she insists. “But I also knew
something really seedy had gone on behind the scenes.
I wanted to retain my parliamentary privilege to be
able to speak if I needed to.” Her scathing resignation
letter to Sunak in late August warned that she was
an unexploded bomb: “You hold the office of prime
minister unelected,” she wrote. “You have no mandate
from the people [and] you have squandered the
goodwill of the nation.” Then the stinger: “I shall take
some comfort from explaining to people exactly how
you and your allies achieved this undemocratic
upheaval in my book,” she warned.
During her drawn-out resignation over the summer
she was accused of leaving her constituents in limbo.
One criticism was that she hadn’t lived in her
constituency for years but moved out to a bucolic
bolt hole 50 miles away, in the north Cotswolds. She
says she moved on police advice after being harassed
by a stalker whom she tried to have prosecuted in 2014.
The Crown Prosecution Service wouldn’t pursue the
case, a refusal that enraged her and she says wouldn’t
happen today.
“He [the stalker] would have been nailed and banged
up in prison now. He put a camera up on a post outside
REX, ALAMY, COURTESY OF NADINE DORRIES
She “utterly hates” her nickname. “It’s lazy,
incredibly sexist and misogynistic. They’d
never say ‘Mad Nad’ about Nadhim Zahawi”
my house, filming while my daughter was at home
during the week on her own. That would not be allowed
today after Jo Cox and David Amess [the MPs
murdered in 2016 and 2021 respectively].”
Dorries, who has a granddaughter, now has CCTV
Clockwise from at her Cotswolds home and two dogs — West
below: enduring Highland terriers, Darcy and Teddy, that are “better
a Bushtucker Trial than burglar alarms”.
on I’m a Celebrity…
orries has overcome more than her
D
in 2012; Dorries
spent a decade fair share of tragedy. Her father was
working as a nurse a bus driver, then a lift operator.
before entering “He got Raynaud’s disease and had
politics; visiting a to have his toes amputated. Then
temporary hospital worked the elevator in Boots on the
at the ExCel Centre corner of Bold Street and Church
in London during Street in Liverpool. He used to sit in
the Covid pandemic this little wooden seat, pull the cage closed and take
people up and down.” She came home one day to the
house they shared and found him dead at 42. She was 20.
Not long afterwards her younger brother, John, died
in a motorcycle accident aged 27. She married Paul
Dorries, a mining engineer with whom she has three
daughters, Philippa, 37, Jennifer, 35, and Cassie, 31. Her
husband suffered from multiple sclerosis, then died of
bowel cancer. “The doctor said, ‘I’ll give you about four
months,’ and he died four months to the day on June 7,
2019. We never were out of each other’s company for
a single moment from the minute he was diagnosed
with cancer. He died in my arms. We were all with
him, our three girls and me. It’s been said that Paul and
I divorced in 2007. We didn’t. We separated then
divorced much later. We’d spend every Christmas,
every family holiday, every Sunday together the entire
time we were separated.”
Despite being proudly defensive of her own tough
upbringing and state education, two of her three
daughters attended Ampleforth, the £43,000-a-year
private school. “When we moved to the Cotswolds, the
school they loved was Chipping Campden
comprehensive. So they went there, but just for sixth
form two went to Ampleforth.”
She formally quit as an MP on August 29, forcing last
month’s by-election — and the loss of one of the
country’s safest Tory seats to Labour — a taste of what
the Conservatives can expect in the general election,
Dorries warns. When Alistair Strathern, the new Labour
MP for Mid Bedfordshire and Dorries’s successor, was
announced in parliament, Sunak responded, “I suspect
the new member for Mid Beds might actually support
me a little bit more than the last one.”
Is she bitter? No. But injustice casts a long shadow.
She has vowed to expose what she identifies as the
small group of people, “some elected and some
totally unknown outside of a tight Westminster ➤
The Sunday Times Magazine • 15
 Dorries burst into
tears as Boris
Johnson ruled
himself out of the
running to be PM in
2016. Below: since
February Dorries
has hosted a show
on TalkTV. Johnson
was her first guest
bubble, operating at the heart of the Conservative
Party”. This group frequently tried to overrule her She alleges that “Dr No” tampered with
while she was in office and, she claims, still controls
the levers of power. Exhibit A: as culture secretary she documents in her red box before it reached
chose the television executive Michael Grade to head
Ofcom against the group’s chosen candidate of
Downing Street for Johnson’s rubber stamp
Stephen Gilbert, the former Conservative deputy
chair. When she stuck to her guns, she alleges that
“Dr No” tampered with documents in her ministerial
red box before it reached Downing Street for Johnson’s
rubber stamp. A telephone call from No 10 alerted her
that the name had been switched to Gilbert. Johnson
overruled the plotters and installed Grade — her
preferred candidate.
Dastardly deeds or conspiracy theory? Some may say
this is all just politics as usual. But she takes issue with
the boys’ club at the heart of it. There were campaigns
to discredit her too, including various nicknames
implying she was dizzy and incompetent. Mad Nad is
one she “utterly hates”. “It’s lazy, because it’s incredibly
sexist and misogynistic, and because it’s not true. They
do it with women all the time. They’d never say ‘Mad
Nad’ about Nadhim Zahawi but for a woman it was easy
to do. Apart from anything else I was mental health
minister for two years and I just think [mad used in that
way] is a bad, bad word.”
he meanest smear tactics, she says,
T
were reserved for Carrie Johnson,
dubbed Princess Nut Nut by allies
of Cummings, owing in part to the
demands she made on her husband’s
time. “There was a mountain of lies
about Carrie and the one thing I can
say is that none of it is true. She is
somebody who never speaks to the media. She’s kept
NADINE DORRIES / INSTAGRAM, BBC
herself very much in the background. She’s followed very
much in the steps of Samantha Cameron. She doesn’t
want to be in the public arena and a lot of what’s directed
towards her is just to get at Boris and it’s pure misogyny.”
In the book she describes Carrie as stoically
supporting Boris, his anchor in stormy seas. After his
resignation, when “the atmosphere was funereal”, it
was Carrie who held things together, she writes.
“Carrie, a total trooper, floated around like a
supermodel in her hot pink Harmur dress and J.Crew
shoes trying to cheer everyone up. She was serene,
resigned; the rest of us were bereft.”
Hang on, though. In the eyes of many Tory voters
Carrie was the Delilah who cut off Samson’s hair.
Instead of a fun-loving prime minister who was going to
restore the freedoms of Merrie England, they ended up
with “Boris Thunberg” — so-called because of his focus
on green policies. Dorries fumes at the suggestion.
“Why would anybody say it was the wife and not the
father? Why would nobody say it’s Stanley who has
been Boris’s influence? Stanley has been an
environmental campaigner all his life.”
Through the pages of The Plot it’s clear her loyalty
to Johnson is undimmed. At one point she describes
how a remark he made resonated with her after a
conversation: “Bliss was it to be in that dawn alive.” She
checks and finds it’s a quote from Wordsworth. “Boris
is the only person I have met in my life who has the
ability to effortlessly insert a great poet into daily
conversation without missing a beat,” she says gushingly.
Her adoration for him is obvious. Some might say naive.
She sits back in her chair. “The thing about Boris is,
he could have gone into banking, he could have gone
into anything with his intelligence and charm. He’d
have made a fortune years ago straight from university.
He never went down the path of making money. He
went down the path of where his interest was, which is
politics. Now he’s a rich man, again, owning a bloody
big mansion in Oxfordshire with multiple millions in
the bank. Will that money keep him happy? I think the
only thing that will keep him happy is being able to
deliver on big visions — and he had a big vision for the
country. He loves the UK and he loves it when we’re
world-beating. Whether that’s our markets or whether
that’s our building projects or whatever it is, he does
believe in the ‘great’ in Great Britain. He really had a
vision to deliver that and sadly it was taken from him.”
In the book she harks back to Johnson’s departing
words on the steps of No 10, when he invoked Lucius
Quinctius Cincinnatus — the Roman statesman who
left his plough when citizens called for him to lead
them into battle. She reminds me that Boris achieved
a larger share of the vote in 2019 than Tony Blair
managed in the 1997 Labour landslide. In the words of
Cincinnatus — or possibly Arnold Schwarzenegger
— he will be back. And if he is, so will she n
The Plot: The Political Assassination of Boris Johnson
by Nadine Dorries (HarperCollins £25). Order at
timesbookshop.co.uk. Discount for Times+ members
The Sunday Times Magazine • 17
 INSIDE THE
MIND OF
A MASS
SHOOTER
As America reels from yet another gun rampage,
two scientists say they have found a way of
stopping the epidemic. Alex Miller reports

CGI ILLUSTRATION BY PETER CROWTHER

 Right: students
are led out of
Columbine High
School in Littleton,
Colorado, where
13 people were
murdered in 1999.
The killers have
since acquired a
cultlike following
ittleton, Colorado, isn’t famous for pizza.
Even if it was, Blackjack Pizza probably isn’t
the sort of place you’d cross state lines to
visit. But that’s exactly what Jeremy and
Eliza did, and Jeremy was ecstatic. It was,
for him, the perfect end to the perfect
mother and son vacation. It was at this
restaurant that the two boys who killed 13
people at Columbine High School in 1999
had worked together as cooks. And they
were Jeremy’s heroes.
In the early Noughties, Jeremy — not his
real name — had spent months trying to
convince his mother to take him to the
scene of the most notorious mass shooting
in US history. Now he led her on a unique
tour. He wanted to buy a trenchcoat, he
wanted to try a pepperoni slice and he
wanted to see the school itself.
The teenager recorded their whole
trip on his camcorder, monologuing
breathlessly throughout: “This is the
neighbourhood where [one of the killers]
used to live,” he gushed. “Just look at this
place. It’s beautiful.” In the driver’s seat
beside him, Eliza smiled unenthusiastically.
Four months later, her gambit — hoping
Shootings in schools
and colleges
University
of Texas
15
Elementary Middle High College/University
1965 1970
that the ghoulish trip may temper her son’s
interest in school shootings — would prove
to be a very bad bet.
Jeremy had suffered from depression and
paranoia since he was a teenager. He had
tried to kill himself multiple times and was
placed in psychiatric care after sending a
schoolmate a video of himself with a gun.
But despite the obvious danger to himself
and others, he was free within weeks and
assigned to a social worker, who immediately
realised something was very wrong.
She tried to enrol him at an inpatient
psychosis treatment programme, but
they wouldn’t admit him. He missed their
next appointment, so she called him
repeatedly. He never picked up. A few
weeks later, after one final failed attempt
at suicide, Jeremy’s darkest thoughts
manifested: he shot and killed his father
at home, took a cache of weapons into the
high school from which he had graduated
the year before and opened fire, injuring
multiple students. (Criminal experts
advise that responsible reporting on
mass shootings should avoid naming
perpetrators, to deny any attention they
Gun violence on US campuses and
playgrounds since 1966 (figures
refer to number of murder victims)
Other
1975 1980
may have craved. We have changed names
in this story and won’t be listing precise
statistics to maintain that anonymity.)
Before the attack he wrote a letter urging
the world to remember Columbine.
He had intended to be killed by police,
or kill himself, but his plan failed and
Jeremy survives in a prison to this day.
Last month, at a bowling alley and bar
in the small city of Lewiston, Maine, the
deadliest attack of the year took place, with
18 people killed and 13 injured. A 40-year-old
US army reservist and firearms instructor
used an AR-15-style assault rifle to carry out
the rampage before killing himself.
There were warning signs. In the months
leading to the mass shooting many feared
the gunman’s mental health was declining.
He had told his family that he was hearing
voices, after which they contacted police
to alert them to their concerns while he
had access to guns. This summer he had
reportedly spent two weeks in a mental
health facility after threatening to attack
an army base. Military officials were also
worried and asked a local sheriff to carry
out a welfare check on him in September.
1985 1990 19
 A friend had warned that he might “snap
and commit a mass shooting”. The sheriff ’s
office made two visits to his home but failed
to make contact. Six weeks later he carried
out the attack. A state investigation is under
way. But what’s clear is that despite the red
flags, he still legally had access to guns.
Unlike the Maine shooter and the great
majority of mass killers, Jeremy is still alive.
Though otherwise he is depressingly
unremarkable. Mass shooters are not
uncommon in America. There have been
580 mass shootings this year already,
defined as four or more people killed or
wounded. More than 600 people so far have
lost their lives in these incidents in 2023.
Jeremy is one of five perpetrators who
have contributed countless interviews to
the most significant study on mass shootings
in American history, the Violence Project.
Today he cannot recognise the person he
was when he attacked his school. He hopes
the interviews will help in some way.
GETTY IMAGES, REUTERS, DAVID GUTTENFELDER FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. SOURCE FOR CHART: K-12 SCHOOL SHOOTING DATABASE
that offered context to their crimes.
When marriage led him to Minnesota,
Densley took a position at Metropolitan
State University and turned his attention
to gangs in New York’s South Bronx.
Meanwhile, down the hall, a psychologist,
Jillian Peterson, was working on the
relationship between mental illness and
violence. They began to collaborate.
Peterson, 43, had begun her career
meeting death-row inmates at New York’s
most notorious jail, Rikers Island. Instead
of finding them to be monsters, she
discovered deeply damaged people.
“We had to work out, how do we
Above: a vigil convince a jury that they should give them
for victims of life instead of death?” she says. Often, the
the shooting in answer would be to share her understanding
Lewiston, Maine, of the abuse, neglect and mental illness
last month, which these people had suffered. Peterson would
claimed 18 lives. analyse their lives right up until the
Below: psychologist moment they committed their crime.
Jillian Peterson and Like the rest of America, the colleagues

In June 2022 the most important piece sociologist James watched helplessly every time a mass
of gun legislation since the 1990s was Densley, creators of shooting occurred. “We were fed up with
passed, the Bipartisan Safer Communities the Violence Project the daily drumbeat of gun violence,” ➤
Act, which, among other things, extended
background checks for people under
21 looking to buy a gun. The Violence
Project was the central text upon which
the act was based. It is a source of hope, a
strategy for stopping the American mass
WE ASKED
shooting epidemic and, strangely enough,
it all started in south London. IF ANYONE
THE MINDHUNTERS ACTUALLY KNEW
James Densley, 41, is the son of a
Leicestershire special constable. While
his sister followed their dad into the police,
HOW MANY OF
Densley chose to get even closer to the
criminals. He spent his twenties moving in
THESE MASS
and out of gangs across London, studying
them for his PhD. One morning he would
SHOOTERS
be in Stockwell, the next in Peckham or
Croydon. He watched them sell drugs and HAD A MENTAL
fight, and then went for dinner with their
families. His study was game-changing, ILLNESS.
revealing for the first time the phenomenon
of “county lines”, the drug-dealing tactic
that involved inner-city children being
NO ONE KNEW
sent to sell narcotics in rural areas. Most
importantly, Densley saw that even the
most violent people he met had stories

Sandy Marjory
Columbine Virginia Stoneman Robb
Tech Hook
13 26 Douglas 21
32 17

Santa Fe
10

95 2000 2005 2010 2015 2020 2025

Densley says. “And one day Jillian just asked
if anyone actually knew how many of these
mass shooters had a mental illness.”
The answer was no, no one did. The more
they looked, the more they realised that
barely anything was understood about
these shooters. There was no national
study, no statistics, nothing. “We started
by trying to figure out what number of
perpetrators have a diagnosable mental
illness,” Peterson says. “But then it grew.”
They would approach it from different
angles; Peterson, the psychologist, wanted
to know the personal histories of mass
shooters. Densley, the sociologist, wanted
to know how America itself was helping
incubate these tragedies.
“We’re trying to better understand the
lives of these individuals,” Densley says.
“So that the next time people who might
perpetrate a shooting are there in front
of us, we can see them and we can do
something about it.”

SURVIVAL LESSONS FROM POOH BEAR

In 2018 NBC Nightly News aired a
segment called “Inside the Safest School
in America”. A credulous presenter smiles
gamely at children demonstrating their
training by hiding behind textbooks. He
jogs through the corridors shaking locked
doors as though he were an active shooter.
This journey is captured by cameras
mounted in the ceiling, their footage beamed
directly into a monitoring facility. From here
men in uniform watch his every movement
before flicking a switch to unleash fierce
jets of smoke directly into his face. Seeing
him choke, Southwestern High feels less
like the Safest School in America and more
like the Most Aggressive School in America.
This is a good introduction to the
philosophy behind most institutional
responses to school shootings: they are
going to fight their way out. Leading
them into battle is a $2.7 billion security
industry producing countless expensive
innovations, from bulletproof backpacks
to corridors with extra corners to hide
behind. It’s profitable, but is it effective?
“There’s no evidence that anyone
has ever used a bulletproof backpack to
save themselves in a school shooting,”
Peterson says.
Inside these militarised schools cowers a
generation of specially trained children. For
most American students, school-shooter
survivalism will be one of the longest-
running subjects on their curriculum.
A school district in Dallas this year sent
four-year-olds home with a book explaining
how to deal with an active shooter: “If there
is danger, let Winnie-the-Pooh and his Crew
show you what to do: Run, Hide, Fight.” This
pamphlet features an illustration of Piglet
in boxing gloves, presumably about to fight
a man carrying an AR-15.
In some states, students will be forced to
do more than 70 drills during the course of
From top: Barack Obama meets
families of Sandy Hook victims,
2016; some American schools
recently sent children home
with survival tips “from
Winnie-the-Pooh” and friends
their education. But these are not air-raid
drills and there is no invading force. The
shooters are in the classroom being trained
alongside everyone else.
PROFILING AMERICA’S SHOOTERS
When Peterson and Densley unveiled
their study in 2019, it included the first
comprehensive database of every mass
shooter in America. They built their model
by applying the FBI’s definition of a mass
murder — four or more people killed
— to events in a public space. In 2021
they published their findings in a book,
The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass
Shooting Epidemic.
Their study begins in 1966, when a
25-year-old veteran sitting in a tower at
the heart of the University of Texas campus
in Austin shot and killed 15 people. This
marked the beginning of the modern mass
shooting as the assault bore many of the
THE MAINE
SHOOTER
TOLD HIS
FAMILY HE
WAS HEARING
VOICES.
FRIENDS
WARNED HE
MIGHT SNAP
tropes we all now know, from the choice
of an educational institution as its target
to the media’s breathless rolling coverage.
Despite stretching back six decades
the Violence Project is a thoroughly
modern document, with more than half
the shootings it recorded happening after
2000, and 33 per cent after 2010. The
death toll from mass shootings in which
at least four people died also climbs,
from an average of 8 lives per year in the
1970s to 51 in 2019.
Looking at this data set, Peterson
and Densley now knew the scale of the
problem, but not its root. To do that, they
would need to research every killer on the
list and, where possible, speak to surviving
shooters themselves. “We had a list of about
150 individuals,” Densley explains. “Of
those, about 30 were alive.” Five agreed to
correspond by letter. Which is how they
met Jeremy:

22 • The Sunday Times Magazine

 I received your letter and I thank you for
taking the time to write me. I have considered Mass shootings by year Civilian firearms
your request and have decided that I am
Firearms per 100 people Firearms
interested in being a part of the work you are
Covid 1 USA 120.5 393.3m
doing to prevent violence from happening in 800 pandemic
the future. I wish you the best during this 2 Yemen 52.8 14.9m
holiday season and thank you again for 3 Serbia 39.1 2.7m

688
contacting me. I will look forward to your 600

645
4 Canada 34.7 12.7m

610
response. God bless you!

580
5 Uruguay 34.7 1.2m
Jeremy
400 6 Finland 32.4 1.8m

414
383
It took them multiple letters to coax 7 Lebanon 31.9 1.9m

347

335
333
meaningful information from him as his

272
8 Austria 30 2.6m
responses were literal to the point of
9 N Macedonia 29.8 0.6m
one-word answers. Nevertheless, over a
tranche of staccato correspondence he 10 Norway 28.8
29.8 1.5m
began to paint a picture of himself. 2015 2017 2019 2021 2023 UK 4.9 3.2m

Q: How would you describe your childhood?
A: It was generally happy, but there were
some scary and confusing incidents.
Q: What were the scary and confusing
incidents?
A: My father showed me pornography as a
young child, and it disgusted me. My father
would sometimes hit or grab my mother.
Q: How often was there violence in your
house? Were you afraid as a child?
A: Violence was not an everyday thing in
our house, but more like several times a year.
Yes, at times I was afraid as a child.
What he describes was a life traumatised
by abuse:
I started to suffer from some depression during
my childhood, although it was not diagnosed
at the time, nor did I realise it. I was probably
around six or seven. Around age 15 I began
OFFICIAL WHITE HOUSE PHOTO BY PETE SOUZA, AP. SOURCES FOR GRAPHICS ON THIS PAGE: GUN VIOLENCE ARCHIVE, SMALL ARMS SURVEY
Mass shootings (four or more
killed or wounded) in the US rose
dramatically post-pandemic
childhood trauma. In the normal
population, it’s about 16 per cent.
“For many mass shooters,” they write, “an
unpredictable and chaotic upbringing is
their first step on their pathway to violence.”
Over the course of these interviews the
self-portrait Jeremy painted was almost
identical to that of many others like him.
Four terrible stages of his downfall would
become a blueprint for Peterson and
Densley’s ultimate goal, a sort of unified
theory of mass shooters:
1. He had been traumatised by childhood
abuse.
2. He had worshipped the Columbine
The US has the highest
number of civilian firearms
per population
This continued for months until he sent
her a VHS tape of himself holding a gun,
threatening suicide. Michelle’s family
reported him and he was placed in a
psychiatric hospital. Just weeks later,
however, she bumped into him at the
cinema. His lips were gnawed and bleeding
as he approached her to apologise. Two
weeks later, just before he attacked the
school, Jeremy wrote Michelle a letter
promising that he wasn’t going to shoot
her sister, who was a student there.
Asked how his mental health was prior to
the crime, Jeremy told the Violence Project:

to suffer from anxiety, and then at 17
I developed severe depression and paranoia
and suicidal thoughts … Towards the last
years of adolescence I was determined to
commit suicide. I tried to kill myself when
I was 15, 17 and 18.
Peterson and Densley dug into publicly
available information on previous shooters
to see if they also had traumatic histories.
It was not always possible but, for the
60 per cent of shooters for whom they
could uncover enough information,
more than half of them had identifiable
shooters.
3. In the weeks leading up to the attack he
had suffered a serious psychological crisis.
4. (Most obviously) he had access to
firearms.
A year before the crime, Jeremy
graduated. He enlisted in the army but,
after completing basic combat training,
he had a breakdown. “I tried to kill myself
with a shotgun and spent a week in the
psychiatric unit,” he wrote. “I felt relieved
when I was asked to leave.” Now discharged,
Jeremy began sending an old classmate,
Michelle, letters declaring his love.
Not good. I was paranoid, depressed, anxious,
obsessive, homicidal and suicidal … Pictures
were staring back at me and [I thought] there
were cameras or recording devices in the air
vents … My family knew I had begun to suffer
from mental health problems but not how
bad they were.
Of mass shooters, 86 per cent aged
20 and under tell people their plans
beforehand. Of the shooters in Peterson
and Densley’s database, 80 per cent were
in a state of crisis leading up to their attack.
“That was the one thing that emerged from
the study,” Peterson says. “People always
say that they knew something was wrong.”

THE COLUMBINE EFFECT

Police evacuate
children from Sandy
Hook, site of the
second deadliest
school shooting
When reading Jeremy’s journal entries
leading to his crime, what stands out —
along with a receipt for the gun he bought
in a Walmart — is his obsession with
Columbine. It opens with a photograph of
one of the two killers and the words, “I’m
going to do it!” When asked about the trip he
took with his mother, he said, “I admit that
I was very excited and happy to see the high
school and the town that I had read about
for almost a year. It was overwhelming.”
But while Jeremy’s obsession is ➤

The Sunday Times Magazine • 23

strange, it isn’t rare. The killers at Virginia
Tech in 2007, Northern Illinois University
in 2008 and Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Connecticut in 2012 were also
Columbine obsessives. This has a name,
the Columbine effect, and a Wikipedia page
that cites 70 planned or completed mass
shootings that were inspired by the atrocity.
“They turned those two kids into
antiheroes,” says Tom Teves, 63, who has
dedicated his life to stopping the media
making stars of mass murderers. Teves’s
charity, No Notoriety, insists that by
printing names, publishing manifestos
and obsessing over motives, the media
encourage future shooters. “We should be
focused on the heroes, the victims, the first
responders,” he says. “Those are the ones
that I believe people want to hear about. Had
they reported on Columbine differently back
then, I truly believe Alex would still be alive.”
Alex was Tom’s son. He would have
turned 35 this year, but in 2012 Alex was
killed along with 11 others while watching
The Dark Knight Rises at a cinema in
Colorado. When shots began, he threw
himself over his girlfriend. She survived.
The killer became famous, covered in the
news across the world, while Alex Teves,
a hero, was largely forgotten.
This red carpet coverage of mass shooters
was defined at Columbine. At the time TV
channels broadcast the manifestos of the
two killers so successfully that they have
thrived as objects of obsession across
multiple generations, like a classic album.
Even now you can buy from Amazon
replicas of the T-shirt worn by one of
them. Reddit boards are full of obsessives
swapping interpretations of the crime. And
on TikTok, in a very 21st-century iteration,
music videos sample images from Massacre
at Columbine High School, a 2004 episode
of the documentary series Zero Hour.
“I FEEL PRETTY SICK NOW”
When I ask if he’s seen these TikTok videos,
David Hickman, 63, sighs. Twenty years
ago, Discovery Europe commissioned the
British director to make a documentary
built from survivor testimony and dramatic
recreations of the Columbine shooting.
“I tried to watch the film before I spoke to
you,” he says. “And I feel pretty sick now.”
Massacre at Columbine High School is
incredibly popular. Endlessly pirated, it
regularly appears on YouTube for a month
or so, racking up millions of views, before
being taken down. Within days, it’s back up.
I get the impression Hickman wished he
had never made it.
“There was an incident, I think in
Washington State, where one of these
school shooters murdered his parents and
then shot up his school,” he says. “Left on
his computer was my film. Which is a very
depressing and upsetting thing to hear.”
Peterson and Densley’s study proves
that mass shootings are infectious: each
How US media
reported the shootings
at Columbine, Sandy
Hook and Marjory
Stoneman Douglas
High School
one leading to another 0.3 attacks, meaning
that if four mass shootings are covered in
the media, a fifth is guaranteed.
While the mainstream media wrestle
with how to cover mass shootings, which
do well for ratings, social media users are
running riot with names, photos, theories.
On social media as on Fleet Street, if it
bleeds, it leads.
HOW TO END THE EPIDEMIC
Peterson and Densley’s work gives us four
identifiable characteristics shared by most
mass shooters: childhood trauma, a recent
personal crisis, an interest in other shooters,
and access to firearms. As such, an effective
method of triage would be to try to counter
each of them. Of course there is no panacea.
“Everything that would make schools
better in general will also make schools
safer in general,” Densley says. “There’s a
reason why people send their kids to private
school, right? It’s small class sizes and
individualised attention. These are basic
principles of good education. If kids can
read and write and feel safe, they’re not
going to shoot one another.”
Peterson and Densley suggest that
schools get rid of the culture of
militarisation and active-shooter drills,
instead creating warm and trusting
environments. They can train staff in
identifying traumatised people and
de-escalation. One school counsellor they
interviewed was confronted in her office
by a young pupil with a gun. By chance she
had once taken part in a hostage negotiation
course and she employed this training. After
hours of talking, he gave her the weapon.
If there is a central theme to the Violence
Project it is that small acts can make big
differences. “A common misconception,”
Densley says, “is that problems can only
be fixed by a certain professional or
policymaker. If it’s a mental health problem,
we assume the only person who can
make a difference is a doctor, professor or
psychiatrist. Actually, it can just be a mum
who gives a kid a hug. And that might be
enough to get someone through the day.”
Of course, America does not have a
monopoly on traumatised young men, a
bloodthirsty media or large class sizes.
“I’m not stupid,” Densley says,
exasperated. “I know it’s guns.” Today, there
are more guns in the country than there are
people. “Study after study finds that ready
access to lethal weapons in the United States
creates opportunity for lethal violence to
occur,” Peterson and Densley write, citing
their finding that 63 per cent of guns used in
mass shootings were legally acquired. “But,”
Densley says, “if the best we can do is wait
for the abolition of the Second Amendment,
then nothing is going to happen.”
In 2018 the deadliest high-school
shooting in US history happened in
Parkland, Florida. Seventeen died. Later
that year a woman supported a conspiracy
theory on Facebook calling the shooting a
hoax. In 2019 she filmed herself harassing
a teenage survivor of the shootings. In 2021
the woman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, was
elected to the US House of Representatives.
Guns are more than an American political
blind spot, they drive it mad.
In the final letter Densley and Peterson
received from Jeremy, he wrote:
Thank you for writing to me and for seeking
my assistance. Thank you for doing this
research and the time you and your helpers
have put into this. Take care now and may
God bless you! I will always pray for you n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 25
My miracle
twins
PORTRAIT BY PAUL STUART
One in thirteen babies is born
prematurely in the UK. Yasmin
Butt recalls the trauma of seeing
her newborns clinging on to life
Yasmin with her children today. From top left: baby Rafi weighed
The Sunday
less than 4lb when he was born; his sister Violet wasTimes
evenMagazine
tinier • 27

On
an autumn morning in 2008 two months before my
due date, I was told that the twins I was expecting
needed to be delivered urgently. I had known for three
months that they were going to be born prematurely
as one was growing at an alarmingly slow rate, but
the doctors had been trying to buy us as much time
as possible to give both children a fighting chance.
Now, at 31 weeks and two days, that time was up. The
doctors had discovered a reverse blood flow through
the umbilical cord of one of the babies, indicating a
serious condition where the placenta was no longer
supporting the baby sufficiently and which, left
untreated, can lead to foetal death. The twins were
coming and I felt terrified — and things were about
to get worse. The neonatal intensive care ward at our
local hospital, the Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich,
south London, was full, which meant we were now
in a race against time to find another place for us all.
This was 15 years ago now, almost to the day. But
still thousands of parents each day are facing similarly
terrifying situations. In 2023 about 60,000 babies in
the UK were born prematurely — before 37 weeks
— which amounts to 1 in 13 babies according to the
latest figures from the charity Tommy’s. Worldwide,
15 million babies a year are born prematurely, and of
these a million will not survive. Complications caused
by preterm birth are the leading cause of death in
children under 5. World Prematurity Day on Friday is
designed to raise awareness of its impact on families.
I was 36 when I conceived and from its very earliest
days my pregnancy was difficult. On a work trip in
Holland shortly after I found out I was pregnant I began
bleeding, and on the train home I sobbed on my friend’s
shoulder, fearing the worst. At an appointment at the
early pregnancy unit at St Thomas’ Hospital in central
London, my partner, Matt, and I were relieved to
discover that I hadn’t miscarried and learnt the
wonderful news that we were expecting twins. Still,
from that moment on I couldn’t shake the feeling that
something would go wrong.
My sense of foreboding became a reality at my
20-week scan. As one junior doctor measured the
second twin and called out the numbers, the other,
who was inputting the figures into the database,
stopped typing and turned to look at his colleague.
She nodded and whispered, “I know …” Feeling really
distraught, we were sent straight from the Queen
Elizabeth to King’s College Hospital in Camberwell
to undergo a barrage of tests.
The reason for the lack of growth of one baby was
thought to be either placental insufficiency, an
infection or Down’s syndrome. At weekly scans they
checked the blood flow through the umbilical cord of
the smaller twin and calculated the odds of survival for
both, which was a near-constant rollercoaster of hope
28 • The Sunday Times Magazine
and despair. We knew the twins were non-identical and
decided to find out the sex as I needed to feel a close
connection with them, whatever the outcome. This
meant I knew it was my daughter who was struggling,
which brought an added emotional distress.
About 60 per cent of twin pregnancies result in birth
before 37 weeks, whether spontaneous or induced,
and about 75 per cent of triplet pregnancies result in
birth before 35 weeks. Over the past 40 years there
has been an upward trend in multiple births, partly
on account of a huge increase in people turning to
fertility treatments such as IVF and women starting
families later: multiple births are more common in
older mothers.
Most of the staff I met were incredible, but I do
remember one thoughtless consultant scanning my
notes and asking, “So we are going for delivery at 32
weeks, regardless of the death of twin two in utero?”
Thankfully another doctor reassured us that the outlook
was more hopeful. If we could reach 32 weeks, one
twin would have a 90 per cent chance of survival and
the other a 50 per cent chance. But now, just shy of
the 32-week mark, our luck had run out.
Back on the ward at the Queen Elizabeth, where I had
chosen to give birth, staff were calling round London
and beyond to find a hospital that could accommodate
us. There was even talk of sending us to Scotland. Every
hour of delay meant the odds of survival of twin two —
as they referred to my daughter — were diminishing.
Medics advise you never to google anything but,
pacing the floor in a side room as I waited for news,
I couldn’t stop myself. Several sites echoed the same
opinion — that the reversal of the blood flow was a sign
60% foetal demise was imminent. I became increasingly
agitated and, with no resolution in sight as the day
came to a close, the nurses gave me a mild sedative.
One of the fears gripping me was the prospect of
of twins being separated from my babies once they were born.
When I was pregnant in 2008, one in eight mothers
are born of multiples ended up in a different hospital from her
premature. babies. A colleague had loaned me a maternity book
For triplets with delivery stories, and I remembered one woman’s
account of giving birth to premature triplets who
Ŋüãϰż÷ŏľãϰ were sent to separate special care units. As she darted
rises to 80% between the hospitals, one by one the babies died. I was
terrified this would happen to us, and if it hadn’t been
for the sedative I wouldn’t have slept at all that night.
The next morning there was some good news: the
Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading would take us.
I was blue-lighted in an ambulance more than 50 miles
through London and out onto the M4 with Matt and
my midwife, Karen. Upon arrival I was prepped for
an emergency C-section and within an hour I was
wheeled into surgery.
Suddenly my twins were here. The midwife briefly
showed me my son, Rafi, who was pink and crying.
I kissed his head before he was whisked away to an
incubator. Then my daughter, Violet, was born.
During the procedure they had had to unwrap the
umbilical cord, which had been wound tightly around
her neck, and she emerged silent, grey and less than
half Rafi’s size. We glimpsed her before she, too, was
rushed away. It was such a flood of emotions to see
finally the baby that for months I had been fretting
over suddenly in the world.
We had already chosen names for them, thankful
for the distraction while plodding from check-up to
check-up. Violet was the name of Matt’s grandmother.
Rafi, my beloved father, died 11 years before the twins
 Yasmin cradles her
daughter Violet,
who was small
enough to fit into
the palm of her
father’s hand when
she was born and
spent the first seven
weeks of her life in
an incubator, right
“One nurse mentioned that their skin was so paper-thin
it could tear. I was petrified of touching them”
were born. Honest and loving, he had a pragmatic
approach to life that would have been appreciated very
much in the trying times before and after the birth.
After a restless night, Matt wheeled me to the
neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) to see our
newborns, who were nestled in two incubators in
a corner. Rafi weighed just under 4lb (1.8kg) and had no
eyebrows or eyelashes, but was fairly robust for such a
tiny chap. I was almost scared to look at Violet: at only
1lb 15oz, she resembled a newly hatched chick. She had
enormous eyes and a large head and feet, contrasting
dramatically with her spindly arms and skeletal body.
In a daze, we listened to staff explaining the stack
of monitors and tangle of tubes keeping them alive,
delivering fluids and nutrition. I remember one nurse
mentioning their skin was so paper-thin it could tear
20%of child
easily, so I spent the next few days petrified of touching
them. On the third day a nurse asked if I had held either
deaths
of my babies and I burst into tears and shook my head, under the
so she arranged for me to hold Violet. The moment ¾÷ãϰĢöϰżŢãϰ
I had her in my arms for the first time was incredible.
I was so nervous but felt an overwhelming wave of love
are due to
and pride for how hard my baby had fought to survive. premature
PREVIOUS PAGES AND THESE PAGES: COURTESY OF YASMIN BUTT
birth
L
ike many parents of premature babies, we felt
fear and uncertainty during the earliest days
of our twins’ lives. The day after he was born,
one of Rafi’s lungs collapsed and for several
days he was kept alive by a ventilator. Both
twins were also diagnosed with jaundice, which affects
about 80 per cent of premature babies.
I was discharged after nine days and we moved in
with friends who lived close to the hospital until special
care places became available in London. Matt and I
spent our days on the unit.
The NICU had a daily rhythm. In the mornings the
parents sat at their respective incubators cleaning their
babies with ear buds and cotton wool pads and
changing their size 0 nappies before the consultants
started their morning rounds and we were herded into
the parents’ room to discuss our children’s progress.
In those early, scary days, I was always in search of
hope. In one quiet consultation room there was a book
full of photos of babies who had been treated and
discharged, sent in by their grateful parents. I leafed
through it once or twice a day, comparing the weights
and gestation periods of each child with mine.
On other occasions, it was harder to feel hopeful. Two
or three times a day I retired to a small room for mothers
to express their breast milk. The kits were stored
alphabetically and mine was next to that of a mother
of premature triplets, one of whom had passed away.
Every time I sat in that room I stared at the triplets’
name tag, wondering whether they would now become
known as the twins or still be referred to as triplets. It
made me cry, as I wasn’t sure if I would be faced with
the same dilemma. Then I’d cry again, feeling selfish
for comparing their tragedy to my situation.
Two weeks after they were born, space opened up for
Rafi and Violet at the Queen Elizabeth. They couldn’t
be transported together in the same ambulance as there
was room for only one incubator and neonatal clinician
at a time, so the team made the journey twice. At 6pm
Violet arrived, and just after 10pm the neonatal transfer
team returned with Rafi, having sacrificed breaks and
extended their already long shift to get them both there
on the same day. Fifteen years later I still feel a surge of
gratitude when I think of the moment they wheeled his
incubator through the hospital doors. There was still
a long way to go, but knowing the twins were nearby
made all the difference.
Our next breakthrough came two weeks later, when
Rafi was discharged after reaching a respectable 5lb.
Unfortunately, Violet’s progress was much slower. ➤
The Sunday Times Magazine • 29

She needed to be 4lb and feeding well to come home,
but she was still reliant on a naso-gastric tube. At six
weeks she required a blood transfusion, which I later
discovered is fairly common in premature babies with a
low birth weight. I was distraught when I learnt I wasn’t
Baby Rafi, left,
a match and watched her like a hawk during the four-
and Violet, both
hour procedure, checking for any signs of an adverse
home at last, aged
reaction. But the transfusion was the boost she needed
about three months.
and her weight gain the week after was excellent.
Below: now 15, the
With Rafi at home and Violet in hospital, for more
twins are preparing
than three weeks Matt and I worked as a tag team, and
for their GCSEs
I don’t know how I’d have done any of it without him
and my mum. Just before Christmas, we got the green
light: Violet was strong enough to come home. She left
hospital on December 21, seven weeks after their birth.
We could finally start planning life as a family of four.
“One in ten premature babies
has a permanent disability such
as cerebral palsy or deafness.
We took nothing for granted”
PAUL STUART FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, COURTESY OF YASMIN BUTT
O
ne in ten of all premature babies will
have a permanent disability such as lung
disease, cerebral palsy, blindness or
deafness, according to the pregnancy
charity Tommy’s. Babies born before
32 weeks are especially at risk: they have had less time
to develop in the womb and reaching developmental
milestones — such as learning to roll over, crawl or
walk — can take longer for premature babies compared
with babies born at full term. Even though the twins
were home now, we took nothing for granted.
In our case, although it was Violet who was the
smaller twin and who’d had the harder start to life,
it was Rafi who had tough days ahead. Aged four
months and still only the size of a newborn, Rafi started
having terrifying seizures. I spent a week with him on
a children’s ward while he underwent tests and doctors
tried to get cannulas into his tiny veins. One day I was
asked to hold him down while they performed a lumbar
puncture, which nearly broke me. We also had to film
him when he was having seizures in order to show the
consultants, which was nightmarish.
He attended the Evelina Children’s Hospital for
several electroencephalograms: recordings of brain
activity. On the right medication Rafi’s seizures
became less frequent, but we had to take him for
frequent eye tests as the steroids he was now taking
could cause permanent damage to his peripheral vision.
When he was eight months old the seizures stopped,
although for several years I didn’t dare to hope he was
cured. We never found out the cause, but doctors think
prematurity could have played a part.
I worried that Rafi had been affected in other ways
too. As a young child he didn’t always reach milestones
at the same time as his sister. He needed intensive
speech therapy until he was six as he struggled to be
understood by anyone apart from us. He couldn’t hold
a pencil well as his grip was weak, so learning to write
and draw became an arduous task for him. I left more
than one parents’ evening in floods of tears, devastated
by what I perceived as Rafi’s lack of progress. I wish
now that I had rejoiced at every step he made. Happily,
over time he caught up with his twin.
Fifteen years on, Matt and I couldn’t be prouder of
them. They are healthy, happy and studying for their
GCSEs. Rafi loves gaming, history and politics, is a
good fencer and, at 5ft 8in, towers over me. Violet is a
keen artist, loves music — especially old indie classics,
to my delight — and enjoys bouldering. Last week at
the gym she deadlifted 75kg (165lb). Not bad for
someone who weighed less than 2lb and could fit into
the palm of her father’s hand when she was born.
This Halloween, Rafi and Violet celebrated their
15th birthday with a joint party, as they do every year.
They went trick or treating with friends and piled back
to the house for apple bobbing. Every Halloween I am
reminded of how lucky we are.
Another annual ritual is that Matt and I send a photo
to the Royal Berkshire to show off the twins’ progress.
When Rafi and Violet were eight years old, a former
colleague contacted me. She had given birth to her first
child, a little girl born at 26 weeks, and spent a couple
of months at the Royal Berkshire, taking solace as I had
in the book of NICU graduates. She was delighted to
see the pictures of Rafi and Violet doing so well.
I will for ever be grateful to the medical teams at
the Queen Elizabeth, the Royal Berkshire, Guy’s and
St Thomas’ and the Evelina, who ensured we could
add our family’s story to that book n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 31
Clarkson at Diddly Squat Farm
comparing a real limited edition
Ford GT with a model Ford GT40
from his childhood

PORTRAIT BY TOM BARNES

I could say “Maserati”
before “Mummy”
Jeremy Clarkson has always lived for cars.
Now, at 63, he says he has grown out of doing skids
in stubble fields. What’s up with him?

1 horsepower. They would talk about their
2 mathematically backward and less practically
3 By which I mean I could spell. I had also
I
have always loved cars. I could
say “Maserati” before I could say
“Mummy”. I would go to bed
every night and peer for hours at
the drawings in my Ladybird Book
of Motor Cars, and when my dad,
a travelling salesman, came home
after a week or two on the road,
he’d always bring me the latest
model from Corgi or Dinky.
I was especially fond of the
Citroën Le Dandy Coupé (1),
which sits even now on a shelf
in my new house. And the
Buick Riviera (2), with jewelled
headlights that flashed when you
put your finger over the rear
window. And the king of them
all, the bright orange Alfa
Romeo OSI Scarabeo (3).
The highlight of my year
was our annual pilgrimage to
the Cathedral of Turtle Wax,
otherwise known as the Earls
Court Motor Show. My dad and I would stay
at a small hotel in nearby Barkston Gardens
and have some impossibly exotic spaghetti
at the Palio restaurant on the Earls Court
Road. And then the next morning, after a
night bathed in breathless anticipation, I’d
be there bright and early to collect as many
brochures as possible. Which I’d then cut
up to make a collage on my bedroom wall.
My first actual car was a ten-year-old Ford
Cortina 1600E (4) and when I wasn’t driving
it I could be found washing it and making
4 5
fur door linings and removing the black
paint from the Rostyle wheels and adding
more lights and a graphic equaliser. And
eventually a set of Wolfrace seats.
One day I fitted the engine with a
chromed sports air filter and convinced
my friends that it added another 100
cars and then the sun would come up
and we’d all drive home because none of
us drank back then. Going to the pub
wasn’t about the pub. It was about the
drive there and back.
Naturally I wanted to work with cars, but
this was likely to be a problem because I’m
minded than a Californian fentanyl
enthusiast, so engineering was out of the
question. I also had another problem.
Everything I ever draw looks like a dog, so
I knew I’d never be a stylist, and I was too
much of a sporting spanner to be much cop
as a racing driver. However, I could write.
won a poetry prize at school, and after three
years on the Rotherham Advertiser and two
block release courses in Sheffield, I had a
piece of paper from the National Council
for the Training of Journalists that said I’d
passed the relevant exams and was
therefore a qualified hack. Which, in my
mind, made me Bob Woodward.
I therefore wrote to a chap called Steve
WHEN I WASN’T
DRIVING MY FORD
CORTINA I COULD
BE FOUND WASHING
IT, MAKING FUR
DOOR LININGS AND
ADDING A GRAPHIC
EQUALISER
6 7
Cropley, who was editing Car magazine
at the time, letting him know that I was
available. And he kindly wrote back
thanking me for keeping him in the loop,
but inviting me to go away.
I then applied for jobs with every other
car magazine and when that didn’t work
either I wrote to all of the advertising
agencies that had a car account, asking
for a job in their copywriting department.
This appealed to my fundamental laziness
because when you review a car for a
magazine you have to write thousands of
words, whereas in an advert you just have
to come up with “Coke is it” and then go for
lunch. I mean “Vorsprung durch Technik”.
Those creative boys didn’t even bother
translating that into English.
All the agencies had me in for an interview
and afterwards all of them invited me to go
away as well. So I ended up getting a job as a
travelling salesman for my mum and dad’s
toy company.
It wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind, but
my company car was a Volkswagen Scirocco
GLi (5) — 1,588cc, Bosch K-Jetronic fuel
injection — which I’d ruined by fitting tyres
that were so wide the steering wheel felt as
though it was set in cement.
I loved that car like I loved my ability to
move about and see things. And what I
loved most is that Car magazine said it did
0 to 60 in 8.1 seconds, which made me
more of a man than Andy Scott, whose
Vauxhall Chevette HS 2.3 (6) took 8.3
seconds. Weirdly, girls used to find our
discussions about this quite uninteresting.
It turned out that I was a terrible
salesman. I’d walk into a toyshop and ask
the owner if he’d like to buy a stuffed dog or
maybe a preposterous 3ft-tall felt Captain
Beaky. He’d say “No” and I’d say “OK” and
that would be that.
But the job did at least mean I could do
a huge amount of driving. I’d get up. Drive
to Swansea. Discover that no one wanted a
stuffed dog or a 3ft-tall felt bird. And then
I’d drive home again. And the next day I’d
go to Dorchester and repeat the process,
before heading off the following day to
King’s Lynn to learn that no one there
wanted my wares either. In my first year on
the job I sold absolutely nothing at all, but
I covered 54,000 wonderful, exciting and
liberating miles in my beloved Scirocco.
When I got back to London I’d drive it
some more. Before the killjoy-in-chief
installed traffic lights at Hyde Park Corner,
I’d meet up with my like-minded mates and
we’d take it in turns to see how many people
we could get to blow their horns at us in a
single lap of the traffic island. Geoff always
won, once with a blistering sideways lap in
8 9

his blue metalflake Alfa Romeo GTA (7),
where he scored a massive 14 honks.
And then, the next morning, I was back
in the car and off for another pointless foray
into the dying world of stuffed toy retail.
Then, one day, while sitting at the lights
in an Oxfordshire town called Wallingford,
I noticed the local newspaper offices and
wondered if they had a motoring column. It
seemed unlikely. So then I began to wonder
if maybe any local paper had one. And later,
as a man in the local toyshop told me he
PREVIOUS PAGES: TOM BARNES FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. THESE PAGES: BBC, ROTHERHAM ADVERTISER
wasn’t interested in my stuffed dog or the
felt bird, a thought struck me.
If I reviewed a car, I could send the same
review to a hundred papers all round the
country. They’d get a well-written (well,
well-spelt) review for maybe £20, which
made it good value for them. And I’d get
£2,000 a week for doing something I wanted
to do anyway. In the pub I told my friend
Jonathan Gill about this wheeze and the next
morning, instead of driving to Wednesbury,
I resigned from the toy industry, went to
Prontaprint, bought some headed paper
and in the front room of Jonathan’s house
the Motoring Press Agency was born.
It was a disaster. It turned out that a great
many local newspapers did in fact have a
motoring correspondent and that he took
umbrage at any attempt to dislodge him
from what he saw as a cushy number. Also,
we quickly discovered that most local
newspapers were part of large groups that
had access to centralised features on travel,
home improvement, fashion … and cars.
10 11
To make matters worse, it turned out my
poor selling technique wasn’t limited to soft
toys. I’d ring the editor of the Black Country
Bugle, ask him if he’d like a car review every
week for £20, he’d say “No” and I’d say
“OK” and that would be that. Again.
To make it even worse, I was experiencing
the misery and humiliation of not being
any good as a salesman and not even having
a long drive to look forward to afterwards.
There was nothing for it. Jonathan and I
repaired to the White Horse in Fulham
and pretty much lived there for a year.
We’d occasionally pop back to his house
to watch Danger Mouse, and in the evening
we’d go to the Shahin on the Fulham Road
12 13
From left: Clarkson
revisits his youth for
a festive Top Gear,
1997; with staff at the
Rotherham Advertiser
in the early 1980s.
Bottom: the Top Gear
team in 1992
for a chicken madras. Then I’d trudge back
to the Vomitorium, the house I was renting
with three mates. Actually, two mates and a
man who got up very early every morning
and sat in the bath listening to Radio 4.
Which is not what you need when you’ve
been at the pub all day and have a headache.
It was called the Vomitorium because
that’s mostly what we did in it. After a
couple of months things were so bad that
you could never stand still for very long or
you’d stick to the carpet.
Incredibly, though, after just two years
the Motoring Press Agency was flying.
Mainly thanks to Jonathan, we’d secured
a number of accounts, including the
Shropshire Star, a newspaper on
Humberside and Lincolnshire Life, which
once changed “Aston Martin” throughout
a review I’d written to “Austin Martin”.
The cash was dizzying. In year three, once
we’d split the income evenly and deducted
the cost of our photography, we each took
home £1,600. Which today would be
£6,400. And that is what Sir Starmer
would call “well below the poverty line for
hard-working people in the community”.
You wouldn’t have guessed it, though, if
you’d seen how we were living. Because
we had a few outlets for our reviews we
could borrow cars from the manufacturers,
which would be delivered every week full
of fuel and fully insured. So I was going to
work in a Renault Fuego Turbo (8) or an
Alfa GTV6 (9) or a Toyota Supra (10) and it
was costing me nothing. ➤
14 15
 And that was just the start of it. Twice a
week we’d be invited to a “press launch”,
which meant flying to Cannes or Madrid or
Rome, staying at the best hotel, eating the
finest and completely free food and, the next
day, driving whatever car was being launched
on the best roads the company’s PR team
had been able to find. I got to know La
Réserve in Beaulieu so well the doorman
recognised me. Not in my wildest dreams
had I ever thought such a job even existed.
Daihatsu once invited me to go to Japan
and try out a new little buzz bomb called
the Charade GTti (11). This meant flying
first class on Cathay Pacific to Hong Kong,
spending a couple of all-expenses-paid days
at the five-star Regent hotel before heading
northeast in great luxury to Kyoto. Here,
I climbed into the car and immediately
crashed it. And having been told not to
worry because “we make one every 23
seconds” I flew first class again, to Hawaii,
where our little group spent a couple of
days jet-skiing around Maui before heading
off, at the front of yet another 747 obviously,
to San Francisco for a long weekend at the
Fairmont on Nob Hill.
Then I came home to find I couldn’t
afford to pay the bill for the long-term
parking at Heathrow. I was living a life Elton
John could only dream about while earning
even less than Sir Keir Starmer’s dad, who
— in case you’ve been on Jupiter for the
past five years — was a toolmaker.
And then it all came crashing down. I was
at the launch of the Citroën AX (12) at a
fancy spa hotel full of wet idiots in sliders
and, over lunch, found myself sitting next
to a man who had Jay Leno’s chin and Brian
Sewell’s accent. It turned out he was called
Jon Bentley and he was a producer on the
BBC show Top Gear.
A month later he called and asked me to
do a screen test, so I prepared something
about a Range Rover (13). But Jon produced
a Citroën 2CV (14) and with no warning
asked me to do something on that as well.
It’s strange when you first talk on television,
because when the director said “Action”,
I suddenly became aware, for the first time
in my life, of my hands — and they were
enormous. It was as if I had two marrows on
the ends of my arms and, to make everything
worse, each of the 40 muscles in my throat
had started to spasm, causing me to swallow
constantly. Still, I spoke for two minutes
about ladies with sturdy shoes, whales and
Monsignor Bruce Kent, and despite being
Edward Marrowhands I got the gig.
This meant I had to be available at short
notice for filming duties, which meant I
could no longer realistically spend quite so
many balmy evenings on the terrace in
With Richard
Hammond and
James May on a
Grand Tour of
California, 2016
St Tropez drinking Château Pétrus. But at
least the pay was awful. I was offered £180
a day and in the first year earned £360.
But, and this is the kicker, what the Top
Gear job meant was: I was now first in line
to try all the hot cars and the speed
machines. I was the kid who’d gone to sleep
after playing with his Alfa Scarabeo and
reading his Ladybird Book of Motor Cars,
in a bedroom festooned with glossy car
pictures, and now I was going to be driving
this sort of stuff on TV.
It took a while. Some of the old guard at
Pebble Mill saw no reason to review cars
that “people can’t afford”, but I pointed out
I WAS OVERTAKEN
RECENTLY AND I
DIDN’T MIND. IT
DIDN’T DENT MY
EGO. I MAY EVEN
HAVE MUTTERED
“MANIAC” AS THE
HEARSE WENT PAST
that most people couldn’t afford an Austin
Metro either. “So if you are going to review
cars that are out of most people’s price
range, they might as well be very out of their
price range because at least that way they’d
be exciting to look at.”
And so it was, without actually getting
permission as such, that I spent a breathless
couple of days with a director called Dennis
Jarvis filming every single Lamborghini we
could lay our hands on. We had a Miura (15)
and an LM002 (16), and we raced a Diablo
(17) against a Golf GTi (18) to demonstrate the
difference between a fast car and a Lambo,
and we used Pulnix minicams on the end
of the sound man’s mike pole and a Bad
Company soundtrack, and the bosses were
appalled. But we’d spent so much money
making the film, they sort of had to show it.
And it worked. It turned out the country
was rammed with people like me who liked
fast cars, so Top Gear did an immediate
handbrake turn. And instead of William
Woollard signing off at the end of the
programme saying, “Well, that’s another
show done, as it were. Next week we’re
heavily into second-hand cars, basically in
Nottingham. Lots and lots of good advice to
pick up if you want to. Until then. See you
then. Drive safely. Goodnight,” we had me
driving round a corner too quickly on full
opposite lock asking viewers to drive fast.
I was captain of the toybox and I ended
up going round the world, making shows
about motoring culture and jets and
speedboats and this all culminated, in 2002,
with the birth of new Top Gear, with the
Stig, Richard Hammond and, eventually,
James May. Which, after Top Gear became
the most-watched TV show in the world,
gave rise to that monstrous opening for
The Grand Tour in the California desert.
And then …
Even until quite recently you only had to
show me a small part of a car, an indicator

16 17 18 19 20 21 22
 lens or a door handle and usually I’d be able
to tell you immediately not just which sort
of car it was and which model, but quite often
which model derivative. An L, a GL or a GT.
I used to entertain myself on the
motorway at night by looking at a car’s
tail lights from half a mile away and seeing
if I could work out what it was before I
caught it up. And I could. Never wrong.
Now, though, you could stand me in
a car park in broad daylight and point at
a modern-day SUV thing that is 10ft away
and I wouldn’t have a clue. I went to
Silverstone this year for the grand prix and
was ferried across the circuit in a car that
was blue. That’s all I can tell you.
Carmakers have always been forced to
make small, economical cars for people
who didn’t have much spare cash at the end
of the month. But they did their best to
make those small cars interesting. Which
is why we got the original Mini (19) and
the Citroën 2CV and the Fiat 500 (20),
and even as recently as the Nineties the
Daihatsu Charade GTti. I didn’t drive it
for very long in Japan before I crashed it,
but I do remember being amazed that
something with a one-litre engine could
produce more than a hundred horsepower.
That really was people power.
But now look at what they’re giving us.
Look at that ridiculous electric Citroën
AMI (21). I’m not sure that even qualifies as
Couple this to the fact that if the car
were invented today, no government in the
world would allow normal people to drive it.
They’d say it was too dangerous for ordinary
mortals. Which is why they’re all so hell
bent on Ulez and net zero and making sure
that the small number of teenagers who
want to take a driving test can’t.
I don’t mind, though, because my God I
lucked out on the timing. I was there in 1971
when music reached its zenith and Hunky
Dory, Who’s Next and Led Zeppelin IV were
all released within months of one another.
I was there when comedians were allowed to
be funny and television was a smorgasbord
of gems such as Blackadder and Fawlty
Towers. And my time as a petrolhead sits

A
nd there’s more. When I was a car. And then examine the bestselling cars neatly between the bookends of the first Ford
18 I literally could not drive in the UK so far this year: the Ford Puma Mustang (26) and the last Nissan GT-R (27).
past a stubble field without (22), the Nissan Kumquat (23) and the Plus, by the time they get round to making
being overcome with a wave Vauxhall Corsa (24). There’s nothing there driving so difficult it will no longer be worth
of uncontrollable desire to to titillate a small boy’s underpant zone. anyone’s while, I’ll be landfill. Just remember
go into it and spend a few There isn’t even a fast version of any of them. to put a picture of that Alfa Scarabeo in my
minutes doing skids. Now? And the fourth bestseller is a bloody Tesla coffin. And at the funeral play a soundtrack
I have stubble fields of my Model Y (25). Which is basically a kettle. of the Lexus LFA (28) at full chat n
own and the impetus has
gone. Drive round in them
for fun? I’d rather roll around
in them naked.
It’s the same story on the
road. I used to blast past
everyone all the time. But now I drive at
whatever speed the vehicle in front is
doing, and that’s fine by me. I was even
overtaken recently, which I’m fairly sure
has never happened before, and I didn’t
mind. It didn’t dent my ego. I may even have
muttered “maniac” as the hearse went past.
Age is partly responsible for a lot of this
and there’s no question I’ve spent a very
long time in the chocolate factory. When
you can drive pretty much anything that
takes your fancy, it does eventually become
dull. That’s why Warren Beatty became
gay. Actually, I’m not sure he did become
gay, but I bet he did reach a point where
he said, “No, Carly, you cannot bring
DUDE, WHERE’S MY CAR?
Raquel over tonight. I want to press
flowers instead.”
And when it comes to losing interest in
THE CHASE FOR JEREMY’S CORTINA
cars, I’m not alone. Young people, and Calling all car sleuths. existence. It hasn’t been
especially young men, have always loved Clarkson’s first car was a 1969 scrapped or exported, nor has
cars. But today that love seems to be on Ford Cortina MkII 1600E, it been declared an insurance
the wane. Many don’t even bother to get a registration number AWT 610G, write-off. It’s listed as originally
licence, saying they’d rather use Uber and with fur-lined doors and racing gold in colour — although it
that coaches have free wi-fi. Some of this, seats. His dad also had a MkII could since have been
I’m sure, is down to Gen Z’s obsession with Cortina. “I didn’t know there resprayed. If it’s out there,
net zero Just Stop Oil ecoism, but there were other cars,” Clarkson we want to find it and we need
must be more to it than that. It takes more says. “I was raised in a Ford your help. Write to magazine@
than one snot-nosed Swedish kid to end Cortina.” But where is Jeremy’s sunday-times.co.uk, preferably
our century-old love affair with the car. first car? A number plate with a photo of the car, or post
Unless she’s being actively aided and check suggests it’s still in in the online comments.
BBC

abetted by the car industry itself. And she is.

23 24 25 26 27 28
T A B L E TA L K
ay dinners
-tr
ne
so
’
ine
Alp
Skye Mc

PLUS Budget beaujolais from Will Lyons ● Charlotte Ivers visits Keir
Starmer’s favourite pub ● Does beans have to mean Heinz?
The Sunday Times Magazine • 39
 ffortless” can feel
E
misleading in cooking
— there is no such
thing. But there is a
spectrum: “a day in the
kitchen and a mountain
of washing-up” at one
end and “maximum
return for minimal
work” at the other.
These recipes are as
low maintenance as you can get:
dishes you can bung in the oven
and forget about. Play with the
flavours: instead of figs, pair the
chicken with potatoes (seasoned
with lemon slices and fresh
thyme or rosemary), or roasted
grapes, persimmon or apple.
For the orzo, swap the mackerel
for green peas and courgette,
or halved baby tomatoes, black
olives and melting mozzarella.
By Skye McAlpine
Chicken thighs with figs
You could, of course, roast a
whole chicken to serve with
jammy, thyme-infused figs, but
the thighs cook quicker than an
entire bird and tend to be the
most flavoursome part anyway,
making this dish a win-win.
Ingredients
(Serves 4)
• 1 tbsp honey
• 5 tbsp olive oil
• 4-6 skin-on, bone-in
chicken thighs
• 8 figs, quartered
• Salt flakes
• Small bunch of fresh thyme
1 Heat the oven to 160C fan/
gas 4. Combine the honey
and oil in a small bowl and
whisk with a fork. Arrange
the chicken thighs and figs in
a roasting dish, then drizzle
the honey mixture over
40 • The Sunday Times Magazine
(I like to drizzle especially
generously over the chicken
skin so it goes all crisp) and
sprinkle liberally with salt.
2 Toss in the sprigs of thyme
and put in the oven to bake for
30-35 min or until the figs are
tender, the chicken is golden
and the juices run clear when
you insert a knife into the
thickest part.
Sausages with fennel
and grapes
This is one of those dishes
that you can happily take into
the colder months. The fennel
is tender but with a tasty
crunch to it; the onions are
melt-in-your-mouth soft, just
caramelised in parts; and the
grapes offer a pop of intense,
jellied sweetness. If you can,
get your hands on sausages
peppered with fennel seeds
— a flavour combination that
works especially well — but any
good-quality pork sausages
will do nicely.
Ingredients
(Serves 4)
• 2 medium fennel bulbs,
thinly sliced lengthways
• 1 small red onion, thinly
sliced lengthways
• 4 tbsp olive oil
• Salt flakes 2 Roast for 20 min, then turn it has a pleasingly stodgy
• 6-8 sausages the sausages so they colour quality, and yet the combination
• 350g grapes evenly and roast for another of sunshine-yellow saffron
10-15 min until they are and buttery, salty mackerel
1 Heat the oven to 200C fan/ browned all over. You can with sweet raisins makes
gas 7. Combine the fennel and test to see if the meat is this the kind of dish you
onion on a large baking sheet. cooked through by inserting could — and should — readily
Drizzle with 3 tablespoons of a knife into the middle of a make for even the most
the olive oil and season sausage — it should feel demanding of dinner party
generously with salt. Toss to warm to the touch when it guests.
combine. Arrange the sausages comes out. Serve immediately.
on top of the vegetables, Ingredients
spacing them out evenly. Orzo pasta with mackerel, (Serves 4)
Nestle in the grapes, broken pine nuts and raisins • 1 vegetable stock cube
into small bunches. Drizzle There is something deeply • 1 tsp saffron strands
over the remaining olive oil. comforting about orzo: • Salt flakes
 Tasted! The best
supermarket
BAKED BEANS

HANNAH’S
PICK

Waitrose Essential
55p, waitrose.com
Nice! Sweet, tomatoey
sauce with a perfect
consistency. Get me a
baked potato now. 4/5

Heinz Beanz
£1.40, tesco.com
Instantly recognisable
but a bit too sweet and
ketchupy, although the
sauce definitely tastes
of tomato. 3/5

M&S Food
50p, ocado.com
Can’t fault the flavour but
the watery sauce would
drown your toast. 3/5

Tesco 50p, tesco.com

A faint taste of tinned
tomato soup. Otherwise
very bland. 2/5

Sainsbury’s So Organic
£1, sainsburys.co.uk
Very thin sauce that
tastes weirdly like
chestnuts and almost
crunchy raw beans. 2/5

Branston £1,
everyday.booths.co.uk
• 400g orzo 2 Combine the orzo, raisins Woah, this is sweet! A
• 50g raisins and pine nuts in a roasting spoonful will suffice. 2/5
SAVE • 20g pine nuts dish (roughly 23x33cm),
FOR LATER • 1 smoked mackerel fillet then crumble in the mackerel Co-op 49p
(roughly 80g) fillet. Pour the stock over Very bland and in an
You can share • 1 lemon, cut into wedges, the pasta and put in the almost brown sauce.
and save to serve oven, uncovered, to bake for Will need tarting up with
recipes from 25-30 min, until all the liquid salt and cheese. 1/5
our digital 1 Heat the oven to 200C fan/ has been absorbed and the
editions gas 7. Dissolve the stock cube orzo is plumped up but still HP £1, morrisons.com
in 900ml boiling water. Using has bite in the centre. The sauce tastes of
a pestle and mortar, grind absolutely nothing.
the saffron strands together 3 Take the dish out of the Bizarre. 1/5
SKYE McALPINE

with a pinch of salt flakes into oven, cover with tinfoil and let
a fine powder, then add to it rest for 5 min. Serve with the Hannah Evans,
the boiling stock. lemon wedges n deputy food editor
 R E S T A U R A N T S Charlotte Ivers l

Sir Keir’s local? Pints for a fiver

and food in fifty shades of beige

THE PINEAPPLE
LONDON NW5

nd so to Keir Starmer’s

A
favourite pub. I’ve
always thought you
can tell a lot about
someone by what they
choose to put in their
mouth — and where
they choose to do it.
So how better to
understand the man
who would be king
than a pilgrimage to his local?
Now, look (as David Cameron
used to say). Let me be clear. It’s
not unknown for our politicians
to pull the name of a random
pub out of their proverbial to
prove their common touch. But
Starmer does actually love the
Pineapple, which is not in
Islington, where everyone
thinks he lives, but Kentish
Town, where he actually lives. invited the finest minds in The others trickle in, along
Admittedly they are spiritually political journalism — the with a bottle of house white **************************************
pretty much the same place. finest available at short notice (£20). The nerd is dispatched THE DAMAGE
Other regulars say they’ve on a Friday night, anyway. First for food. The Pineapple, like **************************************
seen him there. He once to arrive is a lovely nerd from many British pubs, serves Mixed platter A: corn cakes,
described the place as his one of those publications you Thai food. Lore has it this spring rolls, onion rings,
“church”. So I head along in the buy to impress the neighbours began at the Churchill Arms, golden triangles £5.25
hope of feeling His presence. but never actually open. an Irish pub in Kensington.
The Pineapple is one of those He emerges grinning. “Five During the early 1990s the Mixed platter B: chicken
cramped little pubs with the pounds thirty for a Neck Oil!” landlord noticed that punters satch, fishcakes, prawn
bar in the centre and a maze I hate that we are excited by kept slipping away for dinner, toast, prawn tempura, Thai
of rooms surrounding it. They that. I remember my fury when and his Thai bartender dim sum, spring rolls,
make me anxious. You always pints went over a fiver but, by suggested they might stick golden triangles £7.25
have to awkwardly negotiate London standards now, £5.30 is around if the pub could offer
your way through a group of practically free. “Everyone here some nosh. Thai food caught Bottle of house white £20
old boys who have been looks like Keir Starmer,” the on in pubs across the land
sitting there since 2pm, and nerd giggles. On interrogation because its components freeze Pint of Neck Oil £5.30
indeed since 1975. I do exactly this turns out to mean that well and you don’t need much
that and commandeer a table there’s a lot of rosy-cheeked space for a couple of woks. Sir **************************************
out the back. middle-aged men, lots of plaid, Keir should mention that next Total £37.80
To facilitate communion and “everyone looks like they time some politician says that **************************************
with the spirit of Starmer, I’ve spend at least £35 on their hair”. multiculturalism has failed.

42 • The Sunday Times Magazine

 Or maybe not. Given what
arrives, we’d be closing the
borders immediately. I told
you I was here to understand
Starmer — and I’m sorry, Sir
Keir, I didn’t want to do this,
but the irresistible adjective
here is “beige”.
Let’s break down the beige.
Spring rolls: containing the
thinnest slither of veg.
Samosas: either with the
same ingredients as the spring
rolls or perhaps different
ingredients, processed
down sufficiently to be
indistinguishable. Sweetcorn
fritters: enjoyable in the same
way that eating a bag of Haribo
on a hangover is enjoyable.
Flaccid onions rings, that
noted staple of Thai cuisine.
Then, fishcakes. Monstrous.
A texture only God could
forgive. The texture of an
omelette left sweating in the
sun. The taste of something
unholy stuck in the drain when
you’ve finished washing up
the fish knives. Some around
the table think there might
be prawn in these miserable
little discs. It’s hard to say. I’m
allergic to prawns and I ate one
and emerged unscathed. And
thanks to this inconvenient
allergy I can’t tell you what the
prawns in filo pastry tasted
like, or the prawn toasts.
Luckily, if you want to know you
can pop to the nearest Iceland.
Wash it down with another
bottle of wine and a few more
just-over-a-fiver Neck Oils.
ILLUSTRATION BY ALEX GREEN/FOLIO ART FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE. JASON ALDEN, SANE SEVEN
I wake the next morning
feeling guilty. We didn’t have a
main course. I drag a colleague
back for lunch: “Japanese
noodles” I could probably make
better at home and a massaman
curry I couldn’t. The noodles
are slightly overdone, the rice
that comes with the curry
slightly underdone.
Still, it’s £6.50 a dish and I’m
gearing up for a U-turn worthy
of any politician. This is a really
good pub. Airy conservatory,
decent garden, cheap pints.
Sod the food — eat beforehand.
Maybe get some spring rolls if
you feel brave or drunk or both.
Here’s a slogan for you, Keir.
Starmer’s Britain: it’s beige,
but maybe that’s not the worst
thing in the world n
DRI NK
Here’s something nouveau:
bargain beaujolais
O
ne of France’s most famous wine
regions has its moment in the sun
this week as a few diehards gather
to celebrate the arrival of the first
bottles of beaujolais nouveau.
I’ll be away, but even this wine
columnist has been known to
attend the Soho watering hole
the French House to raise a glass
on the third Thursday of
November to this frivolous,
garishly coloured and immature red.
The world fell out of love with nouveau
— and the gimmicky race to get the first
bottles of the new vintage across the
Channel — almost as quickly as it fell in
with it and now this region of 30-odd miles,
sandwiched between southern Burgundy
and Lyons, is busy reinventing itself as the
producer of altogether more serious wines.
There is still enough cheap and cheerful
jug wine to keep the dwindling nouveau
crowd happy, but today Beaujolais makes
some of the most interesting, reasonably
priced bottles in France. At the forefront
of this revolution are the ten crus (Brouilly,
Chénas, Chiroubles, Côte de Brouilly,
Fleurie, Juliénas, Morgon, Moulin à Vent,
Régnié and St Amour) that sit on granite
soil and produce an expression of the gamay
grape that is age-worthy, structured and
complex. At their best these wines possess
a silky texture, lightness of touch and
uplifting floral aromatics. And unlike their
neighbours in Burgundy, whose prices have
hit the stratosphere, they’re still affordable.
Take, for example, the juicy, spicy 2019
Juliénas from Georges Duboeuf, which you
can pick up for £13 at Morrisons.
These reds go so well with
cold meats, terrine or a hunk
of cheese, but my heart also
soars at the simple pleasure
offered by a glass of
beaujolais supérieur
or beaujolais-villages,
which sit below
the crus in the
classification
pyramid. Both are
light years ahead
of nouveau n
l Will Lyons
2022 Château d’Emeringes
Beaujolais-Villages Vieilles
Vignes (13.5%) The Wine
Society, £9.50 Lovely spicy
depth of flavour, with hints
of cherry and a silky texture.
2022 Specially Selected
Fleurie (12.5%) Aldi, £9.49
This smooth, easy-drinking
fleurie is packed with the cru’s
characteristic floral aromas
and bright, tart red fruit.
2022 Taste the Difference
Beaujolais Supérieur (13%)
Sainsbury’s £11 A keenly
priced, balanced beaujolais
from Mont Brouilly delivering
plenty of cherry and blueberry.
2022 Vavril Beaujolais-
Villages Gamay Noir (13%)
Haynes Hanson & Clark,
£14.25 A classic beaujolais-
villages: light and refreshing,
with vitality and crunchy fruit.
2021 Château de Ravatys
Côte de Brouilly (12.7%)
Majestic, £15.99 This organic
brouilly is full of character
and combines earthy spice
with succulent dark fruit.
2021 Dominique Piron
Morgon La Chanaise (13%)
Waitrose, £15.99 A powerful,
generously flavoured morgon
with balance and mellow
tannins. Perfect with poultry.
Bargain of the week
2022 The Best Touraine
Sauvignon Blanc France
(13%) Morrisons, £10 Here’s
a wonderfully fresh, grassy
sauvignon with abundant
zesty citrus and green fruit.
The Sunday Times Magazine • 43
 D R I V I N G Nick Rufford
A Golf in posh clothing that you
can pimp to your heart’s content
sales charts, making it the
REVIEW company’s most popular car last
year with global sales of more
MERCEDES- than a third of a million.
Like the humble Ford Cortina
BENZ GLC or the Nissan Qashqai, the GLC
is a car for its time. It may not be
especially quick or glamorous
but it’s a practical all-rounder
— although Mercedes won’t
welcome such a humdrum
hen the history of description. Possibly they’d be
W
ICE — internal happier with “like a Volkswagen
combustion Golf, only posher”.
engine — cars Need a car to minimise the
is written, the hassle of the daily commute?
Mercedes-Benz A GLC will do nicely. Want
GLC is unlikely something for a family holiday?
to get a mention, It’ll fit two grown-ups, three
but it should. youngsters, a dog and a bootful
Dismissed by of camping gear. You can turn
sceptics as a up at a swanky hotel or collect
Mercedes C-class on stilts flat packs from Ikea. It’s tall
when it appeared in 2016, it has enough to see over traffic but not
slowly but surely climbed the too fat for width restrictors (the
44 • The Sunday Times Magazine
l
new version is 21mm narrower).
It’s better-looking than its
predecessor too, with an extra
70 litres of luggage space. This
smoothed, pimped, updated
GLC has been a long time in
the making because, mindful
of the car’s commercial success,
bosses at Mercedes’s Stuttgart
HQ wanted to avoid fixing
something that wasn’t broken.
The biggest changes are in
the powertrains, the propulsion
system that moves the car
along. The new GLC range is
leaner and greener and uses
electrical power to supplement
traditional engines, providing
a best-of-both-world solution.
Cheapest is the mild hybrid
(non-plug-in) diesel, starting at
£52,880 for the, deep breath,
GLC 220 d 4MATIC Line.
That’s a price low enough to
fend off strong competition
from BMW and Audi. But, hang
on, a diesel hybrid? New diesels
are these days much cleaner,
and this one is very much Ulez
compliant. The cheapest petrol
version (the GLC 300 4MATIC
AMG Line) costs £1,970 more.
If you want a shinier halo,
there’s a plug-in hybrid electric
version, which should cover up
to 80 miles before running out
of charge. This extra range has
the added benefit of making the
GLC cheap to tax as a company
car with a benefit-in-kind rate of
5 per cent. It has a smaller fuel
tank, however: just 49 litres
compared with 62 litres on the
ICE cars and the diesel plug-in.
The other sacrifice is luggage
space. To accommodate the
battery, in the PHEV car it’s
470 litres instead of 620. Still,
for people not ready to make
the full leap into electric vehicle
 You can turn up at a
łţ¾ěĐũϰüĢŊãēϰĢľϰÙĢēēãÙŊϰŽ¾Ŋϰ
packs from Ikea in this
ownership, the PHEV is a good
bridge. (Though note that the
diesel PHEV is the heaviest in
the range, half a tonne more
than both the entry-level petrol
car and the Premium Plus
version that I drove.)
Choosing your powertrain is
just the start of the selection
process. Next is trim level, of
which there is a huge array but
all variations get the same
nine-speed automatic gearbox
— 9G-Tronic Plus — and
four-wheel drive system. They
all have a choice of 64 ambient
lighting colours, heated sports
seats, an oversized touchscreen
The Ruffometer
Mercedes-Benz GLC 300 4MATIC
AMG Line Premium Plus
1,640mm
4,716mm
Engine 1999cc, 4 cylinders, petrol Power 254bhp Torque
295 lb ft Acceleration 0-62mph: 6.2sec Top speed 149mph
Fuel 37.7mpg CO2 1741g/km Weight 1,925kg Price £64,850
Release date On sale now
MIRRORPIX
Nick’s rating
panel and wireless phone
charging. Oh, and a fingerprint
scanner that tees up the car
with your personal settings.
On higher trim levels you’re
paying for panoramic roof,
surround sound system and
head-up display. But even in
the lowest spec the GLC’s
cockpit has a nice roomy feel
and the driver’s position is
comfy. It’s a little tighter for
passengers travelling three-up
in the rear, where the middle
passenger has to straddle a
transmission tunnel.
To its credit, Mercedes has
learnt from past mistakes and
2,075mm
eased back on the touchscreen
technology, by keeping climate
controls on display, for example,
so you don’t need to dig through
submenus to find them. The
steering wheel haptics are still
frustrating, though, especially if
your fingers are slithering about
while driving on an uneven road.
Just to complicate things,
there are also two Mercedes-
AMG versions of the GLC, the
43 and 63, that are genuinely
sporty and can be hustled along
at a fair lick. The latter is a wolf
in sheep’s clothing. On the
outside it’s an eco-friendly
plug-in, but its electric motor is
paired with a turbocharged
2-litre engine to boost power to
a monstrous 670bhp — enough
to whisk you from standstill to
62mph in 3.5 seconds.
A range-topping Edition 1
with all bells and whistles can
be yours for £130,820. And in
case you still can’t find what
you’re looking for among the
GLC’s 19 combinations of
powertrains and trim levels,
there’s a new slope-backed
coupé version of the GLC due
in January that will add another
eight variations.
Why so many? Better to offer
too much choice than too little,
as they say in Stuttgart. It would
help if they streamlined the
names, though n
COLLECTORS’
CLASSICS
Jaguar E-type
When the E-type roared
onto the scene in 1961, it
brought a splash of colour
to a monochrome motor
industry. Enzo Ferrari was
so dazzled he called it the
most beautiful sports car
ever made, even though it
put a crimp in his own sales.
At £2,098 it was less than
half the cost of Italian rivals
as well as fabulous-looking,
with a distinctive forward-
opening long bonnet and
— on early models — glass-
covered headlights.
Celebrities adored it. When
George Best said, “I spent
a lot of money on booze,
birds and fast cars — the
rest I squandered,” he was
reputedly talking about his
E-type. He is pictured
above with his car and his
model girlfriend, Siv
Hederby, in 1976. Other
stars including Steve
McQueen bought it for its
racing pedigree, based as it
was on Jaguar’s D-Type
racing car, which had won
the 24 Hours of Le Mans
race three years in a row.
With a claimed 150mph
top speed and a lively
0-60mph of under seven
seconds it was fast for its
time and captured the spirit
of the Swinging Sixties. In
the closing credits of the
BBC’s Dee Time, the era’s
favourite chat show, Simon
Dee pulled up in his white
E-type to allow a blonde
in a minidress to leap in,
before racing off. Dee was
dropped by the BBC in
1969, but the car’s fortunes
kept climbing. Now it costs
from £25,000 for a “fixer-
upper” to £250,000 for a
pristine model. NR
The Sunday Times Magazine • 45

“The manopause” — you’re joking?
Robbie Williams says he has it. Experts say it’s a misnomer
ecent news that staff
R
at the East Midlands
Ambulance Service
could take up to a
year of paid sick
leave for the “male
menopause” raised
many questions, not
least among women
of a certain age.
Chief among them:
“You’re joking, right?”
It was no laughing matter for
women such as the broadcaster
Mariella Frostrup. The 60-
year-old has called the idea
of a manopause “a land grab,
a ludicrous and blatant
appropriation of women’s
midlife health problems”.
F I TNE S S
Six ways to
boost your
balance
46 • The Sunday Times Magazine
H E A LT H
The controversial guidance
for the ambulance employees
refers to “andropause”, a term
used to describe a drop in
testosterone levels. It says that
men affected by it should not be
made to feel embarrassed and
should be offered portable fans
or heaters, or even time off.
Meanwhile, the singer
Robbie Williams has said
he’s a sufferer. “The hair is
thinning, the testosterone
has left the building, the
serotonin is not really here and
the dopamine said goodbye a
long time ago. I’ve used up all
of the natural good stuff,” he
told The Sun recently. “I’ve
got the manopause.”
rom elite athletes to
F
sprightly grandparents,
one of the keys
to staying strong,
injury-free and
probably living longer
is working on what
keeps the body
balanced. Good
musculature supports
our skeletons better,
keeping us upright and giving
us a better posture, spreading
stresses and strains more
evenly across the body.
These simple exercises are
brilliant for improving balance,
co-ordination, basic movement
patterns and stability — and
it’s never too early or late in
life to start doing them.
By Rosie Stockley,
founder of Mamawell;
mamawell.org
Is it a real thing? The NHS
says terms such as male
menopause and “manopause”
are unhelpful. That doesn’t
mean men have nothing to
worry about in midlife. But the
symptoms they may experience
as they age mostly have nothing
to do with hormones such as
Heel raises
Great for strengthening
calves, ankles and feet —
vital to promote good mobility.
The core also kicks in to keep
you balanced, which aids
posture. These can be
performed holding a chair
for support, or without to
increase balance. Stand with
feet slightly apart, toes facing
forward. Rise up through the
foot, hold and then lower.
Repeat 10 times.
testosterone. “This is a
mistaken attempt to compare
what’s going on in men with
what’s going on in women,” says
Channa Jayasena, a consultant
in reproductive endocrinology.
Jayasena says testosterone levels
dip when men hit their forties
at a rate of about 1 per cent a
year. But only 2 per cent of men
will suffer noticeable symptoms
such as erectile dysfunction
as a result. “Whereas women
undergo a profound change
over a matter of a few years.”
Jayasena says the problem
often starts with men googling
the things that go wrong in
middle age: weight gain around
the belly and chest (the dreaded
“man boobs”); sleep and
memory loss; a reduced ability
and desire to exercise; libido
issues. These can come with
(and fuel) anxiety, irritability,
moodiness and depression.
Search results are awash
with supposed solutions, and
testosterone is increasingly
being pushed as a magic bullet
by private and virtual clinics
that offer at-home blood tests.
“Testosterone prescriptions
have doubled worldwide — it’s
Single leg hinge
Strengthens the leg and pelvis.
Start standing straight, feet
together. Raise one leg off the
floor behind you, hinging the
body forwards like a seesaw.
Keep the back straight and
engaged, not dropping lower
than the height of the leg.
Return to standing and join the
legs back together. Aim to
keep both hips and shoulders
facing forwards. Now do the
other leg. Try 5 repeats of each.

Box step up
Helps co-ordinate the lower
body, activating the legs,
ILLUSTRATIONS: MICHAEL PARKIN FOR THE SUNDAY
pelvis and abdominals. Use
a step or a stool at home.
Place one foot on the box
TIMES MAGAZINE, GETTY IMAGES, PA
and step up, then step up
the other leg so you are
fully standing on the box.
Step down and join both
feet on the floor. Keep your
back vertical and straight.
Add weights for a great
burn on the legs.
Kneeling to standing
Getting up and down to floor
level in a balanced way is
a crucial movement pattern.
This move utilises the lower
body as you go down, and the
abdominals kick in as you
stand. Start from standing,
kneel down with one leg,
then move the other leg down
to join it, keeping the back
straight. Kneel up with the first
leading leg and come to
standing. Repeat 5 or 10 times.
“The testosterone has left the
building,” says Robbie Williams
a multibillion-dollar industry,”
Jayasena says. “But desperate
men can get caught in a rabbit
hole, and private prescribers
are under commercial pressure
to be affirming.”
Low testosterone levels can
play a role in some of these
symptoms, particularly among
the small number of men who
have a real deficiency called
hypogonadism, which can be
treated with hormone therapy.
But in the vast majority of cases,
testosterone is neither the
problem nor the cure. Jayasena
warns that too much of it can
cause serious heart problems.
“It’s a mistaken
attempt to
compare what
goes on in men
with what goes
on in women”
Lateral side walks
These support good posture,
utilising the hips, glutes and
outer thighs. They also help
with knee, hip and back pain.
Use a looped resistance band
above the knees. Bend your
knees with the back straight.
Take a sideways step and reset
the legs again before repeating.
Do 4 each way, then swap,
repeating for 30 seconds. Try
not to close the feet, keeping
some resistance on the band.
“The first reaction
shouldn’t be to say, ‘Oh, I need
testosterone,’ ” Jayasena warns,
“It should be, ‘Well, this may be
a sign of other health problems
— what can I do about it?’ ”
Anyone with concerns
should start at the GP’s surgery,
where Jayasena says doctors
are increasingly having to tell
men who may no longer be able
to afford private testosterone
prescriptions that the NHS
won’t continue them.
Even if testosterone levels do
dip slightly, this is more likely a
result of the other symptoms
and lifestyle factors rather than
a cause of them. A doctor may
suggest getting more sleep,
eating better and exercising
more to reduce stress levels.
Antidepressants or talking
therapies can also help.
For men who may be
feeling that their best years
are behind them, “the key
thing to know is that this is
reversible”, Jayasena says. “You
can still optimise your health
and, by doing that, optimise
your testosterone without
thinking about it.” n
By Simon Usborne
Dead bugs
A great core strengthener,
activating abdominal muscles
that aid posture. Maintaining
torso strength reduces back
pain and keeps you balanced.
Lie flat on your back with your
feet off the ground, knees bent
at 90 degrees. Keep your spine
pressed to the floor. Move one
arm back nearly to the floor
and back up, then swap. Do 10
and then add the opposite leg,
stretching away and back n
The Sunday Times Magazine • 47

A LI F E
Jermaine Jenas
Footballer turned One Show presenter, 40
enas was born in
J
Nottingham and made his
debut for Nottingham
Forest at the age of 17. He
spent the majority of his
career at Tottenham
Hotspur and won 21 caps for
England. Jenas is now a
regular presenter on The One
Show and a pundit on Match
of the Day. He hit the
headlines last month for an
X-rated tweet criticising a
referee, for which he later
apologised. He lives in north
London with his wife, Ellie,
and their three children. He
also has a teenage daughter
from a previous relationship.
There’s no such thing as a lie-in
at our house. If my eldest
daughter is over from America,
you’re talking four kids … 16, 10,
7 and my 2-year-old son, Jacob.
That’s a lot of characters and a
lot of noise. This morning I had
Jacob in bed with me, gave him
his bottle, changed his nappy,
then we had breakfast together.
I had my protein shake, he had
his cereal. When work takes you
away from your family all the
time, little moments set you up
for the day.
I have read a load of stuff
saying that we live in a luxury
house. Yeah, this place is very
different from where I grew up
in the Clifton area of
Nottingham, on one of the
biggest council estates in
Europe. It might not have been
a “luxury” house, but it was
always bursting with love.
That’s a testament to my
parents really, because we got a
lot of racist crap thrown at us.
Especially after they split up
when I was 11. You can imagine
what it was like — a single white
woman with a mixed-race kid.
58 • The Sunday Times Magazine
I N THE
When I look back at those
times, I realise that they
contributed to who I am. They
made me a more rounded
person, someone who’s able to
confront racism. A few years ago
I actually bought that house. I’m
very grateful for the beautiful
home Ellie and I have, but I
want to be able to take the kids
up there and say, “This is where
the story started.” Nice bit of
grounding for us.
Making the change from
football to TV presenting wasn’t
easy. When you’re a footballer,
it dominates everything. In my
case, an injury forced me to
retire in 2016 and I just felt lost.
That can be a dangerous time;
you hear stories about
footballers getting involved
D AY
WORDS OF WISDOM
Best advice I was given
You have to work harder if
you want to be a positive
influence in this world
Advice I’d give
To be a footballer, you need
to work on the technical
stuff. The physical side of
the game will fall into place
as you get older
What I wish I’d known
There are a lot of people
out there who will try to
bring you down
with alcohol and gambling. Ellie
was my guide during that first
couple of years. She was the one
getting me up in the morning,
into a routine, telling me that
everything was going to be OK.
We have a One Show meeting
at 3pm, but I like to get there
early. There’s a nervous tension
involved with live telly that
reminds me of my early days at
Forest. The butterflies I used to
get in the tunnel. The two jobs
are very different but
presenting has given me back
that desire to succeed, putting
myself under pressure to
deliver the goods. I still make
mistakes; emotions sometimes
get the better of me and I say
the wrong thing. You have to
learn from those mistakes.
That’s important because it’s
how life works.
Lunch at the studio is around
4pm — something light, a bit of
pasta and salad — then I don’t
eat until I’m home. Usually
when I get back to the house
the kids are in bed, so Ellie and
I make a point of sitting down
for dinner and talking about
the day. I want to know all the
details: what they did at school,
homework, how many hours
they spent on social media.
There are so many good
things about the internet,
but it’s also become the new
home for racism. When I first
started out, you had fans
throwing bananas at John
Barnes as he was running
down the wing. Now you get
idiots chucking banana emojis
into Bukayo Saka’s socials.
At least we’re having these
conversations, which can only
be a good thing.
Ellie and I watch telly in the
evening, but she has to work
very hard to get me to watch
anything other than sport. I can
be up till 3am if I get caught
up in a golf tournament. Ellie
tells me to listen to my body
more and I do feel better when
I get my eight hours. If you’re
up against four kids in the
morning, you need to be at the
top of your game n
Interview by Danny Scott.
Jermaine Jenas has
collaborated with Dune
London for its AW23
collection; dunelondon.com
Culture
November 12, 2023

Emperor
of the epic
Ridley Scott reveals why he
is taking on the historians
with his Napoleon blockbuster
My Picks Twitter/X @timesculture @TheTimesBooks Instagram @timesculture

Arts
of the Saltburn
and our
4 Cover story From ad man to
blockbuster director — Ridley
Scott meets Jonathan Dean to
discuss modern cinema and his

Week
obsession new historical epic, Napoleon
with class
8 Art Timothy Spall’s unlikely
Film, p6 second career as a painter

10 Books Michael Connelly

Patricia Nicol on his battle to stop AI writing
crime fiction in his name
l On until December at arthouses across
the UK is Cinema Unbound: The Creative Critics
Worlds of Powell and Pressburger, celebrating 14 Film Is Justine Triet’s Cannes
the dazzling visual genius of the British- winner Anatomy of a Fall worth
Hungarian film-making pair. I’m booked for watching? Tom Shone’s verdict
my favourite Hebridean romance, I Know
Where I’m Going!. But I’m tempted by others 15 Theatre Plays that make you
too: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, A laugh are rare — a Queen Mum
Matter of Life and Death and The Red Shoes. comedy has cracked the code
l The Chemical Brothers
Live at the O2 arena
last weekend was an
Books
20 Book of the week Why do
extraordinary experience
we find kittens, Pokémon and
— son et lumière for
Shirley Temple so cute?
unrepentant ravers. My next
big gig experience should
22 Politics Tim Shipman
be quite different: Bruce
dissects Nadine Dorries’s great
Springsteen in Cardiff in May.
Westminster conspiracy
l The fascinating Gwen John: Art
and Life in London and Paris is on at
26 Royalty A new book about
the Holbourne Museum, Bath, until April.
Edward VIII tries to rehabilitate
I saw it at Chichester’s excellent Pallant
a careless king
House Gallery. It’s a wonderfully thought-
provoking, quietly powerful show.
27 Fiction Paul Auster’s novel
reckons with freak accidents
Patrica Nicol is the Sunday Times
radio and podcast reviewer
TV & Radio
AMAZON

Cover Joaquin Phoenix in Napoleon. Right Rosamund 29 The best guide to the
Photograph by Ruven Afanador Pike in Saltburn week’s programmes

© Times Media Ltd, 2023. Published and licensed by Times Media Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed at Walstead Bicester Limited, Oxfordshire. Not to be sold separately.

12 November 2023 3
 Cover story
HAILTHE
BLOCKBUSTER
KING
Ridley Scott is probably
Britain’s most successful
— and outspoken —
director. Ahead of his epic
Napoleon, the 85-year-old
legend rages against
superheroes, politicians,
film critics and history
Jonathan Dean
Interview
n 1977 a brash young British ad man called
I
Ridley Scott, who’d made a bit of a name for
himself with the nostalgic “boy on a bike”
Hovis commercial, went to Los Angeles. His
mission was to flog his first film, an arthouse
Napoleonic number called The Duellists,
and plot his planned follow-up, a take on the
medieval romance Tristan and Isolde.
Within days Scott’s hopes were dust. The
studio had ordered only seven copies of The
Duellists. To cheer himself up the director went
to see a new film that was creating a buzz. It
was called Star Wars — and it changed his life.
He was sitting near the front of the cinema, he
recalls. “I’d never experienced such audience
participation. It was like a rock concert. I
thought: ‘Why the hell am I doing Tristan and
Isolde?’ I was depressed for a month. Then, out
of the blue, someone sent me a script called
Alien.” Scott never looked back. Star Wars
showed him what he really wanted to do: make
big films that people would watch, and boy did
he stick to his guns. After Alien came Blade
Runner, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, The Martian
— popcorn cinema with brain as well as brawn.
At 85 Scott is still on a roll, and now comes
his latest really big one, Napoleon. “Frankly,
he was one motherf***er — wow,” Scott gushes
of the soldier, visionary and emperor who
modernised France and terrified its neighbours.
Joaquin Phoenix plays Bonaparte in a biopic
that zips through his greatest hits and misses
— Austerlitz, Moscow, Waterloo — while Boney
4 12 November 2023
mopes after his cheating wife, Josephine
(Vanessa Kirby, who played the young
Princess Margaret in The Crown). The movie
feels even bigger than Napoleon’s ego.
Years ago Stanley Kubrick wanted to make
a film about the icon. Steven Spielberg planned
one too, as did Baz Luhrmann. But their
versions hit the buffers, for various reasons
including finances and death. Nobody could
stop Scott, though. When I mention those
directors who only tried where he succeeded,
Scott says: “Stanley called me the week Alien
opened. He said: ‘It’s Stanley Kubrick.’ I said:
‘F*** off!’ He said: ‘No, it’s Stanley Kubrick.’
He said: ‘I just watched Alien — how did you
bring that creature out the guy’s chest?’”
He is on rollicking, slightly unhinged form at
his home in Provence. He had been shooting a
sequel to another of his blockbusters, Gladiator,
before it got postponed by the actor’s strike. He
has kept himself busy editing: Napoleon in the
cinema is two and a half hours long, but when it
hits the streaming site Apple, Scott is adding an
hour. “Can cinema audiences really take more
than three hours?” he asks, ever the crowd-
pleaser. “But longer is perfect for streaming.
You can press pause, get a beer, resume.”
Which scenes won’t make the cinema cut? “I
am obsessed with the fact Napoleon had piles,”
says Scott, who believes that the failed invasion
of Russia in 1812 could have been different if
the man in charge had not had haemorrhoids.
Judge for yourself in the streaming edit. “It’s
like having a migraine up your butt! I’ve never
had them, but it’s a horseman’s dilemma.”
I ask about the film’s respect for history. In
real life Josephine was six years older than her
husband, while Kirby is 13 years younger than
French connection Joaquin Phoenix and
Vanessa Kirby in Napoleon. Below: Ridley Scott
Phoenix. “I don’t think it matters,” Scott scoffs.
“I’ve never experienced it in my life but I always
see it, mature women with immature men.”
There is plenty more for historians to nitpick.
At one point, in a spectacular scene, Napoleon’s
cannons fire at the Pyramids. “I don’t know if he
did that, but it was a fast way of saying he took
Egypt,” Scott says.
“Like all history, it’s been reported,” he adds.
“Napoleon dies then, ten years later, someone
writes a book. Then someone takes that book
and writes another, and so, 400 years later,
there’s a lot of imagination [in history books].
When I have issues with historians, I ask:
‘Excuse me, mate, were you there? No? Well,
shut the f*** up then.’”
Scott was born into a military family in
South Shields, Co Durham, in 1937. The
family moved about a lot before he went down
south, to the Royal College of Art to study
photography. There he made a short film,
I will ask
historians:
‘Excuse me,
mate, were
you there? No?
Well, shut the
f *** up then’

Boy and Bicycle, starring his “very talented
young brother”, Tony, who went on
to be a director too, making Top Gun and
Enemy of the State before taking his own life in
2012. No family wowed Hollywood quite like
those British brothers.
The older Scott puts a lot of his success down
to his early career in advertising, which he fell
into because it was better paid than the BBC.
“I took off in that job,” he says, learning how
to communicate fast, telling stories in 30 or
60 seconds and never forgetting the need to
be efficient. “My own definitive plan is that
there is no plan,” he explains. “Since Gladiator
I’ve made 19 movies — I’m busy.”
Martin Scorsese has a fear of his time
running out. Does Scott share that concern?
“Well, since he started Killers of the Flower Moon
I’ve made four films.” So he is not weighed
down by mortality? “No, I don’t think about it.
I get up in the morning and say: ‘Ah great!
Another day of stress.’”
What Scott is weighed down by, though, is
one review that a renowned critic gave Blade
Runner, nearly 42 years ago. “My career has
been paved with perceived disasters,” he rages.
“The biggest? I got crucified by Pauline Kael
[in The New Yorker] for Blade Runner. I was
stunned. It got personal. I was furious because
I knew I had done something special.” The
story of Deckard (Harrison Ford), replicants
and rain is an unsurpassed sci-fi noir. “It is
a sophisticated view of the possible future,”
he adds. “It says: ‘AI has feelings.’”
How will artificial intelligence change his
industry? “We haven’t felt it yet,” Scott says.
“But my concern is it getting into the hands of
people with absolutely no conscience. You
AIDAN MONAGHAN/APPLE
know who they are — so rich it doesn’t matter
— and already we are experiencing global crises
and these wankers are not taking it on board.”
I assume he means Elon Musk or Mark
Zuckerberg, but before I can ask he rushes
off again on another tangent. “Do you have
kids?” Yes. “I’m very concerned about the
future. The stupidity of how we have seen
global warming coming at us like a tidal wave.
How stupid can you get?”
He blows a raspberry. “The world is
bowling along with this blind notion that
somehow it will be OK, but it won’t.” Scott grew
up during the Second World War, so is no
stranger to existential dread. “I’m a war baby,
so I was under the stairs or in the shelter every
night while we got bombed by this lunatic from
Germany. He was mad, cray-zee.”
David Chase, the writer of The Sopranos,
once compared the threat of climate change to
Cold War fears about nuclear Armageddon, I
say. “The atomic bomb is nothing compared to
what is about to happen,” Scott says. “Mother
Nature can shake us off like a flea — she wouldn’t
even know we’re here. They’re advertising
holiday resorts in places where it’s 112 degrees
[Fahrenheit]. Are you kidding? We’re going to
be living by night and sleeping by day.”
All of which sounds like a decent plot for
a film, although the director has his plate full.
Once the strike ends it is back to Gladiator 2,
with Paul Mescal in the lead. Then Scott will
make a western. Then a film about banks.
“I always work three or four ahead.”
Does he think modern audiences, raised
on simplistic superheroes, can cope with the
antiheroes Scott has made a career from, even
RIDLEY SCOTT RANKED up to his recent forays into the Getty and Gucci
families? Is there a lack of nuance in modern
cinema? “In big movies yes,” he says. “But
1 Alien 1979, Disney+ in TV something is changing. I have to have
The unsurpassed masterclass a bedtime story so I always watch something
in sci-fi tension. Stomachs before bed, and little by little television is
explode and an iconic offering something challenging, not the usual
ET decimates the crew — suspects saving the world. I’m not someone
but not their cat. who loves superheroes.”
This is the crux of Scott: a man who makes
2 Blade Runner 1982, buy/rent blockbusters with mass appeal but respects his
Opt for the director’s final cut audience’s intelligence. He goes on to argue that
here. Philip K Dick’s story his own characters are heroic — superheroic
about what is “human” became even — but without the need to “fly off the
Scott’s most emotional — and screen” wearing a cape. Ford’s character, he
quoted — film. says, is a hero in Blade Runner, fighting to find
the truth about who he is. Sigourney Weaver
3 The Martian 2015, Disney+ is too, as Ripley versus the alien. And so was
A latter career triumph. Russell Crowe, in Gladiator, against that bad guy
Matt Damon holds our the Roman Empire. His point, delivered in his
attention as the only person own blunt way: “You can do a superhero film
on Mars, just trying to grow well or as a piece of crap.”
some vegetables. What an underrated director Scott is. He
has never won an Oscar. Does that bother
4 Thelma and Louise 1991, him? “Well, it’s a bit late for me,” he says,
MGM/Prime Video without sounding sad at all. “I care more about
Scott does well with female being well enough to cope with what I’m doing,
leads — never more so than so my health is far more important than a
here, when Susan Sarandon and f***ing gong.”
Geena Davis drive off a cliff. He smiles. “I did get a knighthood, though.”
Well deserved, Sir Ridley — the man whose
5 Gladiator 2000, Netflix entire career seems based on that immortal
The re-creation of Rome was cry of Maximus Decimus Meridius in Gladiator:
extraordinary, the battles were “Are you not entertained?”
brutal — the epic that paved
the way for Napoleon? Napoleon is in cinemas from Nov 22, before
streaming on Apple TV+
12 November 2023 5
 Film
Emerald Fennell has risen
to be the hottest property
in film — now she’s tackling
Britain’s greatest obsession.
By Jonathan Dean
hat, exactly, is the
W
best measure of
how posh one is?
Serviettes, forks,
formalwear?
Actually, nothing
reveals the divide between our
upper classes and Britain’s
aristocrats more than how
they serve tomato ketchup.
The director Emerald
Fennell discovered this on
the set of her latest film,
Saltburn, a vicious satire of
the British class system. She
filmed it in Drayton House,
Northamptonshire, the seat of
the Stopford-Sackvilles, and
served ketchup in a decanter
for a dining scene. The staff
grew restless. There is nothing
so naff, they wailed — ketchup
stays in the bloody bottle.
Fennell laughs. She knows
her place, despite enjoying one
of the quickest, most eclectic
rises to the top: she starred in
Call the Midwife and The Crown,
wrote series two of Killing Eve
and won an Oscar for
Promising Young Woman, a
superb revenge thriller that she
wrote and directed.
Educated at Marlborough
College and Oxford University,
she is well aware of her own
privilege and, crucially, the
difference between new and
old money among Britain’s
elite tribes. She said of her role
as a young Camilla Parker-
Bowles in The Crown: “I play a
chain-smoking posho making
cutting remarks — it’s not a
stretch.” Her father, the
celebrity jeweller Theo, went
to Eton, and Elton John
allegedly spent £200,000 in his
shop in one ornate swoop.
There are the Fennells, and
then there are aristocratic
families like the Cattons, the
fictional inhabitants of the
eponymous stately house,
Saltburn. The story is a riot of
desire as the seemingly humble
Oliver Quick (Barry Keoghan)
meets the hot, rich Felix Catton
( Jacob Elordi) at Oxford and
is invited to spend summer
chez the Cattons.
To say more would risk
spoilers, but Saltburn tackles
the haves and want-to-haves
with a brio that matches
6 12 November 2023
‘Class is
the scab
we can’t
stop picking’
Fennell’s punchy Promising
Young Woman.
“There is always
conversation about my
acquaintance with this sort
of world, but the British class
system is so stratified,” Fennell
says with a laugh, curled up
comfily in an armchair in
a chichi London hotel. “I
could barely get a look-in at
a place like Saltburn!” Oliver
is treated snootily by the
Cattons and I ask if Fennell
has also experienced snobbery
from those even higher up
the ladder.
She thinks, for a long time.
“The thing is,” she says
eventually, “because of my job
as an actress and writer I’ve
taken myself out of all that. You
are necessarily a court jester in
any place you go, so I’ve always
been, up to a point, a source of
ridicule. I mean, I have to
introduce myself to people
with a straight face as
‘Emerald’. I’ve had
to get thick-
skinned
about how
absurd I am
as a person.”
I ask what
themes Saltburn
shares with Promising
Young Woman, in
which Carey Mulligan
set out for vengeance
against men. “I
suppose I’m
Career interested in everyday cruelty,”
highs From she says, smiling. “And the
top: Emerald diligent pursuit of a goal.”
Fennell in Call Few directors have Fennell’s
the Midwife; ability to put across such a
Jodie Comer wide variety of characters so
in Killing Eve; quickly. In Promising Young
as Camilla in Woman those characters were
The Crown; the men that Mulligan sought
Carey retribution against. In
Mulligan in Saltburn we meet Felix’s
Promising family — his mother played
Young by Rosamund Pike and father
Woman; by Richard E Grant — and feel
Alison Oliver like we have known their
in Saltburn eccentricities for years.
She has a gimlet eye for
detail. Halfway through our
interview a waiter serves me a
black coffee. “You hate joy!” she
opines of my choice of drink.
“It says you are confident and
don’t need comfort — you just life that Saltburn’s opening
I’ve had to want something acrid!” That half, at university, feels like a
get thick- sort of observation is all over documentary. It is set in 2006,
skinned her work, so I ask if she has when Fennell was a student,
stacks of notes about people and captures that powder-keg
about how she has met, and whether any of hormones and intoxicants.
absurd I of the characters in Saltburn But she does more than gawp
am as a are based on people she at the “hot mess” of being
person knows. “Well, I hope almost an adult. She talks
anybody would be passionately about being
delighted to be in the young, away from your family
film!” she quips. for the first time, and how
“But the truth is difficult and, indeed,
both ‘no’ and ‘of disappointing that can be.
course’. I hope to “It’s your first time colliding
always be with the world,” she says.
CHIABELLA JAMES
respectful. I don’t “That time is electric — you can
use people.” make up the person you want
Such is to be, but then the world tells
Fennell’s grasp of you, ‘Oh, it’s not about how

hard-working you are, but how
sexy you are.’ How interesting.
It’s the awful realisation that
the rules are much more
complicated than you have
been led to believe.” She is
38 now, with a couple of
children. She smiles. “Then
life wears you down and
you’re just happy to be alive.
And vaguely functioning!”
With her first two films
Fennell joined an invigorating
group of young directors who
tackle our complex world with
a shared pop philosophy —
Bo Burnham (Eighth Grade,
Inside), Greta Gerwig (Lady
Bird, Barbie), Jordan Peele (Get
Out, Us). While directors such
as Martin Scorsese and Steven
Spielberg look to the past, this
new generation chronicles our
times, each bringing their own
slice of life to the big screen.
And Fennell’s specialist
subject? Class. She truly is
excellent on our national
obsession and welcomes the
fact that people compare
Saltburn to other British
stately home stories like The
Remains of the Day by Kazuo
Ishiguro or The Go-Between
by LP Hartley. She is a savvy
film-maker rather than a
cynical one, and she plays
with our expectations about a
subject we thought we knew.
For instance, while Saltburn
seems to be about the
aristocracy and Oliver’s
yearnings for what he does
not have, it is also a
commentary about online
culture, and how people are
obsessed with those who are
better off — scrolling endlessly
and enviously through the lives
of the rich and famous.
“We have a sadomasochistic
relationship with those who not
only don’t care about us but
don’t even see us,” Fennell
says. “It is voyeurism that is
tinged with condescension. It’s
this cycle: ‘I’m looking at this
person and I want to f*** them,
but that makes me feel bad
about myself, so I hate them.’
We can’t help ourselves and
have never been so voyeuristic.
We’ve never wanted to
consume so much. It is a
tension online between
desire and revulsion and,
in this country, we have
had that relationship with the
big houses.”
In the past stories
of the elite were often
aspirational, but thanks
to various prime
ministers, Eton,
their messes and the
Bullingdon Club, that
gloss is now tarnished.
Has our relationship
with the upper classes
become less reverential?
She collects her
thoughts — I feel like I’m
in a seminar. “Yes, our
relationship with [elites]
has changed enormously,
and that’s rightly to do
with our government.
But we still look. It is
more sadomasochistic
when you know better.
And we as a country can’t stop
picking that scab.”
There is a startling
confidence to Fennell, both in
person and on film. Saltburn
is every bit as brash as her
remarkable debut. As befits
her background, Fennell is
utterly self-assured about the
reception to both films. “I’m
not a psychopath, it’s not that
I’m so confident that I don’t
feel nerves,” she insists.
“You’d have to be a liar to say
you’re impervious to
criticism.” Still, I don’t sense
any nerves here at all.
Saltburn is in cinemas from
Friday
Louise Brealey
My The actress and writer, 44,
Cultural on taking acid at her first
Firsts gig and the moment she
knew that Sherlock was a hit
First concert I went to meet John Travolta because I’d
I would like to say an unknown seen him star in The Boy in the
band called Blur in a tiny tent Plastic Bubble, a film in which
at Reading in 1994, but I he plays this kid that can’t step
accidentally took my first and outside a little plastic tent or
very much last acid tab off an he’ll die. The other was asking
apprentice plumber called to meet the pop star Paul
Tony from Swansea and Young. I figured I had a better
watched the The on the big chance with him because he
stage instead. It was all fine was from Luton. At least I
until the music started to didn’t do what my brother did
creep up from the grass and write to Jimmy Savile to
right up my legs and I ask to meet Rolf Harris.
was surrounded by
terrifying gargoyles.
WATCH IT First time I cried at
the cinema
First pop-inspired Such Brave Girls Watership Down
fashion trends I starts on Nov 22, at the Palace in
adopted at 10pm on Wellingborough when
I’m afraid I was an BBC3 I was five or six. It was
unfashionable child. I the first time I had any
was a square and listened clue that creatures die. I was
to 10cc’s I’m Not in Love and very affected by it — I called
the Eagles’ Desperado on my next rabbit Bright Eyes.
repeat. I did love Robert Smith
[from the Cure], but First actor I admired
I didn’t wear enormous Joan Greenwood in Kind
jumpers until my twenties. Hearts and Coronets. She was
the single most beautiful
First time I realised the BBC woman I’d ever seen — and I
drama Sherlock was going was fascinated by her voice.
to be a huge hit
The read-through was First thing I did to embody
electric, which is not normal. my new character Deb in
Usually it’s nerve-jangling Such Brave Girls
because everyone is terrified I started with her voice.
they’re going to be sacked. I wanted to use the
A few weeks later I was Northamptonshire accent.
watching the scene where It’s the land of my birth and
Benedict [Cumberbatch, who how my whole family talks
played Sherlock] first stuck except for me because I was
his head round the lab door a scholarship kid at a posh
and said to Martin Freeman: school, and I’ve never worked
“The name is Sherlock in it before.
Holmes and the address is
EUAN CHERRY/GETTY IMAGES
221b Baker Street.” And I First famous person I met
thought, “Yes it is.” But really I I didn’t meet anyone
realised it was going to be famous until my first proper
huge when I was on early job, which was as a film
Twitter and the show went off. journalist. The most exciting
When Sherlock kissed thing to happen was to go to
[my character] Molly I a film set and sit in Michael
got 60,000 Caine’s trailer. He asked:
followers in an “Would you like to marry
hour. me?” I blushed and
started stammering
First TV show at him. And then he
I enjoyed politely pushed a little
Like everyone at dish of Murray Mints in
school I was obsessed my direction and I
by Jim’ll Fix It. I put realised that he’d
two letters into actually said:
one envelope “Would you like
to double my a Murray Mint?”
chances. One
was to ask to Jake Helm
12 November 2023 7
 Art
‘Life imitating
art is a cliché,
but it’s true’
Timothy Spall took up painting while preparing
to play JMW Turner. It’s left him in the grip of an
obsession that’s changed his life. By Katie Gatens
S
ome actors are known
for going to great
lengths to prepare for
a role — then there’s
Timothy Spall. In 2010
the director Mike Leigh
told Spall he wanted him to
play the titular character in Mr
Turner, his biopic of the British
painter. Spall immediately got
to work — on his brush skills.
Over two years he completed
an art foundation course,
receiving one-on-one tuition
with the artist Tim Wright.
“I’d never painted before,”
Spall says. “But we did
it all — painting and
life drawing and
sketching.”
Turner proved to
be a life-changing role
for Spall. Not only
did he win a slew of
awards — including
best actor at Cannes —
it also kick-started his
unlikely career as
a painter.
This month his
second exhibition,
Winter Sun, opens at
the Pontone Gallery
in Mayfair, London. It
comprises 15 startling
landscapes, each
priced at £4,500,
that are more than a
little Turneresque.
“It’s a classic
cliché — life imitating
art and all that,”
Spall, 66, says,
rolling his eyes.
“But in this case it
really is true.”
I meet Spall in
a café in a tired
shopping centre
in Stratford, east
London, where he
is having a costume
fitting for another film.
8 12 November 2023
CAN YOU
MATCH THE
1
CELEBRITIES
TO THEIR ART? Pierce Brosnan
A
It’s as far away from the art
establishment as it gets. Spall
is unassuming, wearing
black-rimmed glasses, a shirt
People and a black waistcoat, and is
may think much thinner than the Turner
I’m just a from Leigh’s 2014 film — a great
poncey grunting hunch of a man who,
Spall says “felt like he could
actor have come out of the mud of
who’s got the Thames”.
a hobby Immediately, Spall wants to
set the record straight about
his exhibition. “I’m very aware
The sky’s the that I’ve jumped a few queues,”
limit Timothy he says. “That people may
Spall think I’m just a poncey actor D
who’s got a hobby. Quite rightly
that would annoy people,
particularly brilliant artists
who don’t get a look-in.”
It may have been playing
PAUL HEARTFIELD
Turner that ignited the spark,
but it was on the set of the
2019 film Mrs Lowry & Son, in
which Spall was playing the
Lancashire artist, that
painting became an
obsession. Spall was so
inspired he started
painting on set.
“I couldn’t stop. It
became a compulsion.
I painted whenever
I could between
takes,” he says.
He started to
develop his own TIMOTHY SPALL: THE BEAUTIFICATION OF BIRKENHEAD 6 JOHNNY DEPP: ELIZABETH TAYLOR, ELLIOT NYMAN/PANTHEON ART
style instead of
simply copying them and invited Spall to stage Spall veers from the
paintings. To an exhibition. profound to the self-effacing
promote the Spall’s landscapes are a when talking about his work.
film on its combination of imagined On the inspiration for his
release, some places and photographs landscapes he says: “They have
of Spall’s snapped on his phone. an emotional resonance I can’t
paintings were They range from ribbons explain — it’s an ineffability.
put on display in of green northern lights in They’re all a little sneak into
a gallery in Salford, Iceland to Birkenhead and the vastness beyond us.” Then,
Lowry’s home town. Margate, a Turner favourite, while you’re contemplating
Dominic Pontone, where Spall’s mother lived, the profundity of his words,
the owner of the unbeknown to him, in a flat he’ll add, in his thick south
Mayfair gallery, a few doors down from London accent: “That’s all
chanced upon Turner’s boarding house. the bullshit side of it. The
 2 3 4 5 6

Jim Moir Lucy Liu Ronnie Wood Timothy Spall Johnny Depp

B C

E F

1 PIERCE BROSNAN: FISH HOOK, 2023. PORTRAIT KEELY SHAYE BROSNAN; 2 JIM MOIR: BIRD COLOUR WHEEL, JIMMOIR.COM; 3 LUCY LIU: WHAT WAS, 2023 PHOTO: KUNNING HUANG. PORTRAIT: NICOLLE ANG; 4 RONNIE WOOD: DARCEY BUSSELL AND CARLOS ACOSTA 2007; 5

reality is I see something that know what? They’re all right.’ ANSWERS cut me to the core. They some degree of success, he
really affects me, then I try And sometimes I look at 6A have made me feel like a piece is always trying to work on
and bang it out with loads them and think: ‘You stupid, of shit. I can never remember his humility.
ALL IMAGES © TO AND COURTESY OF THE ARTISTS

of colours.”
For all his warmth and
joviality, Spall is his own worst
critic. He doesn’t even seem to
enjoy painting and describes
“ending up in the foetal
position, hating myself” during
the process. “There is huge
self-loathing that goes on,” he
says. “Sometimes I look up at
the pictures and I think, ‘You
jumped-up old twat. What do
you think you’re doing?’”
Changing lanes from acting
to painting “is really exposing”,
he says. He is aware that he is
opening himself up to criticism
— not a thing he takes well.
He reads every review of his
acting. “I get very, very deeply
hurt,” he says. “Recently
I have read a couple that have
5F
4B the good ones, ever. But I
3E can quote you some of the
2C bad ones.”
1D At Spall’s first exhibition at
the Pontone Gallery in 2021,
every painting sold. At the time
of going to press, a week before
the second exhibition opens,
three out of 15 have already
been bought. He concedes that
as an actor who has achieved
As for his art, he says: “At
the end of the day, I say, with
all sincerity I’m just a bloke in
my sixties and if other people
like it, then great. I did get
asked to paint them. Just like
I do get asked to act.”
Timothy Spall, Winter Sun,
is showing at Pontone Gallery,
London W1, Nov 18-Dec 23
12 November 2023 9
 Books
I’ve been
ripped off,
like a victim
of crimeMichael Connelly has
racked up 85 million book sales
with Harry Bosch and the
Lincoln Lawyer — now he’s
fighting to stop ChatGPT
writing sequels in his name
Laura
Hackett
Interview
t’s early morning in Los
I
Angeles, and from his
study Michael Connelly
has a view of the Hollywood
Hills. It’s a vision of quiet
serenity, far from the
fast-paced thrills of his 38
bestselling novels and the
television hits they have
spawned. His two protagonists,
the LAPD detective Hieronymus
“Harry” Bosch and the defence
attorney Mickey Haller, now
also the star of the Netflix series
The Lincoln Lawyer, rarely
experience such peace.
But now the 67-year-old
author’s life has inched a
little closer to his fiction: in
September Connelly filed a
class action lawsuit against
OpenAI, the company behind
the generative AI app ChatGPT.
Alongside the Authors Guild,
the US’s biggest trade union for
writers, and 17 other named
plaintiffs, including Jonathan
Franzen, George RR Martin,
John Grisham and Jodi Picoult,
he is suing the company for
10 12 November 2023
copyright infringement.
Connelly makes a clear
distinction between his pursuit
of justice and that of his lawyer
character. “The lawsuit I’m
involved in is not criminal,”
he says, “although one of the
reasons I’m involved in it is
because I feel like I’ve been
ripped off, a victim of crime.”
Connelly was horrified by the
extent of ChatGPT’s intrusion
into his life’s work. Not only
had the software absorbed
Connelly’s work, it revealed that
it could use all those hundreds
of thousands of words to write
a new Harry Bosch or Lincoln
Lawyer novel. Any other
reader must pay for Connelly’s
books; ChatGPT, he alleges,
just took it for nothing. “That’s
my creative product,” Connelly
says. “Through this new
advancement in technology, I’ve
lost consent, I’ve lost control
and I’ve lost compensation.”
CHRIS PIZZELLO/AP
Before our interview, I asked
ChatGPT to write a scene with
Harry Bosch. It obliged.
Detective Harry Bosch leaned
against the old brick
wall, his eyes fixed
on the crime
scene before
him. The air
was heavy with the stench of
death, a familiar companion
to his years on the force.
If that evocation of a wall is
AI can be anything to go by, I don’t think
beneficial. we’ll be seeing ChatGPT
shortlisted for any prizes
But not
where it (although looking at this year’s
Booker shortlist, who knows?).
takes my But for Connelly, who hasn’t
work and tried the experiment himself
puts it in (“I don’t want to venture into
a blender those waters”), that’s not the
point. “I don’t think it will
ever replace writers, but that
doesn’t mean it’s not a threat.
Someone could say, ‘Write me
a Harry Bosch novel, but
change the name,’ and it would
be very derivative of what I’ve
done. That bothers me.”
The author wants to make
clear he’s no Luddite. “I’m
not Mr I-Hate-AI.” There are
plenty of useful applications
for AI — healthcare,
education, even driving.
“I just want to be able to
work and live and create
in a world where I’m not
threatened by that being
taken away from me.”
Connelly spent
14 years as a
journalist,
mainly as a
MONTAGE BY JEFF POTTER. ORIGINAL IMAGES:
crime reporter, before turning
to a full-time career as a
novelist, but still has a nose
for a story. His new book,
Resurrection Walk, was finished
long before he got involved in
the lawsuit against OpenAI, but
the ethical questions around AI
form an important part of the
novel. AI is used to recreate a
crime, but that re-creation
differs from the official line,
sparking a debate. “What I put
into the book, I hope, is a sense
that AI is here to stay and that
it can be beneficial to humanity
… I’ll benefit from AI at some
point in my life. But not where
it takes my work and puts it in
its AI blender.”
Connelly became interested
in crime aged 16 when he saw
a man stash a gun in a bush
and run away. He reported the
incident to the police and was
asked to identify the culprit
from a line-up (he refused
to identify the man they
suspected, to their frustration).
He devoured his mother’s
Agatha Christie novels, which
were scattered all over the
house, then, at 19, discovered
Raymond Chandler. He
mentions one chapter from
The Long Goodbye, in which
GETTY IMAGES, LIONSGATE FILMS

Bosch Magpie Murders Reacher Tokyo Vice

LITERARY (2014-21, Prime Video) (2023, iPlayer) (2022, Prime Video) (2022, Lionsgate+)

CRIME A modern noir based

on Michael Connelly’s
Anthony Horowitz
adapted his tricksy novel
Don’t waste your time
watching Tom Cruise
Based on a memoir by
Jake Adelstein, this
DRAMAS crime novels in which
Titus Welliver plays a
about a murder mystery
within a murder mystery
as Jack Reacher.
Instead, enjoy this
swaggering drama is
sublime. Ansel Elgort
YOU CAN weary Los Angeles
homicide detective who
into a six-parter. It stars
Lesley Manville as a book
thrilling series based on
Lee Child’s books, with
plays an American
journalist who must
WATCH NOW investigates murders
while driving away those
editor turned sleuth
charged with finding out
the enormous Alan
Ritchson as the police
upend his newspaper’s
toxic relationship with
who love him. It sounds who pushed an author investigator falsely the police with the help
a cliché, but has charm. off a tower. accused of murder. of an inside man.

Marlowe drives around LA “and

in very sardonic and cynical
tones describes the city”. It
inspired Connelly. “I read that
chapter a few times a year.”
It was Connelly’s childhood
reading that prompted him to
join another campaign: PEN
America’s campaign against
book bans in Florida,
to which he has donated
$1 million. The organisation
recorded 3,362 cases of books
banned in 2022-23, with 40 per
cent of those in Florida, where
Connelly grew up and he still
owns a home.
One of the many novels
caught up in the American
controversy is Harper Lee’s
To Kill a Mockingbird, criticised
for its use of racial slurs.
Connelly read it when he was
Truth meets 12, sheltering from the Florida
fiction humidity in the school library
Matthew (“The librarians made you
McConaughey read — they didn’t want you
as the Lincoln just soaking up the air-
Lawyer. conditioning”). The novel
Below: changed his life. “If I hadn’t
Michael read To Kill a Mockingbird, I
Connelly wouldn’t have become a writer.
I wouldn’t be sitting here
talking to you now.”
With all this campaigning, I
wonder how Connelly has time
to pump out a novel a year.
That’s easy, he tells me, thanks
to “14 years as a journalist
where I had deadlines every
day”. He starts writing a book
in November and finishes it by
June. But even with 85 million
book sales under his belt, and
the Lincoln Lawyer Netflix
series racking up 260 million
hours of viewing in less than a
month, he refuses to become
complacent. “I have to raise
the bar every time. I’ve been
given an amazing opportunity
for the life I lead and I have to
There’s a respect it.”
Raymond Resurrection Walk by Michael
Chandler Connelly (Orion £22). Buy from
chapter timesbookshop.co.uk or call
that I read 020 3176 2935. Discount for
every year Times+ members
12 November 2023 11

The
Critics
Camilla
Long
Let me entertain me
Robbie Williams is a narcissist searching for meaning in his life — and finding there is none
Where to begin with Robbie
Williams, a documentary about the
singer Robbie Williams?
Well, I could say I was seriously
looking forward to it: Williams is, as he
tells us over four crazed episodes, a
“born entertainer”. And there’s no
doubt there is plenty of material: 30
years of private footage of him baring
his arse, pulling faces, doing funny
walks, throwing himself round the
globe on one huge tour, for which he
had “93 trucks” and his own plane (a
747) with an RW symbol on the front.
But every time something
outrageous happened — say, his tour
doctor murmuring “I will murder him”
while preparing to jab his bum full of
steroids — we’d come back to Williams,
now 49, sitting mostly naked and thin
in his bed in Los Angeles, telling us,
amid despair and depression, how
hated, resentful and angry he felt.
“I am trying to sort out the wreckage
of the past,” he’d say, rasping.
It was the opposite of PR.
I know it’s a typical documentary of
now: rich, lucky man moans about his
rich, lucky life, while the camera pans
over his pool, his gorgeous kids, his
sexy wife, his house, which, in
Williams’s case, is so big it looks like
some plastic liberal arts college. I seem
to watch one a week. But this show
12 12 November 2023
Television
pulsed with fury and bitterness. I went
Robbie Williams from hardened Williams fan — the hair,
Netflix the humour, the rippling charisma —
to never wanting to spend a single
The Buccaneers minute in the presence of this tedious,
Apple TV+ withered “want monster” again.
Did he actively wish to repel the
Stacey Dooley: viewers? Looking at what he was
Inside the wearing (dirty Y-fronts, the occasional
Undertakers horrible off-the-catwalk mess) I would
BBC1, Thu say yes. Cameras lovingly followed him
as he stepped into the shower, or rolled
around in bed. But we had to contend
with endless crotch shots while his
jewellery clanked. He looked fretful,
frail, like a 90-year-old Chrissie Hynde.
Subjects that didn’t interest him —
Take That, his huge payday from EMI
(£80 million) — were dealt with in a
matter of minutes. And then we were
on to the subject he really cared about:
himself, and his enormous suffering.
I must say, for an obvious narcissist, I
wonder how helpful watching himself,
as he did on his laptop, while talking
about himself, really is.
Williams’s suffering took many
We had to forms. There was the drink and drug
abuse: “I was literally drinking a bottle
contend with of vodka the night before going into
endless crotch rehearsals.” Most of the things he said
shots while were motivational-style nonsense.
his jewellery “Just because in this moment I couldn’t
clanked figure out how to live, I knew that it
MONTAGE. ORIGINAL IMAGES: NETFLIX
The ego has landed Robbie Williams
through the ages
didn’t mean I couldn’t.” Qué? As for
his feud with Gary Barlow, “It’s Lord
of the Flies stuff,” he mooed over
footage of Barlow looking fat. Lord of
the Flies? The Goonies, more like.
The overwhelming impression was
one of a man searching for meaning in
what he had done, only to discover
there wasn’t any. And, having
discovered there wasn’t any, he had
unleashed a titanic wave of nihilistic
fury aimed at his “critics” (ie everyone),
delivered, Achilles-like, from the depths
of his Gucci tent.
Time and again we came back to his
public breakdown in Leeds, when,
hysterical on drugs, paranoid and
angry with the tabloids, he had a
90-minute “panic attack” on stage. I
thought the whole point about panic
attacks was that you couldn’t do
anything, much less sing Angels to
90,000 people. But reality isn’t one of
Williams’s strong suits.
The real victim in all of this was the
director: a talented man who made the
brilliant documentary on Bros. Imagine
having to watch, cut and edit 30 years
of Williams and end up with this
Rudebox-level lasagne of sighs and
self-pity. I think he probably hoped to

find another subject who was comically
furious, like Matt Goss, but what he
found was a man who refused to get out
of bed, to put clothes on, to offer up
any friends or colleagues for insights.
We didn’t even get the thoughts of
Dave, his manager, a wheezing posho
who looked like he’d never had a client
who got through a show.
What we actually got was a
self-obsessed bully who wanted the
camera only on him, whose only
reason to break America was “to piss
a lot of people off back home” (no
wonder he failed). Can you fathom
the negativity of that mindset?
Asked in an interview about the
show, he has said it was “traumatic”,
and “I hope it is for the viewer too”.
Why do a show?
On Apple TV+ there was The
Buccaneers: a hot pink period romp.
You may recall the version released
in 1995, in which a load of American
actresses, gussied up in taffeta,
threw themselves at Greg Wise. Edith
Wharton’s unfinished novel has now
been updated to appeal to the Gossip
Girl generation, so the Buccaneers
shout, “Be the party!” or down
champagne while screaming, “We
always come first!” I find Below Deck
more nuanced and sophisticated.
Arriving in search of “a real-life
dook” is our heroine, Nan (Kristine
Froseth). I think it is absolutely a stroke
of unintentional genius that she should
look like Amanda Knox. If you were to
describe the spirit of the Buccaneers
it is: rich, entitled, oversexual,
dangerous, sassy, rude. Throw in
today’s morbid self-obsession and who
embodies that more than Foxy Knoxy?
Nan herself is a younger sister in a
“family from Saratoga”, so, like Knox,
is officially of no interest at all. Except,
when the smouldering Dook of Tintagel
tells his mother, “I will never marry
anybody who hunts me for the sake of
my title,” we can’t help thinking of her.
This was an enjoyable bit of punky
frippery designed to lure the Bridgerton
crowd. Most of the first episode was a
comedy of manners, played by a sea of
British actors, who throng American
shows like this like Polish builders
(they’re cheap, available and foreign).
I enjoyed it mostly for Fenella Woolgar,
the chilly Lady Brightlingsea.
I’ve left no space for Stacey Dooley:
Inside the Undertakers: she spent a
week hanging out with corpses. This
was a great hour of telly in which
Dooley barely stopped crying. She
found “the subject of death completely
terrifying”, so each day had her
groping around, as if blindfolded on
a Japanese endurance show, for a
response that wouldn’t involve more
horror or shame. What do you say, for
example, when the man you’re sharing
a van with, in which there are five
corpses, says he’s putting on the fans
because of “the smell”?
Radio & Podcasts
The best new true crime
Bible John, the judge doing God’s work and a spooky murder
Patricia
Nicol
Bible John: Creation of a
Serial Killer
The unsolved murders of
Patricia Docker, 25, Jemima
MacDonald, 31, and Helen
Puttock, 29, in Glasgow in
the late 1960s have been
obsessively (sometimes
gratuitously) raked over for
more than 50 years. All three
were mothers killed, seemingly
by the same man, after a night
out at the Barrowland Ballroom
in Glasgow. Now, after this BBC
podcast series, Police Scotland
are examining whether police
corruption and prejudice
interfered with the
investigation of their killings.
In revisiting their cases, the
Scottish investigative journalist
Audrey Gillan wanted to
restore some dignity to the
murdered women and their
families. She had last reported
on the investigation as a
young reporter in the 1990s.
Re-examining the “Bible John”
police files, she was shocked
by the casual misogyny of the
descriptions of the women,
objectified as “promiscuous”
and “fond of male company”
— but also her own failure to
notice that in 1996.
Gillan’s arresting, serious,
thought-provoking
investigation, sensitively
sound-designed by Joel Cox,
succeeds as both a probing,
even explosive, true crime
investigation and a vigorous
feminist inquiry into past
and present mores. It has
won awards, but its
most moving
achievement is the
support it has
received from the
dead women’s
children. I missed
this on its release
last year, thinking
I knew these
women’s stories. I
am happy to admit
I was wrong.
Spooky family
drama Claire Danes
and Hugh Dancy
The Kids of Rutherford murder-suicide, here
County fascinatingly unfolded by the
From New York’s legendary journalist Tristan Redman, his
Serial Productions, this is an brother-in-law.
eye-popping piece of Southern Redman’s ripping yarn is
gothic true crime. While spurred by an extraordinary
listening I kept thinking of coincidence. Some years ago
Louis Sachar’s YA novel Holes, his parents invited the family
set amid a flyblown Texan of his wife, Kate Dancy, over
youth correctional facility. to their Richmond home. On
The series reports on a mass arrival her grandfather told
miscarriage of justice in them that his mother (Kate
Tennessee throughout the and Hugh’s great-grandmother)
2010s, involving the regular had been murdered next
unlawful arrest and door. In the early hours of
incarceration of children — November 23, 1937, Dr Naomi
some as young as seven — for Dancy, a pioneering surgeon,
often mind-bogglingly minor had been shot dead while she
offences. Meting out justice slept; her brother Maurice
was the judge Donna Scott Tribe, a deeply damaged
Davenport, the self-styled First World War veteran,
“mother of the county”, who had then tried and failed to
believed she was “carrying out shoot her husband, Dr John
God’s work”. Extraordinary. [ Jack] Dancy, before slitting his
own throat.
Ghost Story What made these gruesome
The makers of television’s details even more spine-tingling
Who Do You Think You Are? for Redman was that he had
must be kicking themselves often felt an eerie presence in
for neglecting to explore the his teenage bedroom, which
ancestry of the English actor adjoined the murder scene. A
Hugh Dancy (Law & Order, vase would be moved when he
Downton Abbey: A New Era, awoke; subsequent residents
Hannibal, Mr Claire Danes). reported beds being shaken
In his family’s past is a violently. Rooting around more
spectacularly gruesome recently, he discovered a
National Archives blog asking
whether this could actually be
a double murder.
You can see why Redman
might be drawn to all this as a
Redman had often subject, but also why his wife’s
felt an eerie
ROY ROCHLIN/GETTY IMAGES
family might not want their
presence in his understanding of the past
teenage challenged: Jack Dancy, known
bedroom as “Feyther”, is a beloved
familial figure. A joy of this
twisting, psychologically
compelling series is that
those sceptical about the
supernatural can be
drawn in by the
historical true crime
elements, while
those who yearn for
the uncanny will be
rewarded with a
seance. Personally
I was hooked from
the second that
Dorothy L Sayers, a
queen of the golden
age of detective
fiction, made a
real-life cameo. After
subscribing I binged
to the end.
12 November 2023 13
 The Critics Film
Did she push him?
A courtroom drama that swept up at Cannes, plus Nicolas Cage is back
Tom
Shone
Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet, 15, 152min
HHH
Dream Scenario
Kristoffer Borgli, 15, 102min
HHH
Ambiguity is good for you.
Everyone says so. It’s like
spinach. We never find out
what happened in the Marabar
caves in A Passage to India, or
what’s in the suitcase in Pulp
Fiction. Because it’s not about
the solution but confusion and
complexity and nuance and all
those other things that are the
artistic equivalent of eating your
greens. So what’s to stop
someone with a clear story to
tell simply blurring it a little to
create the requisite artful effect?
Justine Triet’s Anatomy of
a Fall swept the top honours
at Cannes this year with its
elliptical courtroom drama
about a successful novelist,
Sandra Voyter (Sandra Hüller),
married to a less successful
one, Samuel (Samuel Theis),
living in the French Alps with
their visually impaired son,
Daniel (Milo Machado Graner).
14 12 November 2023
One day Samuel is found dead
with a bloody head wound,
seemingly having fallen from
a third-storey attic. He must
have hit his head on the shed
at the bottom of his fall, Sandra
reasons with the help of an
old lawyer friend, Vincent
(Swann Arlaud). Was it a
suicide? “I did not kill him,”
she says. “That is not the
point,” Vincent says. “Nobody
is going to believe that.”
Why not? There’s no
evidence that Sandra struck
him — no murder weapon, no
motive, no witnesses beyond
their blind son, who wasn’t
even in the house — but the
prosecutors indict her after
a recording of a vicious fight
between the couple surfaces.
Perhaps marital discontent is
evidence enough?
There are times in Triet’s
film when you find yourself
asking: “Is the French justice
system really this bad?”
Prosecution of the case falls
to a bully with a buzzcut
who casts a dark cloud of
speculation and insinuation
over Sandra’s marriage. A
psychiatrist accuses her of
“castrating” her husband,
forensics experts and police
officers pick over her
infidelities, her bisexuality,
even her novels for proof of
murderousness. “I am not a
monster,” she insists, quietly.
Did she or Hüller is magnificent:
didn’t she? intelligent, shaken, believably
Sandra Hüller grieving, summoning a level
and Swann head to defend herself against
Arlaud in each outrageous accusation.
Anatomy of At one point she even admits
a Fall to lying about something to
“avoid looking guilty”, which
is the sort of thing that only
clever, innocent people say.
And therein lies the chief
flaw in this otherwise flawlessly
executed film. Apart from
Triet’s elision of the actual
death — which we never see,
except in reconstruction — the
film’s ambiguity is something
of a ruse. Sandra’s accusers
are all sexist pedants. The
evidence is non-existent. And
Hüller is a model of quiet,
falsely accused dignity. You
never really believe she might
have done it for a second.
Why not cast in the role of
the prosecutor a debonair
charmer such as Mads Mikkelsen
Sandra or Claes Bang, then arm him
Hüller is with some decent evidence?
a model The film flatters its literate,
novel-reading audience that
of quiet, they are seeing the petty,
falsely pedantic truth of legal
accused bureaucracy deconstructed
dignity before their eyes by the messy
complexity of real life — but
HHHHH KO what is the point of invoking
HHHH A-OK the messy complexity of real
HHH OK life if every last scrap of it points
HH So-so towards exonerating your
H No-no heroine? Triet might as well
have made a straightforward
drama about a martyred
innocent, which is what, I
suspect, this film really wants
to be, beneath its elisions
and smudges.
Finally, a Nicolas Cage role
worthy of his comeback. In
Dream Scenario he plays
Paul Matthews, a professor
in evolutionary biology who
seems to have sealed away
all his anger and aggression
behind the permanent smile
of the people-pleaser, but you
can see that he’s buckling at
the edges with the effort. Then
one day an ex-girlfriend tells
him he has been appearing in
her dreams. “You don’t do
anything, you’re just there,”
she says. Other people — his
students, complete strangers
— report the same thing,
dreams in which Paul just
stands there, in the middle
of an earthquake, say, or in
a roomful of alligators, doing
nothing. “I don’t intervene at
all?” he asks, appalled.
This idea, by writer-director
Kristoffer Borgli, is brilliant, and
harnesses the two strands of
Cage’s onscreen persona — his
surrealism and his sad-sack
mundanity, Vampire’s Kiss on
the one hand and Adaptation on
the other — to wonderful effect.
The whole film allows Cage
to deliver a kind of meditation
on the nature of movie-star
fame — what it is like to fill the
dreams of strangers and how
little it has to do with you. A
“remarkable nobody”, Paul is
soon deluged with posts on
Facebook, interviewed by the
TV news, and sees his
popularity rocket with his
students and daughters. A social
media company wants him to
endorse Sprite, because what
manufacturer doesn’t want
people dreaming about their
products? Maybe Barack
Obama could dream about him?
Borgli’s script is pleasingly
thought out. Just as suddenly,
the dreams turn to nightmares
— Paul as knife attacker,
mugger, murderer — as all his
pent-up aggression and anger
come pouring out. His students
start to feel unsafe around him
and he is “cancelled”. All of
which makes for an excoriating
reflection of modern fame —
but somewhere in there the
film gets stuck in nightmare
mode. What was Paul’s original
sin, exactly, besides being out
of touch with his own feelings?
We still dream of a happy
ending for him.
 Theatre

A right royal giggle POP & ROCK

This tale of the Queen Mother and her butler
made me laugh more than any play this year
Dominic
Maxwell
Backstairs Billy
Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2
HHHH
To Have and to Hold
Hampstead Theatre, London NW3
HHH
It’s not often you sit in a theatre
and laugh and laugh. In fact,
theatreland tends to cling on tight
to the shows that can pull it off. It’s
why Noises Off is back in the West
End for the fifth time. It’s why The
Play That Goes Wrong has stayed
there for more than a decade.
It’s why Steven Moffat’s play
The Unfriend returns next month,
with added Lee Mack. And if the
rumours are true that James
Corden is reviving One Man,
Two Guvnors — the Richard Bean
comedy that brought belly laughs
to the National Theatre and beyond
— expect a box-office bonanza.
I suspect we will see revivals
of Backstairs Billy one day too.
Already this new comedy about the
Queen Mother and her longtime
butler, William Tallon, has made
me laugh more than any other play
this year. The playwright Marcelo
Dos Santos powers these farcical
shenanigans with nimble dialogue,
a keen sense of absurdity and
traces of tenderness too.
Certainly it helps that Penelope
Wilton and Luke Evans play the
leads. That the always excellent
Wilton makes big funny lines feel
casual and intimate comes as a joy,
but not a surprise. Her Queen
Mother, whom we meet aged 79 at
Clarence House in April 1979, is a
figure of perennial wit and fitful
pique (do not underboil Her
Majesty’s eggs). Sidelined
by her royal children,
this Queen Mum seeks
the consolations of fun.
The surprise is how
JOHAN PERSSON
on stage for 15 years because he has
been making films (from Beauty and
the Beast to Dracula Untold) at the
rate the rest of us make sandwiches.
And from the moment he steams on
stage, orchestrating the placing of
flowers in Christopher Oram’s
fondant fancy of a drawing room
set, we’re in safe hands. His Billy is a
powerhouse of outré, pseudo-posh
self-possession.
There is a touch of Noël Coward
and Joe Orton in the air as Billy
brazenly flirts with a new footman,
then passes off a south London
pick-up from the night before as
an African prince. Too silly? No,
Michael Grandage’s production is
so in control of its heightened tone
that it gets away with most things,
including two sets of visiting aristos
making outspoken smalltalk.
There is menace from a stiff
royal secretary who wants to oust
our loveably licentious hero. Boo!
And there is co-dependent love
between a central pair (“there are
two queens in this house”) whose
bantering sense of equality is — we
are reminded in an ending that
restores the status quo with brutal
whimsy — there entirely at Her
Majesty’s Pleasure.
Backstairs Billy offers us foolish
behaviour, but no fools. That same
respect for superannuated central
characters fuels Richard Bean’s
comedy To Have and to Hold.
It’s no One Man, Two Guvnors,
but a loving portrait of two
nonagenarians in a North Yorkshire
semi greeting decrepitude and
isolation with obstreperous wit.
Alun Armstrong excels as the
former policeman Jack Kirk, telling
stories (borrowed from Bean’s dad,
who was a police officer) or chafing
at his wife, Florence. Marion Bailey,
as Florence, chafes back a treat too.
There are laugh-out-loud lines, yet
the evening ends up drifting. The
actors playing the middle-aged
Kirk children have less
rewarding parts. What plot
there is — to do with a dodgy
direct debit — is half-cooked.
Richard Wilson and Terry Johnson
Cinematic and stunning
David Holmes feat
Raven Violet
Blind on a Galloping
Horse
HHHH
Heavenly
DJ, producer
and composer
for film and
television
(Ocean’s
Eleven, Killing
Eve, Steve McQueen’s
Hunger): David Holmes
is a one-man industry. ALBUM
Perhaps that’s why
it’s taken the Belfast
OF THE
musician 15 years to WEEK
release a follow-up to
his previous solo album.
The result is an ensnaring mix
of beats, moods, samples and
cinematic sweep, over which
Baby Queen
Quarter Life Crisis
HHHH
Polydor
Arabella Latham appeared in,
and contributed songs to, the
series Heartstopper. As Baby
Queen, the South African
writes edgy, candid alt-pop
songs about addiction, body
dysmorphia and depression.
Her fantastic debut album
teems with them. DC
CLASSICAL
Kodaly, Bartok
Te Deum & Psalmus
Hungaricus, Cantata
Profana & Transylvanian
Dances
HHHH
Transylvania State Philharmonic
Choir and Orchestra, cond
Lawrence Foster
Pentatone
Composers
Raven Violet delivers lyrics
about mental health, societal
fracture, political chicanery
and the twin poles of cruelty
and compassion, but which
manages to fetch up at a
positive place. When People
Are Occupied Resistance Is
Justified arrives at a
contentious moment, but, as
Holmes, who grew up during
the Troubles, would argue, the
issue is timeless. The album
veers all over the place:
throbbing Eighties
synth-pop on It’s
Over, If We Run Out
of Love; a retro, filmic
pulse on You Will
Know Me By the Smell
of Onions; swirling goth
on the savage I Laugh Myself
to Sleep. Well worth the wait.
Dan Cairns
Cat Power
Cat Power Sings Dylan
HHH
Domino
Recorded live at the Royal
Albert Hall, this intriguing
album is a song-by-song
recreation of Bob Dylan’s
infamous “Judas” gig in
Manchester in 1966. Chan
“Cat Power” Marshall’s deep
feeling for the source material
is evident throughout. DC
obvious pairing, perhaps, but
an inspired one, beautifully
realised by the Transylvania
State Philharmonic Choir and
Orchestra and some superb
soloists under Foster. Kodaly’s
Te Deum is wonderfully lush,
turbulent and devotional,
while his Psalmus Hungaricus
— expertly sung — are both
universal and inescapably
local. Bartok’s lighthearted

good Evans is as the direct and in a perfect world with shared Transylvanian Dances canter
man who made it would have demanded Hungarian- and frolic to playful effect,
happen. The Welsh one last draft. What’s the Romanian drawing superb performances
actor hasn’t been saying? Dying is easy, roots who from the Philharmonic. In
comedy is hard. were lifelong Cantata Profana, by contrast,
Ma’am Penelope friends with a love of the orchestra and choir dig down
Wilton as the For tickets, visit region’s folk music — an into the murky depths. DC
Queen Mother thetimes.co.uk/tickets
12 November 2023 15
 The Critics Art
The genius
artist who
invented
Henry VIII
Hans Holbein’s paintings and sketches
bring the Tudor court to life more vividly
than the entire bookshelf of Hilary Mantel
Waldemar The superb portrait of
Januszczak More that Holbein painted in
England is now in the Frick
Collection in New York, where
it hangs opposite Holbein’s
portrayal of Thomas Cromwell:
Holbein at the Tudor Court is mortal enemies staring across
both a wondrous show and the popish divide. Dropped
a tragic one. It’s wondrous into this murderous religious
because it’s full of Holbeins, mess, Holbein, who probably
and Hans Holbein is one of the had Catholic sympathies but
dozen or so true geniuses ever seems cleverly to have kept his
to have lifted a paintbrush. mouth shut on the subject,
It’s tragic because the fates painted More and his family in
dumped him in the orbit of a group portrait that would
Henry VIII, thereby thrusting have been one of the greatest
him deep into the problematics achievements of European
of the English Reformation, portraiture had it survived. It
a cultural earthquake so was destroyed by a fire in 1752.
destructive that it annihilated What if …
1,000 years of native creativity What is still with us — Thrillingly
and filled the cosmos with cries thrillingly — is the suite of alive Thomas
of “What if?” Poor Holbein. He drawings Holbein made for More and
should have gone to Paris. the commission. They remain Anne Boleyn,
He was born in Germany, in in the Royal Collection and are drawn by
Augsburg, c 1497, but moved to on show at the Queen’s Gallery Holbein. A
Basel, Switzerland, in his teens in a ring of startling likenesses miniature of
because that was where the that keep proving Holbein’s Henry VIII
work was. He became a master talents as a draftsman verged by Nicholas
craftsman working for the print on the miraculous: More, Hilliard
industry and painted a handful blue-eyed, stern, with a five
of heartfelt devotional images o’clock shadow; his son, John,
that marked him out as a long-necked, thin, reading a
religious artist to watch. book; his adopted daughter,
The present show, with a Anne, looking out over our
cheeky flourish, opens with shoulder, as if she has
a scene of Mary Magdalene glimpsed the future.
meeting the risen Christ in the All this has been
garden after his Crucifixion, done with coloured
the famous Noli me tangere chalks, finished off
moment, imagined by so with black ink. It’s a
many excellent popish artists. way of working that
Holbein seems to have painted tests the genius
the scene in England on his of the artist’s hand
first visit here, in 1526, when he steeply. Producing
worked for Sir Thomas More, portraits that appear
who was later beheaded by as present as
Henry for refusing to take the Holbein’s do — so alive
Oath of Supremacy. you would recognise
16 12 November 2023
them instantly if you met them
in the street — while working
with coloured chalks and
occasional ink highlights is a
measure of artistic greatness
that very few have passed.
Holbein keeps doing it.
Being able to compare the
drawings with the paintings
for which they were preparing
is also telling. Sir Henry
Guildford, a high-up in
Henry’s court, looks thoughtful
and sad in his drawing, but
fierce and determined in his
painting. William Reskimer,
short-haired, long-bearded,
in a proto-hipster fashion,
is younger in the
drawing than in the
Holbein’s
priceless gift
to the Tudors
was immortality
painting. In any battle of the
ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST/© HIS MAJESTY KING CHARLES III 2023
truths, the drawings always feel
more trustworthy.
All this brings the Tudor
court to life more vividly than
the entire bookshelf of Hilary
Mantel. This is what art can do.
It’s what Holbein would later
do for Henry VIII when he
reinvented him pictorially as
the man mountain with the
cowboy stance. If Holbein had
not given us such a memorable
Hal, would the Tudor obsession
that still grips us have burnt
with such a fire? No, I don’t
think it could or would have.
Holbein’s priceless gift to
the benighted Tudors was
immortality. Having six wives
feels like one kind of act when
it’s described in the history
books — and another when
you can meet four of them, and
they’re so alive that you feel
their breath. A theoretical
beheading becomes something
different when a pictorial
genius is ensuring that neither
the victim not the perpetrator
can ever fully die.
That said, Henry himself is
only stiffly present here. The
autograph likenesses of him
that survive are scattered about
the museum world and the
Royal Collection can confront
us with only an assortment of
copies. By the time Holbein
rose high enough in the
painterly ranks to paint the
king, Henry would tolerate
only kingly self-promotion —
big paintings of him and his
dynasty. None of the
miraculous intimacy that
Holbein achieved in his
drawings is continued here in
his portrayals of the king.
The show also has ambitions
to bring the Tudor court to life
in other ways. The huge suits
of armour, made by German
craftsmen for the royal King
Kong, tower above us in the
main gallery: my, what a
whopper Henry was! Beautiful
goldsmiths’ work, some of it
designed by Holbein, glitters
gorgeously in the cabinets. A
variety of miniatures, by some
of Europe’s best hands, enlarge
our sense of the Tudor court’s
international presence.
I left the show, with a final
stare at Holbein’s popish Noli
me tangere, thinking: “Britain
used to be like this. And it was
all destroyed. What if, what if,
what if …?”
Holbein at the Tudor Court is at
the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham
Palace, London SW1, until Apr 14
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Books
Facebook Times First Edition

The dark
side of cuteness
From Hello Kitty figures to anthropomorphic condoms,
what we find adorable is intriguing — and disturbing

Book of the week
Irresistible How Cuteness
Wired Our Brains and
Conquered the World
by Joshua Paul Dale
Profile £18.99 pp288
Victoria Segal
In the 1970s Japan’s fancy-
goods industry started selling
(admittedly self-devised) field
of cute studies, any mobile
phone that could not support
emojis vanished from the
Japanese market. Behind the
pastels, cuteness is a cultural
Godzilla in Hello Kitty clothing
— soft power in every way.
Like a giant cuddly turnip
mascot opening its arms for a
hug, Dale’s survey of modern
cuteness, Irresistible, is both
intriguing and disturbing. By
AGNES BUN/GETTY IMAGES
Cutie pies things is only one part of the
Kittens trigger
hold the round-cheeked and
our pleasure soft-bodied have over us.
centres. One of Dale’s primary tasks
Below: furries is differentiating Japanese ideas
at Anthrocon of cuteness — or kawaii — and
2023 in their western iteration. Japan
Pittsburgh is the big squashy heart of the
cute universe — Dale describes
seeing kawaii illustrations on
bank cards, buses and manhole
covers (see also “smiling
anthropomorphic condoms”)
harmless; for the critic Eiji
Otsuka it represented a
“feminised” consumer culture.
Dale, however, explains how
Japan has a long history of
enjoying cuteness. In The
Pillow Book, a text written
more than 1,000 years ago
by the female courtier Sei
Shonagon, the author makes
a “list of adorable things” —
among them “pretty white
chicks who … look as if their

stationery sets imprinted with
sweet little characters, among
them the worryingly mouthless
feline Hello Kitty. Japanese
schoolgirls, already keen
letter-writers, were spurred on
to new levels of tweeness by
these products, sending notes
that not only rounded and
plumped traditional Japanese
writing, but also came sprinkled
with pictures of hearts, stars
and faces — proto-emoji that
would later translate
beautifully to the digital age.
According to Joshua Paul
Dale, an American academic
in Tokyo and a pioneer of the
20 12 November 2023
mixing evolutionary biology, and points out the country’s clothes are too short for them”
cultural history and gender love of miniaturisation, and the more nightmarish
studies, Dale shows just how whether bonsai, haiku or “child’s face drawn on a
close cuteness comes to the Pokémon (“pocket monsters”). melon”. There’s also the
core of humanity. In 1943 the For the artist Takashi beloved 12th-century artwork
Austrian psychologist Konrad Murakami, creeping Scroll of Frolicking Animals, a
Lorenz devised his kawaii revealed gorgeously drawn parade of
“Kindchenschema” postwar Japan’s desire playful frogs, rabbits and
(“child scheme”) to show the US it was monkeys that is often called
of loveable traits the first manga. A country that
— among them enjoyed long periods of peace
large head, and followed a religious
“predominance of tradition where laughter and
the brain capsule” fun might placate the gods was
and “clumsy, wobbly Japan is the receptive to such delights.
movements” — but big squashy Western cuteness, Dale
the desire to nurture heart of the argues, was slower to
small, vulnerable cute universe crystallise. He explores how

children in paintings before
ALAMY
the 18th century were merely
portrayed as tiny unfinished
adults, shadowed by high
infant mortality rates.
Discipline and piety were
vital parenting tools — Dale
mentions that crawling babies
were not considered
endearing, their movements
were too close to those of
animals. It was only as child
survival rates rose and families
shrank that the concept that
a child should be happy, its
innocent naughtiness indulged,
took hold. The etymology of
kawaii suggests blushing at
something exciting. “Cute”,
though, comes from “acute”,
containing sharp intimations
of cunning and mischief that
chime with American versions
of the aesthetic: Shirley
Temple, the plucky orphan
with a pet duck, or Kewpie
dolls, hideous but wildly
popular 20th-century cherubs.
Dale includes chapters on
evolutionary biology that
necessarily slow the pace with
I’ll just make
their careful theorising about
how wolves were domesticated
into more huggable dogs, and
what that process might
explain about human
evolution, our own process of
domestication. Cuteness, he
a note of that
argues, isn’t just a visual game,
something to trick caregivers From Agatha Christie to Henri Matisse, the
into being kind; it’s a matter humble notebook is surprisingly revealing
of socialisation, of ensuring
co-operation and kindness
among groups of people. its notebooks to cult status in
Being an alpha male, he
History the 1990s. Buy a Moleskine,
argues, might not be the flex The Notebook A History with its rounded-off pages and
some people think; what if of Thinking on Paper elastic band closure, the
friendliness was a more by Roland Allen subliminal message ran, and
desirable commodity? Profile Books £25 pp416 you too could be sauntering
At times Dale could enliven around the world thinking
his book with the academic Kathryn Hughes important thoughts and
writing equivalent of a scented meeting interesting strangers.
Miffy gel pen: he could have While Roland Allen can’t
more fun with his subject. You can tell a lot about a writer help sounding cynical about
Even when he is dressed up from their notebooks. While the Moleskine phenomenon,
as a blue wolf at a furry living in Europe, Patricia he isn’t remotely sceptical
convention — a gathering for Highsmith had her Columbia- about the importance of the
those who have an animal branded stationery imported notebook per se in the creative
“fursona” expressed through from NYC (she was an Old process of authors, artists,
dressing up in a lavish Columbian). Agatha Christie, scientists, architects and even
“fursuit” — he remains usually so extravagant with accountants. Charles Darwin
eminently sensible. her knick-knacks, insisted on worked out the theory of
He glides too smoothly over cheap school notebooks in evolution by jotting down in
certain aspects of his subject which she scribbled with his fieldnotes things like, “Why
too. Spend just five grisly whatever came to hand — Biro, 2 [species] of ostrich in South
NSFW minutes on the internet pencil, it was all the same to America?”, while the actor
and you see how rapidly her. Virginia Woolf was more Alec Guinness packed his
cuteness can tip into the particular: The Waves came to commonplace book with
grotesque or be part of life in seven small hardbacks, theatrical anecdotes. That’s not
more sinister processes of written in fountain pen. forgetting utilitarian iterations
infantilisation and fetishisation. Meanwhile there are Bruce such as the policeman’s
The fact his cousin is a furry Chatwin, Ernest Hemingway notebook or the paper pad
means he fails to interrogate and Henri Matisse, all of whom of the waitress (since replaced
the subculture’s more felt passionately about their by digital equivalents, the
unsavoury sexual aspects or its notebooks, at least if you bodycam and the tablet).
appeal to young people. believe the marketing spiel While there have been
There is no interrogation of from Modo&Modo, the notebooks for as long as there
NAPLES NATIONAL ARCHAEOLOGICAL MUSEUM
the links between paedophilia company that trademarked the has been writing, right back to
and the “cute” images of Moleskine brand and propelled parchment and codex, Allen
manga or Lolita fashion either. suggests that the beginning of
Even when Dale assesses Noted A fresco from Pompeii notebook culture really lies in
Shirley Temple’s career as showing Sappho with tablet 14th-century Florence. It was
a child-star phenomenon, here that merchants started
quoting instructions from 20th using small, portable ledgers to
Century Fox’s Darryl Zanuck record trades and calculate
— “keep her skirts high” — he profits. This new science
shies away from diving too of double-entry book-
deep into the moral swamp. It keeping demanded
would be useful to read more notebooks in such
about the pernicious influence a variety of sizes
of cute’s dark side on the and shapes —
Tumblr generation’s aesthetic giornale,
and moral compass, and memoriale,
maybe less about wolves. quaderni,
Even so, by opening up new squartofogli —
perspectives on cuteness in and in such
all its fluffy, big-eyed forms, quantities that
Irresistible displays a large they spilt
head and predominant out into every
brain capsule full of good other sphere of
ideas. Aw. Kawaii. Florentine life.
Leonardo da Vinci
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or call 020 3176 2935. Discount here, describing the
for Times+ members continued on page 22 ◃
12 November 2023 21
 Books
◃ continued from previous page
sketches he dashed down in his
notebooks as his “guides and
masters” once he returned to
his studio to work up finished
drawings. Everything
imaginable poured into his
notebooks: pumps, pipes,
valves, siphons, fountains,
lifts, hoists, presses, furnaces,
grinders and mills. One of his
final entries was a plan for
prefabricated mobile homes
in which the court could stay
on hunting trips. From this
rich, fertile soil grew some
of the most sublime finished
paintings in the history of
art, not to mention crucial
practical inventions too.
Leonardo used his notebook
as his second brain.
Writers followed suit, jotting
down anything that caught
their fancy, from a literary
quotation to their feelings
for the girl next door. The
notebook itself could be
large or small, luxurious or
utilitarian. Some better-off
writers, such as Boccaccio,
the author of The Decameron,
had his zibaldoni made of
expensive parchment. Others,
who placed style above
substance, paid professional
scribes to make fair copies of
their notebooks, turning their
random jots and squiggles into
a kind of abstract art.
From here you could branch
off into more specialist uses,
although Allen, a first-time
author who works in
The best cognitive
tool available to us
was invented in
the 15th century
MARIO TAMA/GETTY IMAGES
Second brain A “tree of life”
sketched in Darwin’s notebook
22 12 November 2023
publishing, makes the good
point that defining a
notebook’s subject makes it,
paradoxically, less useful.
You only have to look at those
products in today’s stationery
stores with “Reader’s Journal”,
“Wine Notes” or “A Mindful
Walking Log” splashed across
their cover to feel a chill
descend. No one likes being
bossed about by a pad of paper.
Even so, one of the nicer
specialist productions was the
album amicorum, or friendship
journal, that flourished in
Germany and the Low
Countries in the 17th century.
The idea was that young men,
especially those training for the
priesthood, should pack their
Stammbuch (a teeny 9x7cm)
with the autographs of
everyone significant they
encountered. It was a way of
commemorating one’s place in
the social and intellectual
hierarchy. In retirement, you
could flip through the names
and fondly relive your
formative days. The habit
travelled and persisted:
Beethoven kept an album
amicorum, as did Mozart,
although, tellingly, he didn’t
get beyond 11 signatures.
The English found this
pastime both ponderous and
sentimental, the sort of “dull”
thing that “Germans” went in
for. These days, Allen points
out, it is the way relationships
are managed in every corner
of the world. Facebook started
as an American student’s
desire to keep his friendship
group connected. Social
media has become our modern
album amicorum.
Allen is not being sneery
here out of a sentimental
hankering for the thick,
creamy pages of the real thing.
Rather, he points to new
academic research that shows
that when we write things
down in a notebook and then
bring them to mind later, our
brains light up in those areas
relating to memory and visual
imagery. It doesn’t happen to
the same degree in people who
use digital notebooks. Despite
what Apple, Evernote and
the like might try to tell us,
the best cognitive tool available
to us today was invented in
the counting houses of
Renaissance Florence. Elastic
band closure optional.
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or call 020 3176 2935. Discount
for Times+ members
It wasn’t a
single plot,
there were
so many...
Nadine Dorries says there was a grand
conspiracy to replace Boris Johnson with
Rishi Sunak. But the former PM was a
victim of many forces — not least himself
Politics
The Plot The Political
Assassination of
Boris Johnson
by Nadine Dorries
HarperCollins £25 pp352
Tim Shipman
Last year Nadine Dorries
invited me to join her for
lunch at 5 Hertford Street, the
Mayfair private members’ club
that has become the canteen of
the Tory right. I arrived with
notebook and voice recorder,
believing I was interviewing
her for my forthcoming book
on the Brexit saga, only to
discover that she wanted to
interview me for the book she
was writing about the plot to
bring down Boris Johnson.
A week ago Dorries’s
publicist got in touch with The
Sunday Times to suggest that
I should not review the book.
I am mentioned in it, so there
was a “conflict of interest”.
This is certainly a book
that comes with baggage: an
author widely admired and
derided, depending on which
side of recent political divides
you reside; a serialisation that
put up in lights some of the
more explosive, but less
typical, sections of the book;
and a backlash from those
she is criticising.
The first thing to say is
that I’ve always liked Nadine
Dorries. In person she is
warm-hearted, far from the
caricature the left loves to
hate. Civil servants whose
judgment I trust say she was
one of the more effective
ministers they worked with at
the culture department. Her
belief in Johnson’s ability to
connect with the public was
well founded.
The second thing to say is
that this is a right riveting read
that skips along at pace. Her
account of the eponymous plot
takes in a dizzying array of
meetings and assignations
with multiple Deep Throats,
disguised here by a series
of monikers appropriated
from the Bond movies. My
favourite are two old codgers
labelled “Bambi” and
“Thumper”, Blofeld’s sidekicks
in Diamonds Are Forever.
What Dorries has tried to
construct is a kind of unified
field theory of politics, that
everything malign over the
past decade can be traced
back to a group of men called
the Movement: Dominic
Cummings (“more anarchist
than strategist”), Theresa May’s
communications director
Robbie Gibb, Mark McGregor
and Dougie Smith, the
secretive Tory fixer of whom
just two photographs exist.
These men have been
associated since the 1980s with
the Federation of Conservative
Students, an organisation so
right-wing that even Norman
Tebbit tried to shut it down. At
the fulcrum of it all, Dorries

writes, “all roads lead to
[Michael] Gove”, whom she
portrays as a demonic presence
and the puppet of Cummings.
She traces the often hidden
links between these men
and posits that they were
responsible for plotting the
downfalls of David Cameron,
Theresa May, Boris Johnson
and Liz Truss and that they
have all spent the past seven
years scheming to install Rishi
Sunak as prime minister.
There are passages that will
embarrass the prime minister,
whom she says is “squeaky”
with “no presence”. Dorries
reveals that he had cleared out
his office in Downing Street
the day before his supposedly
impulse resignation; asked
Treasury ministers to support
him if he ran for the leadership
in February, five months
before Johnson fell; and
petulantly turned his back on
Johnson in cabinet to signal his
distaste in the latter’s final
weeks (I have heard the same
from cabinet ministers).
In Dorries’s telling, Sunak
went to Chequers to suck up
to Johnson a few days after
he had set up a leadership
campaign website.
The degree to which Sunak
was groomed and supported
by Dougie Smith, the master of
the dark arts, is also revealing.
He helped Sunak to secure his
seat in Richmond, North
Yorkshire, and a post at the
Policy Exchange think tank
before he was elected. Smith
told Johnson that Sunak had
to be chancellor long before
it happened. If Smith has
done half the things of which
Dorries accuses him (and an
anonymous character called
Dr No, a device to satisfy the
libel lawyers), many will think
that the fact that he lets him
continue to hold a Downing
Street pass undermines any
claims Sunak has to represent
decency in politics.
Dorries also entertains
the idea that billionaire City
mates of Sunak and Smith
deliberately rocked the
markets after Truss’s
mini-budget to force her
out and clear the way for
Sunak’s arrival in No 10. My
Dorries, understanding is that this is
who is an something Truss believed
outsider, when it happened and may
seems still do. Experts say it is not
possible for a few players to
genuinely upend things in this way.
shocked Dorries has told me that
by what everything in the book has
she has been checked by lawyers and
found a forensic barrister. But I fear
Loyal Nadine
Dorries and
Boris Johnson
during prime
minister’s
questions
The
Movement
plotted
the fall of
Cameron,
May and
Truss
there are factual errors and,
perhaps more importantly,
errors of interpretation as
well as telling omissions that
undermine the credibility
of the main thesis.
By seeing everything as a
branch of the plot, Dorries
wants us to see these men
not just as malign but also as
cleverer and more farsighted
than they probably are. She
has assembled circumstantial
evidence to make the case for
an overarching conspiracy. But
it requires other facts to be left
out. For example, to claim, as
she does, that Gove, Cummings
and Gibb were insincere
Brexiteers will come as a
surprise to people who saw
Cummings weeping with the
emotion of his and Johnson’s
achievement on Brexit night
in January 2020.
It stretches credulity to
argue that the Movement
spent a decade building up
Sunak as a “Manchurian
candidate”, then deliberately
undermined him by leaking
details of his wife’s non-dom
status to keep him on a short
leash, as Dorries claims. There
are plenty of people around
Sunak who believe that a
Johnson loyalist was behind
that story.
Dorries does not question
why people might have wanted
to remove these leaders. Truss
took over the British economy
at a fragile moment, but
proceeded like a bull in a china
shop to the destruction of it
and her. Johnson here was
destroyed by the vengeance
of others. But most Tory MPs
would say they lost faith not
because Cummings told them
to — or even because his
Downing Street was pandemic
party central — but because
Johnson’s handling of one
crisis after another (Owen
Paterson, Wallpapergate,
Partygate, the Pincher affair)
was characterised by denial,
obfuscation, lies and chaos. My
suspicion is that there was no
one plot, but several “plots”.
All that said, there is much
here that is illuminating and
concerning. The book lifts the
lid on the tawdry world of
Westminster power broking,
where the “dark arts” and
often latent sexism are a
fact of life. There are serious
allegations about an MP who
his own whips office believe
is a rapist, along with the
comically lurid — an MP having
sex with a prostitute on a
billiard table while four
colleagues watched.
Dorries, who became
famous for her condemnation
of the “posh boys” at the top
of the Tory party “who don’t
know the price of a pint of
milk”, is an outsider and seems
genuinely shocked by what
she found. This still has the
potential to be an influential
book. What matters for the
future of Conservative Party
politics is not whether Dorries
has proved every point she
makes, but whether the
grassroots of the Tory party
believes the thesis — and there
it is clear she is pushing at a
door that is more than ajar.
However, the verdict on
Johnson’s demise that still
makes the most sense to me
comes from a source who
said: “If you are so convinced
everyone is trying to shoot
you, why would you leave so
many boxes of ammunition
lying around?”
The Movement might have
taken up arms against him,
in their different ways and at
different times, but Johnson
supplied the bullets.
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12 November 2023 23
 Books
Inside the mind of Tolkien
The author was a quiet radical whose letters are funny, bolshie and profound
Letters
The Letters of JRR
Tolkien edited by
Humphrey Carpenter
with Christopher Tolkien
HarperCollins £30 pp708
Christopher Hart
When JRR Tolkien learnt that
an eighth of the world spoke
English, he felt anything but
imperialist pride. “Damn
shame … I shall have to
refuse to speak anything
but Old Mercian.”
Here is the very heart
of the man: bolshie and
mischievous, hating modernity
and uniformity, and loving
human variety and localism,
distinctive languages and
The
Sunday
Times
Bestsellers
Matthew Perry’s
autobiography, Friends,
Lovers and the Big Terrible
Thing, re-enters the general
hardbacks chart this week.
Sales of the book, released in
November last year, jumped
4,133 per cent week-on-week
after the actor’s death, from
156 copies sold in the week
ending October 28 to 6,604
copies sold in the week
ending November 4.
The 18th book in Jeff
Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy
Kid series was the biggest
children’s book in the UK
last week, selling 21,549
copies. More than £70
million has been spent on
books in the series in the UK
since the first in 2008.
The lists are prepared by and
the data is supplied by (and
copyrighted to) Nielsen
BookScan, and are taken
from the TCM for the week
ending 04/11/23.
Figures shown are sales for
the seven-day period.
24 12 November 2023
places. How very interesting Hobbit
that John Ronald Reuel forming
Tolkien should so often be Tolkien in
voted the modern world’s his study
best-loved author. at Merton
His wonderful letters — College,
funny, peppery, profound — Oxford
are the closest thing we have
to an autobiography, reissued
in this invaluable expanded
edition. Among more than 150
newly published letters here,
there’s a dismayed portrait,
during the Suez crisis, of “dons
yelling ‘fascist!’ at high table,
at colleagues who in mild
voices venture to disagree His father
with them”. And how brilliant died when
to learn from another new
letter that The Lord of the Rings
he was
was started in September 1938 three, his
in … Sidmouth, that most mother
pleasingly sleepy and un-epic when he
of English towns. But then was 12
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The teenage pop icon and global
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2 Be Useful Arnold Schwarzenegger
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Life advice from the champion bodybuilder
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10 Unruly David Mitchell
(M Joseph £25) Tales of England’s monarchs
from the Cambridge history alumnus (5,350)
isn’t the cosiness of the Shire,
where the tale begins before
opening out into the terror
and sublimity of those majestic
landscapes of Middle-earth,
a bit like the Devonshire
countryside?
Well, no. If anything,
Tolkien said, the Shire is rural
Warwickshire “about the period
of the Diamond Jubilee”, ie
1897, before most of it was
swallowed up by Birmingham.
But he disliked his imaginary virtually a pacifist, although
world being mistaken as an not quite, and his early life was
allegory for the real one. desperately sad.
Mordor is not Nazi Germany, His father died when he
he tirelessly insisted, and the was three and his mother when
Ring is not the atom bomb. he was 12. He and his brother
But in its inescapable sense were brought up by a much-
of tragedy, its fallen-ness, loved but stern Catholic priest.
Middle-earth is certainly our He fought on the Somme, saw
wartorn world as Tolkien saw most of his battalion wiped
it. A lifelong Catholic, he was out, and was invalided home
Last Weeks in
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11 21

with trench fever. By 1918,
when he was 26 — as he wrote
with terrible bluntness in the
foreword to The Lord of the
Rings — “all but one of my close
friends were dead”.
Hardly surprising, then, that
he viewed history as nothing
but a “long defeat”, and
modernity as a nightmarish
Age of the Machine. In June
1945 he wrote: “Wars are
always lost, and The War
always goes on”; and he was
incandescent that some people
seemed to be rejoicing at the
suffering of German refugee
columns, fleeing before the
Red Army. There seemed to
him no “compassion, no
HAYWOOD MAGEE/GETTY IMAGES
marriage with his beloved
Edith, another orphan,
proposing to her as soon as he
could “on the night of my 21st
birthday”, and also that he
valued his male friendships so
much. His happiest moments
were in the pubs of Oxford
with his fellow academics and
writers, the Inklings, especially
CS Lewis. One letter here
reassures Lewis that he didn’t
mind him being so loud in The
Eagle and Child. “I know no
more pleasant sound than
arriving at the B and B ... and
hearing a roar, and knowing
that one can plunge in.”
In the 1960s he was appalled
by the sight of young women
PAPERBACK
OF THE WEEK
Far East that does not fill me Wise Gals The Spies Who
with regret and disgust,” he Built the CIA and Changed
wrote to his son Christopher. the Future of Espionage
Other letters are very by Nathalia Holt
moving, like the one written in Icon Books £11.99
1971, in failing health, and only
days after the death of his In this
beloved wife, to a patient in thrilling
Broadmoor. “I am glad you book, as
have read my book again ... and propulsive
also that you are feeling better as classic
… If you want to, or wish to John le
have anything explained, write Carré,
again,” and he signs off wishing Nathalia Holt
the patient “love and peace”. tells the
It’s a painfully common story of a handful of women
experience to pick up who shaped the CIA from the
a biography of some 1940s to the age of global
much-admired author, only to terrorism. They include Jane
discover he was an utter pig. Burrell, the first CIA agent to

imagination left in this dark
diabolic hour”.
And how is this for a
complex prophecy: “As
the servants of the Machines
are becoming a privileged
class, the Machines are
going to be enormously
more powerful.”
It’s no surprise that he
raced into an early romantic
in trousers with unkempt hair,
and a house down the road
where some young men were
“aiming to turn themselves
into a Beatle group ... The
noise is indescribable.” But
there was an unpredictable
radical under all that tweed
and pipe smoke. “I know
nothing about British or
American imperialism in the
With Tolkien, you need have be killed on active service;
no such anxiety. Crusty, dusty Adelaide Hawkins, a single
and prickly though he may mother with a high school
have appeared, he was at heart education; and Eloise Page,
a profoundly kindly man. a Southern debutante.
These revised and amplified They are a diverse crew,
letters are an absolute treat. far more so than the Identikit
boys alongside whom
Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk they worked.
or call 020 3176 2935. Discount Kathryn Hughes
for Times+ members

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1 (5,385)

12 November 2023 25
 Books
Royalty
Once a King The Lost
Memoir of Edward VIII
by Jane Marguerite Tippett
Hodder, £25, pp384
Erica Wagner
A May morning in 1948;
a rented, eight-bedroom
mansion nestled in the wealthy
community of Oyster Bay, New
York. The Duke and Duchess of
Windsor — the former Edward
VIII and his wife, Wallis, once
Mrs Simpson — are in exile, as
they will be for the remainder
of their days. But now the duke
has decided to share his story
with the world thanks to a
fabulously generous offer
(worth more than £1 million in
today’s currency) from Life
magazine. Charles Murphy,
a shining star of American
narrative journalism, has
been assigned to assist him.
“His clothes beautiful,”
Murphy wrote in a diary
entry. “Pink with blue plaid,
beautifully pressed. The shoes
with a Guardsman’s polish ...
he filled a pipe with special
cartridges made of Dunhill
in London ... The day the
Duchess had a little cold, whole
household stopped. Butlers
tiptoeing around the Duke
disturbed, harassed with a wild
and worried look in his eyes ...”
It is a brief, perfect sketch of
the brittle, obsessive dynamic
between the duke and duchess,
whose love story — if it can
really be called that — continues
to fascinate although nearly
a century has passed since
Edward VIII abandoned the
throne. He met Wallis at the
home of his mistress at the time,
Thelma Furness, in 1931; Wallis
was still married to her second
husband, Ernest Simpson.
By 1934 Wallis’s marriage was
all but over, and she had
become a fixture in the life of
the Prince of Wales. But a king
could never marry a divorced
woman, so, just over ten
months after his accession
Edward chose passion over
duty, abdicating his kingship.
His radio broadcast to the
nation on December 11, 1936,
remains a landmark of royal
and media history. “I have
found it impossible to carry
the heavy burden of
responsibility and to discharge
my duties as King as I would
wish to do without the help
and support of the woman I
26 12 November 2023
The king of
carelessness
A trove of lost interviews casts light on Edward and
the former Mrs Simpson — but it’s hard to sympathise
with a hapless man who didn’t want to be monarch
love,” he said, his words Exiled were defined by hubris, by the
breaching the dam of regal The Duke and sense that things would always
decorum. The private lives of Duchess of be as they had been.
the members of Britain’s royal Windsor The tale of the abdication
family would be ever after in 1941 has been told so often that
perceived as fair game. one could be forgiven for
I hold no special love for the wondering whether there is
monarchy. Yet I treasure my anything left to add. Yet Jane
collection of china made to Marguerite Tippett, an
commemorate the coronation American archivist, has done
of Edward VIII. They are yeoman’s work in accessing
liminal objects, celebrating Murphy’s papers, 17 boxes of
an event that never occurred; them, deposited at Boston
Schrodinger’s crockery, University in the mid-1990s.
existing and not existing all The collection proved to be
at once. Some bear a date, a trove of material, drafts and
May 12, 1937 — on which interviews and diary entries
Edward’s younger brother not only for the articles
Bertie, George VI, was in fact eventually published in Life
crowned in Westminster Abbey magazine but for what would
alongside his wife, Queen become the duke’s 1951
Elizabeth. I have one cup memoir, A King’s Story, as well
marking this true coronation, as much material relating to
which was clearly made from Wallis’s account of their
the same mould as one for the Wallis romance, The Heart Has Its
vanished king: a simple erasure. comes Reasons, eventually published
The story of the abdication across as in 1956.
shares some elements of a tragic Once a King weaves together
another compelling Edward’s recollections from
20th-century tale, that of the
figure, the later 1940s with letters
sinking of the Titanic in 1912. trapped and memos from Murphy and
Both events took place before by her other significant players,
violent conflagrations that lover into setting them against an
would remake the world; both marriage efficient and thorough
recounting of the events as
they unfolded in 1936. There
are also striking transcripts of
interviews Murphy conducted
with Wallis in 1954 for her
book. So much here is new,
yet it’s hard to argue that
much is surprising.
The reader is never in doubt
about whose side the author
is on. She sets out her stall
clearly: she means to correct
the impression given in Peter
Morgan’s The Crown that the
duke was a selfish ne’er-do-well
and the duchess an inveterate
schemer; and she gives short
shrift to the case made most
recently by Andrew Lownie
in his book Traitor King that
Edward’s attraction to the
rising power of Nazi Germany
went much further than naive
flirtation. To Tippett these are
hapless, charming people
yearning only for love and
personal fulfilment. She does
not reckon with the duke’s
banality and blindness. “The
saddest thing of all in the
Battle of the Somme was the
human sacrifice,” he muses.
You don’t say, the reader may
be forgiven for thinking.
Tippett believes the
accusations of Nazi collusion
are overblown, but even if
they are, here is a man who
described Hitler as “very
vigorous, very serious” and
who, recalling a 1937 visit to
the home of Reichsminister
Hermann Goering, said:
“The house was very
interesting. He was very proud
of his maids ... all dressed in a
sort of peasant costume and he
was very proud of the rooms
he made for them, and each
room had the name of the
maid on the door.” These are
from conversations held in
1948 and 1954, respectively.
Let that, as they say, sink in.
Wallis comes across as a
tragic figure, trapped by her
lover into marriage and kept
in the dark about his plans to
abandon the throne. “I was
without weapons,” she told
Murphy. “All I could say was no
to a man who was determined
to marry me, and he would
not listen.”
Tippett may find the duke
and the duchess sympathetic
characters; it is much harder
for the reader to do so. They
were careless people, as
F Scott Fitzgerald said.
Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk
or call 020 3176 2935. Discount
for Times+ members
Paul Auster’s swansong?
Written while he was ill with cancer, this intimate novel
distils a lifetime writing about chance, love and desire
Fiction
Baumgartner
by Paul Auster
Faber £18.99 pp202
David Sexton
The first chapter of Paul
Auster’s 18th novel is a tour de
force. A chapter of accidents,
which is what Auster has
always shown life to be.
Sy Baumgartner, a 70-year-
old academic, is at work at
home in his second-floor
study, or “cogitorium”, on his
monograph on Kierkegaard’s
pseudonyms when he needs to
get a book from downstairs.
En route he smells burning
and realises that three hours
misadventures in long,
cumulative sentences, one
thing after another, in
conventional diction. The
clarity of his writing has always
given much readerly pleasure.
This orderly prose, though,
presents us with a world
ago he left a pan on the flame. Beyond determined by chance, a view
He grabs it and scorches his criticism of life Auster has often credited
hand. The phone rings. It’s the Paul Auster to seeing another boy struck
daughter of his cleaner to say dead by lightning right next
that she won’t be coming to him when he was 14. His
JEFF PACHOUD/GETTY IMAGES
because her carpenter father 2017 Booker-shortlisted novel
has just severed two of his 4321 imagined one man’s life
fingers with a buzz-saw. A following four different paths
young man arrives to read the as chance intervened, at
meter. It’s in the basement, wearying length. These
but Baumgartner misses his opening 25 pages of
step and crashes down. violent mishap are much
Slumped in more concentrated, a
the kitchen, he classic Auster story
contemplates the in themselves.
burnt pot and recalls They are followed,
buying it 50 years though, by four
ago and glimpsing in chapters that are
that thrift shop the self-indulgent, almost
girl who was to a ragbag. Recovered
become his adored, from his fall,
now dead wife ... Baumgartner tells us
Auster narrates these about his grief over the
death of his wife, Anna Blume,
another writer, in a freak wave
accident ten years ago. He feels
her absence as an amputee
feels the missing limb, a trope
he is delighted to discover —
“He is a human stump now, a
half man who has lost the half
of himself that had made him
whole.” In the last chapter
Baumgartner looks forward
to the arrival of an erotically
promising young grad student
studying Anna’s work — if
accident doesn’t intervene …
Paul Auster, 76, was
diagnosed with cancer last
year. His wife of over 40 years,
the writer Siri Hustvedt, has
revealed that he completed
Baumgartner while already ill,
speaking of his writing life as
behind him. This novel
imagines how life after the end
of a long and happy marriage
might be felt by its survivor.
Criticism stands aside.
Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk
or call 020 3176 2935. Discount
for Times+ members
12 November 2023 27
 Books

Should this A mysterious death at

drone win the
Bad Sex prize? a Lagos megachurch
A psychologist’s race to clear a bishop’s name plus dark dealings
Fiction in the world of biotech — and a murder stalks Alfred Hitchcock
Jungle House
by Julianne Pachico eggs. Kobler combines a
Serpent’s Tail £14.99 pp208 CRIME FICTION surprising plot with sensuous

Mia Levitin ROUND-UP descriptions of what her

characters cook during
pauses in the investigation.
Joan Smith
As AI expands exponentially, buckle up The Wolf
for bot-sex. In Julianne Pachico’s third PICK by Samuel Bjork,
book, a security drone likes to land
between the heroine’s legs, “jammed in
Gaslight
by Femi Kayode
OF THE MONTH trans. by
Charlotte Barslund
there tightly, vibrating his body. Apart Raven £16.99 Bantam £18.99
from the shock of feeling him ... there”, Evangelical megachurches Samuel Bjork’s first novel,
she decides that “there’s something are a feature of everyday life in I’m Travelling Alone, was
about it that feels quite nice ... The Nigeria. The arrest of a bishop a bestseller when it was
pressure, rubbing. The noise of his on suspicion of the murder of published in 2016. It was
engine grows louder and louder.” his wife causes a sensation in the first in a powerful series,
Twenty-year-old Lena has been raised Femi Kayode’s outstanding set in an unorthodox police
in the jungle by a neurotic, artificially new novel, Gaslight. The unit in Oslo. The Wolf is a
intelligent house. “Mother” tells her church hires an investigative prequel, going back to the
she was abandoned there as a baby. psychologist, Dr Philip Taiwo, days when the unit was
Lena’s only human friend is the to clear the bishop’s name, but still assembling personnel,
homeowners’ daughter, Isabella, who he’s suspicious of organised including a raw recruit from
also enjoys the drone’s thigh-bruising religion, even when it starts the police academy, Mia
attention until she disappears. to look as though the bishop Kruger. She’s brought in to
Brought up in Colombia by English has been set up. When the investigate a double murder in
and American parents, Pachico was missing woman’s body is Norway that resembles a case
strong out of the gate: her debut, The found and her death ruled in Sweden eight years earlier
Lucky Ones (2017), a story collection a suicide, Taiwo continues when the staged bodies of two
about coming of age amid Colombia’s his investigation, discovering boys were found in a field.
civil war, was shortlisted for this paper’s that the church operates Written in Bjork’s habitual
Young Writer of the Year award. But The more like a global business. cool prose, it’s an absorbing,
Anthill (2020), about a woman returning Taiwo is a classic outsider, twisty novel.
to Colombia, was less compelling, in working on a temporary
part because of its sci-fi interludes. contract in Lagos after Shot With Crimson
In Jungle House, Pachico doubles experiencing racism by Nicola Upson
down on the speculative elements that back home in the US. This is Faber £16.99
are not her forte. Billed as Never Let Me Kayode’s second novel in the Nicola Upson’s intense new
Go meets Lord of the Flies, it offers Taiwo series and it brings a novel is set in 1939 as the film
neither the chilling revelation of the refreshing new perspective to director Alfred Hitchcock starts
former nor the high stakes of the latter. contemporary crime fiction. shooting his version of Daphne
Its plotline has more commonalities du Maurier’s Rebecca. The
with Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun, Deep Dark Blue author Josephine Tey, who is
but the question of consciousness that by Seraina Kobler, the main character in Upson’s
drives most AI narratives is moot as the trans. by Alexandra Roesch fine series of historical crime
bots present as sentient from the start. Pushkin Vertigo £14.99 novels, boards the boat train
The lap-jamming drone is as Seraina Kobler is a Swiss to visit the shoot in Hollywood.
stimulating as it gets. The Bad Sex in novelist with an unusual A crew has just returned from
Fiction award, on hiatus since 2020, heroine, a police diver in a the mansion in England that
risks being skipped again this year for maritime crime unit in Zurich. was the model for Manderley,
NICK BRADLEY

a dearth of sex. So do submit your The unit is small and informal,
nominations to Literary Review. but Kobler’s subject could not
Cybersex, authors are be more high-tech. It takes us
reminded, is fair game. to the cutting edge of genetics,
where scientists are working
Buy from on modifying human embryos
timesbookshop.co.uk to eliminate hereditary
or call 020 3176 2935. diseases. Detective Rosa
Discount for Zambrano is stunned when
Times+ members she realises that a body pulled
from Lake Zurich is her doctor,
Sci-fi interludes a fertility specialist. She’s just
Julianne Pachico had a procedure to freeze her
28 12 November 2023
the sinister house in du
Maurier’s book, when news of
a murder follows them to Los
Angeles. It’s one of Upson’s
most evocative novels,
including flashbacks to tragic
events in the First World War
and displaying a clear-eyed
knowledge of human nature.
Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk
or call 020 3176 2935. Discount
for Times+ members
 The best of the week ahead
SEVEN DAY LISTINGS
NOVEMBER 12-18
intensified, with reports that this final
THE CROWN season would include “Diana’s ghost”

TV &
Thursday, Netflix
Since its first series in 2016, The Crown
has validated its existence with claims
that it “humanises” the royal family
in conversation with Imelda Staunton’s
Queen Elizabeth II and Dominic West’s
Prince Charles. With this suitably
divided sixth series — the first four
starting on Thursday, the last six from
December 14 — viewers can make a final

Radio
through excellent performances and
the writing of Peter Morgan. Yet there
is something disconcerting about
fictionalising real people. As The Crown
has moved closer to the unhappiest
period of recent royal history, the
controversy around the show has again
Recreating history Elizabeth Debicki
returns as Diana, Princess of Wales
call on whether it’s “humanising” or
tasteless, a judgment that will also need
applying to the wedding of Charles
and Camilla (Olivia Williams) and the
romance between Prince William
(Ed McVey) and Kate Middleton (Meg
Bellamy). There’s so much more story
to tell, but for now at least, The Crown is
wisely stepping back from royal duties.
Victoria Segal

PICK
OF THE
WEEK
THE CROWN BEST PERFORMANCES
Jared Harris Elizabeth Vanessa Kirby Josh O’Connor Claire Foy as
as King Debicki as Princess as Prince Queen
George VI as Diana Margaret Charles Elizabeth II
Harris may Australian Vanessa Kirby Josh O’Connor Despite fine
have featured in actress Debicki preceded is a standout performances
only six episodes, but his took over the role of Diana Helena Bonham Carter and star of series three and four, from Olivia Colman and
commanding turn as from Emma Corrin in Lesley Manville as Margaret taking on the role of a Imelda Staunton as the
Elizabeth’s father, King season five, delivering a with an exceptional principled young Charles Queen in later series, Foy is
George VI, set a high nuanced and very well- portrayal of a young and raging against the royal the original and the best.
standard for the show. observed performance. deeply vulnerable princess. machine and his parents. Tim Glanfield
12 November 2023 29
SUNDAY 12 NOVEMBER
BBC 1 BBC 2
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
7.55 Match Of The Day (R)
9.00 Sunday With Laura
Kuenssberg Discussion.
10.15 CHOICE Remembrance
Sunday — The Cenotaph
David Dimbleby presents
live from Whitehall.
(See Critics’ choice)
12.45 Lifeline Charity appeal.
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.15 CHOICE Songs Of Praise
Remembrance Sunday at
RAF Cranwell, Lincolnshire.
(See Critics’ choice)
1.50 CHOICE War Horse Stars
Jeremy Irvine. A boy seeks
his horse after it is sold to
the British Army. (2011,
12; see Film choice)
4.05 News; Weather Headlines.
4.20 Regional News Update.
4.30 Countryfile John Craven
revisits the Gloucestershire
village where he used to
work on the local paper. (R)
5.20 CHOICE The Earthshot
Prize A celebration,
launched by Prince William
and David Attenborough,
of the best ideas and
initiatives to help save the
planet. (See Critics’ choice)
6.20 Planet Earth III Footage
of animals that live in
freshwater environments.
7.20 Strictly Come Dancing
Featuring a Remembrance
Sunday routine from the
professionals, before two
couples face the dance-off.
8.00 Survivor Joel Dommett
hosts as the biggest twist
yet sends shockwaves
through both tribes, rattling
alliances and changing
the game forever.
9.00 Time Abi and Kelsey bond
after the birth of Kelsey’s
baby; and Orla faces the
consequences of her
actions. (Last in series)
10.10 News; Weather Reports.
10.40 Match Of The Day 2
Recent action, including
Chelsea v Manchester City.
12.00 The Women’s Football
Show Match highlights.
12.45 MOTD Top Ten: Goals By
Defenders. Memorable
strikes from defenders.
1.20-6.00 Joins BBC News
SCOTLAND 12.00 Sportscene
— Premiership Highlights. 1.00
The Women’s Football Show.
1.45 MOTD Top Ten: Goals By
Defenders. 2.20 BBC News.
Variations
BBC2 WALES 5.00 Scrum V
Sunday 8.00 Doctor Who @ 60 —
A Musical Celebration 9.30 Wild
Caribbean 10.30 The Yorkshire
Ripper Files — A Very British Crime
Story 11.30 The Secret Genius Of
Modern Life 12.30 Red Dwarf 1.00
Planet Earth: A Lion’s Tale BBC
SCOTLAND 10.00-10.30 The
Sunday Show 7.00 The Seven
7.15 Premiership Highlights 8.15
Loggerheads 8.45 Rewind 1980s
9.00 The Firm 10.00 Still Game
10.30 Designing The Hebrides
30 12 November 2023
6.25 Countryfile Rural life. (R)
7.25 Beechgrove Garden In
Winter Advice. (R)
7.55 Breakfast Headlines.
9.00 Weatherman Walking
Derek Brockway walks a
route around Hirwaun in
Rhondda Cynon Taf.
9.30 Landward Dougie Vipond
joins the Cairngorm
Mountain Rescue Team.
10.00 Saturday Kitchen Best
Bites With Matt Tebbutt.
11.30 Jimmy’s Food Factory (R)
12.00 Hairy Bikers — Pies &
Pasties Recipes. (R)
12.15 MOTD Women’s Super
League: Tottenham
Hotspur v Liverpool. Live
coverage from Brisbane
Road. Kickoff at 12.30.
2.45 Trampoline & Tumbling
World Championships
Live coverage of day four,
held at Utilita Arena in
Birmingham, featuring the
finals of eight disciplines.
5.00 Flog It! Selling items. (R)
6.00 Remembrance Sunday
— The Cenotaph This
morning’s national service
of remembrance.
7.20 Eva Longoria —
Searching For Mexico
The actress explores
Mexico City’s history, food
and culture, travelling by
boat down a network of
Aztec canals to a floating
vegetable garden. (5/6)
8.00 Antiques Roadshow Fiona
Bruce presents the show
from the grounds of
Belmont House in Kent,
where items include a
David Hockney painting. (R)
9.00 Wild Caribbean Liz Bonnin
explores the Central
American coastline, which
supports an extraordinary
array of wildlife and is home
to some of the world’s
most endangered animals.
10.00 The Yorkshire Ripper
Files — A Very British
Crime Story The arrest,
trial and conviction of Peter
Sutcliffe. (Last in series, R)
11.00 FILM: All The President’s
Men Stars Robert Redford
and Dustin Hoffman.
Political drama. (1976, 15)
1.15 Question Time (Signed, R)
2.15 Mortimer & Whitehouse
— Gone Fishing (Signed,
Last in series, R)
2.45-3.35 The Newsreader
Drama series. (Signed, R)
11.00-12.00 Seven Days STV
6.00 James Martin’s French
Adventure 7.00 Gino’s Italy —
Secrets Of The South 7.25 James
Martin’s Saturday Morning 9.25
News; Weather 9.30 Love Your
Weekend 11.30 Fletchers’ Family
Farm 12.30 News; Weather 12.40
FILM: Smallfoot 2.30 Premiership
Rugby Union. Live 5.15 Tipping
Point — Best Ever Finals 5.45
News; Weather 5.55 Regional
News 6.00 Mamma Mia! I Have A
Dream 7.30 Gino’s Italy — Secrets
Of The South 8.00 Three Little
Birds 9.00 Six Four 10.00 News
ITV 1
6.00 James Martin’s French
Adventure In Bresse. (R)
7.00 Gino’s Italy — Secrets Of
The South In Bari. (3/6, R)
7.25 James Martin’s Saturday
Morning With West End
star Beverley Knight. (R)
9.25 News; Weather Reports.
9.30 Love Your Weekend With
Martin Shaw, Michael Ball
and Julia Bradbury.
11.30 Fletchers’ Family Farm
The Fletchers gather their
flock for a health check.
12.30 News; Weather Update.
12.40 FILM: Smallfoot With the
voice of Channing Tatum.
Fair animation. (2018, PG)
2.30 Premiership Rugby
Union: Northampton
Saints v Exeter Chiefs. Live
coverage. Kickoff at 3.00.
5.15 Tipping Point — Best Ever
Finals Endgames. (R)
5.45 News; Weather Update.
5.55 Regional News Headlines.
6.00 Mamma Mia! I Have A
Dream The Sophies and
Skys find themselves
paired up for the first time.
7.30 Gino’s Italy — Secrets Of
The South Gino D’Acampo
explores Cisternino and
the Itria valley. (4/6)
8.00 CHOICE Three Little Birds
Leah and Hosanna race
to save Chantrelle. (4/6;
see Critics’ choice)
9.00 Six Four Michelle returns
to Scotland in order to
help Chris search for
Annabel. (Last in series)
10.00 News; Weather Update.
10.20 Rolf Harris — Hiding In
Plain Sight The downfall
of Rolf Harris. (2/2, R)
11.15 Premiership Rugby Union
Highlights Round five.
12.20 EFL Highlights (R)
1.40 Catchphrase Game. (R)
2.15 Cash Trapped Quiz. (R)
3.05 Motorsport UK (R)
3.55 Unwind Daily relaxation.
5.10-6.00 Fletchers’ Family
Farm Health checks. (R)
Prize initiative (BBC1, 5.20pm)
10.20 Rolf Harris — Hiding In Plain
Sight 11.15 Premiership Rugby
Union Highlights 12.20 EFL
Highlights 1.40 Catchphrase 2.15
Cash Trapped 3.05 Motorsport
UK 3.55 Night Vision 5.10-6.00
Fletchers’ Family Farm S4C 1.00
Clwb Rygbi 3.20 Mamwlad 3.50
Ffermio 4.25 Clwb Rygbi 6.10
Pobol Y Cwm 7.15 News 7.30
Dechrau Canu Dechrau Canmol
8.00 Prosiect Pum Mil 9.00
Owain Tudur Jones — Ar Faes
Y Gad 10.00 Drych — Meddwl
Yn Wahanol 11.00-11.35 Richard
Holt —Yr Academi Felys
Channel 4
6.20 Cheers Comedy. (R)
6.50 The King Of Queens (R)
7.40 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
8.30 The Simpsons Cartoon. (R)
9.30 Sunday Brunch With Leah
Brotherhead, Chris Harris,
Alfie Boe and Joe Wilkinson.
12.30 Jamie’s One-Pan Wonders
Chickpea casserole. (R)
12.40 The Simpsons Cartoon. (R)
1.40 The Great British Bake Off
A trio of desserts. (R)
2.55 FILM: Shrek Forever
After With the voice of
Mike Myers. A magical
trickster leaves the
grumpy ogre stuck in
an alternate world.
Satisfactory. (2010, U)
4.45 FILM: Peter Rabbit Stars
Domhnall Gleeson and
Rose Byrne, with the
voices of James Corden
and Margot Robbie. A
mischievous rabbit takes
on a farmer in a battle of
wits. Frenzied. (2018, PG)
6.30 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 World’s Greatest Train
Journeys From Above (R)
8.00 Handmade — Britain’s
Best Woodworker The
five remaining contestants
must make a four-poster
bed for the big build
challenge, while in the
skills challenge, they carve
an Indian printing block.
9.00 CHOICE Bill Bailey’s
Australian Adventure
New series. The comedian
travels across Western
Australia, beginning in the
far south, where he
paddleboards with former
NBA star Luc Longley.
(See Critics’ choice)
10.00 Gogglebox Opinions. (R)
11.00 Dispatches The story of a
group of women searching
for their sons in Ukraine.
12.15 Dignity Fact-based drama
about the hunt for a Nazi
cult leader in Chile. With
Antonia Zegers. (German
and Spanish with subtitles)
1.15 FILM: Anais In Love Stars
Anaïs Demoustier and
Denis Podalydès. Romantic
comedy drama. (2021, 15;
French with subtitles)
2.55 The Great British Bake Off
— An Extra Slice (R)
3.50-6.05 Come Dine With Me
Parties in Leeds. (R)
I’m afraid your correspondent is incorrect
about Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1).
“Couple” is a unit of two and thus a singular
noun. Plural would be “couples”.
You say
John Mendleton
“Couple” is a singular noun but in a category of
nouns called collective nouns which means that
it is grammatically singular. Tess Daly is quite
correct in saying, “The next couple is...”
Steve Turner
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.55 The Smurfs Cartoon. (R)
10.10 Spongebob Animation. (R)
10.25 Entertainment News
10.30 NFL End Zone Action from
the latest matches.
11.00 News; Weather Reports.
11.05 Friends US sitcom. (R)
12.30 A Little Christmas Charm
Drama, with Ashley
Greene and Brendan
Penny. A jeweller teams
up with a reporter in the
hope of returning a charm
bracelet to its rightful
owner before Christmas. (R)
2.20 Christmas In Scotland
Romantic drama, with Jill
Winternitz and Dominic
Watters. On a trip to
Scotland, an installation
designer helps a community
create a festive display.
4.10 A Reservation For
Christmas Romantic
drama, with Melissa Joan
Hart and Michael Gross.
An event co-ordinator
faces problems when a
college sweetheart checks
in at her family lodge. (R)
6.05 Greatest Christmas Ads
Julian Clary revisits
memorable festive-themed
advertisements. (R)
8.00 Rich House, Poor House
A businesswoman and her
friend swap lives for a week
with a hard-up couple who
have two children and
manage on a single
income. (Last in series)
9.00 Captain Tom — Where
Did The Money Go? A look
at questions raised about
money raised from the sale
of Captain Sir Tom Moore’s
books, asking if much
of it went to his family
rather than to charity.
10.30 Adults Only: Sex In The
Future. With virtual-reality
porn expected to soon be
worth over £15bn, a look at
how technology is changing
people’s sex lives. (R)
11.25 Getting Kinky — It Hurts
So Good! Insights. (R)
12.20 ICC Cricket World Cup
India v Holland from M
Chinnaswamy Stadium.
1.20 Casino Show Gambling.
3.20 New Lives In The Wild
Double bill of editions,
with Ben Fogle. (R)
4.55 Divine Designs (R)
5.20 House Doctor Advice. (R)
5.45 Entertainment News
5.50-6.00 Children’s Shows
 Critics’ choice
Bill Bailey’s Australian
Adventure (C4, 9pm)
Not many celebrity travelogues
feature a man playing an antique
accordion to a forest, but then not
enough celebrity travelogues are
presented by Bill Bailey. In the
first part, the comedian visits the
far south of Western Australia,
revelling in the opportunities the
state offers to commune with
nature. Showing a sensitivity not
always apparent in TV travel
shows, he begins by participating
in a welcome ceremony hosted by
a First Nations elder, before
setting out across a state that is
home to a Greater Manchester-
sized population over nearly a
million square miles. Bailey fans
will recognise his happiest places:
hugging stones in an ersatz henge,
seeking the region’s 600 bird
species, and singing a robust
sea shanty with the internet
sensations the Albany Shantymen,
all the time eyeing up a future role
for himself as “local eccentric”.
Victoria Segal
The Earthshot Prize
(BBC1, 5.20pm)
Driven by what its organisers have
branded “urgent optimism”, this
award was founded by Prince
William in 2020 as a ten-year plan
to help to save the planet. Its aim:
to reward initiatives that protect
the environment and fight against
doom-filled inertia. During this
ceremony, hosted by Hannah
Waddingham, awards of £1 million
will be presented to the winners in
five Earthshot categories, including
Fix Our Climate, Build A Waste-
Free World, and Protect And
Restore Nature. Previous inventive
champions include the air-saving
Kenyan enterprise Mukuru Clean
Stoves; the seaweed-based plastic
alternative Notpla; the City Of
Milan’s Food Waste Hubs and the
entire country of Costa Rica. Held
in Singapore, the event will also
feature David Attenborough and
musical appearances from
OneRepublic and Bastille. VS
On demand
○ Frasier (C4 streaming)
Anyone wondering why the recent
reboot of this much-loved 1990s
sitcom isn’t quite hitting the mark
should check out a recent Daily
Beast article by Nico Lang entitled
Frasier Was A Very Gay Show For
Straight People. Lang argues that
the original show’s roots in
Molière, Wilde and Noël Coward
plus a plethora of gay talent
(including David Hyde Pierce as
Luc Longley, a three-time basketball Olympian, with Bailey (C4, 9pm)
The Remarkable Journey Of
Bernard Levin (BBC4, 10.30pm)
Despite his humble origins,
Bernard Levin achieved an
impressive double career. As well
as being a Times columnist for 27
years — writing about topics such
as music and food, not just politics
— he was a television personality
who emerged in the 1960s satire
boom and later made travelogues.
In this clip-rich tribute, he’s largely
remembered by fellow journalists,
including Arianna Huffington, his
girlfriend in the 1970s.
Bernard Levin (BBC4, 10.30pm)
Frasier’s brother Niles and the
head writer Joe Keenan) were the
secret to its success. Check out the
Keenan episodes The Matchmaker,
Out With Dad and The Doctor Is Out.
○ Cassette — A Documentary
Mixtape (Prime Video)
The unlikely resurgence of the
music cassette as a popular music
format was recently celebrated in
Marc Masters’s excellent music
history book, High Bias. An earlier
salute to this most unlikely of
Three Little Birds (ITV1, 8pm)
Chantrelle (Saffron Coomber)
panics because rape by Ernest
(Arthur Darvill) is a real threat. So
Leah (Rochelle Neil) and Hosanna
(Yazmin Belo) go on a risky
cross-country journey in an
attempt to rescue her. But can they
get there on time? Replace their car
with a carriage, and this
compelling instalment of
Lenny Henry’s six-part drama
could be a Victorian thriller in
which virtuous heroines try to foil
a wicked employer.
Six Silent Killings — Ireland’s
Vanishing Triangle (Sky
Documentaries/Now, 9pm)
Between 1993 and 1998, six women
disappeared in an area of eastern
Ireland known as the Vanishing
Triangle. Geraldine Niland explores
their stories in this documentary,
talking to relatives, detectives and
a forensic scientist.
John Dugdale
comeback stories can be found in
Zack Taylor and Seth Smoot’s 2016
profile of the format’s endearingly
humble inventor, Lou Ottens.
○ The Jim Cummings Collection
(Arrow Player)
The New Orleans film-maker is one
of the most inventive directors and
actors working on the margins of
Hollywood. His low-budget films
are wild, funny insights into the
madness of America.
Andrew Male
Remembrance
Sunday: Lest we forget
Remembrance Sunday — The
Cenotaph (BBC1, 10.15am)
covers the National Service of
Remembrance on Whitehall in
London. Nearly 10,000 veterans
are expected to take part in
the march-past that honours
the contribution given and
sacrifices made by the British
and Commonwealth military and
civilian men and women involved
in both world wars and beyond. It
is followed by a special edition of
Songs Of Praise (BBC1, 1.15pm).
Tim Glanfield
The nation will remember
sacrifices made
Film choice
War Horse (BBC1, 1.50pm)
Steven Spielberg brings his
best-known powers — his gift for
action scenes and his faith in
unabashed pathos — to this
adaptation of Michael Morpurgo’s
1982 novel about a steed caught up
in the First World War. As well as
offering young viewers a glimpse
into the horror of the trenches, the
film can show them the appeal of
old-fashioned sentimental movie-
making. The painterly visual
compositions (peopled by a cast
that includes Jeremy Irvine,
Benedict Cumberbatch and Emily
Watson) recall 1940s and 1950s
Hollywood. (2011)
3.10 To Yuma (Film4, 11.25pm)
James Mangold’s western is a useful
remake of the 1957 film about a
hard-up rancher guarding a bandit
in custody — roles played here by
Christian Bale and Russell Crowe.
Its gunfights have modern action-
movie flair, but the story still values
the code of honour seen in old
cowboy flicks. (2007)
The Killer (Netflix)
Starring Michael Fassbender as
a hyper-efficient hitman, David
Fincher’s latest film mirrors its
hero’s finesse and sangfroid in its
delivery of a smoothly polished,
relentless tale. Thriller fans would
be foolish to miss it, and anyone
fond of Tilda Swinton should see
her excellent cameo. (2023)
Edward Porter
12 November 2023 31
SUNDAY 12 NOVEMBER
BBC 3 BBC 4
7.00pm Top Gear Test-driving
the Mastretta MXT.
8.00 FILM: William
Shakespeare’s Romeo +
Juliet Stars Leonardo
DiCaprio and Claire Danes.
The children of two
feuding families fall in
love. Flamboyantly hip
adaptation. (1996, 12)
9.50 Where It Ends Comedy
short, with Jack Robertson.
10.00 FILM: 1917 Stars Dean-
Charles Chapman. Two
British soldiers try
to cross enemy lines.
Stunning drama. (2019, 15)
11.50 Drugs Map Of Britain
12.20 Man Like Mobeen
1.10 BBC New Comedy Awards
1.40 RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
2.50 The After Shave
3.05-3.55 Man Like Mobeen
Drama
4.45pm Catherine Cookson’s
Colour Blind Feature-
length drama, with Niamh
Cusack. A girl returns to
her Tyneside home newly
married to her black
husband, and encounters
bigotry from all sides.
8.00 Inspector George Gently
The adopted child of a
middle-class couple is
kidnapped and suspicion
immediately falls upon the
natural mother. (S5, ep 3)
10.00 Traces New series. Emma
is on the cusp of seeing
her mother’s murder case
finally solved; and Daniel is
in Dundee to give evidence
against Phil. (Series 2, ep 1)
11.00-1.35 Jonathan Creek
Feature-length mystery.
Jonathan is stumped
by disappearances
in a Gothic mansion.
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
4.15pm Puss In Boots — The Last
Wish (2022, PG) 6.05 The Last
Rifleman (2022, 15) 8.00 Big George
Foreman. Biopic of the world
heavyweight boxing champion.
(2023, 12) 10.20-12.20 Palm Trees
And Power Lines. A disconnected
teenage girl enters a relationship
with a man twice her age. (2022, 15)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
5.55pm Three Days Of The Condor
(1975, 15) 8.00 Snatch. A boxing
promoter and his sidekick are
drawn into a match-fixing racket.
(2000, 18) 9.50-12.20 Goodfellas.
An Irish-Italian boy is taken under
the wing of a mobster. (1990, 18)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
4.35pm Dad’s Army (1971, U)
6.15 Dad’s Army. The captain
of a seaside town’s Home Guard
platoon contends with German
spies. (2016, PG) 8.00 The Dam
Busters. An engineer designs a
bouncing bomb to target Germany’s
industrial heartland. (1955, U) 10.10-
12.20 Operation Mincemeat (2021, 12)
32 12 November 2023
7.00pm Kiri Te Kanawa At
The BBC Highlights of
the soprano’s career.
8.00 Montserrat Caballe
The Spanish soprano
sings and is interviewed.
9.15 Kiri Te Kanawa The New
Zealand soprano talks
to Bernard Levin and
sings operatic arias.
10.30 CHOICE The Remarkable
Journey Of Bernard Levin
The life of the influential
journalist and broadcaster.
(See Critics’ choice)
11.25 Edward Hopper — Arena
A profile of the famous
American realist painter.
12.05 HMS Brilliant Life onboard
the Royal Navy warship.
1.45 As 7pm
2.45-3.45 Monuments Of
Remembrance The stories
behind First World War
cemeteries and memorials.
Sky Arts
6.00pm The Music Of Buddy
Holly And The Crickets
Celebrating the life of the
Texan singer-songwriter.
8.00 Classic Movies — The
Story Of Brighton Rock
A look at John Boulting’s
1944 film noir, starring
Richard Attenborough as
a psychopathic gangster.
9.00 The Directors The life
and work of John Huston,
whose films include The
Maltese Falcon, The
Treasure of Sierra Madre
and The African Queen.
10.00 The Art Of Film Ian Nathan
takes a look at the new
wave of horror films that
emerged in the late-1960s.
11.00-12.00 Discovering The life
and career of the actress
Octavia Spencer, who
won an Academy Award
for the film The Help.
SKY CINEMA SELECT
5.55pm The Hunger Games —
Mockingjay Part 1 (2014, 12)
8.00 The Hunger Games:
Mockingjay — Part 2 (2015, 12)
10.20-12.40 The Matrix. A computer
hacker joins with rebels to free
humans from virtual-reality. (1999, 15)
FILM4
4.30pm Scrooged (1988, 12) 6.40
Jumanji — Welcome To The Jungle.
Four high-school students are
drawn into a video game. (2017, 12)
9.00 Jumanji — The Next Level.
Players of the rebooted Jumanji
return and try to rescue one of
their own. (2019, 12) 11.25-1.45
CHOICE 3:10 To Yuma. A rancher
escorts an outlaw on a journey to
board a train that will take him to
jail. (2007, 15; see Film choice)
TALKING PICTURES TV
6.00pm Tell Me Another 6.30
Piccadilly Incident. A Wren is
pronounced missing in action,
but returns three years later to
find her husband has remarried.
(1946, U) 8.30 Colonel March Of
Scotland Yard 9.00 Manhunt
10.05 Sex Education 10.35-12.45
Only Two Can Play (1962, PG)
ITV 2
5.25pm FILM: Antz With the
voice of Woody Allen.
An ant sets out to prove
his love for a princess
and help her escape their
brutal colony. Unoriginal
animation. (1998, PG;
includes FYI Daily)
7.10 FILM: Johnny English
Stars Rowan Atkinson.
A bumbling British secret
agent sets out to unmask
a mysterious villain.
Likeable spy spoof. (2003,
PG; includes FYI Daily)
9.00 Big Brother Daily roundup.
10.00 Big Brother — Late & Live
11.05 Family Guy Meg joins the
basketball team. (Series 21,
ep 14) 11.35-12.05 Family
Guy Brian’s estranged
television star son turns up
in Quahog. (Series 12, ep 11)
Sky Max
6.00pm Merlin Arthur incurs
the wrath of Queen Annis,
whose actions endanger
the people of Camelot –
providing him with his first
test as king. (S4, ep 5, R)
7.00 FILM: The Twilight Saga
— Breaking Dawn: Part 1
Stars Kristen Stewart and
Robert Pattinson. A human
falls pregnant after
marrying a vampire.
Boring sequel. (2011, 12)
9.05 An Idiot Abroad 3 Karl
Pilkington goes on a world
tour from Italy to China
with Warwick Davis. (R)
10.00 The Blacklist The Task
Force try to anticipate
Red’s next move. (Series
10, ep 21, R) 11.00-12.00
The Blacklist The future of
the Reddington Task Force
is decided. (Last in series, R)
Entertainment
ITV4
5.35pm FILM: Rio Lobo 8.00
Premiership Rugby Union Highlights
9.00 FILM: A Fistful Of Dollars
11.10 Robson And Jim’s Fly-Fishing
Adventure 1.10-2.15 Motorsport UK
MORE4
5.50pm Come Dine With Me 8.00
999 — On The Front Line 9.00 24
Hours In A&E 10.00 The Emergency
Ward 11.00 Emergency Helicopter
Medics 12.05 The Good Doctor
1.00-2.05 999 — On The Front Line
GOLD
6.00pm Only Fools And Horses 8.00
Dad’s Army 8.40 Only Fools And
Horses 10.00 Blackadder Goes Forth
11.20 Harry Enfield And Chums 12.00
Upstart Crow 12.40 Blackadder Goes
Forth 1.20 Harry Enfield And Chums
2.00-2.35 Blackadder Goes Forth
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm Will & Grace 6.30 The US
Office 9.00 Saturday Night Live
10.25 Curb Your Enthusiasm
11.00 Saturday Night Live 12.30
Intelligence 1.30-3.15 Flight Of
The Conchords — Live In London
ITV 3
4.55pm Poirot A philandering
husband is found dying
after being shot during a
house party where Poirot
is a guest. (Series 9, ep 4)
7.00 Flying For Britain David
Jason meets members of
the RAF’s Battle of Britain
Memorial Flight, and takes
to the skies in their historic
Spitfires and Hurricanes.
8.00 Long Lost Family
A woman brought up by
white adoptive parents
looks for her birth family.
9.00 Joanna Lumley’s Great
Cities Of The World The
actress visits Berlin where
she attends the Festival
of Lights and meets an
all-female motorcycle club.
10.00-12.05 Endeavour
A suicide throws Morse
in at the deep end as he
returns to work. (S2, ep 1)
Sky Atlantic
5.25pm Succession Kendall
and Logan arrange a secret
meeting with PGM CEO,
Rhea Jarrell. (Series 2, ep 4)
6.35 Succession Kendall
makes his case to Naomi
Pierce. 7.50 Succession
As Logan works to finalise
a deal, a threat emerges.
9.00 The White Lotus Rachel
is blindsided by an arrival;
and Armond’s renewed
commitment to sobriety is
put to the test. (S1, ep 4)
10.05 Landscapers Drama with
Olivia Colman. Charting
the true story of seemingly
ordinary couple who
find themselves the
focus of a murder. (1/4)
11.10-12.20 True Detective
Amelia tries to uncover
the whereabouts of the
mysterious one-eyed
man. (Series 3, ep 7)
5 STAR
6.00pm Police Interceptors 9.00
FILM: Robin Hood. Adventure 11.15
FILM: Final Destination. Horror
1.20-2.15 Killer At The Crime Scene
5 USA
5.00pm Columbo 7.05 Columbo
9.00 NCIS. US drama 10.00 Law &
Order: Special Victims Unit 12.00
NCIS 2.00-3.35 Blue Bloods
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Nothing To Declare 8.00
Caught On Dashcam 9.00 Blue
Bloods. Danny witnesses a shooting
10.00 FBI 11.00 FBI — International
12.00 FBI — Most Wanted 1.00
Departure 2.00-3.00 Lincoln Rhyme
— Hunt For The Bone Collector
W Packet Of Crisps 12.20 Red Dwarf
5.40pm Miranda 7.00 Nurses On
The Ward 8.00 Inside The Operating
Theatre 9.00 Louis Theroux’s
Forbidden America 10.20 Kathy
Burke’s All Woman 11.20 Inside
The Ambulance — Coast And
Country 12.20 Ambulance Australia
1.25-2.15 Dating With My Mates
COMEDY CENTRAL
5.55pm Friends 6.25 Friends 6.50
FILM: Harry And The Hendersons
E4
4.25pm The Big Bang Theory
Back-to-back episodes of
the American comedy.
6.50 FILM: Sister Act 2 — Back
In The Habit Stars Whoopi
Goldberg. A singer who
posed as a nun joins the
order again to save a
school. Entertaining
sequel. (1993, PG)
9.00 FILM: Jack Reacher
Stars Tom Cruise and
Rosamund Pike. A former
military police investigator
takes on the case of a
random shooting for
which an army sniper
has been framed. Clever,
fast-paced thriller. (2012, 15)
11.35-12.35 Gogglebox The
armchair critics appraise
I’m a Celebrity, Blue Planet
II and The Weakest Link.
Talk TV
7.00am Talk Today David Bull
presents the breakfast
show, with news, weather
and lively opinions.
10.00 Peter Cardwell The
Westminster insider scours
the latest news from
parliament, featuring
exclusive interviews.
1.00 pm Alex Phillips A look at
the day’s talking points.
4.00 Trisha Goddard The
broadcaster takes a look
through the week’s stories.
7.00 The Sunday Night Club
Host Mark Saggers
reflects on the sporting
weekend and more.
10.00-1.00 Peter Cardwell The
latest from parliament,
featuring interviews with
political heavyweights.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview 237;
Virgin 606; Freesat 217; YouTube,
connected TVs and smart devices
9.00 FILM: The Breakfast Club
11.00 Jimmy Carr In Concert. From
Bloomsbury Theatre 12.50 The Ricky
Gervais Show 1.50-2.20 Digman!
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Bangers & Cash 8.00 ’Allo
’Allo! Triple bill 10.00 Bangers &
Cash — Restoring Classics 11.00
Abandoned Engineering. Camp
Hero 12.00-1.00 Bangers & Cash
DAVE
6.00pm Rick Stein’s Road To
Mexico 7.00 Mediterranean With
Simon Reeve 8.00 Border Force
— America’s Gatekeepers 9.00
Have I Got A Bit More News For You
10.00 All Girls Live At The Apollo
11.00 Two Pints Of Lager And A
1.35-2.40 Question Team
Factual
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
6.00pm Primal Survivor — Extreme
African Safari. Great Rift Valley 7.00
Air Crash Investigation 8.00 Border
Protection Spain 9.00 Hitler’s Last
Stand 10.00 Hitler The Junkie
11.00 Bloody Tales Of The Tower
1.00-2.00 Atlas Of Cursed Places
5 Great shows . . .
Travel
1
Race Across The World
(BBC iPlayer)
Pairs attempt epic
journeys with little
money, no air travel or
modern technology.
2
James May — Our
Man In Japan (Prime
Video) The former Top
Gear presenter is a very
watchable guide from
Hokkaido to Kyushu.
3
Michael Palin —
Around The World
In 80 Days (iPlayer)
His 1989 adventure in
the footsteps of Phileas
Fogg is the godfather of
modern travel TV.
4
Travel Man — 48 Hours
in ... (C4 streaming)
Richard Ayoade and,
latterly, Joe Lycett take
whistle-stop city breaks
accompanied by famous
friends from Dawn
French to Bob Mortimer.
5
Anthony Bourdain —
Parts Unknown
(Prime Video)
The chef travels the
world uncovering
fascinating lesser-
known cultures and
their cuisines.
Tim Glanfield
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Gold Divers 7.00 How The
Universe Works. The Milky Way 8.00
The Lost Lincoln 10.00 Wheeler
Dealers 11.00 Kindig Customs
12.00-4.00 Deadliest Catch
PBS AMERICA
5.55pm Great War Diaries 9.35
Pandemic — The Flu That Killed 50
Million. The 1918 flu pandemic
10.55-12.00 Nazca Desert Mystery
SKY DOCUMENTARIES
5.10pm Steve McQueen — The Lost
Movie 7.00 Val. Actor Val Kilmer
9.00 CHOICE Six Silent Killings
— Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle.
Investigating the disappearances of
six women in the 1990s. (See Critics’
choice) 10.00 Burden Of Proof —
Who Killed Jennifer Pandos? Margie
is offered a deal 11.10-1.40 Kurt
Cobain — Montage Of Heck
SKY NATURE
6.00pm Land Of The Far North
8.00 David Attenborough’s Wild
City 11.00-12.00 Monkey Life
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Tony Robinson’s Wild West
8.00 Shed And Buried 10.00-12.00
Salvage Hunters — The Restorers
A travel TV
classic: Michael
Palin goes global
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 Good Morning
Sports Fans 8.00 LIVE ICC Cricket
World Cup: India v Holland 11.30
LIVE SPFL: Livingston v Rangers.
Kickoff at 12.00 2.00 LIVE Super
Sunday: West Ham United v
Nottingham Forest. Kickoff at 2.00
4.00 LIVE Super Sunday: Chelsea v
Manchester City. Kickoff at 4.30
7.30 LIVE NFL 9.15 LIVE NFL
12.30 NBC’s FNIA 1.20 LIVE NFL.
Kickoff at 1.20 4.30-6.00 News
TNT SPORTS 1
7.00am Premier League Legends
7.30 Original Documentary 8.00
LIVE World Rallycross 9.00 WWE
Raw Highlights 10.00 WWE
Smackdown Highlights 11.00
National League Highlights 11.30
LIVE Serie A 1.30 What Went Down
2.30 LIVE Premiership Rugby
Union: Northampton Saints v Exeter
Chiefs. Kickoff at 3.00 5.15 The
Rugby Review 6.00 WWE Friday
Night Smackdown 7.30 LIVE Serie A
9.45 UFC 12.45 UFC — The Ultimate
Fighter 4.45 UFC Fight Flashback
5.15-6.00 Sign Up — Into Football
Radio & Podcasts
○ Poetry Extra
(Radio 4 Extra, 11am)
Marking the death of
Dylan Thomas on
November 9, 1953, Daljit
Nagra presents a
selection of programmes
about the poet. Gwyneth
Lewis, a poet, recalls
Thomas’s early influence,
and his friend William
Scott remembers a man
who would break into a
room with reprobates,
demanding a party.
○ Ceremony Of
Remembrance From
The Cenotaph
(Radio 4, 10.29am)
Paddy O’Connell leads
the coverage, one of the
few broadcasters who
can cover Eurovision and
events of great gravitas
with perfect pitch. In the
TIMES RADIO
10.00 Sunday Morning With Kate
McCann And Adam Boulton 1.00
Alexis Conran 4.00 Ayesha
Hazarika With Times Radio Drive
7.00 The Best Of Times Podcasts
8.00 Stories Of Our Times 8.30
Red Box 9.00 Highlights From
Times Radio 10.00 Darryl Morris
1.00 Highlights From Times Radio
To get in touch with the Times
Radio studio, text TIMES plus your
message to 87222. Texts cost
your standard message charge.
RADIO 4
9.15 The Archers (R) 10.29
Ceremony Of Remembrance From
The Cenotaph. Live at Whitehall
11.45 Short Works (R) 12.00 News
12.01 (LW) Shipping 12.04 Paul
Sinha’s Perfect Pub Quiz (R) 12.30
Food Programme 1.00 The World
This Weekend 1.30 Killing Death
Row. The issue of whether or not
lethal injection causes pain 2.00
Gardeners’ Question Time (R)
2.45 Opening Lines 3.00 Drama:
The Betrothed. Eileen Horne’s
adaptation of Alessandro
Manzoni’s novel 4.00 Open Book.
Chris Power speaks to Teju Cole
about his new novel, Tremor 4.30
The Exploding Library. Desiree
Burch unravels Octavia E Butler’s
novel Parable of the Sower
5.00 Disability And The Adult
Industry (R) 5.40 Profile (R) 5.54
Shipping 6.00 News 6.15 Pick Of
The Week 7.00 The Archers 7.15
Who Runs The World 7.45 The
State Of The Art 8.00 Feedback
(R) 8.30 Last Word (R) 9.00
Money Box (R) 9.25 Appeal (R)
9.30 Loose Ends 10.00 The
Westminster Hour 11.00 The
Moral Maze (R) 12.00 News 12.15
Sideways (R) 12.45 Bells (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
RADIO 4 EXTRA
10.00 Desert Island Discs 10.45
David Attenborough’s Life Stories
11.00 Poetry Extra. An edition
focusing on Dylan Thomas and
King Charles III 11.30 Grandmothers
12.40 Inheritance Tracks
Reflection: Dylan Thomas
(Radio 4 Extra, 11am)
H-Hour podcast, Hugh
Keir, an ex-sniper with the
Parachute Regiment, talks
to former military
personnel, including a
moving show with Tim
Owen, the ex-military pilot
and co-founder of the
suicide prevention charity
Three Dads Walking. Gavin
12.50 Shakespeare’s Restless World
2.00 The Eric Morecambe And
Ernie Wise Show 2.30 Tony’s 3.00
Desert Island Discs 3.45 David
Attenborough’s Life Stories 4.00
The Destruction Factor 4.30 The
Price Of Fear 5.00 Poetry Extra
5.30 Grandmothers 6.40 Inheritance
Tracks 6.50 Shakespeare’s Restless
World 8.00 The Eric Morecambe
And Ernie Wise Show 8.30 Tony’s
9.00 Desert Island Discs 9.45
David Attenborough’s Life Stories
10.00 Mark Watson Talks A Bit
About Life 10.30 Brian Appleton’s
Unofficial Multi-Media Lecture 10.45
We Know Everything 11.00 Small
Scenes 11.30-12.00 The Skivers
LBC
10.00 David Lammy 1.00 Sangita
Myska 4.00 Ali Miraj 7.00 Leading
Britain’s Conversation 10.00 Nick
Abbot. Discussion 1.00 Richard
Spurr. Debate 4.00 Ian Payne
RADIO 3
9.00 Sunday Morning 12.00 Private
Passions 1.00 Lunchtime Concert.
Esther Yoo and Jae Hong Park play
violin sonatas by Debussy and
Grieg (R) 2.00 The Early Music
Show. Philippe Herreweghe directs
music inspired by Petrarch 3.00
Choral Evensong (R) 4.00 Jazz
Record Requests 5.00 The Listening
Service. Tom Service investigates
the humble recorder (R) 5.30
Words And Music. Works inspired by
the experiences of women during
wartime (R) 6.45 Sunday Feature.
The life and ideas of the literary
critic and cultural theorist Richard
Hoggart, in his own words from the
archives as well as those who knew,
loved and were inspired by him 7.30
Drama On 3: The Spanish Tragedy.
Pauline Harris and Emma Smith’s
adaptation of Thomas Kyd’s bloody
Elizabethan revenge play. With
Robert Glenister and Joanna
Vanderham 9.05 Record Review
Extra. Hannah French offers a
chance to hear at greater length
the recordings discussed in
yesterday’s Record Review, including
the recommended version of
Dvorak’s Symphony No 9 in E minor
Watson’s Military
Veterans Podcast talks to
veterans from Britain and
the US.
○ Sunday Feature
(Radio 3, 6.45pm)
Part of the Afterwords
series on important
cultural figures with audio
archive, today’s
programme looks at
Richard Hoggart, a
founding father of cultural
studies. Those
commenting on his
influential works —
famously Uses of Literacy
— are his son, the
journalist Paul Hoggart,
the writers Lynsey Hanley
and Dan Evans, the
novelist DJ Taylor and the
author and cultural critic
Nathalie Olah.
Clair Woodward
11.00 Journey To The East With
Kirill Karabits. In a new series, the
conductor examines the musical
heart of eastern Europe and central
Asia, exploring its traditions,
influences and connections,
beginning with Ukraine 12.00
Classical Fix. Featuring a bespoke
classical playlist for Radha Modgil
(R) 12.30 Through The Night
CLASSIC FM
10.00 Andrew Marr 1.00 Joanna
Gosling 4.00 John Humphrys
7.00 Charlotte Hawkins 9.00
Moira Stuart Meets — The Hairy
Bikers 10.00 Myleene Klass 1.00
Bill Overton 4.00 Lucy Coward
RADIO 2
9.00 Steve Wright 11.00 The
Michael Ball Show. Michael talks
to the Sir Terry Wogan Young
Fundraiser of the Year Award
finalists 1.00 Elaine Paige. A look
at musicals with a strong dance
element 3.00 Sounds Of The 70s
5.00 Rob Beckett 7.00 Tony
Blackburn’s Golden Hour 8.00
The Paul Gambaccini Collection
10.00 Radio 2 Unwinds 12.00 Phil
Williams 3.00 Alternative Sounds
Of The 90s 4.00 Owain Wyn Evans
VIRGIN RADIO
9.30 The Graham Norton Radio
Show 12.30 Stu Elmore 4.00
Tim Cocker 7.00 Sunday Special
8.00 Bam. Music and chat
12.00 My 80s Playlist 1.00 Sean
Goldsmith 4.00 Steve Denyer
TALKSPORT
9.00 The Sunday Edition 11.00
The Warm Up 1.30 The Sunday
Session 6.30 Final Word 9.00
Trans Europe Express 12.00 A
Talksport Special 1.00 Extra Time
RADIO 4 FM 92.4-94.6 MHz
LW 198 kHz (1515m), MW 720 kHz
LBC FM 97.3 MHz
RADIO 3 FM 90.2-92.4 MHz
CLASSIC FM FM 100-102 MHz
RADIO 2 FM 88-90.2 MHz
TALKSPORT MW 1053,
1071, 1089, 1107 kHz
12 November 2023 33
MONDAY 13 NOVEMBER
BBC 1 BBC 2
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
9.15 Morning Live Magazine.
10.00 Scam Interceptors (R)
10.45 Dr Xand’s Con Or Cure (R)
11.15 Homes Under The
Hammer Auctions. (R)
12.15 Bargain Hunt In Ardingly.
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.45 Doctors Scarlett is
mortified when word gets
out about last night.
2.15 The Bidding Room (R)
3.00 Escape To The Country
3.45 Antiques Road Trip New
run. Raj Bisram and Irita
Marriott are in North Wales.
4.30 The Repair Shop (R)
5.15 Pointless Quiz show.
6.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.30 Regional News Update.
7.00 The One Show Features.
7.30 EastEnders Alfie heads to
the hospital with Linda to
receive his PSA results; and
the Beales band together.
8.00 Panorama Exploring why
the search for buried
carbon in almost every part
of the globe is continuing.
8.30 Countryfile Matt Baker,
Charlotte Smith, Margherita
Taylor, Joe Crowley and
John Craven join groups
around the country taking
part in the Children in Need
Countryfile Rambles. (R)
9.00 MasterChef — The
Professionals The final
week of heats gets under
way, with four more chefs
aiming to impress, and a
dish of crispy squid
croquettes served with a
garlic mayonnaise is
required in the skills test.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
10.40 Have I Got A Bit More
News For You Richard
Ayoade hosts, with guests
Jamie MacDonald and
Steph McGovern. (R)
11.25 Louis Theroux Interviews:
Anthony Joshua. Louis
meets the two-time world
boxing champion. (R)
12.10 The Graham Norton Show
With guests including the
American rapper Diddy (R)
1.00 Blankety Blank (8/10, R)
1.40-6.00 Joins BBC News
SCOTLAND 6.30 Reporting
Scotland; Weather. 10.40
The Firm. 11.40 Have I Got
A Bit More News For You.
12.25 Louis Theroux Interviews:
Anthony Joshua. 1.10 The
Graham Norton Show. 2.00
Blankety Blank. 2.40 BBC News.
6.45 Villages By The Sea (R)
7.15 Bargain Hunt Curios. (R)
8.00 This Farming Life
Insights. (Signed, R)
9.00 Nicky Campbell Debate.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
12.15 Politics Live Discussion.
1.00 The Boss Quiz show. (R)
1.45 Lightning Quiz show. (R)
2.15 Eat Well For Less? (R)
3.15 Oceans Documentary. (R)
4.15 This Farming Life (R)
5.15 Flog It! Items in Norfolk. (R)
6.00 House Of Games With
Toussaint Douglass, Mark
Foster, Sheree Murphy
and Sian Williams.
6.30 Strictly — It Takes Two
Fleur East chats to the
latest couple to leave.
7.00 Between The Covers Sara
Cox is joined by Adrian
Edmondson, Annie
Macmanus, Angela Barnes
and Chris McCausland.
7.30 Mastermind Specialist
subjects include Peter the
Great, Robert Harris’s
Cicero Trilogy and the films
of Quentin Tarantino.
8.00 Only Connect Victoria
Coren Mitchell hosts the
quiz show as the Roadies
take on the Stitchers.
8.30 University Challenge The
second round of this year’s
contest continues, as the
University of East Anglia
face the Open University,
with a place in the
quarter-finals at stake.
9.00 Simon Reeve’s Return To
Cornwall The explorer
goes back to the county as
the cost-of-living crisis
began to take its toll, to
find out what life is like for
the locals after the summer
crowds have gone. (R)
10.00 Cunk On Earth Spoof
documentary telling the
story of human civilisation
from prehistoric times to
the present day. (1/5, R)
10.30 Newsnight Headlines.
11.15 CHOICE The
Conversation Stars Gene
Hackman. An obsessive
surveillance expert makes
the mistake of getting
personally involved in a
dangerous case. (1974,
12; see Film choice)
1.05 Countryfile (Signed, R)
2.00 Money For Nothing In
Altrincham. (Signed, R)
2.45-3.30 Garden Rescue
Makeover. (Signed, R)
ITV 1
6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine Lifestyle chat.
10.00 This Morning Features.
12.30 Loose Women Debate.
1.30 News; Weather Reports.
2.00 James Martin’s American
Adventure In Boston. (R)
3.00 Lingo A brother and sister,
a Highland couple, and a
mother and daughter
compete in the game. (R)
4.00 Tipping Point Gameshow
with Ben Shephard. (R)
5.00 The Chase Quiz show. (R)
6.00 Regional News Update.
6.30 News; Weather Reports.
7.30 Emmerdale Bernice
has vanished, leaving
a trail of debt; Charity
plans a trip; and Marlon
tells Mary his secret.
8.00 Coronation Street Bernie
dreads her punishment;
and Amy puts her
coursework on hold to
comfort a troubled soul.
9.00 CHOICE The Playboy
Bunny Murder Marcel
Theroux looks at a series of
murders of young women
that have remained
unsolved since the 1970s
and reveals a dark side
hidden beneath the wealth
and glamour of exclusive
corners of London’s
nightlife at that time.
(1/2; see Critics’ choice)
10.00 News At Ten Bulletin.
10.45 A Time To Die Exploring
the human cost of the
current British law on
assisted dying through the
stories of five people who
all want the right to die at a
time of their choosing.
12.10 Heathrow — Britain’s
Busiest Airport (R)
12.40 All Elite Wrestling
— Dynamite Action. (R)
2.20 Loose Women Debate. (R)
3.05 For The Love Of Paul
O’Grady A tribute. (R)
3.55 Unwind Daily relaxation.
5.10-6.00 Monster Carp (R)
Dispatches (C4, 11.05pm)
Channel 4
6.05 Countdown Game. (R)
6.45 Cheers Comedy. (R)
7.35 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
8.25 Frasier Sitcom. (R)
9.55 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (R)
10.55 The Great House
Giveaway A run-down
semi in Cramlington. (R)
11.55 News; Weather Reports.
12.00 Steph’s Packed Lunch
2.10 Countdown Game.
3.00 A Place In The Sun In
Oliva, in Spain’s Valencia
region. 4.00 A Place
In The Sun Seeking a
holiday home in Almería.
5.00 Help! We Bought A
Village A Catholic holiday
village turned B&B.
6.00 Four In A Bed At Manor
House Inn in Haltwhistle,
Northumberland. (R)
6.30 The Simpsons Marge
takes up lumberjacking.
7.00 News; Weather Reports.
7.55 Rory Peck Awards
Meeting the Iraqi families
whose homes are next to
the flames of oil-field flares.
8.00 Air Fryers — Are They
Worth It? Denise van
Outen presents an
assessment of the device
that has recently captured
consumer interest,
particularly since the hike
in the price of energy. (R)
9.00 24 Hours In Police
Custody Cameras follow
as detectives from
Bedfordshire police are
called in to investigate after
a man is found dead in a
park in Peterborough. (R)
10.00 999 — On The Front Line
A young man has curvature
of the spine, a high
temperature, low blood
pressure and a fast heart
rate — all triggers for the
life-threatening condition
sepsis. (Last in series, R)
11.05 Dispatches Investigators
seek evidence to prosecute
Russian President Putin
for the deportation and
brainwashing of thousands
of Ukrainian children.
12.20 Embarrassing Bodies A
patient with hair loss. (R)
1.15 Ramsay’s Hotel Hell (R)
2.05 24 Hours In A&E (R)
3.00 Grand Designs (R)
3.55 Unreported World (R)
4.20 Couples Come Dine With
Me Parties in east Kent. (R)
5.10-6.05 World’s Most Secret
Hotels Documentary. (R)
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.15 Jeremy Vine Debate.
11.15 Storm Huntley Opinions.
12.15 Alexis Conran Debate.
12.50 Entertainment News
12.55 News; Weather Reports.
1.00 Home And Away Zara tries
to convince Mali of their
potential together. (R)
1.30 Christmas On The Alpaca
Farm Drama, with Kirsten
Comerford and Matt Wells.
A woman teams up with a
single dad to bring festive
joy to an alpaca farm.
3.15 Haul Out The Holly
Comedy, with Lacey
Chabert. A woman visiting
her parents for Christmas
finds they have gone on a
trip, and ends up pulled
into the local festivities.
5.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.00 Dogs Behaving (Very)
Badly With Graeme Hall. (R)
6.55 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 Motorway Cops —
Catching Britain’s
Speeders After a driver
refuses to confirm his real
name, the officers take
advantage of new facial
recognition technology. (R)
7.55 News; Weather Reports.
8.00 The Motorway A multiple
car pile-up blocks the M60
and patrollers are left to
clean up the mess, but
one of the drivers involved
has just seen another crash.
9.00 Wife On Strike Two
couples swap who does
the household chores, with
a man taking over from his
husband, and woman
putting her kids to work.
10.00 CHOICE Shoplifters
— Stripping The Shelves
At West Orchards
Shopping Centre, guards
keep a close eye on a
newly opened toy store.
(See Critics’ choice)
11.05 Police — Suspect No 1 An
altercation leads to a man
fighting for his life. (R)
12.05 Motorway Cops —
Catching Britain’s
Speeders Insights. (R)
1.00 NFL — Monday Night
Football: Buffalo Bills v
Denver Broncos. The week
10 match, live at Highmark
Stadium. Kickoff at 1.15.
4.30 Entertainment News
4.40 Divine Designs (R)
5.05 House Doctor Advice. (R)
5.30 Entertainment News
5.40-6.00 Children’s Shows

Variations 11.00 Burnistoun 11.30-12.00

BBC1 WALES 11.25 Would I Lie To
You? With Stephen Hendry, Laura
Whitmore, Chris McCausland and
Scary Adult Things STV 6.00
Good Morning Britain 9.00
Lorraine 10.00 This Morning
12.30 Loose Women 1.30 News
3.55 Night Vision 5.10-6.00
Monster Carp S4C 6.00 Cyw 12.00
Is it not time to make the use of the word
“absolutely” on news programmes a criminal
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 12.05 Dau
Gi Bach 12.30 Heno 1.00 Adre 1.30 offence? As soon as someone uses the dreaded
Cymry Ar Gynfas 2.00 Newyddion word, we switch channels.
You say

Maisie Adam 11.55 Louis Theroux
Interviews: Anthony Joshua 12.40
The Graham Norton Show 1.35
BBC News BBC SCOTLAND 2.00
Sign Zone: Landward 2.30 Grand
Tours Of Scotland’s Rivers 3.00
This Farming Life 4.00-4.30
Beechgrove Garden In Winter
7.00 The Last Stone 8.00 This
Farming Life 9.00 The Nine 10.00
River City 10.30 Style Fixers
2.00 James Martin’s American
Adventure 3.00 Lingo 4.00
Tipping Point 5.00 The Chase
6.00 Regional News 6.30 News
7.30 Emmerdale 8.00 Coronation
Street 9.00 The Playboy Bunny
Murder 10.00 News At Ten 10.40
Scotland Tonight 11.05 A Time To
Die 12.40 All Elite Wrestling —
Dynamite 2.20 Loose Women
3.05 For The Love Of Paul O’Grady
A’r Tywydd 2.05 Prynhawn Da
3.00 Newyddion A’r Tywydd 3.05
Dylan Ar Daith 4.00 Awr Fawr
5.00 Stwnsh 6.00 Dan Do 6.30
Rownd A Rownd 6.57 Newyddion
7.00 Heno 7.30 Newyddion A’r
Tywydd 8.00 Sgwrs Dan Y Lloer
8.25 Cais Quinnell 8.55 Newyddion
A’r Tywydd 9.00 Ffermio 9.30
Sgorio 10.00 Gwesty Aduniad
11.00-11.35 Pobol Y Rhondda
Alan Prior
Bill Kenwright’s shows on Radio 2 were sublime.
Softly spoken, knowledgeable and witty — a
great presenter. His Golden Years programme
was the best music show ever broadcast.
RIP Bill and thanks for the music.
Philip Boyd
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk

34 12 November 2023
 Critics’ choice
The Playboy Bunny Murder
(ITV1, 9pm)
In 1975, five years before Dorothy
Stratten, a Playboy Playmate, was
killed in America, another Hugh
Hefner employee — Eve Stratford,
a Playboy bunny girl — had her
throat cut in her east London
home. In the first leg of a
two-part investigation, Marcel
Theroux, the author and
journalist, looks into a second
murder by an unknown killer — of
Lynda Farrow, a casino croupier,
in 1979. Exploring possible links
between their deaths, he
interviews Eve’s boyfriend and
Lynda’s mother, quizzes retired
detectives and meets David
Wilson, a criminologist who is
sceptical about the theory that the
same man killed Eve and Lynda.
Tomorrow, Theroux adds two
further unsolved murders in 1970s
London to the potential series,
and investigates whether a
policeman may have killed one or
more of the four young women.
John Dugdale
The Sky At Night Meets The
Infinite Monkey Cage
(BBC4, 10pm)
Last month, the venerable space
science series modelled itself on
BBC1’s Question Time as the
presenters took questions from an
audience. Now, in the final edition
of 2023, they team up with their
counterparts from Radio 4’s larky
science show The Infinite Monkey
Cage. Amateur astronomy is the
subject as Maggie Aderin-Pocock,
Pete Lawrence and Chris Lintott
join forces with Brian Cox, Robin
Ince and their guest Dara Ó Briain.
If they are uneasy about adopting
other people’s formats for entire
consecutive editions (or about
having to be funny throughout
one), more conventional Sky At
Night fare is on offer too. Lawrence
hosts a stargazing party outside the
BBC’s HQ in central London, and
George Dransfield hears about
opportunities for “citizen
scientists” in space science. JD
On demand
○ Lost (Disney+)
For those who missed it, it’s hard
to convey how expertly JJ Abrams’
2004 series about island-bound
aircraft crash survivors held us
in its thrall. For six seasons we
embraced the mystery and dread
and hoped for answers. When the
final episode was broadcast in
2010, answers came there none.
Maureen Ryan’s Hollywood exposé
book, Burn It Down, revealed
Eve Stratford, a bunny girl who was murdered aged 21 (ITV1, 9pm)
Grime Kids (BBC3, 10pm)
A coming-of-age story following the
fortunes of east London pals in that
excruciating liminality between
leaving school and becoming men.
Based on the memoir of DJ Target,
a grime pioneer, this has been
expanded into a lively ensemble
drama by Theresa Ikoko, a
Bafta-nominated writer. Ian Aryeh
and Abdou Cisse co-direct with
colour-saturated superhero comic
flair, guiding their cast with a sure
hand. Gritty, yes, but with the
sweetness of Gregory’s Girl.
Grime music dreams (BBC3, 10pm)
problematic workplace dynamics.
Revisiting it, Lost seems doubly
unsettling, a show about poisonous
group behaviour and white-saviour
narratives made amid an alleged
real-life toxic atmosphere.
○ Joe 90 (BritBox)
Although they made just 30
episodes between 1968 and 1969,
this Gerry and Sylvia Anderson
puppet show remains one of the
defining TV experiences of the
Sixties. It’s a decidedly odd opus,
Eyewitness To History — Norma
Percy On The Fifty Years War
(BBC4, 10.30pm)
Norma Percy, an Emmy-winning
documentary maker and recently
the producer of BBC2’s Putin vs the
West, looks back at her 1998 series
The Fifty Years War: Israel and the
Arabs. Careful and detailed, it
contains insights into the fog of
war, such as the 1948 Massacre at
Deir Yassin, misreported by
Palestine sources in such lurid
detail their people fled villages to
which they would never return.
Shoplifters — Stripping The
Shelves (C5, 10pm)
Retail theft results in nearly a
billion pounds filleted from
shopkeepers’ pockets every year.
However, this new show will tickle
more funny bones than
consciences, such as hearing a
security guard announce: “We’ve
got a runner from Toytown.”
Helen Stewart
concerning an adopted nine-year-
old boy who is experimented on by
his foster parents and then sent out
on lethal spy missions.
○ Crash Course (YouTube)
Lily Gladstone’s star turn in Martin
Scorsese’s Killers of The Flower
Moon has led many people to seek
out her earlier performances. None
are more charming than her
appearance in this 2017 online
educational series about film
production. AM
Not for those with
anxiety issues
The Curse (Paramount+)
This comedy drama comes from
Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie,
the architects of the deft cringe
creations The Rehearsal and
Uncut Gems. Fielder and Emma
Stone play Asher and Whitney,
newlyweds trying for a baby while
filming a dubious reality TV pilot.
Safdie plays their director pal,
Dougie, and the whole experience
is dark, uncomfortably funny and
packed with creeping dread.
Andrew Male
Stone and Fielder
(Paramount+)
Film choice
The Conversation
(BBC2, 11.15pm)
After hitting the big time with The
Godfather, the director Francis
Ford Coppola allowed himself a bit
of artiness in his next movie, this
story of a surveillance expert (Gene
Hackman) racked by doubts. It still
succeeds as a robust thriller:
overheard words hint at possible
danger, and the tension steadily
rises. Yet the drama also muses on
self-deception and the subjectivity
of how we read the world, and the
film’s crafty use of sound design
underlines these themes. (1974)
Uncharted
(Sky Cinema Family, 1.55pm)
Although its weak reviews put it on
a dicy path at first, this treasure-
hunt adventure movie found its
way to a respectable heap of
box-office gold. Mark Wahlberg
and Tom Holland play its
roguish heroes, and the latter is
especially nimble in the boisterous
action scenes. Dir: Ruben Fleischer
(2022)
Lover Come Back (BBC iPlayer)
Rock Hudson, the subject of a
recently released documentary, All
That Heaven Allowed (rent/buy), is
characteristically deft and suave
in this rom-com. It pairs him with
one of his regular co-stars, Doris
Day, in a story of rival advertising
executives trying to outdo each
other. Dir: Delbert Mann (1961)
Edward Porter
12 November 2023 35
MONDAY 13 NOVEMBER
BBC 3 BBC 4
7.00pm Top Gear Motoring.
8.00 Race Across The World
Five pairs of competitors
travel around the globe.
9.00 The Rap Game UK
Two artists enter the
competition fighting to
take a spot in the line-up.
10.00 CHOICE Grime Kids New
drama series about a group
of young adults growing
up in the early 2000s.
With Juwon Adedokun.
(1/5; see Critics’ choice)
10.50 The Bold Type Kat tries to
get a movement off the
ground. (Series 5, ep 5)
11.30 RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
The queens’ melodramatic
acting skills are tested.
12.40 BBC New Comedy Awards
1.10 The Rap Game UK
2.10 Grime Kids Drama. (1/5)
2.55-3.55 Charlotte In
Sunderland Double bill.
Drama
6.00pm ’Allo ’Allo! General von
Flockenstoffen launches a
raid to capture Churchill.
6.40 Last Of The Summer Wine
On Truly’s advice, Compo
parades a more daring and
glamorous image. 7.20
Last Of The Summer Wine
Compo, Clegg and Truly
dispense advice to a hen-
pecked husband on the run
from his overbearing wife.
8.00 Miss Marple With Joan
Hickson. The spinster is
sent to convalesce in
Barbados, where she finds
life decidedly dull, until a
double murder breaks the
monotony. (Series 3, ep 2)
10.20 New Tricks A skeleton
is uncovered in the
foundations of a swimming
pool. (Series 12, ep 8)
11.40-1.40 Dalziel & Pascoe
Drama. (Series 7, ep 3)
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
4.10pm The Last Rifleman (2022, 15)
6.05 She Came To Me. A composer
sets out for inspiration. (2023, 15)
8.00 Big George Foreman. The life
of the former world heavyweight
boxing champion, from his Olympic
gold medal win to his comeback.
(2023, 12) 10.20-12.20 Palm Trees
And Power Lines (2022, 15)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
6.00pm The Family (2013, 15) 8.00
Gone Baby Gone. A private eye
searches the Boston neighbourhood
where he grew up to find a missing
four-year-old girl. (2007, 15)
10.00 Reindeer Games. A former
convict assumes the identity of
his dead cellmate. (2000, 15)
11.50-1.35 Kindred (2020, 15)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
5.40pm A Beautiful Mind (2001, 12)
8.00 Where The Crawdads Sing.
A young woman in the Deep
South is accused of murder
when her suitor is found dead.
(2022, 15) 10.10-12.25 The Hunt
For Red October (1990, PG)
36 12 November 2023
7.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys On Anglesey.
7.30 Winter Walks Selina Scott
explores Wharfedale.
8.00 Simon Schama’s Power
Of Art Vincent van Gogh’s
Wheat Field with Crows.
9.00 Art That Made Us The
splintering that occurred
under the Stuart kings.
10.00 CHOICE The Sky At Night
Meets The Infinite
Monkey Cage Astronomy-
themed edition featuring
the presenters of both
shows. (See Critics’ choice)
10.30 CHOICE Eyewitness To
History — Norma Percy
On The Fifty Years War
(See Critics’ choice)
10.45 The Fifty Years War —
Israel And The Arabs
1.15 As 7pm
1.45 As 8pm
2.45-3.45 Art That Made Us
Sky Arts
6.00pm Tales Of The
Unexpected A girl is
followed by a strange
man. (Series 2, ep 10) 6.30
Tales Of The Unexpected
A woman learns her
husband plans to kill her.
7.00 Alfred Hitchcock
Presents: Hooked. A man
plots to get rid of his
wealthy wife. 7.30 Alfred
Hitchcock Presents: Pen
Pal. A prisoner breaks out
of jail to meet his pen pal.
8.00 Andrea Bocelli — The
Journey The tenor
embarks on a spiritual
pilgrimage around Italy.
9.00 Classic FM Rising Stars
Julian Lloyd Webber
showcases five young
classical musicians.
10.00-12.30 Andre Rieu — Live
In Maastricht IV The
Dutch violinist performs.
SKY CINEMA SELECT
6.00pm To Catch (1955, PG) 8.00
Sleepless In Seattle. A boy tries to
find his widowed father a new wife
via a radio show. (1993, PG) 9.50
Kate & Leopold. A space-time hiccup
lands a 19th-century bachelor in
modern-day New York. (2001, 12)
11.50-1.25 Miss Potter (2006, PG)
FILM4
4.20pm The Legend Of Zorro (2005,
PG) 6.55 The Greatest Showman
(2017, PG) 9.00 Terminator Genisys.
A time traveller sent on a rescue
mission learns of a plot to change
history. (2015, 12) 11.30-1.50 The
Sum Of All Fears (2002, 12)
TALKING PICTURES TV
6.00pm The Footage Detectives
7.00 Do You Know This Voice?
(1964, PG) 8.35 The Coach
Travellers In 1965 9.00 The Gold
Robbers 10.05-12.45 The Falcon
And The Snowman (1985, 18)
Entertainment
ITV4
5.30pm Minder 6.35 The Best Of
The 90s 6.45 LIVE Snooker —
Champion Of Champions
ITV 2
6.00pm Catchphrase —
Catchiest Moments
Stephen Mulhern presents
his favourite moments
from the quiz show.
7.00 Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win
With Rylan and David
Walliams, and Jimmy Carr
and Katherine Ryan.
8.00 Bob’s Burgers Gene falls
out with his best friend. (S9,
ep 8) 8.30 Bob’s Burgers
Tina and her science
partner contact aliens.
9.00 Big Brother Daily roundup.
10.00 Big Brother — Late & Live
AJ Odudu and Will Best
host the companion show.
11.05 Family Guy Carter adopts
a young girl from an
orphanage. (S21, ep 15)
11.35-12.05 American Dad!
Steve discovers a strange
secret about Channel 3
News. (Series 17, ep 21)
Sky Max
6.00pm Stargate SG-1 Daniel
investigates an ancient
curse. (Series 4, ep 13, R)
7.00 Stargate SG-1 The
team tries to disrupt an
alliance between the
System Lords Apophis
and Heru’ur. (R)
8.00 Movie Megastars — Made
In The 80s The biggest
film stars of the decade,
including Tom Cruise, with
contributions from Peter
Andre and Sinitta.
9.00 A League Of Their Own
Romesh Ranganathan
hosts as Mary Earps and
Guz Khan join regulars
Jamie Redknapp, Micah
Richards and Jill Scott. (R)
10.00 Cobra — Rebellion The
government frantically
searches for the stolen
weapon. (Series 3, ep 5, R)
11.00-12.00 Brassic (S5, ep 7, R)
10.15 MotoGP Highlights 11.15
Motorsport UK 12.20 Minder
1.25-2.30 The Professionals
MORE4
5.50pm The Secret Life Of The Zoo
6.55 The Dog House 7.55 Grand
Designs 9.00 Matt Baker — Travels
With Mum & Dad 10.00 Princess
Diana’s ‘Wicked’ Stepmother 11.05
24 Hours In A&E 12.10 Matt Baker
— Travels With Mum & Dad
1.15-2.20 999 — On The Front Line
GOLD
6.00pm The Green Green Grass
6.40 The Good Life 7.20 Dad’s
Army 8.00 Dad’s Army — The
Animations 8.40 Dad’s Army 9.20
Only Fools And Horses 10.00 Live At
The Apollo 11.00 Upstart Crow 11.40
The Young Ones 12.25 Only Fools
And Horses 1.00 Live At The Apollo
1.55-2.35 The Young Ones
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm The Conners 6.30
The Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air 7.00
Will & Grace 8.00 The US Office
9.00 Last Week Tonight 9.40 Veep
11.00 Last Week Tonight 11.40
Real Time 12.50 Sex And The
City 2.00-3.00 Intelligence
ITV 3
5.55pm Heartbeat A woman is
suspected of stealing a
baby from outside a shop.
(Series 2, ep 8) 6.55
Heartbeat Blaketon is
eager to halt a crimewave
before the assistant
chief constable arrives.
8.00 McDonald & Dodds Five
friends take a hot-air
balloon trip but only four
come back down alive,
leaving the pair to untangle
a web of lies spanning 30
years. (Series 2, ep 1)
10.00 DCI Banks When the body
of a lawyer is washed up by
an underground river, a
disgruntled employee
becomes a suspect. (S4, ep
3) 11.05-12.05 DCI Banks
With Geoff now a marked
man, he and Evie are put
under watch as the search
for Mullen is widened.
Sky Atlantic
5.35pm Succession Shiv,
Kendall and Roman head to
the UK to negotiate with
their mother. (S2, ep 7)
6.40 Succession The Roy
clan travels to Logan’s
hometown of Dundee.
7.50 House Of The Dragon
Rhaenyra navigates
continued speculation
about her children. (6/10)
9.00 The Gilded Age Period
drama set in the 1880s
following the fortunes of a
young woman who lives
with her wealthy aunts in
New York City. (S2, ep 3)
10.10 Unwanted The ship docks
in Tunis, but the authorities
refuse to accept the
migrants. (3/8) 11.15-
12.20 Unwanted Tareq’s
past life is discovered
by Ibrahim. (Italian and
English with subtitles)
5 STAR
6.00pm Home And Away 7.00 GPs
— Behind Closed Doors 8.00
Casualty 24/7 — Every Second
Counts 9.00 Killer At The Crime
Scene 10.00 Sleeping With My
Murderer 11.00 Ambulance —
Code Red 12.00 Trauma Room
One 1.05-2.50 Revenge
5 USA
6.00pm NCIS 9.00 The Blacklist
10.00 Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit. Double bill of the drama 12.00
NCIS 2.00-3.35 Blue Bloods
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Border Security —
Australia’s Front Line 8.00 The
Equalizer 9.00 The Good Doctor
10.00 Departure 11.00 The Rookie
12.00 Private Eyes 1.00 Transplant
2.00-3.00 Air Ambulance ER
W 6.00pm Lost Treasures Of Egypt
6.00pm Junior MasterChef Australia
7.20 Nigellissima 8.00 999 Rescue
Squad 9.00 24 Hours In A&E 11.00
Stalkers 12.00 One Born Every Minute
1.00-2.05 Dating With My Mates
COMEDY CENTRAL
6.00pm Friends 8.00 Most Ridiculous
9.00 Rhod Gilbert’s Growing Pains
E4
6.00pm The Big Bang Theory
Leonard accompanies Amy
to a colleague’s wedding.
(Series 5, ep 3) 6.30 The
Big Bang Theory Penny
arranges a date for Raj.
7.00 Hollyoaks Chester soap.
7.30 Young Sheldon Dale and
Meemaw tackle relationship
issues. (Series 4, ep 5)
8.00 Modern Family Mitchell
gets a new job, so he and
Cam throw a party. (Series
9, ep 15) 8.30 Modern
Family Gloria and Mitch
are invited to a party
at Oprah’s house.
9.00 Married At First Sight UK
It is time for the vow
renewals stage of the
social experiment.
10.00 Made In Chelsea Tristan
invites the Chelsea set for a
weekend in the country.
11.05-12.05 Gogglebox
Talk TV
6.00pm The Talk A panel of
famous faces debate the
hot topics that everybody
is talking about.
7.00 Prime Time With Rosanna
Lockwood The presenter
takes a look at the big
news stories of the day.
8.00 Piers Morgan Uncensored
The host presents his
verdict on the day’s global
events with an hour of
debate and interviews.
9.00 The Independent
Republic Of Mike Graham
The host looks through the
morning newspapers.
11.00-12.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on
the day’s global events.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview
237; Virgin 606; Freesat 217;
YouTube, connected TVs and
smart devices
10.00 Dylan Moran — Off The Hook
11.50 Russell Howard & Mum —
Globetrotters 12.50-2.20 South Park
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys 7.00 Antiques Roadshow
8.00 Abandoned Engineering 9.00
Bangers & Cash 11.00 Abandoned
Engineering 12.00-1.00 Great
British Railway Journeys
DAVE
6.00pm Rick Stein — From Venice
To Istanbul 7.00 House Of Games
8.20 Would I Lie To You? 9.00 QI XL
10.00 Big Zuu’s Big Eats 10.40 Mock
The Week 11.20 QI 12.00 David
Mitchell’s Outsiders 1.00-2.00 Have
I Got A Bit More News For You
Factual
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
7.00 Air Crash Investigation 8.00
Hitler’s Last Stand 9.00 To Catch A
Smuggler 10.00 Ice Road Rescue
11.00 Air Crash Investigation 12.00-
1.00 Airport Security — First Class
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Salvage Hunters 7.00
Wheeler Dealers 8.00 Railroad Alaska
5 Great shows . . .
Science fiction
1
Battlestar Galactica
(BBC iPlayer)
One of the finest modern
sci-fi epics, Ronald D
Moore’s 2004 imagining
of the story of a group
of humans in search of
home is captivating.
2
The Last Of Us
(Sky/ Now)
After a pandemic
destroys civilisation as
we know it, a teenager
could hold the key to
saving humanity.
3
Lost (Disney+)
Despite not having
an ending that
impressed everyone,
this is an epic sci-fi
mystery about
strangers stuck on
an island.
4
Silo (Apple TV+)
Ten thousand people live
below ground in a silo,
but why are they there?
5
Star Trek — Strange
New Worlds
(Paramount+)
A prequel to the original
television series, this
show follows the USS
Enterprise under Captain
Christopher Pike.
Tim Glanfield
9.00 Wheeler Dealers. Mike Brewer
is seduced by a Land Rover
Discovery Mk1 10.00 Shorty’s
Dream Shop 11.00 Expedition
Unknown 12.00 Moonshiners
1.00-2.00 Wheeler Dealers
PBS AMERICA
5.50pm The Stuarts 6.55 Royal
History’s Biggest Fibs. Lucy Worsley
examines key moments in Britain’s
history 8.10 Elon Musk’s Twitter
Takeover 10.40-12.00 Royal
History’s Biggest Fibs
SKY DOCUMENTARIES
6.00pm The Seventies 6.55
Hostages 8.00 The Man Who Played
With Fire 9.00 Hatton 11.00-1.00
1972 — Munich’s Black September
SKY NATURE
6.00pm Gangs Of Lemur Island
7.00 Monkey Life 8.00 Animal
Empires 9.00 Wild Latin America
10.00 Gangs Of Lemur Island
11.00-12.00 Tales From Zambia
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Combat Dealers 7.00 Hunt
For King Arthur’s Castle 8.00 Tony
Robinson’s Wild West 9.00 Combat
Dealers 10.00 Salvage Hunters
11.00-12.00 Shed And Buried
Back to the
island:
Evangeline
Lilly in Lost
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 Good Morning
Sports Fans 10.00 The Football Show
11.30 Ref Watch 12.00 The Football
Show 1.00 Lunchtime Live 2.00
Sports Desk 5.00 News 7.00 LIVE
Grand Slam Of Darts 11.00 News
1.00 LIVE NFL 4.30-6.00 News
TNT SPORTS 1
6.00am PL Review 7.00 WWE NXT
Highlights 8.00 Premier League
9.30 Original Documentary 10.00
National League 12.00 Uefa Europa
League Highlights Show 1.00 PL
Review 2.00 Premier League Stories
2.30 National League Highlights
3.00 Ligue 1 Highlights 4.00 Uefa
Champions League Highlights 6.00
PL Review 7.00 Premier League —
The Big Interview 7.30 The WRC
Magazine 8.00 World Rallycross
Championship Highlights 9.00
Fishing — On The Bank 10.00
Goals Reload 10.30 Ariel Helwani
Meets 11.00 WWE Raw Highlights
12.00 WWE Smackdown Highlights
1.00 LIVE WWE Monday Night
Raw 4.15 What Went Down
5.30-6.00 Classic Premier League
Radio & Podcasts
○ Book Of The Week
(Radio 4, 9.45am)
Irresistible — How Cuteness
Wired Our Brains And
Conquered The World is a
book by Joshua Paul Dale,
who is the founder of the
academic field of
cuteness studies (yes, this
is a thing). He is a
professor at a Tokyo
university and therefore
well placed to look at
how the Japanese
“kawaii” aesthetic of
cuteness has taken over
the world and discover
what makes something
cute. Here, he discusses
the Picachu festival, the
Lolita culture and the
experience of seeing a
roadblock made from
Hello Kitty characters
carrying rainbows. Book
of the week, page 20.
TIMES RADIO
5.00 Rosie Wright With Early
Breakfast 6.00 Aasmah Mir And
Stig Abell With Times Radio
Breakfast 10.00 Matt Chorley
1.00 Mariella Frostrup 3.00 Jane
Garvey And Fi Glover 5.00 John
Pienaar With Times Radio Drive
7.00 Pienaar And Friends 8.00
The Evening Edition 10.00
Carole Walker 1.00 Stories Of
Our Times 1.30 Red Box 2.00
Highlights From Times Radio
To get in touch with the Times
Radio studio, text TIMES plus your
message to 87222. Texts cost
your standard message charge.
RADIO 4
5.30 News 5.43 Prayer 5.45
Farming Today 5.58 Tweet Of The
Day (R) 6.00 Today 9.00 Start
The Week 9.45 Book Of The Week:
Irresistible — How Cuteness Wired
Our Brains And Conquered The
World, by Joshua Paul Dale 9.45
(LW) Daily Service 10.00 Woman’s
Hour 11.00 Fed With Chris Van
Tulleken. Exploring the happiness
of chickens farmed for meat 11.30
The Bottom Line (R) 12.00 News
12.01 (LW) Shipping 12.04 You
And Yours 1.00 The World At One
1.45 The Great Post Office Trial.
New series. Sub-postmasters who
were falsely accused of stealing
2.00 The Archers (R) 2.15 Drama:
How To Build A DJ, by Michael
Southan 3.00 Brain Of Britain 3.30
The Food Programme (R) 4.00
The Infinite Monkey Cage (R) 4.30
The Digital Human 5.00 PM 5.54
(LW) Shipping 6.00 News 6.30
I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue. New
run 7.00 The Archers 7.15 Front
Row 8.00 Nato’s Newest Member.
Documentary 8.30 Analysis.
Examining if reading for pleasure
is in decline 9.00 Young Again (R)
9.30 Start The Week (R) 10.00
The World Tonight 10.45 Book
At Bedtime 11.00 Lights Out.
Homelessness in London’s queer
communities 11.30 Today In
Parliament 12.00 News 12.30
Book Of The Week (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
Cute thinking: Joshua Paul
Dale (Radio 4, 9.45am)
○ Composer Of The Week
(Radio 3, noon)
Kate Molleson and Kevin Le
Gendre look at the lives of
John and Alice Coltrane,
pioneers of avant-garde and
spiritual jazz. John’s album
A Love Supreme reflected
his own religious quest;
Alice was an acclaimed
RADIO 4 EXTRA
5.00 The Blackpool Detective 5.45
Short Works 6.00 Galbraith And
The King Of Diamonds 6.45 Dick
Barton — Special Agent 7.00
Grandmothers 7.15 The Old Wives’
Tale (R) 7.30 Welcome To Our
Village, Please Invade Carefully
8.00 Steptoe And Son 8.30 The
Wordsmiths At Gorsemere 9.00
The Write Stuff 9.30 Ring Around
The Bath 10.00 The Blackpool
Detective 10.45 Short Works 11.00
Galbraith And The King Of Diamonds
11.45 Dick Barton — Special Agent
12.00 Grandmothers 12.15 The Old
Wives’ Tale (R) 12.30 Welcome To
Our Village, Please Invade Carefully
1.00 Steptoe And Son 1.30 The
Wordsmiths At Gorsemere 2.00 The
Write Stuff 2.30 Ring Around The
Bath 3.00 The Blackpool Detective
3.45 Short Works 4.00 Galbraith
And The King Of Diamonds 4.45
Dick Barton — Special Agent 5.00
Grandmothers 5.15 The Old Wives’
Tale (R) 5.30 Welcome To Our
Village, Please Invade Carefully 6.00
Steptoe And Son 6.30 Wordsmiths
At Gorsemere 7.00 The Write Stuff
7.30 Ring Around The Bath 8.00
Radiolab 8.55 Inheritance Tracks
9.00 Mastertapes 9.30 Doctor
Who: Tenth Doctor Adventures
10.00 Paul Sinha’s Perfect Pub
Quiz 10.30 Brian Gulliver’s Travels
10.55 The Comedy Club Interview
11.00 The Now Show 11.30-12.00
Forty Nights In The Wildebeest
LBC
7.00 Nick Ferrari 10.00 James
O’Brien 1.00 Shelagh Fogarty 4.00
Tom Swarbrick 6.00 Andrew Marr
7.00 Ali Miraj 10.00 Ben Kentish
1.00 Richard Spurr 4.00 Ian Payne
RADIO 3
6.30 Breakfast 9.00 Essential
Classics 12.00 Composer Of The
Week: John And Alice Coltrane 1.00
Lunchtime Concert. Live at London’s
Wigmore Hall, the violinist Julia
Fischer in Mozart’s Dissonance
Quartet and Janacek’s String
Quartet No 2 2.00 Afternoon
Concert. The Hong Kong Phil
performs Brahms’ Symphony No 3
pianist and one of the few
jazz harpists, and after her
husband’s death became
involved with Indian
spirituality.
○ You’re Wrong About
ADHD (Global podcast)
The Classic FM presenters
Katie Breathwick and Sam
Pittis were diagnosed with
ADHD late in life — Pittis
at 38, Breathwick at 51
— and their new podcast
looks to offer advice and
support to an increasing
number of adults who are
receiving a diagnosis. That
ADHD Story (BBC
Sounds) features Patrycja
Borka, from Radio
Northampton, who
examines the subject
while waiting for her own
official diagnosis.
Clair Woodward
4.30 New Generation Artists.
Geneva Lewis performs 5.00
In Tune. The violinist Francesca
Dego performs live 7.00 Classical
Mixtape 7.30 In Concert. Fiona
Talkington presents a performance
of Francisco Guerrero’s Missa Pro
Defunctis by the Cererols Choir
under Marc Diaz at Barcelona’s
Basílica de Sant Just i Sant Pastor
10.00 Music Matters. Tom Service
speaks to the French pianist
Bertrand Chamayou about his
new album Letter(s) to Erik Satie
(R) 10.45 The Essay. Eric Hippolyte
tells the story of the djembe, a
West African drum created in the
12th century that has travelled
around the world 11.00 Night
Tracks 12.30 Through The Night
CLASSIC FM
6.00 Tim Lihoreau 9.00 Alexander
Armstrong 12.00 Anne-Marie
Minhall 4.00 Margherita Taylor.
Classical favourites 7.00 Zeb
Soanes 10.00 Ritula Shah 1.00
Bill Overton 4.00 Lucy Coward
RADIO 2
6.30 The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show
9.30 Vernon Kay 12.00 Jeremy
Vine 2.00 Scott Mills 4.00 Sara
Cox 7.00 Jo Whiley 9.00 The
Blues Show With Cerys Matthews
10.00 Trevor Nelson’s Magnificent
7 10.30 Trevor Nelson’s Rhythm
Nation 12.00 OJ Borg 2.30
One Hit Wonders With OJ Borg
3.00 Pick Of The Pops (R)
4.00 Owain Wyn Evans
VIRGIN RADIO
6.30 The Chris Evans Breakfast
Show 10.00 Eddy Temple-Morris
1.00 Jayne Middlemiss 4.00 Ricky
Wilson 7.00 Bam. Music and chat
10.00 Amy Voce 1.00 Sean
Goldsmith 4.00 Steve Denyer
TALKSPORT
5.00 Early Breakfast 6.00
Talksport Breakfast 10.00 Jim
White And Simon Jordan 1.00
Hawksbee And Jacobs 4.00
Drive With Andy Goldstein
And Darren Bent 7.00 Kick Off
10.00 Sports Bar 1.00 Extra Time
12 November 2023 37
TUESDAY 14 NOVEMBER
BBC 1 BBC 2
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
9.15 Morning Live Magazine.
10.00 Scam Interceptors (R)
10.45 Dr Xand’s Con Or Cure (R)
11.15 Homes Under The
Hammer Auctions. (R)
12.15 Bargain Hunt Curios. (R)
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.45 Doctors Bear saves a life.
2.15 The Bidding Room (R)
3.00 Escape To The Country
3.45 Antiques Road Trip
4.30 The Repair Shop (R)
5.15 Pointless Quiz show.
6.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.30 Regional News Update.
7.00 The One Show Features.
7.30 EastEnders Harvey
encourages Rocky to come
clean about his involvement
in the fire after Kathy is
arrested; and Phil worries
Alfie will tell his secret.
8.00 MasterChef — The
Professionals The four
remaining hopefuls
compete in the final heat
where they are challenged
to make the perfect plate
of cavatelli pasta and dish
up a pineapple pudding.
9.00 The Met Detectives
investigate the fatal
stabbing of a motorcycle
stuntman on a video shoot;
and a manhunt team
searches for a suspect
on the run, accused of
raping a 12-year-old girl.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
10.40 Roman Kemp — The Fight
For Young Lives The
presenter seeks to move
the conversation from
encouraging young people
to talk about their mental
health, to making sure they
are properly supported
when they speak out. (R)
11.40 Charlotte In Sunderland
Charlotte Crosby juggles
motherhood and running
her business. (R) 12.10
Charlotte In Sunderland
The reality star dedicates a
tattoo to Nana Jean. (R)
12.40 Survivor A fierce battle
at sea leads to a shock
result and a surprise
visitor for both camps. (R)
1.45-6.00 Joins BBC News
SCOTLAND 6.30 Reporting
Scotland; Weather. 7.00 River
City. 10.40 The Scotts. 11.10 The
Edit. 11.25 Roman Kemp — The
Fight For Young Lives. 12.25
Charlotte In Sunderland. 1.25
Survivor. 2.30 BBC News.
6.20 Bargain Hunt Curios. (R)
7.05 Antiques Road Trip (R)
7.50 Expert Witness (Signed, R)
8.20 Robson Green’s Weekend
Escapes (Signed, R)
8.50 Lifeline Charity appeal. (R)
9.00 Nicky Campbell Debate.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
12.15 Politics Live Discussion.
1.00 The Boss Quiz show. (R)
1.45 Lightning Quiz show. (R)
2.15 Eat Well For Less? (R)
3.15 Oceans Documentary. (R)
4.15 This Farming Life (R)
5.15 Flog It! Items in Norfolk. (R)
6.00 House Of Games Sheree
Murphy, Toussaint
Douglass, Mark Foster and
Sian Williams take part.
6.30 Strictly — It Takes Two
Fleur East chats to some of
the remaining couples.
7.00 This Farming Life Pedigree
Beltex and finest Suffolks
go head to head in the
young handlers contest
at the Royal Highland
Show. (Last in series)
8.00 CHOICE Secrets Of The
Aquarium New series
going behind the scenes at
the National Marine
Aquarium in Plymouth,
with the new curator
attempting a high-risk
move for a misbehaving
shark. (See Critics’ choice)
9.00 CHOICE Louis Theroux
Interviews: Pete Doherty.
The film-maker meets the
singer at his home in
Normandy, where they talk
about his sobriety, passion
for music and his complex
relationship with Libertines
band-mate Carl Barat.
(See Critics’ choice)
9.45 Live At The Apollo Ria Lina
hosts the comedy show
filmed at London’s
Hammersmith Apollo,
introducing routines by
fellow comedians Lucy
Beaumont and Josh Pugh.
10.30 Newsnight Headlines.
11.15 CHOICE Film Stars Don’t
Die In Liverpool Stars
Jamie Bell and Annette
Bening. A romance sparks
between a young actor
and the ageing Hollywood
superstar Gloria Grahame.
(2017, 15; see Film choice)
12.55 Clean It, Fix It The team
heads to south London.
(Signed, Last in series, R)
1.40-3.40 MasterChef — The
Professionals Contest. (R)
ITV 1
6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine Lifestyle chat.
10.00 This Morning Features.
12.30 Loose Women Debate.
1.30 News; Weather Reports.
2.00 James Martin’s American
Adventure Exploring
Salem, Massachusetts. (R)
3.00 Lingo Adil Ray hosts. (R)
4.00 Tipping Point Gameshow
with Ben Shephard. (R)
5.00 The Chase Quiz show. (R)
6.00 Regional News Update.
6.30 News; Weather Reports.
7.30 Emmerdale Bernice tries to
escape police involvement;
Mack’s plans are scuppered
and Rhona struggles to
process this news.
8.00 The Martin Lewis Money
Show Live in Manchester,
the money expert shares
tips on how to celebrate
Christmas without
breaking the bank and
how to get the best
deals before Black Friday.
9.00 The Playboy Bunny
Murder The investigation
takes an unexpected turn
when modern technology
reveals a new victim
and Marcel learns that
detectives are flying out
to the Far East. (2/2)
10.00 News At Ten Bulletin.
10.45 Inside M&S Filmed
over a year and with
unprecedented access, for
the first time, cameras
have been invited inside
every corner of M&S. (R)
11.40 Long Lost Family — Born
Without Trace Davina
McCall and Nicky Campbell
tell the story of two girls
abandoned in Chesterfield
in the late 1980s. (R)
12.35 The Switch Quiz show. (R)
1.25 Cash Trapped Quiz. (R)
2.10 Loose Women Debate. (R)
3.00 Made In Britain (R)
3.20 Unwind Daily relaxation. (R)
4.45-6.00 The Masked Dancer
Featuring the semi-final. (R)
Aquatic antics (BBC2, 8pm)
Channel 4
6.05 Countdown Game. (R)
6.45 Cheers Comedy. (R)
7.35 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
8.25 Frasier Sitcom. (R)
9.55 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (R)
10.55 The Great House
Giveaway A decrepit
home in Garforth, Leeds. (R)
11.55 News; Weather Reports.
12.00 Steph’s Packed Lunch
2.10 Countdown Game.
3.00 A Place In The Sun In
southern Costa Blanca.
4.00 A Place In The Sun
Near Monpazier, France.
5.00 Help! We Bought A
Village The owner of a
French hamlet works to
improve accessibility.
6.00 Four In A Bed Contest. (R)
6.30 The Simpsons Marge
obsesses with getting the
perfect holiday photo.
7.00 News; Weather Reports.
7.55 Rory Peck Awards Gaelle
Borgia looks at rumours of
families selling children.
8.00 The Great British Bake Off
The remaining bakers
tackle sausage rolls and a
chocolate cake in the
competition’s first party
week, and the showstopper
sees them making an
‘anything-but-beige’ buffet.
9.15 Banged Up Tom Rosenthal
smuggles some tobacco
in traditional prison
fashion and a surprise
cell search sees Neil
Parish facing punishment
from the governor.
10.15 Gogglebox Another
chance to see the
edition in support of
Stand Up To Cancer. (R)
11.20 Uefa European Qualifiers
Preview A look ahead to
the final two rounds of
Euro 2024 qualifiers.
11.55 Gogglebox Viewers’
opinions on recent TV. (R)
12.50 Ramsay’s Hotel Hell (R)
1.40 The Last Leg Comedy. (R)
2.35 FILM: Shankar’s Fairies
Stars Shreeja Mishra and
Jaihind Kumar. How the
daughter of a senior police
officer in Lucknow in the
1960s became friends
with the family servant.
Strong drama. (2021, PG)
4.10 The Great Pottery Throw
Down Competition. (R)
5.15 Strangers On A Plane (R)
5.45-6.05 Find It, Fix It, Flog It
On the Isle of Wight. (R)
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.15 Jeremy Vine Debate.
11.15 Storm Huntley Opinions.
12.15 Alexis Conran Debate.
12.50 Entertainment News
12.55 News; Weather Reports.
1.00 Home And Away Dana
and Harper discuss their
uncertain futures.
1.30 A Maple Valley Christmas
Romantic drama, with
Peyton List and Andrew W
Walker. A rancher has
spent her whole life on
the family farm, until a
new arrival makes her
question what she wants.
3.15 Snowed In For Christmas
Drama, with Kayla Wallace.
A young au pair finds
herself unable to return
home for the holidays
when a snowstorm
derails her plans.
5.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.00 Dogs Behaving (Very)
Badly A nature-loving
couple’s hyper-reactive
doberman makes it hard
to enjoy walks. (R)
6.55 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 Shoplifters —Caught Red
Handed A detective tails
two suspects who have
evaded capture before.
7.55 News; Weather Reports.
8.00 Police 999 — Clear &
Present Danger A criminal
is on the run; West Midland
police uncover a man’s
secret; and a Birmingham
officer tries to apprehend a
man in a moving vehicle.
9.00 Portillo’s Andalucia
Michael Portillo visits
Malaga in time for August’s
feria, one the biggest
street parties in Spain.
10.00 The World’s Most
Expensive Hotels A look
at Claridge’s in London’s
Mayfair — the luxury hotel
renowned for catering to
the rich and famous. (R)
11.05 FILM: Cold Pursuit
Stars Liam Neeson and
Laura Dern. A grieving
snowplough driver seeks
out revenge against the
drug dealers who killed his
son. Awkward. (2019, 15)
1.20 Casino Show Gambling.
3.20 New Lives In The Wild (R)
4.10 How The Victorians Built
Britain Documentary. (R)
5.00 Friends Comedy. (R)
5.25 Entertainment News
5.40-6.00 Children’s Shows

Variations 9.00 Lorraine 10.00 This Morning

BBC1 WALES 10.40 Paranormal
— The Girl, The Ghost And The
Gravestone 11.10 Roman Kemp
12.30 Loose Women 1.30 News;
Weather 2.00 James Martin’s
American Adventure 3.00 Lingo
4.00 Tipping Point 5.00 The
3.20 Night Vision 4.45-6.00 The
Masked Dancer S4C 6.00 Cyw
Why do Marcus Wareing and Monica Galetti
need to massage each other’s ego while
12.00 Newyddion A’r Tywydd
12.05 Codi Pac 12.30 Heno 1.00 3 performing the skills tests on MasterChef
Lle 1.30 Ffermio 2.00 Newyddion (BBC1)? As for Gregg Wallace, why does
You say

— The Fight For Young Lives
BBC2 WALES 1.45 First Minister’s
Questions 2.45 Lightning BBC
SCOTLAND 7.00 Snow Dogs 8.00
Beechgrove Garden In Winter
8.30 Aberdeen Harbour 9.00 The
Nine 10.00 David Wilson’s Crime
Files — Scams & Scandals 10.30
Paramedics On Scene 11.30-12.00
Darren McGarvey’s Scotland
STV 6.00 Good Morning Britain
Chase 6.00 Regional News 6.30
News; Weather 7.30 Emmerdale
8.00 The Martin Lewis Money
Show 9.00 The Playboy Bunny
Murder 10.00 News At Ten 10.40
Scotland Tonight 11.05 Inside
M&S 12.00 Long Lost Family —
Born Without Trace 12.55
Heathrow — Britain’s Busiest
Airport 1.25 Cash Trapped 2.10
Loose Women 3.00 Made In Britain
A’r Tywydd 2.05 Prynhawn Da
3.00 Newyddion A’r Tywydd 3.05
Y Fets 4.00 Awr Fawr 5.00
Stwnsh 6.00 Adre 6.30 Sgorio
6.57 Newyddion 7.00 Heno 7.30
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 8.00
Pobol Y Cwm 8.25 Rownd A
Rownd 8.55 Newyddion A’r
Tywydd 9.00 Gwesty Aduniad
10.00 Rocco Schiavone 11.05-
11.40 Arfordir Cymru — Mon
he need to shout with excitement and pull
ridiculous faces of astonishment?
Mike Nettleton
The Beeb will soon have to change the title
of Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg (BBC1)
because it rarely is these days, unfortunately.
Rosemary Mathew
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk

38 12 November 2023
 Critics’ choice
Louis Theroux Interviews :
Pete Doherty (BBC2, 9pm)
For all his much-vaunted exile to
France, where the notorious
Noughties rocker has (mostly)
cleaned up his act, he would
appear to have the spotlight back
on him. In September Channel 4
aired Pete Doherty, Who Killed My
Son? about the death of Mark
Blanco, an actor, at a party. Then
a film by Doherty’s wife Katia de
Vidas, Peter Doherty — Stranger In
My Own Skin, opened in selected
cinemas on November 9. And now
this. At least on the BBC, Louis
Theroux retains top billing.
France appears to suit the singer:
gone is the heroin-addicted rake;
now he’s a shambolic Obelix the
Gaul. The pair chat warmly on a
battered red Chesterfield sofa in a
room filled with memories of his
previous lives with Kate Moss and
the Libertines, but the film is at its
most intriguing when Theroux
steps back to let Doherty and Carl
Barat commune before a gig.
Helen Stewart
A Murder At The End Of The
World (Disney+)
Emma Corrin stars as Darby Hart,
an amateur internet sleuth and
hacking prodigy in a murder
mystery that feels like it’s been
put together by a committee based
on “stuff young people like.” It
largely succeeds thanks to
epic budgets and a hammy older
cast. Hart is a high school freak
who is alert to societal misogyny
thanks to the number of dead
women her coroner father heaves
out of icy pools. Her book (yes,
she’s a writer as well) about
tracking down a murderer has
come to the attention of the shady
tech billionaire Andy Ronson (Clive
Owen). And no sooner can he say,
“I guess you’re wondering why I
gathered you all here,” than she
finds herself holed up in a snow-
bound hotel with a cast of
mysterious do-gooders, some of
whom are evidently intent on
doing bad. HS
On demand
○ Criminal Code (Netflix)
Based on the real-life exploits of
Brazil’s Federal Police and centred
around the illegal drugs trade, this
eight-part Portuguese-language
drama comes on like an ultra-
violent CSI: Paraná crossed with
Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 cartel
drama Sicario. From the
meticulously executed heist of an
insurance company to the finely
detained scenes of small-scale DNA
Theroux’s interview with Pete Doherty strikes a chord (BBC2, 9pm)
Will’s Book — Shakespeare’s First
Folio (Sky Arts/Now, 8pm)
There is so much rich detail in this
superb documentary marking 400
years of Shakespeare’s First Folio
that you’ll be quoting facts from it
for days. A series of tiny lectures by
brilliant academics comfortable
with discussing engraving,
copyright or printers’ urine, it
vividly shows how this precious
monument to Shakespeare’s genius
came together as a volatile
collaboration between printers,
publishers and his friends.
Sleuth: Emma Corrin (Disney+)
investigation, the showrunner
Heitor Dhalia has created a series
all about the micro and macro of
drug enforcement, where forensic
science goes up against meticulous
criminal logic and brute force.
○ Wisconsin Death Trip
(BBC iPlayer)
Based on the 1973 book by Michael
Lesy, James Marsh’s 1999
documentary is a mix of flickering
black and white reenactments and
colour reportage detailing the
Drugs Map Of Britain
(BBC3, 9pm/9.30pm)
These stark documentaries offer
tightly focused snapshots of drug
use in different regions, beginning
with ketamine usage in Cornwall
and Devon. Next comes a bleak
little film about Fife, where “you
can get half a gram quicker than
you can get a taxi” and charities
dedicated to supporting young
people are now dealing with
families where two or three
generations are affected by
substance abuse.
Secrets Of The Aquarium
(BBC2, 8pm)
In this series about Plymouth’s
National Marine Aquarium,
stars include the shark El Diablo,
banished from another joint for
“not being a very good tank-mate”,
and the feisty turtle Friday. Watch
out for the piscine recreation of the
Friends “pivot!” scene.
Victoria Segal
collapse of a midwest US mining
county at the end of the 19th
century.
○ Alfresco (YouTube)
In 1983, four staunchly British wits
(Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Emma
Thompson, Ben Elton) and two
defiantly Scottish performers
(Robbie Coltrane, Siobhan
Redmond) were recruited for
Granada TV’s answer to Not The
Nine O’ Clock News.
Andrew Male
Netflix swings into
action with live sport
The Netflix Cup (Netflix)
For some, this show will be a
heavenly synthesis of beloved
sports; for others, an unholy
mash-up of golf and motor-
racing. The platform has united
stars from Formula One — Drive
To Survive and Full Swing. Four
pairs — each of one driver and one
PGA Tour professional — will play
a tournament at the only 18-hole
golf course on the Las Vegas Strip.
Expect it to be fast, furious — and
maybe infuriating.
Victoria Segal
On a different
driving range:
Carlos Sainz
Film choice
Django Unchained
(Sky Cinema Greats, 11.45pm)
Quentin Tarantino’s first western
stars Jamie Foxx as a gun-toting
former slave looking to free his
wife (Kerry Washington) from an
evil Southern grandee (Leonardo
DiCaprio). As a lurid, exaggerated
tale of the cowboy era, it harks
back to spaghetti westerns,
and in the way it champions a
tireless black avenger, it evokes
blaxploitation movies. As usual,
Tarantino reworks his influences in
his own distinctive and exhilarating
style. (2012)
Film Stars Don’t Die In Liverpool
(BBC2, 11.15pm)
This poignant dramatisation of a
true story features Annette Bening
as Gloria Grahame, a Hollywood
star in the 1950s. Here we see her
out of the limelight in 1979, when
she fell in love with the jobbing
actor Peter Turner (played by Jamie
Bell). Dir: Paul McGuigan (2017)
Maigret
(Buy as stream/download)
Gérard Depardieu plays the
detective from Georges Simenon’s
novels in this film of 1954’s Maigret
And The Dead Girl. The murder
referred to in the title sets the
tone for a downbeat movie, with
the sleuth in especially sombre
mood — a good showcase for the
star’s world-weary charisma.
Dir: Patrice Leconte (2022)
Edward Porter
12 November 2023 39
TUESDAY 14 NOVEMBER
BBC 3 BBC 4
7.00pm Top Gear Designing a
vehicle for elderly people.
8.00 Race Across The World
Panama City. (S2, ep 2)
9.00 CHOICE Drugs Map Of
Britain The increase of
ketamine usage in Cornwall
and Devon. 9.30 Drugs
Map Of Britain The drug
culture in Fife, Scotland.
(See Critics’ choice)
10.00 Stacey Dooley — Inside
The Undertakers One of
the UK’s busiest family-
run funeral businesses.
11.00 The Bold Type Jane, Kat
and Sutton face big choices
as they each evaluate their
own paths towards bright
futures. (Last in series)
11.40 Drugs Map Of Britain
12.40 Grime Kids Drama. (1/5)
1.25 The Rap Game UK
2.30 Top Gear Magazine.
3.35-3.45 Press X To Continue
Drama
6.00pm ’Allo ’Allo! Rene
determines to flee to
England with Yvette.
6.40 Last Of The Summer Wine
Billy sets Nora’s heart
a-flutter. 7.20 Last Of
The Summer Wine
Marina gives up on men.
8.00 Dalziel & Pascoe The
detectives investigate
a series of apparently
accidental deaths, and
their inquiries lead to a
rose-grower. (Series 2, ep 3)
10.00 New Tricks A bloodstained
bust is uncovered during
construction work in a
cemetery and the evidence
points to a murder seven
years earlier. (S12, ep 9)
11.20-1.20 Dalziel & Pascoe
The murder of a retired
detective leads Dalziel to
uncover deception among
his own officers. (S7, ep 4)
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
4.05pm Magic Mike’s Last Dance
(2023, 15) 6.05 She Came To Me.
Comedy. (2023, 15) 8.00 Big
George Foreman. Biopic of the
former world heavyweight boxing
champion. (2023, 12) 10.20-12.25
Palm Trees And Power Lines. A
teenage girl enters a relationship
with a man twice her age. (2022, 15)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
6.00pm Snitch. Thriller. (2013, 12)
8.00 The Manchurian Candidate.
A war veteran is drawn into a
conspiracy. (2004, 15) 10.15-12.15
The Saint. An international thief
accepts a job to steal a scientist’s
formula for cold fusion. (1997, 12)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
5.50pm Ghost (1990, 12) 8.00
Dallas Buyers Club. A man sets up
an organisation to smuggle drugs
for treating HIV into the US. (2013,
15) 10.00 Six Minutes To Midnight.
The daughters of Nazis are sent to
an English school. (2020, 12) 11.45-
2.30 CHOICE Django Unchained
(2012, 18; see Film choice)
40 12 November 2023
7.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys Visiting Bangor
and Betws y Coed.
7.25 Winter Walks Drovers’
roads in Dentdale, Cumbria.
7.55 Some Mothers Do ’Ave
’Em Frank joins a dancing
class. (Series 3, ep 3)
8.30 Yes Minister Jim stands up
for equal opportunities.
9.00 The Australian Wars The
absence of memorials for
the conflict in Tasmania.
10.00 HMS Brilliant Tensions
mount on board the vessel.
10.50 HMS Brilliant The
ship heads to Istanbul.
11.40 Little Ships — The Miracle
Of Dunkirk The boats that
rescued thousands of
allied troops from Dunkirk.
12.40 Edward Hopper — Arena
1.20 As 7pm
1.50 Winter Walks In Cumbria.
2.20-3.20 The Australian Wars
Sky Arts
6.00pm Tales Of The
Unexpected A man plots
to kill his overweight wife.
(Series 2, ep 12) 6.30 Tales
Of The Unexpected
A physician plots to kill
his wife. (Series 3, ep 1)
7.00 Alfred Hitchcock
Presents: The Baby-Blue
Expression. A woman
and her lover plot her
husband’s demise.
7.30 Alfred Hitchcock
Presents: The Man Who
Found The Money. A man
reports to the police that
he found $92,000.
8.00 CHOICE Will’s Book
Taking a look at the story
behind Shakespeare’s First
Folio. (See Critics’ choice)
9.15-12.15 Shakespeare
— Richard II The RSC’s
2013 production of the
play, with David Tennant.
SKY CINEMA SELECT
4.20pm Charlie’s Angels (2000,
15) 6.05 Charlie’s Angels — Full
Throttle. The trio hunt down villains
who have stolen two encoded
rings. (2003, 12) 8.00 Bridget
Jones’s Diary. A woman begins a
new year by resolving to find love
and give up her bad habits. (2001,
15) 9.40 Bridget Jones — The Edge
Of Reason. The hapless journalist
spends time behind bars in a
Thai prison. (2004, 15) 11.35-1.50
Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016, 15)
FILM4
4.10pm We Bought A Zoo (2011,
PG) 6.35 Crocodile Dundee II. The
adventurer lures drug dealers to the
outback. (1988, PG) 9.00 Olympus
Has Fallen. A secret service agent
tries to redeem himself when
terrorists take control of the White
House. (2013, 15) 11.20-2.05 Bad
Times At The El Royale (2018, 15)
TALKING PICTURES TV
6.00pm The Black Arrow 6.30
Scotland Yard 7.05 The Four Just
Men 7.55 Thunderbirds 9.05
Maigret 11.00-12.50 The Mutations.
A mad professor subjects his pupils
to bizarre experiments. (1973, 18)
ITV 2
6.00pm Catchphrase —
Catchiest Moments
Stephen Mulhern presents
his favourite moments
from the quiz show.
7.00 Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win
Jimmy Carr and Katherine
Ryan continue their climb
up the money ladder.
8.00 Bob’s Burgers Louise,
Gene and Tina engage in a
heated turf war. (Series 9,
ep 10) 8.30 Bob’s Burgers
Linda learns about the
world of essential oils.
9.00 Big Brother Daily roundup.
10.00 Big Brother — Late & Live
11.05 Family Guy Peter and his
cronies go on a quest to
seek out and confront God.
(Series 12, ep 13) 11.35-
12.05 Family Guy Peter
and Quagmire decide to
form a singer-songwriter
partnership. (S12, ep 7)
Sky Max
6.00pm Stargate SG-1 General
Hammond makes a shock
announcement. (S4, ep 15,
R) 7.00 Stargate SG-1
Carter uncovers the truth
behind an alien race. (R)
8.00 Movie Megastars — Made
In The 80s The biggest
film stars of the decade,
including Nicole Kidman. (R)
9.00 Flintoff — Lord Of The
Fries Andrew Flintoff and
Rob Penn enjoy the sights
and sounds of Scotland. (R)
10.00 Never Mind The
Buzzcocks With guests
Anne-Marie, Jade Thirlwall
and Nish Kumar. (R)
10.50 Brassic Cardi sets out to
buy a white fluffy bunny
for Lola. (Series 5, ep 7, R)
11.55-1.00 The Blacklist
The Task Force must try
to anticipate Red’s next
move. (Series 10, ep 21, R)
Entertainment
ITV4
5.30pm Minder 6.40 Nine Dart
Finishes 6.45 LIVE Snooker. The
Champion Of Champions 10.15 All
Elite Wrestling — Rampage 11.20
FILM: Renegades 1.30 Auto Mundial
2.00-2.35 Motorsport Mundial
MORE4
5.50pm The Secret Life Of The Zoo
6.55 The Dog House 7.55 Grand
Designs 9.00 Super Surgeons —
A Chance At Life 10.00 24 Hours
In A&E 11.05 Billion Pound Cruise
12.10 Emergency Helicopter Medics
1.15-2.20 999 — On The Front Line
GOLD
6.00pm The Green Green Grass
6.40 The Good Life 7.20 Dad’s Army
— The Animations 8.00 Dad’s Army
9.20 Only Fools And Horses 10.00
Live At The Apollo 11.00 Upstart
Crow 11.40 The Young Ones 12.20
Only Fools And Horses 1.00 Live At
The Apollo 2.00-2.30 Upstart Crow
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm The Conners 6.30 The
Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air 7.00 Will
& Grace 8.00 The US Office
ITV 3
5.55pm Heartbeat The visiting
funfair causes a furore.
(S2, ep 10) 6.55 Heartbeat
The surgery is raided.
8.00 Midsomer Murders With
Neil Dudgeon. Anglers and
mud-runners clash at the
village of Solomon Gorge,
with the bitterness leading
to someone dying after
being electrocuted.
10.00 DCI Banks When the body
of a student is found in a
ravine, the investigation
into his stabbing reveals
surprising details about
his extracurricular
activities. (Series 4, ep 5)
11.05-12.05 DCI Banks
The team traces Hexton
to Gerald and Elaine
Foster’s house, but the
former undercover officer
has already kidnapped
lap-dancer Melanie.
Sky Atlantic
5.25pm Succession Logan,
Kendall, Gerri and Tom
testify before Congress.
(Series 2, ep 9) 6.35
Succession Logan weighs
up a huge decision to
salvage the company’s
tarnished reputation.
7.50 House Of The Dragon
King Viserys calls for
an end to infighting
between members of
the Great Houses. (7/10)
9.00 Landscapers The pressure
of police questions takes
its toll on Susan and
Christopher. (2/4)
10.05 The Gilded Age Peggy
gets welcomed back to
61st Street. (Series 2, ep 2)
11.15-12.20 Billions Prince
encourages his team to
find new investments as
Wendy prepares for the
future. (Series 6, ep 8)
9.00 Curb Your Enthusiasm 11.00
Breeders 11.30 Tonight Show 12.30
Romantic Getaway 1.30-2.50 Veep
5 STAR
6.00pm Home And Away 7.00 GPs
— Behind Closed Doors 8.00 Rich
Holiday, Poor Holiday 9.00 FILM:
Rush Hour 3 11.05 Junior Doctors
Down Under 12.05 Murdered For
Revenge 1.05-2.50 Revenge
5 USA
6.00pm NCIS 9.00 Law & Order
11.00 Law & Order: Special Victims
Unit 1.00 NCIS 2.00-3.35 Blue Bloods
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Border Security —
Australia’s Front Line 8.00 The
Equalizer 9.00 Blue Bloods. Erin
feels the pressure when her new
boss shadows her. 10.00 For Life
11.00 The Rookie 12.00 Coroner 1.00
Transplant 2.00-3.00 Private Eyes
W NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
6.00pm Junior MasterChef Australia
7.30 Inside The Ambulance 8.00
999 Rescue Squad 9.00 24 Hours In
A&E 11.00 Stacey Dooley — Stalkers.
Cases of stalking 12.00 One Born
Every Minute 1.00 Dating With My
Mates 2.00-2.25 Date Night
E4
6.00pm The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon’s old adversary
Wil Wheaton returns.
(S5, ep 5) 6.30 The Big
Bang Theory Sheldon’s
mother comes to visit.
7.00 Hollyoaks Chester soap.
7.30 Young Sheldon Mary is
mistaken for a university
student. (Series 4, ep 6)
8.00 Modern Family Mitch and
Cam head off to a yoga
retreat. (Series 9, ep 18)
8.30 Modern Family Jay is
worried when Gloria’s ex
turns up. (Series 9, ep 17)
9.00 Married At First Sight UK
The remaining couples
prepare for vow renewals.
10.20 Rick And Morty The long-
suffering duo get stuck on
a project. (Series 7, ep 5)
10.50 Naked Attraction’s
Best Naughty Bits
11.55-1.00 Celebrity First Dates
Talk TV
6.00pm The Talk A panel of
famous faces debate the
hot topics that everybody
is talking about.
7.00 Prime Time With Rosanna
Lockwood The presenter
takes a look at the main
news stories of the day.
8.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on the
day’s events with an hour
of debate and interviews.
9.00 The Independent
Republic Of Mike Graham
The host takes a look
through the newspapers.
11.00-12.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on
the day’s global events.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview
237; Virgin 606; Freesat 217;
YouTube, connected TVs and
smart devices
COMEDY CENTRAL
6.00pm Friends 9.00 FILM: Old
School. Comedy 10.45 Jimmy Carr
Live — Comedian 11.45 Your Face
Or Mine 12.45-2.45 South Park
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys 7.00 Antiques Roadshow
8.00 Tony Robinson’s Marvellous
Machines 9.00 Bangers & Cash —
Classics 10.00 Bangers & Cash 11.00
Abandoned Engineering 12.00-1.00
Great British Railway Journeys
DAVE
6.00pm Rick Stein — From Venice
To Istanbul 7.00 House Of Games
8.20 Would I Lie To You? 9.00 QI
10.00 Have I Got A Bit More News
For You 12.00 Mock The Week 12.40
Would I Lie To You? 1.15-2.25 QI
Factual
6.00pm Lost Treasures Of Egypt
7.00 Air Crash Investigation 8.00
Inside The SS 10.00 World War II —
The Apocalypse 11.00 Air Crash
Investigation. A top-secret mission
12.00 To Catch A Smuggler
1.00-2.00 Banged Up Abroad
5 Great films . . .
Motor racing
1
Ford v Ferrari
(2019, Disney+)
Matt Damon and
Christian Bale star in the
story of the visionary
American car designer
Carroll Shelby.
2
Rush (2013, Netflix)
Ron Howard directs this
gripping film about the
rivalry between the
1970s racing drivers
Niki Lauda and
James Hunt.
3
Days Of
Thunder
(1990, ITVX)
Tom Cruise plays
Cole Trickle, a
hot-tempered Nascar
racing driver.
4
Talladega Nights — The
Ballad Of Ricky Bobby
(2016, Sky/ Now)
Will Ferrell stars in a
fine comedy about a star
who finds his position at
the top of motor racing
challenged.
5
Senna (2010, ITVX)
Charting the remarkable
career of Ayrton Senna,
from his first season
in 1984 to his death a
decade later.
Tim Glanfield
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Salvage Hunters 7.00
Wheeler Dealers 8.00 Railroad Alaska
9.00 Gold Rush 10.00 The World’s
Biggest Drug Lord — Tse Chi Lop
11.00 Expedition Unknown 12.00
Moonshiners 1.00-2.00 Gold Rush
PBS AMERICA
5.50pm The Stuarts 6.55 Royal
History’s Biggest Fibs With Lucy
Worsley — Armada 8.10 The Seabees
On Iwo Jima 9.20 Afghanistan —
The Wounded Land 10.30-12.00
Royal History’s Biggest Fibs
SKY DOCUMENTARIES
6.00pm Seventies 6.55 Hostages
8.00 Man Who Played With Fire 9.00
Burden Of Proof — Who Killed Jennifer
Pandos? 10.10-1.00 Phoenix Rising
SKY NATURE
6.00pm Gangs Of Lemur Island
7.00 Monkey Life 8.00 Wild Family
Ties 9.00 Monkey Life 10.00 Gangs
Of Lemur Island. Tensions rise
11.00-12.00 Wild Birds Of Australia
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Combat Dealers 7.00 Ghosts
Of Stonehenge 8.00 Wings Of War
9.00 Combat Dealers 10.00 Salvage
Hunters 11.00-12.00 Shed & Buried
Speed demon:
Tom Cruise in
Days Of Thunder
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 Good Morning
Sports Fans 10.00 The Football Show
12.00 Lunchtime Live 2.00 Sports
Desk 5.00 News 7.00 LIVE Grand
Slam Of Darts 11.00-6.00 News
TNT SPORTS 1
6.00am Uefa Champions League
Magazine 6.30 Goals Reload 7.00
PL Review 8.00 National League
10.00 Fishing — On The Bank 11.00
World Rallycross Championship
Highlights 12.00 The WRC Magazine
12.30 Premier League — The Big
Interview 1.00 PL Review 2.00
Goals Reload 2.15 The Rugby
Review 3.00 Badminton 5.00
Badminton Weekly 5.15 Goals
Reload 5.30 Premier League
Netbusters 6.00 Premier League
Stories 6.30 Original Documentary
8.15 Premier League Reload 8.30
Rio Ferdinand’s Between The Lines
9.00 WWE Monday Night Raw 11.30
Uefa Champions League Goals
Reload 11.45 Uefa Europa League
Goals Reload 12.00 NBA Tip-Off
12.30 LIVE NBA 3.00 LIVE NBA
5.30-6.30 Inside The NBA
Radio & Podcasts
○ The Reinvention Of
Italy (Radio 4, 11am)
The latest part of Anne
McElvoy’s journey
examining political and
cultural change sweeping
through Europe reaches
Italy. Giorgia Meloni, the
right-wing populist,
swept to power last year
to the surprise of many,
with a mission to restore
and defend Italy’s
national identity.
McElvoy visits Padua in
the prosperous north,
where traditional Italian
values come face to face
with an immigrant
population who are
drawn in by the chance
of better prospects.
McElvoy asks what a fall
in birth rates means in a
country where family is
traditionally at the fore.
TIMES RADIO
5.00 Rosie Wright With Early
Breakfast 6.00 Aasmah Mir And
Stig Abell With Times Radio
Breakfast 10.00 Matt Chorley
1.00 Mariella Frostrup 3.00 Jane
Garvey And Fi Glover 5.00 John
Pienaar With Times Radio Drive
7.00 Pienaar And Friends 8.00
The Evening Edition 10.00
Carole Walker 1.00 Stories Of
Our Times 1.30 Red Box 2.00
Highlights From Times Radio
To get in touch with the Times
Radio studio, text TIMES plus your
message to 87222. Texts cost
your standard message charge.
RADIO 4
5.30 News 5.43 Prayer 5.45
Farming Today 5.58 Tweet Of The
Day (R) 6.00 Today 8.31 (LW)
Yesterday In Parliament 9.00 The
Life Scientific 9.30 One To One
9.45 Book Of The Week 9.45 (LW)
Daily Service 10.00 Woman’s Hour
11.00 The Reinvention Of Italy.
Anne McElvoy finds out what it
means to be Italian today 11.30
Moving Pictures. An examination
of Ambulance Call, by Jacob
Lawrence 12.00 News 12.01 (LW)
Shipping 12.04 Call You And
Yours 1.00 The World At One 1.45
The Great Post Office Trial 2.00
The Archers (R) 2.15 Drama:
Elsinore, by Sebastian Baczkiewicz
(R) 3.00 Short Cuts 3.30 Lady
Killers With Lucy Worsley (R) 4.00
Law In Action 4.30 A Good Read.
Harriett Gilbert talks books with
India Knight and Emma Dabiri
5.00 PM 5.54 (LW) Shipping 6.00
News 6.30 Best Medicine. Ria
Lina champions CT scans and
Caroline Rance charts the history
of inhalation 7.00 The Archers
7.15 Front Row 8.00 The Today
Debate 8.40 In Touch 9.00 All In
The Mind 9.30 The Life Scientific
(R) 10.00 The World Tonight
10.45 Book At Bedtime 11.00 Now
You’re Asking With Marian Keyes
And Tara Flynn. New series 11.30
Today In Parliament 12.00 News
12.30 Book Of The Week (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
A snapshot of Italy: Giorgia
Meloni (Radio 4, 11am)
○ The Documentary
(BBC World Service,
9.30am/8.06pm)
In My Forgotten War,
Hannah Lucinda Smith
visits Turkey to examine its
relationship with its huge
population of refugees and
asylum seekers. These
include more than three
RADIO 4 EXTRA
5.00 Blood Sugar 6.00 Julie Enfield
Investigates: Murder West One 6.45
Dick Barton — Special Agent 7.00
Grandmothers 7.15 The Old Wives’
Tale (R) 7.30 Making The Best Of It
8.00 The Goon Show 8.30 King
Street Junior 9.00 Quote … Unquote
9.30 The Change 10.00 Blood
Sugar 11.00 Julie Enfield
Investigates: Murder West One 11.45
Dick Barton — Special Agent 12.00
Grandmothers 12.15 The Old Wives’
Tale (R) 12.30 Making The Best Of
It 1.00 The Goon Show 1.30 King
Street Junior 2.00 Quote … Unquote
2.30 The Change 3.00 Blood Sugar
4.00 Julie Enfield Investigates:
Murder West One 4.45 Dick Barton
— Special Agent 5.00
Grandmothers 5.15 The Old Wives’
Tale (R) 5.30 Making The Best Of It
6.00 The Goon Show 6.30 King
Street Junior 7.00 Quote … Unquote
7.30 The Change 8.00 TED Radio
Hour 8.50 Inheritance Tracks 9.00
Mastertapes 9.30 Doctor Who:
Tenth Doctor Adventures 10.00 Best
Medicine 10.30 Mr And Mrs Smith
10.55 The Comedy Club Interview
11.00 The World Of Simon Rich
11.30-12.00 Think The Unthinkable
LBC
7.00 Nick Ferrari 10.00 James
O’Brien 1.00 Shelagh Fogarty 4.00
Tom Swarbrick 6.00 Tonight With
Andrew Marr. Discussion 7.00
Ali Miraj 10.00 Ben Kentish 1.00
Richard Spurr 4.00 Ian Payne
RADIO 3
6.30 Breakfast 9.00 Essential
Classics 12.00 Composer Of The
Week 1.00 Lunchtime Concert.
Nicolo Foron conducts the LSO Wind
Ensemble in Strauss’s Serenade in
E flat, Op 7 and Suite for 13 wind
instruments in B flat, Op 4, and in
Jonathan Dove’s Figures in the
Garden 2.00 Afternoon Concert.
Jaap van Zweden conducts the
Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra
in a performance of Mahler’s
Symphony No 1, and the RIAS
Chamber Choir sing sacred works
by Haydn 5.00 In Tune. Music and
arts news 7.00 Classical Mixtape
million Syrians, who fled
there during the war,
encouraged by the
€6 million given to the
country to discourage
Syrians heading to Europe.
○ Podcast Graveyard
(podcast)
More than 93 per cent of
podcasts never make it to
more than seven episodes.
This comes as no surprise;
everyone thinks they can
make one until they try. In
this new series, James
Bishop asks what goes
wrong and where podcasts
go to die, including The
Life & Performance
Podcast with the athletes
Greg Rutherford and
Andrew Steele, which
managed two episodes
before its death in 2016.
Clair Woodward
7.30 In Concert. The BBC National
Orchestra of Wales and conductor
Ryan Bancroft perform two works
by Schumann, and Christianne
Stotijn joins them to sing Mahler’s
Kindentotenlieder 10.00 Free
Thinking. Lisa Mullen is joined by
authors Pen Vogler and Rebecca
May Johnson and the academics
Lindsay Middleton, Zayneb Allak
and Sara Read for a conversation
about food, class and luxury
10.45 The Essay. The radio-maker
and runner Ricardo Burt hits the
London streets to chart the
thriving scene of DJ-run crews,
exploring connections between
running, music and community
11.00 Night Tracks. Late-night
listening 12.30 Through The Night
CLASSIC FM
6.00 Tim Lihoreau 9.00 Alexander
Armstrong 12.00 Anne-Marie
Minhall 4.00 Margherita Taylor.
Classical favourites 7.00 Zeb
Soanes 10.00 Ritula Shah 1.00
Bill Overton 4.00 Lucy Coward
RADIO 2
6.30 The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show
9.30 Richie Anderson. Sitting in
for Vernon Kay 12.00 Jeremy
Vine. Current-affairs chat 2.00
Scott Mills 4.00 Sara Cox 7.00 Jo
Whiley 9.00 The Jazz Show With
Jamie Cullum 10.00 Trevor
Nelson’s Magnificent 7 10.30
Trevor Nelson’s Rhythm Nation
12.00 OJ Borg 3.00 Pick Of The
Pops (R) 4.00 Owain Wyn Evans
VIRGIN RADIO
6.30 The Chris Evans Breakfast
Show 10.00 Eddy Temple-Morris
1.00 Jayne Middlemiss 4.00 Ricky
Wilson 7.00 Bam. Music and chat
10.00 Amy Voce 1.00 Sean
Goldsmith 4.00 Steve Denyer
TALKSPORT
5.00 Early Breakfast 6.00
Talksport Breakfast 10.00 Jim
White And Simon Jordan 1.00
Hawksbee And Baker 4.00
Drive With Andy Goldstein And
Darren Bent 7.00 Kick Off 10.00
Sports Bar 12.00 Extra Time
12 November 2023 41
WEDNESDAY 15 NOVEMBER
BBC 1 BBC 2
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
9.15 Morning Live Magazine.
10.00 Scam Interceptors (R)
10.45 Dr Xand’s Con Or Cure (R)
11.15 Homes Under The
Hammer Auctions. (R)
12.15 Bargain Hunt Curios. (R)
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.45 Doctors Luca is caught up
in the family revelations of
an end-of-life care patient.
2.15 The Bidding Room (R)
3.00 Escape To The Country (R)
3.45 Antiques Road Trip Irita
Marriott and Raj Bisram
explore the Midlands.
4.30 The Repair Shop (R)
5.15 Pointless Quiz show.
6.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.30 Regional News Update.
7.00 The One Show Features.
7.30 EastEnders Cindy hides at
the Vic after her fallout with
Ian; Eve goes on a date;
and Sharon and Keanu
prepare for Albie’s
hospital appointment.
8.00 The Repair Shop The
experts restore a chrome
barber’s chair from the
1960s, a stringed Iranian
instrument, a carousel
horse and a roulette
machine that stopped
spinning years ago. (R)
9.00 Shetland Calder decides
to stay on in Shetland and
Tosh welcomes the
support after uncovering a
tattoo that sends the case
in a sinister new direction;
and Tom Knox is identified
as the main suspect in the
case, but a confession
about his relationship with
Ellen send the team back
to square one. (S8, ep 3)
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
10.40 CHOICE BBC New
Comedy Awards Rosie
Jones hosts as the six
finalists take to the stage at
Glasgow’s King’s Theatre
to impress the judges Josh
Pugh, Zoe Lyons and
Darren Harriot. (See Critics’
choice; last in series)
11.25 Game On! Radio 1’s Vick
Hope and gaming expert
Steffan Powell host a
celebration of all things
gaming from Nottingham’s
Confetti X esports arena in
aid of Children in Need. (R)
1.30-6.00 Joins BBC News
SCOTLAND 2.15 Politics Scotland.
3.00 The Bidding Room. 6.30
Reporting Scotland; Weather.
6.30 Escape To The Country (R)
7.15 Antiques Road Trip (R)
8.00 Nadiya’s Simple Spices
Recipe ideas. (Signed, R)
8.30 Tales From A Kitchen
Garden (Signed, R)
9.00 Nicky Campbell Debate.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
11.15 Politics Live Discussion.
1.00 The Boss Quiz show. (R)
1.45 Lightning Quiz. (R)
2.15 Eat Well For Less? (R)
3.15 Oceans The Red Sea. (R)
4.15 This Farming Life (R)
5.15 Flog It! Items in Norfolk. (R)
6.00 House Of Games Sheree
Murphy, Toussaint
Douglass, Mark Foster and
Sian Williams take part.
6.30 Strictly — It Takes Two
7.00 Celebrity Antiques Road
Trip Friends and 1980s
pop stars Samantha Fox
and Sinitta travel through
Kent and Surrey on the
lookout for items to sell at
auction, aided by Steven
Moore and Tim Medhurst.
8.00 The Secret Genius Of
Modern Life Hannah Fry
focuses on the vacuum
cleaner, learning about the
origins of the device and
how the motor in modern
models spins faster than
that of an F1 racing car.
9.00 CHOICE Shakespeare
— Rise Of A Genius A
series of hit plays sees the
Bard at the top of his game
— only for several disasters
to throw his life, purpose
and family into chaos. With
contributions from Judi
Dench and Brian Cox.
(2/3; see Critics’ choice)
10.00 Upstart Crow Will’s new
play goes missing just as it
is about to be presented to
Queen Elizabeth, and
suspicion points to his best
friend. (Series 1, ep 2, R)
10.30 Newsnight Headlines.
11.15 Unspun World With John
Simpson Global news.
11.45 CHOICE My Old Lady
Stars Maggie Smith and
Kevin Kline. A penniless
New Yorker hopes to sell
his dead father’s flat in
Paris, only to find an
eccentric Englishwoman
is living there. (2014,
12; see Film choice)
1.25 DNA Family Secrets
(Signed, Last in series, R)
2.25-3.25 MasterChef — The
Professionals (Signed, R)
ITV 1
6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine Lifestyle chat.
10.00 This Morning Features.
12.30 Loose Women Debate.
1.30 News; Weather Reports.
2.00 James Martin’s American
Adventure The chef’s
culinary journey takes him
to the Hamptons. (R)
3.00 Lingo Adil Ray hosts. (R)
4.00 Tipping Point Gameshow
with Ben Shephard. (R)
5.00 The Chase Bradley Walsh
presents the quiz show. (R)
6.00 Regional News Update.
6.30 News; Weather Reports.
7.30 Emmerdale The ruck
between Billy and Aaron
continues; Gabby throws
Dawn a baby shower; and
Rhona plans to meet Gus.
8.00 Coronation Street Amy is
cuffed and arrested for
criminal damage during an
anti-spiking march; and
Audrey breaks the news
to David and Maria that
she is selling the barbers.
9.00 CHOICE Return To
Lockerbie Lorraine Kelly
returns to the scene of
Europe’s deadliest terror
attack, 35-years after Pan
Am flight 103 exploded
mid-air killing 270 people
in the town of Lockerbie.
(See Critics’ choice)
10.00 News At Ten Bulletin.
10.45 Peston Political magazine.
11.40 A Time To Die Exploring
the human cost of the
current British law on
assisted dying through the
stories of five people who
all want the right to die at a
time of their choosing. (R)
1.00 Long Lost Family —
Born Without Trace (R)
1.50 Cash Trapped Quiz. (R)
2.40 Loose Women Debate. (R)
3.25 After Lucy Letby —
Silence On The Wards? (R)
3.50 Unwind Daily relaxation.
4.50-6.00 The Masked Dancer
Contest. (Last in series, R)
Judi Dench (BBC2, 9pm)
Channel 4
6.05 Countdown Game. (R)
6.45 Cheers Comedy. (R)
7.35 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
8.25 Frasier Sitcom. (R)
9.55 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (R)
10.55 The Great House
Giveaway A family home
in Middlesbrough. (R)
11.55 News; Weather Reports.
12.00 Steph’s Packed Lunch
2.10 Countdown Game.
3.00 A Place In The Sun On the
Greek island of Aegina. (R)
4.00 A Place In The Sun A
holiday home in Tenerife.
5.00 Help! We Bought A
Village A Normandy hamlet
owner begins renovations.
6.00 Four In A Bed The third
visit of the week is to Hotel
Ellenby in Scarborough. (R)
6.30 The Simpsons Todd
Flanders announces that he
no longer believes in God.
7.00 News; Weather Reports.
7.55 Rory Peck Awards The
story of a mother searching
for her son in a community
of drug addicts in Kabul.
8.00 Location, Location,
Location Kirstie Allsopp
and Phil Spencer help two
couples from east London
get out of their rented
accommodation in a
market where homes
are selling quicker than
they can show them.
9.00 Banged Up As the
experiment comes to an
end,HRVY is roped into a
secret drone delivery and
Marcus Luther hunts for an
illicit phone to watch his
son online. (Last in series)
10.00 Britain’s Most Expensive
Houses Broker Constance
is on a mission to get the
listing for Laura Comfort’s
£12.5m home as the singer
wants to downsize to a
£4m pad in Chelsea. (R)
11.05 The Great British Bake Off
The bakers tackle sausage
rolls and a chocolate cake
in the competition’s first
ever party week. (R)
12.20 The Simpsons Cartoon.
12.50 Taskmaster Contest. (R)
1.45 First Dates Hotel (R)
2.40 Hullraisers Sitcom. (R)
3.30 Naked, Alone And Racing
To Get Home (R)
4.25 Handmade — Britain’s
Best Woodworker (R)
5.20 Strangers On A Plane (R)
5.45-6.05 Find It, Fix It, Flog It
A lesson in vintage cars. (R)
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.15 Jeremy Vine Debate.
11.15 Storm Huntley Opinions.
12.15 Alexis Conran Debate.
12.50 Entertainment News
12.55 News; Weather Reports.
1.00 Home And Away Cash
ruins a moment between
Felicity and Tane. (R)
1.30 Dashing Home For
Christmas Romantic
drama, with Paniz Zade and
Adrian Spencer. Trying to
get home for Christmas, a
woman encounters no end
of problems until she
meets a fellow traveller. (R)
3.15 A Sugar And Spice
Christmas Romantic
comedy, with Jacky Lai. An
architect returns home and
finds herself competing in
a gingerbread bake-off
alongside an old high-
school classmate. (R)
5.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.00 Dogs Behaving (Very)
Badly A dog with severe
separation anxiety and
attachment issues. (R)
6.55 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 Shoplifters — Caught Red
Handed A look at how
Britain’s high streets are
fighting back against the
rising tide of shoplifting.
7.55 News; Weather Reports.
8.00 Vanished — The Search
For Britain’s Missing Dan
Walker investigates more
cases of missing people,
and speaks to loved ones,
families, friends, police and
experts from charities.
9.00 Cause Of Death Dr James
Adeley and his team look
into the death of a man
whose body was found
in a wood, having been
arrested a few days before
due to a domestic incident.
10.00 Mummy’s Little Murderer
— The Killing Of Emily
Longley Investigating the
events surrounding the
murder of the 20-year-old
by Elliot Turner. (R)
11.30 Sleeping With My
Murderer The case of a
mother found dead by her
young daughter. (R)
12.30 ICC Cricket World Cup
1.25 Casino Show Gambling.
3.25 New Lives In The Wild (R)
4.15 Building Victorian Britain
With Michael Buerk. (R)
5.05 Divine Designs (R)
5.30 Entertainment News
5.35-6.00 Children’s Shows

Variations 4.00 Tipping Point 5.00 The

BBC1 WALES 8.00 Weatherman
Walking 10.40 BBC Wales Live
11.10 BBC New Comedy Awards
Chase 6.00 Regional News
6.30 News; Weather 7.30
Emmerdale 8.00 Coronation
Street 9.00 Return To Lockerbie
12.05 Colleen Ramsey — Bywyd A
Bwyd 12.30 Heno 1.00 Richard
The Reckoning (BBC1) was a horrific story
that needed to be told, but all the critics failed
Holt: Yr Academi Felys 1.30 Cais
Quinnell 2.00 Newyddion A’r to acknowledge Steve Coogan’s Emmy-worthy
Tywydd 2.05 Prynhawn Da 3.00 portrayal of the monster that was Savile.
You say

11.55 Game On! 1.55 BBC News
BBC SCOTLAND 7.00 Paramedics
On Scene 8.00 Highland Cops
9.00 The Nine 10.00 River City
10.30 Dog Days 11.30-12.00 The
Scandals That Shocked Scotland
STV 6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine 10.00 This Morning
12.30 Loose Women 1.30 News;
Weather 2.00 James Martin’s
American Adventure 3.00 Lingo
10.00 News At Ten 10.40
Scotland Tonight 11.05 Peston
12.00 A Time To Die 1.20 The
People’s History Show 1.50 Cash
Trapped 2.40 Loose Women 3.25
After Lucy Letby — Silence On
The Wards? 3.50 Night Vision
4.50-6.00 The Masked Dancer
S4C 6.00 Cyw 11.20 Dysgu
Gyda Cyw: Caru Canu A Stori
12.00 Newyddion A’r Tywydd
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 3.05 Having met Savile 20 years ago, I fully
Owain Tudur Jones — Ar Faes Y recognised Steve Coogan’s excellent
Gad 4.00 Awr Fawr 5.00 Stwnsh performance of the Jekyll and Hyde character.
6.00 Arfordir Cymru — Mon
Mike Haigh
6.30 Rownd A Rownd 6.57
Newyddion 7.00 Heno 7.30
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 8.00 None of Richard Osman’s Pointless (BBC1)
Pobol Y Cwm 8.55 Newyddion replacements have come close.
A’r Tywydd 9.00 Gogglebocs Graeme W Kirkup
Cymru 10.00 Prosiect Pum Mil Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
11.00-11.35 Sgwrs Dan Y Lloer

42 12 November 2023
 Critics’ choice
Return To Lockerbie (ITV1, 9pm)
On the night of December 21,
1988, Lorraine Kelly — who was
TV-AM’s young Scotland
correspondent — received a call
about a “light aircraft” that had
crashed in the town of Lockerbie.
One of the first reporters to arrive
at the site, Kelly instead saw the
nose cone of a Boeing 747 in a
field, the debris from the terrorist
bombing that killed all 259 people
on board Pan-Am flight 103, as
well as 11 residents of the town. In
this powerful and moving
documentary, Kelly returns to
Lockerbie to see how that night
affected the people who lived
through it, their harrowing
eyewitness accounts underlining
the scale of the horror and the
grief. Kelly uncovers a shared
history of untreated post-
traumatic stress disorder, yet also
finds that bonds forged between
Lockerbie residents and families
of the victims have helped with a
slow process of mutual healing.
Victoria Segal
BBC New Comedy Awards
(BBC1, 10.40pm)
Since its launch in 1995, this search
for new talent has helped to
accelerate the careers of an
impressive comedic roll-call,
among them Peter Kay, Romesh
Ranganathan, Saran Millican and
Joe Lycett. More than 1,000
stand-up hopefuls applied for this
year’s competition. Here, the six
finalists emerge from the jostle of
the regional heats on to the stage of
Glasgow’s King’s Theatre. There
will be one final battle of wit(s)
before one secures the title of BBC
New Comedian of 2023. Hosted by
Rosie Jones, the grand final will be
judged by the stand-up comedians
Josh Pugh, Zoe Lyons and Darren
Harriott. Dan Tiernan, last year’s
winner, does the traditional
Eurovision thing of giving one
more special performance before
handing over his crown. Watch
now, and predict who will be on
Would I Lie To You? by 2025. VS
On demand
○ Nothing (Disney+)
Luis Brandoni, the great Brazilian
actor and former politician, plays
Manuel Tamayo, an ageing
restaurant critic, and eternal
procrastinator who must suddenly
fend for himself when his maid of
40 years dies. Shot on location in
Buenos Aires, and with a surprise
pivotal role for Robert De Niro, it’s
a sweet, funny rumination on age,
loneliness, style and friendship.
Lorraine Kelly when she was TV-AM’s Scotland reporter (ITV1, 9pm)
The Lazarus Project
(Sky Max/Now, 9pm)
Like a mash-up of Groundhog Day
and Spooks, Joe Barton’s brain-
teasing drama mixes sci-fi and
spies, future-saving trips to the past
and more conventional missions
abroad. As series two begins, the
world is in even more danger of
extinction than in the first run.
So the Project Lazarus team could
do with George’s (Paapa Essiedu)
skills and guts. But he’s in disgrace
and now has to prove himself all
over again.
Paapa Essiedu (Sky Max/Now, 9pm)
Plus, at five episodes, each a brisk
30 minutes, you can barrel through
the series in one afternoon.
○ Little Trains & Big Names
(C4 streaming)
There is no more soothing show
than this confection in which Pete
Waterman, the music producer and
model railway enthusiast, visits
fellow famous ferroequinologists.
Sceptics may sneer, but until you’re
seen Jools Holland’s vast historical
layout then reserve judgment.
Who Killed Santa? A Murderville
Murder Mystery
(BBC3, 10.30pm)
Murderville is an American
reworking of Murder In Successville,
in which Will Arnett plays the
equivalent of Tom Davis’s DI Sleet,
and the BBC sitcom’s celebrity
impressions are ditched. In this
Christmas special, the actors Jason
Bateman (Arrested Development)
and Maya Rudolph are the
script-less guest stars who have to
improvise as they assist Arnett’s
senior detective Terry Seattle.
Shakespeare — Rise Of A Genius
(BBC2, 9pm)
William has become England’s
leading playwright, writing
mid-career masterpieces such as
Henry IV and now able to stage
them at the new Globe theatre. But
his only son’s death and other
blows result in the darker vision of
tragedies such as Hamlet.
John Dugdale
○ Veep (Sky/Now)
In the list of great 21st-century
comedies, few have maintained
the high standard of Armando
Iannucci’s foul-mouthed political
satire. Originally conceived as
a US variant of The Thick Of It, it
grew over its seven-year run into
a magnificent portrait of American
political corruption. Julia Louis-
Dreyfus is simply perfect as
Selina Meyer, a nightmarish US
vice-president.
Andrew Male
Remarkable story of
a team driven to win
Brawn — The Impossible
Formula 1 Story (Disney+)
Remember when who won
F1 titles had yet to become
predictable? This film looks
back to 2009, when Britain’s
Ross Brawn stunned his rivals
by winning the constructors’
championship with his newborn
team Brawn GP. And the team’s
British race ace Jenson Button
claimed his only drivers’ title. It
was Brawn GP’s sole triumph too,
as Mercedes then bought it.
John Dugdale
Winning
formula: Ross
Brawn (Disney+)
Film choice
Drive My Car (Film4, 10.50pm)
A short story by Haruki Murakami
becomes a long movie in this
Oscar-winning Japanese production
from 2021. Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s
film earns its three-hour running
time with a quietly engrossing
drama about the challenges of
fathoming other people — the story
of a theatre director (Hidetoshi
Nishijima) getting to know the
woman (Toko Miura) working as
his driver. Hamaguchi’s other 2021
movie, Wheel Of Fortune And
Fantasy — a collection of three
tales about nuanced, oddly fated
meetings — is on Film4 in the early
hours of Friday (1.10am).
My Old Lady (BBC2, 11.45pm)
Maggie Smith enlivens this oddly
gloomy comic drama about an
American (Kevin Kline) who
inherits a Paris apartment only
to find that its elderly resident
has the right to stay. Kristin Scott
Thomas, as the woman’s daughter,
completes the film’s household of
stars. Dir: Israel Horovitz (2014)
Bone Tomahawk
(Mubi/Prime Video)
This cult favourite begins as a
typical western, complete with a
whiskered sheriff (Kurt Russell).
Eventually, though, it becomes
more of a horror movie than a
horse opera. Be prepared to saddle
up for a ride into flamboyant
violence. Dir: S Craig Zahler (2015)
Edward Porter
12 November 2023 43
WEDNESDAY 15 NOVEMBER
BBC 3 BBC 4
7.00pm Top Gear A race
between a car and a yacht.
8.00 Race Across The World
A state of emergency is
declared at the teams’ next
checkpoint in Ecuador.
9.00 Charlotte In Sunderland
The reality star heads out
to Ibiza. 9.30 Charlotte
In Sunderland Rain
puts a damper on the
summer fashion launch.
10.00 The Skinny Jab
Uncovered Investigating
the black market in
cut-price ‘skinny jabs’.
10.30 CHOICE Who Killed
Santa? A Murderville
Murder Mystery
Improvised comedy show.
(7/7; see Critics’ choice)
11.20 Him & Her Three episodes.
12.50 Charlotte In Sunderland
1.50 The Skinny Jab Uncovered
2.20-3.50 Him & Her Comedy.
Drama
6.00pm ’Allo ’Allo! René and
Edith meet an old friend
who has changed sides.
6.40 Last Of The Summer Wine
Barry tries to become more
assertive; and Howard
takes up weightlifting.
7.20 Last Of The Summer
Wine Smiler works as a
door-to-door salesman.
8.00 Signora Volpe When the
son of an old friend is
arrested for murder, Sylvia
interrupts her hunt for a
stolen truffle pig in order to
investigate. (Last in series)
10.00 New Tricks The team
investigates the murder of
a political activist 15 years
earlier. (Series 12, ep 10)
11.20-1.20 Dalziel & Pascoe
A convicted murderer
escapes, and the next
morning a barmaid is
discovered dead. (S8, ep 3)
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
4.15pm The Last Rifleman (2022,
15) 6.10 She Came To Me. A
composer with writer’s block sets
out in search of inspiration. (2023,
15) 8.00 Big George Foreman.
The life of the former world
heavyweight boxing champion.
(2023, 12) 10.20-12.25 Palm Trees
And Power Lines. Drama. (2022, 15)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
4.15pm Snitch (2013, 12) 6.10 Layer
Cake. A dealer trying to go straight
is sent to find a mobster’s daughter.
(2004, 15) 8.00 The Da Vinci Code.
An academic falsely accused of
murder uncovers a dangerous
conspiracy. (2006, 15) 10.35-12.25
The Commuter (2018, 15)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
4.10pm The Young Victoria (2009,
PG) 6.05 The Last Of The Mohicans.
(1992, 15) 8.00 Jaws. A police chief
has to deal with a giant killer shark
preying on tourists. (1975, 12) 10.10-
1.00 Django Unchained. An escaped
slave tries to rescue his wife from a
sadistic plantation owner. (2012, 18)
44 12 November 2023
7.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys Michael Portillo
explores Snowdonia.
7.30 Winter Walks A coastal
walk from Ravenscar to
Robin’s Hood’s Bay.
8.00 Australia — Earth’s
Magical Kingdom
How the nation’s wildlife
has adapted to survive.
9.00 Brian Cox’s Adventures
In Space And Time
The search for alien life.
10.00 Making Out Modern
management hits New
Lyne Electronics. (S1, ep 5)
10.50 Making Out Chunky
and Queenie wed. 11.40
Making Out An executive
manager arrives. 12.30
Making Out Orders from
head office threaten chaos.
1.20 As 7pm
1.50 Winter Walks
2.20-3.20 As 9pm
Sky Arts
6.00pm Tales Of The
Unexpected A swindler
buys a painting. (Series 3,
ep 2) 6.30 Tales Of The
Unexpected A man is
shot in a locked room.
7.00 Alfred Hitchcock
Presents: Make My Death
Bed. A woman has an affair
with a married singer.
7.30 Alfred Hitchcock
Presents: The Doubtful
Doctor. A man sees things
two years back in time.
8.00 Portrait Artist Of The Year
The celebrity sitters are
Josh Widdicombe, Nicky
Spence and Shirley Ballas.
9.00 Discovering Fredric
March The life of the actor.
10.00 Stories From The National
Portrait Gallery Portraiture
through the ages.
11.00-12.45 Record On Paul
Weller’s album Wild Wood.
SKY CINEMA SELECT
5.50pm Sabrina (1995, PG) 8.00
Maid In Manhattan. A case of
mistaken identity leads to romance
between a hotel maid and a wealthy
politician. (2002, PG) 10.00-12.20
Notting Hill. Comedy. (1999, 15)
FILM4
4.30pm It’s A Wonderful Life (1946,
U) 7.10 Daddy’s Home (2015, 12)
9.00 Taken. A former CIA agent
sets out to rescue his daughter from
a gang of sex traffickers. (2008, 18)
10.50-2.25 CHOICE Drive My Car
(2021, 15; see Film choice)
TALKING PICTURES TV
6.00pm For The Love Of Ada 6.30
Sherlock Holmes And The Secret
Weapon. Mystery thriller. (1942, PG)
8.00 Public Eye 9.05 A Prayer For
The Dying. An IRA hitman faces a
crisis of conscience. (1987, 15)
11.15-1.20 Eyewitness (1981, 15)
Entertainment
ITV4
6.35pm Hot Shots 6.45 LIVE
Snooker. Champion Of Champions
10.15 All Elite Wrestling 12.20 The
Professionals 1.25-2.30 Minder
ITV 2
6.00pm Catchphrase Stephen
Mulhern presents more of
his favourite moments.
7.00 Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win
A husband-and-wife team
take on the money ladder.
8.00 Bob’s Burgers The
Belchers are determined to
help Teddy start dating
the girl of his dreams.
(Series 9, ep 12) 8.30 Bob’s
Burgers Bob and Linda
argue on Valentine’s Day.
9.00 Big Brother A roundup of
recent events in the house.
10.00 Big Brother — Late & Live
AJ Odudu and Will Best
host the companion show.
11.05 Family Guy Chris learns
he is the heir to Carter’s
fortune. (Series 12, ep 14)
11.35-12.05 Family Guy
Peter asks Quagmire and
Joe to help him get his
mojo back. (Series 12, ep 9)
Sky Max
6.00pm Stargate SG-1 Daniel
learns how to defend the
Earth. (S4, ep 17, R) 7.00
Stargate SG-1 The team is
transfixed by a beautiful
but deadly device. (R)
8.00 Strike Back — Silent War
Adventure. (S7, ep 5, R)
9.00 CHOICE The Lazarus
Project Thriller, with Paapa
Essiedu. (Series 2, ep 1,
see Critics’ choice, R)
10.00 A League Of Their Own
With Christian Horner
and Alex Brooker. (R)
11.00 FILM: The Expendables 2
Stars Sylvester Stallone
and Jean-Claude Van
Damme. The mercenary
team battles a rival band
of hired guns who have
killed one of their number.
Nostalgic daftness.
(2012, 15; ends at 1.00)
MORE4
5.50pm The Secret Life Of The Zoo
6.55 The Dog House 7.55 Grand
Designs 9.00 Love It Or List It 10.00
Trains From Hell — Caught On
Camera 11.05 24 Hours In A&E 12.10
Emergency Helicopter Medics
1.15-2.15 999 — On The Front Line
GOLD
6.00pm Still Open All Hours 6.40
The Green Green Grass 7.20 The
Good Life 8.00 Dad’s Army 9.20
Only Fools And Horses 10.00 Not
Going Out 10.40 Live At The Apollo
11.40 The Young Ones 12.30 Only
Fools And Horses 1.05 Not Going
Out 1.45-2.40 Live At The Apollo
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm The Conners 6.30 The
Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air 7.00 Will &
Grace 8.00 The US Office 9.00
Breeders 9.30 Romantic Getaway
10.30 The Tonight Show 11.30 Girls
12.40 Tig Notaro — Boyish Girl
Interrupted 1.45-3.15 Bounty Hunters
5 STAR
6.00pm Home And Away 7.00 GPs
— Behind Closed Doors 8.00
Casualty 24/7 — Every Second
Counts 9.00 Trauma Room One
ITV 3
5.55pm Heartbeat A violent
criminal is released from
prison. (Series 3, ep 2) 6.55
Heartbeat One of Nick’s
colleagues is suspected of
robbery; and Greengrass
develops a keen interest in
a villager’s greyhound.
8.00 Lewis The murder of a
babysitter whose elbows
and wrists were tied after
her killing leads Lewis and
Hathaway into a world of
squats, swinging and fetish
photography. (S6, ep 3)
10.00 DCI Banks When the victim
of an attack is found in the
woods, the team wonders
whether it is random or
related to the location. (S5,
ep 1) 11.05-12.05 DCI
Banks A woman commits
suicide and leaves a note
confessing to murder —
but Banks is dubious.
Sky Atlantic
5.30pm Succession Kendall
plans his next move. (Series
3, ep 1) 6.40 Succession
Kendall tries to find more
allies in his fight to take
over control of Waystar.
7.50 House Of The Dragon Six
years later, the succession
plans for Driftmark become
critical; and Rhaenyra
tries to strike a bargain
with Rhaenys. (8/10)
9.00 The White Lotus Belinda
tries to redirect Tanya’s
focus to her business
proposal; and Rachel thinks
about her future. (S1, ep 5)
10.10 Tin Star — Liverpool Jack
arrives in Liverpool hoping
to reunite with Angela
and Anna. (Series 3, ep 1)
11.10-12.15 Unwanted The Tunis
authorities refuse to accept
the migrants. (3/8; Italian
and English with subtitles)
10.00 Ambulance — Code Red
11.00 Skin A&E 12.00-2.35 Revenge
5 USA
6.00pm NCIS 9.00 Criminal Minds.
Four men disappear in Oregon 10.00
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
12.00 NCIS 2.00-3.35 Blue Bloods
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Border Security —
Australia’s Front Line 7.30 Nothing
To Declare 8.00 The Equalizer
9.00 The Rookie 10.00 9-1-1 11.00
The Rookie 12.00 FBI 1.00 FBI —
International 2.00-3.00 FBI
W
6.00pm Junior MasterChef Australia
7.30 Inside The Ambulance 8.00
999 Rescue Squad 9.00 24 Hours In
A&E. Two episodes 11.00 Stacey
Dooley On The Psych Ward 12.00
One Born Every Minute 1.00 Dating
With My Mates 2.00-2.25 Date Night
COMEDY CENTRAL
6.00pm Friends 9.00 Michael
McIntyre’s Big Show 10.00 Michael
McIntyre — Showtime 11.00 Al
Murray — The Pub Landlord:
Beautifully British Tour Live At The
O2 12.00 The Ricky Gervais Show
1.00 Digman! 1.30-2.30 South Park
E4
6.00pm The Big Bang Theory
The gang celebrates
Halloween. (Series 5, ep 7)
6.30 The Big Bang Theory
Penny and Bernadette shop
for bridesmaid dresses.
7.00 Hollyoaks Chester soap.
7.30 Young Sheldon The
youngster’s first day of
college is derailed by a
teacher. (Series 4, ep 7)
8.00 Modern Family Mitchell
arranges a police ride-along
for Cam. (Series 9, ep 19)
8.30 Modern Family
Dede pays a surprise visit.
9.00 Married At First Sight UK
The group reunite for
the first time since the
experiment ended.
10.25 Mafs UK — It’s Official!
New series. Yasmin Evans
dissects the drama from
Married at First Sight UK.
11.00-12.05 Gogglebox
Talk TV
4.00pm Vanessa Feltz
Political debates, and
exclusive interviews.
6.00 The Talk A panel of famous
faces debate hot topics.
7.00 Prime Time Rosanna
Lockwood uses her
journalistic experience to
explore the day’s stories.
8.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on
the day’s global events.
9.00 The Independent
Republic Of Mike Graham
The host looks through the
morning newspapers.
11.00-12.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on
the day’s global events.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview
237; Virgin 606; Freesat 217;
YouTube, connected TVs and
smart devices
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys 7.00 Antiques Roadshow
8.00 Great Canal Journeys 9.00 The
Americas 10.00 Bangers & Cash
11.00 Abandoned Engineering 12.00-
1.00 Great British Railway Journeys
DAVE
6.00pm Rick Stein — From Venice
To Istanbul 7.00 House Of Games
8.20 Would I Lie To You? 9.00 QI XL
10.00 David Mitchell’s Outsiders
11.00 Live At The Apollo 12.00 Mock
The Week 12.40 Would I Lie To You?
1.20-2.00 Big Zuu’s Big Eats
Factual
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
6.00pm Lost Treasures Of Egypt
7.00 Air Crash Investigation 8.00 Car
SOS 11.00 Air Crash Investigation
12.00 To Catch A Smuggler
1.00-2.00 Banged Up Abroad
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Salvage Hunters 7.00
Wheeler Dealers 8.00 Railroad Alaska
9.00 The Garden — Commune Or
Cult? New series. A mysterious
community opens its doors to
outside cameras for the first time
5 Great shows . . .
Westerns
1
Justified (Disney+)
Timothy Olyphant
stars as the deputy US
marshal Raylan Givens, a
maverick Old West-style
cop in modern times.
2
Yellowstone
(Paramount+)
Kevin Costner leads an
excellent cast in the story
of a ranching family in
Montana fighting for
their land.
3
Deadwood
(Prime Video)
A compelling saga set
in a lawless gold rush
town filled with big
characters and even
bigger secrets.
4
Westworld (Sky/Now)
Sci-fi combined
with traditional
western themes,
Westworld offers
viewers gunslingers and
robots — what more
could you want?
5
The English (iPlayer)
A visually stunning
revisionist western, this
2022 series stars Emily
Blunt as an English
woman in search of those
who killed her husband.
Tim Glanfield
10.00 Gold Rush — White Water
11.00 Expedition Unknown 12.00
Moonshiners 1.00-2.00 The
Garden — Commune Or Cult?
PBS AMERICA
5.50pm The Stuarts 6.55 Royal
History’s Biggest Fibs. Lucy Worsley
examines the reign of Queen Anne
8.10 1945-1953 — From World War
To Cold War 9.20 Afghanistan —
The Wounded Land 10.30-12.00
Royal History’s Biggest Fibs
SKY DOCUMENTARIES
6.00pm The Seventies 6.55
Hostages 8.00 The Man Who Played
With Fire 9.00 Six Silent Killings —
Ireland’s Vanishing Triangle 10.00-
12.10 Life Of Crime 1984-2020
SKY NATURE
6.00pm Gangs Of Lemur Island
7.00 Monkey Life. Two editions
8.00 The Big Dry 9.00 Great Blue
Wild 10.00 Gangs Of Lemur Island
11.00-12.00 Wild Birds Of Australia
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Combat Dealers 7.00 Sex,
Lies, And The Taj Mahal 8.00 Wings
Of War 9.00 Combat Dealers 10.00
Salvage Hunters. Quirky items in
Dorset 11.00-12.00 Shed And Buried
Ruthless:
Ian McShane
in Deadwood
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 Good Morning
Sports Fans 8.00 LIVE ICC Cricket
World Cup. The first semi-final 4.30
Sports Desk 5.00 News 7.00 LIVE
Grand Slam Of Darts. The last-16 of
the tournament 11.00-6.00 News
TNT SPORTS 1
6.30am Premier League Netbusters
7.00 WWE Monday Night Raw 9.30
Ariel Helwani Meets 10.30 FIM
X-Trial World Championship
Highlights 11.30 World Rallycross
Championship Highlights 12.30 The
WRC Magazine 1.00 The Rugby
Review 1.45 Fishing — On The Bank
2.45 Ligue 1 Highlights 3.45
National League Highlights 4.15
Uefa Champions League Magazine
4.45 LIVE EuroCup Basketball:
Besiktas Emlakjet Istanbul v London
Lions. Tip-off 5.00 7.00 Premier
League 8.30 Premier League Reload
8.45 Goals Reload 9.00 WWE NXT
10.45 WWE Raw Highlights 11.45
MotoGP Rewind 12.00 Reload 12.30
LIVE NBA 3.00 Fishing — On The
Bank 4.00 Ligue 1 Highlights
5.00-6.00 MotoGP Highlights
Radio & Podcasts
○ Carrie Jade Does Not
Exist (podcast)
If you enjoyed the
compulsive Believe In
Magic (BBC Sounds), the
series uncovering the
secrets behind a charity
started by a sickly young
woman and her mother,
then this one is for you.
Sue Perkins and
Katherine Denkinson, a
journalist, look at Carrie
Jade Williams, a disabled
woman who became
internet famous after she
posted a video on TikTok
claiming to have been
discriminated against.
However, it transpired
that Williams’s identity
and story were lies, and
the real story was of
deception that was bigger
than anyone could have
imagined.
TIMES RADIO
5.00 Rosie Wright With Early
Breakfast 6.00 Aasmah Mir And
Stig Abell With Times Radio
Breakfast 10.00 Matt Chorley 1.00
Mariella Frostrup 3.00 Jane Garvey
And Fi Glover 5.00 John Pienaar
With Times Radio Drive 7.00
Pienaar And Friends 8.00 The
Evening Edition With Kait Borsay
10.00 Carole Walker 1.00 Stories
Of Our Times 1.30 Red Box 2.00
Highlights From Times Radio
To get in touch with the Times
Radio studio, text TIMES plus your
message to 87222. Texts cost
your standard message charge.
RADIO 4
5.30 News 5.43 Prayer 5.45
Farming Today 5.58 Tweet Of The
Day (R) 6.00 Today 8.31 (LW)
Yesterday In Parliament 9.00 Life
Changing 9.30 Just One Thing.
Michael Mosley reveals benefits of
walking backwards 9.45 Book Of
The Week 9.45 (LW) Daily Service
10.00 Woman’s Hour 11.00 Nato’s
Newest Member (R) 11.30 Being
Roman. Mary Beard reveals the
story of a young woman fighting
for her family in the chaos of a
brutal civil war 12.00 News 12.01
(LW) Shipping 12.04 You And
Yours 1.00 The World At One 1.45
The Great Post Office Trial 2.00
The Archers (R) 2.15 Drama:
Elsinore (R) 3.00 Money Box Live
3.30 All In The Mind (R) 4.00
Sideways 4.30 The Media Show
5.00 PM 5.54 (LW) Shipping 6.00
News 6.30 Glenn Moore’s
Almanac. New series. The
comedian reveals what he was
doing at the time of various world
events 7.00 The Archers 7.15 Front
Row 8.00 AntiSocial (R) 8.45 From
Fact To Fiction (R) 9.00 When It
Hits The Fan (R) 9.30 The Media
Show (R) 10.00 The World Tonight
10.45 Book At Bedtime 11.00 Big
Little Questions. Amy Gledhill and
Chris Cantrill explore the world of
accents 11.15 The Skewer 11.30
Today In Parliament 12.00 News
12.30 Book Of The Week (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
Taking a closer look:
Sue Perkins (podcast)
○ Glenn Moore’s Almanac
(Radio 4, 6.30pm)
The comedian looks at
world events and what he
was doing at the time,
starting with how the 2011
royal wedding provided the
backdrop to a love-life
crisis. The show’s quality
gags are woven into great
RADIO 4 EXTRA
5.00 The Curiosity Cabinet 5.45
Short Works 6.00 Julie Enfield
Investigates — Murder West One
6.45 Dick Barton — Special Agent
7.00 Grandmothers 7.15 The Old
Wives’ Tale (R) 7.30 Shush! 8.00
Hancock’s Half Hour 8.30 Ballylenon
9.00 Counterpoint 9.30 The Right
Time 10.00 The Curiosity Cabinet
10.45 Short Works 11.00 Julie
Enfield Investigates — Murder West
One 11.45 Dick Barton — Special
Agent 12.00 Grandmothers 12.15
The Old Wives’ Tale (R) 12.30 Shush!
1.00 Hancock’s Half Hour 1.30
Ballylenon 2.00 Counterpoint 2.30
The Right Time 3.00 The Curiosity
Cabinet 3.45 Short Works 4.00
Julie Enfield Investigates — Murder
West One 4.45 Dick Barton —
Special Agent 5.00 Grandmothers
5.15 The Old Wives’ Tale (R)
5.30 Shush! 6.00 Hancock’s
Half Hour 6.30 Ballylenon 7.00
Counterpoint 7.30 The Right Time
8.00 A Broadcasting Life 9.00
Short Cuts 9.30 Doctor Who —
Tenth Doctor Adventures 10.00
I Don’t Know What To Say 10.30
Date Night 11.00 The Harpoon
11.30 The Skewer 11.45-12.00
The Problem With Adam Bloom
LBC
7.00 Nick Ferrari 10.00 James
O’Brien 1.00 Shelagh Fogarty 4.00
Tom Swarbrick 6.00 Andrew Marr
7.00 Ali Miraj 10.00 Ben Kentish
1.00 Richard Spurr 4.00 Ian Payne
RADIO 3
6.30 Breakfast 9.00 Essential
Classics 12.00 Composer Of The
Week 1.00 Lunchtime Concert.
The mezzo Catriona Morison
sings Lieder by Strauss, Brahms,
Mahler and Berg, with the pianist
Malcolm Martineau 2.00 Afternoon
Concert. Jaap van Zweden conducts
the Hong Kong Philharmonic
Orchestra in a performance of
Brahms’s Symphony No 4; and the
RIAS Chamber Choir sing sacred
choral music by Haydn 4.00
Choral Evensong. Live from
Hereford Cathedral, with music
by Guest, Watson, Byrd and Reger
stories, including about
his career as a radio
newsreader and visiting a
bar called Carpe Diem,
“which I’ve always been
meaning to go to”.
○ Free Thinking
(Radio 3, 10pm)
Naomi Paxton and the
academics Sophie Oliver
and Ana Baeza Ruiz
discuss the art of female
and gender non-
conforming artists tied to
three new exhibitions.
Tate Britain’s Women in
Revolt! is a survey of
feminist art in Britain
between 1970-1990; eco-art
and activism is celebrated
at the Barbican Centrek
and Modern Art Oxford
presents the work of the
eco-feminist Monica Sjoo.
Clair Woodward
5.00 In Tune 7.00 Classical
Mixtape 7.30 In Concert. The
violinist Alina Ibragimova and
fortepianist Kristian Bezuidenhout
join forces with the Basel
Chamber Orchestra for two
Mozart concertos. Plus, a Haydn
symphony and a world premiere
10.00 Free Thinking. Naomi
Paxton is joined by academics
Sophie Oliver and Ana Baeza Ruiz
to discuss exhibitions at Tate
Britain, the Barbican and Modern
Art Oxford 10.45 The Essay. A
linguistic tour of modern Scotland,
created as part of the Multitrack
Audio Fellowship 11.00 Night
Tracks. An adventurous, immersive
soundtrack for late-night listening
12.30 Through The Night
CLASSIC FM
6.00 Tim Lihoreau 9.00
Alexander Armstrong 12.00
Anne-Marie Minhall 4.00
Margherita Taylor 7.00 Zeb
Soanes 10.00 Ritula Shah 1.00
Bill Overton 4.00 Lucy Coward
RADIO 2
6.30 The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show.
Vernon Kay is in Derby for the
second day of his Children in
Need challenge 9.30 Richie
Anderson 12.00 Jeremy Vine
2.00 Scott Mills 4.00 Sara Cox
7.00 Jo Whiley 10.00 Trevor
Nelson 12.00 OJ Borg 3.00
Alternative Sounds Of The
90s With Dermot O’Leary (R)
4.00 Owain Wyn Evans
VIRGIN RADIO
6.30 The Chris Evans Breakfast
Show. Music and chat 10.00 Eddy
Temple-Morris 1.00 Jayne
Middlemiss 4.00 Ricky Wilson
7.00 Bam 10.00 Amy Voce 1.00
Sean Goldsmith 4.00 Steve Denyer
TALKSPORT
5.00 Early Breakfast 6.00
Breakfast 10.00 Jim White
And Simon Jordan 1.00 Hawksbee
And Jacobs 4.00 Drive With
Andy Goldstein And Darren
Bent 7.00 Kick Off 10.00
Sports Bar 1.00 Extra Time
12 November 2023 45
THURSDAY 16 NOVEMBER
BBC 1 BBC 2
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
9.15 Morning Live Magazine.
10.00 Scam Interceptors (R)
10.45 Dr Xand’s Con Or Cure (R)
11.15 Homes Under The
Hammer Auctions. (R)
12.15 Bargain Hunt Curios. (R)
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.45 Doctors Ruhma and Jenny
are questioned about their
difficult day at St Phil’s.
2.15 The Bidding Room Items
include an Evel Knievel doll
and a 6-ft long tuna. (R)
3.00 Escape To The Country
Steve Brown helps a
couple move from
London to rural Suffolk. (R)
3.45 Antiques Road Trip The
experts Raj Bisram and
Irita Marriott start their
journey in North Wales.
4.30 The Repair Shop The team
restores a shattered
jewellery box. (R)
5.15 Pointless Quiz, hosted by
Alexander Armstrong.
6.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.30 Regional News Update.
7.00 The One Show Features.
7.30 EastEnders Sharon reels
after the news at Albie’s
hospital appointment and
finds herself lashing out at
Keanu for continuing to
plan their engagement
drinks; and Cindy invites
Kathy and Rocky to
move back into No 45.
8.00 MasterChef — The
Professionals The last
quarter-final sees the chefs
asked to deliver a dish that
represents sunshine — a
bright, light and colourful
dish that transports the
diner to sunnier climes.
9.00 CHOICE DIY SOS Designer
Gabrielle Blackman, a team
of experts and well-known
faces including Sam Ryder
build a bespoke counselling
and therapy centre for
bereaved young people
in Risley, Derbyshire.
(See Critics’ choice)
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
10.40 Question Time Fiona Bruce
hosts the debate from
Bridgwater, Somerset.
11.40 Newscast A weekly
roundup from Westminster.
12.10 Survivor Challenge. (R)
1.15-6.00 Joins BBC News
SCOTLAND 11.15 Bargain Hunt.
12.00 First Minister’s Questions.
6.30 Reporting Scotland;
Weather. 7.00 River City.
Variations
BBC1 WALES 1.10 BBC News
BBC SCOTLAND 7.00 Scotland’s
Home Of The Year 7.30 The Great
Food Guys 8.00 Scotland’s
Weather — Our Changing
Seasons 8.30 Landward. Reports
on rural and agricultural
developments 9.00 The Nine
10.00 Shetland 11.00 Sportscene
11.45-12.00 Growing Up Scottish
STV 6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine 10.00 This Morning
12.30 Loose Women 1.30 News;
Weather 2.00 James Martin’s
46 12 November 2023
6.30 Escape To The Country (R)
7.15 Antiques Road Trip (R)
8.00 Big Little Journeys The
adventures of pangolin and
a tamarin family. (Signed, R)
9.00 Nicky Campbell Debate.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
12.15 Politics Live Discussion.
1.00 The Boss Quiz show. (R)
1.45 Lightning Quiz. (R)
2.15 Eat Well For Less? (R)
3.15 Oceans Documentary. (R)
4.15 This Farming Life (R)
5.15 Flog It! At Dover Castle. (R)
6.00 House Of Games With Jimi
Famurewa, William Hanson,
Sinitta and Maisie Smith.
6.30 Strictly — It Takes Two
The designer Vicky Gill takes
a look at what the couples
will be wearing at the
Blackpool Tower Ballroom.
7.00 Villages By The Sea The
archaeologist Ben Robinson
views the well-preserved
lime kilns in Solva, Wales.
7.30 CHOICE Mary Makes It
Easy Mary Berry teaches
the dancer Anton Du Beke
how to create assorted
dishes. (See Critics’ choice)
8.00 Saving Lives At Sea On
the northeastern tip of
Scotland, the crew at Wick
begin a frantic search to
find a paddleboarder who
has drifted a mile out to sea.
9.00 The Newsreader The
plummeting stock market
mirrors Helen’s personal
descent as the office
receives contact from a
gossip columnist intent on
exposing her tumultuous
past. (Series 2, ep 3)
9.50 The Fast And The
Farmer-ish Northern
Ireland’s Bogmen and
Determinators go up
against each other,
tackling extreme racing,
reversing and mowing
challenges to grab a place
in the semi-final. (R)
10.00 Mock The Week With Ed
Byrne, Rhys James, Athena
Kugblenu, Laura Lexx and
Alasdair Beckett-King. (R)
10.30 Newsnight Headlines.
11.15 Wild Caribbean Central
American coastline. (R)
12.15 Secrets Of The Aquarium
Behind the scenes at
the National Marine
Aquarium in Plymouth. (R)
1.15 Louis Theroux Interviews
Documentary. (Signed, R)
2.00-4.00 Strictly Come
Dancing (Signed, R)
American Adventure 3.00 Lingo
3.59 STV Weather 4.00 Tipping
Point 5.00 The Chase 6.00
Regional News 6.30 News 7.30
Emmerdale 8.30 Scotland
Tonight: Donor Conceived
Children 9.00 Inside M&S 10.00
News 10.30 Regional News 10.45
Britain — On The Sick? 11.10 The
Motorbike Show 12.05 Long Lost
Family — Born Without Trace
12.50 Sorry, I Didn’t Know 1.15
Cash Trapped 2.05 Loose Women
2.55 Ellie Simmonds — Finding
My Secret Family 3.50 Night
Vision 5.05-6.00 Moneyball S4C
ITV 1
6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine Lifestyle chat.
10.00 This Morning Features.
12.30 Loose Women Debate.
1.30 News; Weather Reports.
2.00 James Martin’s American
Adventure The chef
takes in the sights and
food of Philadelphia. (R)
3.00 Lingo A father and son, a
pair of sisters and a couple
take part in the quiz. (R)
4.00 Tipping Point Gameshow,
with Ben Shephard. (R)
5.00 The Chase Quiz show. (R)
6.00 Regional News Update.
6.30 News; Weather Reports.
7.30 Emmerdale Rhona is
shocked by the situation
she finds herself in;
Dawn has concerns;
and Chloe dreams
while Mack machinates.
8.30 Britain — On The Sick?
Adam Shaw investigates
why the number of people
not working because of
long-term health problems
has risen sharply and is
now at the highest level
since records began.
9.00 Inside M&S The team at
Marks & Spencer’s try to
get the Lakeside Shopping
Centre branch ready for
Christmas; and Davina
McCall pitches to the
company’s lingerie team.
10.00 News At Ten Bulletin.
10.45 Regional Programme
11.15 DNA Journey The actors
Neil Morrissey and Adrian
Dunbar embark on a
journey across UK and
Ireland to explore their
family histories.. (R)
12.20 All Elite Wrestling
— Rampage Hard-hitting
action from America. (R)
1.15 Cash Trapped Quiz. (R)
2.05 Loose Women Debate. (R)
2.55 Ellie Simmonds — Finding
My Secret Family (R)
3.50 Unwind Daily relaxation.
5.05-6.00 Moneyball (R)
Building lives better (BBC1, 9pm)
6.00 Cyw 12.00 Newyddion A’r
Tywydd 12.05 Dim Byd I’w Wisgo
12.30 Heno 1.00 Mamwlad 1.30
Pobol Y Rhondda 2.00
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 2.05
Prynhawn Da 3.00 Newyddion A’r
Tywydd 3.05 Gwesty Aduniad
4.00 Awr Fawr 5.00 Stwnsh 6.00
Y Sioe Fwyd 6.30 Sgwrs Dan Y Lloer
6.57 Newyddion 7.00 Heno 7.30
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 8.00
Pobol Y Cwm 8.25 Rownd A Rownd
8.55 Newyddion A’r Tywydd
9.00 Y Frwydr — Stori Anabledd
10.00 Y Byd Yn Ei Le 10.45
Bwmp 11.00-11.45 Rygbi Pawb
Channel 4
6.05 Countdown Game. (R)
6.45 Cheers Comedy. (R)
7.35 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
8.25 Frasier Sitcom. (R)
9.55 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (R)
10.55 The Great House
Giveaway Property. (R)
11.55 News; Weather Reports.
12.00 Steph’s Packed Lunch
2.10 Countdown Game.
3.00 A Place In The Sun A
woman and her son seek a
holiday home on Spain’s
Costa del Sol. (R) 4.00 A
Place In The Sun A woman
seeks a holiday home
around the town of
Albufeira in Portugal.
5.00 Help! We Bought A Village
A couple explore a network
of underground tunnels.
6.00 Four In A Bed The Crown
Inn in Derbyshire. (R)
6.30 Four In A Bed The
winner is announced. (R)
7.00 News; Weather Reports.
7.55 Rory Peck Awards
8.00 The Great British Bake Off
— An Extra Slice Jo Brand
hosts the companion show
to the baking contest, as
series fans Aisling Bea,
Scarlett Moffatt and Nabil
Abdulrashid help her review
the first ever party week.
9.00 Taskmaster Julian Clary
makes smart use of a
fishing rod; and Lucy
Beaumont asks Alex
Horne to sit on a sled.
10.00 Hullraisers Toni decides
to teach Craig a lesson.
(Series 2, ep 3) 10.30
Hullraisers Rana’s mum
risks being accused of
involvement with a gang.
11.00 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does
Countdown Sean Lock
and Harry Hill take on Jon
Richardson and Rosie
Jones in the gameshow. (R)
12.05 Bangers — Mad For Cars
The best cars of the 1980s,
1990s and 2000s. (R)
1.00 Iris Prize Best British
Shorts: Internal Conflict.
2.20 iTales Short films.
2.50 FILM: Unsane Stars Claire
Foy. A woman is committed
to a psychiatric institute,
where she is confronted
by her greatest fear.
Uneven thriller. (2018, 15)
4.30 Love It Or List It (R)
5.25 Strangers On A Plane (R)
5.50-6.05 Find It, Fix It, Flog It
Items in South Wales. (R)
If you ever needed a reason to hand back
your TV licence, The Travelling Auctioneers
(BBC1) is it. Contrived and phoney, with two
patronising presenters. Should be on CBeebies.
You say
Kath Almond
Simon Schama’s Shakespeare, superb; David
Olusoga’s Union, gripping; and now new
Shetland, brilliant... BBC you are spoiling us!
John Hepworth
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.15 Jeremy Vine Debate.
11.15 Storm Huntley Opinions.
12.15 Alexis Conran Debate.
12.50 Entertainment News
12.55 News; Weather Reports.
1.00 Home And Away Justin
and Leah’s lives are in
serious danger. (R)
1.30 My Perfect Christmas
Family Comedy, with Clare
Bowen. A single woman
recruits her best friend and
her baby nephew to pose
as her husband and
child for a contest.
3.15 A Christmas Spectacular
Comedy drama, with Ginna
Claire Mason. A high
society bride walks out on
her wedding in 1958, to
pursue her dream of
becoming a dancer.
5.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.00 Dogs Behaving (Very)
Badly Graeme Hall meets a
greedy labrador that
constantly scavenges for
things to eat on walks. (R)
6.55 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 Waitrose — Britain’s
Poshest Supermarket
Documentary uncovering
the inner workings of the
supermarket brand.
7.55 News; Weather Reports.
8.00 Inside The Tower Of
London It is May and the
Tower is preparing for
the crowning of a new
monarch — among those
featured is the first female
yeoman warder to take
part in a royal coronation.
9.00 The King’s Guard —
Serving The Crown
New documentary series
going behind the scenes of
the elite regiments of the
British Army’s Household
Division in one of the
busiest years in its history.
10.00 Broadmoor — Serial
Killers & High Security
An insight into the workings
of the high-security
psychiatric hospital. (R)
11.30 Police Interceptors A car
fails to stop for officers in
Worksop, and the driver
then escapes on foot. (R)
12.30 ICC Cricket World Cup
1.25 Casino Show Gambling.
3.25 New Lives In The Wild (R)
4.15 Get Your Tatts Out —
Kavos Ink Body art. (R)
5.00 Divine Designs (R)
5.25 House Doctor Advice. (R)
5.50-6.00 Entertainment News
 Critics’ choice
JFK — The Home Movie that
Changed the World (ITVX)
When John F Kennedy was
assassinated in Dallas on
November 22, 1963, a local
garment maker called Abe
Zapruder happened to capture
the most complete record of the
shooting with his home-movie
camera. Before the 60th
anniversary of the president’s
death, this documentary follows
the course of JFK’s final day, with
testimony from eyewitnesses
heard over archive news footage;
Zapruder’s story — who he was,
why he was in Dealey Plaza to
watch the motorcade, his reaction
to seeing bullets hit Kennedy — is
deftly woven into the overall
narrative. Foreshadowing the way
amateur phone images now
provide key visual evidence of
news events, the 26-second
“Zapruder film” was used by the
Warren Commission on the
assassination and later acquired
for the national archive.
John Dugdale
DIY SOS (BBC1, 9pm)
For the second year running,
Radio 2 teams up with DIY SOS as
Nick Knowles and co make their
annual contribution to Children In
Need. Last year, DJs donned hard
hats and hi-vis as Chris, Jules,
Billy and Gabrielle (plus their
volunteer army) constructed a safe
space for vulnerable girls and
young women in Leeds. This
time, they create a building for
Treetops Hospice in Derbyshire
where young people experiencing
traumatic bereavement can receive
support and counselling, and are
joined by presenters including
Zoe Ball, Kate Bottley, Scott Mills
and Jeremy Vine (but not the
Radio 2 DJ Vernon Kay, who is in
training to run 115 miles over four
days for Children in Need). There
are poignant interviews with some
of the youngsters who will benefit,
and a concluding reveal that
includes an appearance by Sophie
Ellis-Bextor. JD
On demand
○ The X-Files (C4 streaming)
Back in 1993, Chris Carter’s
paranormal sci-fi drama seemed to
be primarily about the FBI agents
Fox Mulder and Dana Scully (David
Duchovney and Gillian Anderson)
investigating a government
conspiracy about the alien
colonisation of Earth. Occasionally
there’d be one-off episodes about
paranormal events or cosmic
horror, but they just seemed to get
The rights to Zapruder’s film were acquired for $16 million (ITVX)
The Art Of Film
(Sky Arts/Now, 8pm)
Sky Arts’ film school with Ian
Nathan, the film critic and writer,
looks tonight at how war is
depicted on screen. The fact that
those of us with phones in our
pockets are seeing the most
brutal conflicts unfold daily
on our timelines goes unaddressed,
but his structured approach is a
blessing, picking over those
films that were propagandist in
nature and those that began the
postwar recovery.
Step by step (BBC2, 7.30pm)
in the way. Thirty years on, it’s
those monster-of-the-week
episodes that stand up the best.
○ Suburræterna (Netflix)
In 2008, a new kind of organised
crime flourished in Rome,
documented in Stefano Sollima’s
2015 crime drama Suburra and its
Netflix spin-off, Suburra — Blood On
Rome. Now comes the next chapter.
Harking back to Italy’s 1970s
“Poliziotteschi” crime films, this is
gritty, brutal storytelling about a
JFK — The Final Evidence
(Sky History/Now, 10pm)
On the instruction of President
Biden, the US National Archives
released 13,173 documents relating
to the assassination of John F
Kennedy. If he thought that would
stop the conspiracists, he was
wrong. About 4,400 files remain
classified, and they occupy the
imaginations of those behind this
history series, which charts the
birth of the CIA, the rise of JFK and
the history of an odd chap named
Lee Harvey Oswald.
Mary Makes It Easy
(BBC2, 7.30pm)
Mary Berry spends a summer day
in Bournemouth teaching Anton du
Beke, the dance show judge, how
to make basic family meals. Taking
inspiration from his approach to
choreography as a Strictly pro, she
keeps the recipes simple yet adds
a bit of razzle-dazzle.
Helen Stewart
corrupt modern city on the brink
of moral and financial collapse.
○ Once Upon A Time In Northern
Ireland (BBC iPlayer)
One of 2023’s TV triumphs was
James Bluemel’s five-part
documentary analysis of the
Troubles. It was a chronological
tale of individuals that gradually
revealed how human lives were
shaped, changed and destroyed by
these grim and harrowing events.
Andrew Male
It was ‘Bye-bye’ and
now its ‘Eh-oh’ again
Teletubbies Let’s Go (ITVX)
In March 1997 children said “Eh-
oh” to Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Laa-
Laa and Po for the first time and
prompted a panic that the cuddly
characters’ semi-formed language
and demands of “Again! Again!”
might turn infants into spoilt,
inarticulate, screen-obsessed
idiots. As this spin-off CGI series,
first shown on YouTube, makes
its way to ITVX, it’s a huge relief
that this did not come to pass.
Goodnight children, everywhere.
Helen Stewart
They’re back!
Film choice
Planet Of The Apes (BBC4, 8pm)
Its use of actors in ape suits might
stagger viewers who take CGI for
granted, but the first film based on
Pierre Boulle’s 1963 novel about a
world of dominant apes is still
fantastic entertainment. The story,
with its wild ideas and satirical
ending, is popular science fiction at
its best, and Charlton Heston is on
good form as a human astronaut.
The rugged star (featured in an
episode of Talking Pictures on
BBC4 at 9.50pm/2.55am) keeps his
dignity despite a beard-and-
loincloth makeover. Dir: Franklin J
Schaffner (1968)
The Big Man (Film4, 9pm)
Starring Liam Neeson as a
Lanarkshire miner forced into
bare-knuckle boxing, David
Leland’s film is a tough drama with
a terrific fight scene thrown in. It
features actors you might expect
to see in a film about working-class
Scots — notably Ian Bannen and
Billy Connolly — and one you might
not: Hugh Grant. (1990)
Parasite (Netflix)
Netflix has added a classic to its
movie catalogue with the arrival
of Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning
thriller. A story of crafty schemers
(led by Song Kang-ho) preying on
a rich family, it highlights the tiers
in South Korean society, and the
audacious plot keeps revealing its
own dark new levels. (2019)
Edward Porter
12 November 23 47
THURSDAY 16 NOVEMBER
BBC 3 BBC 4
7.00pm Top Gear A search
for the world’s best taxi.
8.00 Race Across The World
The teams venture through
Peru’s high altitudes.
9.00 RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
The queens compete in
a makeover challenge.
10.00 The After Shave Review.
10.20 Love, Victor Rahim and
Victor skip school. (Series
2, ep 9) 10.45 Love, Victor
Victor and Felix consider
their futures. (Last in series)
11.20 Fleabag The first episode
of the comedy, with Phoebe
Waller-Bridge. (S1, ep 1)
11.45 Fleabag Dumped by
her boyfriend, Fleabag tries
to rekindle romantic fires.
12.15 RuPaul’s Drag Race UK
1.15 The Big Proud Party
Agency An anniversary.
1.45 Charlotte In Sunderland
2.45-3.45 As 9pm
Drama
6.00pm ’Allo ’Allo! General Von
Klinkerhoffen decides to
restart the local newspaper.
6.40 Last Of The Summer Wine
Compo, Clegg and Truly
meet a man testing for
earthquakes. 7.20 Last Of
The Summer Wine Truly
buys an old lawnmower,
which Compo and Clegg
promptly help him to sell.
8.00 The Mallorca Files
Miranda and Max try to find
a masked assailant who
stole the famous Icon of St
Nicholas. (Series 1, ep 3)
9.00 The Mallorca Files
The duo investigate the
mysterious disappearance
of a supermodel.
10.00-12.00 New Tricks Pilot
episode of the crime
drama, with Amanda
Redman, Alun Armstrong
and James Bolam. (S1, ep 1)
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
4.25pm The Last Rifleman (2022,
15) 6.20 She Came To Me (2023,
15) 8.00 Big George Foreman.
The life of the former world
heavyweight boxing champion.
(2023, 12) 10.20-12.10 The Pope’s
Exorcist. The chief exorcist for the
Vatican investigates the possession
of a young boy. (2023, 15)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
6.00pm A Walk Among The
Tombstones (2014, 15) 8.00 Angels
& Demons. Four cardinals in line to
become Pope are kidnapped by a
mysterious sect. (2009, 12)
10.25-12.25 Revolver. A gambler is
helped by two enigmatic loan
sharks to exact revenge on his
deranged former boss. (2005, 15)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
5.45pm World Trade Center (2006,
12) 8.00 Nope. The residents of a
lonely valley in inland California
bear witness to an uncanny and
chilling discovery. (2022, 15)
10.15-12.20 Interview With The
Vampire. Gothic horror. (1994, 18)
48 12 November 2023
7.00pm The Sky At Night Meets
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Astronomy-themed show.
7.30 Great British Railway
Journeys Michael Portillo
travels from Aberystwyth
to Newtown, Powys.
8.00 CHOICE Planet Of The
Apes Stars Charlton Heston
and Roddy McDowall.
(1968, PG; see Film choice)
9.50 Talking Pictures A look
at Charlton Heston’s
television appearances.
10.30 FILM: All The President’s
Men Stars Robert Redford
and Dustin Hoffman. Taut
political drama. (1976, 15)
12.45 Talking Pictures
1.25 As 7.30pm
1.55 Australia — Earth’s
Magical Kingdom Wildlife.
2.55-3.35 Talking Pictures
Sky Arts
6.00pm Tales Of The
Unexpected An acid-
tongued gossip columnist
gets his comeuppance.
(Series 3, ep 4) 6.30 Tales
Of The Unexpected A
selfish woman needs help.
7.00 Portrait Artist Of The Year
The celebrity sitters are
Josh Widdicombe, Nicky
Spence and Shirley Ballas.
8.00 CHOICE The Art Of Film
Ian Nathan looks at how
film-makers have depicted
war, including expanding
understanding of the
nature of war and humanity.
(See Critics’ choice)
9.00 Discovering A profile of
the actor Tom Hanks.
10.00 The Eighties The events
of Ronald Reagan’s two
terms in the White House.
11.00-12.00 The Directors The
life and work of Rob Reiner.
SKY CINEMA SELECT
6.00pm Maid In Manhattan.
Romantic comedy. (2002, PG) 8.00
Notting Hill. A bookshop owner falls
for a film star, but media interest
makes the relationship tricky.
(1999, 15) 10.05-12.10 Downton
Abbey — A New Era (2022, PG)
FILM4
4.10pm The Wackiest Ship In The
Army (1960, U) 6.25 Star Trek Into
Darkness (2013, 12) 9.00 CHOICE
The Big Man. An unemployed
Scottish miner turns to bare-knuckle
boxing. (1990, 18; see Film choice)
11.20-1.10 Dredd (2012, 18)
TALKING PICTURES TV
5.05pm The Shillingbury Blowers
(1980, U) 6.45 Between The Tides
1958 7.10 Saloon Bar (1940, PG)
8.40 Mortimer’s Musings 9.00
Rumpole Of The Bailey 10.05-12.00
A Kiss Before Dying (1956, PG)
Entertainment
ITV4
5.30pm Minder 6.35 World Of Sport
6.45 LIVE Snooker. Champion
Of Champions. Coverage of the
evening session on day four
ITV 2
6.00pm Catchphrase Lady
Leshurr, Gabby Logan and
Adam Thomas take part.
7.00 Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win
Two friends return to try to
climb up the money ladder.
8.00 Bob’s Burgers Tina is
disheartened when Jimmy
Jr fails to ask her out to
prom. (Series 9, ep 14)
8.30 Bob’s Burgers
Louise wins a contest to
be the principal for a day.
9.00 Big Brother A chance to
catch up on what has been
going on in the house.
10.00 Big Brother — Late & Live
AJ Odudu and Will Best
host the companion show.
11.05 Family Guy Stewie helps
Chris battle some school
bullies. (Series 12, ep 15)
11.35-12.05 Family Guy
Three fairy tales are retold
Quahog-style. (S12, ep 10)
Sky Max
6.00pm Stargate SG-1 Carter
takes a cadet under her
wing. (Series 4, ep 19, R)
7.00 Stargate SG-1 An
alien probe takes over the
computer system and
accesses sensitive data. (R)
8.00 An Idiot Abroad 3 Karl
Pilkington and Warwick
Davis land roles in a
Bollywood movie and
watch a sunset. (R)
9.00 Cobra — Rebellion
Goddard demands that
Sutherland resign or the
Damocles weapon will
be fired. (Last in series)
10.00 Brassic After discovering
Manolito has been playing
them, the gang sets out to
frame him. (Last in series)
11.00-1.00 Movie Megastars
— Made In The 80s A look
at some of the biggest film
stars of the decade. (R)
10.15 FILM: A Fistful Of Dollars. Stars
Clint Eastwood and Gian Maria
Volonte. Western 12.20 Minder
1.25-2.35 Dempsey And Makepeace
MORE4
5.50pm The Secret Life Of The Zoo
6.55 The Dog House 7.55 Grand
Designs 9.00 Ancient Egypt By
Train. With Alice Roberts 10.00 Sky
Coppers 11.05 24 Hours In A&E
12.10 Emergency Helicopter Medics
1.10-2.15 999 — On The Front Line
GOLD
6.00pm Still Open All Hours 6.40
The Green Green Grass 7.20 The
Good Life 8.00 Dad’s Army. Double
bill 9.20 Only Fools And Horses
10.00 Not Going Out 10.35 I’m Alan
Partridge 11.15 The Young Ones
12.00 Only Fools And Horses
12.40 Not Going Out 1.15 I’m Alan
Partridge 1.55-2.35 The Young Ones
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm The Conners 6.30 The Fresh
Prince Of Bel-Air. Philip’s former
girlfriend visits 7.00 Will & Grace
8.00 The US Office 9.00 Girls 10.15
The Tonight Show 11.15 Breeders
11.45 Sex And The City 12.55-2.05
Drew Michael — Red Blue Green
ITV 3
5.55pm Heartbeat An
attempted murder leads
Nick to investigate a local
landowner. (Series 3, ep 4)
6.55 Heartbeat A wedding
is thrown into confusion by
a family death; and Kate is
displeased when a relative
brings important news.
8.00 Vera DCI Vera Stanhope is
called to the scene when
the body of an addiction
support worker is found in
the bleak woodlands of
Northumberland National
Park. (Series 11, ep 2)
10.00 DCI Banks The search for a
missing devoted husband
and father soon escalates
into a kidnap and ransom
case. (Series 5, ep 3)
11.05-12.05 DCI Banks
The team is thrown when a
recently rescued kidnap
victim is found murdered.
Sky Atlantic
5.30pm Succession Tom
makes a potentially life-
altering offer. (Series 3, ep
3) 6.40 Succession Logan
and Kendall have their first
meeting together with Josh,
a serious investor worried
about their family feud.
7.50 House Of The Dragon
Alicent enlists help to
track down Aegon; and
members of the Great
Houses of Westeros affirm
their allegiance. (9/10)
9.00 The Gilded Age Period
drama set in the 1880s
following the fortunes of a
young woman, with Louisa
Jacobson. (Series 2, ep 3)
10.10 Billions Senior and Chuck’s
friends take Chuck on a
retreat to regroup. (S6,
ep 10) 11.20-12.25 Billions
A discovery sets off chaos
at Michael Prince Capital.
5 STAR
6.00pm Home And Away. Two
episodes 7.00 GPs — Behind Closed
Doors 8.00 Junior Doctors Down
Under 9.00 Ambulance — Code Red
10.00 A&E After Dark 11.00 Trauma
Room One 12.00 GPs — Behind
Closed Doors 1.00 Killer At The
Crime Scene 2.00-2.50 Revenge
5 USA
6.00pm NCIS 9.00 Jesse Stone
— Stone Cold 11.00 Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit. Two episodes
1.00 NCIS 2.00-3.35 Blue Bloods
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Nothing To Declare 8.00
The Equalizer 9.00 FBI 10.00 FBI —
International 11.00 The Rookie 12.00
9-1-1 1.00-3.00 FBI — Most Wanted
W NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
6.00pm DIY SOS 8.00 999 Rescue
Squad 9.00 24 Hours In A&E 11.00
Stacey Dooley — Back On The Psych
Ward 12.20 One Born Every Minute
1.25-2.15 Dating With My Mates
COMEDY CENTRAL
6.00pm Friends 9.00 FILM: The
Breakfast Club 11.00 Michael
McIntyre 12.00 Reno 911! 1.00 Ugly
Americans 1.30-2.30 South Park
E4
6.00pm The Big Bang Theory
Sheldon has to face his fear
of birds. (Series 5, ep 9)
6.30 The Big Bang Theory
Stuart asks Amy on a date.
7.00 Hollyoaks Chester soap.
7.30 Young Sheldon George Sr
learns Georgie has been
missing class. (S4, ep 8)
8.00 Modern Family Things
get awkward when Haley
meets Arvin’s parents.
(S9, ep 21) 8.30 Modern
Family Gloria’s dinosaur
party for Joe is ruined.
9.00 Married At First Sight UK
It is the final reunion and
the group look back on the
experiment. (Last in series)
10.25 Married At First Sight NZ
New run of the social
experiment, beginning as
the brides and grooms go
on their hen and stag dos.
11.30-12.35 Gogglebox
Talk TV
4.00pm Vanessa Feltz
Political debates, and
exclusive interviews.
6.00 The Talk A panel of famous
faces debate the topics
everybody is talking about.
7.00 Prime Time Rosanna
Lockwood reports on the
day’s stories, with expert
analysis and lively debate.
8.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on
the day’s global events.
9.00 The Independent
Republic Of Mike Graham
The host looks through the
morning newspapers.
11.00-12.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored The host
presents his verdict on
the day’s global events.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview 237;
Virgin 606; Freesat 217; YouTube,
connected TVs and smart devices
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys 7.00 Antiques Roadshow
8.00 Bangers & Cash — Restoring
Classics. The team take on a Series 1
Land Rover 9.00 Bangers & Cash.
Two editions 11.00 Abandoned
Engineering 12.00-1.00 Great
British Railway Journeys
DAVE
6.00pm Rick Stein’s Mediterranean
Escapes 7.00 House Of Games
8.20 Would I Lie To You? 9.00 QI
10.00 Gavin & Stacey 10.40 Two
Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of
Crisps 12.00 Mock The Week 12.40
Would I Lie To You? 1.20-2.20 QI
Factual
6.00pm Lost Treasures Of Egypt
7.00 Air Crash Investigation 8.00
Ultimate Supercar 9.00 Ice Road
Rescue 10.00 Drain The Oceans
11.00 Air Crash Investigation
12.00 To Catch A Smuggler
1.00-2.00 Banged Up Abroad
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Salvage Hunters 7.00
Wheeler Dealers 8.00 Railroad Alaska
5 Performances... Radio & Podcasts
The Queen ○ 28 Dates Later
(podcast)
Grace Campbell’s
Wrote. In a London Review
of Books podcast, What is
British Humour
world-weary delivery is Anyway?, Jonathan Coe
perfect for this new discusses what makes our

1
Claire Foy
(The Crown, Netflix)
The original star of the
drama, Foy won popular
and critical acclaim for
her fine performance as
the young monarch.
Helen Mirren twice-weekly series on comedy special and UK
in The Queen the horrors of modern political satire with Malin
dating. Running up to Hay.
Valentine’s Day, the
comedian and writer ○ Gangster
aims to go on 28 dates (BBC Sounds)
over two months, going In this new series of
out with men who are Gangster, Livvy Haydock

2
Helen Mirren different from her usual Date night: Grace Campbell looks at Birmingham’s
(The Queen, Disney) type. There’s post-match (28 Dates Later podcast) Burger Bar Boys, a gang
She won an Oscar for (or badly matched) formed after the 1983
her role in Stephen analysis with Grace and ○ Great Lives Handsworth riots who
Frears’ drama about her friends Roz and Dan, (Radio 4 Extra, 9pm) fought with machineguns.
the royals in turmoil. who offer tough love on Penelope Keith nominates They murdered two
her behaviour. Good to Morecambe and Wise with teenage girls in a drive-by

3
Olivia Colman hear a man involved in the help of Eric’s son, Gary, shooting in 2003, and the
(The Crown, this, as there are too and Martin Sterling, the deaths led to the gang’s
Netflix) many dating podcasts Coronation Street script grip being loosened as
The second actress to play which involve women editor and the consultant those terrorised by them
the part in The Crown, endlessly dissing their on the comedy based on spoke out.
Colman won a Golden hapless suitors. the duo, The Play What I Clair Woodward
Globe and an Emmy.
TIMES RADIO RADIO 4 EXTRA 5.00 In Tune 7.00 Classical

4
Emma Thompson
(Playhouse Presents 5.00 Rosie Wright With Early
Breakfast 6.00 Aasmah Mir And
. . . Walking The Dogs,
Stig Abell With Times Radio
YouTube) Breakfast 10.00 Matt Chorley 1.00
A retelling of the 1982 Mariella Frostrup 3.00 Jane Garvey
And Fi Glover 5.00 John Pienaar
palace break-in by
With Times Radio Drive 7.00
Michael Fagan. Pienaar And Friends 8.00 The
Evening Edition With Kait Borsay
Mixtape 7.30 In Concert. Live
5.00 The Curiosity Cabinet 5.45 from City Halls, Glasgow, Alpesh
Short Works 6.00 Julie Enfield
Chauhan conducts the BBC
Investigates — Murder West One
Scottish Symphony Orchestra in a
6.45 Dick Barton — Special Agent
concert of Strauss and Mahler
7.00 Grandmothers 7.15 The Old
10.00 Free Thinking. Matthew
Wives’ Tale (R) 7.30 The Break 8.00
Dad’s Army 8.30 Second Thoughts
Sweet is joined by guests
including the authors Una
9.00 The Unbelievable Truth 9.30
McCormack and Naomi Alderman
Stockport, So Good They Named It
to discuss Ursula Le Guin’s The

5
Jeannette
Charles
(Various)
In films from
The Naked
Gun to Austin
Powers.
Tim
Glanfield
9.00 Survive The Raft. A newcomer
comes ready to light a match and
watch the raft burn 10.00 Naked
And Afraid Brazil 11.15 Expedition
Unknown 12.15-1.15 Moonshiners
PBS AMERICA
5.45pm Israel — A Twice Promised
Land 6.55 Royal History’s Biggest
Fibs 8.10 1945-1953 — From World
War To Cold War 9.20 Afghanistan
— The Wounded Land 10.30-12.00
Royal History’s Biggest Fibs
SKY DOCUMENTARIES
6.00pm The Eighties 6.55 Hostages
8.00 The Man Who Played With Fire
9.00 You Were My First Boyfriend
11.00-1.00 Sergio Leone — The
Italian Who Invented America
SKY NATURE
6.00pm Gangs Of Lemur Island
7.00 Monkey Life 8.00 Australia’s
Hidden Islands 9.00 Wild Castles
10.00 Gangs Of Lemur Island
11.00-12.00 Wild Birds Of Australia
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Combat Dealers 7.00
Hidden City Of The Incas 8.00
Wings Of War 9.00 Combat
Dealers 10.00 Salvage Hunters
11.00-12.00 Shed And Buried
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 LIVE DP World
Tour Golf 8.00 LIVE ICC Cricket
World Cup. The second semi-final
4.30 Sports Desk 5.00 LIVE PGA
Tour Golf. The RSM Classic 7.00
LIVE Grand Slam Of Darts. Day six
11.00 News 12.00 LIVE NFL 4.30-
6.00 LIVE Formula 1. The Las Vegas
Grand Prix first practice session
TNT SPORTS 1
6.00am Reload 6.30 Serie A — Full
Impact 7.00 Ariel Helwani Meets
7.15 WWE NXT 9.00 Badminton
Weekly 9.15 Reload 9.30 The WRC
Magazine 10.00 LIVE World Rally
Championship. Special stage 1 in the
Rally Japan 11.00 African Football
League 12.00 PL Netbusters 12.30
PL Stories 1.00 National League
3.00 Premiership Rugby Union
5.00 WWE Friday Night Smackdown
6.30 WWE Monday Night Raw 9.00
WWE NXT Highlights 10.00 LIVE
World Rally Championship. Special
stages 2, 3 and 4 in Japan 1.00
Original Documentary 2.30
NBA Action 3.00 LIVE NBA
5.30-6.00 Serie A — Full Impact
10.00 Henry Bonsu 1.00 Stories
Of Our Times 1.30 Red Box 2.00
Highlights From Times Radio
To get in touch with the Times
Radio studio, text TIMES plus your
message to 87222. Texts cost
your standard message charge.
RADIO 4
5.30 News 5.43 Prayer 5.45
Farming Today 5.58 Tweet Of The
Day (R) 6.00 Today 8.31 (LW)
Yesterday In Parliament 9.00 In
Our Time 9.45 Book Of The Week
9.45 (LW) Daily Service 10.00
Woman’s Hour 11.00 From Our
Own Correspondent 11.30 A Good
Read. Harriett Gilbert talks books
with India Knight and Emma
Dabiri (R) 12.00 News 12.01 (LW)
Shipping 12.04 You And Yours
12.32 Sliced Bread 1.00 The
World At One 1.45 The Great Post
Office Trial 2.00 The Archers (R)
2.15 Drama: Elsinore, by Sebastian
Baczkiewicz. Unrest at King
Hamlet’s increasingly repressive
regime forces his brother
Claudius to act. With John Light
and John Heffernan (R) 3.00
Open Country 3.27 Appeal (R)
3.30 Open Book (R) 4.00 Legend
— The Joni Mitchell Story.
Exploring the years 1970 to 1974,
including the recording of Blue
4.30 Inside Science 5.00 PM
5.54 (LW) Shipping 6.00 News
6.30 It’s A Fair Cop (R) 7.00 The
Archers 7.15 Front Row 8.00 Law
In Action (R) 8.30 The Bottom
Line 9.00 Inside Science (R) 9.30
In Our Time (R) 10.00 The World
Tonight 10.45 Book At Bedtime
11.00 The Today Podcast 11.30
Today In Parliament 12.00 News
12.30 Book Of The Week (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
Once 10.00 The Curiosity Cabinet
10.45 Short Works 11.00 Julie
Enfield Investigates — Murder West
One 11.45 Dick Barton — Special
Agent 12.00 Grandmothers 12.15
The Old Wives’ Tale (R) 12.30 The
Break 1.00 Dad’s Army 1.30 Second
Thoughts 2.00 The Unbelievable
Truth 2.30 Stockport, So Good They
Named It Once 3.00 The Curiosity
Cabinet 3.45 Short Works 4.00
Julie Enfield Investigates — Murder
West One 4.45 Dick Barton —
Special Agent 5.00 Grandmothers
5.15 The Old Wives’ Tale (R) 5.30
The Break 6.00 Dad’s Army 6.30
Second Thoughts 7.00 The
Unbelievable Truth 7.30 Stockport,
So Good They Named It Once 8.00
The Real Comedy Controllers —
The Things That Made Us Laugh
9.00 Great Lives 9.30 Doctor
Who — Tenth Doctor Adventures
10.00 It’s A Fair Cop 10.30 The
Lawrence Sweeney Mix 11.00
State Of The Nations 11.30-12.00
A Look Back At The Future
LBC
7.00 Nick Ferrari 10.00 James
O’Brien 1.00 Shelagh Fogarty 4.00
Tom Swarbrick 6.00 Andrew Marr
7.00 Ali Miraj 10.00 Ben Kentish
1.00 Clive Bull 4.00 Ian Payne
RADIO 3
6.30 Breakfast 9.00 Essential
Classics 12.00 Composer Of The
Week 1.00 Lunchtime Concert. The
violinist Elena Urioste and the
pianist Tom Poster play Strauss’s
late, highly virtuosic Violin Sonata
alongside Luise Adolpha Le Beau’s
Violin Sonata in C minor 2.00
Afternoon Concert. The Vienna SO
perform Richard Strauss’s Ein
Heldenleben; plus, Ensemble
Polyharmonique in concert
Ones Who Walk Away from
Omelas 10.45 The Essay. Artists,
writers and thinkers talk about
how they have been shaped by
their ’ways of being’ (R) 11.00
The Night Tracks Mix. Sara
Mohr-Pietsch with a magical sonic
journey for late-night listening
11.30 Unclassified. Music by Lisa
Lerkenfeldt and Makoto Nomura
12.30 Through The Night
CLASSIC FM
6.00 Tim Lihoreau 9.00
Alexander Armstrong 12.00
Anne-Marie Minhall 4.00
Margherita Taylor 7.00 Zeb
Soanes 10.00 Ritula Shah 1.00
Bill Overton 4.00 Lucy Coward
RADIO 2
6.30 The Zoe Ball Breakfast
Show. Vernon Kay is in the Peak
District 9.30 Richie Anderson
12.00 Jeremy Vine 2.00 Scott
Mills 4.00 Sara Cox 7.00 Jo
Whiley 10.00 Trevor Nelson’s
12.00 OJ Borg 3.00 Sounds Of
The 90s With Fearne Cotton (R)
4.00 Owain Wyn Evans
VIRGIN RADIO
6.30 The Chris Evans Breakfast
Show 10.00 Eddy Temple-Morris
1.00 Jayne Middlemiss 4.00
Ricky Wilson 7.00 Bam
10.00 Amy Voce 1.00 Sean
Goldsmith 4.00 Steve Denyer
TALKSPORT
5.00 Early Breakfast 6.00
Breakfast With Alan Brazil 10.00
Jim White And Simon Jordan
1.00 Hawksbee And Baker 4.00
Drive With Andy Goldstein And
Darren Bent 7.00 Kick Off 10.00
Sports Bar 1.00 Extra Time

12 November 23 49
FRIDAY 17 NOVEMBER
BBC 1 BBC 2
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
9.15 Morning Live Magazine.
10.15 Homes Under The
Hammer Interior designer
Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen
explores a three-bedroom
terrace near Bristol.
12.15 Bargain Hunt Jean-
Christophe Novelli and
Rustie Lee take on Heather
Small and Rick Wakeman.
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.45 London Kills Drinking links
the end of a dead man’s
marriage, his son’s
attempted revenge and
David’s absence. (S4, ep 4)
2.30 The Bidding Room
A tin plate toy boat and
a vintage petrol pump
are offered for sale. (R)
3.15 Escape To The Country
Jules Hudson helps a
couple find a new home in
the Welsh Borders. (R)
3.45 Antiques Road Trip Raj
Bisram and Irita Marriott are
in coastal Lincolnshire.
4.30 The Repair Shop The
team works wonders to
revive a treasured leather
braid bracelet. (R)
5.15 Pointless Quiz show.
6.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.30 Regional News Update.
7.00 CHOICE Children In Need
Ade Adepitan, Mel
Giedroyc, Chris Ramsey,
Alex Scott, Jason Manford
and Lenny Rush front this
year’s appeal night live
from Media City UK,
featuring one-off sketches
from some of the UK’s
most-loved TV shows —
including MasterChef and
Race Across The World
— and music by Jerub,
Leigh-Anne, and the UK’s
Junior Eurovision act Stand
Uniqu3. (See Critics’ choice)
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
10.40 FILM: Pretty Woman
Stars Julia Roberts and
Richard Gere. A millionaire
businessman hires a
prostitute for a week, and
falls in love with her despite
their many differences.
Glossy romcom. (1990, 15)
12.35 RuPaul’s Drag Race UK A
makeover challenge. (R)
1.40-6.00 Joins BBC News
SCOTLAND 6.30 Reporting
Scotland; Weather. 12.35 A View
From The Terrace. 1.35 RuPaul’s
Drag Race UK. 2.40 BBC News.
Variations
BBC1 WALES 1.35 BBC News
BBC2 WALES 7.30 Scrum V. Live
9.30 The Newsreader 10.20 The
Fast And The Farmer-ish BBC
SCOTLAND 7.00 The Seven
8.00 Scotland — The New Wild
9.00 Still Game 9.30 Burnistoun
10.00 Children In Need
11.00-12.00 A View From The
Terrace STV 6.00 Good Morning
Britain 9.00 Lorraine 10.00 This
Morning 12.30 Loose Men 1.30
News; Weather 2.00 James
Martin’s American Adventure
50 12 November 2023
6.45 Villages By The Sea (R)
7.15 Antiques Road Trip (R)
8.00 Gardeners’ World
(Signed, Last in series, R)
9.00 Nicky Campbell Debate.
10.00 News; Weather Reports.
12.15 Politics UK Updates.
1.00 The Boss Quiz show. (R)
1.45 Lightning Quiz. (R)
2.15 Eat Well For Less? (R)
3.15 Oceans Exploring. (R)
4.15 This Farming Life (R)
5.15 Flog It! In Nottingham. (R)
6.00 House Of Games Sheree
Murphy, Toussaint
Douglass, Mark Foster and
Sian Williams take part.
6.30 Strictly — It Takes Two
Janette Manrara is on hand
with more exclusives.
7.00 Villages By The Sea Ben
Robinson heads to Beer in
Devon, home to Beer stone
which has been quarried
since Roman times.
7.30 Beechgrove Garden In
Winter George Anderson
and Carole Baxter answer
viewers’ questions and
offer more tips and advice.
8.00 Monty Don’s American
Gardens The presenter
explores gardens of early
independent America,
learning how the history of
the South is still very much
evident in the places and
people he meets. (R)
9.00 The Newsreader As the
hype builds for the 1988
bicentennial, Geoff’s
telethon is interrupted by a
protest, thrusting Aboriginal
activist Lynus Preston into
the spotlight. (S2, ep 4)
9.50 The Fast And The
Farmer-ish The best
tractor driving teams from
England and Wales prepare
for the first semi-final. (R)
10.00 Red Dwarf Holly’s new
invention hurls the crew
into a parallel universe
inhabited by their
opposites. (Last in series, R)
10.30 Newsnight Headlines.
11.05 The Secret Genius Of
Modern Life Hannah Fry
looks at the technology
that goes into the modern
vacuum cleaner. (R)
12.05 Shakespeare —
Rise Of A Genius (R)
1.05 Panorama (Signed, R)
1.35 Saving Lives At Sea
Documentary. (Signed, R)
2.35-3.15 Eva Longoria —
Searching For Mexico In
Mexico City. (Signed, R)
3.00 Lingo 4.00 Tipping Point
5.00 The Chase 6.00 Regional
News 6.30 News; Weather 7.30
Emmerdale 8.00 Coronation
Street 9.00 Big Brother 10.30
News; Weather 11.00 Regional
News 11.15 The NFL Show 12.10
The Voice 1.25 Cash Trapped 2.15
Loose Men 3.05 Angela Black
3.55 Night Vision 5.05-6.00
Made In Britain S4C 6.00 Cyw
12.00 Newyddion A’r Tywydd
12.05 3 Lle 12.30 Heno 1.00 Y
Sioe Fwyd 1.30 Sgwrs Dan Y Lloer
2.00 Newyddion A’r Tywydd 2.05
Prynhawn Da 3.00 Newyddion
ITV 1
6.00 Good Morning Britain
9.00 Lorraine Lifestyle chat.
10.00 This Morning Features.
12.30 Loose Men Topical debate,
with an all-male panel.
1.30 News; Weather Reports.
2.00 James Martin’s American
Adventure The chef ends
his culinary road trip
around the United States in
New York. (Last in series, R)
3.00 Lingo A South Wales
couple, a father and
daughter duo from London
and a pair of Birmingham
brothers compete. (R)
4.00 Tipping Point Gameshow,
with Ben Shephard. (R)
5.00 The Chase Bradly Walsh
presents the quiz show. (R)
6.00 Regional News Update.
6.30 News; Weather Reports.
7.30 Emmerdale Pressure
builds for Mack; Kim heads
to see Cain; and Jimmy and
Nicola make secret plans.
8.00 Coronation Street Sean
puts a stop to Dylan and
Mason’s vape enterprise;
Jenny receives a sad
update on the future of the
Rovers; and Amy’s vigilance
saves a woman from a
dangerous drink-spiker.
9.00 Big Brother Will Best
and AJ Odudu present,
as the rebooted reality
show comes to an end,
with the final few
housemates hoping they
have what it takes to walk
off with the £100,000 prize
money. (Last in series)
10.30 News; Weather Reports.
11.15 The NFL Show Craig Doyle
presents action from the
opening match of week 11
between Baltimore Ravens
and Cincinnati Bengals.
12.10 The Voice Contest. (R)
1.25 Cash Trapped Quiz. (R)
2.15 Loose Men Debate. (R)
3.05 Angela Black (5/6, R)
3.55 Unwind Daily relaxation.
5.05-6.00 Made In Britain (R)
Host: Adam Hills (C4, 11.05pm)
3.05 Prosiect Pum Mil 4.00
Awr Fawr: Blociau Lliw 4.05
Cymylaubychain 4.15 Caru Canu
A Stori 4.25 Blero Yn Mynd I
Ocido 4.40 Ne-wff-ion 5.00
Stwnsh: Larfa 5.05 Tekkers 5.35
Rygbi Pawb 5.50 Newyddion Ni
6.00 Cais Quinnell 6.35 Bex
6.57 Newyddion 7.00 Heno 7.30
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 8.00 Mike
Phillips — Croeso I Dubai 8.55
Newyddion A’r Tywydd 9.00
Lleisiau Eraill — Aberteifi 10.00
Sgorio Rhyngwladol — Uefa
Euro 2024 10.30-11.35 Jason
Mohammad — Stadiymau’r Byd
Channel 4
6.05 Countdown Game. (R)
6.45 Cheers Comedy. (R)
7.35 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
8.25 Frasier Sitcom. (R)
9.55 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (R)
10.55 The Great House
Giveaway In Leicester. (R)
11.55 News; Weather Reports.
12.00 Steph’s Packed Lunch
2.10 Countdown Gameshow.
3.00 A Place In The Sun A
Runcorn couple try to
find a property on Spain’s
Costa Blanca. (R) 4.00
A Place In The Sun
Friends seek a suitable
home in Fuerteventura.
5.00 Help! We Bought A
Village Ongoing works
threaten to overshadow
the start of the new season.
6.00 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 CHOICE International
Football Jules Breach
presents live coverage of
England v Malta in the
Group C Uefa Euro 2024
qualifier at Wembley
Stadium. Kickoff at 7.45.
(See Critics’ choice)
10.00 Gogglebox The armchair
critics share their opinions
on what they have been
watching during the week,
with cameras capturing
their instant reactions.
11.05 CHOICE The Last Leg
Adam Hills, Josh
Widdicombe and Alex
Brooker are joined by the
actor David Tennant and
the comedian Thanyia
Moore for a comic review
of the significant moments
of the past seven days.
(See Critics’ choice)
12.10 International Football
Jules Breach presents
highlights of the Group C
Uefa Euro 2024 qualifier
between England and
Malta at Wembley Stadium.
1.05 FILM: Pitch Perfect 3
Stars Anna Kendrick, Rebel
Wilson and Brittany Snow.
Following their win at the
world championship, the
Bellas reunite for one last
singing competition at an
overseas tour. Directionless
comedy sequel. (2017, 12)
2.40 Ramsay’s Hotel Hell
A struggling restaurant in
Washington needs help. (R)
3.30 Come Dine With Me (R)
5.40-6.05 Strangers On A
Plane Travel contest. (R)
Why on earth is ITV foisting I’m A Celebrity...
Get Me Out Of Here! on us once again?
It is so far past its sell-by date — along with its
two presenters.
You say
Bob Watson
Thanks are due to ITV and its team for showing
the Rugby World Cup matches in full. Great
coverage and knowledgeable commentary
has made for a most enjoyable watching
experience. Very well done.
Abi Tudor
Send your comments to: telly@sunday-times.co.uk
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.15 Jeremy Vine Debate.
11.15 Storm Huntley Opinions.
12.15 Alexis Conran Debate.
12.50 Entertainment News
12.55 News; Weather Reports.
1.00 Home And Away
Eden and Remi swerve
Kirby’s solo launch. (R)
1.30 A Magical Christmas
Story Drama, with Erin
Cahill and Steve Lund. A
woman whose husband is
missing presumed dead
keeps his memory alive
through the stories she
tells their daughter.
3.15 The Christmas Stocking
Fantasy, with Mykelti
Williamson and Tamala
Jones. An angel returns
to the land of the living
on a mission to help his
sisters to reconcile.
5.00 News; Weather Reports.
6.00 Dogs Behaving (Very)
Badly Graeme Hall meets a
family struggling to adjust
after adding a third dog
to their household. (R)
6.55 News; Weather Reports.
7.00 Shop Smart, Save Money
Angellica Bell and Ortis
Deley help a mum and her
daughters choose the best
products at the right price.
7.55 News; Weather Reports.
8.00 Susan Calman’s Grand
Day Out The presenter
enjoys scenic views from
the stunning shores of
Loch Lochy, and has a
go at axe throwing. (R)
9.00 The Good Ship Murder
The luxury liner sails to
Sicily and a saga unfolds
involving a terminally ill
businessman, his children
and his new wife. (6/8)
10.00 FILM: The Dirty Dozen
Stars Lee Marvin and Telly
Savalas. Twelve convicts
are sent on a mission to
destroy a French chateau
being used as a German
military base. A wartime
powerhouse. (1967, 12)
1.00 Casino Show Gambling.
3.00 Bad Girls Behind Bars (R)
3.45 The All-Inclusive —
How Do They Do It:
And Should You? (R)
4.30 Divine Designs (R)
5.00 House Doctor Advice. (R)
5.20 Entertainment News
5.30 Children’s Shows Fun.
5.45 Entertainment News
5.50-6.00 Children’s Shows
 Critics’ choice
Children In Need (BBC1, 7pm)
Although the children’s charity
(which was launched in 1980)
raised more than £35 million in
2022, there’s no denying that over
the past few years takings have
dropped, which puts some
pressure on the hosts of tonight’s
extravaganza. Old hands Jason
Manford, Ade Adepitan, Alex
Scott, Chris Ramsey and Mel
Giedroyc don’t seem too
perturbed, and with the addition
of the child actor Lenny Rush
(Am I Being Unreasonable?) as
co-presenter, they hope to target
that all-important kid audience
and harness “pester power” to
persuade parents to donate. For
all the technical whizz-bangery,
this promises to be a night of
old-fashioned variety, with a treat
from the Doctor Who team, a
puppet takeover of the MasterChef
kitchen and a parody of Race
Across The World, with the town of
Pudsey the ultimate destination
all in aid of a very good cause.
Helen Stewart
Angelheaded Hipster — The
Songs Of Mark Bolan & T Rex
(Sky Arts/Now, 9pm)
On the glitter-cheeked face of it,
this is a film about a “happening”
brought about by the veteran music
producer Hal Willner and the Who
manager Bill Curbishley, who
welcomed an impressive line-up of
musicians, from U2 and Nick Cave
to Joan Jett, Beth Orton, Maria
McKee and Bolan’s own son Rolan
and had them each interpret a
song. Willner, who died of Covid-19
in the year of the record’s release,
says: “Bolan was hardly ever talked
about as a ‘composer’. It was all
about what a great rocker he was,
how innovative he was, how David
Bowie took his essence and Bolan
was in his shadow.” One can’t help
but think that Bowie would
approve of this film, which
assembles dazzling archive footage
and imagery of his friend and
shows how Bolan came of age with
colour television itself. HS
On demand
○ Monarch — Legacy Of
Monsters (Apple TV+)
Anyone hoping for mega-lizard
battles in this latest addition to the
Godzilla/King Kong franchise will
be disappointed. Created by Chris
Black (the Severance producer) and
Matt Fraction, a comic book artist,
this ten-part series is about human
drama. Partly set in the 1950s, as
Wyatt Russell’s Lieutenant Lee
Shaw establishes the secretive
Your hosts: Adepitan, Scott, Ramsey, Rush and Giedroyc (BBC1, 7pm)
Country Music Awards
(BBC4, 10.35pm)
With at least two truck-themed
songs in the running for prizes
here, it’s fair to say that the 57th
Annual Country Music Association
Awards isn’t on an urgent mission
to shift any paradigms or shatter
any clichés for 2023. Bob Harris
will be guiding British viewers
through highlights from this year’s
show in Nashville, Tennessee, with
performances from Jelly Roll, Chris
Stapleton and Tanya Tucker, as
well as a Jimmy Buffett tribute set.
Marc Bolan (Sky Arts/Now, 9pm)
organisation Monarch, the series
also unfolds in the post-apocalyptic
2010s, the older Shaw now played
by Kurt Russell (Wyatt’s dad). As a
piece of franchise expansion, this is
ambitious stuff. It’s the Russells’
show and the father-son duo invest
it with a welcome charm and soul.
○ Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
(Netflix)
Thirteen years on from Edgar
Wright’s live-action adaptation of
Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel
The Last Leg (C4, 11.05pm)
Now in its 29th series, this
chat-show challenger to Have I Got
News For You’s comic current
affairs throne has lost none of its
satirical vim as time passes.
Stalwart presenters Adam Hills,
Josh Widdicombe and Alex Brooker
are back to scrutinise the week’s
news. They are joined by Thanyia
Moore, the stand-up comedian and
actor, and — in the spirit of the
imminent Doctor Who 60th
anniversary celebrations this
month — David Tennant.
Unwanted (Sky Atlantic/Now,
9pm/10.05pm)
Based on Fabrizio Gatti’s
bestselling book Bilal, this Italian
show dramatises the conflicts of
illegal migration as a cruise ship
rescues 28 shipwrecked refugees.
In this double bill, desperate
measures escalate the tension as
Tareq holds the ship hostage.
Victoria Segal
comes an eight-episode anime
sequel that reunites the original
cast: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth
Winstead, Kieran Culkin, the lot.
○ Nothing To See Here (Netflix)
Alexis Arroyo, a blind Mexican
comedian, plays a fictionalised
version of himself in this Spanish-
language comedy drama about an
aspiring comic with a manager(Kike
Vázquez) who has cerebral palsy.
Funny, bittersweet and inspiring.
Andrew Male
England host Malta as
they play for top spot
England have already qualified for
Euro 2024 after beating Italy 3-1 at
Wembley last month, so this
penultimate game against Malta
(C4, 7pm; ko 7.45pm) — much
like their trip to North Macedonia
on Monday — may offer a chance
for Gareth Southgate to mix things
up in the starting XI. However, the
team will be keen to keep up the
momentum and finish top of the
group, so don’t expect the Three
Lions to take their foot off the gas
until the final whistle blows.
Tim Glanfield
Gareth
Southgate
(C4, from
7pm)
Film choice
Renfield (Sky Cinema Premiere,
12.10pm/8pm)
Nicolas Cage, who often draws his
lifeblood from juicy, over-the-top
roles, sinks his teeth into playing
Dracula in this horror comedy. Set
in the present day, Chris McKay’s
film centres on the vampire count’s
undying henchman, Renfield
(Nicholas Hoult), who is now
desperate to be rid of his toxic
boss. The mix of humour and gory
action is neither all-out funny nor
truly scary, but Cage’s performance
— a full Bela Lugosi routine overlaid
with rock-star glamour — is well
worth seeing. (2023)
Daddy Long Legs (TPTV, 8.10am)
This musical is rather out of step
with modern views on male stars
paired with younger women — Fred
Astaire plays a middle-aged tycoon
who falls for an orphan (Leslie
Caron) whose education he has
anonymously funded. Yet those
two great dancers work superbly
together in the film’s carefree tale.
Dir: Jean Negulesco (1955)
Cutthroat Island
(buy as stream/download)
This jokey take on swashbuckling
pirate adventures has been
reissued in a restored version. It
might boost the growing belief that
Renny Harlin’s rumbustious movie
(starring Geena Davis and Matthew
Modine) was unlucky to be a box-
office flop. (1995)
Edward Porter
12 November 2023 51
FRIDAY 17 NOVEMBER
BBC 3 BBC 4
7.00pm Top Gear The trio create
a street circuit in Spain.
8.00 Race Across The World
For the next leg, the teams
choose whether to travel
through Bolivia or Chile.
9.00 FILM: Words On
Bathroom Walls Stars
Charlie Plummer. A
teenager struggles to keep
his mental illness a secret
while falling in love.
Sensitive drama. (2020, 12)
10.45 Some Girls Amber
struggles to cope with
her feelings for Brandon.
(Series 1, ep 5) 11.15 Some
Girls Saz is determined
to lose her virginity.
11.45 Charlotte In Sunderland
12.45 The Skinny Jab Uncovered
1.15 The Rap Game UK
2.15 Grime Kids Drama. (1/5)
3.00-4.00 Some Girls Comedy.
Drama
6.00pm ’Allo ’Allo! Michelle
tries to steal the Fallen
Madonna from Herr Flick.
6.40 Last Of The Summer Wine
Howard hires a surveillance
team to follow Pearl. 7.20
Last Of The Summer Wine
Truly investigates the case
of a bus that disappeared
between stops.
8.00 Father Brown The priest
is determined to find out
why the body of a young
man was taken from his
graveyard. (Series 4, ep 8)
9.00 Father Brown The
sleuthing priest tries to
solve the murder of an
aeronautics magnate’s son.
10.00 New Tricks The team
reinvestigates the murder
of a policewoman. (S1, ep 2)
11.20-1.20 Dalziel & Pascoe
A tourist is found battered
to death. (Series 8, ep 1)
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
4.20pm Retribution (2023, 12) 6.05
The Last Rifleman. Drama. (2022, 15)
8.00 CHOICE Renfield. Dracula’s
henchman tries to make a new life
away from the Count. (2023, 15;
see Film choice) 9.50-12.10 Big
George Foreman. The life of the
former boxing champion. (2023, 12)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
4.10pm Revolver (2005, 15) 6.10
Reindeer Games (2000, 15) 8.00
Inferno. A professor suffering from
amnesia tries to stop a lethal virus
from killing millions. (2016, 12) 10.05
Shaft. A tough-talking cop quits the
force to bring a racist murderer to
justice on his own terms. (2000, 18)
11.50-1.40 Snatch (2000, 18)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
6.00pm Top Gun. A pilot causes
conflict when he joins an American
navy fighter school. (1986, 12) 8.00
The Patriot. A retired soldier vows to
avenge the unprovoked murder of
his son by British forces. (2000, 15)
10.50-12.50 Terminator Salvation.
Sci-fi thriller sequel. (2009, 12)
52 12 November 2023
7.00pm Top Of The Pops Reef,
Curtis Stigers, Radiohead
and Pulp from June 1995.
7.30 Top Of The Pops
With Michael Jackson,
Annie Lennox, U2 and the
Bluetones. 8.00 Top Of
The Pops With Rozalla,
Tina Turner and Michael
Jackson. 8.30 Top Of The
Pops With Elton John.
9.00 Linda Ronstadt — The
Sound Of My Voice
Documentary about the
versatile female singer.
10.35 CHOICE Country Music
Awards Highlights of the
57th staging of the awards.
(See Critics’ choice)
11.35 The Old Grey Whistle
Test: Linda Ronstadt.
A performance from 1976.
12.25 Sisters In Country —
Dolly, Linda And Emmylou
1.25-3.25 Top Of The Pops
Sky Arts
6.00pm Tales Of The
Unexpected A crooked
antiques dealer tries to con
a farmer. (Series 3, ep 6)
6.30 Tales Of The
Unexpected A scorned
husband seeks revenge.
7.00 Guy Garvey — From The
Vaults The Elbow frontman
introduces clips from the
television archives from
1981. 8.00 Guy Garvey
— From The Vaults
Television appearances
by Britpop era bands.
9.00 CHOICE Angelheaded
Hipster — The Songs Of
Marc Bolan & T Rex
Celebrating the band.
(See Critics’ choice)
11.00-12.15 Chuck Berry —
Brown-Eyed Handsome
Man A collection of
performances of songs
by the rock’n’roll pioneer.
SKY CINEMA SELECT
3.20pm The Hobbit — An
Unexpected Journey (2012, 12)
6.20 The Hobbit — The Desolation
Of Smaug. The party of dwarves
and their hobbit ally face a dragon.
(2013, 12) 9.05 The Hobbit — The
Battle Of The Five Armies. Dwarf
king Thorin descends into madness
as his homeland stands on the
brink of war. (2014, 15) 11.40-2.50
The Lord Of The Rings — The
Fellowship Of The Ring (2001, PG)
FILM4
3.35pm El Dorado (1966, PG) 6.10
Transformers — Revenge Of The
Fallen. The shape-changing robots
fight for control of an evil machine.
(2009, 12) 9.00 Darkman. A
scientist disfigured by a criminal
gang seeks revenge on those
responsible. (1990, 18) 10.50-12.35
Dead Man’s Shoes (2004, 18)
TALKING PICTURES TV
6.00pm No Time For Tears. A
caring matron adopts two ill-treated
youngsters. (1957, U) 7.45 Bindle
(1966, U) 9.05 Ben. A detective
investigates the killing of a man by
trained rats. (1972, PG) 11.00-1.15
The Ninth Configuration (1979, 18)
ITV 2
6.00pm Catchphrase Peter
Andre, Georgia Toffolo,
Helen Flanagan and Alison
Hammond play for charity.
7.00 Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win
A married couple try to
climb the money ladder.
8.00 Bob’s Burgers Bob ends
up working at a local
sandwich shop. (Series 9,
ep 16) 8.30 Bob’s Burgers
Gene tries to save a
misunderstood plankton
blob from being destroyed.
9.00 Big Brother The final of the
reality show sees the last
few housemates hoping
they have what it takes
to win the prize money.
10.30 Big Brother — Late & Live
AJ Odudu and Will Best
host the companion show.
11.35-12.05 Family Guy Brian
passes on herpes to
Stewie. (Series 12, ep 16)
Sky Max
6.00pm Stargate SG-1 The
team revisits a planet they
helped free from Goa’uld
enslavement. (Series 4, ep
21, R) 7.00 Stargate SG-1
The team pays a visit to
the Tok’ra homeworld in
Cronos’s mothership. (R)
8.00 A League Of Their Own
Guests Christian Horner
and Alex Brooker take on
a G-force challenge. (R)
9.00 FILM: The Expendables 3
Stars Sylvester Stallone,
Mel Gibson and Jason
Statham. Soldier of fortune
Barney Ross recruits a new
team to battle an arms
dealer with a score to
settle. Familiar thriller
sequel. (2014, 15) (R)
11.15-12.15 The Lazarus Project
Sci-fi thriller, with Paapa
Essiedu. (Series 2, ep 1, R)
Entertainment
ITV4
5.10pm Minder 6.15 Made In Britain
6.45 LIVE Snooker — Champion Of
Champions. The opening semi-final
10.00 All Elite Wrestling — Dynamite
12.05 Extreme Salvage Squad
1.05-2.10 The Professionals
MORE4
5.50pm The Secret Life Of The Zoo
6.55 The Dog House 7.55 Grand
Designs 9.00 For Life 10.00 24 Hours
In A&E 12.05 Emergency Helicopter
Medics 1.10-3.20 24 Hours In A&E
GOLD
6.00pm Still Open All Hours 6.40
The Green Green Grass 7.20 The
Good Life 8.00 Dad’s Army 9.20
Only Fools And Horses 10.00 Not
Going Out 10.40 Here We Go
12.00 I’m Alan Partridge 12.40 Not
Going Out 1.20 I’m Alan Partridge
2.00-2.35 The Lenny Henry Show
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm The Conners 6.30 The Fresh
Prince Of Bel-Air 7.00 Will & Grace
8.00 The US Office 9.00 Intelligence
10.00 Breeders 10.30 The Tonight
Show 11.30 Sex And The City
ITV 3
5.55pm Heartbeat One of Kate’s
patients receives threats;
and Greengrass takes the
law into his own hands.
(S3, ep 6) 6.55 Heartbeat
Nick is left with a sore head
following an incident in a
graveyard; and Blaketon’s
home life is suffering.
8.00 Marple The sleuth looks
into the murder of her old
friend Father Gorman, using
a list of names sent by the
priest moments before his
death to bring the guilty
party to justice. (S5, ep 1)
10.00 DCI Banks When a fellow
officer is brutally stabbed,
Banks becomes obsessed
with one suspect — and
Anderson questions if he
is up to the job. (S5, ep 5)
11.05-12.10 DCI Banks A
suspended Banks prepares
to confront Steve Richards.
Sky Atlantic
5.30pm Succession Kendall
and the Waystar team work
together at the annual
shareholders’ meeting. (S3,
ep 5) 6.40 Succession
Logan and team head to
Virginia for a conservative
political conference.
7.50 House Of The Dragon
While mourning a tragic
loss, Rhaenyra tries
desperately to hold the
realm together. (10/10)
9.00 CHOICE Unwanted Tareq
orders the ship back to Italy.
(5/8) 10.05 Unwanted The
ship is surrounded by the
military; and Dilleta finds
she is pregnant. (Italian with
subtitles; see Critics’ choice)
11.10-12.10 Funeral For A Dog
The owner of the bar
suggests Felix’s death may
not have been an accident.
(3/8; German with subtitles)
12.40 Romantic Getaway. Two
episodes 1.40-2.35 The Rehearsal
5 STAR
6.00pm 101 Adorable Puppies 7.00
GPs — Behind Closed Doors. Patients
with chronic pain issues 8.00 Million
Pound Motorhomes 9.00 FILM: Robin
Hood 11.15 FILM: Final Destination
1.20-2.15 Trauma Room One
5 USA
6.00pm NCIS 10.00 Law & Order:
Special Victims Unit. Two episodes
12.00 NCIS 2.00-3.35 Blue Bloods
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Nothing To Declare 8.00
The Equalizer 9.00 FBI — Most
Wanted 10.00 Blue Bloods 11.00 The
Good Doctor 12.00 Coroner 1.00
Chicago Med 2.00-3.00 Transplant
W 7.00 Air Crash Investigation. An
6.00pm DIY SOS 7.00 Inside The
Ambulance 8.00 999 Rescue Squad
9.00 24 Hours In A&E 10.00 Ski A&E
11.00 The Catherine Tate Show
12.55-1.55 Dating With My Mates
COMEDY CENTRAL
6.00pm Friends 9.00 Dylan Moran
— Yeah, Yeah Live 10.00 Beavis And
Butt-Head 11.00 Ugly Americans
E4
6.00pm The Big Bang Theory
7.00 Hollyoaks Chester soap.
7.30 Young Sheldon Georgie
gives Missy some brotherly
advice. (Series 4, ep 9)
8.00 Modern Family The return
of the comedy, with Ed
O’Neill. (Series 10, ep 1)
8.30 Modern Family
Gloria suspects Manny’s
girlfriend is made up.
9.00 Gogglebox Memorable
moments of 2021, featuring
some of the country’s
favourite celebrities.
10.00 FILM: Jack Reacher Stars
Tom Cruise and Rosamund
Pike. A former military
police investigator takes
on the case of a random
shooting for which an
army sniper has been
framed. Brash action yarn.
(2012, 15; ends at 12.35)
Talk TV
4.00pm Vanessa Feltz
Political debates and all
the latest from parliament.
6.00 The Talk A panel of famous
faces debate hot topics.
7.00 Plank Of The Week
Presented by Mike Graham.
8.00 Friday Night Nadine
Dorries presents her take
on the week with guests.
9.00 Piers Morgan
Uncensored Best Of
The week’s global events.
10.00 Plank Of The Week
Mike Graham presents.
11.00 What Just Happened?
Kevin O’Sullivan wraps up
another eventful week.
11.30-12.00 The World
According To Mike
Graham The host explores
the week’s biggest stories.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview 237;
Virgin 606; Freesat 217; YouTube,
connected TVs and smart devices
11.30 FILM: Harold & Kumar Get The
Munchies. Stars John Cho 1.10
Digman! 1.40-3.05 South Park
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Great British Railway
Journeys 7.00 Antiques Roadshow
8.00 Secrets Of The London
Underground 9.00 Bangers & Cash
11.00 Abandoned Engineering 12.00-
1.00 Great British Railway Journeys
DAVE
6.00pm Rick Stein’s Mediterranean
Escapes 7.00 House Of Games 8.20
QI 9.00 FILM: Kill Bill — Volume 1
11.20 Mock The Week 12.40 Would I
Lie To You? 1.20-2.20 Taskmaster
Factual
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
6.00pm Lost Treasures Of Egypt
engine failure in 2010 8.00 Area 51
— I Was There 9.00 Air Crash
Investigation 10.00 Border Protection
Spain 11.00 Air Crash Investigation
12.00 To Catch A Smuggler
1.00-2.00 Banged Up Abroad
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Salvage Hunters 7.00
Wheeler Dealers 8.00 Gold Rush
5 Sport on TV
Highlights
1
Euro 2024 qualifier:
Armenia v Wales (Sat,
2pm, S4C/BBC iPlayer)
Wales can qualify if they
beat Armenia, and Croatia
lose to Latvia.
2
Grand Slam Of Darts (Fri,
7pm, Sky Sports Arena)
The PDC event nears
its final stages at
Aldersley Leisure Village,
Wolverhampton.
3
Snooker— The
Champion Of
Champions
(Fri, 7pm, ITVX)
Some of the
biggest names
in the game
battle it out at
the University
of Bolton
Stadium.
4
Las Vegas
Grand Prix
(Sun, Nov 19,
from 6am, Sky
Sports F1)
The F1 drivers take to
the streets in Sin City.
5
MotoGP Grand Prix Of
Qatar (Sun, Nov 19, from
2pm, TNT Sports 2)
The bikers head for the
Lusail Circuit.
Tim Glanfield
9.00 Alien Abduction — Travis
Walton 11.00 Expedition Unknown
12.00 Moonshiners 1.00-3.00
Alien Abduction — Travis Walton
PBS AMERICA
5.45pm Israel — A Twice Promised
Land 6.55 Royal History’s Biggest
Fibs. With Lucy Worsley 8.10 Putin’s
Crisis 9.20 Afghanistan — The
Wounded Land 10.30-12.00
Royal History’s Biggest Fibs
SKY DOCUMENTARIES
6.00pm The Eighties 6.55 Urban
Secrets 7.50 Burden Of Proof
— Who Killed Jennifer Pandos?
9.00 Six Silent Killings — Ireland’s
Vanishing Triangle 10.00-12.30
Kurt Cobain — Montage Of Heck
SKY NATURE
6.00pm Gangs Of Lemur Island
7.00 Monkey Life 8.00 City Wildlife
Rescue 9.00 Wild Family Ties
10.00 Gangs Of Lemur Island
11.00-12.00 Wild Birds Of Australia
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Combat Dealers 7.00
Treasures Of The Terracotta Army
8.00 Wings Of War 9.00 Combat
Dealers 10.00 Salvage Hunters
11.00-12.00 Shed And Buried
Snooker
sensation:
Mark Allen
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 LIVE DP
World Tour Golf 1.00 LIVE Ladies
European Tour Golf 4.00 The F1
Show 5.00 LIVE PGA Tour Golf
7.00 LIVE Grand Slam Of Darts
11.00 The F1 Show 12.00 News 4.15
LIVE Formula 1 5.45-6.00 My Icon
TNT SPORTS 1
6.00am Rallycross 7.00 WWE 9.00
Ariel Helwani Meets 10.00 NBA 10.30
LIVE World Rally Championship.
Special stage 8 in the Rally Japan
11.15 A-League 12.15 Sign Up 1.00
PL Reload 1.15 PL — Big Interview
1.45 Rugby Review 2.30 Champions
League 3.30 Basketball 4.30 World
Rally Championship 5.00 PL
Netbusters 5.30 Documentary 7.00
LIVE Rugby Union: Bath Rugby v
Bristol Bears. Kickoff 7.45 10.00
Champions League 10.30 World
Rally Championship 11.00 LIVE
World Rally Championship 11.45
Reload 12.00 WWE 1.00 LIVE
WWE 3.00 Ariel Helwani Meets 3.45
LIVE World Rally Championship
4.45 Reload 5.00-6.00 LIVE
World Rally Championship. In Japan
Radio & Podcasts
○ Where It’s At —
A Short History Of
Girlbands (BBC Sounds)
As part of the Radio 1
Stories series, the
Saturdays’ Mollie King
charts the evolution of
the Nineties and
Noughties girl bands.
There are contributions
from groups including
TLC, Girls Aloud, Little
Mix and the Sugababes,
who have all earned a
place in music history.
She also looks at how
today’s bands, including
Flo, Say Now and South
Korea’s Blackpink, are
spreading the word of
girl power for a new
generation. The Women
In Pop podcast features
established and rising
female musicians from
around the world.
TIMES RADIO
5.00 Rosie Wright With Early
Breakfast 6.00 Chloe Tilley And
Calum Macdonald With Times
Radio Breakfast 10.00 Matt
Chorley 1.00 Ruth Davidson
4.00 Cathy Newman With Times
Radio Drive 7.00 Ed Vaizey 10.00
Henry Bonsu 1.00 Stories Of
Our Times 1.30 Red Box 2.00
Highlights From Times Radio
To get in touch with the Times
Radio studio, text TIMES plus your
message to 87222. Texts cost
your standard message charge.
RADIO 4
5.30 News 5.43 Prayer 5.45
Farming Today 5.58 Tweet Of The
Day (R) 6.00 Today 8.31 (LW)
Yesterday In Parliament 9.00
Desert Island Discs (R) 9.45 Book
Of The Week 9.45 (LW) Daily
Service 10.00 Woman’s Hour
11.00 Born In Bradford. A
long-term health study in the
West Yorkshire city 11.30 Mark
Steel’s In Town (R) 12.00 News
12.01 (LW) Shipping 12.04
AntiSocial. Adam Fleming
examines what culture war
arguments are all about 1.00 The
World At One 1.45 The Great Post
Office Trial 2.00 The Archers (R)
2.15 Drama: Harland 2.45 Close
Encounters. The mathematician
and writer Simon Singh celebrates
a portrait of code-breaker Alan
Turing (R) 3.00 Gardeners’
Question Time. Christine Walkden,
Matt Biggs and Matthew Wilson
are in Wokingham, Berkshire 3.45
From Fact To Fiction 4.00 Last
Word 4.30 Feedback 5.00 PM
5.54 (LW) Shipping 6.00 News
6.30 The Now Show 7.00 The
Archers 7.15 Add To Playlist.
Cerys Matthews and Jeffrey
Boakye take a musical journey of
discovery 8.00 Any Questions?
8.50 A Point Of View 9.00 The
Great Post Office Trial (R) 10.00
The World Tonight 10.45 Book At
Bedtime 11.00 Americast 11.30
Today In Parliament 12.00 News
12.30 Book Of The Week (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
Charting the pop hits:
Mollie King (BBC Sounds)
○ The Verb
(Radio 3, 10pm)
Ian McMillan presents an
interview with Colm Tóibín,
who published his first
collection of poetry,
Vinegar Hill, last year.
There are eight series of
Frank Skinner’s Poetry
Podcast, where the comic
RADIO 4 EXTRA
5.00 The Curiosity Cabinet 5.45
Short Works 6.00 Julie Enfield
Investigates — Murder West One
6.45 Dick Barton — Special Agent
7.00 Grandmothers 7.15 The Old
Wives’ Tale (R) 7.30 Ed Reardon’s
Week 8.00 Albert And Me 8.30 Rent
9.00 The Food Quiz 9.30 Plum
House 10.00 The Curiosity Cabinet
10.45 Short Works 11.00 Julie Enfield
Investigates — Murder West One
11.45 Dick Barton — Special Agent
12.00 Grandmothers 12.15 The Old
Wives’ Tale (R) 12.30 Ed Reardon’s
Week 1.00 Albert And Me 1.30 Rent
2.00 The Food Quiz 2.30 Plum
House 3.00 The Curiosity Cabinet
3.45 Short Works 4.00 Julie Enfield
Investigates — Murder West One
4.45 Dick Barton — Special Agent
5.00 Grandmothers 5.15 The Old
Wives’ Tale (R) 5.30 Ed Reardon’s
Week 6.00 Albert And Me 6.30
Rent 7.00 The Food Quiz 7.30 Plum
House 8.00 Up Close And Personal
8.30 Soul Music 9.00 Monsters Of
Music With Tom Allen 9.30 Doctor
Who: Tenth Doctor Adventures
10.00 Who Runs The World 10.30 I
Think I’ve Got A Problem 10.55 The
Comedy Club Interview 11.00 On
The Hour 11.30-12.00 The Boosh
LBC
7.00 Nick Ferrari 10.00 James
O’Brien 1.00 Shelagh Fogarty 4.00
Tom Swarbrick 6.00 Lewis Goodall
9.00 The Legal Hour 10.00 Nick
Abbot 1.00 Clive Bull 4.00 Ali Miraj
RADIO 3
6.30 Breakfast 9.00 Essential
Classics 12.00 Composer Of The
Week 1.00 Lunchtime Concert. The
Notos Quartett perform Strauss’s
Piano Quartet in C minor; plus,
Mahler’s brooding Quartet
movement in A minor 2.00
Afternoon Concert. Markus Poschner
conducts the Orchestra della
Svizzera italiana in Tchaikovsky’s
Symphony No 3; and Ensemble
Polyharmonique perform sacred
choral music by Monteverdi 4.30
The Listening Service (R) 5.00 In
Tune. Quatuor Agate and RIOPY
perform live 7.00 Classical Mixtape
discusses favourite works.
The Poetry Society’s
podcast features more
than 100 episodes of
readings by and
discussions with
contemporary poets. In
The Poetry Exchange,
guests discuss poems and
what they mean to them.
○ Born In Bradford
(Radio 4, 11am)
Winifred Robinson’s
report on the study of
growing up in the city and
how it affects health. The
latest research involves all
the teenagers, and she
discusses the mental
health of this group. She
also discovers that cousin
marriage, which can cause
genetic disorders in
children, is decreasing.
Clair Woodward
7.30 In Concert. Recorded live in
concert, Ryan Wigglesworth
conducts the BBC SO in
Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring;
plus music by Arvo Part, Anna
Meredith and Niculescu 10.00
The Verb. Ian McMillan presents
an extended interview with the
acclaimed Irish novelist, essayist,
playwright and poet Colm Toibin
10.45 The Essay. Tom Shakespeare
reveals his ’way of being’ and
relationship with a cultural
touchstone, in this case the work
of JRR Tolkien (R) 11.00 Late
Junction. Jennifer Lucy Allan
shares music made through
chance operations and
collaborations with AI 1.00 Mindful
Mix (R) 3.00 Through The Night
CLASSIC FM
6.00 Tim Lihoreau 9.00
Alexander Armstrong 12.00
Anne-Marie Minhall 4.00
Margherita Taylor 7.00 Zeb
Soanes 10.00 Ritula Shah 1.00
Katie Breathwick 4.00 Sam Pittis
RADIO 2
6.30 The Zoe Ball Breakfast Show
9.30 Gary Davies 12.00 Jeremy
Vine 2.00 Scott Mills 4.00 Sara
Cox 7.00 Michelle Visage 8.30
Michelle Visage’s Handbag Hits
9.00 The Good Groove With DJ
Spoony 11.00 The Rock Show
With Johnnie Walker 12.00
Romesh Ranganathan — For The
Love Of Hip-Hop 1.00 Who Are
We — Doctor Who? 3.00 My Life
In A Mixtape 4.00 Sophie
Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco
VIRGIN RADIO
6.30 The Chris Evans Breakfast
Show 10.00 Eddy Temple-Morris
1.00 Jayne Middlemiss 4.00 Ricky
Wilson 7.00 Ben Jones 10.00
Rich Williams 1.00 Olivia Jones
TALKSPORT
5.00 Early Breakfast 6.00
Breakfast 10.00 Jim White And
Simon Jordan 1.00 Hawksbee And
Jacobs 4.00 Drive 7.00 Kick Off:
England v Malta. Kickoff 7.45
10.00 Sports Bar 1.00 Extra Time
12 November 2023 53
SATURDAY 18 NOVEMBER
Kin: an eight-part crime drama (BBC1, 9.35pm/10.45pm)
BBC 1
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
10.00 Saturday Kitchen Live
11.30 Mary Makes It Easy
With Anton Du Beke. (R)
12.00 Football Focus Preview.
12.30 Bargain Hunt Curios. (R)
1.00 News; Weather Headlines.
1.15 MOTD Women’s Super
League: Chelsea v
Liverpool. Live coverage of
the match at Stamford
Bridge. Kickoff at 1.30.
3.45 Escape To The Country
Properties in Suffolk. (R)
4.45 Garden Rescue (R)
5.30 News; Weather Reports.
5.55 The Weakest Link New
run. Romesh Ranganathan
welcomes eight EastEnders
cast members to test their
general-knowledge skills.
6.40 Strictly Come Dancing
Tess Daly and Claudia
Winkleman host live from
the Blackpool Tower,
with an opening routine
from the Strictly cast.
8.00 Survivor The reward
challenge has the tribes
fighting for food.
9.00 Blankety Blank With Oti
Mabuse, DJ Target, Yung
Filly, Sue Perkins, Eamonn
Holmes and Josie Gibson.
9.35 Kin New crime drama, with
Aidan Gillen, Ciaran Hinds
and Charlie Cox. There are
reprisals when the son of a
Dublin crime boss gets into
a violent confrontation
with a drug dealer. (S1, ep 1)
10.25 News; Weather Reports.
10.45 Kin The family deals with
the fallout of Cunningham’s
retaliation. (Series 1, ep 2)
11.40 The Rap Game UK (R)
12.40 FILM: X+Y Stars Asa
Butterfield and Rafe Spall.
A teenage maths genius
finds love while training
to take part in the
International Mathematical
Olympiad. Feel-good
comedy drama. (2014, 12)
2.30 Joins BBC News
6.00 Breakfast Headlines.
9.00 Sunday With Laura
Kuenssberg Interviews.
10.00 Politics Reports.
10.30 Scotland’s Sacred Islands
Isle of Skye. (Last in series)
11.30-12.00 Amanda & Alan’s
Italian Job (1/8, R)
SCOTLAND 3.45 Garden Rescue.
Transforming a plot in Bracknell.
4.30 Landward. 5.00 Scotland’s
Weather — Our Changing
Seasons. Documentary.
54 12 November 2023
BBC 2
6.15 Hey Duggee Double bill. (R)
6.30 Supertato Animation. (R)
6.35 Shaun The Sheep (R)
6.55 Dennis & Gnasher
Unleashed! Cartoon. (R)
7.05 Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse
Cheese Cartoon. (R)
7.15 Grizzy And The
Lemmings Double bill. (R)
7.35 Pokemon Animation. (R)
7.55 Deadly Mission Shark (R)
8.25 Blue Peter Magazine. (R)
8.50 Newsround Update.
9.00 The Bear Family And Me
Documentary. (R)
10.00 FILM: Into The Woods
Stars Meryl Streep.
Musical fantasy. (2014, PG)
12.00 My Million Pound Menu
(Series 2, ep 2, R)
1.00 FILM: Ice Station Zebra
Stars Rock Hudson. Arctic
adventure. (1968, U)
3.20 Australasia — Our Wild
Adventures Wildlife. (R)
4.20 Saving Lives At Sea The
crew at Wick search to find
a paddleboarder. (R)
5.20 Flog It! Selling items. (R)
6.00 The Tea Trail Simon Reeve
explores the tea industry
in eastern Africa. (R)
7.00 Great Asian Railway
Journeys Indonesia. (R)
8.00 Blondie At The BBC
Archive appearances.
9.00 When Blondie Came To
Britain A look at the band’s
relationship with the nation.
10.00 Blondie In Concert
— 1979 A performance by
the band at the Apollo
Theatre in Glasgow. (R)
10.40 Later… Jools Holland is
joined by guests Corinne
Bailey Rae, Cleo Sol and
Billy Bragg. (Last in series)
11.25 Blondie At Glastonbury
1999 The band’s Pyramid
stage performance. (R)
12.35 Blondie At The BBC (R)
1.35 FILM: Lullaby Stars Karin
Viard. (2019, 15; French
with subtitles; ends at 3.10)
6.30 A To Z Of TV Gardening
With Carol Kirkwood. (R)
7.15 Glorious Gardens From
Above Holy Island. (R)
8.00 Beechgrove Garden In
Winter Advice. (R)
8.30 Weatherman Walking For
Children In Need (R)
9.30 Landward Rural issues.
10.00 Saturday Kitchen Best
Bites Recipe inspiration.
11.30-12.00 Jimmy’s Food
Factory (Series 1, ep 4, R)
ITV 1
6.00 Love Your Garden (R)
7.30 Love Your Weekend (R)
9.25 News; Weather Reports.
9.30 James Martin’s Saturday
Morning Chat show.
11.30 Ainsley’s Mediterranean
Cookbook Sardinia. (R)
12.30 James Martin’s Great
British Adventure (R)
1.00 News; Weather Reports.
1.15 Racing Coverage of day
two of the November
Meeting at Cheltenham.
3.45 News; Weather Reports.
3.55 Regional News Updates.
4.05 Mamma Mia! I Have A
Dream Competition. (R)
5.30 FILM: Harry Potter And
The Order Of The
Phoenix Stars Daniel
Radcliffe and Emma
Watson. The wizard forms
his fellow pupils into a
secret army to battle
Lord Voldemort. Dazzling
fantasy. (2007, 12)
8.00 The Voice Emma Willis
hosts as the blind auditions
continue in the spinning-
chair singing competition.
9.35 The 1% Club Quiz show
hosted by Lee Mack. (R)
10.30 News; Weather Reports.
10.45 The Playboy Bunny
Murder Marcel Theroux
investigates the murders
of four women. (1/2, R)
11.45 English Football League
Highlights Action from
the latest fixtures.
12.45 Catchphrase Game. (R)
1.15 Cash Trapped (R)
2.05 The Switch Quiz. (R)
2.55 Made In Britain (R)
3.45 Unwind Relaxation. (R)
5.05 James Martin’s French
Adventure Double bill. (R)
7.00 Gino’s Italy — Secrets Of
The South (4/6, R)
7.30 James Martin’s Saturday
Morning Chat show. (R)
9.25 News; Weather Reports.
9.30 Love Your Weekend
11.30-12.30 Fletchers’ Family
Farm Documentary.
Films
SKY CINEMA PREMIERE
6.00pm Little Dixie (2023, 15)
8.00 Renfield. Dracula’s
henchman tries to make a new
life away from the Count. (2023,
15) 9.50-12.10 Big George
Foreman. Charting the life of
the former world heavyweight
boxing champion. (2023, 12)
SKY CINEMA THRILLER
6.00pm Snitch. A man volunteers
to become an undercover
informant. (2013, 12) 8.00 The
Talented Mr Ripley. A man is paid
to persuade a spoiled youth to
return home to his family. (1999,
15) 10.25-12.25 Gone Baby
Gone. A private eye tries to find
a four-year-old girl. (2007, 15)
SKY CINEMA GREATS
5.35pm Forrest Gump (1994, 12)
8.00 Jerry Maguire. An idealistic
sports agent finds himself forced
to set up business on his own.
(1996, 15) 10.25-12.25 Vampire In
Brooklyn. A bloodsucker begins a
quest to find a woman who will
be his eternal bride. (1995, 15)
Channel 4
6.05 The King Of Queens (R)
6.55 Frasier Sitcom. (R)
8.10 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
9.40 The Simpsons Cartoon. (R)
11.40 Formula 1 Action from the
Las Vegas Grand Prix
qualifying session.
1.10 Four In A Bed B&Bs. (R)
3.45 The Great British Bake Off
Party week challenges. (R)
5.00 News; Weather Reports.
5.30 Fortress Britain The story
of Britain’s response to the
risk of nuclear attack. (R)
6.30 Richard III — The King In
The Car Park Charting
the hunt for the remains of
the medieval ruler. (R)
8.00 The Princes In The Tower
—The New Evidence
Rob Rinder and Philippa
Langley reinvestigate new
leads in the case of the
infamous historical
mystery, concerning the
fate of the two young
princes who disappeared
in 1483, leading to claims
that Richard III had them
killed to validate his own
claim to the throne.
9.45 FILM: White House Down
Stars Channing Tatum and
Jamie Foxx. A policeman
on a tour of the White
House has to save the
president when terrorists
seize control of the
building. An entertaining
romp. (2013, 12)
12.20 FILM: Alita — Battle
Angel Stars Rosa Salazar
and Christoph Waltz.
Sci-fi adventure. (2019, 12)
2.25 Ramsay’s Hotel Hell (R)
3.15Banged Up Reality. (R)
4.10 Hollyoaks Soap. (R)
6.15Cheers Comedy. (R)
7.10The King Of Queens (R)
8.00 Everybody Loves
Raymond Comedy. (R)
9.00 The Simpsons (R)
9.30-12.30 Sunday Brunch
SKY CINEMA SELECT
5.35pm The Lord Of The Rings
— The Fellowship Of The Ring
(2001, PG) 8.35 The Lord Of The
Rings — The Two Towers. Frodo
and Sam face the former owner
of the ring. (2002, 12) 11.35-2.55
The Lord Of The Rings — The
Return Of The King (2003, 12)
FILM4
4.45pm Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles (2014, 12) 6.45 Jumanji —
Welcome To The Jungle. Four
high-school students are drawn
into a video game. (2017, 12) 9.00
Colombiana. An assassin secretly
plots revenge on the gangsters
who murdered her parents. (2011,
15) 11.10-1.00 Meander. A woman is
locked in a series of strange tunnels
full of deadly traps. (2021, 15)
TALKING PICTURES TV
6.00pm The People That Time
Forgot. An explorer leads an
expedition to a prehistoric island to
rescue his friend. (1977, U) 7.50
Look At Life 8.00 Maigret 9.00 The
Gold Robbers 10.05-12.15 Malice.
A surgeon develops a dangerous
pride in his abilities. (1993, 15)
Channel 5
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.55 The Smurfs Cartoon. (R)
10.10 Spongebob Animation. (R)
10.20 Entertainment News
10.30 Friends US sitcom. (R)
12.30 A Very Merry Bridesmaid
Romantic drama, with
Emily Osment and
Casey Deidrick. (R)
2.20 Christmas At Castle Hart
Romantic drama, with
Lacey Chabert and
Stuart Townsend. (R)
4.10 Christmas At The Chalet
Romantic drama, with Teri
Hatcher and William deVry.
6.05 All New Greatest
Christmas Ads Festive
advertisements. (R)
7.55 News; Weather Reports.
8.00 Cadbury At Christmas —
Secrets Of The Chocolate
Factory Behind the scenes
as the confectioner gears
up for the festive season. (R)
9.00 Michael Barrymore
— Rise & Fall Of Mr
Saturday Night A look at
the life of the entertainer,
who was one of the
nation’s best-loved TV stars
until the death of Stuart
Lubbock, at his house in
2001, ended his career.
10.25 The Greatest TV Of The
80s A look back at the
best programmes of the
decade. (Last in series)
12.25 Criminals — Caught On
Camera Crime. (R)
1.00 Casino Show Gambling.
3.00 Bad Girls Behind Bars
Documentary. (S2, ep 2, R)
3.50 The All-Inclusive — How
Do They Really Do It?
(Series 2, ep 3, R)
4.35 Divine Designs (R)
5.00 House Doctor Advice. (R)
5.30 Entertainment News
5.40 Children’s Shows
6.00 Milkshake! Children’s fun.
9.50 The Smurfs Cartoon. (R)
10.05 Spongebob Animation. (R)
10.15 Entertainment News
10.20 NFL End Zone Action.
10.50-12.20 Friends Sitcom. (R)
Entertainment
BBC3
7.00pm EastEnders 8.00 Top Gear
9.00 Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet
Of Crisps 11.00 Bad Education
12.45-1.45 Charlotte In Sunderland
ITV2
5.30pm FILM: Antz 7.10 FILM:
Johnny English 9.00 FILM: Identity
Thief. Stars Jason Bateman 11.15
Family Guy 12.15 American Dad! 1.10
Celebability 2.00-3.00 Unwind
ITV4
6.35pm FILM: Rio Lobo 9.00 English
Football League Highlights 10.00
FILM: Death Wish 2. Stars Charles
Bronson 11.55 Motorsport UK
12.55-1.25 Auto Mundial
E4
5.35pm The Great Christmas Bake
Off 6.50 FILM: Sister Act 2 — Back In
The Habit. Comedy 9.00 Celebrity
Gogglebox 10.00 Gogglebox
12.05-2.15 Celebrity First Dates
MORE4
5.50pm Four In A Bed 6.20 Four In
A Bed 7.55 999 — On The Front Line
9.00 24 Hours In A&E. Double bill
BBC 4
7.00pm Extreme Mountain
Challenge The naturalist
Steve Backshall explores
caves within the mountains
in Venezuela. (2/2)
8.00 Britain’s Outlaws
— Highwaymen, Pirates
And Rogues Sam Willis
concludes his exploration
of the criminal underworld
of the 17th and 18th
centuries by looking at
urban crime, fraud and
corruption. (Last in series)
9.00 Scrublands New drama
series, with Luke Arnold.
A disenchanted journalist
is ordered to write a
follow-up piece a year
after a mass shooting of
five parishioners by a
young priest. (1/4) 9.50
Scrublands Scarsden
decides to stay on in
Riversend to dig deeper
into the mystery of Byron
Swift — and comes across
two skeletal remains.
10.40 The Hollow Crown: The
Wars Of The Roses —
Richard III The ruthless
Duke of Gloucester plots
to seize the throne for
himself. (Last in series)
12.50 Yes Minister Sitcom.
1.20 Some Mothers Do ’Ave
’Em (Series 3, ep 3)
1.55 Extreme Mountain
Challenge (2/2)
2.55-3.55 Britain’s Outlaws
— Highwaymen, Pirates
And Rogues (3/3)
Scrublands (BBC4, from 9pm)
11.05 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does
Countdown. Double bill of the
gameshow 1.15-3.25 24 Hours In A&E
GOLD
5.00pm Only Fools And Horses.
Five episodes 10.50 Blackadder
Goes Forth 11.25 The Young Ones
12.55 The Lenny Henry Show
1.35-2.10 Blackadder Goes Forth
SKY MAX
5.15pm Hawaii Five-0 7.00 Movie
Megastars — Made In The 80s 9.00
A League Of Their Own 10.00
Flintoff — Lord Of The Fries 11.00
The Lazarus Project 12.00 Cobra
— Rebellion 1.00 Brassic 2.00-3.00
The Force — Manchester
SKY COMEDY
6.00pm Will & Grace 6.30 US Office
9.00 Curb Your Enthusiasm 10.15
Saturday Night Live 11.30 Tonight
Show 12.30 Romantic Getaway
1.30-2.45 DL Hughley — Goin’ Home
SKY WITNESS
6.00pm Border Security — Australia’s
Front Line 8.00 FBI. A security agent
is killed 9.00 FBI — International
10.00 FBI — Most Wanted 11.00
The Rookie 12.00 The Good Doctor
Sky Arts
2.00pm Portrait Artist Of The
Year With Shirley Ballas.
2.55 Tina Turner — What’s
Love Live The singer’s
1993 concert in San
Bernardino, California.
5.05 Discovering The life and
career of Fredric March.
6.00 Peter, Paul & Mary —
Live At Newport
Documentary capturing
the spirit of America’s Folk
Renaissance at its zenith.
7.15 Classic Albums The
making of Fleetwood Mac’s
1977 album Rumours.
8.30 Discovering The rise of
English band New Order.
9.00 Record On The story of
New Order’s 1983 album
Power, Corruption & Lies,
exploring how the band
turned to electronic
instrumentation.
10.45-12.00 AC/DC — Forever
Young Documentary.
Drama
2.00pm Dalziel & Pascoe A
tourist is found battered
to death. (Series 8, ep 1)
4.00 Father Brown The priest
investigates a case of
body-snatching. (Series 4,
ep 8) 5.00 Father Brown
The sleuthing priest tries to
solve the murder of an
aeronautics magnate’s son.
6.00 The Brokenwood
Mysteries Mike and his
team explore the world of
antiquities when one of the
hosts of a hit series is found
murdered. (Series 7, ep 1)
8.10 An Inspector Calls
Adaptation of JB Priestley’s
stage play, with David
Thewlis, Miranda
Richardson and Ken Stott.
10.00 Manhattan A high-profile
guest shakes things up on
the Hill. (Series 1, ep 4)
11.00-12.20 Mrs Wilson (1/3)
1.00 Lincoln Rhyme —Hunt For The
Bone Collector 2.00-3.00 For Life
W Rush — White Water 9.00 Survive
5.40pm My Family 7.00 Miranda
9.00 The Catherine Tate Show 11.00
Ambulance Australia 12.00 One
Born Every Minute 1.00 Dating With
My Mates 2.00-3.00 Nanny On Tour
YESTERDAY
6.00pm Great Continental Railway
Journeys 10.00 Porridge. Comedy
12.00-1.00 Bangers & Cash
DAVE
6.00pm Soapbox Race 2016 7.00
Not Going Out 9.00 FILM: Kill Bill —
Volume 2 11.50 Outsiders 12.50-1.50
Have I Got A Bit More News For You
Factual
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
6.00pm Lost Treasures Of Egypt
7.00 Lost Tombs Of The Pyramids.
A team of archaeologists embark on
an extraordinary excavation 8.00
King Tut In Colour. The discovery
of Tutankhamun’s tomb is
revealed for the first time in colour
9.00-2.00 Lost Treasures Of Egypt
Sky Atlantic
1.40pm Succession Shiv,
Kendall and Roman head to
the UK. (Series 2, ep 7)
2.50 Succession The
clan travels to Logan’s
hometown of Dundee.
4.00 Succession Logan,
Kendall, Gerri and Tom
testify. 5.15 Succession
Logan weighs up a huge
decision. 6.35 Succession
Kendall plans his next
move. (Series 3, ep 1)
7.45 House Of The Dragon
Rhaenyra faces continued
speculation about her
children. (6/10) 9.00
House Of The Dragon
King Viserys calls for
an end to infighting.
10.10 House Of The Dragon
Rhaenyra tries to strike a
bargain with Rhaenys.
11.25-12.35 House Of The
Dragon Alicent enlists
help to track down Aegon.
Talk TV
10.00am Peter Cardwell The
Westminster insider scours
the latest news from
parliament, featuring
exclusive interviews with
political heavyweights.
1.00 Alex Phillips Opinions and
discussion on recent news.
4.00 Trisha Goddard A look
through the week’s stories.
7.00 James Whale Unleashed
Commentary and opinions,
and chance for viewers to
express their opinions.
10.00 That Was The Woke That
Was Andre Walker quizzes
an opinionated panel.
11.00-1.00 The Late Night
Phone-In Andre Walker
gives his take on the
week’s biggest stories.
Available on Sky 522; Freeview
237; Virgin 606; Freesat 217;
YouTube, connected TVs and
smart devices
DISCOVERY
6.00pm Gold Rush 7.00 The Garden
— Commune Or Cult? 8.00 Gold
The Raft. After a tumultuous start, a
new arrival throws fuel into the fire
10.00 Alien Abduction — Travis
Walton. New evidence reveals the
true story behind the film Fire in the
Sky 12.00-4.00 Wheeler Dealers
PBS AMERICA
5.15pm The Stuarts 8.35 Israel — A
Twice Promised Land. Israel after the
Second World War, focusing on the
end of the war, and the UN vote on the
Partition Plan 9.50 Israel — A Twice
Promised Land. A look at 1948-1967,
which was punctuated by wars
between Israel and its neighbours
10.55-12.00 Putin’s Crisis
SKY NATURE
7.00pm Shark — British Isles. With
Steve Backshall 8.00 In For The Kill
9.00 Big Beasts — Last Of The
Giants. Patrick Aryee heads to Africa
10.00-12.00 Nature’s Fast Attacks
DISCOVERY HISTORY
6.00pm Combat Dealers 8.00
Tony Robinson’s World War One
10.00-12.00 Secrets Underground
ITV3
8.35am Midsomer Murders
Drama, with John Nettles.
2.40 Midsomer Murders With
John Nettles. The apparent
suicide of a childless
farmer’s wife puts Barnaby
on the scent of an ancient
land feud. (Series 5, ep 2)
4.40 Midsomer Murders
Barnaby is called in when
the bell-ringers of Midsomer
Wellow are mysteriously
murdered one by one
— and it seems an ancient
rhyme may hold the key
to the killer’s motive.
6.45 Snooker Jill Douglas
presents live coverage of
day six of the Champion
of Champions from
Toughsheet Community
Stadium in Bolton,
featuring the concluding
semi-final, played over
the best of 11 frames.
10.00 Law & Order — UK Brooks
and Devlin investigate a
hospital department where
three patients have died in
suspicious circumstances
in six months. With
Bradley Walsh and Jamie
Bamber. (Series 5, ep 1)
11.00-12.00 Law & Order
— UK A police hunt is
launched when a boy goes
missing from a merry-go-
round, but with more than
one suspect and no
physical evidence, the
search throws up more
questions than answers.
Quizmaster (BBC1, 5.55pm)
Sport
SKY SPORTS MAIN EVENT
6.00am News 7.00 LIVE Formula 1.
Las Vegas Grand Prix qualifying
9.30 LIVE DP World Tour Golf
12.30 LIVE EFL: Notts County v
Bradford City. Kickoff 12.30 3.00
Soccer Saturday 6.00 News 7.00
LIVE Fight Night. Franck Petitjean
takes on Adam Azim 11.05 LIVE
Women’s Big Bash 2.10 World
Cup Cricket Classics 2.35 LIVE
Women’s Big Bash 4.30 Formula 1
5.55-7.00 LIVE Formula 1. The Las
Vegas Grand Prix. Start-time 6.00
TNT SPORTS 1
6.00am LIVE WRC. The Rally Japan
7.00 LIVE A-League Women 9.00
WWE 10.30 LIVE WRC 11.15 PL
Reload 11.30 Premiership Rugby
Union 12.30 LIVE FA Futsal
Women’s Super Series 2.30 LIVE
Premiership Rugby Union: Leicester
Tigers v Northampton Saints.
Kickoff 3.05 5.15 LIVE Premiership
Rugby Union: Harlequins v
Saracens. Kickoff 5.30 8.00 LIVE
UFC 1.30 Uefa Champions League
2.00 LIVE WRC 3.45 Sign Up
4.30 MotoGP 5.00-6.45 LIVE WRC
Radio
○ The Weekend
Documentary (BBC
World Service, noon)
Tanni Grey-Thompson, a
former Paralympian, on
changing attitudes to
disability. She talks to
people about growing up
disabled, and to Frank
Gardner, the BBC
security reporter, about
adapting to becoming
disabled after being shot.
Clair Woodward
TIMES RADIO
6.00 Chloe Tilley And Calum
Macdonald With Times Radio
Breakfast 10.00 Hugo Rifkind
1.00 Alexis Conran 4.00 Ayesha
Hazarika With Times Radio Drive
7.00 The Best Of Times
Podcasts 8.00 Stories Of Our
Times 8.30 Red Box 9.00
Highlights From Times Radio
10.00 Darryl Morris 1.00
Highlights From Times Radio
RADIO 4
5.30 News 5.43 Prayer 5.45
Close Encounters (R) 6.00 News
And Papers 6.07 Open Country
(R) 6.30 Farming Today This
Week 7.00 Today 9.00 Saturday
Live 10.00 Your Place Or Mine.
Salma El-Wardany makes the
case for Cairo, Egypt 10.30 The
Kitchen Cabinet. New run 11.00
The Week In Westminster 11.30
From Our Own Correspondent
12.00 News 12.01 (LW) Shipping
12.04 Money Box 12.30 The
Now Show (R) 1.00 News 1.10
Any Questions? (R) 2.00 Any
Answers? 2.45 The Planet Earth
Podcast 3.00 Drama: iPromise,
by Martin Jameson. (R) 4.00
Weekend Woman’s Hour 5.00
Saturday PM 5.30 Political
Thinking 5.54 Shipping 6.00
News 6.15 Loose Ends. With
Tony Iommi, Steven Knight and
Ellie Simmonds 7.00 Profile 7.15
The Infinite Monkey Cage. Brian
Cox and Robin Ince explore the
science of coincidence 8.00
Archive On 4: I Was 21 Years.
Billy Bragg marks 40 years since
the release of his seminal song
A New England 9.00 The
Corrupted, by GF Newman (R)
9.45 The Skewer (R) 10.00
News 10.15 Add To Playlist (R)
11.00 Brain Of Britain (R) 11.30
Uncanny 12.00 News 12.15 The
Exploding Library (R) 12.48
Shipping 1.00 As World Service
RADIO 3
7.00 Breakfast 9.00 Record
Review 11.45 Music Matters 12.30
This Classical Life 1.00 Inside
Music 3.00 Sound Of Cinema
4.00 Music Planet 5.00 J To Z
6.30 Opera On 3: L’Aube Rouge.
Guillaume Tourniaire conducts
the Wexford Festival Chorus and
Orchestra in a performance of
Erlanger, with Andreea Soare
(soprano, Olga) and Andrew
Morstein (tenor, Serge) 10.00
New Music Show. Highlights from
the Ivors Classical Awards, a
celebration of new classical
music and sound art by British,
Irish or UK resident composers
12.00 Freeness. With Matana
Roberts 1.00 Through The Night
12 November 2023 55
 12 NOVEMBER 2023

Treat
yourself
(and the dog)
365 luxury
gifts for all
the family
 The Barometer Edited by Priya Elan

Fashion! Beauty! People! Things! Welcome to your weekly guide

to the stuff everyone will be talking about. Do keep up

Headboards, but Heating up

make them haute ▲ HORSEGIIRL
Equine DJ big with the
Fancy something tall, sculpted and style crew (Marc
sensational-looking for the bedroom? Jacobs is a fan). Why

JOSEPH
Supersize headboards are rising up the long face?
to replace feature walls, and the latest ▲ TOM BLYTH
upholstered launches combine The Hermès-catwalk-
walking actor putting
cosiness, brilliant colours and curves. the “hun” into the
Why not start with the new

COS
Hunger Games
collaboration between the fabric prequel (out Friday)
designer Julia Brendel and The
Additional words: Katrina Burroughs. Photographs: Getty Images,

Headboard Workshop, based on the

architecture of Jaipur (from £1,200),
or interior designers are using Molly ▲ WILD SWIM
Mahon’s hand-block-printed fabrics, SHOW-OFFS
@horsegiirl420, @tomblyth, goffphotos.com

such as the blue stripe (£112 a metre), Those in the

▲ STEIN INN know are
to create custom ones. If you’re on a Foodies are making ditching their
budget, dip into Etsy and you’ll find a pilgrimage to Dryrobes
upholstered headboards for under this Isle of Skye for a stylish
pub for fresh version from
£100. Some of the fanciest, though, seafood. Nigella Speedo, out
are at Trove by Studio Duggan, where has been, natch this week
Moorish points and shapely scallops
are covered in fabric — but you have to
be prepared to shell out just shy of
Cooling down
£2,000. We’ll sleep on it. ▼ PASTA WATER ▼ BACKGROUND MUSIC
MARTINI A host of new
Headboard, from £950, Has had restaurants and
more than bars are making a
kellinghome.com 60 million banging bass the daily
views on
TikTok, but
special (see Bambi,
System, Moko)
Will you ‘woolouflage’
adding pasta
water to gin
this winter?
and olive brine Hiding in plain sight? Now a style flex too.
to make a Twinning your scarf with your jumper —
cocktail? No aka going full “woolouflage” — is big on the
catwalk (Max Mara, Buci), the high street
(Zara, Cos) and with street-stylers. How to get
▼ HANGOVER
SPRAY
it right? Ensure your knit and scarf ’s shade
Bacon match perfectly or invest in a set: see Joseph’s
buttie and black and white pairing (above, scarf, £495,
a stiff and jumper, £795, joseph-fashion.com). If
coffee or
this new you’re going for patterns, try getting perfect
spray? alignment, otherwise you’ll make passers-by
▼ MINI DOGS IN BAGS Um …
The Y2K revival no go cross-eyed. The spiced caramel latte in
pooch asked for your hand is, of course, optional.

ON THE COVER LARA MENEZES PHOTOGRAPH GIAMPAOLO SGURA STYLING VERITY PARKER. BODY, £1,050, AND SKIRT, £2,480, ALAÏA. SHOES, £575, MANOLO BLAHNIK

EDITOR LAURA ATKINSON DEPUTY EDITOR CHARLOTTE WILLIAMSON ART DIRECTOR ANDREW BARLOW FASHION DIRECTOR KAREN DACRE BEAUTY DIRECTOR SARAH JOSSEL
ACTING BEAUTY DIRECTOR PHOEBE MCDOWELL FEATURES EDITOR PRIYA ELAN ENTERTAINMENT DIRECTOR SCARLETT RUSSELL JEWELLERY DIRECTOR JESSICA DIAMOND ASSOCIATE FASHION DIRECTOR VERITY PARKER
FASHION AND MERCHANDISE EDITOR FLOSSIE SAUNDERS BOOKINGS DIRECTOR AND CREATIVE PRODUCER LEILA HARTLEY PICTURE EDITOR LORI LEFTEROVA SENIOR DESIGNER ANDY TAYLOR
JUNIOR FASHION EDITOR HELEN ATKIN STAFF WRITER AND EDITORIAL ASSISTANT ROISIN KELLY CONTRIBUTING EDITOR ALICE KEMP-HABIB CHIEF SUB-EDITOR SOPHIE FAVELL SENIOR SUB-EDITOR JANE MCDONALD

© Times Media Ltd, 2023. Published and licensed by Times Media Ltd, 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF (020 7782 5000). Printed at Walstead Bicester Limited, Oxfordshire. Not to be sold separately

The Sunday Times Style • 25

Santa
Socks again? Absolutely,
if they’re cashmere.
Gift-giving is a skill, says
India Knight – and here’s
how to get it right
Everyone is supposed to love giving presents,
which is quite a stressful concept because it
implies that the presents you give are always
successful. Giving wildly successful presents is
indeed deeply satisfying, both for the giver and the
receiver. But it also requires time and effort. Very
occasionally you’ll see something and think, “Oh,
that is perfect for so-and-so,” but more often than
not you have to rootle about a bit. And this rootling
takes time, the one thing no one has, especially in
the already stressful enough period leading up to
Christmas. So many — most? — people compro-
mise and give merely OK presents.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with an OK present
provided that it’s to someone other than your
husband/wife/partner. The giftee quite likes it,
which is good, even if their face does not light
up with delight. The gifter is middlingly pleased,
or maybe relieved, but doesn’t feel the thrill of
having got it absolutely spot-on. When my chil-
dren were little and squealed with excitement
when they opened a longed-for toy, my mother-
in-law at the time would cry: “I say, it’s a smash
hit!” (A phrase that immediately lodged itself in
family vocab and is now my Christmas gift to you.)
The smash hits would make her day, make our
day, make the children’s day, and engender much
festive feeling all round.
The key to good presents for adults is thought-
fulness and noticing things, like someone once
said they liked nasturtiums or baroque architec-
ture. I also like a degree of ingenuity. I have a friend
who is a broke writer and longed for a shed to write
in. Those sheds cost an arm and a leg, and anyway
she doesn’t have the space for one. Last Christmas
her partner made her (by himself ) a very well-
considered, perfectly appointed (wallpapered!) writ-
ing space under the stairs. On the vintage desk he’d
baby
found on eBay sat a pair of noise-cancelling
headphones. Now that is a good present. I’m
not saying everyone needs to build stair
desks — it was also the thoughtfulness
and the love that made the gift perfect.
For me, and these things are of
course subjective, the worst presents
are expensive and thoughtless. The giver
can’t think of anything to get the giftee, so
they lob money at the problem, thinking
that at least the obvious cost of the gift shows they
care. This would be true if the expensive thought-
less gift were, for example, a thatched cottage in
the woods, but would not be true at all of a random
and hideous piece of jewellery. You never want to
give a present that causes the recipient to think,
“Hi, have you met me?” Or, “Hi, have you been to
my house?” I’m thinking here of the friend (white
rooms, challenging art, sparse, carefully curated
furniture) whose best work friend gave her a faux
medieval tapestry cushion of robins. Had it been a
joke, it would have been outstanding.
How to get presents right? First, there is nothing
wrong with asking people what they’d like. What
this lacks in romance and surprise is made up for by
the satisfaction of giving someone exactly what
they wanted. The rule here is not to deviate from
the brief: if they say wooden spoons, don’t buy them
stainless-steel ones on the well-intentioned basis
that they’re longer lasting. This is particularly
important for teenagers: get the specific thing
they’ve asked for, not the similar thing you prefer
the look of (“I know you said black, darling, but
black is so gloomy so I got you this lovely
turquoise”). You don’t have to like the present —
only they have to love it. If there are children and
teenagers on your list whose ages you’re quite vague
about, I actively recommend asking their parents for
gift suggestions. If they say money, as is likely, do
insist a bit — it is sad for young people to have
nothing concrete to open on Christmas Day.
Even little presents can feel lavish and magnifi-
cent. You can’t go wrong with small extravagances.
Nobody, of any age, doesn’t like something they
would never, or could never, buy for themselves,
like cashmere socks or a spenny lipstick in a
weighty case. No keen cooks or eaters would turn
their noses up at a bottle of fantastic, expensive
The Sunday Times Style • 27
 The key to good
presents for adults is
thoughtfulness and
noticing things. I also like
India Knight
a degree of ingenuity
olive oil or a packet of amazing coffee. Someone
EIGHT GREAT PRESENTS
who buys utilitarian T-shirts in bargain packs of 1 The Secret of Cooking by Bee Wilson (4th Estate £28).
three would be amazed by the softness and flat- This is my book of the year across any genre. Give it to
tering cut of something costlier. Also good: multi- someone who loves cooking and they’ll love you for ever.
ples of things, as in normal rather than cashmere Super-friendly, packed to the gills with useful tips and
socks, but seven pairs. advice, plus excellent recipes. It is simply brilliant.
The whole presents issue is complicated further if
your recipients are people who are at the age when 2 Chanel Le Vernis nail varnish (£29 each).
they pretty much have everything they need. My The limited-edition ones for Christmas are
solution to this — and my favourite presents, both divine, especially the shade Tuxedo.
to give and to receive — are emotionally resonant
3 A cashmere beanie Everyone of every age
things in frames, by which I mean things that are
welcomes a cashmere beanie at some point over
professionally framed by a framer. Mementoes of
the winter. I like the ones from Cos (£55).
significant events are a lovely thing to give: a restau-
rant menu from a memorable date, boarding passes 4 Shearling Birkenstocks In various unisex
from a joyous trip, tickets to a special sporting event, iterations, including clogs — there is nothing cosier
a letter, a child’s drawing or piece of writing, an old to wear on your feet (from £125).
Polaroid, a funny doodle, a postcard, their late dad’s
bus pass — basically anything that the person keeps 5 A set of bed linen from Piglet in Bed (duvet cover
in a drawer for sentimental reasons and can’t bring from £129), ideally checked, or from Toast
themselves to throw away. But it must be framed as (duvet cover from £99), ideally stripy.
though it were going to be hung in a museum, to
give it heft and make it splendid. 6 C Atherley Geranium No 1 Bath Oil (£39).
Don’t dismiss physical photographs either (again, This smells so delicious, plus has beautiful packaging.
they must be framed) — so much nicer than peering There are alternatives for the bathless.
at thumbnails on a phone. One of my favourite ever
presents, from my youngest sister, was a family 7 A subscription to The Idler magazine (£40),
photo album she had painstakingly compiled from which is wide-ranging, always interesting and the
everyone’s old, half-forgotten pictures. perfect thing to read in the bathroom. Also gift
Things to read, so books, but books that you subscriptions to podcasts, Substacks or both.
know the person is going to love. Here it really pays 8 An Ikea Brobock rattan armchair
to buy offline, from an independent bookshop (£139), with a sheepskin on it.
with sellers you can chat to. Failing which, coffee
table books. Nobody buys themselves coffee table 3
1
books, and the best of them are ravishingly beau-
tiful. Match the topic to the giftee, obviously.
Don’t discount the practical gift. This doesn’t
mean buying your wife a Hoover, though I was
once given a KitchenAid stand mixer and I’d be 2
lying if I said I was displeased. But buying things
that people actively need is never a bad idea. A
4
keen hiker would probably love a walking boot
upgrade or better binoculars, a young person could
probably do with better tech accessories, an older
one might like more flattering reading glasses. 5
6
And don’t discount the gift of time. Your time
makes a fantastic present. If there’s someone you 7
Getty Images, Catherine Garcia

don’t see enough of (that you like), book your- 8

selves a weekend away. It doesn’t even have to
cost you anything: one of my favourite recent
presents — I have three dogs and am kennel-
averse — was a friend who my dogs love saying
she’d move in and look after them so that I could
go away for my birthday. ■ @indiaknight

The Sunday Times Style • 29

 What
gives
Treating someone
special this Christmas?
For the ultimate in bags,
shoes – and a diamond
or two – delve into
Style’s luxury gift guide

Photographs Theresa Marx Styling Flossie Saunders Edit Helen Atkin

Crushed-velvet pumps, £925, Loewe

The Sunday Times Style • 31

 STYLE WISH LIST
4
1

2 6

3
8
5

10
11

12

14

15

13

16

19
17 Just in time
for Christmas,
Dear Frances has
perfected the
knee-high boot —
this style also
comes in black
and cream 18
20

1 Flats, £275, russellandbromley.co.uk. 2 Necklace, £4,125, and amethyst pendant, £5,400, pragnell.co.uk. 3 Good Girl Liquid Blush, from £36,
carolinaherrera.com. 4 Velvet blazer, £420, and 5 trousers, £270, cefinn.com. 6 Huggie earrings, £325, edgeofember.com. 7 Rouge Stiletto
Glossy Shine Lipstick, £48, Christian Louboutin, harrods.com. 8 Card holder, £35, aranyani.com. 9 Ring, £4,100, cartier.com. 10 Jumper knitting
David Newby

kit, from £107, woolandthegang.com. 11 Earrings, £150, lovenesslee.com. 12 Robe, £235, skinworldwide.com. 13 Siberian Pine & Winter Rose
candle, £60, carrierefreres.co.uk. 14 Manicure roll, £40, notanotherbill.com. 15 Bra, £34, and 16 knickers, £18, And/Or, johnlewis.com. 17 Boots,
£730, dearfrances.com. 18 Bag, £1,950, celine.com. 19 Dior Forever Cushion Case, £23 (case only), dior.com. 20 Mules, £295, byfar.com

32 • The Sunday Times Style

 22

23

21

Flossie Saunders
FASHION EDITOR
Along with an air fryer (who doesn’t
want one of those?) you can’t go wrong
25 with a cookbook — this detailed guide to
salt is the niche Christmas essential your
loved ones will definitely thank you for.
Burberry’s mini sling bag is also sitting
pretty on my wish list — I love the idea
26 of it worn with traffic-stopping shades.
24 1 Bath Oil, £78, Olverum, harrods.com.
2 Air fryer, £100, the Hairy Bikers;
wayfair.co.uk. 3 Rice Table, £27, Su Scott,
timesbookshop.co.uk. 4 Matches, £8,
thepresenthouse.co.uk. 5 Bag, £1,590,
burberry.com. 6 Salt and the Art of
Seasoning, £27, James Strawbridge,
timesbookshop.co.uk. 7 Jacket, £1,645,
joseph-fashion.com
1

2
27

28
3

29

30 5

6
31

21 Jumper, £35, marksandspencer.com. 22 Necklace, £595, otiumberg.com. 23 Beanie, £340,

louisvuitton.com. 24 Nail varnish, £27, dior.com. 25 Hot-water bottle cover, £95, herdwear.co.
26 Trousers, £720, toryburch.com. 27 Holdall, £510, WNU x Tusting, tusting.co.uk. 28 Bracelet,
£4,350, danielladraper.com. 29 Jacket, £1,245, nour-hammour.com. 30 Le Smash Santal
Shimmering Body Moisture Crème, from £19.50, beautypie.com. 31 Clogs, £890, fendi.com

The Sunday Times Style • 33

 STYLE WISH LIST

Saddle up
In metallic silver, this Gucci saddle bag is the ultimate arm decoration. Shoulder bag, £2,470, Gucci

34 • The Sunday Times Style

 STYLE WISH LIST
2

Laura Atkinson
6 EDITOR
For the fashion lover who has
everything, Levi’s Lot-1 service is, to
4 my mind, the perfect present. A tailor
takes your measurements and together
you pick everything — from the
5 material to the colour of the thread
— and you end up with a perfect,
personalised pair of jeans that will last
you for ever. The experience is like
getting a suit made on Savile Row,
7
incredibly special and memorable.
Otherwise, you can’t go wrong with a
great pair of trainers: the new Loewe x
On running ones are top of my list.
1 Enamel plate, £23, re-foundobjects.com.
2 Suite 302, £170 for 50ml EDP,
victoriabeckham.com. 3 Rouge Hermès
10 Lip Care Balm, £62, hermes.com. 4 Tank
Must watch, £2,800, cartier.com.
8
5 Plant-based 501 jeans, £110, levi.com.
9 6 Trainers, £375, Loewe x On, loewe.com

2
1

In the perfect
shade of Christmas
tree green, this
Mulberry bag
4
is a winner
5

11 3
12

1 Skirt, £1,530, loropiana.com. 2 Sunglasses, £310, loewe.com. 3 Necklace, £2,590,

messika.com. 4 Ring, £7,900, vancleefarpels.com. 5 Resurgence Retinal ReSculpt 6
Overnight Treatment, £105, Murad, sephora.co.uk. 6 Pendant, £1,600, lucydelius.co.
7 Candle, £74, Acqua di Parma, johnlewis.com. 8 Poudre de Beauté Éclat Soleil Powder,
Ben Parks

£47, Gucci, selfridges.com. 9 Tote, £950, mulberry.com. 10 Coat, £350, Jaeger,

marksandspencer.com. 11 Bracelet, £230, swarovski.com. 12 Carry-on, £395, july.com

The Sunday Times Style • 37

 STYLE WISH LIST

Party bag
This embellished bag by Prada is a showstopper worth dancing around. Cleo handbag, £3,300, Prada

38 • The Sunday Times Style

 STYLE WISH LIST

2
3
1

Karen Dacre
FASHION DIRECTOR
I’m pretty sure I’ve had a new pair of 5
trainers on my Christmas list every year
since I was eight. No change this year:
these new issue Air Max 1s are right up
4
there — I’ll wear them for weekending
and work and everywhere in between.
I’m also obsessed with these
monochrome earrings from Pond.
Looking for more heart-warming ideas?
This insulated and very chic cafetière is
surely the thing everyone really wants
this winter. No more cold coffee! 6
1 Jumper, £269, Patagonia, endclothing.
com. 2 Earrings, £155, pondlondon.com.
3 Candle, £58, haeckels.co.uk. 4 Cafetière,
£99, Fellow, goodhoodstore.com.
5 Portraits, As Chosen By…, £40, Kate
Friend, lyndseyingram.com. 6 Air Max 1 ’87
trainers, £140, Nike, sneakersnstuff.com
7
2

Jimmy Choo’s
9
festive tartan kitten
heels are the perfect
shoes to unwrap on
1 Christmas Day and
put straight on

10

12
5
11

1 Candle, £103, trudon.co.uk. 2 Nightdress, £220, ifonlyif.co.uk. 3 Mini Dolcevita watch,

Victoria Adamson

£3,700, longines.com. 4 Jumper, £445, joseph-fashion.com. 5 EGF Power Serum, £165,

bioeffect.com. 6 Soft Matte Lipstick, £40, prada.com. 7 Bra, £60, and 8 knickers, £34,
6
doralarsen.com. 9 Belt, £290, Benedetta Bruzziches, koibird.com. 10 Slingbacks, £750,
jimmychoo.com. 11 Ring, £3,360, faberge.com. 12 Vanity case, £650, smythson.com

40 • The Sunday Times Style

 STYLE WISH LIST

High shine
A Fendi Baguette with added sparkle is 2023’s handbag VIP. Embellished bag, £3,300, Fendi

The Sunday Times Style • 43

 Photographs Theresa Marx
Styling and edit Flossie Saunders

Ski goggles,
£855, Loro Piana

Boys’ toys
From gadgets to grooming, these gifts are guaranteed
to raise a smile. Novelty knits need not apply

The Sunday Times Style • 45

 STYLE WISH LIST
1

4
2

6
7
5

8
9

This Burberry
scarf is reborn for 11
the countryside in
a fitting “shrub”
shade
10

12
13

16

14 15

1 Trousers, £129, Patagonia, endclothing.com. 2 Bleu de Chanel shaving brush, £82, chanel.com. 3 Chronomat Automatic
GMT 40 watch, £6,500, breitling.com. 4 Backpack, £345, Porter-Yoshida & Co, matchesfashion.com. 5 Cap, £65, Battenwear,
endclothing.com. 6 Keyring, £340, Prada, farfetch.com. 7 Boots, £70, barbour.com. 8 Reverence Aromatique Hand Balm, £25, Aesop,
mrporter.com. 9 Drinks bottle, £39, Yeti, endclothing.com. 10 Scarf, £420, burberry.com. 11 Single watch roll, £240, smythson.com.
12 Wild Mint & Lavandin, £120 for 100ml EDP, moltonbrown.co.uk. 13 Sweatshirt, £215, cpcompany.com. 14 Trainers, £85, Adidas,
offspring.co.uk. 15 Wallet, £85, Comme des Garçons, selfridges.com. 16 Overshirt, £69, johnlewis.com

46 • The Sunday Times Style

 1 3
2

Priya Elan
FEATURES EDITOR
Wallace and Gromit knew exactly what
they meant by “the wrong trousers”.
They were probably talking about
corduroy versions, right? It’s very hard
to find a pair that fits well (snug with a
slight flare but not baggy) and has a cut
that is just the right side of “vintage”.
These trousers from Toast tick all the
boxes and come in a delightful shade of
woodland green that’s perfect for that 4
inevitable family walk on New Year’s 5
Day. Shout out too, to this hair serum
from the brilliant Pattern, which does
great products for people with curly hair.
1 Jojoba Oil Blend serum, £25, Pattern,
cultbeauty.co.uk. 2 Coffee machine,
£330, Sage, johnlewis.com. 3 Corduroy 9
trousers, £155, toa.st. 4 Sonic Life:
6
A Memoir, £20, Thurston Moore,
roughtrade.com. 5 High-tops, £155, 8
MoonStar, endclothing.com

11

3 10
12

1 Cosmograph Daytona watch, price on application, rolex.com. 2 Water flosser, £45,

ordolife.com. 3 Reversible shirt, £2,100, dior.com. 4 Hypnotist whitening toothpaste,
£17, Selahatin, coltortiboutique.com. 5 Clogs, £90, Birkenstock, matchesfashion.com.
5 6 Socks, £20, Beams Plus, mrporter.com. 7 Vintage champagne 2013, £205,
David Newby

Dom Pérignon, clos19.com. 8 Bespoke, £65 for 100ml EDP, Hackett, boots.com.
9 Noise-cancelling headphones, £100, sony.co.uk. 10 Sweatshirt, £275, vollebak.com.
11 Carry-on suitcase, £1,130, rimowa.com. 12 Pen, £405, montblanc.com

50 • The Sunday Times Style

 STYLE WISH LIST

The 19th hole

This Louis Vuitton bag will be a winner on and off the green. Golf bag, price on application, Louis Vuitton

The Sunday Times Style • 51

 STYLE WISH LIST

3
2

7
5

9 The chore jacket

as reimagined
by Paul Smith is the
perfect gift for
8 the man who lives
in denim

10

11

15

14

13

16
12

1 Bag, £695, carlfriedrik.com. 2 Liner vest, £67, arket.com. 3 Sunglasses, £250, tomford.co.uk. 4 Beach bat set, £245, Frescobol Carioca,
matchesfashion.com. 5 Jacket, £225, paulsmith.com. 6 Beanie, £29, communityclothing.co.uk. 7 Limited Edition Overactive Mind Sensory Point
Oil, £120, anatome.co. 8 Liner jacket, £160, carhartt-wip.com. 9 Fifty Fathoms watch, £340, Blancpain x Swatch; swatch.com. 10 Moustache
comb, £140, celine.com. 11 Belt, £70, loake.com. 12 Washbag, £830, brunellocucinelli.com. 13 Chukka boots, £95, toms.com. 14 Wallet, £390,
Giorgio Armani, armani.com. 15 Hot-water bottle and cover, £290, burberry.com. 16 Orange Blossom candle, £345, loewe.com

The Sunday Times Style • 53

 STYLE WISH LIST

On the ball
Celine’s petanque set is the style essential you never knew you needed. Petanque game, £1,050, Celine Maison

The Sunday Times Style • 55

 STYLE WISH LIST

3
2
A chicly
wrapped soap is 6
the grown-up
stocking filler you 5
can’t go wrong
with 7
4

8
Under £10
The perfect present doesn’t need to break the
12
bank – there’s an affordable (and stylish) gift for
everyone on your list
9 13
Edit Helen Atkin
11
10

15
14

16

1 Soap, £7, Claus Porto, notanotherbill.com. 2 Nail Paint in Blue Macaron, £8, palettelondon.com. 3 Earrings, £10, weekday.com. 4 Pinch pot,
£6, falconenamelware.com. 5 Chopsticks, £8 for four, Island Bamboo, goodhoodstore.com. 6 Bauble, £8, libertylondon.com. 7 Make-up bag,
£7.50, johnlewis.com. 8 Pencils, £6, Monk & Anna, folkinteriors.co.uk. 9 Pencil wrap, £9, fermliving.co.uk. 10 Ice sphere moulds, £10, oliverbonas.
com. 11 Matches, £8, John Derian, mazeclothing.co.uk. 12 Socks, £7, cos.com. 13 Earrings, £10, stradivarius.com. 14 Black truffle sea salt, £9,
trufflehunter.co.uk. 15 Shoe laces, £8, David Shrigley, shop.balticmill.com. 16 The Mixer’s Manual, £10, Dan Jones, timesbookshop.co.uk

The Sunday Times Style • 57

 STYLE WISH LIST

7
4 8
5

12
10

11

13

14
16

15

These emerald- 17
coloured earrings
from Accessorize
are a steal at £10
and will make
any outfit

1 Scrunchie, £10, arket.com. 2 Coaster, £8, avenidahome.com. 3 Honeypot, £10, Kilner, fenwick.co.uk. 4 Socks, £10, zara.com. 5 Lime
squeezer, £7, Eddingtons, hartsofstur.com. 6 Eyeshadow in Gaia, £5, hm.com. 7 Candles, £5 for two, sostrenegrene.com. 8 Storage
tin, £9, Hay, connox.co.uk. 9 Mystery Matchbox puzzle, £5, kikkerlandeu.com. 10 Sleep mask, £10, hm.com. 11 Almond and Flowers
Delicious Hands hand cream, £9, loccitane.com. 12 Spirit measure, £9, Uberstar, marksandspencer.com. 13 Tumbler, £9.50, Fiorira un
Giardino, mazeclothing.co.uk. 14 Earrings, £10, accessorize.com. 15 Organic All Butter Lemon Biscuits, £7, highgrovegardens.com.
16 Notebook, £10, Notem, smallable.com. 17 Adventures in the Darkness mint chocolate, £7, fortnumandmason.com

The Sunday Times Style • 59

 STYLE WISH LIST

1
5

4
3

2 6

10

9
7
8 11

12

13

16 Give your
14
most forgetful
friend a vibrant
notebook that’s
15 impossible
to lose
18

17

1 Sunglasses, £6, monki.com. 2 Bauble, £8.50, Ian Snow, glassette.com. 3 Earrings, £8, accessorize.com. 4 Clementine curd, £5, daylesford.com.
5 Sailor’s Cure salted peanut brittle, £7, mrstanleys.co.uk. 6 Pastry brush, £9, Iris Hantverk, goodhoodstore.com. 7 Measuring spoons, £7, Ernst,
nordicnest.com. 8 Gingerbread cutters, £10, Bloomingville, nordicnest.com. 9 Bag tag, £10, notanotherbill.com. 10 Letter pendant, £7.50,
pilgrim.net. 11 Orange & Chocolate Biscuits, £7, fortnumandmason.com. 12 Shot glass, £10, Broste, selfridges.com. 13 Incense, £10, Kuumba,
goodhoodstore.com. 14 Smoked Chipotle Chef’s Honey, £10, fortnumandmason.com. 15 Afternoon Tea, £10, selfridges.com. 16 Beanie, £10,
sweatybetty.com. 17 Ravioli stamp, £10, Marcato, selfridges.com. 18 Notebook, £6, MiGoals, moxon.london

The Sunday Times Style • 61

 STYLE WISH LIST
1

4
2

Pretty in pink?
Stuff this cap in
their stocking this
Christmas
5

8
13
12

10

14
11
15

17
16

1 Home Bird, £5, Megan Davies, johnlewis.com. 2 Leather bookmark, £10, arkcolourdesign.com. 3 Felt robin, £8, johnlewis.com.
4 Reclaimed teak spoon, £10, Originalhome, fenwick.co.uk. 5 Hair claw, £8.50, marksandspencer.com. 6 Cap, £10, hm.com. 7 Touchscreen gloves,
£7, accessorize.com. 8 Candlestick, £6.50, oliverbonas.com. 9 Red bra, £10, and 10 thong, £10 for three, hm.com. 11 Napkins, £10 for two, hm.com.
12 Matches, £8, archivistgallery.com. 13 Espresso cup, £10, Anna + Nina, libertylondon.com. 14 Mug, £7.30, HKliving, folkinteriors.co.uk. 15 Sweet
and Smokey Spice Rub, £6, ottolenghi.co.uk. 16 Tomato seeds, £3, notanotherbill.com. 17 Black Cherry chocolate, £6, ocelotchocolate.com

The Sunday Times Style • 63

 FIT FOR
Most brands pay celebrities wagon loads
of cash to wear their clothes. Some of the
world’s biggest names wear Luca Faloni’s
clothes because they want to and they pay
in full. Even royalty. It all started “a few
years ago when one of my customers, who
is a keen polo player and moves in certain

A KING
circles, sent us a picture of Prince William
and asked, ‘Is he wearing your shirt?’”
Faloni, 39, explains. He didn’t think about
it too much “until I saw the prince on TV
on a tour of southeast Asia and said, ‘Wait
a second, I think he is wearing our shirts.’”
The future king’s online shopping was
confirmed when Faloni’s cashmere sweater
and denim shirt made it into the prince’s
family Christmas card photograph in 2020. Luca Faloni is the little-known designer
Other famous customers include Stanley
Tucci, Regé-Jean Page, Ronan Keating, transforming Prince William’s wardrobe
the Formula One driver Charles Leclerc,
the chef Giorgio Locatelli and the Disney
(no ties allowed). John Arlidge meets him
CEO, Bob Iger. Another F1 star, Lando
Norris, who drives for McLaren, gets his Prince William
dad to do his shopping for him in Faloni’s wearing a Luca
Milan store before the Monza Grand Prix. Faloni linen shirt
Faloni’s brand appeals to royalty and
business titans because there are no
logos. “They don’t want to be flashy. If
you’re Prince William, you don’t want
60 million people in England to know that
you bought a £10,000 jacket from an
expensive brand. You look for something
that is discreet and classic.” So Luca Faloni
is not fashion? “It’s classic but different —
without going crazy.”
It’s not crazy expensive. A cotton polo
shirt is £125, a wool blazer £675, chinos
£150 and a linen suit £925. Faloni says he
wants to offer value because some of the big
brands have become “greedy” and raised
their prices to “absurd” levels. He knows
what he’s talking about. He grew up in
Turin and bought his clothes from the local
shirtmakers and tailors, who make some of
the most stylish collections from the best
cottons, wool and cashmere “for a fraction
of the price of the big brands”. Research
by Luca Solca, leading luxury analyst at
Bernstein, confirms that 21 out of 23 of the
best-known high-end fashion brands have
jacked up prices over the past 12 months.
Faloni keeps prices lower than his
competitors not just because he wants to
but also by adopting a different business
model. He sells mainly directly to
consumers (DTC) online, rather than
through stores. He does have a handful of
shops — including three in London, where
his business is based — but he regards
stores as “DTC too, because you have direct
contact with the customer”.
He will “never sell wholesale” (selling
stock to third-party online retailers or
department stores, for example) because

64 • The Sunday Times Style

 ‘I hate ties. It’s all about
pretending to be more
elegant. It’s useless’
“they put up the price so high to cover rent,
tech and warehousing, which means the
customer gets a bad deal. And if they have
too much stock they discount like mad in
the sales, which devalues the brand.”
Faloni has a strict no sales rule, “even
though some of our customers complain
about it”. Why? “Because it’s absurd and
wrong. When you go to a restaurant you
pay full price. When you go to the cinema
you pay full price. No other industry says,
‘Stick around a while and we’ll give you
everything for 70 per cent off.’ That doesn’t
make any sense. It’s unhealthy for the
industry, for the consumer, for the brands
and for the environment.”
He developed the idea of upmarket DTC
menswear after studying tech and the
consumer goods market when he worked
as a management consultant for Bain &
Company in the UK and US — and thanks to
a chance meeting in San Francisco with
Edoardo Zegna, son of Gildo Zegna, the
CEO of the Italian menswear behemoth.
“Edo was working for Everlane in the US at
the time, earning his stripes away from the
family firm. We ran into each other, had a few
drinks one night and he explained to me
exactly how the fashion world worked and
how technology would change it.” Faloni
began to wonder if he could use technology
to recreate online the world of affordable
luxury Italian style he witnessed in Turin.
The designer
Luca Faloni
Above The Prince of Wales
in Luca Faloni for the family
Christmas card photograph,
2020. Left The autumn/
winter 2023 collection.
Below left Penn Badgley
and the F1 driver Lando
Norris wearing the brand
The DTC model worked almost immedi-
ately. Annual revenue hit £1.5 million in the
fourth year after launch in 2014 and is now
about £35 million, he says, which is enough
to break even. “We’re growing but we invest
a lot in marketing in order to grow faster.”
Britain is his largest European market, with
20 per cent of sales. He has offices and
warehouses in the UK and Italy, which has
made it easier than for some firms to navi-
gate post-Brexit trading regimes.
Now that he is established, what’s next?
Men’s winter suits, shoes and more coats
are on the drawing board. Menswear is a
good place to start a DTC brand, since men
tend to buy the same sorts of clothes over
and over again. But womenswear accounts
for 70 per cent of the luxury fashion market,
so, even though it is more complicated with
more kinds of garments, “eventually you
have to do womenswear”. He points out
that brands often considered more for men,
such as Brunello Cucinelli and Loro Piana,
make more money selling to women.
Could both the future queen and king “go
Italian”, rather than stick to Savile Row or
French couture as their forebears have?
Faloni’s “refined, elevated classic and casual
staples” would certainly work for both of
them, he says. “Times are changing.”
But one thing he will never make, not
even for William, is a tie. “I hate ties. All
other clothes are functional. You wear knit-
wear because you’re cold. But a tie doesn’t
make any sense. It’s all about pretending
to be more elegant. It’s useless. I will never
make one.” You can hear the sighs of relief
on Jermyn Street. ■
The Sunday Times Style • 65
 High-neck jumper, £325,
and-daughter.com

Roll
with it
When the mercury drops, stylish women
everywhere have one secret weapon. Laura Craik
dissects the power of the poloneck

66 • The Sunday Times Style

 Early November and a long overdue chill fills the air.
Finally it’s jumper weather, and all over the country
women are falling gratefully into the warm embrace of a
winter knit. Only sometimes they’re falling a little too far.
Is that Fiona over there? You’re not quite sure. It looks
like Fiona but you can only see her eyes. The rest of her
is submerged in an oversized navy poloneck, like an
enigmatic submarine.
This season jumpers are back with a vengeance,
reappearing on the catwalks and high street with
almost truculent intent. “Here we are,” they seem to
be saying. “You thought you could live without us, did
you? You thought a mere cardigan could keep you
cosy? Pah. No warmth in those.” Indeed, winter 2023
is the jumper’s revenge and it’s a dish best served
with an ultra-high neckline. Yes, you can still find
crewnecks in the shops, but the smarter money is on
polonecks and funnelnecks. As well as being warmer —
a genuine consideration, given the cost of heating our
homes these days — there’s something pleasingly myste-
rious about a high-neck jumper. While pulling up a hoodie
over your head can make you look rather foreboding,
pulling up your neckline grants you instant mystique.
It’s something the patron saint of chic, Phoebe Philo,
knows only too well. At the end of her Celine shows, the
designer frequently took her bows wearing a poloneck,
while a black-and-white portrait of her in sweatpants,
a Celine coat and a shucked-up polo (shot in 2015 by
David Sims) still lingers on many a woman’s mood board.
When her eponymous collection was finally unveiled on
October 30, fans were happy to see she’d included a merino wool versions (from £30) among the most demo-
plethora of beautifully crafted funnelnecks and polonecks cratic (and useful) around.
in neutral shades of cream, mushroom and grey. Despite Above High necks Polos are also handy for effecting a hair tuck, most
being priced from £750 to £1,600, most sold out immedi- at Max Mara, recently rebranded as a “Taylor tuck”, after Ms Swift sent
ately. Which isn’t surprising. Gauchere and the internet into a frenzy by stepping out looking as
When it comes to finding a cosy but flattering neckline, Andreadamo. though she’d had her hair lopped into a bob. She hadn’t —
everyone’s needs are different. The options for polo-neck Below, from left her look had been achieved with hairpins — but a high-
aficionados are varied. Do you go oversized and cable knit A piece from neck jumper will give the same effect.
or opt for a skinny-fit in merino wool that’s perfect for Phoebe Philo’s It also lends the wearer a degree of comfort — some-
layering under a suit? Of course there is plenty of scope collection; Phoebe thing we’re all in need of. A lot has been written about the
when it comes to price too, with sustainably farmed yak Philo; Linda hemline index, linking the rise and fall of skirt lengths
polos the choice of the fashion darlings (see Phoebe Evangelista on The with the rise and fall of the economy. In prosperous times,
Philo’s chocolate brown option), or Uniqlo’s excellent Super Models hemlines become shorter; in worrying times, they fall
again. Some of us prefer to take our cues from the neckline
index instead. Like hemlines, necklines rise and fall too —
it’s just that nobody makes a fuss about it.
It’s this classic “no comment” simplicity that so appeals.
Linda Evangelista could have worn anything for her
appearance on Apple TV+’s The Super Models, but she
chose a navy rollneck in a power move that reeked of
quiet confidence. Evangelista has spoken candidly
of the extreme measures she took to disguise her jaw
Getty Images, Apple TV+, launchmetrics.com/spotlight

and neck after being “brutally disfigured” by a popular

fat-freezing procedure, and was habitually photo-
graphed afterwards with her face tightly wrapped
in a headscarf. While her jumper only revealed
a sliver of neck, it felt like a step forward for
someone who once felt so self-conscious,
that she had to hide the area entirely.
That’s the beauty of polonecks — they
can reveal or conceal at whim. In the
wardrobe of life, they’re the warm hug
you can always rely on. How many
garments can you say that about? ■

The Sunday Times Style • 67

 This page Lara wears
silk georgette dress,
£8,500, Gucci. From left,
Mor wears tracksuit
top, price on application,
Adidas Originals by Wales
Bonner. Andrea wears
T-shirt, £85, Sunspel. Polo
top, £515, Commission.
Nicolo wears T-shirt,
£550, The Row. Denim
trousers, £1,000,
Balenciaga. Opposite Lara
wears satin dress, £2,750,
Prada. Daniela wears
cashmere top with feather
trim, £2,180, and trousers,
£3,400, Prada. Earrings,
POA, Bottega Veneta

68 • The Sunday Times Style

The finer things
Indulge in showstopping cocktail dresses that
will make you feel every bit as good as they look
Photographs Giampaolo Sgura Styling Verity Parker Model Lara Menezes
 This page Lara wears shirt, £1,070, blazer, £4,020, and shorts, £970, The Row. Nicolo wears satin dress, £2,150, Miu Miu.
Opposite Lara wears dress, POA, Blumarine. Slingbacks, £770, Celine by Hedi Slimane

70 • The Sunday Times Style

Lara wears minidress, POA,
JW Anderson. From left,
Andrea wears top, £4,660,
Bottega Veneta. Daniela wears
bustier dress, £2,220, Saint
Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello.
Earrings, POA, Bottega Veneta.
Watch, Daniela’s own. Mor
wears shirt, £1,220, and shorts,
£895, Prada. Nicolo wears
T-shirt, £550, The Row
The Sunday Times Style • 73
 This page Lara wears crepe dress, £6,900, Valentino. Opposite Lara wears sheer dress, £185, Poster Girl.
Hand-crocheted dress, £4,755, Chanel. Nicolo wears denim trousers, £1,000, Balenciaga. Cap, £48, Palace

The Sunday Times Style • 75

This page Lara wears
silk dress, POA, Louis
Vuitton. Satin sandals,
£845, Manolo Blahnik.
Opposite Lara wears
rhinestone dress, £945,
Philosophy di Lorenzo
Serafini. Shoes, £890,
Prada. Mor wears cotton
shorts, £895, Prada

Hair Ezio Diaferia

using Cotril. Make-up
Martina D’Andrea at
Blend. Nails Annarel
Innocente Furina at Blend.
Model Lara Menezes at
Next Management.
Casting SimoBart
Casting. Supporting
cast Daniela Torta at
Streetpeoplecasting,
Mor Mbaw at
Independent, Daniil
Prakapiuk at Tank, Nicolo
Tagliabue at Badd and
Andrea Lai at Crew.
Thanks to Hotel Principe
di Savoia, Milan
The Sunday Times Style • 77
 Small world
From stocking fillers to big hitters – your kids’
gift list just got even longer
Photograph Charlie Goodge Styling and edit Flossie Saunders
Set design: Liv Snowden. Cove wood-effect vinyl flooring, harveymaria.com

Canopy, £295, projektityyny.com. Ride-on car, £120, Vilac, childrensalon.com.

Chair, £90, Oyoy, allmamaschildren.com. Toadstool basket, £50, dunelm.com.
Rattan Strolley, £120, Olli Ella, fortnumandmason.com. Rug, from £99, Zuri
House, scandiborn.co.uk. Christmas decoration kit, £34, merimeri.co.uk

The Sunday Times Style • 79

 STYLE WISH LIST

8 9

10
11

Stylish parents
will love these
stripy PJs from
Nights by Wilder
(just as much 12
as their kids)

13

1 Velvet ballerina shoes, £49, lacoquetakids.com. 2 Jacket, £180, bobochoses.com. 3 Backpack, £56, Fila x Mini Rodini;
minirodini.com. 4 Tabby McTat, £7, Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler, timesbookshop.co.uk. 5 Nintendo Switch Lite,
£200, nintendo.co.uk. 6 Goggles, £16, sunnylife.com. 7 Wireless headphones, £50, pogsheadphones.co.uk. 8 Mushroom
hat, £34, Meri Meri, edieandeve.co.uk. 9 Trike, £149, Banwood, kidly.co.uk. 10 Nightie, £57, ifonlyif.co.uk. 11 Pyjamas, £56,
nightsbywilder.com. 12 Ladybird backpack, £29, merimeri.co.uk. 13 V-10 sneakers, £111, Veja, brownsfashion.com

80 • The Sunday Times Style

 15
14

Verity Parker
ASSOCIATE FASHION DIRECTOR
16 My husband started my Hermès
collection and I’m hoping he adds to it
this Christmas with this beautiful Kelly
bracelet — the epitome of timeless
luxury — or maybe he’ll buy me this
cosy winter warmer from Celine.
18 A voucher for my favourite garden
centre (@alexandranurseries in
17
southeast London) is always a hit.
When it comes to gifting, you
can’t go wrong with a River Cafe
cookbook. Delicious!
1 Shopping bag, £95, longchamp.com.
2 Cushion, made to order, from £70,
Julie Baby Punch Club, biglittlestore.co.
3 Kelly silver bracelet, £2,810,
hermes.com. 4 River Cafe 30, £40,
Ruth Rodgers, timesbookshop.co.uk.
5 Fair Isle jumper, £890, celine.com

19 1

3
21

22

20

14 Stripy jumper, £55, whistles.com. 15 Hairclips, £6.50, rockahulakids.com. 16 Yoto

Player, £99, case, £25, and song cards, £25, yotoplay.com. 17 Piano, £95, Vilac,
5
libertylondon.com. 18 Dress, £28, marksandspencer.com. 19 Clogs, £30, Crocs,
Rory Payne

schuh.co.uk. 20 Advent calendar, £55, oliverbonas.com. 21 3/4 LA electric guitar with

mini-amp, £100, gear4music.com. 22 Tracksuit bottoms, £36, organic-zoo.com

The Sunday Times Style • 81

 House
Whether keen
cook or couch potato,
there’s something
for every type of
proud
homebird this Christmas
Photograph Charlie Goodge
Styling and edit Flossie Saunders
Set design: Liv Snowden. Flowers: Minnow and Wolf Flowers, minnowandwolf.com

Scented candle, £110, Loewe, libertylondon.com. Leopard vase, £19, truffletablescapes.co.uk.

Candle holder, £22.50, and burgundy candle, £14 for two, hotpottery.co.uk. Stripy candle pot,
£35, Hodge Pots, glassette.com. Bluebell candlestick, £35, anna-nina.nl. Blue candle, £35
for six, Hay, libertylondon.com. Stripy vase, £38, biaseditions.com. Glass candle holder, £39,
Hay, libertylondon.com. Candle, £40 for 20, Anna + Nina, libertylondon.com. Clear vase, £32
for a set, and Palm candlestick, £165, mrsalice.com. Floral candle, stylist’s own. Check vase,
£85, Vaisselle, libertylondon.com. Wiggle candlestick, £52, biaseditions.com. Tough Love
candle, £30 for two, Anna + Nina, selfridges.com. Rattan vase, £42 for a set, mrsalice.com

The Sunday Times Style • 83

 1
A decorative
4
box of matches is
2 the host-pleaser of
the season — no
dodgy flowers 3
required

5
6

10

9 11

12

17

13

15 16

14

1 Bauble, £19, anna-nina.nl. 2 Tomato Leaves candle, £82, Loewe, libertylondon.com. 3 The Inseparables matches, £8, view-gifts.com.
4 Santoku knife, £120, alldaygoods.co.uk. 5 Scalloped pillowcases, £90 for two, bedthreads.com. 6 Hip flask, £55, aspinaloflondon.com.
7 Wave dinner plate, £28, Woven Rosa, glassette.com. 8 Enamel cake stand, £70, falconenamelware.com. 9 Candlestick, £30, npgshop.org.uk.
10 Christmas truffle crackers, £130 for six, fortnumandmason.com. 11 Chair, £2,020, gucci.com. 12 Glasses set, £230, La DoubleJ,
net-a-porter.com. 13 Twisted candle, £32 for six, and 14 rattan ice bucket with tongs, £72, rebeccaudall.com. 15 Mug, £25, Anna + Nina,
anthropologie.com. 16 Digital radio, £100, Roberts, johnlewis.com. 17 First Edition gin, £45, renais.co.uk

The Sunday Times Style • 85

 STYLE WISH LIST
1

2 4

5
7

11

10 9

12

13
14

16

15 Loewe’s
stripy blanket
is a treat for those
who love to stay
at home

1 Hot-water bottle with cashmere cover, £85, notanotherbill.com. 2 Cushion, £44, beliani.co.uk. 3 Ceramic centrepiece, £385,
vaisselleboutique.com. 4 Tubereuse candle, £68, Diptyque, selfridges.com. 5 Glass tumbler set, £175, Stories of Italy,
brownsfashion.com. 6 Clam shell pinch pot, £38.50, Minnie-Mae Stott, glassette.com. 7 Monte Carlo, £85, Ségolène Cazenave
Manara, net-a-porter.com. 8 Kettle, £210, alessi.com. 9 Basket, £219, Hay, libertylondon.com. 10 Espresso cup and saucer,
£26, villabolognapottery.com. 11 Mixer, £499, kitchenaid.co.uk. 12 Double egg cup, £13.50, The Old Sun Pottery, etsy.com.
13 Veuve Clicquot Yellow Label Personalisable Arrow, £67, clos19.com. 14 Lucy Mahon Shoreditch print, £250, sohohome.com.
15 Marbled cafetière, £45, Mahi, oliverbonas.com. 16 Blanket, £895, Loewe, matchesfashion.com

86 • The Sunday Times Style

 18
17

20

19
Phoebe McDowell
21 ACTING BEAUTY DIRECTOR
Wine buff or prefer cheap plonk? It all
tastes better out of a skinny-stemmed
glass such as this one by Nude. Have you
ever seen such a good-looking speaker?
It’s the perfect present whether your
loved one blares Taylor Swift or nods
along to politics podcasts. And no
Christmas is complete without a gift set,
24 so try these nourishing lip balms from
the cult brand Summer Fridays.
1 Hand towel, £48, thehousebymah.com.
23 2 No 5 The Body Oil, £102, chanel.com.
3 Lip Butter Balm Set, £42, Summer
Fridays, cultbeauty.co.uk. 4 Ring, £170,
louis-abel.com. 5 Beosound A5 speaker,
£899, bang-olufsen.com. 6 Red wine
glass, £59 for two, nudeglass.com
22
1

26

25

2 3

28
4

27

17 Linen napkins, £47.50 for four, Hot Pottery x Polkra, hotpottery.co.uk. 18 Belvedere 10
vodka, £185, selfridges.com. 19 Spice grinder, £58, addisonross.com. 20 Large
Always Pan, £155, fromourplace.co.uk. 21 Reusable crackers, £62 for six, kaneo.co.uk.
22 Christmas wreath, £40, lights4fun.co.uk. 23 Apron, £95, La DoubleJ, harrods.com.
David Newby

24 Side plate, £40, henryhollandstudio.com. 25 Where Bartenders Drink, £17, Adrienne

Stillman, glassette.com. 26 Beer mug, £89, klimchi.com. 27 Raffia lampshade, £110,
Arbala, maisonflaneur.com. 28 Watering can, £20, toa.st

The Sunday Times Style • 87

 Doggy
style
There’s no shortage
of treats in store for your
four-legged friends
Photograph Charlie Goodge Styling Flossie Saunders
Model Teddy the dog Edit Helen Atkin
Set design: Liv Snowden. Thanks to Teddy the dog

Large bouclé dog bed,

£199, teddylondon.com.
Personalised dog bowl,
£95, henryhollandstudio.
com. Happy Pet green rope
tugger, £15, Kong Lobster
toy, £7.50, and Kong Wubba
puppy toy, £5.50,
lordsandlabradors.co.uk

The Sunday Times Style • 89

 STYLE WISH LIST

1
3

2
5

8 9
7 10

11

14
15
12

13

18
17

For the time-

poor (or lazy?)
pet owner, this auto
game of fetch is
a great idea
16

1 Dog jumper, from £55, Meet the Parents x Wray, littlebeast.co. 2 Laser Mouse toy, £5.50, All for Paws, lordsandlabradors.co.uk.
3 Balancing Eucalyptus Dog Soap, £15, Troopets, petsofponsonby.co.uk. 4 Dog tracker, £149, pitpat.com. 5 Oil Infusion for Joints, £15,
Yoko, opahstore.com. 6 Dog bed, £140, teddymaximus.com. 7 Squeaky Squirrel toy, £15, lishlondon.com. 8 Doggy water bottle, £23,
cucciolocavallo.com. 9 Coaching Cards for New Cat Parents, £15, Dr Marlena Lopez, waterstones.com. 10 Reflective cat collar, £45,
cheshireandwain.com. 11 Gentle Horse Shampoo, £15, wildwash.co.uk. 12 Jellyfish cat toy, £25, mungoandmaud.com. 13 Itch Relief Balm for
dogs, £10, bagandboop.com. 14 Birdball seed feeder, £72, greenandblue.co.uk. 15 Smart Mouse cat toy, £50, The Tech Bat, selfridges.com.
16 Pet bowl, £35, hotpottery.co.uk. 17 Drying mitts, £21, dogrobes.co.uk. 18 Automatic tennis ball launcher, £152, pethavenmarket.net

90 • The Sunday Times Style

 20 23

21
19

22

26

27 28

24

25

30

29

Cook up a real
“dog’s dinner” 31
with this
definitive guide

32

34

33

19 Cat scratcher, £60, dukeandcopetsupplies.com. 20 Treat bag, £288, pagerie.com. 21 Silent dog whistle, £22.50, acmewhistles.co.uk.
22 Super Soft Dog Conditioner, £22.50, wildfordogs.co.uk. 23 Dog boots, £34, sparkpaws.uk. 24 Longhair cat grooming kit, £40, catit.co.uk.
25 Dog lead with poo bag holder, £219, Baurdelle, harrods.com. 26 Collar, £200, tods.com. 27 Waterproof dog coat, £55, barbour.com.
28 Dog tag, £32.50, mungoandmaud.com. 29 Dog car seat bed, £119, funnyfuzzy.co.uk. 30 Cat play tower, £28, Designed by
Lotte, vetsend.co.uk. 31 Poo bag charm, £135, anyahindmarch.com. 32 Feed Me: 50 Home Cooked Meals for Your Dog, £20, Liviana Prola,
glassette.com. 33 Cat bed, £115, lordsandlabradors.co.uk. 34 Balance + Calm dog treats, £10, Botanical Bones, sticksandsocks.com

The Sunday Times Style • 91

92 • The Sunday Times Style
‘The
most
beautiful
house is
always
the next
one’
From rococo to avant-garde,
Karl Lagerfeld’s homes were
as eclectic as the man
himself (including the one he
only spent a single night in),
says Katrina Burroughs
With his trademark black shades and powdered white
ponytail, Karl Lagerfeld was at the heart of the fashion
industry for over half a century, designing up to 14
collections a year well into his eighties. Celebrated for
the prolific creativity of his tenures at Chloé, Chanel
and Fendi, the designer, who died in 2019, is less well
known for his private passion: interiors. In September
Victoria Beckham held her label’s spring/summer 2024
show in the salon of one of Lagerfeld’s former homes
on Paris’s Left Bank. She is not the only one: last month

Left Lagerfeld in 2008, in the photo studio at the back

of Librairie 7L, the bookshop he opened in Paris in 1999

The Sunday Times Style • 93

 Design Miami’s inaugural Paris edition pitched up at
the same mansion in Saint-Germain-des-Prés — Hôtel
Pozzo di Borgo in Rue de l’Université, to be exact —
with the art crowd admiring the mise en scène of
crystal chandeliers and chequerboard marble floors.
Now a new book, Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses,
reveals the jaw-dropping decor of 13 of his residences.
“This collection of interiors reflects the desires,
circumstances and whims of its creator and reveals his
character more fully than any biography,” Patrick
Mauriès writes in his introduction. Mauriès, a long-
term Lagerfeld watcher, adds that “Lagerfeld collected
interiors in the same way that Don Juan notched
up conquests.”
The series of love affairs that took him from Paris
to Biarritz, Rome and Hamburg, began in the Rue
de l’Université in 1963, when Lagerfeld moved with
his mother into a second-floor apartment of an
18th- century mansion. There he placed
art deco pieces by Émile-Jacques Ruhl-
mann and André Groult alongside
Sixties armchairs by Joe Colombo and
‘Each time he
tables by Eero Saarinen. It was a mix and moved into a
match made in heaven, but Lagerfeld
rarely became attached to any of the
house he told
elements of his homes. “It’s collecting himself a story
that’s fun, not owning,” he once said, and
accordingly he painstakingly researched and invented a
and acquired the perfect pieces. Then, life to go with
the ensemble completed to his satisfac-
tion, he moved on to the next look. that house’
94 • The Sunday Times Style
“The most beautiful house is always the next one,” was
Lagerfeld’s way of describing his thirst for a new project.
And his subsequent home was indeed sublime. In the
early 1970s he purchased a flat on Place Saint-Sulpice, on
the other side of the Boulevard Saint-Germain, and in
1975, ready for an aesthetic fresh start, sold his art deco
collection at Drouot auction house. But it was the Hôtel
Pozzo di Borgo, where he moved two years later — the
backdrop to Beckham’s floaty frocks — that marks the
most spectacular of Lagerfeld’s transformations. The
18th-century architecture is unashamedly grand and, to
match the majesty of the rooms, he decided to evoke the
spirit of Louis XIV and Madame de Pompadour in the
decor. He bought old master paintings and furniture
with gilded rococo curves and neoclassical lines. This
was when the designer began to wear his hair in a pony-
tail and carry a fan, entertaining guests by candlelight,
like a grand siècle dandy. The extravagant decor spread
from wing to wing, the makeover only
halted by his debts to the French tax
authorities — which led to a sale of
much of the Pozzo di Borgo collection at
Christie’s in 2000.
Marie Kalt, who wrote the chapters
on his homes, accounts for the constant
metamorphoses by explaining that his
houses were never private sanctuaries
— they were stage sets. She had previ-
ously worked with Lagerfeld for several
months in 2012 when she was editor-in-
chief of Architectural Digest France
 Left Lagerfeld’s office in his apartment on Place
Saint-Sulpice, Paris. Below In his Memphis
Group-decorated home at Le Roccabella,
Monte Carlo. The table is by George Sowden
and the Riviera chairs are by Michele De Lucchi.
Below The bedroom at Place Saint-Sulpice.
Opposite Lagerfeld in the sitting room of his
Rue de l’Université flat, Paris, 1972

and he guest-edited an issue. “Each time he moved into

a house he told himself a story and invented a life to go
with that house,” she tells me. “It was just as if he had
been designing a set for a film or play and he was the
central character.”
Never one to be typecast, in 1981 Lagerfeld moved
into an apartment on the 21st floor of a high rise in
Monte Carlo designed by Gio Ponti, called Le Rocca-
bella. There he proceeded to create the aesthetic oppo-
site of his 18th-century fantasia, with avant-garde
design by the Memphis Group: Ettore Sottsass’s
Carlton bookcase, Michael Graves’s Plaza dressing
table and Masanori Umeda’s boxing ring.
Ten years later, when Lagerfeld’s Memphis moment
had passed, the collection was sold at Sotheby’s. “He
was very much that sort of person who starts building
something and then he destroys it and then moves on
to something else — which was also the way he treated
his relationships,” Kalt says. “He was very, very close to
some people, then after a while they were banned and
he started a new circle — and on and on and on again.”
The final house in the book, and his last interiors
project, Pavillon des Voisins, in Louveciennes, is a 19th-
century mansion with a neoclassical façade in the coun-
tryside near Paris, which he bought in 2009. It can
scarcely be called Lagerfeld’s home. The designer never
actually lived there, spending a single night and
throwing one dinner party (for his friends Princess
Caroline of Monaco and the event organiser Françoise

The Sunday Times Style • 95

 Above The blue sitting room at the Pavillon de Voisins,
Louveciennes. Left The doors leading to the guest bedroom
at the Pavillon are surrounded by vintage German advertising
posters. Below Lagerfeld at the Hôtel Pozzo di Borgo, Paris, in
1990, in front of a bureau attributed to Jean-François Oeben

It was the most

personal of his
properties — here were
all the objects he had
never sold or discarded
Dumas) in the house. But it was the most personal of
his properties. Here were all the objects he had never
sold or discarded. Georg Jensen candlesticks by Johan
Getty Images, Alamy, Shutterstock, Jacques Schumacher, Jérôme Galland

Rohde, which had followed him from Monaco to

Hamburg and Biarritz. Works by Ronan and Erwan
Bouroullec and Martin Szekely brought from his Paris
apartment on Rue des Saints-Pères. He recreated his
teenage bedroom on the first floor and added a repro-
duction of a painting of Voltaire and Frederick II of
Prussia by Adolph von Menzel that had originally
inspired his interest in the 18th century. If not a home,
then this country house was a testament to the shape-
shifting designer’s lifelong curiosity — as well as his
inexhaustible genius for reinvention. ■

Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Houses by Patrick Mauriès and

Marie Kalt (Thames & Hudson £75) is published on
December 7. To order a copy go to timesbookshop.co.uk.
Discount available for Times+ members

The Sunday Times Style • 97

 The truth about
married men
and social media
Think Instagram flirting Photograph Victoria Adamson
is harmless? Roisin Kelly,
30, explains why she’s
had enough of receiving
‘friendly’ messages from
men in relationships
Clicking on to Instagram, I see I have three new
direct messages — a meme from a friend, someone
asking if I received their email and … oh no, it’s that
married guy again. The same married man who, in
the few months since we made small talk at an event,
ignites conversations with me on Instagram almost
daily. It started with harmless, mundane chatter
about work and TV shows. Then a bit of teasing and
banter that, if he weren’t married, I would consider
flirting. He likes every picture I post and one
Saturday night upped the ante with a reaction of
flame emojis to my pre-going-out selfie. There’s
never a mention of a wife or a marriage — not even
a casual “we” in conversation. If it weren’t for the
wedding photos pinned to the top of his profile, I’d
assume he was single. Am I overthinking it? “Get
over yourself, he’s just being friendly,” I tell myself.
And then he asks me out to dinner.
I didn’t go, of course — I stopped replying and
eventually he got the message. But a sense check
with a group of girlfriends reveals a sad truth: this
is just one brief glimpse of a single, 30-year-old
woman’s DMs, and it turns out every woman has a
story of a married man, or a man in a relationship,
flirting with them on Instagram.
“Married guys in your DMs are the worst,” one
friend says, as others roll their eyes in agreement.
I hear stories of them receiving messages that say,
“Need company? Haha” after they’ve posted a
photo of a bubble bath. Or, “U should date a real
man lol *wink emoji*” following a story about a bad
date. These are bold examples, but more often than
not it’s a sly, subtle build-up. For example, a man
I met abroad last year spent hours in deep conver-
sations with me, showering me with compliments.
A nosy browse through his tagged photos while we

98 • The Sunday Times Style

 were mid-conversation one evening revealed a
moving-in picture with a long-term girlfriend
and a puppy they had adopted. I wondered if I was
reading too much in to the whole thing and stopped
responding. He unfollowed me a few weeks later.
Even worse, a friend tells me about a man she
exchanged numbers with on a dating app.
When he messaged her on WhatsApp, his
profile photo showed him at the zoo with his
wife and children.
Sadly this behaviour isn’t as shocking as it sounds.
Infidelity is nothing new: a survey by YouGov found
that one in five British adults admits to having had
an affair, while a third say they
have thought about it. According
to another study, conducted A man I met
earlier this year, nearly two-thirds
of people who use Tinder are
spent hours
already in a relationship. chatting with me
But thanks to social media,
the question of what counts as on Instagram.
cheating and, in turn, what His tagged
people can get away with, is
more complicated than ever. photos revealed
The line has been blurred.
Attempting to cheat on your
a long-term
partner used to require some girlfriend and
effort: people stayed late at the
office or sneacked off to a hotel their puppy
with their lover under the guise
of a conference or a golfing weekend. Where once a
would-be cheater would have to go to their car
to make an illicit phone call, now it is a much
easier, less suspicious late-night conversation on
Instagram. Instead of risking flirting with a stranger
on a night out, we can like photos and send flame
emojis without even having to leave the sofa. In
October, a TikTokker went viral when she spoke
about catching her boyfriend sending X-rated
Instagram messages behind her back. It turned out
he was speaking to an AI bot.
While these actions aren’t physically adulterous,
Styling: Flossie Saunders. Hair: Samuel Broadbent at Hershesons. Make-up: Julia Wren
they do push the boundaries of what is acceptable
at Carol Hayes Management using Nars. Nails: Johanna Horn using Bio Sculpture
behaviour when you’re in a relationship. A study of
1,000 Americans found that 59 per cent of women
believe that sending flirtatious messages is “always
cheating”, compared with 42 per cent of men.
Joanna Harrison, a senior clinician at Tavistock
Relationships in London and the author of Five
Arguments All Couples (Need to) Have, agrees that
it comes down to “different ideas of what’s
appropriate” — for example, differences of opinion
about following exes and liking posts on social
media. “People often feel the way they use
their phone is so personal, but then it can
come as a shock that it’s something that needs
negotiation in the relationship,” she says.
But some things are straight-up inappropriate.
Anyone who has ever faced the agonising conun-
drum of catching a partner sending flirty
messages, or fretted over a partner’s constant
liking of other girls’ bikini pictures knows how
much this hurts. In 2014, a British law firm
found that Facebook and other social media were
cited in a third of divorces — numbers have risen
since. And while I’m writing from the perspective
of a woman, this kind of behaviour isn’t exclusive
to men. In fact, last year the website The Truth
About Deception found that women were more
likely than men to engage in cyber cheating (40 per
cent versus 30 per cent).
Being on the receiving end of such messages isn’t
a compliment. If a woman is single it does not mean
she will be flattered by advances from men who
are in relationships, whether
that’s on social media or in person.
We end up second-guessing
ourselves, questioning whether
we’re reading too much into it
or if we’ve given off the wrong
signals. We wonder what it is
about us that makes a man think
we would be “that sort of girl”. We
fear confronting them because
we know they’ll gaslight us with
denial; they will tell us to get over
ourselves and insist that they
were simply being “nice”. Instead
we have to divert the conversa-
tion, send a polite reply that
doesn’t address their intentions,
or phase out the conversation without seeming
rude, all the while worrying about the blissfully
unaware wife or girlfriend sitting next to them.
It’s a risky game to play — all that is needed to
out someone is a screenshot. Take the Maroon 5
frontman, Adam Levine, who was at the centre
of an Instagram controversy last year, when
a woman shared screenshots of messages
that appeared to be from him, which read:
“It is truly unreal how f***ing hot you are.
Like it blows my mind.” Levine followed with
a statement admitting to using “poor judgment
in speaking with anyone other than my wife in any
kind of flirtatious manner”, but insisted that he
“did not have an affair”.
For many people, Instagram cheating is about
self-gratification and an ego boost more than
wanting to start anything romantic. For others, it’s
simply boredom. But if someone finds that they
can get away with it, what starts as messaging can
turn into something more. I’ve experienced it
myself: catching a boyfriend firing off flirty Insta-
gram messages and forgiving him because “it’s
not real cheating”, then kicking myself a year
later when he was sleeping with someone else.
Many friends have similar stories. And even if
it doesn’t lead to physical cheating, what does it
say about your relationship if your partner is lying
next to you on the sofa, stroking your hair with one
hand, but telling other women how fit they are on
Instagram with the other? ■ @roisinkatekelly
The Sunday Times Style • 99
 CITY
slicker

100 • The Sunday Times Style

 Photographs Chris Mottalini

The fashion label Hill House Home is famous for its

chintzy style, but the house of its owner, Nell Diamond,
couldn’t be more different, says Olivia Lidbury
You might assume the home of Nell
Diamond — founder of Hill House Home
and the woman responsible for bringing
nostalgic smocked dresses into the
mainstream — would be an ode to all things
chintz. But her townhouse in Manhattan
is a study in sophisticated splendour. Slabs
of grey marble, not flowery wallpaper, flank
the enormous bathtub in the principal
bathroom, and the palette throughout is
skewed towards shades of pale grey with
deep aubergine accents. “I designed the
house with my husband and it’s definitely
a combination of our tastes together,”
Diamond concedes of the delicate dance
that is compromise. That said, her brand’s
headquarters are “an explosion of all of
the things that I chose not to do in my
house”, so she arguably enjoys the best of
both decor worlds.
Diamond, 35, and her husband, the
private equity investor Teddy Wasserman,
bought the classic brownstone in the West
Village in 2014, and spent almost three years
restoring it from apartments back to a family
home. They enlisted the help of the interior
designer Mark Cunningham to unite
Diamond’s predilection for all things
feminine and polished with Wasserman’s
affection for symmetry and clean lines.
Diamond is a self-confessed tidy freak, Opposite Diamond outside her West Village
so a sense of order underpins each space: brownstone, wearing the Naomi Nap Dress.
“I’ve always felt like my mental health is Top “The purples that run through the house
affected by a room that feels too cluttered, add depth,” Diamond says. The painting is
so I like everything to have its place. by the American artist Christopher Wool.
Like in the kitchen there are millions Above Some of Diamond’s many books

The Sunday Times Style • 101

 Above left “It of appliances, but almost all of them are
feels very British,” behind doors.”
Diamond says There are spirited touches, though — “I’m
of the tub in definitely the type of person that doesn’t take
her bathroom. myself too seriously,” Diamond says. These
Above right are discerningly chosen: a neon Trust Yourself
Diamond on the slogan by Tracey Emin lights up the hallway,
staircase at home, while an Andy Warhol of Queen Elizabeth II
wearing the takes pride of the place in the kitchen. The
Olympia skirt subsequent addition of the couple’s three
from her brand. children — Henry, aged seven, and twins
Left Diamond Willow and Sebastian, three — has also
sleeps in a brought a playful dimension to the home
canopied (the walls of Henry’s bedroom are decked out
four-poster bed, in jungle-themed wallpaper by Hermès).
Kitchen photograph: Kyle Knodell

complete with an Set over five floors, the layout of the house
internal light for reminded Diamond of the style of properties
late-night reading she lived in back in London. Her American
accent belies the fact that she was born in the
capital and, save for a few early years in Japan,
grew up in its most desirable neighbourhoods
(her father, Bob Diamond, was the CEO of

102 • The Sunday Times Style

Barclays). She credits exploring Portobello
Market and the vintage section in the
basement of Topshop Oxford Circus as
having helped mould her style. “That
originality and taste was electric, figuring
out what feels good to you regardless of
whether it’s on trend or in a magazine.”
She buys into the British look now with
tableware from UK designers such as
Matilda Goad and Mrs Alice and delightful
“oddities” like pig-shaped cocktail napkins
from the website Houses & Parties.
Not that hosting is often on the agenda.
“Right now home is where I spend private
time with my kids and husband and my
extended family. It’s a sanctuary,” she says.
‘I’ve always felt like my mental health is affected
by clutter, so I like everything to have its place’
Friday nights are sacrosanct.“You could not
get us out of the house — it would have to be
something very important,” she laughs of
their takeaway-and-movie ritual. But when
her parents, who live uptown, offer to babysit
midweek, she takes advantage of the food and
theatre scene on the doorstep: “I’m such a
city person. I definitely wasn’t looking for a
quiet corner of New York City.”
Diamond walks everywhere around town,
including daily to Hill House Home’s offices
in SoHo. What started as a bed linen brand
in 2016 has organically mushroomed into a
ready-to-wear phenomenon thanks to the
success of the now trademarked Nap Dress.
Nightie-like and with a smocked bodice
Above The airy kitchen,
which remains a clutter-free
zone, is where the family of
five congregate. Left A Tracey
Emin neon artwork takes
pride of place in the hallway
(designed so Diamond wouldn’t have to wear
a bra and would still feel “presentable out of
the house or on a Zoom”), the Nap Dress
became a viral sensation in 2020, with drops
of the £150 piece selling out within minutes.
Celebrity fans include Princess Beatrice and
Anya Taylor-Joy, and a collaboration with the
Netflix series Bridgerton catapulted the
brand further into the public consciousness.
Diamond wears various iterations of the
famous frock as loungewear around the
home (never tracksuits). “I really don’t like
the way pants feel. I’ve never found them
comfortable,” she says of her devotion.
Diamond switches off from
entrepreneurial duties by losing herself in
fiction. Her bedside tables are “absolutely
loaded” with titles to get through, while the
TV room in the basement houses her “show
books”, such as a first edition of Zadie
Smith’s White Teeth. The plush window seats
in her bedroom provide the ultimate book
nook. “My husband is also a big reader.
When we’re older we could definitely be
those people that are just, like, living among
books. It makes me so happy to just stare at
big piles of them.” ■
hillhousehome.co.uk
The Sunday Times Style • 103
 BLOCK
PARTY
Booked in for balayage? Think
again. All-over colour is back –
and brunette is the shade of the
season, says Phoebe McDowell
After years of highlights, lowlights, balayage and
bleach, we’re returning to block-coloured hair.
The kind we were born with, but a little, well, better.
Forget pumpkin spice latte, rodeo red, candlelit
brunette, Bambi blonde and blorange, the new
season palette is reassuringly old-school. “Loads
of clients have come back from summer ready for
a colour change,” says Amy Fish, head colourist at
Larry King. “One that’s strong from root to tip.”
In an age of simplicity, when normcore dominates
the way we dress, one-dimensional hair comes into
its own. Blending in is the new standing out. Two
years ago balayage hinted at a sun-drunk summer,
now it’s ubiquitous and screams “the salon” —
which doesn’t exactly chime with the prevailing
less-is-more beauty mood. “The beachy balayage era
lasted long enough. We’ve moved on,” says Zoë
Irwin, colour director at John Frieda salons. “It’s
all-over colour that now feels fresh.”
“Suddenly I thought my blonde bits looked
try-hard,” says Tabitha, a 35-year-old marketing
executive. “My hair looks neater all one colour and it
makes me look more put-together. My mousey-
brown hair was the base for the sun-kissed bits
before, but now it’s the main event.”
According to Cetera Lamb, senior
colourist at John Frieda, “liquid brunette,
which means it has an ultra mirror shine” is
the most requested. Because alongside
skin that looks alive and nails that don’t
bend, people want their hair to look —
and feel — in fine fettle. Going even one
shade darker than your natural colour
replenishes moisture as there’s “no abrasive
lifting”, Lamb says. Manageable and
low-maintenance, in winter particularly, Glossy brunette looks healthy and put-together.
cosy, luxe shades of brown feel as Left Hailey Bieber’s block-colour bob
comforting as swaddling a scarf
Getty Images, Conduit + Zaicew/Blaublut Edition

around your neck. “People used to

come in and say they wanted to look
like [enter celebrity name here], but
now the priority is hair health.”
This is where single-process colour
(achieving a desired shade in a single
step), bonding treatments (used to stop
colour fade) and glossing (a semi-
permanent treatment that evens out
tone and supplies shine) come in.
“Together they make hair look
super-conditioned and expensive without you even
having to try,” Fish says.
Craving change? It’s not just limited to brunette.
Take inspiration from old shots of a black-bobbed
Winona Ryder and an auburn-maned Nicole
Kidman, both as Nineties as metallic cocoa lipstick,
ribbed knits and low-rise jeans. Press the reset
button on your hair colour and go back to your
(literal) childhood roots. “It’s what people want in
uncertain times,” Lamb says. ■ @phoebejmcd

The Sunday Times Style • 105

 What it feels
like for a girl
The singer Mahalia’s chest
(size 32J) gets stares and
comments, plus forget
finding a bra that fits. She
writes about the reality of
living with very big boobs
Photograph Jennifer McCord
106 • The Sunday Times Style
“I’d love to have your boobs for a day.”
One of my best friends said this to me when
we were in school. It was a throwaway
remark about my big boobs (my very big
boobs) and I know she didn’t mean to upset
me. In fact, I’m sure she meant it as a
compliment. But it bothered me. She
envied my body — but only for 24 hours,
not for the rest of her life.
I’m 25 now and I’ve had to deal with
comments about my breasts since I was 11.
I imagine I always will because when you
have big boobs it’s a talking point. I’m a
32J and everyone feels they have a right
to comment: men, women, strangers in
a nightclub. Don’t get me wrong, I love
women coming up to me and saying
that my boobs are amazing — that’s a
confidence boost. But even with a
compliment there are often undertones
that I find slightly degrading. I do
sometimes wish people would be more
aware and a bit more sensitive.
I had boobs when I started secondary
 school, but they grew very quickly when
I was 14. I’m from a small town in
Leicestershire, so for my whole life there
have been things about me that are a
talking point. When I was one of the only
black kids in school it was my skin, then my
afro, and when my boobs came in I was like,
“F***ing great, here’s another thing.”
I studied dance throughout school and
within a few years had learnt that I really
didn’t have the ideal dancer’s physique, even
though I was actually really skinny — size 8
on the bottom and 10 on top. But you can’t
wear bras or even sports bras under a leotard
as they show up and, of course, big boobs
get in the way when you’re dancing.
The reaction from men is odd. In
school the boys made comments but
nothing creepy or sinister. I think they
were just shocked. All my past boyfriends
have been obsessed with my boobs.
Once on a date a guy told me he wasn’t
a “boob guy”. I was like, “OK, I’m not
asking you to be.” My boyfriend now,
Ben, is amazing, and I know he loves my
body and isn’t weird about it. But one
of his mates asked him: “What’s it like
dating a girl with massive boobs?” I
think that’s quite sad. Why do you care?
Those things don’t make me angry, I just
think it’s ridiculous.
I do feel uncomfortable on the Tube,
however. I often pull my bag over my chest
to avoid stares, and I hate it when a man is
wearing sunglasses as I don’t know if he’s
looking or not. My breasts are oversexualised
in a way that smaller boobs aren’t.
I’d always wanted to go to a nudist beach
because I’m actually very body confident
now and want to spread the message about
body positivity, especially to young women
who listen to my music or come to my
shows. So on a recent holiday with my
girlfriends to Barcelona we went to a nudist
beach, which was lovely. But as soon as I
took off my bikini top, I felt like I’d done
something wrong. My friends with smaller
boobs were not getting the stares I was
getting — from women — and within ten
minutes I’d covered up again. It was
upsetting. Why do my boobs fascinate
As told to Scarlett Russell. Inset photographs: Getty Images
people so much? They’re just breasts!
One misconception about very large
breasts is that everyone assumes I have
back pain. I don’t at all. Maybe that’s years
of ballet training giving me a strong back.
What cause discomfort are bras. Finding
the perfect-fitting bra is near-impossible
and I rarely wear one now. It’s much more
comfortable not to. If I’m on stage I might
wear a sports bra or, especially if I’m playing
a festival, I’ll wear two bandeau tops, one in
size XS to keep my boobs in, then a bigger
one over the top. I have to be able to move,
From top Mahalia in New York in July;
at the Brit awards in 2020; and
performing at BST Hyde Park last year
so anything over my boobs has to be
stretchy material. Underwired bras are a
no-go. Asos sells beautiful, soft, jersey bras
with no underwire. I buy a lot of my bikinis
from Asos too. I’ve never bought a
maternity bra but have bought maternity
tops that I’ll wear without a bra.
I think the fashion industry still has a long
way to go in terms of designing for very
large breasts. Most of the time a “fuller bust
collection” only goes up to a G. But if you’ve
got a 30in back and you’re a double-H cup,
for example, the options are really limited.
We’ve seen brands embrace plus-size women
but they’ve forgotten the “in between”. I
have always called myself that. I will wear
size 12-14 trousers, but I probably need a
16-18 top, so finding dresses that fit is tricky.
I notice this most when I’m being styled
for a photoshoot or an event. It’s never
straightforward with stylists because I think
most aren’t that experienced working with
someone with my size boobs. I often see
something on a rail, like a satin slip dress,
I do feel
uncomfortable
on the Tube.
I often pull my bag
over my chest to
avoid stares
and ask, “Why did you pick that?” because
I know it’s going to look terrible on me.
Interestingly, male stylists are often better.
I think because it’s such a different body to
theirs, they’re precise and almost
mathematical when it comes to boobs.
The best dress I wore on a red carpet
was by an American brand, Lena
Berisha, for the 2020 Brit awards.
I bought that dress with my own
money too, which comes to another
point: having very big boobs is
expensive. On average I’ll spend £40
on one bra, when most of my mates
can get two for £20 on the high street.
I did once consider a breast
reduction. It was during the 2021
lockdown and I was feeling low. I started to
feel like my boobs were getting in the way
so I went to see a private plastic surgeon in
London, where I’ve lived for the past few
years. He weighed my breasts and told me
each one was the weight of a newborn
lamb, which is quite mad. He told me I’d
need to stop smoking for six weeks (I’d
been smoking since I was 16) before any
surgery. So I did that and felt amazing
afterwards, so much healthier. I was going
for longer walks and not getting out of
breath running up the stairs. It gave me a
different outlook and I didn’t feel I wanted
the surgery. The real clincher, though, was
when the surgeon told me I’d be unable to
breastfeed in later life, as they have to
remove and reattach my nipple and this
affects the milk ducts. This was a big no-no
for me. I want kids and want at least the
option of breastfeeding. It all gave me a bit
more appreciation for my body.
Female fans often ask where I get my bras
or say my body confidence makes them feel
better and that’s amazing to hear. I have
this thing when I perform. At the end of
every show I say to the crowd, “No matter
what committee you’re in, big titty or itty
biddy — you never have to wear a bra.” I say
it so much the audience scream it along
with me. What I want to say to all women is
to love your body no matter what. Just
please don’t stare so much. ■
Mahalia’s album IRL is out now
The Sunday Times Style • 107
 Words Verity Clark

Making scents of it
Perfume can be one of the trickiest gifts to buy – but get it
right and you’ll be in their good books for ever
 Buying perfume for someone else is a risky business. Guerlain Tobacco Honey, £290 for 100ml EDP
Buy the right (or the wrong) fragrance and you can “change A seriously addictive unisex scent that’s equal parts
someone’s olfactory world for ever”, the British perfumer smoky (that’s the tobacco leaves), sweet (the honey) and
Lyn Harris believes . Nail it and they’ll always be thankful sexy (hello, sandalwood and oud).
to you for introducing them to their new signature scent.
But misjudge a fragrance gift at your peril. Tom Ford Café Rose, £106 for 50ml EDP
So, how to pick the perfect perfume? Scent is very much Don’t be fooled by the inclusion of rose; here the personality
an extension of personality, and herein lies the secret to a is more tempestuous red rose than delicate pink petal.
successful purchase.“Be guided by who they are,” says Olivia Throw in a double shot of espresso and stir in some spicy
da Costa, the founder of the cult fragrance house Olfactive O. cardamom and you’ve got yourself a head-turner.
“Think about the places they enjoy and what they like to do
for work and pleasure.” Fans of evenings on the sofa sipping
expensive red wine “might enjoy a sensual woody fragrance”,
she suggests. If they’re always at the hot new restaurant, then
gourmet fragrances — with edible ingredients — may please.
According to Harris, confident types are usually drawn to
“dark woods, ambers or expressive colognes”, whereas calmer
souls often prefer “a gentle citrus or floral”.
How someone dresses comes into play too.“If they have
a staple uniform consider a cologne or fresh wood,” suggests
Harris, who says that more eclectic dressers may enjoy
a “dark wood or amber scent”. Cashmere scarves and
tailoring more their thing? Pick a classic cologne,
leather-based or herby scent, all of which scream (or perhaps
whisper) quiet luxury. And don’t overlook gender-neutral
fragrances. Traditionally, rich woods were for men and pretty
florals were for women — but come on, things have changed.
Musky, subtly woody scents have universal appeal. Look at
Maison Margiela and Boy Smells, which offer delicious
genderless fragrances across the board.

FOR THE FOODIE

They insist on queueing for croissants at 7am on a
Saturday and only drink coffee brewed at that micro-place.
Their palates are refined (or so they think). Indulge them
with the tastiest of scents.
Jo Malone London Ginger Biscuit, £124 for 100ml EDC
If the tree is already up and mince pies have been consumed,
this is for them. An emphatically festive concoction of
ginger, nutmeg and cinnamon, topped off with a swirl of
buttery caramel and roasted hazelnuts.
FOR THE NEW TRADITIONALIST
The festive season is all about rituals. The same baubles are
hung, the same songs are sung — but there is always one who
likes to do things a little differently. Duck instead of turkey, a
Barbie on top of the tree, Taylor Swift over John Rutter … you
get the picture. Traditions with a twist. In perfume terms,
that means taking a classic scent and turning it on its head.
Le Labo Lavande 31, £168 for 50ml EDP
If there’s any brand that can make you reconsider lavender
it’s Le Labo. Forget the smell of your granny’s soap or those
stuffed pouches in your knicker drawer, this is full of citrussy
bergamot and neroli and a heady dose of tonka.

Chloé Lumineuse, £95 for 50ml EDP

Red roses? So predictable. If your loved one turns up their
nose at the first sniff of a cliché, fool them with this. Classic
rose is shrouded in a cloud of jasmine and vanilla.
Sweet, yes. Boring, never.

Dior J’adore l’Or, £144 for 50ml essence de parfum

Betina du Toit/Trunk Archive

Dior J’adore is a bona fide classic, a bestseller for more than

20 years, so if it ain’t broke why fix it? Because when you use
the same familiar and deliciously distinctive bouquet of
flowers — jasmine, rose, lily of the valley and violet —
but make it smoother, sunnier and more velvety, you
get something that’s, well, better.

The Sunday Times Style • 109

 FOR THE IT GIRL (AND BOY)
Harder to buy for than your father-in-law, they were
wearing Baccarat Rouge 540 (by Maison Francis Kurkdjian)
years before it went viral. But don’t worry, the perfumes
below are fash pack-approved.

Burberry Goddess, £95 for 50ml EDP

This delectably creamy number ticks off two firsts.
One: vanilla caviar (the seeds in vanilla pods) is the star
ingredient — never before used in fragrance and totally
addictive. Two: this is the brand’s first refillable fragrance.

Loewe Aire Anthesis, £118 for 50ml EDP

FOR THE ROMANTIC
Looking to impress? Enter pheromone fragrances, the
internet searches for which have risen by 350 per cent in the
past two years, while #pheromoneperfume has clocked up
over 370 million views on TikTok. For the most arousing
aromas, try musk, leather, heavy woods, vanilla and amber.
DS & Durga Deep Dark Vanilla, £155 for 50ml EDP
Does what it says on the tin, really. With its blend of earthy
hay and bewitching dark patchouli, there’s a curiousness
to this bold vanilla scent. It lends itself to long, heady
nights, no mistletoe required.
Editions de Parfums Frédéric Malle Heaven Can Wait,
£185 for 50ml EDP Understated but electric: smelling this
is like locking eyes with someone you fancy across the room
at a party. Boys and girls will go weak at the knees for this love
story between warm vanilla and soft, sultry iris and musk.
If the Loewe Paseo pleated bag is out of budget, then this
— a rich and discernibly cool amber scent with rhubarb,
peony and pear — is the next best thing.
Dries Van Noten Rock the Myrrh, £245 for 100ml EDP
Don’t be put off by the holy connotations (although it does
make for a rather fitting festive gift). This smells like the
expensive materials well-dressed men lust after, including
leather and suede. It’s a total knockout.
Jimmy Choo Rose Passion, £91 for 100ml EDP
Regular H2O? No thanks. It’s coconut water only for the
It girls. Happily, that’s the star in this showstopper of a floral
scent. Frangipani, orchid and jasmine aren’t your everyday
flowers, but then she’s no ordinary girl.

Dolce & Gabbana Devotion, £92 for 50ml EDP

Reminiscent of a zingy cocktail, with sweet vanilla,
orange blossom and candied citrus. So bright and sunny,
it will have them hoping a plane ticket to Italy is included.

Gucci Guilty Elixir de Parfum Pour Homme, £124 for

60ml EDP Leather seats hidden in the corners of dark bars.
The smokiness of amber mingles with the spiciness of
nutmeg and patchouli. Sex appeal bottled. Phwoar.

Team Style’s forever favourites

LAURA INDIA KNIGHT
ATKINSON A scent I’ve worn on
People stop me and off for years — and
and ask what my always migrate back
perfume is when to eventually — is
I wear Chanel Le Lion Le Labo Santal 33
(£200 for 75ml EDP). (£168 for 50ml EDP).
It’s powerful, punchy It’s delicious and it makes
and lasts all day. me feel cosy. If it were a
A stone-cold classic. piece of clothing, it
would be a favourite
cashmere jumper.
PHOEBE PRIYA ELAN KAREN DACRE DOLLY ALDERTON
MCDOWELL Lord knows I love mint Escentric Molecules Penhaligon Cornubia
My latest squeeze is ice cream, and since Molecule 01 (£95 for was sadly discontinued a
Byredo Eleventh my signature scent is 100ml EDT) is my couple of years ago, but
Hour (£140 for 50ml EDP), Roger & Gallet L’Homme forever favourite. As I stocked up before it
which is spicy and Menthe (£35 for 100ml someone who routinely disappeared. I love it
warm enough to feel EDT) it turns out I like steals her husband’s because it has a deep
snuggly in winter. smelling of it too. aftershave, I also love amber warmth that
that it’s unisex. I haven’t found in other
perfumes. It smells like a
sexy, less sweet version
of warm McDonald’s
doughnuts. ■

110 • The Sunday Times Style

 India Knight
A make-up artist told me this is the best nude eyeshadow
palette she has ever used – and she’s right

My usual issue with bigger eyeshadow palettes is that I only

ever use a few of the shades, even if I’ve bought them
specifically because I’ve thought: “Aha, this is the one! I’ll be
using most of these.” It rarely works out that way. This is
partly because I don’t spend much time on eye make-up —
I like using one shadow and some pencil for most normal
days. When I try to do something more complicated,
punchier and less subtle, usually in the context of a more
eveningy eye, I can’t guarantee the result. I would say I get
the desired look maybe seven times out of ten. Questionable technique aside, I blame the
larger palettes I’m using (I do not have this problem using my ever-reliable Victoria
Beckham Beauty Smoky Eye Brick, £54). Because I’m unpersuaded by some of the shades
these larger palettes contain — I don’t always feel they “go” optimally with each other on
my particular colouring — I wander off and find a “better” brown, or a “nuder” nude from
somewhere else, and quite often the result is a bit of a mess.
The dream, therefore, is to find a big palette with colours that really do all work together
on me. The even greater dream is to find a palette that contains such colours and has help-
fully worked out which three shades look best together, depending on what look you’re
after. That palette, my friends, is the Natasha Denona Biba Eyeshadow Palette (£130).
I was introduced to it by a make-up artist who said it was the best nude palette she has ever
used, and after spending some time with it, I’m ready to join in the praise (somewhat belat-
edly — it’s not a new product). It is fantastic and incredibly user-friendly. The colours are
beautiful — both warm and cooler, slightly 1970s-ish neutrals, as the name suggests, in a
variety of exceptionally good textures, creams and powders that go from completely matte
to shimmer and metallic. These would all work on any skin tone. The top row is made up of
neutral to brown shades, the middle row comprises warmer/redder shades, and the bottom
row is cooler colours. Once blended, these all behave like neutrals, meaning that, for example,
the most wine-looking colour in the pan doesn’t give you maroon eyes (thank goodness) but
goes on as a super-flattering, completely wearable take on reddish brown. I particularly like
the well thought out pale colours in here, which are discreet but still have substance, if that
makes sense — they are not wishy-washy. There’s also an extremely useful deep black, in a
cream-to-powder formula that does not fade to grey or make a mess everywhere.
So yes, new fave, whether you’re skipping about more or less au naturel or piling it on. Not
cheap, but I absolutely promise that once you’ve played around with all the shades and
experimented with combinations, this will become your go-to palette. If you don’t want to
experiment, just use three colours that are in a line. ■ @indiaknight
Once you’ve
played around
with the
INDIA LOVES combinations,
READ Naomi Klein’s book Doppelganger (Penguin £25) is ostensibly about people mistaking
this will
Catherine Garcia

her for Naomi Wolf, who has become an antivaxer (and the rest). But it’s also about how the
recent iteration of the liberal left — so binary and unnuanced — enables conspiracy theorists
and the “populist” right. Klein is particularly brilliant on social media and personal branding,
become your
but the book roams widely and is illuminating throughout. timesbookshop.co.uk go-to palette

The Sunday Times Style • 113

 Dear Dolly
Your love, life and friendship dilemmas answered
by Dolly Alderton

I have been with my boyfriend for six years and have lived with him for four. He has had
the same job since we first met. He works in hospitality and I’m in an office, working
8am-5pm, so our schedule is totally out of sync. When we do get time together he
complains he is tired and doesn’t want to do much. I’m always up for doing something,
even if it’s in the flat. I feel I’m missing out on my late twenties. I’ve moved towns to live
in a place where I don’t know anyone and I’ve only managed to make one friend. We do
enjoy each other’s company when we are together. Do you have any advice on how to
improve things or how to be strong enough to know if it’s the end of this relationship?

The question you ask is one I think about
a lot. I’m rereading Pride and Prejudice at
the moment and it’s a comfort to realise,
as a 35-year-old woman, that it’s a romantic
dilemma that left Regency women in a
pickle too. What should I want from a
partner? What standard should I have for
myself ? When am I being too fussy and
when am I not being discerning enough?
What makes two people compatible or
incompatible? What do I think a good rela-
tionship looks like? What, therefore, do I think a good life
looks like? It was a brain-scratcher then and it continues to
puzzle us now.
My first question will seem obvious, but I also know how
easy it is to keep these huge worries in a relationship to
yourself for fear of what it might lead to: have you talked
to him about it? Have you told him that you’re worried
about how much time you’re spending together and the
quality of that time spent together? Have you made it clear
that you’ve made a compromise by moving to a city where
you don’t know anyone, and that you hope he could meet
you at the same point of compromise by perhaps trying to
work different hours, or at least by making an effort to be on
good form when you do have your time as a couple?
My inkling is that this is less about a scheduling conflict
and more about a spiritual conflict. Spiritual incompati-
bility is one of the biggest challenges between two people
in a romantic relationship. What do you mean by spirit,
you daft old hippy? Well, I’ll tell you. Spirit, I think, is a
mix of outlook and energy that has always made up who
you are, and is the hardest thing to change. It’s the differ-
ence between being a pessimist or an optimist; an empa-
thiser or a pragmatist; someone with wanderlust or a
homebody. In your case, it seems like you’re a high-energy
person who wants to experience new things, and he may
Also, the bottom line is: not seeing your
boyfriend sucks. It can be done in the
short term but ultimately it will dislocate
your relationship. You need time to do stuff,
do nothing, have sex, not have sex, find your
favourite TV shows, bicker, snog, travel,
chill, create new memories together. I’ve
been in relationships where, for one reason or
another, we’ve struggled to have time for each
other, and the next relationship where that
isn’t a problem feels like a relief. Relationships
are challenging enough to make work without the logistics of
trying to find the spare hours in which the relationship can
actually happen. (Of course, in the interests of fairness, I also
have to warn you, other shit always comes up. There’s always
an inevitable game of Whac-A-Mole when you go from one
boyfriend to another. You get rid of one problem and another
one will come up. No situation is perfect.)
The last thing I’d advise is to try to delineate between
what feels good and what feels familiar. Familiarity does a
good impersonation of contentment, but they’re different
things. You say “we do enjoy each other’s company” as a
reason to stay together, which is of course a valid reason,
but it’s the baseline requirement of a good relationship.
Ask yourself how much you see yourself spending the next
phase of your adult lives together and how much you’re
using the enjoyment of his company as a way to persuade
yourself to stay in a relationship you may have outgrown.
Four years is a long time, especially in your twenties.
Leaving a relationship of that length is hard when you’re in
the first decade of adulthood because you don’t have many
examples of leaving something familiar and finding happi-
ness on the other side. Now I’m in the second decade of
adulthood (apparently), I feel much stronger about leaving
behind a comfortable, well-worn, well-loved thing that once
made me happy but no longer does, whether that’s a rela-
Alexandra Cameron

be someone who’s pretty happy with his lot. Neither is the tionship, a work project, a flat, a neighbourhood or a friend-
right or wrong way to be, but it’s worth asking if this is a ship. Because I know that it’s never a disaster. It may feel
part of who he is and whether it would be so different if uncomfortable, scary even, but if you listen to your
you were on the same work schedules. instincts, it’s never a disaster. ■

To get your life dilemma answered by Dolly, email or send a voice note to deardolly@sundaytimes.co.uk or DM @theststyle

114 • The Sunday Times Style

November 12, 2023

‘We built an island paradise in the Cotswolds’ 12

Kitchen confidence
Six-page special on the most important room in the house 14-19
2 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Home

COVER: KITCHEN DESIGNED BY STUDIO DEAN. THIS PAGE: DUNCAN MACBRAYNE. OPPOSITE PAGE: INES GENUSO
MAKING
HOUSE OF THE WEEK
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
Radnage Bottom Farm is a £2.35M
grade II listed farmhouse in
about ten acres of the
Chiltern Hills area of

MOVES
The best of this week’s property on sale
outstanding natural beauty. It
has four bedrooms, beamed
ceilings and an Aga; outside
are two listed barns, a gravel
drive, a garage and a tennis
court. It’s near the village of
Radnage, which has two
Compiled by pubs, and is seven miles from
Property
team
High Wycombe.
bluebookagency.com
 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 3
£750,000 £695,000
LEAVE YOUR LEAVES ALONE
t was about 7 on a
I Sunday morning when
I first heard it — a full-
throttle, ear-splitting
noise, similar to a
pneumatic drill. It sounded
extremely near. It was
particularly unwelcome
because I was staying at a
friend’s house in a leafy
suburb where one of the
delights is to wake to the
ESSEX DEVON sound of birdsong.
In the village of Little Bardfield, near Braintree, Guivers is a The grade II listed Fitzford Gate House is in the centre of Instead I was rudely
four-bedroom Arts and Crafts house with leaded windows, Tavistock, ten miles from Plymouth. At present run as a awakened by a man with a leaf
beamed ceilings and brick fireplaces. It has a quarter-acre holiday let, it has three bedrooms and period features, blower in a neighbouring
plot and a detached double garage. hunters.com but the kitchen and bathrooms are modern. savills.com garden. Furious, I watched
through the window as he
aimlessly blew leaves from one
side of the lawn to the other.
This continued for some time.
O/O What is it with gardeners
£1.4M £650,000 and their toys — do they no
longer want to work
surrounded by the sounds of
nature? Surely there is a
certain joy to be had in
methodically raking autumn
leaves while you listen to the
sounds of birds around you. A
feeling of being connected to
nature that you can’t possibly
achieve with a leaf blower.
A colleague agrees with me.
After staying with his parents
EDINBURGH NORTH YORKSHIRE recently, he found sitting in
A six-bedroom Georgian terraced townhouse, designed An imposing semi-detached five-bedroom townhouse in the garden virtually
by William Playfair, in the centre of the city. It has elegant the centre of Ripon, located within walking distance of unbearable due to the noise of
features throughout, a substantial private garden and a Ripon Grammar School, the city centre, shops and a strimmers, trimmers, leaf
double garage to the rear. savills.com cathedral. beadnallcopley.co.uk blowers and lawnmowers. He
lamented the disappearance
of the quiet “whoosh” of the
old-fashioned push mower
and the “clip-clip” of hedge
cutters.
£795,000 £3.995M
Leaf blowers can
be almost as loud
as a jet taking off
OXFORDSHIRE WILTSHIRE
A grade II listed four-bedroom stone cottage in the village A luxurious five-bedroom home in the village of Limpley
of Bampton, near Witney, that is filled with character and
has a half-acre garden enclosed by mature evergreen
hedging and trees. struttandparker.com
Stoke, near Bath, that was completed in 2021. It has two
split-level floors and a stunning kitchen, a pool and sun
terraces. fineandcountry.co.uk HOME
TRUTHS
£950,000 £2M
CAROL
LEWIS
Property editor
SUFFOLK NORTHUMBERLAND
Park Lodge is a five-bedroom pad on the fringes of A mile from Morpeth, this modern mansion is tucked away
Woodbridge with lashings of late-Victorian appeal. in about four acres of manicured grounds, while the
A hall opens to three reception rooms and the kitchen/ house extends to 6,470 sq ft on two floors. It has seven
diner. Pubs are within walking distance. savills.com bedrooms and six bathrooms. finestproperties.co.uk
In some parts of the United
States leaf blowers have been
banned after it was ruled that
they can be dangerously loud
(some have recorded levels of
up to 100 decibels; the level at
which sustained exposure can
result in hearing loss is 80-90).
To put this into context, a jet
aircraft taking off comes in at
120 decibels. The petrol-
fuelled leaf blowers used by
some professional gardeners
also spew out horrible
emissions.
I might also add that they
raise the cortisol levels in
neighbours expecting a
peaceful weekend lie-in. What
is more, noise pollution over
50 decibels has been shown
to increase the risk of
cardiovascular disease.
In America some gardeners
are fighting back, though,
arguing that their clients
don’t want to see leaves soiling
their manicured lawns. Leaf
blowers also save time, they
argue. There are gardeners
who say that too many leaves
can damage lawns by starving
them of light and air.
However, I’m with the
veteran gardener Alan
Titchmarsh, who recently
wrote in the BBC Gardeners’
World magazine that he
doesn’t use power tools on a
Sunday. “I believe profoundly
there should be at least one
day in the week when we
could go out into our gardens
and experience a bit of peace
and quiet,” he wrote.
“If you must power your
way through Sunday, please
do so between the hours of
9am and 6pm, so that I can
sip my early morning tea in
silence and enjoy my
sundowner to the
accompaniment of the
blackbird, rather than the
Black & Decker,” he added.
I couldn’t agree more.
I’d go further and ask
whether there is a need to do
quite so much maniacal leaf
blowing at all. Leaves are rich
in nutrients and make a
natural habitat for insects,
worms and hedgehogs.
Across the Atlantic there is
a campaign urging gardeners
to “Leave Leaves Alone” —
we should get on board.
Henrietta Courtauld and
Bridget Elworthy, aka the
Land Gardeners,
advocate mulching
flowerbeds at this time
of year with the last of
the grass clippings and
fallen leaves. Leaves
are nature’s fertiliser;
we should use them
to feed our gardens
where possible.
We must resist the
urge for pristine
manicured gardens,
in which a fallen leaf
instils panic. Autumnal
leaves are a good
thing. Where they do
need to be scooped up,
embrace the rake.
4 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Home
There are lots of classic
THE student properties in the
city, but we would prefer to
buy something that we
TWO
could keep as an investment
after he is done and would
prefer that not to be a
student let in the longer
term so are considering
slightly more expensive
ROBS
areas. What sort of yield
should we expect, given
that his rent would be
covered?
James King, Nottingham
Your questions on being a landlord
A
You’re right to avoid
buying a “classic” (ie
and investing in property answered
shabby) student property,
as the rising expectations
SHOULD WE BUY A STUDENT of students has led to this
HOUSE FOR OUR SON? type of accommodation
Q
My son has just started struggling across many
university at Nottingham university cities. There are
Trent and has gone areas of Nottingham, such as
into halls of West Bridgford, that are
residence. As we live suitable for students and are
close to Nottingham also popular with families
we are considering and professionals.
whether it would We can’t calculate the
make sense to buy a yield for you, but you can
house that would do this yourself by taking
remove the need for the expected rental
him to pay rent in the income and dividing it by
second and third years the cost of the type of
— we would rent out the property you’d want to
other rooms. We could own. You should base this
purchase without a calculation on the likely level
mortgage up to of rent a family would pay: the
£300,000. overall rent is likely to be
higher when renting to
students room-by-room, but
you’ve said this wouldn’t be
your plan in the longer term.
Over the couple of years
that your son is studying,
you’ll probably find the
difference between buying the
house (versus investing the
same amount of money in
another asset and paying your
son’s rent) isn’t significant
enough in its own right to go
ahead with this plan. It really
depends on whether you want
exposure to the property
market over the long-term.
We think of this as a similar
situation to wanting to buy a
holiday home that you can use
sometimes and rent out the
rest of the time. In theory it
gives you the best of both
worlds. Often it would work
out better to just make the best
investment without thinking
about your own needs and pay
out of pocket for your holidays
(or your son’s rent in this case).
If you do go ahead, make
sure to look into local rules
around creating new “houses
in multiple occupation”
(known as an Article 4
direction) and the need to
obtain a licence for the
property, as well as giving
yourself a crash course in the
legalities of renting out
property in general.
WHAT MUST I DO BEFORE
MY TENANT SIGNS A
SHORTHOLD AGREEMENT?
Q
After years of letting a
property, I recently had
an issue with a tenant.
My solicitor told me that
I hadn’t given the tenant all
the relevant documentation
at the start of the tenancy.
Can you tell me what the
government regulations
require me to give a new
tenant on signature of an
assured shorthold
agreement?
Matthew, London
A
It’s important to comply
with the laws around
service of documents
because, as you’ve
discovered, if you don’t it can
be impossible to serve a valid
notice to end a tenancy. This
means that even if you want to
use the “no fault” procedure
to remove a troublesome
tenant, the courts will find
against you.
The most important thing
to do at the start of a tenancy
is to protect the deposit with
an approved scheme within 30
days of receiving it. That’s
because it’s the only mistake
that can’t easily be remedied
later: if you don’t protect the
deposit in time, you’ll need to
return it before you can issue a
valid notice to quit. You also
need to provide “prescribed
information” about its
protection within 30 days —
but if you don’t, you can still
validly seek possession if you
provide it late.
The same goes for the other
key documents: an energy
performance certificate, a gas
safety certificate (if there’s a
gas supply) and the latest
version of the government’s
How to Rent guide. You should
provide these before the
tenancy starts. But if you
didn’t, you can do so late and
then proceed to give notice.
The ability to provide
documents late means you can
put your house in order at the
last minute then go ahead with
seeking possession — although
there’s no excuse for not doing
it at the outset. The nightmare
scenario would be to serve
notice, wait out the notice
period then wait longer for it
to go to court, only then to
find out you’ve missed
something and have to go back
and start again.
Rob Dix and Rob Bence are the
presenters of The Property
Podcast
Submit your questions for the
two Robs at propertyhub.net/
sundaytimes
 6 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Home
costs estimated by a surveyor because it
GUY NEWMAN/KOR

may be that it comes to more than the

property value.
“Rebuild costs have risen dramatically
in recent years,” he says. Add in the fact
that a thatched rebuild could require the
expertise of architects or craftsmen, and
adequate cover becomes shorthand for
much higher insurance premiums.
Reading the small print of your policy
is just as important. This will include
stipulations on chimney sweeping and
certification, or requirements to tell
the insurance company that you have
a wood-burner.
“Check that appliances are covered
in the policy because previous owners
won’t always say,” Daniel Hodgson, the
managing director of Sweep Safe, the UK’s
chimney sweep association, says. He
is a chimney sweep himself and always
steers clients to look at their insurance
policy before booking a job.
There is still one caveat to the advice.
Finding an insurance provider prepared
to cover a thatch property with a real
fireplace isn’t straightforward. Nearly all
house insurers offering cover for a wood-
burner and thatch ask for a 1.8m-high
chimney in line with building regulations.
Not only might extending the height of the
chimney involve the cost of a surveyor
checking if a 600-year-old chimney can
take the extra weight, it could also fall foul
of planning if the house is listed.
“If you are in a conservation area in
a listed property, they might say no,”
Karen Crouch from the Thatch Advice
Centre in Hampshire, says. She counsels
homeowners on all things thatch-related
and publishes a thatch directory that
includes a list of insurers. The picture
grows more complicated given that
conservation rules for thatch appear to be

‘OUR COTTAGE
a postcode lottery. “We’ve seen people
spend a fortune restoring a house with
cob, lime and longstraw thatch, and at the
end of the job they just want to put a
temporary straw finial on top, and the
council won’t let them,” she says.
Still, she adds that a few insurers will

TURNED INTO AN INFERNO’ cover listed thatch buildings with low

chimneys. Insurance requirements have
also changed after research that identifies
the main cause of thatch fires as ejected
sparks and embers from the chimney,
Using a real fire to keep a thatched home warm in winter is sustainable but throwing cold water on a long-held belief
that thatch fires were caused by heat
risky — as one couple in Devon discovered to their cost. By Sarah Rundell transfer through solid brickwork.
Despite the challenges, both Crouch
and Hodgson notice enduring demand

T
he weather in the to collapse and within three hours the risk. Two years after the Above: Laura from thatch householders for a real
mid-Devon village house turned into an inferno. “It was like fire the Parkmans are now back in their and Geoffrey fireplace. “We don’t see any of our clients
of Stoodleigh was one of those films where you see flames cottage after a £600,000 refurbishment — Parkman at their switching to electricity,” Hodgson says.
unseasonably hot and dry for shooting out of the window,” she says. “All paid for by insurance — but they have thatched cottage “Due to the cost of living we’ve seen a
April although the nights that was left was the stone walls and switched to central heating. in Stoodleigh, jump in people inquiring about putting in
still carried a hint of winter chill. two chimney stacks. Everything Others struggle to get insurance or find Devon after it was a wood-burner,” Crouch adds.
Laura Parkman lit inside was destroyed.” themselves caught between insurers rebuilt. Below: Another explanation is the desire to
the wood-burner in the As the winter nights draw requiring chimney modifications and the aftermath of live sustainably. Thatch properties,
sitting room of her and her in there is nothing cosier strict planning laws for listed buildings. the fire that usually made of materials such as cob,
husband Geoffrey’s All that was left than lighting a fire if you All the advice points to the importance gutted the lime, mud and locally sourced and
thatched cottage, just as was the stone live in the countryside. of adequate insurance cover. Andrew cottage naturally insulating straw, already tick the
they had throughout that However, for those living in Chalk from NFU Mutual, one of the few green box. A real fireplace is a good way to
winter. Shortly afterwards walls and two thatched houses, a real fire insurers to cover thatch and wood- let the house breathe and wood-burners
something drifted down in chimney stacks in the house carries added burners, suggests it’s worth having rebuild only heat the room you’re in as opposed
front of the window on the to the whole house, using wood, which is
breezeless evening. She went a renewable and easier option for country
outside, looked up, and the thatch dwellers not on the mains. Not to mention
was on fire. the aesthetic. “If you buy a country house,
“Smoke was billowing from the thatch you don’t want to look at a radiator,”
and then flames came right over the roof, Hodgson says.
over the ridging, and down the other side. What is required is common sense and
It just went up,” she says. following advice such as not stacking
The fire remained in the attic space wood next to the wood-burner, regularly
long enough for the fire brigade to retrieve sweeping the chimney, checking for bird
some of the Parkmans’ possessions. “I nests and applying fire-reduction spray to
won’t tell you what Geoffrey said when the outside of the thatch. Crouch fears
they asked if we wanted to save the farm many of those who moved from the town
accounts,” she says, able to laugh now to the countryside after the pandemic still
although the trauma at the time meant she need to grasp this before winter sets in. “A
couldn’t recall the whereabouts of many lot of the time it’s not the wood-burner
of their precious things. that’s the problem, it’s the people,” she
It wasn’t long before the ceilings started concludes.
8 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Home
CARBON
POSITIVES
T
he Brown family
have gone green.
They have a heat
pump. Not just any
heat pump — a heat
pump in a hybrid system.
Like 90 per cent of families
in Britain, the Browns —
Michael and Amy, and their
son, Nate, six — had a gas
boiler that burnt fossil fuel.
“We wanted to decarbonise
our heating,” Michael, a
website manager, says. Two
years ago they applied to take
part in the government’s
“electrification of heat” trial to
test heat pumps.
There was a problem.
Experts deemed the Browns’
three-bedroom house, built in
1902 in an Edwardian terrace
in Gateshead, unsuitable for a
standard air source heat
pump. Their garden did not
have room for the bulky
outdoor unit. Although they
had loft insulation and double
glazing, they would need to
spend a “colossal sum” on
solid wall insulation for a heat
pump to work efficiently.
Regular heat pumps
supply hot water at a lower
temperature (45C to 55C) than
gas boilers (over 65C), so need
bigger radiators in well-
insulated properties to
provide the same amount of
heat. In a leaky old house like
the Browns’, a straight swap
from gas boiler to heat pump
risks leaving you with high
energy bills — or a cold home.
Then the experts came
back. The family could rip out
Are hybrid heating systems the
answer for old and leaky homes?
The Brown family tell Martina Lees
how installing one helped them go
green and slash their gas bill
KATIE LEE FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES; DAVID COTSWORTH
their gas boiler after all, they
said, by swapping it for a
hybrid system. “We jumped at
it,” Michael says. Without
losing garden space or
insulating walls, “our fossil
fuel use is about one fifth
of the level of gas we were
using before”.
Are hybrid heating systems
with pumps the answer for
Britain’s old and leaky homes?
Can they cut your carbon
without compromising on cost
or comfort?
HOW DOES HYBRID
HEATING WORK?
A hybrid system combines a
heat pump with a gas (or oil)
boiler to supply heating and
hot water. The heat pump
runs on electricity, of which
40 per cent is generated
cleanly from wind or sun (or
more, if you have solar panels
or a green energy supplier). It
uses the electricity to amplify
ambient heat from the air or
ground, even at temperatures
as low as minus 25C.
Typically, for every one unit
of electricity, it produces three
units of heat — or more, if the
system is well designed and
the home highly insulated.
However, when it gets very
cold, the heat pump uses
more electricity for the same
output, which would ramp up
fuel bills. Then the boiler
increasingly kicks in to top up
heat — using gas, which is 74
per cent cheaper (7p per kWh)
than electricity (27p per kWh)
but emits far more carbon.
A smart system usually
controls how much heat to
draw from each source. The
Brown family’s system
predominantly uses the heat
pump when the outdoor
temperature drops below 15C.
You can fit a heat pump
alongside a separate boiler as
part of a hybrid system,
potentially keeping your
existing boiler. Or you could
install one new product with
both elements in the same box
— like the Browns, whose
machine went into the garage,
in the same spot where their
old gas boiler had been.
Hot water for taps can be Top: the Brown family at home in Gateshead. Above: a Worcester Bosch heat pump
set up to come from either
the new boiler element or the village, he is going hybrid. His heat pump system, Arntzen WHEN ARE HYBRIDS
heat pump. family have an oil combi says. “We think [hybrid WORTH IT?
boiler, to which they are heating] has a much bigger It may indeed be the answer if
ARE HYBRIDS THE ANSWER adding a heat pump. role than the government you can’t give up space inside
FOR HARD-TO-RETROFIT “Converting my home to a acknowledges right now.” your home for a large cylinder.
HOMES? 100 per cent heat pump An internal Worcester You need one to store hot
Carl Arntzen is the chief system wouldn’t have worked Bosch report calls hybrid water provided by a heat
executive of Worcester Bosch, very well,” he says. systems a “game-changer” for pump. Yet 13.4 million homes
Britain’s biggest boiler Britain has “lots of old, net-zero transition and the in England (57 per cent) have
manufacturer. In his home, a leaky properties” that are not “perfect solution” for up to combi boilers that heat water
1960s property in a Midlands all suited to a 100 per cent 17 million smaller UK homes. instantly without a hot water

tank, the English Housing
Survey suggests.
“I think about my sister’s
house,” says Emma Bohan, the
manager of IMS Heat Pumps, a
heat pump installer. “She has
a two-up, two-down old
worker’s cottage. I look
around this tiny place and
think, ‘Where am I going to put
a hot water cylinder?’ I can’t fit
it in without making my sister
give up storage space.”
With a hybrid system,
however, Bohan says her sister
could use a gas combi boiler
“just to do the taps. She would
be mainly decarbonised,
heating the house on a heat
pump. She would then need a
smaller heat pump that would
cost less.” Another space-
saving solution is a thermal
battery, such as Sunamp,
which heats hot water on
demand but is smaller than
a hot water tank.
A heat pump topped up by
a gas boiler may also allow you
to stagger upgrades of
radiators and insulation as you
can afford it, Bohan adds.
Once you are done, “you can
take your gas boiler out”.
The Climate Change
Committee, which advises the
government, says that heat
pumps in a hybrid system may
indeed be more cost-effective
in the 1.3 million “hard-to-
decarbonise” period homes.
They could help people to
“avoid disruption” and
decarbonise “distress
purchases” where a gas boiler
suddenly conks out.
But overall, hybrid systems
won’t play a “significant” role,
Dr Richard Hanna of Imperial
College London believes.
Hanna thinks high-
temperature heat pumps,
which supply to radiators at
the same temperatures as a
gas boiler (over 65C), will be
a better solution for hard-to-
retrofit homes. He co-
authored the Future of Home
Heating report last year, which
found the flexibility of hybrid
heat pumps may help to
manage the load on the
electricity grid during peak
times.
To work out if a hybrid is
right for you, get a heat pump
engineer accredited by MCS,
the industry scheme, to assess
your home. If they suggest a
hybrid solution, ask what
exactly the fossil fuel element
will do, Bohan says. “Is it just
kicking in for hot water? Is it
kicking in when it’s really cold
outside, or while you can’t
afford to do the upgrades? You
need to understand that.”
The risk, she adds, is that
you “can get conned into
thinking that you are
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 9
decarbonising and then end although you may be able to
HYBRID HEATING up with a system that’s mainly keep your existing boiler.
SYSTEM reliant on fossil fuel”. A standard air or ground
Domestic source heat pump qualifies for
Control hot water WILL IT SAVE YOU MONEY? a £7,500 grant under the
system Small In the government-funded government’s Boiler Upgrade
radiator trial, in which the Brown Scheme. But you cannot get
family took part, 742 heat this for a hybrid system. “That
Gas or pumps were fitted — a fifth is quite a big difference,” says
oil boiler of which were in hybrid Katrina Young, a heat policy
Heating heating systems. “They manager at Catapult.
provided heat for the The Brown family’s
homes but the hybrid system cost
Cold efficiency hasn’t £13,450 in total,
water been as high as including £5,300
Heat expected,” says for the hybrid
pump Our fossil fuel
indoor unit Daniel Logue heat pump and
of the energy use is one fifth of five days of
Heat pump Gas consultancy work to replace
outdoor unit Catapult, who the level of gas we all the radiators
Electricity
oversaw the trial. were using with bigger ones
ALL-ELECTRIC For every unit and their narrow
HEAT PUMP Domestic of electricity they microbore pipes
hot water
Control used, the heat pumps with wider ducting.
Large tested produced about 2.4 “There was quite a bit of
system radiator
units of heat — compared with disruption,” Michael says.
2.9 units from standard heat Luckily the government paid
pumps. That excludes the role because they were in the trial.
of the gas boiler element, And the family’s bills?
Heating
which produces about 0.9 Before, their direct debit for
Insulation
units of heat for every unit of gas and electricity was £94.
NEEDS UPDATING fuel it burns. This brings the Now it is about £100, despite
efficiency down further. prices “going sky high”,
Cold An air source heat pump Michael says. “But it’s changed
Heat water
pump Domestic can cost from £7,000 to the type of fuel we use, which
indoor unit hot water £15,000 to fit, depending on is positive environmentally.”
cylinder the property, according to Eco Their gas bill has fallen from
Heat pump Experts, a group of climate- almost £1,100 a year to £301
outdoor unit Electricity
savvy writers. A new boiler for nine months. “That’s been
Source: Hybrid Heating Great Britain costs an extra £4,000, a big change.”
10 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Home
MEMORY
LANE
An interior designer refurbished her late
grandmother’s home — but her parents had
to buy it back first. By Katrina Burroughs
D
onkey rides, cake making,
her grandmother’s pekinese
dogs ... the interior designer
Emma Deterding has many
happy childhood memories
of Cold Ashby Hall in Northamptonshire.
The Georgian country house that her
grandparents bought at the end of the
war, where her father grew up, was
a favourite haunt for Deterding and
her brothers.
“We stayed with Granny Donkey quite
a lot. We used to do lots of baking with
her. We rolled masses of puff pastry with
lots of sugar and cinnamon and we
thought we were child geniuses.”
After her grandmother died, the family
sold the house in 2008 and Deterding’s
parents, Jane and David Dollar, built
themselves a large property with seven
bedrooms and seven bathrooms, a
swimming pool and stables, on their
farm in Naseby, a couple of miles away,
where they had lived for 17 years.
David says of the modern house: “We
loved it, but we made a bit of a mistake
and made it a bit large, and we felt it was
too much for us to cope with.” Giving up
a swimming pool, at the tail end of Covid,
was not a decision that pleased the
family. He adds: “When we decided to
leave, Emma was furious and so were
the children.”
At the precise moment the Dollars
were searching for a more manageable
property, in 2022, the entire nation
seemed to be looking for a home in the
countryside. Unexpectedly, Cold Ashby
Hall turned up on the market, so they
pounced, buying it in April last year.
And so Deterding returned to her
early stomping ground in a professional
capacity to help to redesign and decorate
the rooms for her parents, who are in
their eighties.
“It’s quite weird redoing your
grandparents’ house that you remember
from your childhood,” she says.
Deterding, whose studio is called
Kelling Designs, used her recollections
and her parents’ memories of the
interiors as a starting point for the decor.
“We all remembered the rooms and
where the furniture went. A lot of the
furniture has gone back into the same
places. The cupboard in the drawing
room that had all the drinks went straight
back to where it was 70 years ago.
Grandmother always used
to keep her drinks there
and father now keeps
his drinks there.”
On the upstairs
landing, she says,
the chest of drawers
and the clock have
resumed the
positions they
occupied in 1947.
She has even returned
some items from her
own home. “Mum and
Dad gave me the side table
from the dining room, when
Granny died, and I sent it back to
them last year so it could go back to the
place it was in. It fitted beautifully.”
The decorator partially recreated
the old interiors, but added plenty of
contemporary touches, including many
of her own designs. A spectacular
wallcovering in the hallway is her
Kelling Home oak leaf wallpaper, and
contemporary decorative lighting
includes her Eloise lamp with a fluted
Bee lampshade. On the bedroom wall
MARK BOLTON PHOTOGRAPHY; BRENT DARBY
is her Hearts and Minds wallpaper, and
on the floor her Priory rug. In the sitting
room, Kelling’s Peridot Hearts and Minds
cushions are on the couch, with her Beau
lamp with Delilah lampshade on the sofa
table behind.
How easy was working for family?
Deterding says: “It was surprisingly easy.
I’ve done it twice now. I did the house in
Naseby and this house. They tell me I am
improving with time. Dad pretends not to
care. My mother has a great eye and
wonderful taste.”
Jane adds: “The only thing we ever had
a row about was she kept saying, ‘I want
to do hard flooring in the bathrooms.’”
Her parents dug in their heels and insisted
on the comfort of carpet. “Otherwise we
agreed pretty quickly on most things,” she
concludes. David says: “We didn’t dare do
anything else.”
Every room holds memories of a
remarkable family. Her father’s favourite
recollection concerns a toy plane.
“Grandfather was in Colditz. Douglas
Bader was a very good friend of his.
Aged about eight, I made my first model
aeroplane. It was a glider with an elastic
band inside to make the propeller go
round. I took it out on the terrace. I
was about to launch it when I was told
Douglas was a distinguished fighter
pilot and he should launch my plane.
Douglas launched my aeroplane and it
went straight into the ground. No,
I didn’t burst into tears. I was
bloody cross.”
Now the Dollars are
It’s quite weird comfortably ensconced
in the newly decorated
redoing your interiors, the only objection
grandparents’ they have to their new/old
house is the heating bills.
old house David says: “There’s this
perennial problem of not
being able to have double glazing
on a listed house whereas in Naseby
we had underfloor heating and massive
insulation. So energy bills are up. We
used to have ground source heating in the
new build. Once you’ve done it, it is
virtually free.”
His designer daughter has tried every
trick in the book to warm up the interiors.
“We put curtains in, which are lined and
From top: Jane and interlined, and we are looking at putting
David Dollar; Cold in secondary glazing. We sealed off the
Ashby Hall; the loft and added more insulation.”
upstairs landing; And she has chosen colours that make
the snug; Emma the rooms seem — if not actually feel —
Deterding, who warmer. “The snug was white all winter so
redesigned the we painted it Farrow & Ball Lake Red. It’s
interiors of her one of their limited-edition colours and
grandparents’ it’s very pretty. That really changed the
home feel of the room.”
12 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Home

MY COTSWOLD ISLAND
PARADISE
HUGH
GRAHAM
@HughGrahamST

Y
ou can take the boy out of
Canada, but you can’t take
Canada out of the boy — even
if he’s a Brit. In 1975, when
the Kent-born Anthony
Edmondson was only 17, he took off
for the Yukon. “I was looking for
adventure and fell in love with the place,”
says Edmondson, now 66, who worked in
a silver mine and as a lumberjack.
“It was so wild. It was like going to the
moon. You almost felt like you were the
first person there. There were bears,
wolves, beavers and birds of prey. You
could hear the wolves howling at night.
I went out for a gap year and ended up
staying three and a half years,” he says.
“Dad’s always been happy grafting by
himself and living a pioneering lifestyle,”
says his son, James, 33. “He was attracted
to the romance of it.”
When Anthony returned to the UK and
became a tree surgeon, he yearned to
recreate that rugged feel. In 1980, when
looking to start a fish farm, he came
across a 90-acre lake near Kemble,
Gloucestershire, that resembled a
moonscape: there were no trees, services
or roads. It was an abandoned gravel pit
that had been dug up in the 1960s to build
the M4 and M5. He bought it and spent
four years living in a mobile home on the
130-acre site, planting 42,000 trees and
reed beds to purify the water.
A British man was so inspired by the Canadian wilds, he transformed
a Gloucestershire lake into his own version, complete with log cabins
Anthony and James Edmondson canoeing in the Yukon
“I was trying to replicate the feel of the
Yukon on a smaller scale so that people
could get a taste of living in the wild,”
Anthony says.
He eventually opened a fish farm,
met his wife and built a log house, Mayo
Landing, named after a village in the
Yukon. It was an idyllic place to grow
up, James says. He planted reed beds for
pocket money, trapped eels and camped
on Survival Island, one of 15 on the lake,
where he and his sister told each other
ghost stories by the campfire. “It was a
very Swallows and Amazons childhood.”
Anthony took advice on conservation
from Natural England. When the fish farm
changed the chemistry of the water, he
closed it. By 1994 the site had become
such a haven for bird life it was designated
a site of special scientific interest.
The Edmondsons needed income,
however, so they started hosting
corporate retreats. In 2008, when that
business collapsed during the financial
crisis, they opened Log House Holidays,
comprising eight Finnish-built timber
cabins where Brits can go wild swimming,
then warm up beside fire pits.
He may have grown up in paradise, but
James yearned for the bright lights of the
big city. In 2011, after finishing university,
he moved to London to work as an
investment banker in the City. “I quickly
realised it wasn’t for me. I enjoyed the
energy and excitement, but it wasn’t a
healthy lifestyle. So I came back after a
short time. Having gone away, I realised
how special this place was.”
James has since got married and had
two children, Aubrey and Bernie, and

now runs the family business. He and One staircase leads up to two
his wife, Sophie, started married life in bedrooms, where the couple can see the
a Portakabin, but in 2020 built their own lake from their bed. The other staircase,
rustic homestead, a four-bedroom, at the other end of the house past a
3,700 sq ft oak-framed house built using ground-floor third bedroom, leads up to a
timber pegs, handmade clay roof tiles and separate first floor, with a fourth bedroom
Cotswold stone and perched on an and snug. “Having the two barns is
isthmus surrounded by lake. fantastic because when guests stay they
On a sunny autumnal day James drives have their own separate space.”
me through a thicket of Norway spruces, It’s irresistibly cosy: you can imagine
maples and flaming liquidambar trees. As Pa entering on a snowy night laden
we pass log cabins and approach his with firewood (the wood-burner is
home, which is clad in Douglas fir and fuelled by logs from their property).
larch and fronted by a walnut tree, I hear The Edmondsons are also self-sufficient
the theme song for Little House on in water since Anthony drilled a
the Prairie in my head. borehole. Underfloor heating
Inside the look is similarly is powered by a water source
rugged, with walls clad in heat pump at the bottom of
rough-sawn Douglas fir, the lake; solar panels
chunky beamed ceilings,
To have this cover half their energy
animal skin rugs and seclusion in the bills; solar glass reduces
distressed timber furniture. south of England airtightSipmembrane
heat; panels and an
“I wanted an oak-frame keep
house; they have character is a rare thing things warm.
and look like they’ve been It’s a tranquil existence.
there for a long time,” James says. James starts his day with a
“We asked the company [Border Oak] coffee on the lakefront terrace in his
to deliberately leave the oak unplaned for Adirondack chair, keeping an eye out for
that rustic look.” otters, dragonfly (there are 17 varieties),
James and his father sketched ideas for bitterns, starlings, ospreys, kingfishers
the house and gave them to Border Oak. and egrets. He ends the day with a bracing
James wanted an “irregular” structure of dip in the lake, even in winter.
two intersecting barns. “I like old houses However, it’s hard graft too. James
where you have buildings from different spends his days managing woodland,
periods joined together. That gave me the clearing scrub, sowing and maintaining
idea of two barns. I wanted it to look like a wildflower meadows, and running the
sprawling farm.” holiday-let business, which is booming.
The ground floor has an open-plan Apart from Covid shutdowns, the eight
kitchen/living/dining room with a wood- cabins have been booked solid for nine
burner and picture windows overlooking years straight. What’s the appeal to Brits?
the lake, and a sliding door opening onto “People like coming back to something
a shaded terrace. that’s a bit old-fashioned,” James says.
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 13
PETE HELME PHOTOGRAPHY AND PHOTOPIA BOTH FOR BORDER OAK
From left: Sophie
and James
Edmondson, who
run Log House
Holidays; the
site’s lake; the
intersecting
barns where the
Edmondsons live;
a bedroom and
living area in
their home.
Right: rowing on
the lake. Below:
the open-plan
kitchen/living/
dining room
“Log cabins exude life in the slow lane.
To have this seclusion in the south of
England is a rare thing.”
Guests say they feel like they are
in Sweden or Canada. Indeed, Gucci
shot a campaign here set in an American
summer camp, while Barbour did
a photo shoot with fake snow on
the cabins.
James prefers not to reveal the budget
for his house, but Border Oak, which
built it, says a typical price for a full-build,
four-bedroom house is about £500,000-
600,000. They started construction in
August 2019 and James moved in in
October 2020.
Anthony is busy planning a new
oak-frame house on the site, but that
will be the last. “We have planning
permission for a couple more, but I’m
happy keeping things as they are and
focusing on conservation,” James says.
“The next generation might have a
different take on it.”
He won’t pressure his children to take
over the business. “But it would be lovely
to think the trees planted now will be
enjoyed by generations to come. If the site
was sold, I’d feel quite lost without it. It’s
my whole world.”
In troubled times it’s certainly a haven
from turmoil. James says: “If we can
provide a happy place for people to
escape to, all the better.”
Border Oak exhibits at the Homebuilding &
Renovating Show. To claim free tickets for
the event at the Bath & West Showground
(this weekend) and Farnborough
International Centre (January 13-14),
go to homebuildingshow.co.uk/
pr-sundaytimes
14 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Home
Home KITCHEN SPECIAL

T
o refresh or renew

CHRIS SNOOK; CHRISTOPHER HORWOOD

a kitchen, look
beyond the usual
off-the-shelf
brands: some
canny creativity can go a long
way. The key is always to
engage the design insiders’
favourite tactic, the high-low
approach, which is knowing
where to spend and stretch
your cash for maximum effect.
Pinch ideas from Alice
Gaskell, the founder of
Alice Grace Interiors, who
transformed the kitchen
fronts of a client’s grey
Shaker kitchen in Bath
with decorative pine reeding
from B&Q (£7.37 for a 2.4m-
long baton, diy.com).
To replicate the look, take
off your kitchen doors and
place on a flat surface. “If the
original doors have Shaker
surrounds, the measurements
need to be taken within, top to
bottom,” Gaskell advises.
The doors were lightly
sanded and mouldings were
affixed with Gorilla glue or
Loctite, starting with the piece
in the centre of the door,
working outwards to allow an
equal finishing on each edge.
“Fix in place with veneer pins
top and bottom. Once dry,
apply a water-based primer
and paint. Due to the extra
weight and sometimes depth
of the new doors, you may
need to upgrade the door
hinges to allow for appropriate
clearance,” she adds. Finally,
she repainted in a rich red-
earth shade called Mchanga
for a look that’s still neutral,
but far more interesting than
the original grey.
The wedding dress designer
Kate Halfpenny has speedily
made over a dull pine laminate
kitchen in her Airbnb in
Faversham, Kent, with The couple behind the
minimal fuss. The stylist (who @mytinyestate account (Dean
has dressed Rihanna, Kate Poulton and Borja de Maqua)
Moss and Erin O’Connor) first are renovating a collection of
primed the cabinetry with Georgian buildings in the
Zinsser Bulls Eye 1-2-3 Primer- West Midlands. For their
Sealer (£19.99 per litre, kitchens, they use off-the-shelf
screwfix.com) followed by a carcasses from Ikea or DIY
couple of coats of Farrow & shops and “bespoke it” with
Ball’s Lichen, a mid-green. simple kitchen fronts cut to
Open shelving (made from size at B&Q. They installed
18mm MDF) and brackets from fancy brass taps and hardware
Etsy replaced an upper and higher-end worktops, and
cabinet for a more modern added definition to the
look. Halfpenny also added cabinetry by fitting skirting to
tongue-and-groove wall the units and mouldings under
panelling (MDF sheets from the worktops.

HOW TO REFRESH
B&Q) to the splashback: Abi Hugo, a DIY lover from
“This allowed us to run some Essex who posts her upcycling
electrics behind to add wall results @thewhitethistle,
lights under the shelves. wanted to conceal the messy

YOUR KITCHEN
Another trick is to update contents of a large glass-
inside the cupboards with fronted kitchen cabinet. She
sticky-back marble plastic.” ordered some reeded glass-
Vinyl wraps are an effect film from Purlfrost

inexpensive and rental-
friendly method to revamp
dated fronts and worktops.
Try layed.com for professional
architectural wrap to upcycle
kitchen cabinet doors. An
average kitchen (about 20 to
30 cabinet/drawer fronts, plus
side panels and carcass fronts)
would cost £200 to £300 for
material, while worktop wraps
in marble, concrete or wood
effect average £16 a metre.
Instagram is an excellent
source for semi-DIY shortcuts.
ON A BUDGET
(£65 for two panels). “I’m glad
I went for the 25mm [the
largest size] — it’s distorted
enough but not overly
dramatic,” she says. “I cleaned
the window and sprayed on
some plain water before
peeling the film and placing it
on the window. I shifted it into
position and once I was happy
Upgrade your space with these smart and stylish ideas, from I squeegeed out the excess
water until there were no air
or water bubbles. I then
fresh-looking cabinets to quirky handles. By Victoria Brzezinski trimmed down the edges with
an X-Acto knife and voilà:

Clockwise from
far left: a Studio
Fabbri kitchen
with Plykea
fronts; Alice
Gaskell used pine
reeding in her
redesign; Matilda
Goad laquered
knob; an Annie
Sloan kitchen in
Antibes Green
Chalk Paint
pretty cupboard doors.” Her
top tip is to order the film
with 2cm spare on either side
of the window.
Hugo used self-priming,
self-sealing Frenchic kitchen
cupboard paint in a khaki
shade called Funky Dora
(£21.95 for 750ml) to update
her kitchen fronts. Annie
Sloan has a similar Chalk Paint
range, from £7.95 for 120ml.
“Ensure the cabinets are clean
and free from grease before
you start painting,” Sloan says
as a caveat. “Use soapy water
and a wire brush to give them
a clean and wait until they’re
fully dry before you start
painting.” Slather on two coats
and once dry, wax the doors
using Clear Chalk Paint Wax
(£13.95 for 500ml).
Tamsin Saunders, the
founder of interiors studio
Home & Found, was enlisted
to update the Victorian home
of the artist Rosie Copeland.
Copeland’s original greige
kitchen was in good working
order, so Saunders repainted it entry-level cabinetry.
in an earthier shade, Farrow &
Ball’s Pigeon, and used Farrow
& Ball’s Salon Drab on the
island to complement the dark
granite worktops. She also
swapped the kitchen handles
for a combination of antique
brass and high-quality new
ones from British Standard
Cupboards and removed
the tiling behind the
range for a bare
plasterwork look,
adding a framed
panel of 18th-
century Delft tiles. acrylic above one of her
Swapping
knobs and
handles is the
ultimate quick fix.
Trawl eBay for
second-hand
bargains. Etsy is also
a good source.
Ironmongery brands
to consider include Dowsing
& Reynolds, Armac Martin or
Turnstyle. Matilda Goad
designs colourful lacquer
knobs and bamboo-shaped
handles (from £20) while
Leicestershire brand deVOL
handcrafts a range of
designs (from £18). Julia
Kendell, an interior
designer from the
Homebuilding &
Renovating
Show, notes: A variety of tones invisi-pull doors
“If you are and materials
keen to change
the metal from will make
steel to brass, less ‘kitcheny’
you will also need
to change exposed
hinges for a cohesive
aesthetic.”
To fake a high-end look,
take tips from the interior
designer Nicky Mudie of the
west London design company
Violet & George. “I didn’t have
the same budget as my clients
so I used a cheap carcass from
Howdens [£3,600] in an oak-
effect laminate and then had
the doors made to make the
kitchen look and feel like a
fully bespoke kitchen. We
veneered a textured Mundy
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 15
veneer onto a quality birch ply choose a muted or a bright hacked fronts for Ikea’s Metod remove marks and wear, or
from mundyveneer.com,” she tone in a matte for the fronts.” kitchen as well as its own give them a whole new look.
explains. The door fronts in a The Oslo company Ask og cabinets. Its newest design is If the metal surface is sealed
finish called Deralam Homapal Eng supplies high-quality called Plate (€340 per with lacquer, coloured
H50/014 set her back £5,400, bamboo fronts for Ikea standard 60cm x 80cm door) anodising or similar, we would
while the polished brass Kube cabinets, cover panels, filler while its brushed metal doors not recommend sanding.”
cabinet handles cost £28.80 pieces and plinths, handmade cost €790 each. “If your fronts Don’t be afraid to think
each from A&H Brass. She in its Norway workshop. Four are made of raw steel you can outside the box. An
splurged on £600 taps from bamboo door fronts in the sand them either with an enterprising chef, Andrew
Lefroy Brooks’s Connaught finish Rye transformed the orbital sander or by hand,” Mellon, integrated a £149
range to instantly elevate her kitchen in a small studio in suggests Reform’s Rikke galley from a second-hand
Antwerp for €990 (£861). Bodker Christensen. “The Boeing Jetliner 737 into his
In her southwest London Get the pared-back Scandi appearance can change cabin’s kitchen in
home artist and illustrator look adored by the Danish depending on the direction Aberdeenshire, combined
Ofelia Botella has created a fashion labels Stine Goya and you sand and the grit of the with a commercial gas cooking
Delft-meets-Portugal mood by Designers Remix with Reform sandpaper, but it’s a great way range and stainless steel
hand-painting her white-tiled Copenhagen, which sells to freshen up the fronts, counters.
splashback with her favourite
local flowers and animals —
“mostly ducks from Battersea
Park” — using blue Pebeo
porcelain paint (£5.50,
amazon.co.uk) to adorn the
plain white tiles. This took
about four hours, and Botella
also added a pretty “Casa
Botella” mural using regular
built-in kitchen cupboards
complete with a lobster, shell
and bunch of grapes.
A plethora of firms offer
hand-finished fronts, handles
and custom cabinetry to fit
proprietary kitchen systems
from Ikea or Howdens — often
a cheaper way to get a bespoke
look than a made-to-measure
kitchen company. These
include the UK-based HOLTE
studio, Naked Kitchens and
Plykea. Studio Fabbri created
a colourful kitchen in
Walthamstow, northeast
London, utilising a playful
range of Plykea
components
including oak and
Formica fronts
(£8,500) with
on Ikea cabinets
(£3,174.50).
it feel Slatted oak
panels also
spruce up the side
of an Ikea island by
Naturewall (£285).
Merilin Kook, design
manager at HOLTE studio,
says: “There’s no need to
match the new doors’ tone
and finish to existing cover
and side panels as gone are the
days of matchy-matchy spaces,
all done in one colour only. In
contemporary kitchen
schemes, a variety of tones
and materials helps to break it
all up and make it feel less
‘kitcheny’. If your side and
cover panels are in timber,
Tamsin Saunders
of interiors studio
Home & Found
updated the
kitchen of the
artist Rosie
Copeland
 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 17

Home
Home KITCHEN SPECIAL

T
he best part of

1
planning a kitchen
is the prerogative
to consume pantry
porn. There is
nothing more satisfying to
scroll than clearly labelled
cook’s ingredients decanted
into labelled clip-top jars and
displayed on the shelves of
custom store cupboards.
That’s why #pantrygoals
has clocked up 325 million
views on TikTok. It’s a passion
that unites the generations.
The Zoomers, sans their own
houses, are obsessed with OPP
(other people’s pantries). At
the older, more affluent end of
the kitchen market (the people
who cook for them), bespoke
pantry design has evolved into
a competitive sport, with
makers vying to devise the
most precisely tailored
creations. Despite their below
stairs origins, pantries are now
the last word in luxury.
According to Merlin Wright,
the design director of the
stealth-wealth kitchen studio
Plain English, when clients
visit his showrooms, it’s the
pantries that exert a magnetic
pull. “People always make 4
a beeline for them and open
them up, and are thrilled by
the reveal. It’s like a cabinet
of curiosities.”
So here is a new pantry for

THE PULL OF
your Pinterest board. Wright’s
latest kitchen design (the Kew
collection, revealed here and
already installed in his new
Pimlico Road, southwest

THE PANTRY
London, showroom), features
a colossal cupboard with an
arched door and horseshoe-
shaped shelving. For a
dramatic ta-da moment, the
interior is painted a contrast
colour to the exterior
cabinetry, and drawers are
finished with custom
cupboard pulls in aged cast Pantries may have humble below stairs origins but
brass. Inspired by the 18th-
century kitchens at Kew
Palace, it takes the larder
these storage stars are finally going up in the world
to a whole new level.
The British lust for pantries 1. Plain English food storage) with an

2 3
has persisted since the Kew kitchen, aesthetically and emotionally
pandemic and has lately from £70,000 satisfying solution.
spread across the Atlantic, 2. Davonport As Wright says, “It makes
where US homeowners are Holkham kitchen, people feel happy and
increasingly demanding from £40,000 in control if they’ve got
Georgian-style storerooms. 3. Husk kitchen everything to hand.” And
At the risk of provoking in Verde Brac who doesn’t love feeling
a semantic spat (actually I green, £4,300 happy and in control?
adore a semantic spat), let’s 4. John Lewis of On this wave of storage
acknowledge that on both Hungerford Cool euphoria, pantries have
sides of the Pond the term freestanding ascended from the servants’
pantry is used interchangeably pantry, £7,000 quarters to the status interior
with larder. Pedants may of the moment. Kate Watson-
object that the original Smyth, the author of Home:
function of the pantry was for The Way We Live Now, says,
storing bread and dry goods, “Pantries are the new en
while the larder was a separate suites. Everyone used to want
area designed to keep meat an en suite. Now we all have
fresh. But in the 21st century those, so pantries are the new
we have fridges for our aspiration.” Her new kitchen
perishable foods, and both reveal this autumn created
words have come to signify quite a stir, featuring a pantry
an ancillary room or storage/ We all have off the kitchen, with a run of
display cupboard that often en suites now so plaster pink cabinets and its
takes on the additional tasks of KATRINA own sink. Her ancillary space
secondary food prep area and pantries are the BURROUGHS had been converted from
hiding place for the toaster new must-have @Kat_Burroughs laundry duties to food prep
and coffee maker. and storage.
The genius of the It’s up to you to decide
contemporary pantry is whether your budget is more
that it addresses our most “tweak an existing space” or
common kitchen pain points “splurge the cost of an EV on
(inadequate or inaccessible exquisite cabinetry”.
18 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Home
Home KITCHEN SPECIAL
GALLEY-HO!
SAVE SPACE
IN STYLE
The classic nautical kitchen is
back in fashion. By Lindsay Blair
O
n social media
every kitchen has
a vast footprint
and a sprawling
island. However,
the small but practical parallel
arrangement of a galley
kitchen is where many of us
find ourselves cooking dinner.
The galley is a design with
long-sustained popularity. It
began as the favoured shape
for kitchens on ships, trains
and aircraft to make the long,
narrow spaces functional for
cooking and easy enough to
manoeuvre around.
By the 1920s the concept of
efficiency reached mass
production with the
revolutionary Frankfurt
kitchen by the Austrian
architect Margarete Schutte-
Lihotzky. Deemed the first
fitted kitchen, it came with
dedicated cooking and
preparation areas, and storage
on each side. These days, a
functional-first approach is
synonymous with a galley and
perhaps the reason for its
lasting success.
Wren Kitchens’ showroom
development and design
director Darren Watts says:
“Modern galley kitchens are
on their way to becoming a
key kitchen trend, with a
52 per cent increase in
searches in the last year. This
more traditional-style
kitchen is perfect for small
spaces, which is what makes
them so popular.”
The Classic English kitchen, from £30,000, Devol; Stowupland kitchen, £12,193, British Standard Cupboards
Jeremy Grove, managing
director at the interior design
company Sibley Grove,
suggests keeping dedicated
tasks to one side or the other.
“By their nature, galley
kitchens are through routes,
so the risk of injury is greater.
These risks are the same on
boats as in residential settings
with family, children and pets.
“So ensure there are spaces
on either side of the oven or
hob to place hot items
without having to turn behind
you, and make sure cutting is
done on one side of the
kitchen to avoid turning with
sharp implements.”
Long runs of base units
bring with them plenty of
worktop, but think of this
Keeping surfaces
clear will help
make the room
feel larger
space as practical rather than
for display. “Keeping surfaces
clear will help make the room
feel larger and less cluttered,”
says William Eaves, design and
development director at
British Standard Cupboards.
“Lower units are the working
parts and should include the
sink, oven, bin and
dishwasher. You could put
your fridge and freezer below
the work surface to extend the
worktop areas and draw the
eye further into the room.”
While you’re likely to have
long lengths of wall to play
with too, don’t be tempted to
cram them full. “Be mindful of
the density of the cabinetry
within the space,” says George
Glasier, co-founder of the
kitchen maker Pluck. “There’s
a balance to be struck between
maximising storage and
avoiding the feeling of
cupboards looming over you.”
Think carefully about what
you need to store, cull
unnecessary items and
meticulously plan where
things will go. Drawers offer
more space than cupboards.
Magic corner racks, twin-
carousel cabinets and sliding
pull-outs can make access
easier. The narrowest void
can be turned into storage
for chopping boards or
baking trays.
There are clever ways to
boost space too. Relocating a
boiler and using a cupboard
under the stairs as an
ALEXIS HAMILTON
extension to the kitchen are
sensible solutions, but
unassuming areas can also
prove useful.
“A small indent in a wall is a
perfect place to fit slim shelves
and when painted the same
colour as the walls they almost
disappear. These provide good
storage for glassware and tall
shallow objects, and also
create a nice visual where wall
space and spots for
ornamentation are in short
supply,” says Helen Parker,
Devol’s creative director.
While space will be tricky,
this type of kitchen works the
hardest of them all and a well-
designed one will be the most
practical and efficient, just as
history intended.
20 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Home

‘NATURE-BASED Room to
THERAPY IS A grow
GAME CHANGER’
Dr Richard Claxton learnt to love gardening and
its health benefits. Arabella Youens meets the GP

D
octor Richard
Claxton grew up
as the son of an
independent
school teacher.
While living in a boarding
schoolhouse he was, at one
time, appointed house captain
while his father was
housemaster, an experience
he describes as being more
like a punishment than a
privilege.
After training at Guy’s and
St Thomas’ Hospital medical
school and qualifying, in 1996,
he went on to specialise in
paediatrics. During his
preclinical training Claxton
completed a psychology
degree, and later trained in
psychotherapy while at Guy’s.
This early interest in mental
health led to him volunteering
for Aids charity the Terrence
Higgins Trust.
Claxton was married and
living in north London and
was about to embark on the
pathway to becoming a
consultant when he decided to
switch to general practice in
search of a better work-life
balance. “If I knew then what
I know now I might not have
been so hasty,” he says.
The experience of working
as a junior doctor in the 1990s
had taken a toll. To switch off
in his brief moments of
downtime Claxton went out
into his small patch of garden
and soon fell in love with
gardening.
“I saw it as a way of
switching off and taking gentle
exercise at the same time — a
win as I hate going to the gym.
Plus, studying medicine and
science squeezes the creativity
out of you, so it felt good to
change that.”
There was something about
the cyclical nature of
gardening and the connection
to the seasons that helped to
ground Claxton, literally.
“Generations and
generations of humans have
had to plant and grow their

own food to survive, and
AKIRA SUEMORI FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES
taking part in that process
helped me to contextualise my
own problems, and those of
my patients, colleagues and
family,” he says.
When the pandemic arrived
Claxton was living with his
wife and three children near
Benenden in Kent while
working as a partner of a GP
practice in Tonbridge. Their
family home is a grade II listed
Georgian weatherboarded
miller’s house with a garden of
just under an acre and a
paddock.
Sitting on the kitchen table
is a basket full of Cox and
Braeburn apples collected
from the small orchard he
planted when they bought the
house. Rows of leafy green
plants and succulents line all
the available windowsills. Two
dogs lie in their baskets.
“The early days of the
pandemic were brutal. Like
many others I lost patients,
friends and colleagues,”
Claxton says. “For a while
before, I’d had the idea of
hanging up my stethoscope
and taking up garden design
full time, and I suppose that
brush with mortality made me
decide not to wait any longer.”
During lockdown Claxton
started an online diploma and
put together Gardening 4
Health, a directory of therapy
gardens that pinpoints
locations that promote
horticulture to help mental
and physical wellbeing.
“There are a huge number
of gardens with this intent, but
many prescribers don’t know
about them. Neither do self-
referrers. I wanted to do
something to address that.”
The more Claxton
researched, the more he
discovered the benefits of
using gardening for therapy,
reducing the prescription of
antidepressants and A&E
attendance. A study he tells
me about has found that
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 21
patients in a care home who
have undertaken gardening
activity during the day are less
likely to require assistance
from carers at night because
they feel calmer.
Today Claxton works four
days a week as a GP, with the
rest of his time devoted to
gardening — he volunteered at
Chelsea this year.
Alongside other demands
on his time, including being a
trustee of the Greenfingers
Charity, which builds
therapeutic gardens in
children’s hospices, and a
guide at Sissinghurst Castle
Garden, he has his own plot to
tend to.
The garden is mainly west
Left: Richard facing with heavy clay soil,
Claxton in his and was largely laid to grass
garden in Kent. with little or no planting when
Above: the GP’s the couple bought the house.
one-acre patch One of the first interventions
also has a was to design four vegetable
paddock and fruit beds including a fruit
cage, brassicas and a
particularly productive
asparagus bed. It’s sheltered
by a yew hedge.
New herbaceous borders
were established around an
existing pond. Tall shrubs
such as variegated
pittosporum, osmanthus and
camellias provide a natural
break between the vegetable
patch and the rest of the
garden, while delphiniums,
aquilegias and salvias set a
cottage tone. Around the back
door of the house is what
Claxton calls a “Dixter-
inspired collection of pots” in
a nod to Great Dixter, the
garden made famous by
Christopher Lloyd, which is
seven miles down the road.
Now he’s increasingly
focused on broadening the
outreach of green therapies
for patients by campaigning
for therapy gardens to open
where there is the highest
demand. “Often that’s not in a
walled garden down a mile-
long drive of a country house
but in a densely populated
area.”
Claxton helped to organise
a conference with the garden
designer Annie Guilfoyle and
Maggie Haynes of Tuppenny
Barn, a therapy garden, to
navigate a pathway towards
the universal provision of
nature-based therapies.
“This is a game changer,” he
says. “A typical patient with
mild or moderate depression
or anxiety might put off going
to see a GP — they’ll assume I’ll
just reach for a prescription or
put them on a ridiculously
long waiting list for talking
therapy. It’s wonderful to have
a third dimension of treatment
options in therapy terms.”
22 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Home
TIME AND SPACE THE WAY WE LIVE NOW
MONICA ALI
The Brick Lane author on bathtime
plotting and a dream to buy in Portugal
I
love my three-floor, five-
bedroom Victorian house in
Herne Hill, south London, but
there’s always something to
do. I often fantasise about
moving into a zero-maintenance flat
now that my son’s left home and my
daughter won’t be far behind.
Where did you grow up?
I was born in East Pakistan, now
Bangladesh. I moved to the UK aged
three, initially just with my English
mother and brother, during the civil
war in 1971. My Bengali father was
stuck in India. At first, we lived with
my maternal grandparents in their
four-bedroom semi-detached house
in Bolton. I don’t think they were best
pleased that my mum had returned
with these two little brown children.
After my dad joined us 18 months
later we moved into a cramped, often
damp, ground-floor two-bedroom
housing association flat on the other
side of town. My parents slept on the
sofa bed in the sitting room. It was a
bit grim. I lived there until I went to
university at 18.
What was the first home you
bought?
A cottage-style three-bedroom
terraced house with a back garden
in Loughborough Junction, which
was then the arse-end of Brixton,
south London. It cost £100,000 in
the mid-1990s. Shortly afterwards
I saw a magazine article saying that
the area was “best known for its
fatal stabbings”, which wasn’t very
reassuring. A few years later, in 2001,
my husband Simon and I moved to
a four-bedroom Victorian house in
East Dulwich, a less edgy part of
London, which cost about £400,000.
The only oddity was that the shower
room lay next to the kitchen.
What is your home like?
My husband and I bought it for
£740,000 in 2006 following the
success of my debut novel, Brick Lane.
Having lots of floors was good when
the kids, Felix and Shumi [now 24 and
22], were young and running around,
and I was trying to find somewhere
quiet to write. We’ve opened up the
kitchen, built a loft conversion and
redesigned the garden since moving
in. I hide away my book awards in a
cupboard. I’ve got no idea what it’s
worth now but a few years ago a
nearby property sold for £2 million.
What do you like about the area?
Everyone talks about the benefits of
“the 15-minute city” these days, and
we’re certainly lucky in that respect.
The area feels like a village. I can
walk to the post office, café and
bakery to get some bread. What’s
more, Dulwich is within easy reach,
Brixton isn’t far and I’m on the train
line to London Bridge.
Top: Monica Ali; Lisbon, Portugal — she’d like to buy a property there.
Above: Brockwell Park in south London is close to her home in Herne Hill
MICHAEL CLEMENT FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES; POLLYANA VENTURA/GETTY IMAGES; SAM MELLISH/ALAMY
HOME HOW DO YOU
COVER UP
HELP CHIPPED PAINT
ON A DOOR?
Q
My internal
painted wood
doors are the
traditional Victorian style.
They were originally
painted yellow but I sanded
them down and repainted
them white. Five years later
one door has been chipped
in a few small places to
reveal the old colour
underneath. Are there any
quick fixes to cover over
these imperfections rather
than having to resand and
repaint the whole door?
Victor Novak, Essex
A
When this type of old-style
panelled door has received
many coats of paint over the
years, the surface becomes
hard and brittle. Layer upon
We’ve also got a lovely park on layer of paint can lead to sharp
our doorstep, which is great for dog edges that are prone to
walking. Sadly we suddenly lost our chipping easily. The only real
beloved border terrier Poppy, 13, a solution is to have the
few weeks ago, leaving us all panelled doors professionally,
heartbroken. It has been like a chemically stripped and then
bereavement. She’d sit at my feet you can decide whether to
when I was writing. I really spent leave the door with a natural
more time with her than anyone else. wood finish, or refinish in a
type of paint of your choice.
What is your favourite room at
READERS’ CLINIC
home?
The top-floor bathroom. It was my
least favourite room until I had it
redecorated a couple of years ago. AFTER REMOVING THE LABEL FROM A JAR, HOW DO
I put up some lovely Pierre Frey
wallpaper that has transformed the
YOU REMOVE THE RESIDUAL ADHESIVE?
room. I like to lie in the bath when ... soapy water and
I’m trying to resolve a particularly methylated spirits don’t
knotty storyline in a novel. I often lie work for me.
there until the water goes cold. Julian Glasgow, Suffolk
Where is your dream home? Lighter fluid and a damp
Apart from the zero-maintenance flat cloth/kitchen towel.
in London, my other fantasy is buying Richard Savage
a property in Portugal, where we had
a rural holiday home for several years. Spray with WD-40. Soak for
If we did move back permanently, we 30 seconds. Rub with paper
wouldn’t live somewhere so remote. towel. Wash with soap.
Ideally, we’d get a place with a sea Mike Faraday
view in Cascais, the beautiful resort
on the Portuguese Riviera. Property Paint-brush cleaner followed
there isn’t cheap so we’d look at by warm soapy water.
Lisbon and Porto too. Celia Johnson
Interview by York Membery
White spirit is the answer.
Monica Ali’s latest novel, Love P Harrington
Marriage, is out now in paperback.
Buy from timesbookshop.co.uk or Nail varnish remover or De-
call 020 3176 2935. Discount for Solv-it Sticky Stuff remover.
Times+ members Hugh Hutchinson, Ealing
Sticky Stuff remover
from Lakeland.
Angie Waddell
Use spray polish
(Pledge). Leave for
two minutes. Wipe off.
Julie
Peanut butter. Smear over
the sticky area. Leave for a
while and wash off.
Jan McKenzie
Use balls of steel wool.
Peter Neild
Label remover spray from
Amazon.
Grahame Crawford, Devon
The trick is to lightly sand
down the damaged sections to
blend in the sharp proud
edges. Then apply a coat of a
specific type of primer that
adheres to the surfaces very
well. Products like Zinsser’s
Bulls Eye 123 is ideal for this
type of job. A couple of coats
of this type of product will
adhere well to the surface and
then you can apply the final
coat/finish/colour.
One point I must stress:
when sanding any style of
woodwork of this period there
is the risk of old lead paint
being underneath the other
coatings. Ensure you wear a
suitable facemask and always
wet sand the surfaces — never,
ever, dry sand substrates of
this age as there are risks of
lead poisoning and
contamination within the
dust. If in doubt consider
using a Painting and
Decorating Association
member to deal with the issue.
Neil Ogilvie, CEO, Painting and
Decorating Association
Send tips and questions to
homehelp@sunday-
times.co.uk. Advice given
without responsibility
Isopropyl alcohol.
Carolyn Grand
Eucalyptus oil.
Nicé Muir, Edinburgh
Turpentine substitute.
Mary Maxwell-Irving,
Stirling
Put jars in hot soapy water
for 30 minutes. Using rubber
gloves push labels off with
thumbs, then use Pink Stuff
and a green pan scrub to
remove the remainder.
Finish with eucalyptus oil
and kitchen roll.
Isobel Connell
I use a razor blade with a bit
of tape over the other edge
to protect fingers.
H Morgan
Zoff wipes are great.
Azra Hussain
Cut off adhesive
with a sharp knife
lubricated with a
drop of washing-up
liquid.
Richard Quin, Dorset
FUTURE QUESTION
How do you keep the
underside of soap from
going soggy in its dish?
Send tips and questions to
homehelp@sunday-
times.co.uk. Advice given
without responsibility
November 12, 2023

On the JFK trail in Dallas 5 Party-town Ischgl grows up 8 Late-season sun in Greece 16

TRAVEL
SECTION OF
THE YEAR

Say hello
to the
£100k
family holiday

Granny and Grandad are fuelling a boom in big-budget, big-ticket trips 22

2 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel
WHY I LOVE
RYANAIR
— AND YOU
SHOULD TOO
CATHY
ADAMS
A
colleague asked whether we
have all fallen back in love
with Ryanair. My answer:
I never fell out of love. It’s
been two decades of (mostly)
bliss: fastidiously measuring cabin bags
and bouncing down the runway to the
“you’ve arrived on another on-time
flight” jingle, pinballing between cities
from Poznan to Perpignan, Rome to
Rodez. It’s a polyamorous relationship,
but on the whole we’ve been very happy.
As are its customers — its numbers
increased by 11 per cent this summer over
the same period last year, 105.4 million
flying with the airline during the busiest
months of the year. (Considering social
media is awash with “I hate Ryanair”
posts, that’s a lot of haters apparently
still choosing to board.)
And so too are the
shareholders. Those
“loony” enough to hold
Ryanair stock have just It is extremely
trousered £348 million
satisfying to
between them with
its first dividend, which squeeze five days’ Ibiza and Mallorca when
the chief executive
Michael O’Leary had worth of gear
pledged he would never into a backpack touniversity
give. The reason? Europe’s
biggest budget carrier is
doing better than ever:
passenger numbers in markets
including Italy, Poland and Hungary
have grown by double digits, with profits
for the half-year topping £1.9 billion.
All this is happening amid increasing
flight costs, particularly for things such
as baggage allowance, mid-air snacks and
speedy boarding, fattening up the budget
airlines’ bottom line. This ancillary
revenue, or “drip pricing”, could soon
be a thing of the past, however. This week
the government announced a bill that
would ban airlines from obscuring the
“real” cost of flights and charging for
extras such as seat selection.
Of course this budget business model
doesn’t suit everybody. A friend of mine
who is a loyal British Airways business-
class customer insists that the holiday
starts as you step on to the plane. Before
a budget flight we took together she was
in disbelief that she had to cram her
stuff into a small backpack to avoid paying
a charge for luggage.
However, for the experienced budget
flyers among us this is second nature.
There is something extremely satisfying
about squeezing five days’ worth of gear
into a backpack, sliding a laptop down
the front of your trousers ( just me?)
and feeling as though you’ve defeated
Napoleon at Waterloo when you manage
BIG
SHOT
TICKLED PINK
Life imitates
social media
imitates art
at the Kaeson
metro station
in Pyongyang,
North Korea.
The pastels,
symmetry and
to slip an extra handbag past the gate clean lines
staff. If you only ever fly business class
you’re missing out on one of the greatest
make this image
a perfect fit for
nerve-sharpeners in travel. Accidentally
Ryanair underpromises and Wes Anderson,
overdelivers. It will get you from A to B, an exhibition
probably on time, given the extremely from the
tight turnaround times it operates, for people behind
the cheapest fare going. It’s so cheap that the Instagram
I often don’t look elsewhere — indeed, account of
The Sunday Times found it to be the the same name
cheapest option in seven out of ten cases. celebrating
I paid £80 for return Dublin flights this the aesthetic
summer — the same as a peak train fare of the American
to London from the home counties. For film-maker. With
Benidorm flights over new year my family more than 200
of three have paid about £300 in total — images grouped
and we’re not forking out for luggage, so by themes such
I’ll be washing my disco outfit in the sink. as Hotels/Motels,
The airline’s social media manager — Adventures and
whose tone is so in tune with the Ryanair Transport, the
experience — regularly reposts customer show runs from
moans about the lack of windows or bag December 13
weight limits (including the infamous, to February 17
now-deleted “Prince William” tweet). at 79-85 Old
But is it too much to ask you to read the Brompton Road
small print, weigh your bag in advance in southwest
and figure out how to get to your final London (£13;
destination after landing 100 feverup.com)
miles northeast of it?
Ryanair has been the
constant in my life. I grew
up near Stansted and my
destinations grew with
Your views
me. From early flights to
I was 19 to summers in
Rome while visiting a
friend and trips The best of this week’s emails, posts and comments
the cheaper Baltics and
former Iron Curtain countries
when my student loan ran out. COMMENT OF WORDS OF ADVICE than Pakistani-British, most European
My first trip with my husband, as he is THE WEEK I too have been confounded tourists were scared off by the Foreign
now, was to Berlin Schönefeld (the East (and irritated) by official Office overreaction.
German terminal, now closed); our mini- travel advisories (“What use Paul Heaton, via the times.co.uk
moon was spent in Nice via a Ryanair is Foreign Office advice?” last week),
flight. During a year I spent abroad the preferring to make up my own mind. I am a retired Foreign Office member
browser homepage on my laptop was the The Foreign Office advises against and served in countries to which British
airline’s homepage — I had a deeper all travel to Iraq except the Kurdistan nationals ignored advice not to travel
relationship with it than with my family, region, to which it advises against then experienced problems requiring
flying from Carcassonne and Pau to places all but essential travel, which also them to return the UK at great financial
nowhere near where they professed to be: affects insurance availability. My wife cost, particularly if they had to be
Paris Beauvais (nearer to the Channel and I — senior citizens — visited Iraq medically evacuated.
than the French capital); Frankfurt-Hahn in 2019 (with a tour group) and this Roger Church, Surrey
Trav
(basically Luxembourg); Venice-Treviso (a year (independently). At no time did
different city entirely); and let’s not go
near the “Stockholm” twins of Skavsta
and Vasteras, each more than 60 miles
from the Swedish capital.
I remember Ryanair’s original quirks,
T we feel unsafe or threatened, and we
received a friendly welcome wherever
we travelled. A policeman in Baghdad
whipped out his phone and insisted
on having his picture taken with us.
ISLANDS IN THE SUN
Cape Verde has been saved by tourism
(“Walking on sunshine”, last week).
I went in 2018 and visited settlements
where people had died 20 years earlier
and even now find them endearing: the T
free-for-all seating, when it really was like
Travel
Frustratingly, the Foreign Office gives
the green light for travel to countries
because of a lack of drinking water.
When the big hotels arrived about ten
T
a bus service; the scratchcards that cost
more than the flight; the constant noise
Travel where the risk of crime and threat to
life is far greater.
years later they brought a desalination
plant that saved the islanders from
that meant you could never catch up on For expert guides Craig Baguley, Greater London dehydration. It is an interesting place
the sleep you missed to catch that 5.45am to your favourite and a great holiday destination that
flight — I love it all. We’re a few years off destinations, I was in northwest Pakistan (Khyber will stay with me for a long time.
our silver anniversary, Ryanair — can I get plus the latest Pakhtunkhwa) last month when the Hubbell Walker, via the times.co.uk
free speedy boarding at least? travel news and Foreign Office gave negative advice.
the best trips and The problem was confined to Gilgit for KENYA CALLING
Do you have a crush on a budget airline? deals to book now, two days. No tourists were affected, but The photograph of giraffes against the
Or does the mere thought repulse you? see our dedicated there would have been a problem had Nairobi skyline reminded me of the time
Let us know in the comments online or travel website the an insurance claim been needed. Other I worked in Kenya (“Big Shot”, last week).
email us at travel@sunday-times.co.uk times.co.uk/travel

We often took visitors to Nairobi National
Park, where if lucky we would also see
lions. Landing at the airport you would
often see giraffes and zebras along the
perimeter fence. What a welcome!
John Pettinger, Somerset
PLACES OF REST
Poelcapelle, outside Ypres in Belgium,
has almost 7,500 graves (“A tomb with
a view”, last week). More than 8 per cent
of those are of unnamed British and
Commonwealth soldiers killed in the
First World War. This means that fewer
people have a connection with the
place and if there you would probably
be alone and deeply moved.
John Irvine, via the times.co.uk
Undercliffe Cemetery in Bradford
would give the Necropolis in Glasgow
a run for its money any day.
Christian Butt, via the times.co.uk
I’ve been to La Recoleta, but for me one
of the most serene places is the Old
Protestant Cemetery in Macau — so
peaceful and the light is mesmerising.
Jacqueline Brabazon, via the times.co.uk
Many cemeteries in eastern Europe
are in woodland, with the graves
crammed among the trees and bushes,
and these are wonderful to walk around.
A particular favourite is the Central
Cemetery in the Polish city of Szczecin,
which has a number of memorials
— some triumphant (Red Army); some
poignant (to civilians who died while
TOP 7
SHETLAND ISLANDS
COVER: NORA CAROL PHOTOGRAPHY/GETTY IMAGES. BIG SHOT: DAVE KULESZA
This far-flung Scottish archipelago
is renowned for being the best
place in Britain to see the
northern lights (or “Mirrie
Dancers”, as the locals call them).
They’re most visible between
UK PLACES TO SEE THE
mid-October and March, and
Shetland has plenty of curious NORTHERN LIGHTS
pastimes to keep you busy, from
coastal walks past sweeping beaches
to Viking settlements and steaming
bowls of local mussels. To up your
aurora-spotting odds, avoid full moons
and don’t stay in Lerwick (the only
town). Instead, head for the rural,
16th-century Busta House hotel in Brae. The Lake
Details B&B doubles from £145
(bustahouse.com) District is
an under-
ERYRI, CONWY
Eryri (Snowdonia) became a dark sky the-radar
reserve in 2015, and it’s a magical place aurora spot
to spot the lights — “Ffagl yr Arth”
(the bear’s firebrand) in Welsh.
Forest-wrapped Llyn Geirionydd lake,
close to the town of Betws-y-Coed, is
a favourite viewing spot, though you
also have sight of snow-capped peaks
from many low-lying winter walks in
the area. Stay at the Gwydyr Hotel for
its modern rooms and cosy cocktail
lounge, taking walks in Gwydyr
Forest and visiting the quirky
Conwy Valley Railway Museum
and dazzling Dolbadarn Castle.
Details Room-only
doubles from £110
(gwydyrhotel.co.uk)
BRANCASTER STAITHE,
NORFOLK
The north Norfolk coast has
been blessed with bright aurora
lights this year, with fantastic
photos captured in the seaside
towns of Brancaster Staithe and
Happisburgh. A blustery winter break
here should also take in the 18th-century
Holkham Hall estate (Christmas lights
and decorations through December),
wild coast walks at Brancaster and
Wells-next-the-Sea and a ride on the
protesting against the communists Norfolk Lights Express, a festive steam
in the 1960s). train. Stay at the White Horse for views
Stephen Fisher, via the times.co.uk over the tidal marsh and an award-
winning seafood restaurant — the “Room
BACK TO BERLIN at the Top” comes with a telescope.
I lived in Berlin during the Cold War, Details B&B doubles from £150
leaving in 1986 (“Tracing my Berlin (whitehorsebrancaster.co.uk)
roots”, last week). Whenever I travelled
to East Berlin I found the differences WHITBY, NORTH YORKSHIRE
between the two halves of the city Low light pollution and dramatic scenery
so profound and never expected make Yorkshire a fantastic place to catch The northern
reunification in my lifetime. The wall fell the lights. Though they’ve been spotted lights over
within three years of me leaving West in the Dales, they’re most commonly Derwentwater
Berlin, and I returned to walk through seen around the coast. Try Whitby for and, above,
a city no longer divided. I keep going other quaint diversions, from the clifftop Stonehenge
back, as I find all the changes since
1989 fascinating, especially the building
boom in the late 1990s near Potsdamer
Platz, which was a logistical wonder
in terms of bringing all the materials
in and out of the city underground.
The museums are superb too.
Sharon Boyes-Schiller,
via the times.co.uk
We visited Berlin nearly ten years ago
and thought that the Jewish Museum
was excellent; a fascinating design too,
by Daniel Libeskind. The Topography
of Terror permanent exhibition on
Niederkirchnerstrasse was also
worth visiting (free; topographie.de).
Lucy Matthews, via the times.co.uk
Share your experiences, opinions and
tips with us by emailing travel@sunday-
times.co.uk, tweeting @TimesTravel
or commenting on one of our stories
at thetimes.co.uk
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 3
Whitby Abbey to windswept walks
along Robin Hood’s Bay and the
Captain Cook Memorial Museum,
in the 17th-century house where
he did his apprenticeship. A
ten-minute drive from the pretty
harbour, Raithwaite Sandsend
hotel has tranquil gardens and
a spa with an indoor pool.
Details Room-only doubles from
£111 (raithwaitesandsend.co.uk)
BALLYCASTLE, CO ANTRIM
Northern Ireland isn’t as failsafe an
option as Scotland and its islands, but the
Antrim coast does enjoy the occasional
light show. The historic coastal town of
Ballycastle is less than an hour’s drive
from Belfast airport and a great base for
exploring the rugged Causeway Coast.
Stay at the Salthouse, an eco-luxe hotel
with a roaring fire in the lounge and
outdoor hot tubs overlooking unspoilt
coastline. In daylight, pick a walking trail
at the Giant’s Causeway (25 minutes away)
or have a warming tasting at Bushmills,
the world’s oldest licensed distillery.
Details B&B doubles from £160
(thesalthousehotel.com)
KESWICK, CUMBRIA
The Lake District is an under-the-
radar spot for aurora hunters;
in-the-know locals take to
Derwentwater, the serene lake
next to Keswick, to photograph
the phenomenon. Classic
walks nearby include the
two-hour loop to the
Castlerigg Stone Circle,
but when it’s too frosty for
rambles Keswick will furnish
you with brewery tours,
art exhibitions at the Rheged
Centre and pub classics at olde-
worlde inns. Stay at the Hazeldene
for fells views and friendly hosts.
Details B&B doubles from £100
(thehazeldene.co.uk)
SALISBURY, WILTSHIRE
Northern lights sightings become rarer
the further south you go, but last week
vibrant purples and pinks hovered over
Stonehenge in Wiltshire — with glimpses
this year as far south as Devon and
Cornwall. In laid-back Wiltshire, just
outside Warminster, the Bishopstrow
Hotel & Spa is a 20-minute drive from
Stonehenge. Soak in the hotel’s swish
spa, then book tickets for Longleat Safari
Park (a Festival of Light counts down
to Christmas) and explore Salisbury’s
medieval old town and magnificent
cathedral, home to Magna Carta.
Details B&B doubles from £169
(bishopstrowhotel.com)
Lucy Thackray
WESTEND61/GETTY IMAGES; OWEN HUMPHREYS/PA/ALAMY
 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 5

Travel US
he world has the wrong

‘T

SEAN PAVONE/ALAMY; REUTERS

idea about Lee Harvey

ON THE TRAIL
Oswald,” Pat Hall says
in her singsong southern
twang. “Mr Lee was a
sweet, kind, considerate man who loved
children. When he lived here he would

OF JFK
play hide-and-seek with my brothers
and me in the yard. He would help us
with our homework at the dining table.”
That sturdy mahogany table still
anchors the anachronistic room in which
we’re sitting, beneath a framed picture
of an 11-year-old girl with a blue ribbon
in her hair. It’s an image of Hall taken in
1963, the year that her family’s lodger
shot and killed John F Kennedy.
Hall’s parents and brothers are long
gone, but their house remains frozen in
that year as one of Dallas’ quirkiest tourist
attractions. The Oswald Rooming House,
in the Oak Cliff neighbourhood, runs
multiple tours a day, with Hall often
herding visitors across the fraying lounge
carpet, past a washing machine-sized TV
set and into the bedroom where slept one
of the most famous assassins in history.
Kennedy tourism has always been big
business in the Big D, but especially so
this month, which marks the 60th
anniversary of his assassination in Dealey
Plaza. Global interest has intensified
further in recent weeks with the
publication of a book by one of the secret
service agents on duty that day. In The
Final Witness, Paul Landis — who was 28
when he saw Kennedy’s death at close
range — says that he found a bullet on the
back seat of the presidential limousine
and removed it to deter souvenir hunters.
It’s a revelation that makes the possibility
of there having been a second shooter —
perhaps an accomplice of Oswald on the
infamous “grassy knoll” — more likely.
Dealey Plaza remains ground zero for
conspiracy theorists, history nuts and
ballistics buffs alike, and like the Rooming
House has changed little over the past 60
years. People continue to visit these white
colonnades and neatly manicured lawns
It’s 60 years since President Kennedy’s assassination. Jonathan Thompson
on the western edge of downtown Dallas
to walk through their own theories, poke takes a tour of Dallas — the history trail, the cocktails and the stylised stetsons
about in the undergrowth for other
bullets and weigh up the firing angles Downtown Dallas anniversary with many previously way to familiarise oneself with Dallas’s
12 miles Elm Street
from the grassy knoll and the adjacent and, below, the unseen items, including limousine neighbourhoods and decide which bits to
Texas School Book Depository, where presidential blankets bearing the presidential seal explore further (£17; bigdfuntours.com).
Oswald is believed to have been The Sixth Floor motorcade and the blood-stained shirt of the The art deco Texas Theatre is a
crouching on November 22, 1963. Oswald Rooming House moments surgeon who tried to save Kennedy’s life. perennial favourite. It is still a working
The depository is now home to the before the fatal “Even six decades on Dealey Plaza cinema, with the original velveteen seats
Sixth Floor Museum, an exhaustive DALLAS Lockhart Smokehouse shots were fired remains a place infused with a palpable (you can sit in the spot where Oswald
tour of Kennedy’s administration and Bishop constant energy,” Stephen Fagin, the was arrested), while its cocktail bar is
assassination, with some 90,000 artefacts Arts museum’s curator, says as we gaze down a magnet for local scenesters, in their
telling the story, including the subsequent AT&T Stadium district from its notorious sixth floor. “People tight jeans and stylised stetsons.
conspiracies, ranging from the Soviets, 12 miles The Wild continue to wander this plaza as if the From here it’s a short walk to the
Cubans or mafia pulling the strings to a Paradiso Detectives answer is still here somewhere.” Bishop Arts district, a bohemian
Oak Cliff
CIA set-up with Oswald as the fall guy. One of the spots to which enclave of boutiques, bars and
This month the museum unveiled Two 1 mile Texas Theatre those visitors are inexorably restaurants where you’ll find
Days in Texas, an exhibition marking the drawn is the reconstructed some of the city’s best food
sniper’s nest in a corner and drink. Don’t miss
window. Boxes are stacked Kennedy tourism Paradiso, a 1920s-style
as they were on the day cocktail bar around a
of the assassination,
has always leafy central courtyard
including the one on which been big business (cocktails from £12;
Oswald allegedly rested his in the Big D paradisodallas.com),
$19.95 rifle. The scene is or the Wild Detectives, a
encased in glass, but you can bookstore meets lounge bar
stand at the adjacent window for (thewilddetectives.com).The
a near-identical view of Elm Street, Lockhart Smokehouse is an excellent
where two spray-painted crosses on place for some traditional barbecue
the road mark the spots where the fatal fare (lockhartsmokehouse.com).
bullets ended Kennedy’s 1,000-day Dallas has plenty to offer beyond the
presidency and his life (£15; jfk.org). spectre of presidents past and smoked
According to the Warren Commission meats, though. The city is home to
Report, the government investigation America’s largest urban arts district,
published in 1964, Oswald slipped out of which is home to the spectacular
the building after the shooting and made Norman Foster-designed Winspear
his way back to Oak Cliff. The JFK Trolley Opera House, as well as one of the hottest
Tour traces the events that followed, from foodie scenes in the south (Bon Appetit
his fatal shooting of the police officer JD magazine recently named it America’s
Tippit to his capture at the Texas Theatre restaurant city of the year). It is also one
and his death 48 hours later at the hands of the places to experience live sport,
of the nightclub owner Jack Ruby. with the Texas Rangers having won their
The hour-long bus tour is also a handy Continued on page 6 →
6 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel US
→ Continued from page 5
first baseball World Series this year and
the Dallas Cowboys, Mavericks and Stars
all perennial play-off contenders in the
NFL, NBA and NHL, respectively; not to
mention the Fifa World Cup coming to
town in 2026.
Those World Cup matches will be
played at the AT&T Stadium, the
100,000-capacity home of the Dallas
Cowboys. As I drive towards the stadium
to catch a game I make one final stop,
in Irving, where a stray piece of the JFK
jigsaw has become another must-see
museum. Known as the Ruth Paine
House, this unassuming one-storey
property about 25 minutes’ drive
from downtown Dallas was the home
of Oswald’s estranged wife, Marina,
PGIAM, JOE DANIEL PRICE/GETTY IMAGES
and their young daughter, June. Out of
character, Oswald spent the night before
the assassination here, departing early the
next morning after leaving his wedding
ring and life savings on the bedside table.
In 2013 the home was restored to how
it would have appeared that day, complete
with holographic representations of the
key players (including Marina’s friend
Ruth Paine, who was living with her at
the time of the assassination). The
attention to detail is incredible, right
down to the toys on the floor and the
recipe books on the kitchen counter
(Joys of Jello was my personal favourite).
Walking around the ranch-style home
with April Baker, the museum’s assistant
director, I’m struck by how normal
everything seems — as though we’re
walking through a 3D photograph of
serene 1960s suburbia. Perhaps that,
above all, is what makes Kennedy’s
assassination so difficult to comprehend
for so many — the characters and the
conditions simply don’t fit the colossal
scale of the crime.
“The attraction here is that there
are so many potential truths that fit the
established facts,” Baker says as we
stand in the sun-dappled backyard that
Oswald knew so well. “This is simply
America’s favourite puzzle, and for many
the quest to find the answer has become
the actual end in itself.”
Jonathan Thompson was a guest of
Visit Dallas (visitdallas.com). British
Airways has five nights’ room only at
the Hotel Indigo Dallas Downtown from
£1,045pp, including flights (ba.com)
3 STYLISH STAYS IN DALLAS
THE JOULE
The best boutique hotel in the
city (if not the state of Texas),
the Joule sits at the heart of
downtown in the former Dallas
National Bank building. Most
guests make a beeline for the
tenth-floor cantilevered pool,
which juts out over Main Street,
allowing you to float above
commuters. Meanwhile the
award-winning subterranean
spa is guaranteed to
reinvigorate even the most
jet-lagged of bodies, while a
basement speakeasy, Midnight
Rambler, has one of the
punchiest cocktail menus in
town. Don’t miss the shrimp
and grits at the upscale Texan
brasserie CBD Provisions and
save time to check out the
hotel’s quirky art collection
— including a 30ft-tall eyeball.
Details Room-only doubles
from £379 (thejouledallas.com)
THE SWEXAN
“Swiss hospitality meets Texan
charm” is the concept behind
this game-changing newcomer,
which opened in the up-and-
coming Harwood District this
summer. The rooftop infinity
pool has already become a
favourite with the local in-
crowd, while the sleek
underground cocktail lounge,
Babou’s, nails the sweet spot
between luscious velvety decor
and luscious velvety drinks.
A pretty, sunlit restaurant with
tiled floors and huge windows,
Léonie will transport you
straight to francophone Europe,
while the steak restaurant
Stillwell’s is good enough to
stand toe-to-toe with the best in
town — which is genuinely
saying something in a meat
mecca like Dallas.
Details Room-only doubles
from £514 (hotelswexan.com)
THE ADOLPHUS
The grand dame of downtown,
the Adolphus became Dallas’s
first true luxury hotel when it
opened in 1912 and remains
one of the finer places to stay
in the city. With an interior
modelled after a beaux arts
German castle, it’s a fairytale of
open fires, stately portraits and
lofty chandeliers (be sure to
check out the grand piano — the
twin of the one that sank with
the Titanic). Despite its heritage,
the Adolphus is far from dusty.
It had a facelift in 2018 and its
rooftop pool deck hosts regular
movie nights and parties, while
its ground-floor boutique,
Commerce, is a treasure trove
of stylish clothing, curios and
accoutrements from the
hippest Dallas designers.
Details Room-only doubles
from £436 (adolphus.com)
8 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel Ski
THE PARTY
TOWN THAT
GREW UP
H
ow many naked
skiers is too
many in an
Ischgl sauna?
The answer
is just the one. Or at least
it was for me, at the end
of last season, in the Silvretta
Therme spa. The £65 million,
state-of-the-art spa opened
in December 2022 and this
two-storey suite of plunge
pools, steam baths and
heated cabins is one of its
centrepieces. Only it’s so big
and multifaceted that it can
be confusing for the average
Brit. Perhaps they knew this
would be the case because
there is actually a help desk
in the middle of the sauna
area, where I was queueing.
I had several questions.
Such as, where do you
start? What’s the difference
between the Panorama and
Event saunas? And yes, I know
that in common with nearly
every Austrian sauna there’s
Ischgl’s apres-ski scene is legendary. But its new mega-spa
reveals a surprising side to the resort, says Sean Newsom
a no-swimsuits rule. But does
that also apply to the plunge
pool outside? You know, the
one on the giant balcony
within sight across the valley
of a thousand hotel windows?
I hoped for answers to all
these as I waited for my turn
— naked myself, apart from
the towel wrapped very tightly
around my waist.
I assumed the couple
behind me in the queue also
wanted advice. Though it
didn’t look that way. They
were engaged in the kind of
snog I last saw at the back end
of a university’s freshers week
party. At least they were
wrapped in towels too — unlike
the large pink German woman
who suddenly appeared,
area of pistes. Martina has
been holidaying here for
40 years and when I asked
her why, she said nothing
about the Trofana Alm or the
Silvretta Therme. Instead she
got her phone out and showed
glistening, from one of the Tyrol region was a byword for broaden the resort’s appeal. me a photograph she’d taken
sauna cabins. She leaned full-throttle après-ski. When Then, in March 2020, that a couple of days beforehand.
over the desk in front of I first visited it, 20 years back, rebranding became urgent It was of Ischgl snow,
me and asked for a fresh one. bars such as the double-decker when Ischgl achieved a wider glittering in the early-spring
At which point I decided Trofana Alm lit up every notoriety as one of Europe’s sunlight, freshly groomed
that actually I didn’t evening with the kind most successful Covid- and still soft and grippy
need any of bright-eyed, infection hubs. Now, not — when other ski areas, lower
information, good-natured surprisingly, it’s presenting down, were turning slushy.
thanks very energy that itself as more refined and “We’re just here to ski,”
much, and went You can holiday could power restrained. The Silvretta she said. “It’s the altitude
to hide in a a small town at Therme spa is one of the key of the mountains that brings
shower cubicle. here for days Christmas. But elements of that new image, us back every year.” And who
I didn’t emerge without a whiff there was no even if it was clear that not can blame her? Ischgl was
again until I was doubt the every guest had got the memo. late to the Alpine skiing
sure everyone of Jägerbomb partying could Of course, not everyone boom. Its first cable car
else was behind a occasionally get out needs to modify their didn’t open until 1963, 26
closed cabin door. of hand. Even before behaviour. Take Martina from years after the Galzigbahn
You may have heard Covid struck, the resort Mainz in Germany. I chatted to in nearby St Anton. But it
of Ischgl. For a quarter was trying to dial down the her and her son, Christian, on caught up quickly. In part,
of a century between the massed German choirs (Take one of the three gondolas that that was because of its
1990s and the late 2010s, this Me Home, Country Roads was whisk skiers up from the valley natural advantages. Most of
mountain town in the Austrian a favourite après song) and floor towards Ischgl’s main its pistes are between 2,300m

Silvretta Therme
Zalwonder
Paznaunerstube
and 2,900m, in the colder,
eastern half of the Alps,
and thanks to the local
terrain, they are mostly
broad and good for skiers’
egos. Not only do they hold
their snow well — they’re also
perfect for those who don’t
get to the mountains more
than once or twice a season.
But what really marks
Ischgl out from its rivals is
its lift company. Nearly 300
local families hold shares in
Silvrettaseilbahn AG — many of
them hotel owners with a keen
interest in Ischgl’s continuing
success. So it’s no wonder it
reinvests so vigorously in its
infrastructure. You’ll see the
effect not only in the whizzy
modern lifts — some of which
have heated seats and
headrests. It’s also evident
in the reliability of the snow.
Since 1995, one of the key
features of the Ischgl season
has been its opening and
closing concerts (free to
Innsbruck
ISCHGL
Kuhstall
Trofana Alm
150yd
anyone with a lift pass).
These too are funded by the
lift company, which pays top
dollar for the acts — among
them Mariah Carey, Lenny
Kravitz, Rihanna, Robbie
Williams and Kings of Leon
— and makes sure there’s
snow to ski on, even if Mother
Nature hasn’t lifted a finger
to help. As a result, its snow-
making system is among the
fastest in the Alps.
So it’s well prepared —
in the medium term at least
— for our changing climate,
and the skiing public knows
it. Here’s proof. One day last
January saw Ischgl’s third-
highest ever sales of lift tickets.
That wasn’t because someone
like Rihanna or Elton John was
in town. It was simply because
its snow was good, despite
an unsettling Christmas thaw.
Many lower resorts had been
doused by rain.
In other words the tills will
be ringing here for some time
Clockwise from
left: the resort
by night; Ischgl
families have
shares in the
lift system;
tobogganing;
an outdoor
pool at the
new Silvretta
Therme spa
3 MORE RESORTS FOR APRÈS-SKI
VERBIER, SWITZERLAND
Hard-skiing, hard-partying
Verbier has gone so far
upmarket lately that
champagne is arguably its
favourite tipple. But even
so, the Farinet hotel is still
the cornerstone of the
most memorable evenings
here, courtesy of its live
music and a spot
of bodysurfing
to reach the bar.
To continue in the
same vein, Lumi
should be your
next stop. But you
can also calm things
down at the Bar à Vin,
which is open to all despite
being below 67 Pall Mall,
the resort’s new private
club. Hôtel de Verbier
is close to all the action.
Details Seven nights’ B&B
from £1,790pp, including
flights (alpineanswers.co.uk)
VAL D’ISÈRE, FRANCE
The feistier a resort’s
slopes, the more joyful
its celebrations, so it’s
no wonder that Cocorico
is so loud and proud
after dark, standing
at the bottom of
two of the most
testing pistes in
France. Yes, OK,
many of the skiers
will have caught
a lift back down
rather than skied, or taken
an alternative route via the
piste-side party at La Folie
Douce, above, but it’s still
the essential Val d’Isère
launchpad. Book Chalet
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 9
yet — supporting not just new-
STEFAN KÜRZI /TVB PAZNAUN - ISCHGL; KARL-JOSEF HILDENBRAND, DPA/ALAMY
look projects such as the
Silvretta Therme, but the
inventive Michelin-starred
tasting menus at the
Paznaunerstube restaurant
(four courses from £120;
trofana-royal.at), as well as
innovative hotels such as the
Zalwonder, where I stayed.
A low-key but luxurious new-
build, it’s home to its own
spa as well as a big-window,
unvarnished-pine aesthetic
that’s Alpine without straying
into cliché. Crucially it’s also
well away from Ischgl’s main
cluster of bars. Martina from
Mainz would love it. She
could holiday here for days
without the faintest whiff of
Jägerbombs tainting the crisp
mountain air.
But that’s not to say
traditional après-ski is
completely off the menu. How
could it be, in a resort that still
runs the best programme
of mountain concerts in the
Alps? George Ezra was playing
while I was there. Platoons of
German teenagers, a Greek
father reunited with his two
London-based undergraduate
kids, the odd loud and proud
Brit: we danced for a couple of
hours before clicking back into
our skis to tackle the steep
home run back to the resorts.
When I clicked out of them
again the obvious next step
was into the Kuhstall pub.
The Kuhstall, aka the
Cowshed, hasn’t changed
much since my last visit.
Despite its size, it was still
rammed solid with skiers
and still sparkling with that
extraordinary sense of good
cheer that comes when a
couple of hundred people
pack into a bar — their blood
fizzing from a day of high-
speed adventure — and sup
on even the weakest alcoholic
drink. I was drinking radler
(shandy), and quickly fell into
conversation with Bruno from
Zurich. He said it was his
fourth visit to Ischgl that
winter — but before I could ask
him why he’d joined in with
the next DJ-led singalong.
The song was Der Zug hat
keine Bremse — and if there’s
du Berger and you won’t
have far to walk afterwards.
sillier, more raucous song
better suited to a bar full of
Details Seven nights’ Germans (and Switzers),
self-catering from £1,099pp, then please let me know. The
including flights (leski.com) chorus is ostensibly about a
train with no brakes, but the
ST ANTON, AUSTRIA verse reveals its true import.
Days spent off piste in It’s a story of a man who
St Anton usually end in surrenders completely to
the MooserWirt, a giant the party spirit.
bar set just above the “Come on Sean!” Bruno
resort. And with good cried. “Where’s your voice?”
snow the atmosphere Half an hour later I left
is euphoric, even if you Kuhstall, completely hoarse:
won’t recognise half the but with a smile as wide as the
songs. But please, stay off Alps plastered across my face.
the Jägermeister — once Cheers, Ischgl. Long may
the music stops you still your party continue —
have to find your skis amid whether it’s on brand, or not.
the hundreds stacked
outside and get back Sean Newsom was a guest of the
down into the resort. The Tourism Association Paznaun-
Rundeck Hotel is near the Ischgl (ischgl.com) and Hotel
bottom of the piste. Zalwonder, which has half-
Details Seven nights’ B&B board doubles from £254
from £1,139pp, including (zalwonder.com). Silvretta
flights (crystalski.co.uk) Therme has half-day tickets
from £29 (silvrettatherme.at)

Travel UK
MICHAEL POWELL FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES; ADAM GRAY/GETTY IMAGES
BREAKS THAT
LAST A LIFETIME
Liz Edwards heads to the Peak District to help out with
a charity that gives holidays to kids desperately in need
W
ould you think twice
about a holiday with 24
strangers that involved
7am starts from a single
bed, torrential rain, a
DBS police check and quite a lot of baked
beans? They’re not top of my list, yet they
all featured on a trip I took recently — and
it was the most delightful, uplifting,
intense, soul-swelling break I’ve taken in
a long time. It was nowhere exotic and
cost me no more than my train fare, but
there were moments of such sweep-you-
along joy that at one point I even found
myself in a group singalong — sober and
irony-free — belting out Dancing in
the Moonlight.
What powerful magic
was this? It came from Go
Beyond, “the charity giving My job was
young people breaks
that last a lifetime”, with to help put
whom I spent a few days smiles on
volunteering. Founded 30
years ago, the charity runs faces
free five-day activity holidays
in Cornwall and Derbyshire for
children aged 8-13 who are having a
tough time and are referred by a teacher
or care professional. They might be
suffering abuse or isolation; they might
self-harm; they could be carers or have
experienced bereavement or bullying. It’s
frequently a combination, with poverty
a common theme. On the breaks children
sleep four to a room; for some it’s the first
time they’ve had their own bed.
For potential volunteers, perspective-
shifting issues such as these might seem
daunting. But my job was to help to put
smiles on faces. Go Beyond takes children
climbing and kayaking, and gives them
space, support and equipment so they
can play — building their confidence and
resilience, via the medium of fun. That
I could manage.
At the charity’s Daleside centre,
a converted farm in 63 acres of glorious
Peak District countryside, I joined a break
with two other volunteers — Daisy, 32,
taking time out from her job with another
charity, and Alice, 18, working towards
her gold DofE. Running the show were six
qualified break leaders, a lovely lot who
did everything from bedtime supervision
to minibus driving to bingo calling to
safeguarding.
And then there were the 10
and 11-year-olds. Sometimes
children are referred
individually; this group
of 16 were all in the same
class in a postindustrial
Derbyshire village where
85 per cent of pupils are
eligible for free school meals
(nationwide it’s 23.8 per cent).
When I arrived they were out in
the farm’s converted barns, dressing
up, playing table football and electric
piano (who taught them Baby Shark?),
and shooting goals with Omar, the leader
everyone wanted as their friend. I’d
missed their Monday afternoon arrival
and Tuesday’s baking and rock climbing.
But I was in time for a trip to Gentleshaw
Wildlife Centre. We saw lemurs and
marmosets; held an owl, a python and
a bearded dragon; and found urgent
distraction in the opposite direction from
the amorous tortoises. The rowdy kids
piped down for the animals’ sake; the
timid ones psyched themselves
up to stroke a snake. But it was
just as wonderful seeing them
all fling themselves about the
playground, shrieking with delight at
the puddles and rain. Go Beyond has
waterproofs and wellies to borrow, and
a washer-dryer that is almost the seventh
team member.
Back at Daleside, one stonking
chicken pie later, it was time for evening
reflections — a smart way to wind down
for bedtime. Children, volunteers and
leaders each shared their favourite
moments — the owl and the puddles
had top billing — and nominated their
“star of the day”. I picked my new best
friend, Alexander, who’d adopted me
on the minibus. We’d worked through
three Where’s Wally? books; I’m still
seeing stripes.
Trips to Dovedale’s stepping stones and
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 11
A515
Dovedale
stepping
stones Go Beyond
Daleside
A52 Centre
Gentleshaw Ashbourne
Wildlife Centre
DERBYSHIRE
1 mile
Derby
an indoor inflatable park (quite the
change from my usual Thursday
afternoon in the office) meant it wasn’t all
altruism. There’s no denying the Ready
Brek-style glow all of us volunteers got
from the trip. “It’s lovely to see the big
changes in children over the week,
especially the quiet ones who’ve come out
of their shell,” Daisy said. It’s no wonder
some volunteers become regulars. After
my return I spoke to Jody Kelly, who has
done about 15 breaks since her first in
2017. “I think I get as much out of it as the
young people,” she said. “I always come
back with my heart full.”
It’s not hard to see how the children
benefit from the time away. Remember
how, post-lockdown, we all felt bolstered
by the simplest day out; buoyed by a
change of pace and scene? Now imagine
that effect on children who have never
been on holiday before; who don’t even
go to play areas on their doorstep for fear
of local crime. It’s life-changing.
One teacher from the children’s
school — which has sent groups
previously — came to see them
at the inflatable park. “You
can see how confident they
are when they come back,”
she said. “It’s all they talk
about for weeks and weeks!”
Another teacher from the
same school told Go Beyond:
“This will be the best
opportunity that these children
get for years to come.”
Go Beyond maximises the benefit
to the children from these breaks by
giving them as much notice as possible,
so they can enjoy the anticipation, and
From main: helping them to hold on to their happy
Liz with some memories. On the last morning each child
of the children is given some small gifts, personalised
at Dovedale messages from leaders and volunteers,
stepping and photos of themselves in action.
stones; cows Go Beyond has heard from previous
in Dovedale; participants that these snaps help them
back at the reconjure positive feelings — one woman
Daleside centre told them hers were the only childhood
in Derbyshire pictures she had. We’d all signed cards to
be sent to the children on their birthdays,
and they are given a freepost envelope so
they can write to the charity — many do.
And what do the children have to say?
On her new pad Isla wrote a note thanking
us adults for “this amazing trip”; James,
who’d seemed harder to reach than some,
took the marbles he’d been given and
solemnly handed one to each adult. The
leaders showed me a letter from a child
at the same school who’d visited last year.
“Every night before bed we would give
our favourite part of the day and why,”
it read. “But I think really we should
take the time to appreciate the fact that
you made us have a favourite part of the
day (every day).”
Some names have been changed. Go Beyond
breaks are free to children, their families
and volunteers, though donations of £100
are suggested for DofE candidates. To
volunteer, donate or otherwise get involved
see gobeyond.org.uk
12 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Travel France

LEST WE
FORGET
More than a century after her Great-Uncle Harry died in the Battle of the Somme,
as Devil’s Wood, and where he
was badly injured in a shell
attack on his trench. Most of

Julia Brookes visits Arras in northern France to seek out his final resting place his company was wiped out.
I can hardly bear to imagine
the terror that he must have

I
never met my Great- his last days. With the help of
Uncle Harry. In fact I
never knew he existed
the British Army’s war diaries,
I learnt that he was involved
until one of my cousins in some of the most brutal
researched our family battles at the Somme, much
history and found that he died of it hand-to-hand combat.
aged 23 during the Battle of the Driving from Arras through
Somme in September 1916 — the undulating countryside
among the 300,000 deaths in now it is hard to imagine that
one of the bloodiest conflicts anything terrible happened
of the First World War. here — until I spot the war
Harry, one of eight siblings cemeteries with their endless
who grew up in Thames Ditton rows of white headstones,
in Surrey, had volunteered in each marking a life cut short
September 1914. He was a and a family left devastated.
labourer — 5ft 4in tall with fair The biggest memorial, at
hair and blue eyes, according Thiepval, commemorates
to the recruitment more than 72,000
register. It’s servicemen with
heartbreaking no known graves.
to think that he And when
may have been I look more
anticipating It is hard to carefully I
an adventure imagine that realise that
away from a other signs
humdrum life. anything terrible of the conflict
Two years happened here still exist: fields
later Lance with white chalk
Corporal Harry stains that are
Arthur Babbage of the remnants of the
8th Battalion of the Buffs trenches; fences held up
(Royal East Kent Regiment) with the corkscrew pickets
was buried at Heilly Station that were used to string up
Cemetery. His father received barbed wire because they
his war gratuity of £7 11s 7d. could be screwed silently
When I realised it was unlikely into the ground.
that anybody had visited his Near Guillemont, where
grave, I had to put it right. Harry fought, it is still possible
It’s an easy journey by to see battle debris in the field
Eurostar from St Pancras to edges. About 40 tonnes of
the battlefields of northern shells are ploughed up on the
France, but before seeking out Somme each year. There is so
Harry’s resting place — just much unexploded ordnance
beyond Heilly, a tiny village that the advice is: if you see
between Arras and Amiens — something don’t pick it up (I
I wanted to trace the route of later hear about two Flemish
souvenir-hunters pedalling
around with live ammo in
their rucksacks).
The matter-of-fact war
diaries don’t give a flavour
of the horror that Harry faced
here, but the German author
Ernst Jünger described it in
graphic detail. “The sunken
road now appeared as nothing
but a series of enormous shell
holes filled with pieces of
uniform, weapons and dead
bodies,” he wrote. “The
ground all round, as far as the
eye could see, was ploughed
by shells. You could search in
vain for one wretched blade
of grass. This churned-up
battlefield was ghastly. Among
the living lay the dead.”
There was more ferocious
fighting for Harry’s battalion
in Delville Wood, acquired
after the war by the South
African government, which
built a magnificent memorial
to its soldiers, who had been
told to hold the wood at all
costs, and did so, with
appalling casualties.
Behind the memorial and
its immaculate lawns are rows
of oak trees, and I walk the
pathways named after roads
in London, Edinburgh and
Glasgow and the acorn-strewn
remains of the trenches; the
silence is enveloping. It’s a
tranquil spot and on a sunny
day, with the leaves rustling
gently in the breeze, it feels
the perfect place for a picnic
— so different from the barren
wasteland of shattered trunks
that Harry would have known
3 MORE BATTLEFIELD TOURS
SELF-DRIVE IN SOUTH AFRICA
White stone cairns still dot
the Isandlwana battlefield in
South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal
province, below, marking
where British soldiers fell
when defeated by the Zulu
army in 1879. Tours of
Isandlwana, and Rorke’s
Drift, where a small unit of
British soldiers defended
a mission station against
4,000 Zulus, are at the heart
of a tailor-made, 12-day
Classic KwaZulu-Natal
self-drive trip. There
is also a chance
to spot the big
five on game
drives in
Manyoni Private
Game Reserve.
Details Eleven
nights’ B&B from
£3,305pp, including
flights and car hire
(audleytravel.com)
CAEN IN COMPANY
Leger has nearly 50 tours
exploring First World War
and Second World War
battlefields, as well as sites
key to other significant
wars, including Waterloo
and the American Civil War,
accompanied by specialist
battlefield guides. Next year
marks the 80th anniversary
of D-Day and the Battle of
Normandy, and its four-day
coach trip based in Caen,
from February to October,
visits sites such as Pegasus
Bridge and the Pegasus
Memorial Museum to look
at the glider landings and
first Allied actions on D-Day,
as well as Sword, Juno and
Gold beaches.
Details Three nights’ B&B
from £419pp (leger.co.uk)
VIETNAM IN DEPTH
Crawling through the Cu Chi
Tunnels used by the National
Liberation Front (aka
the Viet Cong) to
launch surprise
attacks is the
classic way
to witness
Vietnam’s war
history, but
Regent’s War
Legacy Tour goes
much further. It also
includes visits to the
strategically important
Pleiku air base; Camp Enari,
the former headquarters
of the US 4th Infantry
Division; the war sites of
Cacteka plantation, Pleime
and Ban Can; and Camp
Holloway, once a US
helicopter base and home
to the Huey assault
helicopter companies.
Details Sixteen nights’
B&B from £3,795pp,
including flights, guides
and some extra meals
(regent-holidays.co.uk)
felt and it’s almost a relief to
leave Delville and trace his
final journey, most probably
by horse-drawn ambulance,
to the No 36 Casualty Clearing
Station (CCS), which covered
a square mile next to Heilly rail
station. I don’t have to imagine
what it looked like; the map
of the site in the National
Archives shows the position of
everything from the operating
theatre to the latrines. If he
was sent to the CCS there must
have been hopes for his
survival, but in those pre-
antibiotic days it would have
been no surprise that he
succumbed to infection.
The cemetery — designed
by Sir Edwin Lutyens, one
of the greatest English
architects — stands in a
secluded spot at the base
of a hill. There are 2,890
Commonwealth servicemen
commemorated here; it also
contains 83 German graves.
Because so many casualties
were expected, trench graves
were dug and some
headstones have up to three
sets of details, so regimental
badges couldn’t be included.
Instead, 117 have been carved
on a cloister wall.
I find Harry’s headstone
in the middle of the
immaculately mowed lawns,
surrounded by purple asters
and red Remembrance roses
the same shade as the
Flanders poppy, and lay
a wreath on my family’s
behalf. He shares the grave
with Lance Corporal Frank
 The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 13

Arras
Hindson, who died the same old graffiti and the detritus

LUCENTIUS/GETTY IMAGES; IAN G DAGNALL, PETER NOYCE FRA, GRANGER HISTORICAL PICTURE ARCHIVE/ALAMY
Wellington Tunnels
day as him. It’s an enormous of daily life, is a haunting
Thiepval Delville Wood comfort to know that they experience, while the
are so well cared for in this recreation of the way in
Guillemont exceptionally peaceful corner which the men took their turn
Normandy
Amiens Heilly
of a foreign field. to climb out of the tunnels and
Back at the Commonwealth emerge into the horror of the
War Graves Commission front line is gut-wrenching.
Hauts-de-France
centre outside Arras I discover After such an emotional
the remarkable behind-the- day I wanted to toast Harry’s
20 miles scenes effort that goes into memory. Strolling through
maintaining these and other the Place des Héros — the
war cemeteries around the fabulous main square in Arras,
world. The meticulous work with its gothic town hall and
Arras, left, and of carpenters, stonemasons, gorgeous façades of Flemish
in 1916, below gardeners, engineers and gabled houses — it’s hard to
right. Far left, metalworkers is all on display, comprehend that by 1918 the
a First World and it’s astonishing to learn city centre was virtually
War trench; that soldiers’ bodies are still destroyed, so meticulous was
above right, being found on the Somme the restoration. At Chez Marcel
the memorial at the rate of 50 a year; if they I raise a glass of delicious
at Thiepval can be identified they are craft beer to my long-lost
reburied with full military great-uncle. I may not have
honours. known him, but he’s now so
I can’t leave Arras without much more to me than just
visiting one more relic of the a name on my family tree.
war. The Wellington Tunnels
is a subterranean museum Julia Brookes was a guest
that has been sensitively of Hauts-de-France Tourism
created in part of the vast (hautsdefrancetourism.
network dug under no man’s com), Arras Tourism (arras
land by New Zealand miners paysdartois.com), the
and other Allied troops in Commonwealth War Graves
1916 in an attempt to surprise Commission (cwgc.org) and
the Germans. Eurostar (eurostar.com).
With tin helmets firmly The Mercure Arras Centre
on we descend 20m into the Gare has room-only doubles
cavernous galleries that from £95 (accor.com). For
housed some 20,000 soldiers. a Somme battlefield guide
Walking through them, seeing see visit-somme.com
16 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel Greece
The sun’s out but
not scorching and
the crowds are
gone. Laura Hackett
explores late-season
Athens and beyond
S
tepping out of Athens airport,
we were hit by that wonderful
wave of heat you spend the
whole flight anticipating. But in
the taxi the radio began playing
an all too familiar jingle: the opening
notes of the Mariah Carey classic All I
Want for Christmas Is You.
It was November 1 and my boyfriend,
Bernie, and I had come in search of
autumn sun. We’d looked further afield,
but something made us consider Greece,
well known for scorching summer heat
but neglected in winter, when hotels and
restaurants on many islands close and
the tourist towns empty out.
It might have been the forecast, which
predicted highs of 27C — surely there was
still life to be found in the Greek low
season? We aren’t the only ones to have
considered this. The travel giant Tui has
extended its season for Greece and
Turkey into November, recognising that
this summer’s extreme 40C-plus
temperatures were
causing people to push back their
holidays to the autumn.
Tui’s all-inclusive resorts can stay open
even if the surrounding area is deserted.
But we were on the hunt for the lesser-
spotted Greece and well aware we might
have to work a bit harder to find it.
First stop was Athens, where we
quickly ran into the biggest downside of
the low season. Having checked into the
chic, friendly Herodion hotel at 3pm and
admired the view of the Acropolis from
our balcony, we wanted to climb it to see
the Parthenon. But it had closed for the
day. The Acropolis Museum was about
to shut too — as were the other key sites.
As we enjoyed some consolatory food,
it began to get dark.
It might have been summer
weather, but the sun was
setting at 5pm. As
we wandered the
darkening streets, we realised that this
holiday would require planning and,
most important, some early starts.
Just as I was starting to despair that our
relaxing break was transforming into a
Duke of Edinburgh-style challenge, we
stumbled upon some local colour. Jazz in
Jazz is a charming old bar with walls
covered in vintage paintings, old shoes,
typewriters and dusty wine bottles. It felt
distinctly wintry — and for a reason. The
barman told us it closes over the summer
for the staff to head off to the islands; it
had reopened on September 4. It doesn’t
open until 7pm and wasn’t full until
10pm, but as we sipped cocktails with the
locals, jazz playing in the background,
Athens started to feel alive.
We weren’t giving up on the big sites,
though. A thunderstorm delayed our
planned early start, but as we climbed
the Acropolis the sun emerged. The
Parthenon was breathtaking up close.
And while we weren’t alone, there was no
jostling for a view. We had all the benefits
of mass tourism without the masses.
The impressive Acropolis
Museum (£9 off-season,
usual price £13) features
(almost) all the ruins missing from the big Above, from left:
hill — from November 1 until March 31 Tolon beach;
tickets at many spots across the city are Monastiraki,
reduced or half-price. And lunch at the in the old town
museum is not stale sandwiches but of Athens, next
delicious salads with a view of the whole to Plaka; the
city. Almost too delicious, in fact, because Parthenon.
our leisurely meal meant we missed Below: Nafplion
Hadrian’s Library and the Roman Agora,
both of which closed at an irritating 3pm.
By our third day we’d figured out
a routine. Early morning: activity.
Bernie went for a run around the
Olympic stadium (open for jogging
every day between 7.30am and 9am,
£9); I took a brisk walk up Lycabettus
Hill. Early afternoon was for ruins and
museums: my favourites were the
Benaki art museum, with exhibits
extending far beyond ancient Greece
(£10; benaki.org), and the ancient Agora,
open until 5pm with beautiful views,
a mini museum and space to wander
the grounds freely, unhindered by
swarming tour groups (£5; archaeological
museums.gr). Evenings were for walking
through Plaka, the unspoilt old town full
of live music, blossom-covered wooden
doors and restaurants (all with tables
available). We loved Lyra, where I tried
traditional pasta with rooster and the
musicians mixed Greek music
with brief renditions of the
James Bond theme every
HOW
GREECE

time their favourite waitress walked out
(mains from £10; lyrarestaurant.gr). And
then there was our hotel’s rooftop hot
tub with panoramic views — best enjoyed
at sunset.
In the end Athens was an utter joy.
But while capital cities stay open year-
round, small villages do not. So our next
stop was Delphi. It’s easy to see why the
ancients called it omphalos, the centre
of the world, because it sits at the top of
a magnificent valley so vast I felt my eyes
stretch. But don’t expect a thriving
metropolis to match the name.
Driving in we spotted
tumbleweeds on the road.
There was no time to waste,
though. It was already after
1pm, and the ancient sites Capital cities stay the valley, attempting to
closed at 3.30pm. Are you
spotting a theme?
open year-round, local
Later, in the only café small villages
open at 4pm (everything do not
opened again at 6pm,
inexplicably), we found a copy
of Edward Dodwell’s Views and
Landscapes of Greece. Dodwell was an
Irish archaeology expert who visited
Greece in 1801. His observations are
a mixture of hapless — he falls into a
spring, “to the great amusement of the
surrounding Turks” — and insightful:
“A traveller must not expect to derive
any information whatever from the
generality of Greeks upon the antiquities
of their country.”
Nowhere was this more true than in
Delphi, where historically significant
ancient ruins are often marked only as
“stadium” or “theatre” or “gymnasium”.
It’s best to buy a guidebook if you’re
there with academic intentions.
We were content to wander in
STRETCHED
SUMMER
Dodwellian ignorance, taking in the site
of the Oracle of Delphi in hushed
reverence, helped by the low-season
peace and quiet. This was where the god
Apollo slew a serpent, where his priestess
gave cryptic prophecies to Alexander the
Great and where the Pythian Games took
place. Few tourists stay the night and the
friendly manager at the charming
Acropole hotel was delighted to see us.
As were the staff at the signless
restaurant listed online as “In Delphi
café”, where the slightly domineering
owner insisted we ate pork souvlaki
and the waiter had us try his
delicious homemade walnut
cake. We finished the night
on our balcony overlooking
down the (undrinkable)
wine.
But we loved Delphi for
all its eccentricities. This
was a town in the process
of emptying out for the year
— the restaurant was closing in
a few weeks, as was the hotel — but that
meant we glimpsed its stripped-back,
slightly wilder side. In the morning we
took the Pilgrims’ trail that runs down
the valley between Delphi and Kirra.
The route is very well signposted, nine
miles in total, winding through villages,
past a little chapel and down to the Gulf
of Corinth. It might have been my
favourite moment in the trip. We didn’t
encounter a soul.
City? Easy. Mountains? Fine. But
could we manage a seaside holiday in
November? A four-hour drive to the
harbour town of Nafplion was one way to
find out. Nafplion has three fortresses: the
frighteningly high Palamidi, the smaller
and older Akronafplia, and Bourtzi Castle,
on a tiny island in the harbour.
VASILIS VERVERIDIS, ROBERT HARDING/ALAMY; KIRK FISHER/SHUTTERSTOCK; BERNARD VISSER
In summer we would probably have
had time to do it all. With one day and
dwindling daylight we picked Bourtzi
Castle, fresh from extensive renovations.
Once a 15th-century defensive fortress,
later the home of the town’s executioner,
then a five-star hotel, the Bourtzi is
now a tourist attraction. A boat (£5pp)
goes there from the harbour every 30
minutes, which is about how long it
takes to explore this fascinating little
spot — and it is open all winter (£4.50;
discovernafplio.gr).
It was time to put on our swimming
costumes and go to the beach — not
Nafplion’s rocky spot but nearby Tolon,
which has a proper sandy beach. In
November it’s populated almost
exclusively by locals — there’s no fighting
for towel space here. You can sunbathe
without burning, you can swim without
shivering, and we weren’t nervous about
leaving our things. There’s a nearby
island you could swim out to if you
fancied an adventure, and plenty of
boats available for rowing or kayaking.
We forgot it was November.
Lunch was at the Romvi, a two-star
hotel whose defiantly run-down exterior
hides a wonderful beachfront restaurant
(we’d never have found it without the
recommendation of our tour operator,
Sunvil). The wine comes in a metal jug,
the water laps your feet and the
menu is full of fresh seafood. Our
waiter told us they were closing
Delphi
in two weeks, but the low
season is getting shorter. At
one time the Romvi would
have reopened in late March. G ul
f of
This year it was February.
He loves November in
Greece — much better than
rainy September, never
mind the horrors of summer.
Nafplion
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 17
THREE MORE YEAR-ROUND
GREEK HOLIDAY SPOTS
MYTHOLOGY IN CRETE of St John, is frisson-giving
Crete is the cradle of the romantic, especially after
greatest Greek myths, dark. Dine there in the non-
but trying to channel touristy tavernas open year-
Ariadne and the Minotaur round — preferably on slow-
at Knossos, below, in the baked lamb kapama, stuffed
hot, jam-packed summers with rice and cumin — and
is impossible. In winter, stay at Porolithos Boutique
when temperatures are Hotel, which has bags of
perfect for lingering outside medieval atmosphere.
and admission and car-hire Details B&B doubles from
prices drop, you can £96 (porolithos.com).
have it and Crete’s Fly to Rhodes
other myth- via Athens
imbued sights
(Phaistos, Malia, WINING AND
Gortyna etc) DINING IN
to yourself. Stay THESSALONIKI
near Knossos Thessaloniki
in Heraklion, is Greece’s
a short walk from gourmet capital,
its archaeology with a vibrant street
museum, filled with food scene, superb seafood
enchanting Minoan art. and colourful markets that
Kipos Suites has quiet really come into their own
rooms with kitchenettes in the cooler weather. Work
five minutes’ walk from up an appetite by cycling
Heraklion’s centre. along the seafront to the
Details Room-only doubles landmark White Tower,
from £38 (kipossuites.gr). visiting Byzantine churches
Fly to Heraklion via Athens glittering with mosaics, and
the archaeology museum
RHODES FOR ROMANCE packed with treasures from
With 300 days of sunshine the time of Alexander the
a year, Rhodes delivers Great. Plus the nightlife
plenty of vitamin D. In winter, is best in winter when
without the crowds and the students are in town,
cruise ships, you can visit with much of the action
beautiful Lindos and actually in walking distance of
see it (instead of the back your hotel — stay at the
of someone’s head), then Modernist Thessaloniki.
walk up to its vertiginous Details B&B doubles from
acropolis without melting. £86 (themodernisthotels.
At this time Rhodes Old com). Fly to Thessaloniki
Town, built by the Knights Dana Facaros
How did they cope with this year’s heat?
“We survived,” he said, grimly.
We almost wished we were staying
at the Romvi, we said as we drove back
to Nafplion. But the town remains busy
at the weekends with Greek tourists,
and has the infrastructure to meet their
needs — row of bland harbour-front
bars included. The good stuff was
in the bowels of the town, such
as the café-bar Allotino, which
Kirra spills out on to the street as
the night goes on and which
GREECE has a handful of rooms too
C or (alotino.gr), or Aiolos
in t h Athens
Taverna, and its drunken
chicken (mains from £13).
Is November Greece’s new
August? It all depends on your
plans. If you want to lie in, get
a tan and leave your cardigans
Tolon at home, if island-hopping is your
thing, or if you want to see every
20 miles ancient ruin, November will be too
cold and dark. If you prefer your tourist
attractions emptier, if you’re happy with
early rises and the chance of rain, then
November might just be perfect for you.
It was for us — a brilliant mix of
relaxation, adventure and discovery.
We weren’t slowed down by extreme
heat or queues, and we were welcomed
with real warmth at every restaurant
and hotel. Come February, I suspect I’ll
be itching to go back — as long as I can
operate a BYOB policy in Delphi.
Laura Hackett was a guest of Sunvil, which
has five nights’ B&B in Athens, Delphi and
Nafplion from £1,722pp, including flights
and car hire (sunvil.co.uk)
22 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel Trend
RISE OF THE Multigeneration holidays are
on the up — as is the money we
£100K
are willing to spend on them.
Katie Bowman picks the best
BIG-FAMILY
of the five and six-figure breaks
BLOWOUT
M
ultigenerational holidays,
3G breaks, trips with “the
fam”… whatever you call
them, however often
you take them, you —
grandparents, parents and kids — are part
of a travel boom, with operators seeing a
continuing rise in bookings for extended
family escapes.
At the travel company Black Tomato,
for instance, bookings from
multigen families and
groups have increased
35 per cent for 2023 compared
with 2019. “People now prioritise
spending time away with their
families and friends,” says the
co-founder Tom Marchant.
Groups of eight or more account
for 25 per cent of all Black Tomato
bookings in 2023, he says.
And any travel boom that’s led by
boomers means there are frequently
big budgets involved. Money is no object
when it comes to making memories, they
reason. James Bell, the managing director
of Turquoise Holidays, says: “The
pandemic made our clients realise that
time and opportunity are not indefinite
and that those long-planned, or dreamt-of
trips need to become a reality.” So much
so, he says, that “a £100,000 holiday is
not far off becoming normalised”.
Can you imagine spending a six-figure
sum on a holiday? More people do
than you might think. The villas team at
Abercrombie & Kent reveals that they
“are almost sold out of large group villas
for next year, and some cost more
than £100,000”.
But however big your wallet, you still
need expert advice and value for money.
You need a trip that’s going to be
unforgettable, the type of adventure that
your grandkids’ grandkids will hear
about. So, here’s our pick of the 25
greatest 3G trips on the market:
TAKE A VIP TOUR OF COOL CROATIA
Which Insta-icon wasn’t in Croatia this
summer? We saw the Beckhams SUP-ing
off Lopud, Katy Perry yachting on the
Dalmatian coast and Usher wandering the
streets of Dubrovnik. Be the A-listers in
your own mega-Med trip, on a luxury
ten-day circuit that -stops in Hvar, Split
and Dubrovnik. The itinerary features
kayaking around Dubrovnik’s city walls,
snorkelling the Pakleni Islands, hiking
along Hvar’s southern coastline and
zip-wiring across the Cetina River.

Relatives less interested in “likes” can go
on a panoramic cable car to the top of
Mount Srd, strut along Hvar’s waterfront
promenade or just go to the beach.
Details Nine nights’ room only from
£4,705pp, including flights, transfers
and excursions (audleytravel.com)
INSPIRATIONAL, ACCESSIBLE ICELAND
It’s been topping family bucket lists for
years, but now Granny and Grandad want
in. Nowhere else offers such otherworldly
scenery or unforgettable pursuits without
an epic flight (we’re looking at you New
Zealand), yet Iceland is just three hours
away. One day of your trip might star a
superjeep tour, the next a quiet soak in a
geothermal spa, even glacier hikes, whale-
watching, volcano climbing, and catching
the northern lights from your hot tub. The
island’s manageable size means you’re
never far from base, so family members
can opt out and go shopping in Reykjavik
or laze in the Blue Lagoon, before being
reunited with the adventurers.
Details Six nights’ room only from
£9,100pp (blacktomato.com).
Fly to Reykjavik
PRIVATE CHARTER BOAT ON THE NILE
Live like a family of pharaohs on this
awesome tour, which is unsurprisingly
“Abercrombie & Kent’s number-one
bestseller and has been for years”. It gets
the multigen vote thanks to Zein Nile
Chateau, a private charter boat that can
be taken exclusively by one family (four
cabins and two suites). Your trip starts in
Cairo, taking in the exquisite, new Grand
Egyptian Museum (expected to fully
open by spring), then sees your crew
sailing down the Nile, making stops in
style at Aswan, Abu Simbel, Edfu and the
Temple of Horus. End the adventure
poolside, kicking back at a luxury Luxor
hotel — after a hot-air balloon ride over
the ancient wonders at Karnak, obvs.
Details Eight nights’ room only from
£6,820pp, including flights, some
extra meals and excursions
(abercrombiekent.co.uk)
LIVE LIKE A PROVENÇAL LANDOWNER
High in the hills of the Luberon you’ll find
Le Grand Banc — “the big seat” — which
isn’t so much a villa as your very own
French hamlet. The private estate has a
cobbled street with ten gorgeous stone
houses on either side, which can
accommodate up to 24 in total. One house
has a library, another a funky kids’ bunk
room, while the gardens come with table
tennis, pétanque, table football and a
saltwater pool. There’s a stupendous
outdoor marble table that seats 28, while
breakfast is served daily at a second table
in the heart of your “hamlet” (up to three
chef-prepared meals each day are
included in the rental).
Details Seven nights’ full board, sleeping
24, from £18,600 (scottwilliams.co.uk).
Fly or take the train to Aix-en-Provence
or Avignon
MULTISENSORY GLITZ IN ABU DHABI
Surprise No 1: you don’t need to fly more
than nine hours for guaranteed heat
in deepest, darkest winter; flights to
the UAE take about seven hours and
the time difference is as little as three.
Surprise No 2: Abu Dhabi, the largest
emirate, is an underrated option for
families. It’s got that glitz grown-ups
might crave — Michelin stars, six-star
hotels, designer shopping — but cultural
and wildlife experiences unique to Abu
Dhabi (that’s Granny and the children
happy). Try a desert safari on Sir Bani
Yas Island (anantara.com) or mangrove
kayaking, and visit the awesome Sheikh
Zayed Grand Mosque. The beaches are
world beating (see Saadiyat for proof )
and teens can be lured away from
screens with Yas Waterworld, Ferrari
World and Warner Bros theme parks.
Details Seven nights’ room only from
£1,650pp, including flights and private
transfers (etihadholidays.co.uk)
MAKING MEMORIES IN THE MALDIVES
Flower-petal bathtubs and lagoon villas
might have made the Maldives famous,
but it takes more than that to convince
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 23
later relax in the overwater spa, enjoy
YELLOW DOG PRODUCTIONS/GETTY IMAGES
dinner on a secluded sandbank, or ride
the kids’ club waterslides.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from
£16,225 for a family of four, including
flights and seaplane transfers
(elegantresorts.co.uk)
LIVE LIKE GODS IN GREECE
The ultimate multigen trips aren’t just
luxurious, but also tick off adventure,
world wonders and — if Mum and Dad
hide it in the itinerary well enough —
education. So, it’s not enough to sit on
a Greek-island beach for a whole week.
Instead, start in Athens (Acropolis, tick;
Olympics site, tick; Monastiraki markets,
tick), staying at the five-star Hotel Grande
Bretagne with its outdoor pool. Then
move on to the capital’s most accessible
and ravishing coastline at Porto Heli on
the Peloponnese (less than three hours’
drive). This is where your brood will
discover Amanzoe — recognise it as the
location for Glass Onion, Grandad? — a
once-in-a-lifetime hotel that consists of
private, temple-style stone villas among
olive groves and lavender.
Details Room-only doubles at
Hotel Grande Bretagne from £355
(marriott.com); B&B doubles at Amanzoe
from £910 (aman.com). Fly to Athens
ALGARVE FOR THE AGES
If Granny and Grandad don’t already own
a house here, you can bet they wish they
did. The Algarve, with its year-round
flights and winter warmth, has been a
firm favourite with British families for
decades. Before the olds sign on the
dotted line, give local life a spin at Vila
Vita Parc, a five-star resort with the styling
Clockwise from three — sometimes four — generations to of a traditional Portuguese whitewashed
far left: Four travel up to 24 hours by myriad means of village; families can take over one of its
Seasons Resort transport (the seaplane is so worth it, terracotta-roof cottages and villas, or go
at Kuda Huraa in though, we promise). Pioneering for family rooms and interconnecting
the Maldives; multigen travellers are making the hotel suites. Either way, you have access
spot turtles in the journey to observe mass manta ray to the resort facilities, which include
Galapagos; feeding, volunteer on turtle conservation Annabella’s Kids’ Park (with trampolines
waterparks are programmes, sail a dhoni at sunset, and and playground), a crèche, mini golf,
fun for all; Abu dive rare coral reefs, all of which are SUPs and kayaks, yacht rental, and padel
Simbel in Egypt; laid on for families at Four Seasons and tennis courts. The best part of not
the pool at Agnos Landaa Giraavaru and sister resort Four owning your own pad is letting someone
House in Corfu Seasons Kuda Huraa. You’ll stay for the else cook; road-test the seven bars and
final four nights at the latter where, 12 restaurants, one of which holds two
depending on your age bracket, you can Michelin stars.
Details Seven nights’ B&B from £1,260pp,
including flights and transfers
(sovereign.com)
WILDLIFE IN ECUADOR
AND THE GALAPAGOS
The holiday fairy grants every generation
its wish on this extraordinary trip: a
Galapagos cruise aboard the small ship
La Pinta for grandparents; home cooking
at a stylish hacienda for the parents; and
amazing animal encounters for teens and
tweens, whether that be with marine
iguanas, hot-pink flamingos, giant
tortoises, toddling penguins or blue-
footed boobies. It’s not all experienced
through binoculars either, but features
up-close interactions, via snorkel trips,
kayaking, swims and hikes. Family-
focused extras include chocolate tasting,
swimming with turtles and night treks
through Ecuador’s “cloud forest”.
DetailsEleven nights’ room only from
£11,500pp, including flights, transfers
and some meals (scottdunn.com)
FAMILY AND OTHER ANIMALS, CORFU
Unlike anything Gerald Durrell ever
experienced, but with the same idyllic
location as his family retreat, Agnos
House and Little Agnos on Corfu are
heavenly 3G havens. Agnos is the
main house and sleeps up to 18 in six
beautiful bedrooms, while Little Agnos
— converted from the original olive press
building — sleeps two and has its own
Continued on page 24 →
24 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel Trend
→ Continued from page 23
private garden and terrace (we predict a
scrap between grandparents). There are
gardens for days — frothing with fruit
trees including mulberry, peach, lemon,
fig and orange — and a spectacular
swimming pool in landscaped grounds.
We can’t see any reason why you’d leave,
but if you do, the picturesque coves of
Corfu’s northeast are less than ten
minutes’ drive away.
Details Seven nights’ self-catering
for 20 from £13,200 (scottwilliams.co.uk).
Fly to Corfu
ITALIAN CITY CLASSICS
There’s something about the Italian
powerhouse cities — unlike hubs in
Spain or France, say — that grabs the
attention of every age bracket. It might
be re-enacting A Room with a View in
Florence, people-watching over a bellini
in Venice, or mock fighting a gladiator
in Rome’s Colosseum. Audley’s ten-
day Classic Italian Family Adventure
takes in the whole spectrum, with a
tailored set of activities that’s totally
different from its standard tour. This
means engaging kids by making pasta
with a local chef in Florence, or mask-
making in Venice, as well as exploring
Rome on the back of a vintage Vespa.
Details Nine nights’ room only
from £5,480pp, including flights
and transfers (audleytravel.com)
ZANY AND ZEN IN JAPAN
The folks at Original Travel say Japan is
probably their most frequently booked
destination for multigen travel “because
Japanese culture appeals to all ages and,
while the cities can be intense but
fascinating, it’s easy to get out to the
stunning gardens, temples and
mountains”. The 13-day Japan Through
the Eyes of a Child tour involves time in
Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka and the Japanese
Alps, with add-on activities including
sushi-making lessons, origami and a day
with an expat expert who’ll take you to
cat cafés and video-game arcades.
Details Twelve nights’ room only from
£3,570pp, including flights, transfers and
some meals (originaltravel.co.uk)
MEDITERRANEAN CRUISE IN STYLE
Cruise converts are mystified as to why
any family still needs convincing that this
is the perfect multigen option. However
big your crew, you’re all fed, watered and
entertained for seven days; there’s only
one base (and one lot of unpacking) and
yet you tick off five or six destinations in a
week. Up for it? Good, in that case, bouji
first-timer families should pick the Italian-
owned MSC cruise line, as it is home to
the Yacht Club. This luxury “ship within
a ship” has spacious suites, 24-7 butler
service, private restaurants, sun decks
and a dedicated pool. However, kids
can still use the wow-factor aqua parks,
waterslides, basketball courts and games
arcades on other decks. Sail MSC’s Med
voyage for a mix of big city and beach;
ports include Civitavecchia (for Rome),
Mykonos, Izmir, Santorini and Naples.
Details Seven nights’ all-inclusive
in the Yacht Club from £2,409pp,
including flights (msccruises.co.uk)
PRIVATE-ISLAND LIVING IN ANTIGUA
There’s five-star Antigua — and then
there’s Jumby Bay. The private 300-acre
island is just two miles off the coast and
gives cosseted castaways the chance to
live like Robinson Crusoe by day, before Above: Alta Badia Details Seven nights’ all-inclusive from
retiring to a swanky pad by night. The in the Italian £140,600 at Private Residence Morning
Private Residences at Jumby Bay up the Dolomites. Left: Glory, sleeping ten adults and six
luxury further still: these are all-inclusive Kyoto in Japan children, including flights, private
villas offering multigen families privacy transfers and UK airport lounge vouchers
and space, while giving access to the (elegantresorts.co.uk)
hotel’s bells and whistles when required
(they include a spa, Jumby Explorers LAST HURRAH IN IBIZA
kids’ club, restaurants and more). Visit The top-of-the-range tour op Carrier has
between June and November and you’ll seen such a spike in multigen trips with
be there during hawksbill turtle nesting teens that it has launched the Flying the
season, which is a bucket list-topper, Nest collection. One destination that both
whatever your date of birth. Gen Z and Gramps will love is Ibiza; the

business and stay in a three-bedroom
JÉRÔME GALLAND; ALEX MOLING
residence at Six Senses Ibiza.
Details Seven nights’ B&B for six from
£41,190, including flights and transfers
(carrier.co.uk)
FAR-FLUNG FUN IN INDONESIA
As the kids say, here’s a POV from
somebody IRL: “This fantastic trip
delivered exactly what we asked for:
adventure, new experiences, cultural
insights and some downtime. It also made
us do stuff that we’d never have thought
of, much of which turned out to be
holiday highlights.” No wonder this
family waxed lyrical when you consider
their Scott Dunn Indonesian escapade
featured snorkelling in Bali’s Blue Lagoon,
street-food excursions, cooking classes,
temple visits, even whitewater rafting.
The R&R comes in the handpicked hotels,
one of which is Nihi Sumba, a remote
luxury eco-lodge with private villas,
perfect for multigenners.
Details Ten nights’ room only from
£8,300pp, including flights, transfers
and some meals (scottdunn.com)
break includes digi-detox activities such
as mindful-eating workshops, farm visits ULTIMATE SAFARI, KENYA
and practices that help maintain a long Whatever your wedge, chances are that
and healthy life (yoga and Cellgym a safari will be a once-in-a-lifetime gig, so
therapy, for example). There’s time for there’s a lot riding on it. Bring multiple
white-knuckle adventure too — kayaking, generations into the picture and your
snorkelling and cliff jumping — and, of choices become even more critical.
course, Insta-moments for the mum- Black Tomato staff (who have road-tested
fluencer in the group: a private rooftop each safari with their children) have
cinema at sunset and an underwater pinpointed Kenya as the best spot for
photoshoot with a local photographer are first-timer families: the itinerary kicks
just two options. A multigen family of six off at an elephant sanctuary and giraffe
(four adults and two children) might fly centre so that children get instant
gratification and can feed animals. Your
first private game reserve may look
familiar as it was the inspiration for The
Lion King. Later, you’ll stay at a Maasai
Mara camp with no minimum age for
game drives, where anybody needing
a change of pace can try horseback and
mountain-bike safaris, foraging, or a trip
to Maasai Warrior School.
Details Eight nights’ full board from
£6,500pp (blacktomato.com). Fly to
Nairobi
A-LIST SKIING IN THE DOLOMITES
Where does Angelina Jolie ski when she
has had enough of the US press? Where
does George Clooney slalom when
looking for slopes close to his Italian
homes? Alta Badia. Look it up
(altabadia.org) — then keep the name to
yourselves. This low-key luxe region is
all about excellent skiing and even better
food, but zero pretence. It’s a small
nook, just six square miles in the Italian
Dolomite mountains, with plenty of
easy-breezy blue runs, as well as more
demanding reds and Gran Risa, the
region’s World Cup black run. Off-piste,
activities revolve around food — steaming
apple strudel at a mountain hut or
Michelin-starred La Stüa de Michil.
Locals even offer one-off gourmet
encounters, such as bread-making with
the baker Nikolas or herb-foraging with
expert Helga. Stay at the family-friendly
Hotel Antines with its indoor pool and
timber-clad good looks.
Details Seven nights’ half-board from
£1,804pp, including flights and transfers
(skiworld.co.uk)
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 25
See emperor MARCH OF THE PENGUINS IN
penguins in ANTARCTICA
Antarctica Here’s one for the 1 per cent. To celebrate
20 years since the release of the
documentary March of the Penguins, a
group of up to 12 travellers can join an
award-winning crew filming emperor
penguins in Antarctica; you may even
spot orca pods and leopard seals too.
These adventurers will become an
integral part of the team as they embark
on a journey to the remote rookery on
Snow Hill Island, which can only be
reached by helicopter. Your base is
Asteria, a 1970s salvage tug given a luxury
makeover, where you’ll spend evenings
learning about the challenges of filming
Antarctic wildlife and dining. Crew and
activities are covered, but onboard costs,
including those for food, are extra —
there’s no upper limit.
Details Ten nights’ room only from
£650,000 for 12, including flights, for
departures in December 2024
(pelorusx.com)
MEDITERRANEAN
ISLAND-HOPPING BY YACHT
It’s the only way to see the Med, don’t
you know? Yacht charters provide total
luxury, independence and privacy, yet
come with a sense of adventure that no
five-star hotel suite could ever emulate.
Alegria II sails the western Mediterranean
each summer — Greek islands, Croatia,
the French Riviera, but the exact route is
up to you. It’s a sleek 28m Ferretti motor
yacht (if you know, you know), with a
spectacular sundeck and tons of water
Continued on page 26 →
26 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times
Travel Trend
→ Continued from page 25
toys, including Seabob diving scooters,
paddleboards, snorkelling gear and a
jellyfish net, as well as a Williams Sportjet
speedboat for swift shore excursions. Eight
lucky guests are looked after by a crew
of four. Onboard expenses for food are
extra, though staff will shop for groceries.
Details Seven nights’ room only from
£56,000 (edmiston.com). Fly to your
port of choice
ENDS OF THE EARTH ADVENTURE
IN NEW ZEALAND AND TAHITI
Despite busting the £100,000 budget,
this trip is popular with multigenners who
hanker after wide open spaces. The tour
operator Turquoise Holidays says that
“it’s exclusivity and remoteness that our
customers crave”. You’ll certainly get that
on this 12-night bonanza that incorporates
the North Island of New Zealand — perfect
for exploring Rotorua, Lake Taupo
and Tongariro National Park. Then
it’s off to Kaikoura, on the South Island,
for whale-watching and dolphin
swimming, before Queenstown, the
country’s adventure capital and wine
hub. The tour ends at the posh Brando
resort in Tahiti. The accommodation
throughout is a private lodge or villa.
Details Twelve nights’ all-inclusive
from £114,000 for four adults and two
children, including flights and car hire
(turquoiseholidays.co.uk)
ALL-INCLUSIVE ANDALUSIA
Ikos is to all-inclusive hotels what
Fortnum & Mason is to supermarkets:
the top spend. Thus, perks include à la
carte meals created by decorated chefs,
wine lists 300-labels strong, 24-hour
room service, use of a Tesla car and
meals at off-site gourmet restaurants,
as well as kids’ club entry, childcare
and a pass allowing entry to local
museums and galleries. Ikos Andalusia
in Marbella, set in 17 beachfront acres of
tropical gardens, is one of the newest
in the group. You could test the limits
of this all-inclusive and see who can eat
the most ice cream in a day, or take the
healthy route and use the free bikes,
paddleboards, tennis courts, football
sessions and Pilates classes. Or try all
the above. It’s all-inclusive, innit?
Details Seven nights’ all-inclusive
from £12,219 for a family of four,
including flights and transfers
(inspiringtravel.co.uk)
BLING IN THE BAHAMAS
Imagine Florida crossed with St Barts
and Jamaica and you have a close
approximation of the Bahamas. It’s
the crowd-pleaser of the Caribbean
islands, with waterparks, stylish stays,
pin-up beaches, sensational seafood
and an underwater world that few islands
can match. So any multigen escapade
should cram it all in, starting on the
main island of New Providence, which is
home to the Atlantis resort (yes, the
one with the pink architecture, royal
guests, dolphins and shark-tank
waterslide). After a few fun-filled days
here, dial it down and island-hop to
untouched Eleuthera, a sandy strand
where life moves in the slow lane. Check
The Other Side in to the Other Side, a “glamping” site
in the Bahamas that is as glamorous as camping gets — its
gorgeous open-air tents have hardwood
floors, four-poster beds and outdoor
bathtubs. It’s the antithesis of Atlantis,
with days involving nothing more taxing
than poolside yoga or taking a
paddleboard out to the local turtles’
favourite spot.
Details Seven nights’ room only at
Atlantis Bahamas from £1,729pp,
including flights (ba.com); room-only
doubles at the Other Side from £400
(ontheos.com). Fly to Nassau
ELEPHANTS AND
ISLANDS IN THAILAND
Now that Gen Z has graduated to further-
flung Asia, Thailand has gone mainstream
and welcomes all ages, not just the
backpackers and honeymooners. Exsus
designed its Elephants & Islands trip
with multiple generations in mind,
starting with a blast of Bangkok before
moving on to the leafy north to meet
elephants at Anantara Golden Triangle
Elephant Camp & Resort. Temples ticked
off, hilltops hiked and street-food
devoured, you’ll end the trip on Phuket,
dozing by the pool.
Details Ten nights’ room only from
£6,250pp, including flights, transfers
and some meals (exsus.com)
CHRISTMAS IN LAPLAND
You didn’t think we were going to miss
out Santa, did you? Not when a trip to
Lapland is among the most popular
multigen trips of them all. Make yours
an extra-special Christmas cracker by
travelling on Abercrombie & Kent’s
Lapland Family Experience in Finland,
on which an elf leads you to your
snow-covered hotel, with possible
northern lights sightings. Over the
subsequent three days you’ll visit a
reindeer farm, and go husky mushing, by
which point under-12s will be positively
busting to meet the big man. He lives in
the Santa Claus Secret Forest, Joulukka,
where children can decorate gingerbread
and receive a gift from you know who.
Details Three nights’ room only from
£5,585pp, including flights
(abercrombiekent.co.uk)

Travel City breaks
istory is everywhere you
H turn in Cordoba, from its
grandest monuments to
the humblest cobblestones.
Even the dishes served in
its restaurants have a story to share. This
Andalusian city has a chequered past,
filled with invasions and conquests, of
riches brought back from faraway lands,
of Romans, Arabs and Jews, of Catholic
kings, persecution, war and, ultimately,
peace. Once the capital of both Roman
and Moorish Spain, Cordoba might be
best known these days as Seville’s less
glamorous neighbour. But scratch the
surface and there’s still magic to be found,
if you know where to look. Fly to Seville or
Malaga — both are about 90 minutes’ drive.
WHAT TO DO
If Cordoba’s 12th-century cathedral
housed within an 8th-century mosque
doesn’t make your jaw drop then
nothing will. With its eye-popping
marble columns and red-and-white
arches, the Mosque-Cathedral, known
as the Mezquita, is the second most
visited site in Andalusia after Granada’s
Alhambra. Although 80 per cent of its
decoration is Islamic, it operates as
a Catholic cathedral. A daily Mass is
held in the chapel at the centre of what
was once a 40,000-capacity mosque.
Book a tour — Woow has the most
enthusiastic multilingual guides
(tours from £23pp; woowcordoba.es).
The Jews were expelled from Cordoba,
and the rest of Spain, in 1492, but La
Juderia — the Jewish Quarter — remains
one of the best preserved in Europe. At its
heart, in Calle de los Judios (Street of the
Jews), you can still visit the tiny synagogue
from 1315, one of three remaining pre-
expulsion synagogues in Spain (free entry).
Markets and shops make retail a
pleasure in the city. Visit La Corredera
food market with the New Yorker Gaby
Mangeri, whose private cooking classes
showcase the culinary delights of her
adopted home. Feast on delicacies such
as Iberian ham with almond bread, and
baby calamari with peaches — whatever’s
in season — accompanied by natural wine
(three-hour cooking classes from £95;
jugovivo.com). Shop for artisanal leather
art, known as Cordoban, in Calleja de las
Flores (Alley of Flowers), one of the
narrowest lanes in the old town, named
for the colourful hanging flowerpots.
The highlight of Cordoba’s cultural
calendar is its annual Fiesta de los Patios
(courtyard festival). For two weeks in
May, Cordobans open their homes to
the public, showing off their ornately
decorated patios. Many of the best are
around the parish of San Basilio and the
Mezquita. Alternatively, you can visit
the 12 exquisite patios of the 14th-century
Palacio de Viana all year (£6;
palaciodeviana.com).
THE COOLEST NEIGHBOURHOOD
For eating, drinking and sightseeing,
tourist-heavy La Juderia is undeniably
Cordoba’s buzziest quarter. But for
something less chaotic head to the old
silversmiths’ district, La Axerquia. Set
outside the ancient walls of the Moorish
medina, this lesser-known side of the old
town is where you can shop for artisanal
jewellery at Kuvo Plata (kuvoplata.com),
join the locals for a dish of croquetas de
rabo de toro — oxtail croquettes — in
historic taverns such as Taberna Regina
(mains from £8; instagram.com/
tabernaregina.cordoba) or sip a cold
Cruzcampo beer in the old-school Bar
Pancho with its pretty Andalusian tiles.
THE BIG WEEKEND
CORDOBA
Fiestas and Michelin-starred food in ancient Andalusia
WHERE TO EAT AND DRINK
Noor
The residential Cañero area isn’t an
obvious home for a two-Michelin-star
joint. But diners come here for chef Paco
Morales’s “gastroarchaeology”, which
explores the culinary treasures that have
arrived in Andalusia over the centuries
and includes dishes such as marinated
fallow deer with yellow beetroot (tasting
menus from £125; noorrestaurant.es).
Taberna Los Berengueles
Taberna Los Berengueles occupies the
leafy courtyard of a historic building that
used to belong to a local aristocrat. Sit
under an orange tree and sample dishes
such as ensaladilla, a potato salad with
prawns (mains from £11; instagram.com/
losberengueles).
Taberna San Miguel Casa El Pisto
One of Cordoba’s oldest taverns, El Pisto,
has been serving hungry (and thirsty)
punters in centrally located Plaza de San
Miguel since 1880. Try the Fifty-Fifty,
a tipple that combines two fortified
wines, fino and pedro ximenez,
for a not-too-sweet and not-too-
dry but utterly lethal finish
(mains from £9;
casaelpisto.com).
head to the old
Casa Pepe de la Juderia
An elevated spin on an
Andalusian taberna, Casa Pepe
serves the classics on its delightful
patio and rooftop overlooking the old
town. House specials include salmorejo,
a thicker, creamier version of gazpacho
topped with diced Iberian ham (mains
The Sunday Times November 12, 2023 29
ILLUSTRATION BY ADEEL IQBAL
Hotel Boutique
Patio del Posadero
Eurostars Patios
de Cordoba
La Corredera
La Axerquía
La Juderia Hospes Palacio
del Bailio
Mezquita
Guadalquivir
River
¼ mile
from £14; restaurantecasapepe
delajuderia.com).
Mercado Victoria
Mercado Victoria’s countless stalls are
the place to sample Cordobes street
food, such as flamenquin, a deep-fried
snack of Iberian ham wrapped with pork
loin, or pastel Cordobes, pastry filled
with sticky pumpkin jam (snacks from £2;
mercadovictoria.com).
Jugo Vinos Vivos
Gaby Mangeri moved to Cordoba from
New York with her Spanish husband
in 2010 and has never looked back.
Nowadays, she can be found sharing her
love of natural wine with a diverse group
of chatty clients in her tiny bottle shop-
cum-wine bar (wine by the glass from
£3.50; instagram.com/quierojugovivo).
WHERE TO STAY
Eurostars Patios de Cordoba
If you want to be close to the action but
not smack-bang in the middle of it, you’ll
love Eurostars Patios de Cordoba. Guests
can relax in the hotel’s five open-air
courtyards, which are filled with candles
at night. It’s great value (B&B doubles
from £52; eurostarshotels.com).
Hotel Boutique Patio del Posadero
This tiny boutique hideaway has only
six rooms but it’s worth booking early to
snag one. The vibe is more convivial B&B
than stuffy hotel; there’s an honesty bar,
complimentary tea and coffee and lots
of personal touches to make you feel at
home (room-only doubles from £70;
patiodelposadero.com).
Hospes Palacio del Bailio
As plush stays go, Hospes Palacio del
Bailio is in a league of its own in Cordoba.
Breakfast is served in the courtyard
surrounded by 14th-century frescoes.
The garden has a dreamy swimming
pool among the orange trees (room-only
doubles from £117; hospes.com).
IF YOU ONLY DO ONE THING
Cordoba’s first-century Roman bridge
used to be part of the road from Rome
to Cadiz. Cross it at sunset for exceptional
views of the Mosque-Cathedral across the
Guadalquivir River.
By Isabelle Kliger, who was a guest of
For something Hospes Palacio del Bailio, Noor and
less chaotic, Woow Cordoba. Fly to Seville or Malaga
silversmiths’
district
T Travel
For dozens more guides to your
favourite city-break destinations,
and those you’re still to discover,
see our dedicated Times Travel
website thetimes.co.uk/travel
30 November 12, 2023 The Sunday Times

Travel

MY HOLS

JEFF SPICER /GETTY IMAGES; LUCKY-PHOTOGRAPHER /ALAMY

BEVERLEY
KNIGHT
The singer explored her heritage
in Jamaica and went partying
with Brazilians in Salvador
Beverley Knight, 50, was born in Wolverhampton. Her
music career began in the 1990s and she has appeared
in West End musicals including The Bodyguard and
Memphis; this year she won an Olivier award for her role
in Sylvia, in which she plays the social activist Emmeline
Pankhurst. She lives in London with her husband, James Montego Bay in Jamaica, where Beverley Knight surprised her mum and felt a strong connection to the culture

Hands down my most Mum is from St Elizabeth, so I travelled absolutely wowed — ordering room too. I went to a local club where, despite
memorable trip was there to see where she and Dad went service (the best risotto I’ve ever had) their circumstances, people were
to Jamaica to celebrate to school, and also saw the Moravian and looking at this guy and thinking, dancing in couples with abandonment
my mum turning 70. She church on the hill where most of “He’s amazing.” and happiness.
and her best friend went on a Caribbean my Jamaican family were baptised. Last year I visited Tulum in Mexico My most recent holiday was a few
cruise then stayed on in Jamaica to visit Because my dad is no longer with to get beach and culture on one trip. days away in Calpe in Spain, where I
my grandma. She knew that we — the us there was an extra emotional My husband dived in some seriously stayed with a friend for her birthday.
kids — were organising a fancy resonance. During our visit we deep cenotes (sinkholes) while we For her present I took her to see Tom
dinner for her from England, but also went to St Mary, where we were there, but I’m not that brave. Jones perform in Alicante, then as a
didn’t know that James and I visited GoldenEye, Ian Fleming’s We also visited Chichen Itza and surprise we went backstage to meet him.
were going to turn up too. former home. Now it’s a hotel, marvelled at the Mayan ruins. It was wonderful.
Mum is partially deaf and owned by Chris Blackwell of Rio de Janeiro was great because The rest of the time there was on the
when we got to her hotel Island Records — I spotted him it looked like a future version of Britain: beach, shooting content to support my
I cheekily crept up behind swimming there and waved. it was very diverse and no one batted new album. I was glammed up in a long,
her and tapped her on the One of the best places I’ve an eyelid at us, a mixed-race couple, billowy dress and had to paddleboard
shoulder. She turned and let stayed in has to be the San walking down the beach. out to rocks in the middle of the sea and
out a cry of utter delight. The Domenico Palace hotel, But it was Salvador, in the Bahia mime to a video. People must have
party in St Ann’s Bay, where a former 17th-century monastery region of Brazil, that I found to be most thought that we were
my grandma lived, was beautiful. in Taormina, on Sicily. We went eye-opening. I went there in 2001 as insane. It was precarious
Jamaica is the land of my heritage, there in 2007. It’s fabulous inside a Christian Aid ambassador to witness and seriously hot — but
but I’d never been, and when I landed [the second series of The White the work being done to combat Aids, great fun.
in Montego Bay I had an overwhelming Lotus was filmed there]. They’ve and I also visited the favelas. Those
feeling of joy to the point of tears. kept the original façade, so there’s who lived there were so warm and Interview by Caroline Rees
They didn’t speak like me, but groups a rustic feel, and Mount Etna is friendly, but the smell was horrendous,
of elderly men, laughing and joking ever present — the hotel stands in because they’d had to build homes on Beverley Knight is touring the UK to mark
at the tops of their voices, reminded its shadow. It was my first holiday top of an open sewer. her 50th birthday (beverleyknight.com).
me of my family. I just felt a connection. with my husband, and I remember being There was music everywhere in Brazil Her album The Fifth Chapter is out now

we’re just not on the same tea. One three-course dinner

COMPETITION WHERE WAS I?
I told my friend we were
going near a city, not into it.
WIN A But he’s not a good listener.
Now he’s broadcasting his
wavelength. So I suggest for two (excluding drinks) at
that we scout out a country the hotel’s Colony Grill, is also
estate, less than a mile south- included. For details visit
southeast of the green. Many
festivals and jamborees have
thebeaumont.com.
The prize must be taken

LUXURY disappointment far and wide.

“We’re only two miles from
been held there, including
a global gathering, 16 years
before March 15, 2024,
subject to availability and

LONDON the home of one of the most

influential products of the
past 130 years — and you
ago, that marked a centenary.
Soon, Friend is on the
crest of a wave, scoffing
excluding December 24-
January 2.

BREAK want to see a duck pond?”

he splutters through
sandwiches and imagining
events that the estate has
HOW TO ENTER
WORTH a mouthful of cheese-
and-onion sandwich.
witnessed — notably the
night when a special
Answer the questions and
complete the entry form

£1,518 AT THE Well, yes and no. This

village does have a pretty
regiment’s commander
tried to drive a Jeep up
at thetimes.co.uk/travel/
where-was-i by the end

BEAUMONT pond — home, until quite

recently, to a famous goose.
A future Scottish king was
IN MAYFAIR married here too; the site
of his former property lies
within a university college.
My main interest, though,
is in those influential
products. The city may
have been their home, but
it was in this village that a
mass-market use for them
was first regularly tested
under licence in the UK.
Friend heaves a cheese-
and-onion-laced sigh. Today
the stairs of its mansion.
“What fun!” Friend cries.
And what fumes too. At
which point I finally despair
of Friend’s sandwich breath.
“Fancy some chewing gum?
I suggest. “What kind?” he
asks. “Airwaves,” I tell him.
Sean Newsom
THE QUESTIONS
1 What is the name of the
village?
2 What is the name of the
estate?
THE PRIZE
The winner and guest will
stay for two nights, B&B,
in a superior room at the
Beaumont, Mayfair. This
sumptuous five-star hotel sits
on a quiet square in central
London — a few minutes’ walk
from Selfridges, Hyde Park
and the Royal Academy.
Outside, a giant sculpture by
Antony Gormley overlooks
the entrance. Inside, beyond
the gleaming lobby, you’ll
find 72 rooms and suites,
including Gormley’s ROOM,
which inhabits the inside of
his sculpture. Throughout,
the style is elegant and art
deco-flavoured and facilities
include a white-marble spa, a
cocktail bar and terrace, and
Gatsby’s Room for afternoon
of Thursday, November 16.
One entry per person.
Full terms and conditions
apply, and your information
will be used in accordance
with our privacy policy
at newsprivacy.co.uk.
LAST WEEK’S PRIZE
The answers are Stourbridge
Glass Museum and Catesby.
Liz Heads of Northumberland
wins a luxury break in central
London worth £2,030 at
L’oscar on Southampton Row.