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4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
Ukraine’s dam disaster
Thousands of people were being evacuated
from their homes in southern Ukraine this
week following the destruction of the vast Nova
Kakhovka dam, in Russian-occupied territory
northeast of the city of Kherson (which Kyiv
regained in November). With some areas under
three metres of water, the UN warned that the
breach would have “far-reaching consequences”:
as well as risking lives and affecting the supply
of water to countless homes, including in
Russian-occupied Crimea, there were fears that
the breach could interfere with the cooling of
the reactors at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant,
Europe’s largest. Moscow and Kyiv blamed each
other for the explosion at the dam, which the EU
said may be “violation of international law”. Flooded homes in Kherson
The breach came as Kyiv appeared to be launching the start
of its long-awaited counteroffensive. Analysts speculated that
Russia had destroyed the dam to stop Ukrainian troops
using it to cross the Dnieper River. Kyiv said its troops were
conducting various “offensive actions”; Russia claimed it had
repelled a major Ukrainian offensive in the Donetsk region.
What the editorials said
The destruction of the Nova Kakhovka dam is “arguably
the worst man-made disaster in Europe since the Chernobyl
explosion in 1986”, said The Daily Telegraph.
And though Russia has denied involvement, it
seems likely that its commanders regarded it as
a “legitimate target” – a means of thwarting the
Ukrainian advance into Russian-held territory.
As well as destroying the road across the dam,
vast areas between the two front lines are now
underwater. But the rest of the world should
see it as a “war crime”, an illegal attack on
civilian infrastructure that has inundated crops,
ruined homes and destroyed livelihoods.
Russian voices have insisted that the dam was
hit by Ukrainian rockets, said The Economist,
to distract from Kyiv’s military failures and
deprive Crimea of water. But Western analysts
say that Russia was almost certainly behind the
attack. “A breach of this size” would require pre-positioned
explosives, and the dam has been under Russian control for
over a year. Along with its hydroelectric station, which supplies
power to three million people, it was of strategic value to the
Russians, but Russian military bloggers had been hinting that
“the military value of destroying the dam could be greater”.

What happened What the editorials said

The Covid Inquiry
The Covid Inquiry formally opened on
Tuesday amid a procedural row about its
right to procure evidence. Baroness Hallett,
the former judge leading the inquiry, last
week ordered the Cabinet Office to hand
over all of Boris Johnson’s Covid-era
WhatsApp messages and diary notes
in unredacted form. The Government
refused, arguing that some of the messages
were “unambiguously irrelevant” to the
inquiry. It launched a judicial review of the
order, saying there were “important issues
of principle” at stake. Hallett: “full visibility”
But Johnson subsequently let it be known that he had
already handed his diaries and phone records to the
Cabinet Office, and was now happy for them to be passed
on to Hallett uncensored – adding that he’d send any other
material still in his possession directly to the inquiry. In
her first public response to the row, Hallett insisted that it
was up to her, as the chair of a statutory inquiry, to decide
whether evidence was “relevant or potentially relevant”.
On his first day in office, Rishi Sunak promised “integrity”
and “accountability”, said The Independent. Extraordinary,
then, that he is now being “outflanked
morally” by his slippery predecessor.
Johnson may be partly motivated by a desire
to embarrass Sunak, but he is doing the right
thing. To form a “holistic view” of the British
state’s response to the first global pandemic
in a century, Hallett must be allowed full
“visibility”. She’s not out to expose irrelevant
gossip, said The Times. By standing in her
way, the Cabinet Office is just slowing down
an already lengthy inquiry.
Transparency is vital, agreed The Daily
Telegraph. The Covid pandemic affected
everyone, and many serious questions remain about the
Government’s handling of it. There have been troubling
reports recently, for example, about the way the secretive
Counter-Disinformation Unit sought to curtail debate around
lockdown policies. There are, of course, legitimate concerns
about privacy regarding phone messages, but “these are
trumped by the importance of ensuring the inquiry builds
a true picture of what happened three years ago”.

It wasn’t all bad A Mediterranean miniature

Skylark numbers declined
75% between 1972 and 1996,
owing largely to changes in
agricultural practices, including
more intensive methods, but
the birds are now making a
modest recovery. The latest
breeding bird survey by the
British Trust for Ornithology
found that populations of the
skylark, Wordsworth’s “pilgrim
of the sky”, have grown 10%
in the past five years. In some
areas, such as the east Midlands
and southeast England, they
are up nearly 20%.
THE WEEK 10 June 2023
donkey foal that was stolen from
A former Army captain has
become the first person to
a community farm in Hampshire swim from mainland Britain to
has been found by police and the Isle of Man, raising £16,000
returned to its mother. Moon, for the charity Healthier Heroes
who is three months old, and just in the process. Adam Diver, 46,
18 inches tall, went missing from took two-and-a-half days to
Miller’s Ark in Hook on 15 May. swim to the island. The crossing
An appeal to find her soon gained is 31 miles, but he believes he
traction on social media, with actually covered about 46 miles
hundreds contacting the police because he swam in a zigzag to
with possible leads, including one avoid going against the tides.
woman who claimed she’d seen He said it felt “amazing” to have
a baby donkey in the back of a completed the swim, which he
blue estate car. Moon was finally first attempted last year, but
tracked down to a house in High admitted that jellyfish and
Wycombe. Miller’s Ark said it was “beyond thrilled” to have the foal other challenges had made
back and that it would now be investing in security cameras. it a bit of a “suffer fest”.
COVER CARTOON: NEIL DAVIES
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
Even before the dam was destroyed, the Ukrainian counteroffensive faced massive challenges, As evacuation efforts
said Luke Harding in The Guardian. In the south, Russian engineers have built “some of the continued on Wednesday,
most extensive fortifications seen on the planet for decades”, according to the UK Ministry of there were hopes that the
Defence. They have created three separate lines of defence, several miles apart, featuring five- water levels were dropping
metre-wide tank ditches as well as “dragon’s teeth”: concrete blocks to slow the advance of in the worst-affected areas.
armoured vehicles. In addition, Russia has laid mines along the entire front line as well as in However, President Zelensky
the Dnieper River. In advance of the anticipated offensive, Moscow had used a new wave of warned that hundreds of
air strikes to disrupt Ukraine’s preparations for it, said Jamie Dettmer on Politico. In the past thousands of people were
four weeks, Kyiv has been targeted by 400 drones and 114 cruise missiles. Aerial attacks have without normal access
also struck deep in Ukrainian territory, targeting military command centres and logistics hubs, to drinking water; his
rather than civilian infrastructure. Last weekend, Russian missiles hit an airbase far into western government said that 10,000
Ukraine. Aware of the need to tamp down expectations, President Zelensky has said that the hectares of farmland on the
struggle “could take some time and come at a heavy cost”. He’s surely right on that. Ukrainian-controlled side of
the Dnieper were underwater,
Ukraine can at least take heart from the generosity of its allies, said Michael Day in The i Paper. along with an area larger
America’s recent change of heart in allowing Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s; Britain’s decision to than that on the other side.
supply highly accurate long-range cruise missiles; and a £2.4bn aid package from Germany
were all encouraging signs. Nevertheless, it will take more than one offensive to “put Russia on The UN’s nuclear watchdog
the back foot”. Those American warplanes won’t be in the air before the end of the year, and says that the breach of the
devastation caused by the dam breach “will keep the country’s emergency services distracted” dam has not caused a risk
for some time. Kyiv is already insisting that the dam’s destruction won’t hold up its offensive, in the short term to the
said Veronika Melkozerova on Politico. Officials say they have the pontoons and watercraft Zaporizhzhia plant, 90
necessary to overcome the new obstacles in their way. As for ordinary Ukrainians, said Francis miles upstream, as even if the
Dearnley in The Daily Telegraph, this latest “outrage” may only firm up their view, and that reservoir it relies on drains,
of their supporters in the West, that Moscow simply cannot be allowed to win the war. it has “back-up” facilities.

What the commentators said What next?

Why would Rishi Sunak take legal action against a statutory body his own Government Cabinet Office minister
appointed? He must think something very important is at stake, said Andrew Rawnsley in Jeremy Quin says the
The Observer. Is he worried about details emerging that could embarrass him? It wouldn’t Government’s judicial
look good for the PM, for instance, if it was revealed that “he was warned in advance that his review is being “expedited”
Eat-Out-to-Help-Out-the-Virus subsidised meals wheeze would be the plague-spreader that it and will likely be heard “on
turned out to be”. I don’t think it’s an attempt at back-covering, said Stephen Bush in the FT. or shortly after” 30 June.
After all, the inquiry is unlikely to unearth anything more damning than the mistakes ministers
have already been taken to task over. More likely, it’s just a knee-jerk attempt to defend the In the meantime, the Covid
secrecy that is “the default setting of British governments, regardless of who is in power”. Inquiry was this week
planning to begin inspecting
There is a “serious constitutional point here”, said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. WhatsApps provided by
The Cabinet Office believes that revealing every WhatsApp message in full would set a bad Boris Johnson. It has also
precedent, denying ministers and civil servants “any space for private deliberation”. Hallett’s arranged for security
inquiry was designed to learn lessons from the pandemic, to arm us against a future such crisis. experts to try to salvage
But it seems to have grown into an endless, all-encompassing investigation that can also assign older messages from
blame and deliver “national catharsis”. The inquiry isn’t due even to complete its public Johnson’s previous phone.
hearings for another four years. Compare that to Sweden, whose Covid inquiry reported last Johnson switched that
year, months before ours had even agreed its terms of reference. It’s true that some countries device off permanently
have had “short, sharp investigations” into the pandemic, said Paul Waugh in The i Paper. But in the spring of 2021 on
none of these had public hearings, and none had the power to compel officials to hand over key the advice of the security
documents. The scale of Hallett’s inquiry seems only appropriate for something that claimed services, when it emerged
the lives of nearly a quarter-of-a-million Britons. And its modular nature means that Hallett that his mobile number
and her team will be issuing regular reports and recommendations after each section, not had been publicly available
waiting to deliver “one big” report at the end. It promises to be anything but a wasted exercise. online for 15 years.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
Firstly, dear readers, are you OK? If this seems like a strange way Editor: Theo Tait
Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
for a media outlet to address its audience, well, we may have to City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editors: Robin de Peyer,
get used to it. On Monday, Holly Willoughby returned to the sofa Leaf Arbuthnot Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
of ITV’s This Morning, for the first time since the resignation of her colleague Phillip Schofield, with Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Fiona Paus,
a short opening speech straight to camera. “Firstly, are you OK? I hope so,” she began, as if the Billie Gay Jackson Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
Art director: Katrina Ffiske Senior sub-editor: Simmy
whole nation was traumatised that a TV host had had an affair with a much younger colleague, had Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connell
Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
lied about it, and had left the show as a result. Even to someone not much interested in Holly and
Phil, it was a mesmerising performance. It felt like one of those terrible “cultural moments”: Meghan Production Manager: Maaya Mistry
Account Directors: Aimee Farrow, Steven Tapp,
Markle professing her truth, or Gazza crying at the 1990 World Cup. Willoughby briefly outlined Amy McBride
Classified Sales Executive: Nubla Rehman
Schofield’s crimes and her “hurt”. (“That is a lot to process,” she declared.) Then, having unctuously Advertising Director – The Week, Wealth
& Finance: Peter Cammidge
and sanctimoniously thrown her colleague under a bus, she started on the fuzzy warm bit: “I think Managing Director, The Week: Richard Campbell
what unites us all now is a desire to heal ... get back to a place of warmth and magic ... find strength SVP Lifestyle, Knowledge and News: Sophie Wybrew-Bond

in each other...” Inevitably, there was much mockery. “Firstly, are you OK?” has become an instant Future PLC, 121-
141 Westbourne
catchphrase, an internet meme, the start to thousands of emails. But I fear it can’t be so easily Terrace, London
W2 6JR
laughed off. Helen Rumbelow in The Times argued that we should see Willoughby’s speech as
Editorial office:
a set text elucidating a “new secular religion”, of psychobabble, perma-trauma, 020-3890 3787 Future plc is a public !ǝǣƺǔ0ɴƺƬɖɎǣɮƺ ǔˡƬƺȸ Jon Steinberg

Theo Tait
company quoted on the Non-Executive Chairman Richard Huntingford
London Stock Exchange !ǝǣƺǔIǣȇƏȇƬǣƏǼƏȇƳ³ɎȸƏɎƺǕɵ ǔˡƬƺȸ Penny Ladkin-Brand

self-worth blather. She may be right. It really is a lot to process. editorialadmin@

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any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 10 June 2023 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Prince Harry in court

Taking on the death tax Prince Harry became the first

senior member of the royal
family to give evidence in
“Few items of public policy raise the public’s hackles quite like court for 130 years, when he
inheritance tax,” said John Ashmore on CapX. For many Brits, appeared at the High Court
the idea that the state should intervene in the intimate matter this week to testify in his
of what you leave to your children “sticks in the collective hacking case against the
craw”. Then there’s the unfortunate timing: HMRC presents Daily Mirror. The Prince said
that he had been pursued by
the bereaved with a huge bill, a “death tax”. Others object to
a hostile press since early
it on the grounds that it amounts to double taxation on assets childhood, citing numerous
that may have already been taxed when they were amassed, stories of anguish, pain and
via income or capital gains tax. Inheritance tax certainly polls embarrassment caused to
“pretty damn badly”. (A recent survey by YouGov found that him. However, under cross-
50% of people in the UK thought it was unfair or very unfair, examination on Tuesday, he
compared with just 19% who thought it was fair or very struggled to come up with
fair.) So you can see why The Daily Telegraph has launched evidence that the stories had
a campaign to do away with it altogether, and why that has been gathered by the Mirror
Zahawi: not the best figurehead unlawfully. He admitted that
the support of more than 50 Tory MPs, including Liz Truss,
he had not owned a mobile
Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadhim Zahawi. But would abolishing it be a good idea? phone at the time that one
allegedly hacked story came
Inheritance tax may not be entirely fair, but neither is inheriting large amounts of unearned cash, said out; other stories had been
Emma Duncan in The Times. And it is often entirely unearned, because so much of it now derives reported elsewhere first, or
from property wealth, amassed “due not to hard work, but to the rise in property prices”. Besides, were based on statements
less than 4% of estates actually attract the tax, which kicks in when they’re worth over £325,000 issued by Palace officials.
(usually twice that where a married couple’s estate is concerned), at a rate of 40%. And the benefits Some, the Mirror’s lawyers
of abolishing it wouldn’t go “to the middle classes who have salted away a few bob”: the Resolution suggested, had been leaked
by his own associates.
Foundation estimates that 70% of the gains would go to estates of over £1m, about half of them in
London and the Southeast. But that’s precisely the point, said Daniel Johnson in The Daily Telegraph.
Because of property price inflation, this is “a tax that potentially affects almost any homeowner in
the more prosperous parts of the country”. That is unfair and morally wrong. “The desire of one
generation to help the next ought to be encouraged, not penalised.” This is “a tax on aspiration”.

Some Tories seem to think abolishing it would be popular, said Polly Toynbee in The Guardian.
They’re deluded. In principle, people don’t like the idea of inheritance tax. But do the Conservatives
really want to go into the next election, with the tax burden at a historic high, promising hefty cuts
for the richest 4%? And what could be “more comic” than the multimillionaire Nadhim Zahawi
leading this campaign, when his brief chancellorship is remembered mainly because he was sacked
for failing to declare an investigation into his tax affairs? The tax could certainly be reformed,
said Paul Waugh in The i Paper. At the moment, it’s absurdly easy to avoid if you have millions, yet
impossible if the family home is your main asset. But the campaign to abolish it is doomed, for one
simple reason: in the current climate, no chancellor will give up the £7bn that it raises every year.
Migration plan “working”
Rishi Sunak claimed in a
Good week for: speech in Dover this week
Spirit of the age Talent spotting, after a pub landlord who’d bet £100 that his that his plan to tackle small
The average cost of friend’s 11-year-old son would one day play a Test match for boat crossings was “starting
attending a stag or hen England picked up his winnings. Josh Tongue, who is now 25, to work”. The PM highlighted
party in the UK has reached made his debut against Ireland last week; and Tim Piper, the figures showing that
£779, research by Aviva cricket-lover from Redditch who’d been awed by Tongue’s skills crossings have fallen 20%
has found. Those travelling years earlier, collected £50,000. this year. He also confirmed
abroad for the celebrations that the Government has
can expect to spend £1,200. Sue Gray, who was cleared to take up her new role as Keir acquired two barges big
A third of respondents to Starmer’s chief of staff. Some Government officials had allegedly enough to accommodate
the survey said that they’d called for the former civil servant, who led the Partygate inquiry 1,000 asylum seekers.
turned down an invitation in 2022, to have to wait up to two years before she could take Separately, Border Force
to a stag or hen do; of up the job. But a vetting board said she could start in the autumn. figures showed that French
them, four-fifths said it authorities are intercepting
was because of the cost. more than half of attempted
Bad week for: crossings for the first time
The sanitary products brand Oxfam, which was accused of portraying J.K. Rowling as a trans- since the small boat
Always is supplying British hating villain. In a short animation in support of LGBTQ+ rights, crossings began in earnest
schools with a 22-page the charity had featured a woman with a resemblance to Rowling, five years ago. So far this
guide to menstruation but with demonic eyes, an ugly grimace and the derogatory term year, 8,635 people have been
that contains no mention Terf on her lapel badge. Oxfam said it was not meant to represent prevented from crossing the
of women or girls. The the author, but apologised and deleted the video. Channel by French officials,
pamphlet, entitled “Puberty while 7,610 have arrived in
and Confidence Guide for 1970s diets, with a new survey showing that one in five British the UK – an interception rate
Everyone”, explains that children have never tasted tinned spaghetti hoops. Moreover, 20% of 53%, up from 42% last
“every month, bodies with have not had frozen burgers, 27% have not tried cream of tomato year. Border Force officials
female sex organs prepare soup and a quarter have never been served a tuna bake. And 77% said that the figures were
for pregnancy”, and uses of parents said meals such as fish fingers now seem old-fashioned. a sign that the £480m deal
the phrase “young people Holidaymakers, who were warned to expect delays at Heathrow, that Sunak struck with
with female sex organs” President Macron in March
owing to strikes by security officers. Unite said its members would
in place of the word girls. is bearing fruit.
walk out for 31 days between 24 June and 27 August.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Europe at a glance
Berlin
Far-right on the rise: A senior figure in
Germany’s far-right AfD party is being
prosecuted for allegedly repeating a
banned Nazi-era slogan. Björn Höcke,
the party’s regional leader in Thuringia,
is accused of having used the words
“Everything for Germany” – a slogan of
Hitler’s stormtroopers – while speaking
at a campaign rally in 2021. Prosecutors
said that he did so knowingly. Mainstream
parties are growing increasingly concerned
about the rising influence of the AfD: the
most recent polls indicate that if a general
election were held tomorrow, the party
would win a record 18% of the vote. That
puts it level with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s
Social Democrats, and behind only the
conservative CDU/CSU on 28%. The AfD
continues to exploit concerns in Germany
about immigration, but is also said to be
tapping a rich vein of dissatisfaction with
Scholz’s three-way coalition – and in
particular, its climate-friendly policies.
NEWS 7
Vienna Warsaw
Skewed solution: Record protest: In Poland’s biggest
Officials in Vienna demonstration since the end of
have found a novel communism, half-a-million people took to
way of dealing the streets to protest against the country’s
with a statue of a right-wing government. Donald Tusk, the
controversial former leader of Civic Platform – Poland’s main
mayor. Rather than opposition party – told the crowds in
tear it down, they are Warsaw on Sunday that he intends to
going to tilt it 3.5° to “save Poland” by ousting the ruling Law
the right. Karl Lueger and Justice party (PiS) in this autumn’s
was a social reformer general elections. Unease has been growing
who shaped the over a new law proposed by the PiS
modern city in the administration, which would allow the
early 1900s; he was government to investigate politicians it
also a Catholic given suspects of being Russian agents. Critics
to antisemitic say it will be used to target Tusk, whom
rhetoric. A local artist came up with the the PiS accuses of having been too friendly
idea of tilting the statue, saying it would towards Russia during his time as PM.
disorientate viewers and cause them to
ponder Lueger’s legacy. Officials hoped
it would be an acceptable compromise,
but campaigners are still calling for
the statue to be toppled.

Greystones, Ireland
Smartphone ban: Parents in a town in
Ireland have joined forces in an effort to
prevent their children using smartphones.
The voluntary code – which has been
adopted by all eight primary school
parents’ associations in Greystones, Co
Wicklow – requires that the phones be
withheld from children until they start
secondary school. While they do not
expect that all the families in Greystones
will adopt the code, participating parents
hope that enough will do so to weaken
the social pressure to give their children
smartphones. “If I know 90% of the class
are in agreement, it makes my job easier
in saying no,” said a mother in the town.
A Fianna Fáil senator, Fiona O’Loughlin,
is now calling on parents at other schools
across Ireland to follow suit, and has
suggested that the government should
look at promoting the idea nationally,
to “safeguard youth mental health”.

Seville, Spain Moscow Bakhmut, Ukraine

Noise meters: Seville is to become the
latest city to crack down on Airbnbs and
similar holiday lets – in its case, by strictly
enforcing noise limits. Local authorities
in other cities have insisted that decibel
meters be installed in holiday lets. In
Seville, a new rule goes further: it requires
that the devices automatically notify
landlords when a noise threshold is
breached, and obliges them to act
immediately or face penalties. In large
parts of Seville’s historic centre, including
the entire district of Santa Cruz, there are
more short-term rentals than there are
permanent residences, and many locals say
the resulting noise is often intolerable. The
law was pushed through by conservative
mayor José Luis Sanz, who seized
control from the socialists in last month’s
elections, having campaigned on a promise
to address the negative effects of tourism,
including “the desertification of the city”.
Birthday message:
More than 100
people are
reported to have
been arrested in
cities across
Russia last week
for taking part
in rallies to mark
the 47th birthday
of the jailed
opposition leader Alexei Navalny. He
responded by posting a statement on social
media in which he said he was “in a good
mood” and still determined to fight for “a
better future”. Navalny (pictured in court)
is serving an 11-and-a-half-year term for
charges, including fraud, that he says
were trumped up by the Kremlin. Later
this month, he will go on trial on a
separate “extremism” charge that could
see him jailed for a further 35 years.
Russian infighting: The Wagner mercenary
group took captive a Russian army brigade
commander, in an escalation of the feud
between its boss, Yevgeny Prigozhin, and
the Russian military establishment. In a
video posted by Prigozhin on social media
this week, Lt Col Roman Venevitin tells
an interrogator that, while drunk, he’d
ordered his men to fire on Wagner Group
troops as they withdrew from Bakhmut.
He says he’d acted out of a “dislike” of
Wagner, and apologises. In the past few
months, Prigozhin has launched a series
of tirades against senior Russian officials,
including Sergei Shoigu, the defence
minister, and Valery Gerasimov, the chief
of the general staff. He is believed to have
made powerful enemies in Moscow. But
this latest incident suggests that Wagner’s
capture of Bakhmut – Moscow’s first
notable military win since last summer
– has left him riding high.

Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk 10 June 2023 THE WEEK

8 NEWS The world at a glance
New York
Smoky city: New York
City recorded the worst
air quality in the world
on Tuesday, as smoke
from wildfires blazing
in eastern Canada
continued to drift
south. In New York, the concentration of PM2.5 was more than
ten times the guideline set by the World Health Organisation, and
some schools cancelled outdoor activities as a result. Air quality
warnings were also issued in Toronto and Ottawa. Canada’s fire
season began unusually early this year; there are blazes in almost
all the country’s regions, but Quebec is currently the worst
affected. More than 600,000 acres have burned there.
Ottawa
Cigarette rules: Canada has been printing health warnings on
cigarette packets since 1972, and in 2001 it became the first
country to print graphic photos on them. Now it is taking a
further pioneering step, by requiring that health warnings are
printed on individual cigarettes. Starting next year, cigarettes
sold in the country will have to be stamped with phrases such
as “poison in every puff”, “cigarettes cause leukaemia”, “tobacco
smoke harms children” and “cigarettes cause impotence” –
written in both French and English, the country’s two official
languages. Canada already has a lower smoking rate than most
developed countries – around 13% of adults smoke, compared
with 15% of adults in the UK and 23% in the US. But with
smoking still estimated to kill 48,000 people a year, the
government wants to cut that to 5% by 2035.

Des Moines, Iowa

Pence stands: The former vice-president Mike Pence
formally joined the Republican race this week, pitting
himself against his ex-boss Donald Trump. Pence served
Trump loyally, but the pair fell out when he refused
to back Trump in challenging the result of the 2020
election. He has since accused Trump of endangering his life by
supporting the rioters who stormed the Capitol on 6 January
2021, some of them chanting “Hang Mike Pence”. Hours after
he announced his candidacy, former New Jersey governor Chris
Christie, another one-time Trump ally, threw his hat into the ring.
Neither he nor Pence is believed to have a realistic chance of
securing the nomination, and commentators say they risk helping
Trump to victory by splitting the votes of those who oppose him.

Inyo National Forest,

California
Wolverine sighting: For only
the second time in a century, a
wolverine has been spotted in the
wild in California. The solitary
creatures – the largest terrestrial
member of the weasel family
– were once native to California,
but became more or less extinct in the state in the 1920s, largely
as a result of fur trapping. In 2008, the appearance of a male
named Buddy caused much excitement; it was last seen in 2018.
Now, another young male has been glimpsed in the forests of the
eastern Sierra Nevada. Like Buddy, who was believed to have
trekked to California from Idaho, it may be an immigrant.

Tallahassee, Florida
Migrant “kidnap”: Florida governor and Republican presidential
contender Ron DeSantis has enraged his counterpart in California
by sending 36 migrants to the state, without coordinating it with
the authorities there. Two private planes carrying migrants of
South American origin arrived without warning in Sacramento
over last weekend. The migrants were then abandoned outside
churches in the city. California’s Democrat governor, Gavin
Newsom, described DeSantis as a “small, pathetic man”, and
implied that the stunt was akin to kidnapping. Last year, DeSantis
arranged for dozens of Venezuelan migrants who’d arrived
in Florida to be taken to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.

Jérémie, Haiti Brasília

Deadly floods: The impoverished and crisis-hit nation of Haiti was
struck by a deadly earthquake this week, just days after at least
42 people were killed in severe floods. The 4.9-magnitude quake
struck in the coastal city of Jérémie, killing at least four people.
Earlier in the week, the country’s western, northwestern and
southeastern regions had been pelted by days of torrential rain,
causing several rivers to burst their banks and forcing around
13,000 people from their homes. Officials say it is of particular
concern that the floods arrived at the start of the region’s
hurricane season – which runs until November – as the damage
they have caused will leave the country yet more vulnerable to
the impact of this year’s storms.
Maduro’s tour: Venezuela’s
authoritarian president, Nicolás
Maduro, attended high-level meetings in Saudi Arabia this
week, days after he was welcomed to a summit hosted by Brazil’s
left-wing president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In the years following
2018’s disputed presidential election, Maduro was isolated on
the world stage, said the FT; there are fears that his return to
the diplomatic limelight will frustrate EU and US efforts to force
him into holding free and fair elections. Speaking at the summit
in Brasília last week, he boasted of resisting pressure from the US.
Saudi Arabia’s decision to host him, in defiance of the US, was
seen as a signal that it plans to pursue its own foreign policy.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 The world at a glance
Kabul
War on drugs: Washington spent billions of
dollars in a vain attempt to stem the flow
of heroin from Afghanistan, but now the
Taliban has succeeded where the US failed.
Afghanistan used to produce around 90%
of the world’s opium, and it supplied 95%
of the heroin market in Europe – a key
source of income for the Taliban. But
this year, the BBC reports, the Taliban has
enforced a ban on poppy cultivation with
ruthless efficiency, destroying crops across
the country. Analysis of satellite data
shows annual cultivation could be down
80% on last year. The effect of the ban will
take time to affect the heroin market in the
West, owing to the stockpiling of drugs by
traffickers, but the blow to local farmers’
incomes will be immense: wheat, the main
crop that has supplanted poppies in fields,
is worth a fraction as much.
Khartoum
Ceasefire ends:
The ceasefire deal
between Sudan’s
two warring
factions – the army
and the paramilitary
RSF – broke down last weekend, as fighting
intensified across the country. The truce,
brokered by Saudi Arabia and the US, had
granted access to aid workers for the first
time since the conflict broke out on 15
April. But it has been repeatedly violated,
at terrible cost to the population. At least
60 infants in an orphanage in Khartoum
are thought to have died from fever and
malnutrition in the past few weeks. And
around 27 civilians were killed last week,
when six tank shells struck a market in
Mayo, a poor area south of Khartoum.
Clips on social media seem to show that
RSF fighters have now occupied the
National Museum in central Khartoum.
NEWS 9
Balasore, India
Railway tragedy: At least 275 people were killed
and 1,200 injured last week when three trains
collided in the eastern Indian state of Odisha
(formerly Orissa). It was India’s deadliest railway
disaster in more than 20 years. The Coromandel
Express from Kolkata to Chennai was travelling at
80mph near the town of Balasore when it switched
tracks to a loop line and crashed into a stationary
freight train. Several coaches flipped onto an
adjacent track, derailing another oncoming express train. Some 1,000 rescue workers,
mostly volunteers, spent two days pulling survivors and bodies from the wreckage.
Initial reports suggest the Coromandel had been given a green signal to move onto
the loop line, and the government has announced a criminal negligence investigation.
Those found guilty, said PM Narendra Modi on his visit to the site, would be
“severely punished”. But his opponents accuse him of trying to shift blame for the
disaster. Modi has spent billions on modernising the network, one of the world’s
largest, but a recent audit showed spending on maintenance and basic safety measures
has declined. Hundreds of rail accidents still occur each year, most due to derailment.
Taipei
US trade deal: The US has
signed a trade deal with
Taiwan designed to boost
trade between the two
nations and strengthen the
island’s relations with the
West. The US had earlier
sought to avoid provoking
China by excluding
Taiwan from a wider Asian
trade agreement – the
14-member Indo-Pacific
Economic Framework for
Prosperity – launched by
President Biden last year.
Beijing, which regards
Taiwan as its own
territory, has denounced
the deal as an
infringement of its
sovereignty
over the
island.
Tehran
Hypersonic
missile: At a
ceremony this
week attended
by the president,
Ebrahim Raisi,
and broadcast on
state television, Mount Everest, Nepal
the Iranian Rare rescue: The heroic rescue of a
military unveiled Malaysian climber who had become
a hypersonic stranded in the Mount Everest “death
missile that it zone”, the perilous area above 8,000m,
claims is capable of bypassing and has highlighted the risk posed to Nepali
destroying Israeli and US air defences. mountain guides by inexperienced climbers
The Fattah (Conqueror) missile supposedly on the mountain. Gelje Sherpa was guiding
has a range of 870 miles, and can travel at a client to the summit when he aborted the
Mach 15, or 15 times the speed of sound, ascent to go to the aid of the climber,
enabling it to hit targets in Israel in as little Ravichandran Tharumalingam, who had
as 400 seconds. Only four other countries, collapsed and was close to death. Wrapping
including Russia, claim to have such him in a sleeping bag, the Sherpa and
hypersonic missiles – weapons that can a colleague took turns carrying him on
fly at least at Mach 5 – in their arsenals. their backs 2,000ft down the mountain.
10 June 2023 THE WEEK
10 NEWS
A cinematic childhood
Nancy Spielberg grew up
immersed in films. From an
early age, her older brother
Steven was fascinated by the
medium, and would dragoon
her and her two sisters into
acting as his cast and crew.
“We just did whatever Steve
said because he sort of ruled
the house,” she told Anne
Joseph in The Times. She didn’t
always enjoy it, “but this is
what we did, and I guess we
grew to love some of it in the
end”. Years later, when Steven
told her he was making a film
based on their childhood, and
their parents’ painful divorce,
Nancy – who is a documentary
producer herself – felt
“overwhelmed” by the idea.
But he took care to make sure
his sisters were on board, and
employed them as consultants.
She has seen The Fabelmans
11 times, and each time, she
says, it has made her cry. It has
won several awards, and been
nominated for 100. “We’re
kvelling. Our chests are so
puffed out with pride for our
big brother.” Yet when people
find out that she is Spielberg’s
sister, they always tell her
what they don’t like about
his work, she says, laughing.
“They feel it’s their duty!”
The first “nepo-daddy”
At 37, Lana Del Rey is one
of the world’s most successful
singer-songwriters. Now, her
69-year-old father Rob Grant
is getting in on the act, by
releasing his own first album,
says Gabriella Paiella in GQ.
It’s led to him being dubbed
the first “nepo-daddy” – a riff
People
on the “nepo-baby” label
applied to children of media-
and art-world celebrities who
get a leg up in the same sphere.
They both bristle at the term’s
implications. “It’s just another
way to rile simple folks up,”
says Del Rey. “Nobody wants
to give anyone any credit for
doing anything,” adds her
father. “God forbid that you
actually have talent. People
don’t want to acknowledge
that. They will find a way to
undermine you and to really
make you feel bad about
yourself.” So when Grant
first came across the term, he
decided to own it, and profit
from it: he bought the domain
name, and is already marketing
nepo-daddy merchandise.
“Hell, I’ll sell you hats, T-shirts,
canvas bags, you name it.”
Joan Collins’s secret sauce
Few women have remained
international celebrities for Living in a chocolate-box village on the South Downs, Richard
seven decades, says Gyles Coles is a vision of middle-aged niceness, in his specs and corduroy
Brandreth in The Oldie. So trousers, says Decca Aitkenhead in The Sunday Times. But Coles
how has Joan Collins managed is an angrier person than people take him for, and he is happy to
it? She reckons that there are admit it. He’s angry with the Church of England, for refusing to
five secrets to her success. celebrate same-sex relationships (he retired as a vicar last year);
“One, energy. Mine is God- and he is angry about the death, three-and-a-half years ago, of
given,” she says. “My mother his husband David – and about people’s response to his grief.
used to call me Miss Perpetual “I’m angry when people speak in a way that means they think you
Motion, because I never kept should be over it,” he explains. “It’s not a cold.” His anger is not
still. Two, exercise. Use it or lose new. When he and Jimmy Somerville formed their hit band The
it. That’s true of everything. If Communards in 1985, he was unable to take any pleasure in
you stopped talking for a week, their success, because he was so seething with resentment about
your tongue would atrophy. Somerville getting more attention than he was. During one blazing
Three, optimism. Cultivate it... row, Coles screamed at his bandmate that he’d been diagnosed
Four, work, work, work. If with HIV. It was a fabrication, but the upper hand and dark glamour
you want [something done], the lie conferred was so gratifying, he repeated it to close friends
do it yourself. Five, live for for five years. (When Coles finally came clean, all Somerville said
today. Remember: yesterday is was: “That took something to admit, doll.”) So how come everyone
history, tomorrow is a mystery, has mistaken him for a sweetie? “Because I’ve offered them that
today is a gift. That’s why it’s version of me,” he says, groaning despairingly. “Why do I do it?
called the present.” Sometimes I could drown in a sea of my own whimsy.”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint:

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured
Farewell
the journalist Jeremy Bowen The Bezos effect Helmut Berger, troubled
“This week Mark Zuckerberg posted Austrian film actor, died
1 Let’s Stay Together by Al Green, Willie Mitchell and Al Jackson Jr,
performed by Al Green
a picture of himself looking exhausted, 18 May, aged 78.
verging on ill, on Facebook. He was Hugh Callaghan, one
2* Symphony No. 2 in E-Flat Major, Op. 63: II by Edward Elgar,
performed by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli wearing a 20lb weighted vest, having of the Birmingham Six,
3 Piano Concerto No. 2 in C Minor, Op. 18 by Sergei Rachmaninoff,
just completed a fearsome exercise jailed for 16 years, died
performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the London Symphony routine called the ‘Murph’. He’s the 27 May, aged 93.
Orchestra, conducted by André Previn latest to succumb to the ‘Bezos effect’: Astrud Gilberto, singer
4 America by Paul Simon, performed by Simon & Garfunkel the transformation, pioneered by Jeff best known for The Girl
5 O soave fanciulla from La bohème by Giacomo Puccini, Bezos, of a tycoon in middle age from from Ipanema, died
performed by Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé and the nondescript nerd to chiselled Adonis. 5 June, aged 83.
London Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Georg Solti Whatever happened to fat plutocrats, Lord John Morris, former
6 Denn alles Fleisch, es ist wie Gras by Johannes Brahms, performed eh? Eating pounds of caviar in a single Welsh secretary and
by the Berlin Philharmoniker, conducted by Herbert von Karajan sitting, like Robert Maxwell? Lounging Blair attorney general,
© ADAM GERRARD/DAILY MIRROR

7 In My Life by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed around in top hats and opera cloaks, died 5 June, aged 91.
by The Beatles snacking on swans? Only Donald Cynthia Weil, co-writer
8 Waterloo Sunset by Ray Davies, performed by The Kinks Trump is sticking to the noble tradition of 1960s hits such as
Book: The Complete Novels, George Orwell of moneybags-as-greedy-slob. Who’s You’ve Lost That Lovin’
next on the cross-trainer? Bill Gates?” Feelin’, died 1 June,
Luxury: a manual typewriter * Choice if allowed only one record
aged 82.
Robert Crampton in The Times

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Briefing NEWS 13

Center Parcs: “the paradise machine”

The holiday resort chain is up for sale, with a price tag somewhere north of £4bn. What is the secret of its success?

Where did Center Parcs come from? What about the downsides?
It all began “with an idea”, according Center Parcs certainly has its detractors.
to the company website: “the idea of “We all have our own idea of what hell
bringing people and nature together”. In looks like,” Kathryn Knight told the
1968, Piet Derksen, a Dutch entrepreneur Daily Mail, “and mine is the domed
who owned a successful sporting goods Subtropical Swimming Paradise at
chain, Sporthuis Centrum, set up De Center Parcs in Woburn Forest, on
Lommerbergen, a holiday retreat in the a Saturday morning.” The Parcs have
woods near Reuver, close to the German been described by critics as like living in
border: initially just a series of tents a giant Ikea or an open prison (they all
in a field for his staff and customers. have perimeter fences to keep children in
But Derksen, who was also a devout and unwanted visitors out). The identikit
conservative Catholic, soon grasped lodges, some complain, are soulless and
its potential, and conceived a vision of give the place a Truman Show-like feel;
what he called “the villa in the forest”: the food, some say, is expensive and
an idyllic escape from city life. He mediocre. Mainly, though, it’s the prices
commissioned the architect Jaap Bakema that people object to: in school holidays,
to make his vision a reality. Bakema these will often exceed an all-inclusive
designed a plan for a holiday village, with A “Shangri-La for parents”, or an “open prison”? holiday abroad. A four-night break for
30 simple, modernist bungalows nestled a family of four in August costs between
unobtrusively in the woodland, clustered around a “Center” that £1,449 and £4,199 (for an “exclusive lodge”). On top of that,
combined a swimming pool and other sports facilities. It provided guests have to shell out for food (the lodges are self-catering) and
a blueprint that is still replicated in Center Parcs today. though swimming is free, activities cost extra: from hiring bicycles
to teddy bear making (£25.50 for ten minutes), table tennis (up to
How did the company grow? £8.75 for 30 mins) and “quad bike safari” (up to £47.50 an hour).
The concept was an instant hit, and in the 1970s five more villages
were constructed. However, the winning formula was not really How popular are they?
completed until 1980, when the “Aqua Mundo” was built at the Despite the high prices, and the odd PR disaster (the business
De Eemhof village near Amsterdam: a glass dome containing a tried to banish guests for 24 hours “as a mark of respect” over
swimming pool complete with slides, wave machines and Jacuzzis, The Queen’s funeral last year, though it later U-turned on the
surrounded by lush tropical foliage. This was a big moment for decision), Center Parcs are still hugely popular. The British and
the brand, writes the architect Tim O’Callaghan in his dissertation Irish resorts attract more than two million visitors each year,
on what he calls “the paradise machine”, “cementing its ability and they are effectively full, all the time: the annual occupancy
to compete as a year-round destination, while also providing rate is over 97%. More than half of visitors return within five
its first real architectural icon”. It was renamed Center Parcs years. Since Covid, Center Parcs have benefitted from the boom
in 1986. By 1987, when the first resort opened in the UK, in in “staycations”, and during the cost-of-living crisis, they seem
Sherwood Forest, there were Parcs in Belgium, Germany and the relatively affordable: they offer budget options, and also appeal
Netherlands. Today there are 27 in mainland Europe, and six in to wealthier customers trading down from foreign trips.
the UK and Ireland. (The two companies have been separately
owned since 2001; Derksen sold his shares in 1989.) How big is the business?
The UK and Irish business is being put up for sale by its owners,
What’s the attraction? the global real estate group Brookfield Property Partners.
The resorts present themselves as a safe, stress-free, traffic-free Although no official statement has been issued, the price tag is
haven, offering a wide array of leisure reported to be between £4bn and
activities, from swimming and cycling A short history of the British holiday £5bn – about double the £2.4bn
to falconry and fencing. Cars must be British aristocrats used to embark on lavish “grand Brookfield bought it for in 2015.
left at the entrance, but all resorts are tours” of Europe from the 17th and 18th centuries, and If that seems exorbitant, the
conveniently close to a motorway or the better-off went to genteel resort towns; but most company is a giant cash machine:
commuter hub. Guests still stay in Britons didn’t start holidaying until the 1800s, when it booked revenue of £426.6m
“villas” or “treehouses” nestled in workers began to benefit from ”Wakes Weeks” (week- between April and December 2022,
woodland. The British villages are all long holidays) and bank holidays (introduced in 1871), up 18% on its pre-pandemic figures.
about 400 acres in size. They provide and the new railways took the middle and working It made pre-tax profits of £66.2m
proximity to a manicured version of classes to seaside resorts. In the mid-19th century, a for the year to April 2022.
cabinet maker called Thomas Cook started arranging
nature, but also access to artificial affordable excursions, first in Britain, and then to
lakes, sports pitches, spas and Switzerland, Paris and Florence. The heyday of the What does the future hold?
restaurants; there are branches of British seaside came between the 1930s and 1960s. Center Parcs is hoping to build
Starbucks and Café Rouge on site. Billy Butlin built an array of British holiday parks from another village in the UK (though
At the heart of all six UK and Irish Bognor Regis to Skegness, promising “a week’s holiday plans for another site in West
sites sits a vast glazed “Subtropical for a week’s wages”. That offer was made possible by Sussex, near Gatwick, were rejected
Swimming Paradise”, heated to the 1938 Holidays with Pay Act, which entitled workers, on environmental grounds). And
29.5°C year-round – a geodesic dome for the first time, to one week of paid holiday. The first whoever owns it, Europe’s answer to
package tours to the Mediterranean began in the
© CENTER PARCS ELVEDEN FOREST

in Sherwood Forest, a pyramid in Disneyland, offering a safe, sanitised

1950s, accelerating in the 1960s. By 1990, the number
Elveden Forest, a “giant clam” in of overseas holidays taken by Britons stood at 21
version of nature, looks likely to go
Woburn Forest – providing weather- million – almost double what it had been a decade from strength to strength. The secret
proof entertainment. Center Parcs earlier. Today, with cheap flights readily available, of the brand’s success is that people
has been described as a middle-class Britons make 71 million trips overseas each year will pay through the nose for child-
utopia, a Shangri-La for parents with (including business trips and family visits). centred holidays. As customers say:
young children, a “Boden Butlin’s”. “If the kids are happy, we’re happy.”

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

14 NEWS Best articles: Britain
Can we defeat the people smugglers by persuading other countries
to act as Britain’s immigration police? That’s what Immigration IT MUST BE TRUE…
Paying evil Minister Robert Jenrick seems to think: he visited north African
countries last week to enlist their help to “stop the boats”. But
I read it in the tabloids

men to “stop he’s no pioneer: he’s following the lead of EU politicians, who
for more than a decade have been “stitching up deals” with
A woodyard worker from
Kent is so “addicted” to
cheese that he has spent
the boats” reactionary and repulsive regimes, paying them large sums to
detain would-be migrants to Europe. This policy has had little
more than £60,000 funding
his habit. Mark King, 54, eats
Kenan Malik impact on people trafficking, but it has been “catastrophic” two blocks of cheddar a day;
for thousands of innocent people fleeing oppression. Detention his favourite is a sandwich
The Observer centres in Libya, where militias have rebranded themselves as containing one whole block,
“coastguards”, have been damned by a UN report for the torture along with Marmite, white
and rape to which incarcerated migrants are routinely subjected. pepper and mayonnaise. He
avoids dishes like macaroni
In Sudan, the militia guilty of genocidal violence in Darfur now cheese, however, as he finds
“hunts down migrants” at the behest of Brussels. In defence of them insufficiently “cheesy”.
its own sovereignty, the EU has trampled over the sovereignty His wife Tracey told the Daily
of poorer nations: now the UK is set to do the same. Mirror that she isn’t worried.
“I took him to the GP for
Wake up, says Matthew Lynn. The powerhouse of China is bloods and all that and
about to push the capitalist West into second place, and no one everything came back perfect.
The capitalists seems to have noticed. The days of it selling us cheap stuff and
being a conveniently large market for our own are over. In a
The GP said because he’s
been eating it for so long it’s
like he’s acclimatised to it.”
are yielding to slew of industries, China is set to outperform us. Last month saw
the maiden flight of its first commercial jet, the C919 – a keenly
the dragon priced rival to the Boeing 737 or Airbus A320. Chinese car-maker
BYD has just overtaken Volkswagen in domestic sales and is
Matthew Lynn now pushing into the global market: China is already the world’s
largest exporter of cars. It’s also the second-largest investor in
The Daily Telegraph pharma R&D, after the US – only a matter of time before it starts
challenging Pfizer and GSK. But relying on industrial policy and
massive subsidies to compete with Beijing – as the US is doing by
pouring billions into chip manufacturing and green energy – is a
fool’s errand. The only way to keep up is by boosting the things
we’re good at – innovation and entrepreneurship – through
deregulation and lower taxes. And we’d better get a move on.

There could be no clearer illustration of the rapacity of fossil fuel

corporations than Ffos-y-Fran in south Wales, the UK’s biggest
How the fossil opencast coal mine, says George Monbiot. It was permitted to
open in 2005 as a “land reclamation scheme”, the idea being
A funeral firm in Edinburgh
is hoping to break down
fuel companies that money from the opencast extraction would be set aside to
rehabilitate a hill deeply scarred by the detritus left by previous
the taboos around death
dump on us deep mining. That work was meant to be done by the end of next
year. It hasn’t even begun. Instead, there’s an ever-deepening hole,
by offering novelty coffins,
including one that looks like
a Greggs sausage roll. Other
George Monbiot and the fund for restoring the land contains just £15m – the same
models from Go As You
amount as in 2014, since when the estimated restoration cost
Please include a pint of lager
The Guardian has ballooned from £50m to between £75m and £125m. And
and a Doctor Who Tardis.
Ffos-y-Fran is no one-off. There are numerous giant holes around
“The most unusual one we
the country that were all meant to be rehabilitated into country
had to prepare recently was
parks or housing developments. Yet the mining corporations keep
a pink Harry Potter-themed
wheeling out the same line: just let us dig a bit more, then we’ll be
coffin,” the firm’s general
able to fund the improvements. Across the world, the strategy of
manager told The Sun. “The
the fossil fuel companies is the same: “extract the money, dump
family had their mum photo-
the costs, abandon the community and move to the next frontier”.
shopped onto a broomstick.”
Should our rulers’ WhatsApp messages be open to public scrutiny An Airbnb “hostess from hell”
in the way other official missives are? The Government’s position, was convicted at Chester
What’s so says Hugo Rifkind, seems to be that as some of these messages are
private, they all should be regarded as such. A High Court ruling
Magistrates’ Court last week.
Lyndsey McCabe, a holistic
private about last year did indeed accept the view that such digital exchanges
were akin to “a conversation with an adviser in a corridor”, so
therapist, rented out a room
in her home near Chester to
WhatsApp? didn’t need to be officially logged. But if that’s true of one-off
messages, it’s surely not of those sent to a WhatsApp group,
Jane Dillon, a party planner,
model and actress, on 28
Hugo Rifkind the formation of which is essentially “a decision to hold all January. McCabe wrongly
concluded that Dillon was
meetings in a corridor from now on”. After all, there was nothing a prostitute and entered her
The Times impromptu about “CSA/CMO/Matt/PM/Dom”, the Covid-era room, shortly after her guest
Downing Street WhatsApp group that included the PM, the health went to bed, and began
secretary, the chief science and medical officers, and Dominic slapping and kicking her,
Cummings. Or about the wider “No10/DHSC/Covid-19” group. shouting: “Get out of my
These were clearly official channels of communication – ergo, they house... I know what you
should be treated as such and their contents copied and stored like are, you are a sex worker.”
formal minutes of any other sort. We can’t afford to let this “grey McCabe was ordered to pay
area” in Government communication continue unchecked. Dillon £500 in compensation.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Best of the American columnists NEWS 15

Taking Pride: the virtue signals of corporate America

Over the past few years, Pride Month
has become a fixture of the US
marketing calendar, said Danielle
Wiener-Bronner on CNN – an
opportunity for corporations to signal
their progressive values. But some
may tread more cautiously this June,
in light of a recent public backlash
against supposedly “woke” initiatives.
In April, right-wingers were furious
when Bud Light used the transgender
influencer Dylan Mulvaney in its
online marketing. Since then, sales
of the beer have dropped by about
a quarter, and the market value of its
parent company, Anheuser-Busch, has A Pride Month clothing display at Target
fallen by about $26bn. Last week, the
retail giant Target came under attack for its Pride-themed
range, which includes adult clothing with the slogan “Super
Queer” and rainbow-branded children’s clothes. In response
to widespread calls for boycotts and threats against its
employees, Target felt obliged to withdraw some lines
and make its Pride displays less prominent.
When will firms learn that American consumers don’t like being
lectured at, asked Jim Geraghty in National Review. It’s not the
job of corporations to make us more accepting of transgender
individuals, any more than it’s their
job to warn us about North Korea’s
intercontinental-missile programme.
I don’t like the boorish tone of some
of the pro-boycott “Bud Lighting”
campaigns, said Jonah Goldberg in
the Los Angeles Times. But if these
rows result in firms stepping back from
politics and concentrating on their core
mission – building shareholder value
– “America will be better for it”.
The idea that corporations are trying to
push US culture in a more progressive
direction is misplaced, said Greg
Sargent in The Washington Post. These
companies are making “self-interested
decisions” in response to shifting consumer tastes and needs, as
they always have. Many companies reluctantly backed the civil
rights movement in the 1960s, and the gay rights movement in
subsequent decades, for the same reason they now back Pride
Month and Black Lives Matter: to reach new customers and
strengthen the loyalty of their existing base. It’s all about money.
The recent flurry of boycott campaigns is a “rearguard action”
whipped up by right-wing activists and populist Republicans
to stop a cultural evolution that is already under way. They’re
winning some battles, but ultimately, they won’t win the war.

Is that it? After all the feverish speculation about how a standoff over the US debt ceiling might
trigger a default and a global financial crisis, last week’s low-key deal came as a surprising
It is not the anticlimax, says Paul Krugman. The need for the Republican Party to sign off on extra borrowing
gave the GOP access to “a financial doomsday machine”, and the party was expected to demand
economy, harsh spending cuts as the price of their agreement. In the event, though, they extracted “hardly any
major concessions” – mostly, just modest spending caps. What happened? Eventually we may get a
stupid blow-by-blow account of how the debt negotiations played out, but my suspicion is that the GOP’s
heart just wasn’t in it. Republicans “don’t actually care about the budget deficit” these days, or
Paul Krugman about fiscal policy in general. While right-wing think-tanks “still inveigh against the evils of big
government”, and the donor class is as keen as ever to secure tax cuts, “the real passion on the
The New York Times right” now seems to revolve around culture-war battles over issues such as abortion and racism.
How times change. “Critics of Democratic politics used to berate activists for focusing on social
issues while allowing Republicans to dictate the economic agenda.” Now it’s the other way round.

US politics provides little cause for cheer these days, says Henry Olsen, but we can take heart from
one thing. Recent elections show that, while we’re fiercely polarised about candidates’ views, we no
Voters are longer care much about their skin colour. For a long time, white and black Americans voted along
strictly racial lines. This “sad proclivity” wasn’t limited to the Deep South, and it persisted long after
increasingly the Jim Crow era. When Harold Washington, a black US representative of Illinois, unexpectedly
won Chicago’s Democratic mayoral primary in 1983, white voters in the city who typically voted
colour blind Democrat rallied en masse behind the unknown Republican nominee. As recently as 2015, more
than 80% of black lawmakers in the US House were elected from districts that were majority African
Henry Olsen American or at least majority non-white. Since 2018, though, 14 new black Democrats and four
black Republicans have been elected to the House from districts with white majorities. In the recent
The Washington Post Republican gubernatorial primary in Kentucky, a black candidate sailed to victory over two white
candidates with almost 48% of the vote of an overwhelmingly white GOP electorate. Racism is still
a problem, of course, but on this particular front, the US has come a long way in a short time.

Amazing but true, says Charlie Mahtesian: if Ron DeSantis makes it to the White House, he’ll be
the first Floridian ever to do so. All of the US’s other most populous states have produced presidents.
Can DeSantis Texas can point to three (four, if you count Dwight Eisenhower, who was born there). California has
produced two. Even Hawaii, only admitted to the union in 1959, can claim Barack Obama. But
lift the curse Florida, the third-largest state, home to more than 22 million people? A big zero. The irony is that
it’s an “ideal proving ground” for aspiring presidents. Winning statewide office requires campaigning
of Florida? in two time zones and ten TV markets, and winning over a hugely diverse electorate. The problem is
that Americans have always struggled to take the Sunshine State seriously. When, in the 1940s, the
Charlie Mahtesian writer John Gunther took stock of the nation for his book, Inside U.S.A., he noted that Florida’s
“freakishness in everything from architecture to social behaviour [is] unmatched in any American
Politico
state”. Florida was a political backwater back then, unlike now, but DeSantis is still running against
the state’s lingering reputation as “a gun-shaped anti-paradise of grifters, rejects and assorted
weirdos”. Does he have what it takes to lift the curse and put Florida on the presidential map?

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: International
Will China win the race to become the AI superpower?
The country that leads the way in is why it is restricting the sale of
artificial intelligence “will become advanced chips for AI to China.
the ruler of the world”. That was
Vladimir Putin’s prediction back in Understandably so, said Christy
2017, when AI was largely confined DeSmith in The Harvard Gazette
to the realm of online chess – and (Cambridge, US). China is
before anyone had even heard of uniquely well placed to become
ChatGPT, said Malte Lehming in an AI superpower. The technology
Tagesspiegel (Berlin). In that same is heavily dependent on the input
year, China’s President Xi Jinping and interpretation of data; and
announced plans to make his autocratic regimes “collect vast
nation a “global innovation hub” troves of it”, which they can hand
for AI by 2030. And since then, over to favoured tech firms. Yet
Beijing has invested “tens of when it comes to the systems
billions of dollars” a year in AI known as “foundation models”,
tech, said Bill Drexel and Hannah Ernie: Beijing’s answer to ChatGPT was launched in February which “give generative AI” like
Kelley in Foreign Affairs (New ChatGPT its wits, America is still
York). It has also leveraged its “vast espionage network to try leading the field, said The Economist. ChatGPT was created by
to steal foreign corporate technology secrets”. All this has paid US startup OpenAI; Google and Meta have powerful systems
off. China produces “more top-tier AI engineers than any of their own. And while Chinese firms have built rivals to
other country – around 45% more than the US”, its closest ChatGPT, their foremost effort, Baidu’s Ernie, is “widely seen
competitor; and it has overtaken the US in “publishing high- as less clever” than the best US systems. Analysts reckon China
quality AI research”, accounting for some 30% of citations is now “two or three years behind America” in this arena, in
in major AI journals in 2021. AI has now become integral to part because so much more of the internet is written in English,
Beijing’s “system of state surveillance, repression and control”. giving US-built chatbots more material to draw upon.

It has also become integral to China’s military strategy, said
Gabriel Dominguez in The Japan Times (Tokyo). The People’s
Liberation Army (PLA) is preoccupied with developing its
capabilities for “cognitive warfare”: using AI techniques to
influence the minds and shape the decisions of its adversaries.
In particular, its focus is on using them to manipulate public
opinion in Taiwan, which it could do by amassing vast
databanks of detailed personal information and then using
deep fakes and other forms of AI-generated misinformation to
engineer a change in people’s perception of China’s intentions.
Running in parallel with this is the PLA’s deployment of AI
on its own troops: more and more of its soldiers are being
given smart sensor bracelets that it claims can continuously
record their facial information and state of mind, and address
any perceived psychological problems. There is still a fair
amount of scepticism about how effective these techniques will
prove to be, but Washington isn’t taking any chances – which
Just as worrying for China is the exodus of its experts, said
Gabrielle Chou in Le Monde Diplomatique (Paris). Although
“almost a third of the world’s best AI researchers come from
China”; only one in ten of them work there. Most have gone
to work in the US, fearing that Beijing will soon tighten
regulation of the sector. Their fears are well-placed, said Matt
O’Shaughnessy in the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace (Washington). In April, China’s internet regulator
unveiled a draft law containing wide-ranging new rules for AI.
All AI-generated content must henceforth reflect “socialist core
values”; content deemed a “subversion of state power” will be
banned. The truth is that AI poses a clear threat to authoritarian
regimes as well as an advantage: “deep fakes” and other
AI-based techniques can easily undermine national security and
social order. China might see AI as a way of advancing its quest
for global supremacy, said Bill Drexel and Hannah Kelley, but
just like everybody else, it will need to tread carefully.

“Gastronationalism.” That’s what Italian MEPs are being accused of, say Karl De Meyer and
ITALY Olivier Tosseri. They keep trying to skewer EU food initiatives. They’ve tried to foil the launch of
the Nutri-Score, a system – already adopted by France and Germany – which rates food from “A”
The threat (the healthiest) to “E”. It caused outrage in Italy because its evaluation method resulted in olive oil
Brussels poses and parmesan being awarded an “ignoble” C and D, lower than French fries. Rome has also revolted
against the EU’s approval of powdered insect larvae in foods such as flour: in its view, Italian cuisine
to Italy’s pride and bugs don’t mix. Some see this stand as a desperate attempt by the ruling Brothers of Italy party
to express its nationalist populism: thwarted by Brussels on major economic issues, its the one issue
Les Echos the far-right party can take a stand on. But others feel it’s more deep-rooted than that. Food “is the
(Paris) only flag that national pride can unfurl”, says food historian Alberto Grandi. The invented traditions
associated with it are Italy’s foundation myths. To mess with them is to mess with Italian identity.

It’s the media’s job to expose wrongdoing, not act as prosecutors in a war crimes trial, says Matt
AUSTRALIA
© ILLUSTRATION FOR THE CHINA PROJECT BY ALEX SANTAFÉ

Collins. Yet that’s the position three Australian newspapers found themselves in, after they published
evidence in 2018 that Ben Roberts-Smith, Australia’s most decorated living soldier, had murdered
From hero to Taliban prisoners while serving in Afghanistan. Roberts-Smith then sued the papers for libel –
a disastrous miscalculation. Last week, a court found that the most serious charges were
zero: a soldier’s “substantially true”: the Victoria Cross winner had been involved in the murders of three unarmed
downfall men and ordered another killing to “blood” a rookie soldier. The papers have been vindicated – but
it shouldn’t have played out this way. This was a story that deserved to be told in the public interest,
The Sydney Morning Herald but when the papers first reported the allegations there was no such defence in Australian law (it was
introduced in 2021). In light of such serious allegations, it was the state that should have initiated
a war crimes trial. Instead, it passed that responsibility to the newspapers, who would have faced
ruin had the verdict gone against them. So Roberts-Smith, though not convicted of anything, is now
tainted as a criminal. And the press will be wary of pursuing such investigations again. What a mess.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Health & Science NEWS 19

What the scientists are saying…

A blood test for Alzheimer’s
Scientists have moved a step closer to
developing a blood test that can predict
whether people are at risk of Alzheimer’s,
reports The Times. The disease has long
been associated with the build-up of a
protein called amyloid in the brain, but
although everyone with Alzheimer’s has
these amyloid plaques, not everyone with
the plaques gets Alzheimer’s, suggesting
that something else is involved. Now,
researchers have identified what that might
be: a star-shaped cell called an astrocyte.
For their study, they gave 1,000 people
in their 60s and 70s blood tests and PET
scans to gauge their amyloid levels, and
also tested for astrocyte reactivity. They
found that the patients with abnormal
astrocyte activity were the ones whose
amyloid levels continued to build up, and
triggered the activation of another protein,
called tau, that is also closely associated
with Alzheimer’s. “This puts astrocytes
at the centre as key regulators of disease
progression,” said Dr Tharick Pascoal,
of the University of Pittsburgh. The hope
is that it will now be possible to develop
a combined test for Alzheimer’s, which
would lead to much earlier diagnoses,
and perhaps new treatments.
Ants build their own waymarks
Desert ants build landmarks to help them
find their way home across the featureless
Saharan landscape. Famous for their
navigational skills, the ants travel long
distances to find food for their colonies,
reports the New Scientist. But for ants
like Cataglyphis fortis, which lives on
the Tunisian salt flats, finding the tiny
entrances to their underground nests is
quite a challenge in the absence of any
natural landmarks, such as plants or hills.
Now a team at the Max Planck Institute,
“An enormous effort”: an ant on its nest hill
in Germany, has examined the mounds that
the ants build, and found that these appear
to be ant-made landmarks. They began by
tracking the ants’ journeys. It turned out
that on the longest journeys, of about 2km,
a fifth of the ants did not make it home.
The team then removed the mounds – and
noted that losses rose up to fourfold. The
ants quickly rebuilt the mounds, but if the
researchers created an artificial one for
them, they didn’t bother. “It’s an enormous
effort to build such a nest hill. There are
hundreds of ants building the whole
night,” says study lead Dr Markus Knaden.
“So they don’t do it if they don’t have to.”
The foods that boost memory
Age-related memory loss can be reversed
by eating foods that are rich in flavanols,
a study has suggested. These nutrients are
found in tea and dark chocolate as well as
in certain fruit and vegetables, including
onions, broccoli, kale, tomatoes, apples
and berries. Researchers in the US recruited
3,500 healthy older adults, and randomly
assigned them either a 500mg flavanol
supplement or a placebo. The participants
filled in questionnaires about their diets,
and took online memory tests at intervals
over three years. Consuming more
flavanols seemed to make no difference
to the people who already had a diet that
was rich in them. But after a year on the
supplements, the participants who’d been
deemed flavanol-deficient showed a 16%
improvement in their short-term memory,
which was still evident two years later.
The oldest cases of the plague
Analysis of ancient teeth unearthed at
Bronze Age sites in Cumbria and Somerset
has revealed that the plague reached
Britain at least 4,000 years ago, thousands
of years before the first recorded outbreak,
the so-called Plague of Justinian in AD541.
Researchers from Oxford University and
elsewhere extracted dental pulp from
34 skeletons and examined it to see if
it contained the DNA of Yersinia pestis.
Three cases came back clearly positive –
two in children who were around 11 when
they died, and one in a woman who was
in her 30s or 40s. The children’s remains
came from the Charterhouse Warren site in
the Mendips, where some 30 skeletons were
found dumped in a shaft; many showed
signs of trauma and dismemberment.
The finding raises the possibility that they
were attacked because they had the plague.
Genetic analysis indicates that it was the
pneumonic plague. Later strains had a
gene that allowed the bacteria to be spread
by fleas, typically on rats, leading to the
bubonic plague that caused the Black
Death in the 14th century. Probably the
deadliest pandemic ever, it killed about a
third of Europe’s population at the time.

How AI can protect our rivers Hope for migraine sufferers

Proponents of AI say it has a multiplicity of Thousands of people who suffer from
positive uses; and now wildlife experts have frequent migraines are to be offered a
identified a new one. They say the kind of facial potentially life-changing drug on the
recognition technology that is used at airports NHS. Rimegepant, which was approved
could be adapted to prevent invasive fish last week by the drugs watchdog Nice,
from colonising British rivers. There is growing is taken every other day as a wafer that
dissolves under the tongue. The new
concern that pink salmon are establishing guidelines say it can be given to patients
breeding colonies in UK rivers, threatening who suffer four to 15 migraine attacks
© MARKUS KNADEN, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR CHEMICAL ECOLOGY

native Atlantic salmon and potentially a month, and who have not responded
disrupting fragile ecosystems, reports The Daily to three or more existing treatments.
Telegraph. Norwegian experts have had similar Rimegepant prevents migraines by
concerns – and have developed AI river gates to stopping a protein – calcitonin gene-
keep the fish out. The software has been trained related peptide – from binding to its
Pink salmon: facing closed gates
to recognise the distinct features of the invaders. target in the brain. The protein’s build-up
If the AI concludes that the fish coming up the river are Atlantic salmon, the gates causes severe inflammation, leading
to the pain associated with migraines.
open. If it decides they are pink salmon (which have distinctive humped backs), the Evaluating the drug, Nice noted that
gates stay closed and the fish are diverted to a holding tank and taken back out to sea. migraines were often an “invisible
Introduced into Russian rivers in the 1950s, pink salmon were rarely observed disability” and that they blight millions
in British rivers until 2015, but 200 have been seen since then, and last year, their of lives. Migraine charities welcomed
smolts (young salmon) were found in two Scottish rivers for the first time. In Norway, the approval of the drug, but said it
numbers reached 100,000 in 2021, and they are likely to hit a million this year. should be offered more widely.

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

20 NEWS
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
A cheese company in
Oxford that used the Cerne
Abbas Giant on one of its
labels has been criticised
for editing out the chalk hill
figure’s famously large
penis. The 180ft-tall figure
is thought to date back to
some time between AD700
and 1,100BC, said The
Times, but its age is up for
debate. The National Trust
recently asked visitors
how old they believed the
giant was. One woman
apparently replied that he
“looks about 21”.
Edward Enninful is stepping
down as editor of British
Vogue after six years.
His departure from the
£500,000-a-year job is being
sold as an exciting new
move – he will take on a
“global advisory position” –
but the gossip is that he’s
been demoted, having lost
a battle for supremacy with
US Vogue editor Anna
Wintour. Enninful had
apparently demanded her
job, but the 73-year-old was
not ready to relinquish the
role she’s held for 35 years.
“Edward shot for the Moon
and lost and so will go back
to his first love, which is
being a stylist,” a friend
told The Sunday Times.
Speaking at the Hay Festival
last week, Margaret Atwood
revealed that she’d used the
flight over to the UK to catch
up with the latest film in the
Hotel Transylvania cartoon
series. She has, she admits,
quite a weakness for
children’s animations.
Indeed, on another flight,
she became so engrossed
by 2017’s Captain
Underpants that she forgot
her laptop on the plane. In
her defence, she said it was
a “really edgy adventure”.
THE WEEK 10 June 2023
Talking points
Kosovo: Europe’s other conflict
With all eyes on the war in
Ukraine, insufficient attention
has been paid to “another
chronic conflict in the heart
of Europe that, yet again,
threatens to spill over into
violence and bloodshed”, said
The Times. Last week, Nato
sent 700 more peacekeeping
troops to Kosovo, boosting
its 3,800-strong force there,
in response to days of rioting
in three towns in the north
of the country. Ethnic Serbs
– who form a majority in the
area – had boycotted local
elections, with the result that
ethnic Albanian candidates
Kfor forces in northern Kosovo
won. Though turnout was just
3.5%, the government in Pristina ordered the
new mayors to take up their office, infuriating
ethnic Serbs and Kosovo’s Nato allies. US
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that
Kosovo’s Albanian-nationalist PM, Albin Kurti,
was to blame for “escalated tensions” – and
kicked Kosovo out of a US-European military
exercise. Kurti in turn blames Belgrade, backed
by its allies in Moscow, for stirring up the unrest. said Con Coughlin in The Daily Telegraph.
The centuries-old dispute in Kosovo appears as
intractable as ever, said Marton Dunai in the FT.
Serbs regard the ancient Serbian province as the
cradle and heart of their culture and statehood.
But ethnically, Kosovo has always been mixed,
said Chris Stevenson in The Independent – and
Albanians have formed the majority for more
AI: a case of “regulatory sabotage”?
In just 23 words, more than 350 leading figures
in artificial intelligence research delivered a
message last week that was brutal in its
simplicity, said Andrew Griffin in The
Independent. “Mitigating the risk of extinction
from AI,” they warned, “should be a global
priority alongside other societal-scale risks
such as pandemics and nuclear war.” In the past
few months, we’ve had a series of apocalyptic
warnings about AI; that these have come from
the very people who are developing the tech
makes them seem all the more alarming: the
signatories of the new statement include the
CEOs of Google DeepMind and OpenAI, the
creator of ChatGPT. But before jumping into our
bunkers, we should ask why these experts are
saying this, and why now? Partly, it’s “reverse
marketing”: our products are so powerful, they
could wipe out life on Earth. Actually, they
can’t – not yet at least. But by likening AI to
a lethal virus, the makers of the tech also hope
to persuade us that they’re powerless in the face
of dangers that are naturally occurring and
imminent; when in fact, the risks are the result of
choices that they’ve made – and are still making.
What we are seeing, said Matteo Wong in The
Atlantic, is an attempt at “regulatory sabotage”.
Although ChatGPT’s ability to spout human-like
language has captivated the media and investors,
than a century. Following the
break-up of Yugoslavia in the
1990s, the nationalist Serb
leader Slobodan Miloševic
cracked down hard on a
separatist movement in
Kosovo, leading to the brutal
war of 1998-1999 which was
only brought to an end by a
Nato-led bombing campaign
that drove out the Serb forces.
Kosovo declared independence
in 2008, but Serbia, Russia,
China and five EU countries
do not recognise it. Today,
ethnic Serbs make up only 5%
of its 1.9 million population,
but in the north, they are in
a large majority.
Kosovo’s Nato sponsors hope to square this
circle by giving ethnic Serbs enough rights and
protections to convince them – and Serbia itself
– to recognise Kosovan statehood, said Aris
Roussinos on UnHerd. Ultimately, they hope
to bring Serbia and Kosovo fully into the West’s
orbit. Naturally, Vladimir Putin has other ideas,
With his “special military operation” looking
shaky, there is nothing he’d like more than for
a new conflict to erupt in Europe that would
divert resources away from Ukraine. The
disturbances in northern Kosovo might seem
“relatively parochial”. But they “have all the
potential – with Moscow’s help – to escalate
into a far bigger crisis”.
“granting Silicon Valley a Promethean aura”,
AI and its harms are much as they have been for
years: the “technology depends on surveillance
and data collection”, exploits the creative work
of others, “amplifies bias, and is not sentient”.
By hyping up the idea that it’s become terrifying,
its creators are seeking to divert attention from
the damage it is already doing – and the myriad
ways we could be minimising that. The CEOs of
the tech firms keep saying they want regulation,
said Marietje Schaake in the FT. But “executive
actions speak louder than words”. Sam Altman,
CEO of OpenAI, told the US congress that he’d
welcome regulation last week; days later, he was
threatening to pull out of the EU because of it.
To echo Mark Zuckerberg’s words, what tech
giants like is “the right regulation”. In this case,
said Grant Gallagher in Newsweek, that means
costly and complex licensing and testing rules
that the big beasts, with their good government
contacts, can easily navigate, but that would act
as a barrier to entry for smaller firms. Such is the
existing power of the tech giants, governments
will struggle to limit their activities, said Martin
Rees in The Independent. And their power and
wealth will only grow, as the full potential of
AI is unleashed and its systems become more
pervasive and intrusive. AI may not wipe us
out, but it still poses a pandemic-scale threat.
 Talking points
Keir Starmer: invading Tory territory
“Labour has come to life,”
said John Rentoul in The
Independent. After a long
period during which
journalists have complained
about an absence of detail,
Keir Starmer’s party is
suddenly unveiling lots of
new policies – many of which
unashamedly invade Tory
territory. On immigration,
Labour wants to scrap
rules that allow employers
in certain sectors to hire
overseas workers at below
the market rate. On housing, Reeves and Starmer: securonomics
it wants to enable local
councils to buy land and capture the gain in
value from the granting of planning permission.
On Brexit, Starmer has ruled out trying to rejoin
the single market or customs union, saying
“Britain’s future is outside the EU”. The point
of these announcements is to close off lines of
Tory attack, to flesh out the broad “missions”
set out by Starmer in February – and “to have
an election-ready programme in place by the
party conference in October”.
Labour recognises that the winner of the next
election will inherit a tough financial situation,
said Bagehot in The Economist. The last time it
entered office, average growth was about 3%
and national debt was 37% of GDP. At the
next election, growth is expected to be 1.8%;
and debt is already 99% of GDP. The party is
hoping, optimistically, that good intentions and
Succession: a 21st century masterpiece?
It was reported to be a term of
Jerry Hall’s divorce settlement
from Rupert Murdoch that
she was not allowed to give
“story ideas” to the writers of
Succession, HBO’s drama about
a tyrannical media tycoon and
his children’s bitter struggle to
inherit his empire. “Thankfully,
as its sublime finale showed last
week, they continued to manage
without her contributions,”
said Catherine Bennett in The “Insanely rich and disagreeable” the figure will rise with streamed
Observer. Jesse Armstrong’s
“gorgeously produced satire about the
insanely rich and disagreeable” has become an
international phenomenon. And the ending of
the fourth and final series did not disappoint.
Part sitcom, part Shakespearean tragedy,
Succession is a “peerless drama”, agreed Louis
Chilton in The Independent. Television, a young
medium, has produced few masterpieces, but
this is “a truly great work of art”, up there with
The Wire, Breaking Bad and The Sopranos.
The first two seasons, I’ll admit, were
“incredible”, said Arwa Mahdawi in The
Guardian. But after that, it got a little “meh”.
The acting and the one-liners were great. But
“it was the same old story over and over again:
NEWS 21
Wit &
strategic thinking will be
enough to overhaul public
services. But in the case of
Wisdom
climate change, it has been “It is easy to be tolerant
“fiscally realistic”, pledging when you do not care.”
to spend £28bn a year on Clement F. Rogers, quoted
everything from home in Forbes
insulation to tree-planting. “There are no solutions.
“Making the national grid There are only trade-offs.”
carbon-free by 2030 will not Economist Thomas
come cheap.” What a welcome Sowell, quoted in
contrast to the Tories, who The Washington Examiner
dumped their home insulation
scheme after barely six “Streams of oratory do not
months, said Bill McGuire in always come from
The Guardian. At least Labour mountains of thought.”
“walks the talk on climate”. Charles Grant, quoted in the
San Francisco Chronicle
The green reforms, which include the
“It’s not the notes
establishment of a state-owned energy company,
you play. It’s the notes
are part of what Rachel Reeves, the shadow
you don’t play.”
chancellor, calls a new strategy of
Miles Davis, quoted in the
“securonomics”, said Fraser Nelson in The Daily
New Hampshire Journal
Telegraph. Apparently involving a more “active,
strategic state” that puts voters’ interests before “Liberals looked for heretics,
unqualified support for free markets, it’s a while conservatives looked
version of President Biden’s green subsidies and for converts.”
protectionist policies – and is likely to be just as Attributed to Michael
ineffective. As for Labour’s plan to ban new gas Kinsley, quoted in
and oil licences in the North Sea, it’s hard to see The Guardian
how that would improve security given that it
would just make us more reliant on imports. “My definition of happiness
Reeves is a smart operator who has won over is being alone in a room in
many sceptical business figures. But her a house full of people.”
“securonomics” agenda is “a massive gamble Antonia Fraser, quoted in
on the failed policies of yesteryear”. The Mail on Sunday
“Words are to the
anthropologist what rolled
pebbles are to the geologist –
battered relics of past ages
rich people backstabbing rich often containing within them
people and swearing a lot as indelible records capable of
they wallow in opulent misery”. intelligent interpretation.”
(There were, apparently, 2,071 John Herschel, quoted on
“fucks” in the first three seasons. The Collector
The finale of season three alone
had 119.) Succession isn’t “It is best to read the
perfect, agreed Ed Cumming weather forecast before
in The Daily Telegraph. And it we pray for rain.”
wasn’t a real hit, either. In the Mark Twain, quoted
US, 2.9 million people watched in The Times
the final episode live (though
Statistics of the week
viewings). By contrast, Seinfeld At the end of 2021, there
got 76 million for its finale, and Friends 52 were 31 electric cars in the
million. In the UK the episode had just under UK for every public charger;
600,000 viewers on the night, “a quarter by the end of last year,
as many as watched Jeremy Paxman’s final there were 36 to one. In
University Challenge”. What was important, it the northwest of England,
seems, was “the kinds of people who watch it”. there are 85 cars per
Succession is the latest in a line of “elite” TV charger, up from 49.
The Times
shows, forced on us by “the chatterati”.
More than 800 million trees
Yes, it’s a “niche” programme, said Ross Douthat have been cut down in the
Amazon rainforest in the past
in The New York Times. So what? Surely it’s six years to make way for
enough to say that Succession is excellent: a beef cattle, most of which is
“crackling black comedy of manners” planned reared for export.
as carefully as a good novel, with a “rare The Guardian/Bureau of
dramatic unity”. Unlike so many of the best Investigative Journalism
TV shows, it even had a “proper ending”.
10 June 2023 THE WEEK
22 NEWS Sport
Cricket: England suffer a “huge blow” before the Ashes
Since Ben Stokes became England’s Test captain a
year ago, only one player has been ever-present in
his side, said Paul Newman in the Daily Mail. That
player is Jack Leach. The left-arm spinner may
not be the most flamboyant member of Stokes’s
squad, but his bowling has come to be regarded
as indispensable to the success of a team that has
won 11 of its past 13 Tests. So the news that they
will be without their “No. 1 slow-bowling option”
strikes a “huge blow” to England’s prospects in the
Ashes – which start on 16 June. The 31-year-old
began experiencing back pain during last week’s
Test against Ireland, which England won
comfortably. On Sunday, a scan revealed that he
has a stress fracture in his lumbar spine. He is
expected to be out for the whole summer.
Leach: indispensable?
Leach is one of several players who have been
“revitalised” under Stokes’s leadership, said Tanya Aldred and
Ali Martin in The Guardian. Earlier in his career, he was in and
out of the Test side, but over the past year Stokes has consistently
given him “attacking fields”, and bowled him at important stages
of games. That trust has been rewarded with a player who has
“visibly grown in confidence”. And with a question mark hanging present a formidable challenge to England’s batsmen. England’s
over Stokes’s own bowling fitness, Leach’s ability to bowl long
spells – and therefore relieve pressure on England’s pace attack –
was looking “more crucial than ever”. What makes Leach’s
absence particularly worrying is the “paucity
of spin in the English game”, said Mike Atherton
in The Times. With the County Championship
pushed “to the margins of the season”, England’s
counties no longer have much incentive to
produce attacking, wicket-taking spin bowlers.
Adequate replacements are thin on the ground,
and England could even be forced to resort to
an all-pace attack.
The injury to Leach aside, England could take
some positives from their victory over Ireland,
said Nick Hoult in The Daily Telegraph. Opener
Ben Duckett struck 182 in his first Test in
England, and Ollie Pope scored England’s fastest-
ever Test double century with 205 from 208 balls.
Meanwhile, bowlers Stuart Broad and debutant
Josh Tongue both bagged five-wicket hauls.
While such performances can’t hurt England’s confidence, they
are all but meaningless as predictors for the Ashes, said Simon
Wilde in The Sunday Times. Australia are a team “of a different
magnitude” from Ireland. In particular, their world-class pace
trio of Pat Cummins, Josh Hazlewood and Mitchell Starc will
recent success has largely been founded on ultra-aggressive
batting – but it has to be said “they are in the dark” as to
whether the tactic will pay off against Australia.

Football: Manchester United have to bow to their rivals

Saturday’s FA Cup final was the “first all-Manchester
FA Cup final there has ever been”, said Oliver Holt
in the Daily Mail. And for both teams there was a
great deal at stake. For Pep Guardiola’s Manchester
City, victory would keep alive hopes of ending the
season with the treble. For Manchester United – so
far the only treble-winning club in English football
– victory would prevent “the new blue empire across
the city from equalling their feat”.
The match got off to a dramatic start: City’s captain,
Ilkay Gündogan, opened the scoring inside the first
13 seconds. His perfectly struck edge-of-the-area
volley was the fastest-ever goal in an FA Cup final Gündogan: a perfect strike it with their rivals won’t be “easy to digest”. Yet on
– a rout seemed on the cards. Yet to United’s credit,
they battled hard, said Sam Wallace in The Daily Telegraph, and
went on to make a decent match of it, even if their 33rd-minute
equaliser, a Bruno Fernandes penalty, was extremely lucky, having
been set up by a baffling VAR handball decision
against Jack Grealish. But then Gündogan scored
with another volley early in the second half, and the
lead proved decisive. Although far from a “vintage
City performance”, the divide between the two teams
was nonetheless stark: whereas Erik ten Hag’s United
are very good, City are simply “irresistible”.
Now just one more match, Saturday’s Champions
League final against Inter Milan, lies between them
and the treble, said David Hytner in The Guardian.
United will be praying City lose that game. The treble
matters enormously at Old Trafford: having to share
current form, there’s little realistic hope of Inter –
who finished third in Serie A this season – getting the better of
Guardiola’s team. “City are just so convincing in all areas, so
powerful”, it would be a huge shock if they don’t clinch the treble.

Have Mercedes finally turned the corner? Sporting headlines

On the face of it the Spanish
Grand Prix was business as
usual, said Giles Richard in
The Guardian: Max Verstappen
claimed his third straight victory
after yet another “crushingly
dominant” performance. But
behind the Dutchman, things
were different: the pecking order
was “revitalised”. The Mercedes
duo of Lewis Hamilton and Hamilton: relishing second place drivers’ title from Hamilton”,
George Russell secured their
“first double podium of 2023”, finishing second
and third respectively. Such relative success had
seemed “all but unimaginable”, so badly has
the Mercedes car been “off the pace”. But on
the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, the newly
redesigned car was a “revelation”. Undoubtedly
there’s a “long way to go” – Verstappen “looks
unstoppable” at present – but this was still
a “great step forward” for
Hamilton and his team.
The past three seasons have
been cruel to Mercedes, who
won a record eight consecutive
constructors’ titles between
2014 and 2021, said Alasdair
Reid in The Times. “There was
the race director’s howler at the
tail end of 2021 that took the
followed by last year’s botched
technical innovation – the “so-called zero-pod
W13 concept” – that led to a car so beset by
problems that Hamilton called it “undriveable”.
Things were no better at the start of this season.
But with their latest innovation, Mercedes do
seem to have “turned a corner”. Whether it
will come in time for the 38-year-old Hamilton
to challenge for another title remains to be seen.
Golf The 20-year-old American
Rose Zhang became the first
player in 72 years to win on
her pro LPGA Tour debut at
the Mizuho Americas Open.
Football Australian manager
Ange Postecoglou, 57, has
been named manager of
Tottenham Hotspur. Barcelona
beat Wolfsburg 3-2 to win the
Uefa Women’s Champions
League for the second time.
Tennis Top seed Carlos Alcaraz
will face Novak Djokovic in
the semi-final of the French
Open after beating Stefanos
Tsitsipas 6-2, 6-1, 7-6. The first
women’s semi-final will be
between Karolina Muchová
play Aryna Sabalenka.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023


Pick of the week’s correspondence
MPs at large
To The Independent
Boris Johnson has a seat in the
Commons and yet is allowed
to occupy a distant location
of choice while paid from the
public purse, to do absolutely
nothing. If reports are to be
believed, he spends more time
on holiday and lecture tours
than he spends doing the job
the country pays him for.
Presumably, all other MPs
are entitled to do the same.
Is it time they were obliged
to book holidays only when
Parliament is in recess?
It would appear that Kwasi
Kwarteng, Liz Truss, Dominic
Raab, Priti Patel and Chris
Skidmore, whose book
Britannia Unchained offered
the opinion that “the British
are among the worst idlers
in the world”, were right. At
least rules oblige the rest of
us to actually turn up to
work to get paid, although
in fairness the country would
be in a much healthier state if
Kwarteng and Truss had not.
David Nelmes, Newport
The harm of lockdown...
To The Daily Telegraph
The findings discussed in
your report on the impact
of lockdown come as no
surprise to many of us.
However, the reality is that,
when the pandemic began, the
Government had little choice in
seeking to limit the loss of life
to Covid through draconian
and costly lockdowns.
Imagine the reaction if it had
followed Sweden and stood
firm against public opinion.
Every death would have been
laid at Boris Johnson’s door,
even though today we can see
how wrong that would have
been. The only consolation is
that we now have evidence
to support the claim that
lockdowns not only don’t
work but also, in the long
run, do more harm than good.
Sadly, we shall be picking up
the human and economic
pieces for years to come.
Wesley Hallam, Batheaston,
Somerset
...is worse than thought
To The Guardian
From 2020 to 2022, I
autopsied people who had
died of or with Covid. But
many others died not from
having it themselves, but
O Letters have been edited
LETTERS 25
Exchange of the week accept our dalliance with the
EU was nothing more than
The cost of clean energy a failed experiment.
Steve Mackinder, Denver,
To The Sunday Times Norfolk
Keir Starmer’s plan to ban new drilling in the North Sea
and invest in clean energy is sound economics. We have long Artificial not intelligent
known that decarbonising energy quickly will avoid climate To The Times
damage, slash air pollution and stabilise energy prices. We Calling the present generation
also know that a greener, healthier and safer global energy of advanced machine-learning
system will be substantially cheaper. Our research estimates systems “intelligent” is surely
that a fast transition to clean energy by 2050 would save a misnomer. These systems
£10trn in global energy costs alone, creating true energy cannot tell reality from fantasy
security and preventing climate breakdown. or good from evil; they cannot
Investing in new oil and gas now is like investing in process abstract concepts and
typewriters ten years into the internet revolution. The sooner they cannot process values and
the UK gets the infrastructure built, the sooner we will start morals. They are therefore not
saving money; the faster we move, the more we will save. truly intelligent in any normal
Prof J. Doyne Farmer, Baillie Gifford professor of sense of the word.
mathematics, University of Oxford The Rev Canon Charles
Jenkin, Bury St Edmunds
To The Sunday Times
If the UK reduces its production of fossil fuels, it will do Lift the tax burden...
nothing to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, since the demand To The Daily Telegraph
will be met by other producers – and they will probably be The main reason for
less environmentally conscious than, say, Shell. abolishing inheritance tax is,
If we are to reduce the burning of these fuels, it’s the users, counterintuitively, to tax the
not the producers, who need to be convinced. Rather than rich. The really rich business
targeting the oil companies, activists should talk to people who owners are largely resident in
are waiting at airports, for example, and extol the advantages Switzerland and such places.
of online business meetings and the joys of holidaying at home. But for inheritance tax, they
Henry Haslam, Taunton, Somerset would return to England
and pay income tax on their
To the Financial Times worldwide incomes. It would
“Green hydrogen’s staggering cost” refers to Lex’s calculation be like 1979, when Margaret
that “a net zero [green hydrogen] system might require ... Thatcher abolished exchange
$20trn of investment by 2050”. It is worth noting this control. Money flowed into
“staggering” cost of less than $1trn a year is less than fossil this country.
fuel subsidies in 2022, as calculated by the IEA. That was Sir David Roche, London
admittedly an exceptional year, but the point is that
staggering costs can be affordable. ...on the poor, not the rich
Peter Nicholas, London To The Daily Telegraph
Scrapping, even reducing,
because they were advised not Brexit: get over it inheritance tax is the wrong
to go to hospital or to see their The Independent priority. The beneficiaries are
GP with symptoms. They died Your readers continue overwhelmingly likely to be
of undiagnosed acute diabetes, relentlessly to rail against the affluent. Taxation in this
leukaemia, other cancers and democratic UK decision to exit country is disproportionately
acute coronary thrombosis. the EU. We made an informed on working-aged people. They
NHS 111 advisers did not ask choice to leave, with lies should be the priority for any
people with fever symptoms presented by both sides. tax cuts – especially those on
about their recent travel, so The romantic vision of our low incomes. Conservatism
some died alone at home of nation in harmony with our is at its best when it supports
treatable malaria. Saddest of European friends is rose-tinted those striving to achieve the
all were the deaths of pregnant piffle. We refused to sign up for good life, rather than those
women: one after a home the Schengen free movement who already have it.
delivery, and another from agreement and couldn’t allow Ryan Shorthouse, London
undiagnosed sepsis. ourselves to adopt
I tried to interest London the euro. We were
public health leaders in these never “in” Europe.
“collateral Covid deaths”, Unless there is
noting that they needed to something new
collect the autopsy reports. to say, can I ask
Coroners deleted my that we stop
references to Covid (“only this depressing
indirect”), and thus the campaign? It is
death certificates did not futile to keep
mention the infection. Public banging the same
health was not interested. drum. Let’s try “Why has the shit hit the fan?
It was supposed to go in the river.”
Prof Sebastian Lucas, focusing on the
Westbury, Wiltshire here and now and © PRIVATE EYE
10 June 2023 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
The Swimmer
by Patrick Barkham
Hamish Hamilton 400pp £20
The Week Bookshop £15.99
The naturalist Roger Deakin almost
single-handedly kickstarted the “wild
swimming” craze, said Tom Parfitt in
The Times. His 1999 book Waterlog
– an account of his quest to swim
through the British Isles, in seas and
rock pools, rivers, lakes, tarns and
streams – was a literary sensation, and
turned its author into “something of a guru” for many. Now, 17
years after Deakin’s death from a brain tumour, aged 63, comes
Patrick Barkham’s startlingly original biography. Barkham, who
is himself a nature writer for The Guardian, reveals that he started
writing a “cradle-to-grave biography”, but then scrapped it in
favour of a less conventional work – one in which Deakin is “lead
narrator” of his own life story, while friends and acquaintances
add their own recollections. The author admits that the technique
might have “outraged Deakin” – who was highly attentive to
detail – but the book feels “rich and authentic”, and captures
the spirit of an “extraordinary man”.
The Swimmer “reads well”, but Barkham’s approach is not
unproblematic, said David Horspool in the TLS. It’s not always
27
clear whether he is quoting directly
from Deakin’s journals and letters,
or simply putting words in his mouth
(and there are no notes or index to
help). It’s also the case that Barkham’s
“generous” portrait of the naturalist
doesn’t always chime with what others
in the book say about him. Barkham
includes the voice of a girlfriend,
Serena Inskip, who recalls that he
once hit her over the head with a frying
pan, and made “unreasonable” physical
demands. Of course, the revelation
that Deakin was an “occasionally
violent” bully shouldn’t necessarily
stop people from enjoying his work.
But it does sit rather uncomfortably
with The Swimmer’s overall “tone of homage and celebration”.
Maybe so, but the book leaves us seeing Deakin “more
completely”, said Amy-Jane Beer in The Guardian. And that has
to be a good thing. He was over-romanticised before, and it is
the fate of the over-romanticised to be exposed at some point as
“not wholly who we thought”. Deakin may have been selfish and
callous at times, but we can still admire – even envy – the life he
forged, said Alex Preston in The Observer. At Walnut Tree Farm,
the farmhouse in Suffolk that he moved into aged 31 (after a brief
career in advertising), he led a “wonderful, friend-filled existence”,
devoted to swimming (often in the farm’s own moat), exploring
the natural world and writing. That life has been beautifully
honoured by Barkham’s “rich, strange and compelling work”.

An Uneasy Inheritance
by Polly Toynbee Novel of the week
Atlantic Books 448pp £22 Death Under a Little Sky
The Week Bookshop £17.99 by Stig Abell
HarperCollins 352pp £14.99
The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee has The Week Bookshop £11.99
spent much of her career railing against social
inequality, said Melissa Benn in the FT. So it was “Stig Abell has such a versatile CV” – his
courageous of her to write a book examining her career has encompassed both The Sun and
own “class shame”. She hails from a stratum of the Times Literary Supplement, and he is
British society that occupies an “uncomfortable now a presenter on Times Radio – that it isn’t
space” within it: the “radical middle- and upper- that surprising to find him dipping a toe into
middle classes”. Her great-great uncle, Arnold “crime-writing waters”, said Andrew Rosenheim
Toynbee, was a renowned social reformer; her in The Spectator. What may be surprising is
grandfather, also Arnold, was a famous liberal historian. They and many other “how well he’s done it”. Death Under a Little
campaigners and intellectuals flit through the pages of her book, along with Sky is set in a tiny village in a nameless part
glamorous people who were the friends of her forebears, among them Rupert of England, to which police detective Jake
Brooke and Jessica Mitford. Toynbee shares “many of the values of her Jackson retires after inheriting a large house
ancestors”, but this is no exercise in hero-worship. She is open about their flaws from his uncle. Initially, he leads a solitary
– which included “shocking emotional neglect” – and reveals that her privileged existence, but he soon befriends Livia, an
background has caused her “much confusion and soul-searching”. The result attractive local vet. When human bones
is a compelling “mash-up” of social analysis, polemic and family memoir. are uncovered during the village’s treasure
An Uneasy Inheritance could easily have been the “ultimate boomer hunt, the pair investigate the mystery together.
genealogy project with an added measure of liberal hand-wringing”, said This is a “joyful dive into the detective genre”,
Johanna Thomas-Corr in The Sunday Times. But it is “much more fun than said Alison Flood in The Observer. Abell’s
that”. It’s “packed with gruesome countesses, wayward debutantes and naughty love of crime fiction “shines through, as Jake
uncles”, and it contains a fascinating portrait of Toynbee’s father, Philip, a ponders what the likes of Jack Reacher might
journalist who “used to pee in the lift of The Observer after one too many do in a messy situation”. I was charmed by
drinks”. Toynbee is acutely aware of the advantages she has had in life, said the “eccentric cast of characters”; and also
Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. She highlights, for instance, the “second and engrossed by the “increasing sense of menace,
third chances” she was given after failing her 11-plus, and later dropping out of as Jake digs into what happened”.
Oxford. “Laceratingly honest and often funny”, this is an “enthralling” book.
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

28 ARTS Podcasts & Music
Podcasts... on masculinity, memory and a tragic murder
The TV presenter Rylan Clark, Jew, who as a boy was kept
he of the sparkling white hidden by “courageous gentiles”
“gnashers” and glowing tan, and survived the Holocaust,
started out as an “overwrought unlike many members of his
comedy contestant” on The X family. Pallai describes hearing
Factor, said Patricia Nicol in Debussy’s Clair de Lune being
The Sunday Times. A decade on, played through a window of his
he’s in demand on TV and radio apartment building at the end
– a “mononym star”, billed of the War. “I had never heard
simply as Rylan. As someone anything that beautiful before.
who finds this “stratospheric” It gave me a powerful feeling
rise a touch perplexing, I of peace having broken out.
approached Rylan: How to There would be no more
Be a Man, in which he talks killing, no more danger, no
to ten high-profile people about more hiding.” Ranging widely
their notions of manliness, with across the world, from Australia
a degree of cynicism. But it’s Rylan Clark: a gift for putting his subjects at ease to Jamaica to Ireland, the
a belter: a thoughtful, and at “episodes are short – between
times moving and inspiring, podcast about masculinity. Guests three and 15 minutes – but rich in detail and atmosphere”.
include boxer Amir Khan, comedian Phil Wang, the “popinjay
interiors guru” Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, and Jake Daniels, New from BBC Sounds, Vishal is “almost too sad, I suspect, for
the UK’s only openly gay male professional footballer. Clark has some listeners to contemplate”, said James Marriott in The Times.
a gift for putting them at ease, and “then – often half-joking – It is about the case of Vishal Mehrotra, an eight-year-old boy who
asking probing questions that elicit candid answers”. Teenagers disappeared near his home in southwest London on the day of
might find some of it embarrassing to listen to with a parent, but Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer’s wedding in the summer
many might be “grateful to be steered towards it”. of 1981, and whose remains were found months later in woods
in West Sussex. “The juxtaposition of tragedy and celebration
Promenade, an “elegantly produced” podcast about memories, is eerie”, and the shockwaves the crime sent through the wider
and the role they play in shaping us, is back for a welcome second community are conveyed with “startling immediacy”. What sets
season, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. Curated by Andy Gaffney, this sensitive podcast apart from the “more garish examples of
the show offers “beguiling” self-portraits in which individuals the true-crime genre” is the involvement of Vishal’s half-brother,
“reflect on the sounds, sights and smells that transport them to Suchin Mehrotra, who is the host of the initial episodes. “If you’re
different times”. We meet, for example, Peter Pallai, a Hungarian going to do true crime, do it like this.”

Albums of the week: three new releases

Bob Dylan: Michael Spyres: Noel Gallagher’s
Shadow Contra-Tenor High Flying Birds:
Kingdom (Il Pomo d’Oro, Council Skies
Columbia cond. Francesco Sour Mash
£12 Corti) £11
Warner Classics/
Erato
£14

Two years ago, with his “Never Ending
Tour” paused by the pandemic, Bob Dylan
recorded some favourite songs from his
back catalogue, and shared them – for one
week – as a streamed concert. Now they’ve
been given a “long overdue” release as an
album, said Neil McCormick in The Daily
Telegraph – and “what an absolute joy it
is”. Shadow Kingdom, which is skewed
towards the 1960s, but also features a
handful of songs from the 1970s and
1980s, is the sound of a master revisiting
“cherished texts and discovering new
meanings alive in them”.
In concert, Dylan’s “improvisational
spontaneity” makes him the “opposite of
an oldies act”, said Michaelangelo Matos
in Rolling Stone. That constant, questing
experimentation is given free rein here, as
he “brilliantly reinvents” some of his best-
known songs. On Tombstone Blues, for
example, the giddy pace is slowed to an
irresistible “wry crawl”. The recording
“stands totally on its own, and so does
the album it’s on”; it’s a “triumph”.
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)
Michael Spyres’s Baritenor, a collection
of arias of all shapes and sizes, was our
classical record of the year in 2021, said
Dan Cairns in The Sunday Times. With his
“revelatory and remarkable” new album,
the American opera star has struck gold
once again. Contra-Tenor is a veritable
“banquet of baroque staples and rarities”,
from Lully, Handel, Mozart, Vivaldi and
Gluck, among others, which shows off
his “extraordinary range and agility” to
glorious effect. At times, his singing is
“literally breathtaking” – so breakneck are
his runs, so “compelling his ease through
repeated passages of hurtling, octave-
straddling coloratura”.
With its focus on the 18th century,
Contra-Tenor is like a prequel to the earlier
collection – and it is “just as spectacular,
if not more so”, said Tim Ashley in
Gramophone. There are “jaw-dropping”
show-stoppers – such as Cosroe’s aria from
Lattila’s Siroe, which “rears and plunges
across well over two-and-a-half octaves”.
But everything is “beautifully characterised”.
Noel Gallagher’s superb fourth album with
his High Flying Birds is his most “Oasis-like
yet”, said Will Hodgkinson in The Times.
Easy Now has the “kind of rousing, melodic
swell that made Don’t Look Back in Anger
such a standard”; Dead to the World is
a beautiful, uncertain lament. There is
a “sense of regret” on the album, not a
quality usually associated with Gallagher;
but “hope, too, albeit of a tainted sort. We’re
Gonna Get There in the End offers a stoic,
age-weathered retort to the unruliness
and defiance that made the young Oasis
so appealing when they started out.” With
signs that he and Liam want a reunion, the
album is a timely reminder of how Oasis
became “the biggest band of the 1990s”.
This “mature and melodic” album finds
Gallagher “relaxing into his knack for big,
bittersweet tunes”, said Helen Brown in
The Independent. The title track is “pure
summer, swung with breezy, bell-bottomed,
slightly bossa nova-ed percussion”. And
the whole thing is “guaranteed to make
the old fans feel right at home”.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Film ARTS 29
This “astounding docudrama” about an American intelligence operative turned whistleblower uses
as its screenplay the transcript of an FBI interrogation, said Kevin Maher in The Times. As a result,
it feels very authentic and includes “fascinating half-formed sentences that lead to nowhere” (as well
as crackles of static that stand in for redactions in the official record). Sydney Sweeney (The White
Lotus) is “riveting” as Reality Winner, the 25-year-old operative who arrives home one evening to
find two government agents (Josh Hamilton and Marchánt Davis) waiting to grill her. As her
bungalow is searched, she is quizzed about her involvement in leaking to the press a document
about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. “Sweeney’s phenomenal performance
of hidden guilt under pressure” is the “secret weapon” in a very tense, concise film.
Reality “Directed with clarity and precision” by Tina Satter, who found the transcript online and turned
1hr 23mins (12A) it first into a play, Reality is an “edge-of-your-seat thriller” unlike any other, said Deborah Ross in
The Spectator. At first the agents pretend to be a bit dim, and are “friendly as hell” – they ask Winner
Tense docudrama about about her passions (“yoga, CrossFit, animals”), and show concern for her rescue cat. “We know,
the arrest of a US and she knows” that “their amiability is in the service of something dark”, and as this “dance of
whistleblower entrapment” goes on, it becomes utterly terrifying to watch. “The film’s mixture of threat, absurdism
+++ and staccato ambience is like vintage Pinter,” said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. Gradually the
stakes are revealed: Sweeney’s cheek begins to twitch, “her breathing and blink rate go up, she starts
to pace, then needs to sit”. You’re right there with her – and by the end “you’re limp as a rag”.

One of surprisingly few animated superhero films, 2018’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse was the
first to explore the currently ubiquitous idea of “alternate universes”, said Nicholas Barber on BBC
Culture. “The film was a game-changer”, and now we have a sequel. Sadly, it’s only so-so. Our hero
is Miles Morales (voiced by Shameik Moore) who, in the first film, became the Spider-Man, only to
discover that there are “countless other universes” with countless web-slingers of their own, including
a 1930s vigilante Spider-Man who exists in a black and white world, and “a Looney Tunes-style pig
called Spider-Ham”. In this film, Miles meets hundreds more Spider-people, and is soon drawn into a
battle with a villain (voiced by Jason Schwartzman) who can open portals into other dimensions.
Every frame is crammed with “dazzling new sights”, yet the film manages to be both frantic and
Spider-Man: “wheel-spinningly slow”, and the multiverse concept feels frankly rather tired.
Across the It’s so “densely plotted” as to be “almost overwhelming”, and Daniel Pemberton’s score is
“an Escher staircase of anxiety”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. But it’s fizzing with ideas; the
Spider-Verse animation is “kaleidoscopically detailed”, and the story has real heart. It more than matches the
2hrs 20mins (PG) first film’s energy and visual verve. Spidey devotees won’t want to miss it, said Luke Jones in the
Daily Mail. “The standard filmgoer, however”, may only find a “web of confusion” that, at nearly
Sequel to the 2018 cartoon two-and-a-half hours, is decidedly on the long side. The film is endlessly “self-referential”; and most
+++ of it “left me bored rigid”. To add insult to injury, the story is “cut off pre-climax with a ‘to be
continued’ promise” that feels more like a threat.

“Noël Coward may not be forgotten, but he certainly feels neglected,” said Matthew Bond in The
Mail on Sunday. Barnaby Thompson’s “well-assembled documentary” about the life of the singer,
composer, actor and playwright “does a good job of putting that right”. Rupert Everett voices
Coward’s writing while Alan Cumming narrates, a combination that seems obvious but doesn’t
entirely work, “and you do long for one or two contributors from the present day”. Still, it includes
“some brilliantly restored footage from Coward’s home movies”, and it’s “fascinating” on the
background to The Italian Job and on Coward’s Vegas years, which rescued him from bankruptcy.
The film does a “solid, succinct job of fitting a lot of life into a little over 90 minutes”, said Cath
Clarke in The Guardian. And Coward really did lead the most remarkable of lives: born into poverty
Mad About the in the suburbs of London, he sailed to New York aged 20 with £17 in his pocket, became the highest-
paid author in the Western world by the time he was 30, and died aged 73 in 1973, having written
Boy: The Noël 500 songs and 60 plays. As the documentary “trots through” all this material, though, it sometimes
Coward Story feels “like a Wikipedia entry read out loud”, and it never quite gets “under the skin of a
complicated”, self-invented man. The film is basically “just a timeline”, said Danny Leigh in the
1hr 31mins (12) Financial Times; and “tonally, it can wobble” as it moves between “bittersweet modern analysis of
A bittersweet documentary a closeted gay man” and “a simple celebration in line with a king of light comedy”. Still, the Coward
+++ story “bumps into so much 20th century history” that it’s “hard not to get hooked”.

The Gallows Pole: Shane Meadows’ first foray into period drama
Benjamin Myers’ 2017 novel The Gallows Pole
“told the true-life tale of the 18th century gang of
coin clippers led by ‘King’ David Hartley, whose
illegal work and attendant violence came to
dominate Cragg Vale in West Yorkshire”, said Lucy
Mangan in The Guardian. Now, it’s been turned
into a three-part BBC drama directed by Shane
Meadows (This is England) – and it’s a treat. We
meet David (Michael Socha) as he is returning
to his home village after a long absence, with
a stab wound in his side and an idea for how to
make some money. If you clip a tiny bit of gold
from ten coins, he tells his family and friends, you
can melt the trimmings and create an 11th coin,
thus delaying “starvation, eviction and untimely
death”. So “who’s in?” Meadows’ take “keeps all
the energy, density and fortitude of the book, but
adds the missing humour”. It’s a drama “of rare
quality in every sense”.
Meadows’ first proper period drama has his
usual rough and ready improvisation (plus some
of his favourite actors). But while some people will
love it, I was disappointed, said Ben Dowell in The
Times. The actors don’t seem “entirely at ease in
their dirty tricorn hats and heavy boots”, and the
script is full of repetitive “yammering”. You do
wonder if Meadows is that interested in either “the
period or the book”, said Benji Wilson in The Daily
Telegraph; but the “performances, the humour and
just the life that he manages to capture on film are
irresistible. This is a gang that, within half-an-hour,
Michael Socha you want to join.”

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

30 ARTS
Exhibition of the week: China’s hidden century
British Museum, London WC2 (020-7323 8299, britishmuseum.org). Until 8 October
In 1796, when the sixth
emperor acceded, the Qing
presided over a third of the
world’s population and one of
the most prosperous empires in
history. In 1912, the 11th and
last emperor abdicated, aged
12, ending 2,000 years of
dynastic rule, and paving the
way for the modern Chinese republic.
The period in between is China’s “long
19th century”, said Laura Cumming in
The Observer. Marked by famines, foreign
invasions and savage wars, in which tens
of millions of people died, it has also been
dubbed the “hidden century”, because
the period was considered so dark and
violent that cultural histories have
“skated right over it”. But now, in a
world first, the British Museum has
brought together 300 objects from the
era, based on the intensive research of
some 100 scholars, and the result is
“enthralling”. We see everything from A jacket with a border of steam ships (1860-1900) complicated period,
exquisite embroidered robes and “a pair
of imperial vases so gigantic they dwarfed the emperor”, to
the “handprint with which an illiterate worker once signed a
contract”. There is a “fragment” of the Old Summer Palace in
Beijing, looted and destroyed by British and French troops in
1860, and beside it, a sentimental portrait of a tiny dog brought
back for Queen Victoria. Believed to be the first Pekingese to
arrive in Britain, it was punningly named Looty.
What is made startlingly clear in this “dumbfounding” exhibition
is the “cynical” role that Britain played in the decline of imperial
China, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. One of the items
on show is an 1851 lithograph of a depository stacked to the
roof with Indian opium bound for export to China. It was
Art
China’s efforts to stop this
devastating trade that led to
the Opium Wars (in which the
Summer Palace was destroyed)
– the first direct military
confrontation between China’s
“time-hallowed civilisation”,
with its medieval armoury,
and the “industrial” West, with
its modern guns. How could
China, where gunpowder was invented, have
been humiliated by “Queen Victoria’s drug
dealers”? One answer is hinted at in a case
containing a labourer’s garment, made
from rice-fibre and palm (pictured below).
It evokes the millions who were toiling in
poverty, a world away from the closed
confines of the “bejewelled” imperial
court, a place where nothing seemed to
have changed for centuries.
It’s a big show that
seeks to compress a
said Laura Freeman
in The Times. And the task of taking it all
in is made more difficult by the irritating
audio tracks that play on a loop, of
ghostly Chinese voices and cockerels
crowing. My advice is to trot through it
all, to get a gist of the history, then go
back and focus on just a few objects,
perhaps the hanging scrolls decorated
with antique vessels, or the “handsome
thumb rings worn by Manchu archers”.
This “curiosity shop” is overstuffed, but
it contains many individual items of
“extraordinary beauty”.

Where to buy… The rainbow city

The Week reviews an
exhibition in a private gallery
Alina Grasmann
at Niru Ratnam
It’s easy to see why Florida might hold
appeal for a painter. It is at once a place
of untameable nature and unimpeded
artifice, home to both the Everglades
and to Disney World. In Florida Räume,
a series of recent paintings, the German
artist Alina Grasmann (b.1989)
imagines it as a kind of tropical
Ballardian idyll, in which swamp
vegetation encroaches on pristine
landscaping and art-historical references
run riot. We see melting clocks, as if
There But Where, How (Room 10)
The Kiss hide themselves away in
exotic foliage. All of this is articulated
in the hyper-realistic, mildly disquieting
A 44-year-old
artist and
property
developer has
completed the
latest stage
in her project
to transform
the city of
Gloucester.
Tash Frootko
started painting Gloucester’s terraced houses in
rainbow colours in 2018. Hopewell Street, with
its 63 houses, was her biggest undertaking yet,
and brings the total number of houses she has
painted to 134. Her first few projects were self-
funded, but the local county council has now
agreed to support her work, using “levelling
up” funds. Estate agents say that the
regeneration has boosted property prices, and
locals seem to be delighted by the impact of the
project. One long-term resident, Brigitte Wurfel-
© TRUSTEES OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM

from Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory,
draped over a pool lounger. Read the
image literally and they are deflated
pool toys; alternatively, you could see
them as escapees from one surrealist
fever dream to another. Brâncusi
columns hang from trees like paper
lanterns, while the lovers in Rodin’s
and very marketable style that has
dominated contemporary painting
fashion for some time. But they are
fun and funny – and really very good.
Prices range from £4,000 to £20,000.
23 Ganton Street, London W1
(niruratnam.com). Until 24 June
Mathurin, said it had been “life-changing”, and
made her feel proud to live in the city. Another,
Rob Wilks, noted that Frootko had worked
tirelessly behind the scenes to “fix the street’s
issues” before applying the rainbow paint.
“She has brought love, fun, colour and laughter
to the street, and we can’t thank her enough.”

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 The List ARTS 31
Best books… Jesse Norman Television
The MP, government minister and author of acclaimed biographies of Programmes
Edmund Burke and Adam Smith picks his favourite books. His first novel, Best Interests In Jack
The Winding Stair (Biteback £20), is out now Thorne’s four-part drama,
Michael Sheen and Sharon
Moby Dick by Herman the jazz solo, and pioneered Super-Infinite: The Horgan star as parents fighting
for their disabled daughter to
Melville, 1851 (Wordsworth scat singing. He was born into Transformations of John have medical care. Mon 12 and
£3.99). Writing The Winding poverty as the son of a part- Donne by Katherine Rundell, Tue 13 Jun, BBC1 21:00
Stair has thrust me deep into time prostitute, grew up 2022 (Faber £10.99). A (60mins each).
different blends of history playing in brass bands and on fascinating new biography,
and the novel, fact and fiction. Mississippi steamboats, and which brings a novelist’s flair Africa Rising with Afua
Nowhere is this done better made himself into one of the for language and metaphor to Hirsch The writer and
than in Moby Dick. From its musical greats. Just like its the tangled life of perhaps the broadcaster travels across
opening chapters, this book author, this book is pure gold. greatest love poet in the history Africa to meet the young
brings the reader on, layering of the English language. creatives changing its culture:
first stop, Morocco. Tue
in wonderful characters and HHhH by Laurent Binet, 2009 13 Jun, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
slowly building the tension (Vintage £9.99). This novel Kneelers: The Unsung Folk
until the final pages bring it tells the extraordinary true Art of England and Wales How to Win the Ashes On
to a shattering conclusion. story of how two young men by Elizabeth Bingham, 2023 the eve of the first Test, cricket
defied the Nazi Protectorate (Chatto £20). OK, so this legends including Ben Stokes
Satchmo: My Life in New of Bohemia to kill its brutal is a piece of shameless cross- describe the intense rivalry
Orleans by Louis Armstrong, overlord, Reinhard Heydrich. marketing for my mother-in- that underpins the series. Thur
1954 (Da Capo £11.99). I It is a tale of incomprehensible law. But this book rediscovers 15 Jun, BBC2 19:00 (60mins).
grew up intoxicated by the risk and bravery, made still a vital vernacular art form –
Scandalous: Phone
music of Louis Armstrong, and better by the way in which embroidered kneeler cushions – Hacking on Trial Sienna
learning to play the trumpet in Laurent Binet weaves in his makes new sense of every visit Miller and Hugh Grant are
my 40s only added admiration own exploits as researcher and you make to a church, and is among the phone-hacking
to my joy. Armstrong invented detective to uncover the truth. funny and wise to boot. victims who give testimony
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk in this powerful documentary
about the case against three
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing tabloid newspapers. Thur
15 Jun, BBC2 21:00 (90mins).
Showing now They All Came Out to
The churches of the City of London host a series Montreux Docuseries tracing
of events to mark the 300th anniversary of the the rise of the Montreux Jazz
death of Sir Christopher Wren. The Wrenathon Festival and musicians who’ve
opens with an 11-day series of recitals, performed there over the
performances and Evensong at St Paul’s, and years. Fri 16 Jun, BBC4 22:15,
23:10 and 00:00 (55mins each).
culminates in a Vocal Marathon by community
choirs. 13-24 June, various venues, London EC1
(squaremilechurches.co.uk). Films
The Straight Story (1999)
David Lynch’s poignant, offbeat
Eddie Izzard’s solo performance of Great road movie, based on a true
Expectations is “as glorious an evening of story, about a man who drives
singularly rendered Dickens as I’ve encountered” 300 miles on his mower to see
(Dominic Cavendish, Daily Telegraph). Until his dying brother. Sat 10 Jun,
Eddie Izzard: a “singular” take on Dickens
1 July, Garrick Theatre, London WC2 Film4 11:00 (145mins).
(eddieizzardgreatexpectations.com). End revival, with Lily Allen starring as a writer
who is arrested in a totalitarian state. 12 June- Law of Tehran (2019) Gritty
Gwen John: Art and Life in London and drama set against the
2 September, Duke of York’s Theatre, London
backdrop of Iran’s drugs war.
Paris brings together 113 of the Welsh artist’s WC2 (pillowmanplay.com). A determined cop pursues a
“captivating portraits” and landscapes local drug lord who will do
(Observer). Until 8 October, Pallant House Some of the best-known names in British anything to save his family. Sat
Gallery, Chichester (pallant.org.uk). comedy – from Jack Dee and Sara Pascoe to 10 Jun, BBC4 21:00 (125mins).
Nish Kumar and Nina Conti – converge on
Book now Bristol’s Queen Square for the Bristol Comedy
Martin McDonagh’s Olivier Award-winning Garden festival. 14-18 June, Queen Square, New to subscription TV
dark comedy The Pillowman is getting a West Bristol (bristolcomedygarden.co.uk).
White House Plumbers
Critics are divided over this
The Archers: what happened last week comedy-drama about the duo
Freddie is organising Lower Loxley’s Late Mayfest, hoping the trustees will notice his hard work. who oversaw the botched
Hungover Jim lost his glasses at Jazzer’s stag and muddles up the scoring at the T20 match, Watergate break-in, but the
making it a tie. Brian is furious to discover Stella has bought an expensive new drill without his subject is fascinating (FT).
approval. Adam claims he didn’t authorise it, although he did urge Stella to use her initiative. Ian On Sky Atlantic/NOW.
tells him to keep mum. There’s bitter disappointment as Helen learns the CPS has decided not to
charge Rob. Tony wants to fight on, but Helen just wants Rob out of her life. At the Mayfest, Brian The Full Monty An eight-part
and Adil hit it off, while Freddie discovers the trustees have delayed his inheritance. Justin assures
Brian that Stella was always professional when working with him. Adil is annoyed that Oliver lent
sequel to the 1997 film about
© AMANDA SEARLE

Grey Gables for Tracy’s hen without telling him. After a wild goose chase, Jazzer and Jim locate the the Sheffield strippers,
missing specs. Stella returns from holiday and is confronted by Brian about the drill purchase. She featuring the original cast.
claims Adam authorised it, which he denies. Brian dismisses her, with immediate effect. From 14 June. On Disney+.

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

32 Best properties
Idyllic mill houses

Essex: Witham Road, Little Braxted. Former watermill featured in Pevsner and retaining many original features. Main
suite, 4 further beds (3 en suite), kitchen, 3 receps, swimming pool, pool house, garden. £1.1m; Savills (01245-293233).
Kent: Farningham
Mill, Farningham. This
elegant former mill
dates from c.1790.
Main suite with dressing
room, 2 further beds
(1 en suite), family
bath, kitchen/breakfast
room, 3 receps, garden,
garage. £1.25m; Savills
(01732-789706).

Cornwall: Clapper
Mill, Lamorna. This
charming 18th century
property is situated at
the top of the Lamorna
Valley. Main suite,
3 further beds, family
bath, shower room,
kitchen/dining room,
3 receps, garden.
£895,000; Savills
(01872-243200).

Surrey: Wonham Lane, Betchworth. A Georgian former flour mill in a tranquil setting. Main suite, 3 further beds
(1 en suite), dressing room/bed 5, family bath, kitchen, 3 receps. £1.6m; Fine & Country (07507-114672).

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

on the market 33
Buckinghamshire:
Edlesborough Mill,
Dunstable. A historic
19th century watermill
and windmill in a
spectacular location. It is
set in more than 23 acres
of grounds and includes
4 ponds and 0.75 miles
of the River Ouzel. Main
suite, 4 further beds (2 en
suite), kitchen, 4 receps,
self-contained 2-bed
converted windmill,
outbuildings, garden.
£3.5m; Fine & Country
(01442-877627).

Oxfordshire:
Dandridges Mill, East
Hanney. The duplex
penthouse overlooking
Letcombe Brook features
an 18th century French
spiral staircase. Main
suite, 2 further beds
(1 en suite), shower
room, kitchen, 3 receps,
garden, parking.
£995,000; Savills
(01865-339702).

Yorkshire: Caydale Mill, Old Byland. This 16th century mill house is set in a private
dale with a waterfall and 28 acres. Main suite, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen,
3 receps, self-contained cottage, garden. OIEO £1.25m; Blenkin & Co (01904-671672).

Essex: Barnes Mill, Chelmsford. A mill house and converted mill dating to the 1700s.
Main suite, 6 further beds (3 en suite), family bath, shower room, 2 kitchen/breakfast
rooms, 4 receps, garden, garage. £2.85m; Jackson-Stops (01245-806101).

10 June 2023 THE WEEK


The sad decline of the Balti Triangle
Birmingham’s “Balti Triangle” is justly
famed, says Jessica Murray in The
Guardian. Located just south of the city
centre, the area has “one of the largest
Pakistani Kashmiri populations in
Britain”, and is credited with popularising
the “balti” – a curry served in a thin steel
bowl. In its 1990s heyday, the Triangle
was “home to more than 30 authentic
balti houses”. It “still attracts plenty of
tourists” – but now there are only four.
This decline has various causes. The
area’s former popularity led to rent rises,
which forced some restaurants to relocate.
Some of the offspring of the original
restaurateurs were reluctant to take over
when their parents retired: the closure
last year of the “Triangle mainstay” Adil’s
was down to there being “no one to pick
up the reins”. Changing tastes have also
had an impact: former balti houses have
been turned into “burger joints and dessert
parlours”. Later this year, Andy Munro –
of the Association for the Protection of the
Authentic Balti – is staging an exhibition
about the Triangle, which will feature his
photos of closed restaurants. “No matter
what happens, the Balti Triangle is still
where it was invented,” he says. “You
can’t take away the history of the place.”
The magic and joy of confit
Confit has always struck me as having
a “magic” to it, says Olivia Potts in
The Spectator. Not only does it seem
“wonderfully improbable” that
LEISURE
Food & Drink
A chef at work in the Balti Triangle
cooking meat (typically duck leg) slowly
in its own fat renders it safe to eat for
months on end, there’s also the fact that
this “unlikely process” results in flesh that
is so “tender” and “flavoursome”. The
technique is particularly associated with
Gascony in southwest France, where it
developed as a means of preserving meat.
Today, while preserving meat is no longer
a strict necessity – we have fridges and
freezers, and a year-round supply – confit
continues to be “beloved in France and
beyond”. And that’s not surprising when
you consider that it’s “one of the most
delicious, irresistible ways of eating a
bird”. Although confit duck legs can be
readily bought (they’re available online
if you don’t have a local stockist),
35
I prefer to make my own. This is
satisfyingly straightforward – and
economical too, as you can use the same
fat “over and over”, creating an “endless,
delicious cycle”. With a container of confit
duck legs in your fridge (they’ll keep there
for months), you “need never be more than
half an hour or so from a perfectly cooked
duck leg again. What a joy.”
Making the most of ’nduja
A few years ago, ’nduja – the spicy,
spreadable pork paste from Calabria – was
considered rather niche, says Diana Henry
in The Daily Telegraph. These days, it is
“everywhere”, with own-brand versions
in most supermarkets. In fact, some
people “love it a little too much, putting
it in dishes where it overwhelms other
components”, such as a lamb braise.
Even melted on its own into pasta, I find
it’s “too much”. ’Nduja has to be used
sparingly; and it works well when there’s
another food to counter it, particularly
“soft, bland ingredients such as ricotta
and mozzarella, or sweet ingredients like
prawns and scallops”. It makes a great
addition to roasting tin suppers. Dot it
“around chicken thighs, potatoes and any
other vegetables that work (aubergines,
red peppers, wedges of red onion), and
let it do its magic”. Or add some to a red
pepper sauce. Like its cousin chorizo, it’s
“sublime” with egg yolks. Leftover boiled
potatoes fried with red pepper, garlic, chilli
and ’nduja – with an egg cracked into the
pan – would make a fine midweek supper.

Recipe of the week: arroz negro (black paella)

Cooked with prawns, squid and squid ink, this black-coloured rice dish is the taste of the sea on a plate, says Omar Allibhoy.
I have particularly fond memories of it because in my family we would often eat it to celebrate religious events
and other special occasions.

Serves 4
2 litres shellfish stock 0.4g saffron 120ml extra virgin olive oil 2 dried ñora peppers 2 tomatoes
1kg cuttlefish, cleaned and cut into small strips 8 garlic cloves, peeled 1 tsp sweet smoked paprika
5 sachets of squid ink 440g Spanish paella rice 1kg red prawns (shrimp), shells removed (heads left on) salt, to taste

• Heat the shellfish stock in a saucepan over oil starts to separate from the tomato
a low heat and crumble in the saffron. Keep paste. Add the rice and stir for a couple
warm over the lowest setting. of minutes, ensuring the rice gets coated
• Place a paella pan over a low heat, pour with the oil.
in the olive oil and fry the ñora peppers for • Carefully add the hot stock to the pan
2 minutes. Remove the peppers from the and give it a good stir to distribute the
oil and blend to a paste with the tomatoes rice evenly. Taste the stock and adjust the
using a blender or food processor; set seasoning if necessary. Cook over a high
aside for later. heat for the first 10 minutes, then reduce
• Increase the heat to high and add the the heat to medium and continue cooking
cuttlefish. Sauté for about 5 minutes, or until for another 5 minutes, without stirring.
golden in colour. Season with salt. Add the • Place the prawns around the paella and
garlic, closely followed by the paprika, the shake the pan to flatten the rice. Let it cook
squid ink and the tomato and ñora pepper for a final 2 minutes, then allow to rest off
paste. Cook for about 2 minutes until the the heat for 5 minutes before eating.

Taken from Paella: The Original One-Pan Dish by Omar Allibhoy, published by Quadrille at £18. Photography by Facundo
Bustamante. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £13.99, call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

36 LEISURE Consumer
New cars: what the critics say
The Daily Telegraph
Although you might not
have heard of BYD (Build
Your Dreams), the Chinese
firm has been making EVs
for years. This model is the
compact electric SUV with
which it is aiming to enter
the UK market. The car
has an “ingenious” lithium
BYD Atto 3 iron-phosphate battery
Price: from about £36,490 that is more sustainable
than other batteries as
it doesn’t use cobalt. The
downside is the range:
officially 260 miles – 20
or 30 behind its best rivals.
Top Gear Magazine
While the exterior of the
Atto is “neatly executed”,
it’s unlikely to have
anybody “swooning”. It
has tall proportions, roof
rails and full-width rear
lighting. Inside, though,
“imaginations have run
riot”. The dash is an
“exaggerated” wave
shape and elsewhere in
the decently roomy cabin,
“details lie between playful
and cheesy”. It won’t be
for everyone, but “your
kids will love it”.
Autocar
The Atto 3 is a huge seller
in China, where it’s called
the Yuan Plus. And you
can see why. To drive, the
car is “unassuming”. It
rides well on bumpy UK
roads, has various drive
modes and “swift, but not
exceptional” acceleration.
There’s nothing pressing to
tempt British buyers away
from more familiar brands,
but for the money, you do
get a “thoroughly pleasant
family car”, though the
boot could be bigger.

The best... Bluetooth speakers

Bose SoundLink
Flex Bluetooth
speaker The flat
shape and weight
of this Bose speaker
make it better at staying
put than most when,
say, balanced on a rock.
The sound quality is “incredible”,
thanks to technology that optimises
audio depending on the speaker’s
position (£129; ao.com).
Boompods Rhythm speaker
Made from recycled
plastic, this is a great
durable little speaker,
Nokia portable wireless speaker 2 This
Nokia model is perfect for those who want a
really compact and rugged speaker to dangle
from a backpack or bring out at impromptu
gatherings. The exterior is 100% recycled, it
has a 22-hour battery life, and the sound is
very impressive for its size (£50; nokia.com).
Polaroid P2 Bluetooth speaker While
Polaroid might be a surprising entrant
into this arena, this is a great little
speaker that delivers a strong sound at
volume. It also has a music-responsive
LED display (from £90; polaroid.com).
Sony XG300 X-Series portable
wireless speaker The larger size of

SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT

which can be this speaker (at 31.8cm x 13.8cm)
submerged a metre pays off, with top sound quality and
under water for 30 a real punch, especially when using
minutes. It’s simple the Mega Bass feature. It’s rugged
to use, and can be and blasts out a crisp sound for 25
controlled via an app hours on a charge (£199; sony.co.uk).
(£40; boompods.com).

How to… garden on And for those who Where to find…

a budget
OSupermarket herbs are cheap, but they’re
hard to keep alive. This is because the
seedlings were planted too close together.
Take them out of the pot, brush away the
soil and plant them individually in their own
pots. If you snip just above the side shoots
it will encourage them to spread out.
OAsk friends and neighbours for cuttings.
It’s the best way to get plants for free, and
gardeners are usually very generous.
OWhen people move, they often sell plants,
kit and containers cut-price on second-hand
sites such as Gumtree.
OInstead of filling a planter or raised bed
with expensive soil, fill it with cardboard,
twigs, wood chips or leaves, then top that
off with peat-free compost.
OMake your own compost heap or leaf
mould (which is easier); use lawn or hedge
cuttings as a thin layer of mulch.
OGeraniums are easy to keep flowering;
perennials such as violets and pansies are
also a cheap way to make a splash.
have everything…
The Hozelock Green Power Thermal
Weeder delivers blasts of up to 600°
Celsius, allowing you to eliminate
weeds in the garden without using
chemicals or having to crawl around
on the ground. You can also use it to
light the barbecue.
£70; argos.co.uk
wild orchids
The New Forest’s heaths and bogs are a
great place to spot orchids, including tiny
bog, heath-spotted and butterfly orchids.
Among the dunes of the Unesco Biosphere
Reserve at Braunton Burrows, north Devon,
you might see densely packed early marsh
orchids, ranging in colour from white to red.
In another dune habitat, at Kenfig in South
Wales, you’ll find a huge number of orchid
varieties. The real gem is the rare fen orchid
with its pale-green, skyward-facing flowers.
Upper Teesdale in County Durham is an area
“arguably unmatched for British flora”, and
home to the dark red helleborine orchid.
Overlooking the Thames, Hartslock Reserve
in Oxfordshire is a good place to see
England’s “little men” orchids, plus monkey
and lady orchids and their hybrid, “lonkeys”.
Ayrshire’s Feoch Meadows is one of Britain’s
best examples of traditional meadowland,
with the lesser and greater butterfly orchid
varieties, and the rare frog and small white.

SOURCE: THE TIMES SOURCE: T3 SOURCE: COUNTRY LIFE

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Travel
This week’s dream: a cruise on the mighty Brahmaputra river
From its source in Tibet, the
Brahmaputra river flows through
northeast India to Bangladesh, merging
there with its equally mighty sister, the
Ganges, and draining into the Bay of
Bengal. A cruise along its Indian stretch
on the “elegant” 18-cabin river boat
Charaidew II is a delight, says Sophy
Roberts in the FT. In seven days, you
travel 110 miles through Assam, an
“overlooked” region that is rich in rare
flora and fauna and home to several
distinct cultures. You’re unlikely to
pass many other tourist vessels (I didn’t
see one), and you’ll have plenty of time
on deck to observe the vast, hypnotic
river and its ever-changing shores. Sunset over the Kaziranga National Park
Beginning in May, the monsoon
transforms the area into “a landscape that’s more water than
earth”, forming and reshaping sandbanks known as chars,
“encouraging elephants to swim in search of new habitat” and, in
bad years, forcing more than a million people to relocate to safer
ground. The river’s width has nearly doubled in the past century,
LEISURE 37
a process accelerated by climate change,
and yet human settlement still thrives
on this “edge-land”. Among the ethnic
groups who inhabit it are the Ahom
(with roots in Myanmar) and the
Mising, who have a Tibetan-Burmese
history. And though the Charaidew II is
“styled after British-era steamers”, with
cane furniture and tropical plants on its
teak deck, its crew are all local people
with long experience of navigating the
river’s treacherous eddies.
Kingfishers flash past “like Mughal
jewels”, and fishermen’s nets cast
from the banks “fall with the grace of
dragonflies landing on a pool of light”.
There’s a chance to visit a tea estate, as
well as several wonderful historic sites,
including the palaces and temples of the Ahom kingdom. The trip
includes a stay at a lodge next to Kaziranga National Park, which
is one of the best places in India to see tigers, rhinos and other
wildlife. AndBeyond Asia (andbeyond.com) has a ten-night trip
from $7,798pp (£6,295pp), excluding international flights.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of…

Kayaam House Sri Lanka
Built a few years ago, this
“intimate” seaside resort has
recently been revamped by
the well-known local brand
Resplendent Ceylon. Set beside
a private beach near Tangalle on
the south coast, it offers “absolute
peace”, says Harriet Compston
in Condé Nast Traveller, “broken
only by a soundtrack of crashing
waves”. The nine rooms and suites
are “simple yet sophisticated”,
and most have four-poster beds
and terraces with tubs. There’s a
“glorious” pool “flanked by palm
trees and frangipanis”, a spa with
a sea-facing yoga shala, and a
restaurant with a good-quality
global menu, “including a very
British roast rack of lamb”.
Doubles from £180pn;
thereverie.life.
China’s new barbecue hotspot
A once-obscure manufacturing hub 270
miles south of Beijing, Zibo has risen in just a
few months to become China’s hottest tourist
destination, says Vivian Wang in The New
York Times. And it’s all down to two things:
barbecues and the power of social media.
The city is home to 4.7 million people, yet it
received 4.8 million visitors in March alone,
not long after the local BBQ technique – you
grill your meat on skewers then wrap it with
condiments in tortilla-like pancakes – began
trending on social media. Keen to please,
the authorities have set up a “Barbecue
Experiential Ground” the size of 12 football
fields, with hundreds of grills, and even far-
flung suburban eateries are doing a roaring
trade. Tourists queue for hours, and few
seem to mind the wait: everyone agrees
that, while Zibo cuisine is wonderful, the
city’s “liveliness”, after three years of Covid
lockdowns, is a pleasure more piquant still.
A train ride through the Wild West
There can be few more relaxing ways to
see the glorious landscapes of Utah and
Colorado than from the Rocky Mountaineer,
says Ed Grenby in The Daily Telegraph.
After three decades of service in Canada, this
“gleaming” royal-blue train recently began
its second-ever season in the US, offering
two-day, 356-mile journeys between Moab
and Denver, with a night at a hotel in
Glenwood, a town known for its hot springs
and “raffish frontier feel”. Carriages are
largely encased in glass, and seats can be
turned to face forwards, making it easy to
drink in the “epic” vistas, including “scale-
defying” deserts, sunlit prairies and the
“towering” canyons of the Colorado River.
The pace is often slow, so you can get a good
look at passing wildlife, including coyote and
bald eagles. The trip costs from £1,270pp,
full board (rockymountaineer.com).
A lovely mile of England’s coast
Once the England Coast Path has been
completed (which should be in a couple of
years), the UK will have some 10,000 miles
of accessible coastal trails. Having walked
1,000 of the most glorious myself, I’m often
asked to name the winning stretch, says Paul
Bloomfield in The Sunday Times – and my
answer is always the South West Coast
Path, which meanders for 630 miles between
Minehead in Somerset and Poole in Dorset.
If pressed for time, head straight for Lynton
on the Exmoor coast, and take the cliff path
westwards from the top of its funicular
railway to Woody Bay. Passing through
the Valley of the Rocks (north Devon’s
“Little Switzerland”) and the “idyllic, brook-
babbled” Lee Abbey estate, the route is
neither particularly tough nor exceptionally
remote, but there’s no doubt in my mind that
this is “Britain’s most beautiful coastal mile”.

Last-minute offers from top travel companies

North Macedonia getaway
Stay 7 nights at the Inex Olgica
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making use of its bike hire to
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020-3451 2688, tui.co.uk.
Depart 21 July.
All-inclusive in Tunisia
The One Resort Aquapark
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beachfront luxury. A 7-night
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Depart 26 June.
Beautiful Bali
A 9-day trip, during which
you’ll get to visit a temple, hike
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0808-274 5111, intrepidtravel.
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Atlantic Islands cruise
The 7-night cruise on board
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between the Canary Islands
and Madeira. From £831pp
all-inclusive (incl. flights).
020-3993 6988, iglucruise.
com. Depart 27 January 2024.

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

38 Obituaries
Tory grandee who laid the foundations for the peace process
In a fairer world, Peter
Peter Brooke Brooke, who has died aged
1934-2023 89, would be remembered
as the Northern Ireland
minister who laid the groundwork for the
peace process in the late 1980s and early
1990s, said The Guardian, or as the founding
minister for the National Lottery. As it is, he
is more likely to be known as the politician
who sang Oh My Darling, Clementine on an
Irish TV chat show on the night that seven
Protestant construction workers were killed
by an IRA bomb. Brooke had had a busy
week in Belfast and knew little about the
bombing; more to the point, he had been
caught off guard by the host, Gay Byrne,
asking him about “the traumatic death” of
his first wife while his current wife was in the Brooke: a charming, old-school Tory
studio audience – then pressing him to sing
a song. “My defences were down… it was patently an error,”
Brooke said later. A charming, courteous, old-school Tory, known
for his passion for cricket, Brooke apologised unreservedly. A less
popular man might have been finished by the gaffe, but in the
Commons Brooke won cross-party support, with only Ian
Paisley’s DUP holding out in demanding that he stand down.
Nevertheless, the PM, John Major, having backed him at the
time, removed him from that office a few months later.
Peter Brooke was born in 1934 into a family “steeped in politics”,
said The Daily Telegraph. His father, Henry “Babbling” Brooke,
served as home secretary to Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas-
Home; his mother Barbara was a Tory vice-chairman. Peter was
educated at Marlborough and Balliol College, Oxford, before
taking an MBA at Harvard and becoming a management
consultant. His shift into politics was predictable enough, but it
was not straightforward. He was passed over for numerous seats,
before being selected to fight Neil Kinnock at Bedwellty for the
election of October 1974, where he lost his deposit. He was finally infancy), and by his second wife, Lindsay Allinson.
The last of the Navy’s “human minesweepers”
John Payne, who has died aged
John Payne 98, is believed to have been the
1925-2023 last surviving member of the
Royal Navy’s wartime “P”
Parties. These were small secret units of divers,
whose task it was to clear enemy mines from the
ports of northwest Europe in the period after
D-Day. Collectively, the demolition divers searched
more than 20 million square feet of harbour and
port facilities. Diving into cold, dark water, they
located and cleared unexploded ordinance,
booby traps and general debris, and so enabled
the return of military ships carrying supplies and
reinforcements vital to the Allied advance. The
Germans had anticipated that it would take
the Allies months to reopen each port; but these Payne: a member of the “P” Parties they were among the most decorated units of the
“human minesweepers” got the job done in days.
John Edwin Payne was born in Oxfordshire in 1925, the son
of Albert and Florence Payne, and brought up in Lancing, West
Sussex. His father had served in the First World War, and later
become a storeman for a building supplies company. John left
school at 14, and volunteered as a warden with the Auxiliary Fire
Service before enlisting in the Navy. He joined the “P” Parties
because he wanted to do “something active”, he said. He received
specialist training, then travelled to northern France about two
weeks after D-Day. His unit, P1 (later Naval Party 1571) was
sent straight to Cherbourg, the first major port to be taken by
THE WEEK 10 June 2023
elected to a Tory safe seat in central London
at a by-election in 1977. Although he was
not a Thatcherite, he was a loyalist, and he
served in various government posts from
1979, and as party chairman, before being
promoted to the cabinet as Northern Ireland
secretary in 1989.
Brooke had some fine qualities for the job,
said The Scotsman, including seemingly
infinite patience, finely tuned negotiating
skills and an “appealing manner”. As well
as facilitating “talks about talks”, he made
some statements – such as that Britain has
“no selfish strategic or economic interest”
in Northern Ireland, and would accept
unification if that were the wish of the people
– that are believed by some to have played a
crucial role in fostering the conditions
necessary for the peace process. And in 1990, secret back-room
talks got under way between an agent of MI5 and Republican
paramilitaries. The violence continued, but his efforts were seen as
having formed the basis of further negotiations in the late 1990s.
After leaving the Northern Ireland Office he was tipped to
become speaker of the House of Commons, but the role went to
Betty Boothroyd instead. He returned to the cabinet as secretary
of state for national heritage, replacing David Mellor, who had
resigned in the wake of his affair with the model Antonia de
Sancha. Brooke refused to accept the description of himself as the
architect of the National Lottery, but said that he had perhaps
been its “master mason”. He returned to the backbenches in
1994, and remained an MP until 2001, when he was given a
peerage. A devout Christian, he gave his time to several charities,
some of them in Wiltshire, where he had made his home. His first
wife, Joan Smith, died following routine surgery in 1985. He is
survived by his three sons from that marriage (a fourth died in
the Allies. Their equipment was rudimentary and
uncomfortable, said The Daily Telegraph: a stiff
rubberised canvas suit, and a helmet with limited
visibility. The men did two dives a day, often
fighting thick mud and strong currents. It was
exhausting, Payne recalled, and the rations were
poor. After Cherbourg, they were sent to Rouen –
which, he said, was so badly bombed, you could
hardly tell it had a port. Moving on up the coast,
P1 sometimes arrived only hours after the
Germans had retreated. At Antwerp, in the winter
of 1944-45, the men had to dive in freezing water
as shells and rockets flew across. By the War’s
end, there were five “P” Parties, comprising 100
British, Dutch and Commonwealth divers – and
War, with some 70 awards. Payne was awarded
the British Empire Medal. Remarkably, the units sustained only
one fatality: William Brunskill was killed in a V2 rocket attack
on the cinema in Antwerp where he’d gone to see a film.
Payne left the Navy in 1946, returned to Lancing and became
a postman. He also volunteered as a Sea Cadet instructor. Two
years ago, aged 96, he was invited to the Diving Museum in
Gosport, where he was given a guard of honour by serving Navy
divers. Presented with a plaque featuring old photographs of
himself with his comrades, he broke down in tears. “This is just
lovely,” he said from his wheelchair. “It is just lovely.”
 CITY CITY 39
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Zellis/MOVEit: Russian payroll hack
Hackers targeting UK businesses have found a new weakness, said the FT – payroll
transactions. Tens of thousands of employees at organisations including British Airways,
Boots and the BBC have been warned that their personal data has been compromised,
owing to a security breach at payroll software provider Zellis, which “serves nearly half
the FTSE 100”. The cyberattacks have been attributed to a Russian-linked criminal gang
known as “Lace Tempest”, which is affiliated to the Clop ransomware group and runs Seven days in the
an “extortion site” carrying data stolen in attacks, said Dan Milmo in The Guardian. Square Mile
Hackers took advantage of a “vulnerability” in a file transfer system used by Zellis
called MOVEit. And therein lies the rub, said The Times. MOVEit is “a widely used piece PM Rishi Sunak headed to Washington
of software” deployed by “thousands of companies globally”. Indeed, experts believe the for talks with President Biden in an effort
to boost opportunities for trade falling
Zellis attacks “could be the tip of the iceberg” and that many other businesses have been outside a full free-trade agreement with
hit. MOVEit has now built a patch, and has urged users to install it. That won’t reassure the US. “Digital trade” was expected to
the victims whose details have already been harvested. BBC staff are said to be “jumpy”. form a key part of discussions. There
Some of the corporation’s “biggest stars” have had their personal data compromised. were also reports the two sides could
unveil a pact that would allow British
Binance: federal target car-makers to export EVs to the US,
Cryptocurrency exchanges have been under close scrutiny since Sam Bankman-Fried’s while benefitting from some of the tax
FTX collapsed last year, said Dave Michaels in The Wall Street Journal. US regulators credits offered to American firms. The
seem determined to turn up the heat. The latest to feel it is Binance – the world’s largest president of the European Central Bank,
Christine Lagarde, said price pressures
crypto exchange – and its founder Changpeng Zhao, who has been served with a civil remained “strong” and there was no
suit alleging a slew of violations. Describing Binance as “a web of deception”, the Security clear evidence that underlying inflation
and Exchange Commission has filed 13 charges, including diverting customer funds had peaked – cementing expectations
and manipulative trading. The main risk for the company is being ruled “an unlicensed of another interest-rate hike next week.
exchange”, which would bar it from operating in the US, one of its main markets. The Uncertainty swirled around the future
attempted clampdown had an immediate impact on crypto assets, reported Bloomberg. ownership of The Daily and Sunday
Bitcoin suffered its “steepest decline in almost three months”, falling by nearly 7%. Telegraph newspapers and The
Even if Zhao, who lives in the United Arab Emirates, “makes it through this regulatory Spectator, amid reports they are to be
blowback”, he “doesn’t have much to look forward to”, said Anita Ramaswamy on put up for sale – to recover debts owed
Reuters Breakingviews. The market has already “moved against him”. Crypto exchanges to Lloyds Banking Group by the network
“are fighting for dwindling market share and an increasingly sceptical customer”. of companies controlled by the Barclay
family. The family described reports that
the business could enter administration
Asos: warring suitors as “unfounded and irresponsible”.
It has been a roller-coaster week for Asos, the online firm that “started out selling clothes
The Swedish private equity firm EQT
worn by TV stars” before growing into “one of the UK’s largest fashion retailers”, said
agreed to buy Dechra, the London-listed
The Sunday Times. It was booted out of the FTSE 250 last week, having lost 93% of its veterinary products maker, for £4.5bn in
market value in two years, but shares almost immediately received a fillip with the news the biggest takeover deal in Britain so far
of a £1bn approach from the Turkish online retailer Trendyol – backed by the Chinese this year. Defence contractor Chemring
e-commerce giant Alibaba. The vote of confidence doesn’t come a moment too soon, said said geopolitical tensions had helped
Eloise Hill in Retail Gazette: the retailer has just entered into a £275m refinancing deal at expand its order book to the highest
punitive rates “to strengthen its balance sheet”. Yet suddenly everyone wants a piece of it, level in a decade. Eurostar said it would
said Kate Beioley on FT.com. A fight is “brewing” between the Danish retail billionaire cancel its London-Amsterdam in 2024
Anders Holch Povlsen – whose Bestseller empire is Asos’s largest shareholder – and for nearly a year, because of work on
Amsterdam’s railway station.
Frasers’ Mike Ashley. The latter recently increased its stake to 8.8%. “One to watch.”

Apple Vision Pro: game-changer or potentially ruinous mistake?

In what was billed as its most significant new
product since Steve Jobs launched the iPhone,
Apple has unveiled its long-awaited “mixed
reality” headset, the Apple Vision Pro, said
Bloomberg. The new piece of kit – described
by CEO Tim Cook as “the first Apple product
you look through, and not at” – combines both
“virtual” and “augmented” reality capabilities
and will be available early next year for
around $3,499. Some reckon it could prove
a game-changer in the “still kludgy” (inelegant,
makeshift) AR/VR market, said Lauren Goode
on Wired. “Once Apple wades into a product
category, it often both validates the category
and obviates competitors.”
Vision Pro: “sci-fi ski goggles”
Cook welcomed us to “the era of spatial
computing”, in which digital features, such as apps, will appear
floating in the physical environment around the user, said David
Pierce on The Verge. And the gateway to this new world? “A pair
of ski goggles” – albeit “the fanciest, most sci-fi
ski goggles you’ve ever seen”. The “harsh
reality (rather than the virtual one)”, said
Matthew Lynn in The Daily Telegraph, is that
Apple has chosen a “graveyard” sector. Meta
has already lost billions “trying to persuade
us all to live in an imaginary world”. So
have Microsoft and Google. Tim Cook and
co have simply run out of ideas.
The evangelists of the metaverse are certainly
in retreat, said The Economist. Even Apple
accepts this “early stage” gadget won’t be a
big seller. The point is to prepare the ground.
But all the cutting-edge tech firms see AR as
the future. If Apple can refine Vision Pro into
“something that normal people might wear
all day” – as thin and unobtrusive as a pair of sunshades – it
might just replace the smartphone as the next big tech platform.
But that’s probably still some way off.

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

40 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: the CBI’s crunch vote
The business group has won a stay of execution, but plenty of questions remain about its future
The CBI has been “mired in an
existential crisis” ever since The
Guardian reported allegations of sexual
misconduct at the group, including two
claims of rape, said The Observer. Has
the stricken business lobby group finally
turned a corner? On the face of it,
yes. This week, new boss Rain Newton-
Smith won a “make-or-break” vote of
confidence at an extraordinary general
meeting in the City by a resounding
margin of 93% to 7%. She said she was
“deeply grateful” for “the faith shown
in us by our members”. That might be
stretching the point, said Simon Foy
and Matt Oliver in The Daily Telegraph.
At best, this was “a stay of execution”. Newton-Smith: “stay of execution”
Despite the CBI’s new pledge to become
“more transparent”, it refused to disclose what proportion
of members from its depleted list had actually voted – it is
understood that PwC, JPMorgan, Rolls-Royce and BT were
among the no-shows. Moreover, there has as yet been no
rapprochement with the Government, whose support and
willingness to engage is considered crucial to the CBI’s survival.
In the circumstances, it’s “impossible to judge” whether this vote
was “a thumping endorsement or a show of general apathy”, said
Nils Pratley in The Guardian. What counts is that “the show will
go on”, albeit in slimmed-down form, because the resignations of
high-profile members – including Aviva,
NatWest, John Lewis and, now, Tesco –
have “put a dent” in its budget. Whether
the CBI can ever “recover its lobbying
clout” depends on two factors. First,
the support of ministers. Secondly, the
number of defections to the rival British
Chambers of Commerce (BCC), which
launched a new “business council” for
large companies just before the CBI
vote. Talk about “a red-toothed grab
for market share”, said Alistair Osborne
in The Times. But there’s no reason why
the BCC couldn’t supplant the CBI’s
role as the “voice of business”. A glance
at Newton-Smith’s “inward-looking,
navel-gazing” new prospectus shows
“it’s not up against much”.
The CBI is promising to reform its culture, said Oliver Shah
in The Sunday Times. Yet months after the scandal broke, “we
still don’t actually know what happened”. All that can be said
for sure is that the January complaint against the former director
general, Tony Danker, which “lit the fuse on the whole thing”,
was so badly handled that Danker is preparing to sue.
“MeToo allegations” often elicit “an outpouring of emotion,
and sometimes moral panic”. But those accused must be given
the chance to answer in a fair forum. “Due process” and
“corporate governance” are boring phrases, but they matter.

Making money: what the experts think AI investing

O North Sea alarm
Unions are fretting
about the possibility of
“a jobs bloodbath” in
the oil and gas industry
if Labour wins power
and pushes through
its “proposed ban”
on new North Sea
projects, said Ben
Wright in The Daily
Telegraph. The policy A Harbour North Sea drilling platform said Alexa Phillips in
may prove to be just
hot air. But Britain’s largest independent
North Sea oil and gas producer, Harbour
Energy, might not stick around to find out, “permanent change” that could depress
said Reuters. Shares in the Edinburgh-
based driller shot up this week on news of
merger talks with its Gulf of Mexico peer,
Talos Energy. It made a welcome change
for shareholders. “Harbour’s shares have
plummeted” since the Government’s first
windfall tax was announced a year ago
– prompting CEO Linda Cook “to scale
back North Sea spending” and “diversify”
overseas. A Talos deal could see the
combined company listing in New York
– dealing “a new blow to London’s appeal
as a global financial centre”.
O Going, going…
UK house prices “registered the first
annual contraction in more than a decade” Beijing liberalised the economy, stopped
in May, according to Halifax, as higher
mortgage rates continued to bite, said
Valentina Romei in the FT. Prices were 1% “expect the foreign retreat to continue”.
lower last month than
in May 2022 – marking
the first annual fall since
December 2012. “The
brief upturn we saw in
the housing market in
the first quarter … has
faded,” said Halifax’s
Kim Kinnaird. It isn’t
just borrowing costs
that are threatening,
The Daily Telegraph.
According to the OBR economist David
Miles, the move to remote working is a
house prices by 10% in the medium-term
as people move out of pricey city centres.
He predicts that the “age of massive rises
in house prices may be nearing an end”.
O Chinese retreat
How’s the rally in Chinese shares going?
Blink and you missed it, said Lex in the FT.
Record buying from foreign investors in
January has morphed into a stampede for
the exit. Two big Canadian pension funds
are retreating, and Singapore’s GIC
sovereign wealth fund has also reduced
exposure because of “waning faith”: the
“post-lockdown economic surge” hasn’t
materialised. “Investment would rally if
interfering in business and sought a
rapprochement with the US.” Without that,
“There’s a barrage of AI-related hype
juicing up the financial markets,”
according to Jason Hollands of
investment platform Bestinvest. Some
liken it to the dotcom boom of the late
1990s. Still, it’s worthwhile checking out
the options, says David Brenchley in The
Times – particularly funds that track AI
firms, which are now surging.
ETFs The L&G Artificial Intelligence
exchange traded fund (ETF), whose
top holdings are Microsoft, Alphabet
(Google) and chipmaker Nvidia, is
up 24% so far this year. Hollands also
likes Global X Robotics & Artificial
Intelligence ETF, which includes
Japanese automation specialist
Keyence, and Intuitive, which makes
robotics products for surgery.
Actively managed funds Hollands
suggests the Sanlam Global Artificial
Intelligence fund, which charges 0.5%
a year (only slightly more than L&G’s
ETF); or Polar Capital Automation
& Artificial Intelligence.
Broader tech funds Useful for giving
you exposure to AI and other tech
trends: the Polar Capital Technology
Investment Trust is recommended.
Investment trusts The easiest way to
back privately owned companies. One
of the biggest holdings of the Chrysalis
Investments trust, for instance, is Deep
Instinct, which uses “deep learning” to
prevent cybersecurity threats.

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 Commentators CITY 41
The latest instalment of the US debt-ceiling soap opera, “having
threatened the world with a sovereign default and financial City profile
Armageddon disaster”, is finally over, says The Economist. After all the drama,
the “piddling resolution” seems incongruous. The Republicans
Dame Carolyn McCall
After half a decade at the
gives way to have managed to whittle down federal spending by $1.3trn
over the next decade, which sounds impressive – until you set
helm of ITV, Carolyn McCall’s
tenure could yet be defined
fiscal hell it against the $80trn of outlays forecast for the same period.
“A weak deal is infinitely preferable to no deal, which might have
by a grilling from MPs “in an
anonymous committee room
Editorial provoked a meltdown in global markets.” Still, America’s fiscal in Westminster”, said the FT.
path remains worrisome. Federal debt is now about 93% of GDP: The scandal engulfing the
The Economist “almost triple its level on the eve of the global financial crisis of broadcaster’s flagship This
2007-2009”; the US will shortly “spend more annually on interest Morning show, and the exit
of former presenter Phillip
payments than on national defence”. Some good may yet come Schofield, has raised
out of the debacle: there’s talk of “a bipartisan commission to “uncomfortable questions”.
figure out how to fix the country’s finances”. But what’s the MPs questioned her about
betting that “harsh political realities will intrude”? The new allegations of a toxic work
agreement runs until early 2025, at which point the “next culture and safeguarding
episode of debt-ceiling drama is all but certain to kick off”. issues. For the moment,
investors seem sanguine:
“Losing one finance director is a misfortune,” says Lex, “but ITV’s shares have fallen only
when a quarter of FTSE 100 finance directors box up their desk slightly. But during McCall’s
tenure as a whole they have
Britain’s contents in the space of a few months, it is clear something does
not add up.” The level of churn is “remarkable” – the latest to
fallen by 60%, and the affair
is, at the very least, an
“finance sling their hooks are the chief finance officers of Unilever and
Prudential – but there are some common factors. Incoming CEOs
unwelcome distraction at a
difficult time. Some former
defectors” often prefer to bring in their own financial lieutenant rather than
inherit one: thus, “a cluster of CFOs have left amid a new broom’s
senior staff are less than
positive. “I think she’s toast,”
Lex clean sweep”. Still, the “CFO merry-go-round is spinning even said one. “She’s run out of
faster than the CEO carousel”, with average tenure now little ideas… If you’re looking for
Financial Times more than four years, compared with five years-plus for corporate an excuse as investors to
force change, this seems the
captains. A plausible theory is that the bumpy economy has made obvious moment.”
the job much tougher. Slowing revenues and cost inflation means
CFOs are “on the hook to deliver unpopular and complex cost-
cutting plans”, while “twitchy capital markets” make raising debt
“hair-raising”. Given the pitfalls, perhaps it’s no wonder so many
have decided “now is a good time to count themselves out”.

The “culture wars” sweeping through society have found a new

battleground, says Mehreen Khan – central banks. In 2021, the
Is “wokeness” former US treasury secretary, Larry Summers, blamed the Federal
Reserve’s failure to foresee the threat of inflation on its “obsession
undermining with wokeness”. Now much the same charge has been lobbed at
the Bank of England. The former governor, Lord [Mervyn] King,
central banks? reckons that the prominence given to establishing “gender and
ethnicity” on the Monetary Policy Committee has come at the
Mehreen Khan expense of “diversity of thinking”. But while his call for more
debate is laudable, his argument on diversity is “particularly
The Times misplaced”. The nine-strong committee, which currently includes One thing’s certain, said
Katie Prescott in The Times.
three women serving as external members, has become “a far Dame Carolyn, 61, is no
more diverse and divided body” than in King’s day, when “group- pushover. She’s “calculating,
think” was rife. “Anti-wokeists are loath to admit that their sacred capable, smart and always
intellectual diversity is often enhanced by recruiting more people charming”, according to
from non-traditional backgrounds.” There are good reasons to those who know her.
criticise the Bank’s “dismal recent record on inflation”. Pinning Another frequently deployed
it to recruiting more women and minorities is ludicrous. adjective is “determined”.
Born and raised in India,
Airport e-gates are guaranteed to wind up the most patient she gave up her “hated” first
career as a secondary school
travellers, says Martin Vander Weyer. “The instructions are poor, teacher to take a masters in
The outrage the facial recognition frequently fails”, and the “Don’t abuse our
staff” posters tell you “you’re trapped in a system that’s bound to
politics, later joining the ad
sales team at The Guardian,
of e-gate annoy”. Last month, the process went “from bad to worse” when,
thanks to what the Home Office called “a technical nationwide
where she rose steadily to
become CEO. In 2010, McCall
outages border system issue”, all 270 e-gates at UK entry points broke
down. Who was responsible? It’s not entirely clear. In 2013, a
jumped ship to lead easyJet,
then beset with problems,
Martin Vander Weyer contract for UK e-gates was awarded to a Portuguese firm, Vision- which “prospered under her
Box. But confusion as to “who’s in charge of e-gate upgrades” leadership”. Rival Michael
O’Leary of Ryanair once
The Spectator may be another part of the story. One such transition is handled dismissed McCall as a
by Fujitsu – the Japanese giant “responsible for the faulty Horizon “media luvvie”. Ironically,
software that led to hundreds of prosecutions against innocent running a commercial
sub-postmasters”. Fujitsu has continued to win huge government broadcaster in the age of
contracts, notably from HMRC – “despite calls from MPs to streaming has proved the
pause the relationship”. Was it to blame again? Who knows? Still, more intractable challenge.
at least the problem can’t “be blamed on British workmanship”.

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 43

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
Bloomsbury Publishing Empiric Student Property MJ Gleeson Unilever
Investors’ Chronicle The Times The Daily Telegraph
The Harry Potter publisher is The accommodation provider The housebuilder/developer 4,400
being fuelled by non-consumer is reducing maintenance costs is focused on affordable Director sells
4,350 41,975
products – textbooks, and boosting margins with properties in the North and
4,300
“educational fiction” and the “cluster” developments in Midlands. Despite macro-
higher-margin digital arm. university cities. Shares are economic challenges, there’s 4,250

Well-run, with a stellar track unjustifiably discounted, given long-term need, and Gleeson 4,200
record and convincing growth stable valuations and solid is cheap with a strong balance 4,150
strategy. Buy. 417p. rental growth. Buy. 90.5p. sheet. Buy. 425p. 4,100

4,050
Eden Research Hill & Smith Nvidia
The Mail on Sunday The Mail on Sunday The Times Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Eden makes plant-based crop The steel specialist, which Nvidia’s chips power tech

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

protection, including a fungal
disease preventative and a
product for warding off birds.
Backed by US giant Corteva;
playing into regulatory trends
and consumer preferences.
Buy. 3.65p.
supplies critical products
for energy, transport and
building projects, is benefitting
from surging US and UK
infrastructure spending.
Revenues are up 18%, profits
exceed forecasts. Buy. £14.94.
Regional president Sanjiv
groups, cloud computing Mehta has cashed in around
providers – and the AI gold £1.8m-worth of shares in a
rush sparked by Open AI’s well-timed sale. Despite an
ChatGPT tool. Benefitting “eventful” 2022, shares gained
a fifth, but have since fallen –
from early-mover advantage, on fears more shoppers could
momentum should turbocharge switch from brands to
sales. Buy. $400.80. own-label products.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

AJ Bell Dr. Martens SSE Shares tipped 12 weeks ago

Investors’ Chronicle The Times The Daily Telegraph Best tip
The investment platform Disappointing guidance comes The energy giant is balancing Arecor Therapeutics
has benefitted from sitting on on the heels of three profit the tricky act of steering The Mail on Sunday
cash balances as interest rates warnings for the bootmaker, investments towards net zero, up 0.82% to 245p
rise. Performance is impressive, which has problems in its US while pleasing investors. Still,
given capex and surging ops. There’s overseas potential, the capex project will increase Worst tip
ITV
staff costs. But margins are but boot sales are slipping in the asset base, which should
Investors’ Chronicle
expected to “compress favour of lower-margin drive earnings per share and down 18.07% to 70.3p
slightly”. Hold. 315p. sandals. Avoid. 138p. boost the divi. Hold. £18.34.

B&M European Value Retail Greencore Group United Utilities

The Times
The retailer’s pre-tax profits
fell 17% due to stock
markdowns, store investment
and cost inflation. Investors are
unconvinced, yet easing freight
costs will help – and there
are plans for 60 new stores.
Hold. 509.8p.
Investors’ Chronicle Investors’ Chronicle Market view
Higher costs have tipped The water group is bringing
”Nobody wants to
the convenience food-maker forward infrastructure spend, miss out on it.”
into the red. But sales are up in a bid to reduce sewage Stuart Kaiser, head of US
and demand for packaged spills, at a tricky time: interest equity trading strategy
sandwiches has held, despite on index-linked debt has at Citigroup, on tech’s
changes to working patterns. ballooned. Overvalued dramatic recent rally.
A strong profits bounce-back given the regulatory risks. Quoted in the FT
is expected. Hold. 78p. Sell. £10.16.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for
for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
6 June 2023 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS
8,000
FTSE 100 7628.10 7522.07 1.41% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 4167.20 4104.75 1.52% B&M European Val. Ret. 539.80 +14.39
7,900
Dow Jones 33551.64 32972.13 1.76% Anglo American 2454.50 +8.37
Abrdn 218.50 +6.74
NASDAQ 13297.01 13058.42 1.83%
Antofagasta 1446.00 +6.09 7,800
Nikkei 225 32506.78 31328.16 3.76%
Hang Seng 19099.28 18595.78 2.71% United Utilities Group 1068.50 +5.74
7,700
Gold 1959.65 1947.90 0.60%
Brent Crude Oil 76.18 73.81 3.21% FALLS
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.75% 3.81% Ocado Group 358.40 –8.55 7,600
Entain 1305.00 –5.06
UK 10-year gilts yield 4.31 4.34
National Grid 1067.50 –2.95
US 10-year Treasuries 3.70 3.71 Hiscox DI 1154.00 –2.37
7,500
UK ECONOMIC DATA Natwest Group 260.70 –1.73
Latest CPI (yoy) 8.7% (Apr) 10.1% (Mar) 7,400
Latest RPI (yoy) 11.4% (Apr) 13.5% (Mar) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
Halifax house price (yoy) −1.0% (May) 0.1% (Apr) Indivior 1681.00 +15.10 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
Dr. Martens 132.70 –13.30
£1 STERLING: $1.241 €1.162 ¥173.002 Bitcoin $26,211.50 Source: Refinitiv/FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 6 June (pm) 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index

10 June 2023 THE WEEK

44 The last word

Boy vs. grizzly bear: surviving

an attack in the wilderness
When Alex Messenger was 17, he canoed through the Canadian Northwest Territories. His main concern was that he might capsize
his canoe, but what he encountered was far more terrifying than any white water. Elle Hunt reports

Late one afternoon, on he remembers being struck

what was supposed to be a by its agility. “I’ve never
six-week white-water canoe seen anything move as
trip through the Canadian quickly as that bear.” The
wilderness, 17-year-old Alex other thing that registered
Messenger left his campsite above his terror was the
to climb a steep ridge that smell – “like a dog that had
promised panoramic views never been bathed”.
of the tundra. It was the
highest point for 50 miles. For excruciating seconds,
“You could see lake after bear and boy circled each
lake, after lake,” he says. other, “bullfighting style”
Then, directly across the – but with each round, the
ridge, Messenger saw circle grew tighter. The bear
something else – a flicker of was snapping and swiping
brown. His body recognised at Messenger, who took
it before his conscious mind a glancing blow to the
did. “It triggered all of the shoulder, then another
physiological responses in across his back. But, just as
a fraction of a second,” he he had dodged its jaws, the
says, “before I even realised bear reached up with its
it was a grizzly bear.” forepaws. The blow across
his face could have felled
Four weeks earlier, in July a caribou or a musk ox, the
2005, Messenger’s group Despite their bulk, grizzly bears can run at up to 40 miles per hour bear’s typical prey. “I felt
of six had set out on their like a mosquito getting
summer adventure from Lake Wholdaia, in the remote Canadian swatted,” he says. “My head went to the side, then I went flying.”
Northwest Territories. They had been told that they would be Mid-air, he realised there was no way that he could outsmart or
lucky even to see a bear. “I felt like I had a good appreciation of outmanoeuvre his opponent. “There was nothing physically that
what risks we were likely to encounter,” Messenger says. “Top of I could do: you’ve got a 150lb 17-year-old versus a 600lb grizzly
my mind was flipping the boat, and other things that can happen bear,” he says. “I just realised that, you know… I was about to
in white water.” Finding himself face to face with a 600lb grizzly die.” He pauses. “And it was a terrible feeling.”
bear had not crossed his mind.
Now, with the predator just 30ft As soon as Messenger landed,
away, Messenger felt his airways “As soon as Messenger landed, the bear was on hard, on his tailbone, the bear
enlarge, his adrenaline spike and him. Its head was right above his hip joint, its was upon him. Its head was
his pulse double, preparing his right above his hip joint, its
body to flee, fight or hide. The jaws around his leg. He felt the teeth go in” jaws around his leg. “I felt those
bear seemed to be making a teeth go in on both sides, and
similarly rapid assessment. It was on all fours, wide-eyed and blacked out from the pain,” he says. He doesn’t know how long
clearly startled. “It was like we’d stumbled upon each other, and he was unconscious: “I was playing dead very effectively.” When
both had the reaction: ‘What am I looking at?’” says Messenger. he came to, the bear was loping quickly in the other direction.
Having eliminated the threat, it seemingly wanted to make
He wanted to run. Instead, he says, “I fell back on my training.” a quick getaway. Still playing dead, Messenger watched it
He started slowly backing away, speaking in a low voice, keeping disappear over the edge of the rise, then took his chance. He set
his eyes averted, trying desperately to persuade the bear that he out in what he hoped was the direction of the camp, his surging
was not to be feared. But the bear wasn’t convinced. Grunting adrenaline just about overpowering the growing heat of his
and growling, it launched towards Messenger, one or two steps right thigh. “The whole time I was waiting for the bear to come
at a time, as if it was testing him. The distance between them was back and finish the job,” he says.
shrinking rapidly, even as Messenger was edging away. “I knew
that I couldn’t run – but I wasn’t really sure what to do at that He staggered 150 yards or so to the lip of the ridge, his right leg
point,” he says (the bear deterrents the group had packed were now screaming, his trouser leg sticky with blood, and yelled
back at the campsite). Then the bear charged. Despite their down to the campsite: “Bear!” Below, his friends reacted with
immense bulk, bears can run at close to 40mph. When it was 15ft disbelief. They were in a bug-proof communal tent, making
away, Messenger could feel the ground shaking under its paws. pizzas for dinner. Messenger had been unlucky to run into the
bear and even less lucky to be attacked by it. Just 44 attacks by
He yelled for help, knowing that no one could hear him. Then, grizzly bears are reported globally each year, with 12 of them
instinctively, he threw his 15lb camera case at the animal taking place in North America. Most are non-fatal. He estimates
galloping towards him – and hit it square on its snout. The strike now, on a video call from his home in Duluth, Minnesota, that the
was forceful enough to turn the bear’s head, allowing Messenger time between stumbling across the bear and losing consciousness
to jump out of its path. “As soon as it realised that it had missed was 30-60 seconds. “It was super-short, but it had ripple effects
me, it turned around and came at me again.” Even in the moment, through the rest of my life,” he says. Lying there on the hill,

THE WEEK 10 June 2023

 The last word
powerful images of loved ones flashed
through his mind in quick succession.
The group’s 27-year-old guide, Dan, had
some emergency responder training and
he carried out an initial assessment.
Messenger’s right leg had been in the
bear’s jaws, causing a deep puncture to
his thigh and four more compression
wounds elsewhere. He had claw marks
across his back, around one ankle and to
an earlobe, and the beginnings of a black
eye where the bear had struck him.
At some point, the tips of two of his
toes had been sliced clean off: he has no
recollection of how that happened.
The group was more than 100 miles from Alex Messenger before the attack in 2015
the closest settlement – but, after their
base camp was consulted via satellite phone, an emergency
evacuation by plane was deemed too logistically challenging.
While Messenger could not walk, he could paddle, so the group
resolved to continue along the route towards what had been
their intended destination, the tiny settlement of Baker Lake in
the Arctic territory of Nunavut, remaining in close contact
with experts by phone and monitoring Messenger day and
night for signs of infection.
Damage to Messenger’s muscle tissue had slowed the flow
of blood to his wounds, and Dan was tasked with regularly
reopening them and flushing them by syringe. Messenger recalls
the excruciating pain, and biting down on his leather-covered
multitool to cope. The group’s stores of ibuprofen had to be
rationed, but for Messenger
there was some comfort in
putting his fate in the hands of “He worries people think he’s made the
his teammates. “It can be hard story up. When they hear it, their first
to let go, but I think it’s a really
important step. It helps to bring
reaction is to look him up and down”
some peace and remove stress.”
With Messenger only able to paddle with reduced mobility, and
sometimes having to encounter white water, the group made slow
and often painful progress. But, he says, being able to contribute
was a “really good feeling”. “That I was able to assist in my own
rescue was empowering and cathartic for me … I had this mindset get mauled by a bear in the 2015 film The Revenant was to think:
of ‘OK, what do we have to do next?’” As long as Messenger
remained stable, the priority was getting him a rabies shot within
12 days of the attack. But, after a gruelling five-day passage, his
wounds started showing signs of infection. Dan improvised his
first-ever surgery, cutting out the dying tissue – “like trying to cut
through the tough parts of raw chicken”.
Nevertheless, the infection continued to spread. Now that they
were closer to Baker Lake and helicopters were available, the call
was made to evacuate the patient. It was decided that one of the
team, Mike, would accompany Messenger on his journey, because
it was thought that he was less likely to develop post-traumatic
stress disorder if he stayed with someone he knew. Ironically,
Messenger recalls, Mike was the one who had persuaded him to
come on the trip, when he had been wavering over the cost. “I’m
still thankful that he did,” he says. “Really – it was just such an
amazing experience, even if it didn’t quite go as we planned.”
At Baker Lake, Messenger received 12 hours of intravenous
antibiotics, before being flown south to Winnipeg for the first of
five rabies shots. His parents drove through the night from the
family home in Minnesota to pick him up. For six weeks, he
took oral antibiotics and followed a programme of wound-care
management. Two months after the attack, the puncture on his
right thigh had healed. He regained full motion a year later
through personal training. “I was incredibly lucky,” he says.
“To see me, no one would have any idea what had happened.”
45
That has proved its own burden. There
is no support group for survivors of
bear attacks, because, as Messenger says,
there aren’t enough of them. “I recognised
pretty early on that it would be hard to
find people who would relate.” Even
before they were evacuated, Messenger
had told Mike that he almost wished for
claw marks on his arm, some sign of
what he’d been through. “It’s like this
impostor syndrome: people are going to
think that I’m making it up.” When most
people hear his story, he says, their first
reaction is to look him up and down.
The toll proved to be mostly
psychological. For the first few weeks
after the attack, Messenger had
flashbacks and would wake up in the
night, convinced a bear was right next to him. Even almost 20
years later, Messenger, who is now 35, remains easily startled.
When he is out hiking, and a twig snaps, “I instantly go into a
full-blown fight-or-flight response.” Dogs in particular can be
triggering. But, through meditation and breathwork, he has been
able to gain greater control over those bodily responses. Learning
about bears and why they attack has also helped him to process
the trauma. “When you have a trauma, regardless of what it is,
if you’re able to understand it, that can be a big step towards
healing,” he says. “It’s taking this thing that your brain can’t
figure out and compartmentalising it, so that it’s not just going to
jump out at you.” Messenger also drew comfort from researching
what he could have done differently, in case he should ever be
unlucky enough to stumble across a bear again. “It’s things as
simple as not going out alone,
and making a noise when you’re
coming up to a blind spot, that
are going to dramatically
decrease the chances of this
ever happening again.”
A few years ago, he returned to grizzly country, visiting the
Glacier National Park in Montana with friends. They carried
bear spray “religiously”. Today, Messenger speaks knowledgeably
about bear behaviour in a way that belies his firsthand experience.
His only response while watching Leonardo DiCaprio’s character
“That bear is not moving like my bear did.” Messenger’s was
a “classic defensive encounter”, he says, meaning that the bear
was motivated only by the desire to eliminate threat, not by the
need for food – which, he says, would be what is known as a
“predacious encounter – and a whole other level of horrifying”.
Although Messenger might have mastered intellectually what
happened to him, for some years he struggled to find the meaning
of it. “I’ve always felt that there’s perhaps some kind of purpose
tied around this whole experience. I don’t know what that is, but
it feels like there was a little bit more at play than what we can see
and touch.” For years, “I was waiting for an ‘Aha!’ moment that
would tie it all up for me”, he says. “That never happened.”
Eventually, he joined his local volunteer wilderness search-and-
rescue team, using his experience to help others. Writing a book
about his experience was therapeutic: “I realised I could spend my
entire life waiting to find out what the purpose was – it was time
to tell the story. I didn’t need to tell people what it meant: they
could take their own meaning from it.” His book is about how a
singular experience can transform a life. “Everything changes once
you get there – and everything changes once you leave.”
A longer version of this article appeared in The Guardian
© 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited. The Twenty-Ninth
Day: Surviving a Grizzly Attack in the Canadian Tundra by
Alex Messenger is published by Blackstone
10 June 2023 THE WEEK
 Crossword 47
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1366 This week’s winner will receive an
An Ettinger pass holder and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass
correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 19 June. Send holder in assorted colours, which
it to The Week Crossword 1366, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the retails at £115, and two Connell Guides
completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

ACROSS
7 Swimmer holds on for brief
rest period (8)
9 Dane’s head of a city port?
This one maybe (6)
10 Minor instruction not on (4)
11 Willy’s aware of latest trends
in club group (10)
12 Spell what ends a sentence
for Trump (6)
14 Writer’s block? More than
once (8)
15 Appropriate first-class retail
outlets for peer (4,1,8)
17 Very loyal member of Oxford
team? (4,4)
19 Composer of overture to
opera after theatrical scene? (6)
21 A term for ham wearing
notably loud dicky? (10)
22 Criticise girls from the east (4)
23 Get away with individual
request being first (6)
24 Southern Indian dishes can
give you the runs! (8)
DOWN
1 English novelist putting
area first for excellence (6)
2 Lots of luggage? (4)
3 Subject given with help
recalled in newspapers etc. (3,5)
4 Avoid keeping diamonds for
publicity (6)
5 Angry article can make you
beam (10)
6 Ozzie football team abroad
laid mast out (8)
8 Wherein Number Ten is seen
in centre for Marxism (5,8)
13 Likely rocky space up in part
of Yorkshire (6,4)
15 One hour in The Plough for
a tense match (8)
16 Old joke involving two parts
of the body (8)
18 Role to change for thief (6)
20 Wine cartel busted (6)
22 Safe beach reported (4)

Name
Address
Clue of the week: Restless polar bears like protection from the sun Tel no
(7 letters, first one P last one L) The Independent, Quince
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1364

Restore your
ACROSS: 1 Postage stamp 9 Prattle 10 Rat race 11 Erica 12 Determine
13 Lingering 15 Degas 16 Utile 18 Bombshell 20 Elongates 23 Route
24 Trounce 25 Inroads 26 Trainspotter

news-life balance
DOWN: 2 Oration 3 Tête-à-tête 4 Greed 5 Stratagem 6 Alter 7 Peaking
8 Peter Sellers 9 Poet laureate 14 In-between 15 Desert rat 17 Iron out
19 Educate 21 Ganja 22 Skimp
Clue of the week: Drunk given watered shot felt hurt and quit, perhaps
(4,11, first letters P & P) Solution: PAST PARTICIPLES
The winner of 1364 is Janet Liddle from Reading

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