JFK: 60 years Dorries’s weird The original

of unanswered Westminster “international

questions exposé man of mystery”
BRIEFING P13 TALKING POINTS P23 OBITUARIES P42

18 NOVEMBER 2023 | ISSUE 1462 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

A surprise comeback
Can Cameron save the Tories?
Page 4

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

4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
David Cameron returns
Rishi Sunak took Westminster by surprise this
week with his appointment of David Cameron
as Foreign Secretary. Lord Cameron, as he now
is, is the first former prime minister to return to
a Cabinet role since Alec Douglas-Home, who
took the same post more than 50 years ago.
His appointment was the centrepiece of a wider-
than-expected reshuffle brought forward by a
bust-up with Suella Braverman. He sacked her as
home secretary days after she accused the police
of bias in an unauthorised article about pro-
Palestinian marches. In a scathing resignation
letter, the former home secretary accused
Sunak of betrayal, saying that he had repeatedly
failed to deliver key policies (see page 6).
Cameron: “Daddy’s back”
Cameron replaced James Cleverly, who was
given Braverman’s old job in the Home Office. Steve Barclay,
meanwhile, was moved from Health to Environment Secretary, Whether the appointment of Esther McVey as a “common
replacing the Liz Truss loyalist Thérèse Coffey. His role went
to Victoria Atkins, a rising star from the liberal wing of the
party. Sunak hailed his “strong and united” team, but the
reshuffle enraged some Tory backbenchers. Andrea Jenkyns
submitted a letter of no confidence in the PM, accusing him
of purging right-wingers from his Cabinet.
What the editorials said
“No one will ever be able to call Rishi Sunak dull again,” said
The Independent. This was certainly an eye-catching reshuffle.
By enlisting Cameron and ditching the
recklessly provocative Braverman, the PM
has improved the quality of his top team,
but the move does add to a general sense of
a Government “thrashing around”. It marks
yet another switch of direction, agreed the
FT. Only six weeks ago, Sunak was boasting
about being an agent of “change”, who was
breaking with 30 years of failed consensus.
Now he’s lurching back to the political centre
by re-embracing Cameron, who served as
Tory premier for six of the past 13 years.
The reshuffle may reassure some voters in the
Tory shires, said the Daily Mail, but it won’t do
much for the party’s fortunes in “red wall” seats
in the Midlands and northern England, where
voters backed Brexit against Cameron’s Remain campaign.
sense tsar”, to oversee the anti-woke agenda, is enough to
placate the Tory Right remains to be seen. The reality, said
The Sun, is that most voters don’t really care who holds
which Cabinet job. “They are tired of the Tory soap opera.
They just want our biggest problems fixed.” Come the election,
the Government will be judged on results, not personalities.

What happened
The crisis in Gaza
Israeli forces entered Gaza’s largest hospital
on Wednesday. Israel said that its “targeted”
operation at the Al-Shifa Hospital was aimed
at dismantling a Hamas “command complex”
located in tunnels beneath the building.
Witnesses said troops were searching the
hospital room by room, and interrogating
some of the 2,000 people who have taken
shelter there from the fierce fighting in the
area. Even before the raid, conditions in the
hospital, in Gaza City, had been the focus of
growing international concern: 32 people,
including three premature babies, have died
in Al-Shifa since it lost power on Saturday; A wounded girl in Al-Shifa leader to call for a ceasefire, saying that there
with incubators no longer working, doctors
reported having to wrap babies in foil to keep them alive.
Hamas denies using the hospital as a military facility; but
Israel’s claims to the contrary were supported by declassified operation that hospitals in Gaza “must be protected”.
US intelligence. Two-and-a-half weeks after its ground
offensive began, Israel said that Hamas had “lost control”
of Gaza, citing its capture of the territory’s parliament and
institutions, including Hamas’s military police HQ. Separately,
there were hopes that Israel and Hamas were close to reaching
a deal to secure the release of some of the
people being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza.
Israel is prioritising the release of the 100 or
so women and children who were among the
estimated 240 hostages seized on 7 October,
but the initial number released is likely to be
smaller, The Washington Post reported.
Hamas-run health authorities announced that
the number of people killed in Gaza has now
exceeded 11,000, intensifying international
calls for Israel to moderate its military response.
France’s President Macron became the first G7
was “no justification” for bombing babies and
women. The US also hardened its language: Secretary of State
Antony Blinken warned that “far too many Palestinians have
been killed”; and President Biden said before the Al-Shifa
Rishi Sunak urged Israel to “act within international law”.

It wasn’t all bad Attenborough’s long-

A blind runner has married the
man who volunteered to guide
her in her first race. Kelly
Barton, 46, from Southport,
Merseyside, had assumed that
her visual impairment would
make it impossible for her to
go running. But when her GP
suggested that she could try
the sport with a trained running
guide, she signed up for a
Parkrun, where she met Mike
Leatherbarrow, 49. They kept
running together and began,
as Barton put it, to “fall for
each other over the miles”.
THE WEEK 18 November 2023
beaked echidna, an
A book club that started reading
Finnegans Wake 28 years ago
ancient egg-laying has finally finished it. The group
mammal that was feared in Venice, California, began
to have long ago become meeting to discuss James
extinct, has been caught Joyce’s novel at a local library
on camera for the first in 1995. They initially read two
time. A British team pages a month, then slowed to
spent 21 fruitless days one, and finally reached the last
in Papua’s Cyclops page in October. But they’re
Mountains searching for not moving onto a new book:
the echidna, named after instead they’re starting all over
the famous naturalist. again. “The last sentence of the
They were about to set off home when their cameras recorded four book ends midsentence and
three-second clips of the creature. Echidnas are thought to have then it picks up at the front of
emerged 200 million years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth; the book,” explained founder
until now, the only firm evidence for the existence of the Zaglossus Gerry Fialka. “It’s cyclical. It
attenboroughi species was a decades-old museum specimen. never ends.”
COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
More than seven years after Cameron left office, “sadly humming a little tune to himself” as he Opposition parties and the
walked back into No. 10 following his last press conference, he has staged a shock comeback, Commons Speaker, Lindsay
said Alice Thomson in The Times. It’s good news for him. “He must have been getting very Hoyle, raised concerns this
bored.” He left office at the age of only 49, and wanted to “feel useful and necessary again”. week about how MPs would
And Tory moderates are delighted by his return. “Daddy’s back,” crowed one. The move is be able to hold Cameron to
comparable to Gordon Brown’s decision to bring Peter Mandelson in from the wilderness in account given that he will sit
2008, said John Rentoul in The Independent. That move bolstered Brown’s government and as a peer rather than in the
helped Labour to “fight back from the depths of opinion-poll gloom”. But Cameron’s arrival, Commons. Foreign Office
which only highlights the “incoherence” of Sunak’s Government, is unlikely to prove as helpful. Minister Andrew Mitchell,
deputising for Cameron in the
With his assured manner, Cameron has always “looked the part” of a statesman, said Bagehot Commons, assured them that
in The Economist. But he has a lousy record. He’s the PM who pushed the damaging austerity the new Foreign Secretary
agenda; who made the unrealistic promise to cut annual net migration numbers to below believed proper scrutiny
100,000; who naively invited China to invest in UK nuclear power stations and other sensitive of his role was “essential”,
infrastructure; and who called and lost the Brexit referendum. After leaving office, he further adding that Cameron would
embarrassed himself by engaging in unwise lobbying for the now-bankrupt Greensill Capital. appear before the House
of Lords and relevant
Cameron has made his share of mistakes, said Jawad Iqbal in The Spectator, but he has likely committees regularly.
learnt from them. His experience, and understanding of the machinery of government, are
valuable assets. Let’s hope his return helps dispel the “self-defeating” idea that “former leaders Cameron said he had given
of the country do not – and should not – return to frontline politics”. We need their hard-won up all his other jobs to accept
knowledge. It makes sense for organisations to include experienced people in their team, said the new role. In PMQs on
Sean O’Grady in The Independent, particularly when they’re not blessed with a wealth of Wednesday, Labour leader
new talent. Cameron should be a reliable and loyal adviser for Sunak, “with no pretensions to Keir Starmer asked when
stealing his job”. His return, and the removal of Braverman, will “cause conniptions” among there would be “full public
the Right, but for the PM, who desperately needs his Government to project at least an illusion disclosure” of his work for
of competence, that’s a “price worth paying”. At this point, frankly, what has Sunak got to lose? Chinese interests.

What the commentators said What next?

The Israeli army’s entrance into Al-Shifa Hospital is a “dramatic development” in its war in Israeli PM Benjamin
Gaza, said Amos Harel in Haaretz. It shows a willingness to strike at “the heart of Hamas’s Netanyahu has said that
military and government apparatus in the northern Gaza Strip”, despite the risks of such steps he opposes the return of
eroding international support. And it follows a similar operation at the smaller Rantisi Hospital the Palestinian Authority
– beneath which Israel says it found a large cache of weapons – as well as the capture of the in Gaza. The US and others
Gazan parliament. Israel’s military offensive is so far proving highly effective, said Richard have suggested that, when
Kemp in The Daily Telegraph. Its forces have encircled Gaza City and are gradually destroying the fighting is over, Gaza
Hamas’s tunnel network. And while Israel hasn’t yet taken out “top level” Hamas commanders, could be administered by
there are signs that the group is under real pressure: rocket launches from Gaza are at their the PA, which runs the
lowest level since the war began, and Hamas leaders are reportedly pleading with Hezbollah occupied West Bank. But
in Lebanon to mount “sustained attacks” to divert Israel’s attention to its northern border. Netanyahu warned that
Israel would face down
As civilian casualties mount, however, Israel’s claim that it is conducting a “proportionate international pressure for
response” to the atrocities of 7 October is beginning to look unsustainable, said The Guardian. such an outcome. “I don’t
Two-thirds of those killed so far have been women and children, according to Gaza’s health intend to cave,” he said.
ministry, and the WHO estimates that one child is being killed every ten minutes in Gaza. If
Hamas is using civilians as “human shields”, as Israel alleges, then it is guilty of an unforgivable According to the UN, all
breach of international law; but that doesn’t give Israel “free rein” and “a ceasefire is long but one of the hospitals in
overdue”. Israel is in a bind, said Lauren Jackson in The New York Times. It remains firm in northern Gaza are now out
its intention to eliminate Hamas; but it is also facing growing international discontent over the of service, owing to the lack
way in which it is prosecuting this war, with civilian casualties triggering global protests. Israel’s of power, drugs, oxygen,
allies won’t withdraw their support just yet. But make no mistake: “the clock is ticking”. food and water.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
Luxury Advent calendars “destroy” Christmas. That was the warning Editor: Theo Tait
Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
issued to The Daily Telegraph last week by Dr Gavin Ashenden, City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editors: Robin de Peyer,
Leaf Arbuthnot Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
a trenchant and quotable Roman Catholic priest. As an admirer of Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
Dr Ashenden’s extravagant broadsides – he has previously railed against exotically flavoured hot Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Amelia Butler-
Gallie, Louis Foster Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
cross buns as “the work of the devil” – I tracked down his latest piece in the Catholic Herald, punchily Art director: Katrina Ffiske Senior sub-editor: Simmy
Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connelll
entitled: “The modern Advent calendar and our descent into vice.” Rather to my surprise, it struck Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
a chord. Advent calendars were designed to help us “clear the clutter from our lives” and focus on
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Christmas, he says. And indeed I still remember the anticipation I felt at the prospect of opening the Account Directors: Aimee Farrow, Amy McBride
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chocolate, spirit miniatures, cheap jewellery, even, it seems, sex toys. The other surprise, reading Director – The Week, Wealth & Finance: Peter Cammidge
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SVP Lifestyle, Knowledge and News: Sophie Wybrew-Bond
today’s media and social media world. This, after all, is an era of principled anger about issues big
and small: not just Israel-Palestine, Brexit and vaccines, but also pronouns, Christmas adverts (see Future PLC, 121-
141 Westbourne
page 15), and even the rescue of a sheep called Fiona. We live in a doctrinal age; right-thinking and Terrace, London
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any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 18 November 2023 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week Rwanda judgment

Braverman’s exit The Supreme Court

dealt a severe blow to the
Government’s immigration
“Very few people can claim to have been sacked from the same policy this week when it
job twice,” said Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph. Suella ruled that the plan to deport
Braverman achieved this feat on Monday, when her second some asylum seekers to
term as home secretary was ended by Rishi Sunak. The final Rwanda was unlawful.
straw was her article in The Times that – in defiance of orders Reading out the unanimous
judgment, Lord Reed said
from No. 10 – took issue with the Metropolitan Police’s
that there was a “real risk”
decision to allow a pro-Palestinian march on Armistice Day that applications would not
(see page 22), and claimed that the police “play favourites” be properly considered in
when it comes to protesters: they are tougher on right-wing Rwanda, leading to refugees
extremists, she said, than on pro-Palestinian “mobs”. After being wrongly returned to
her sacking, Braverman issued a resignation letter that, “even their countries of origin. As
by the standards of some of the great knifings in Tory history”, evidence of this, the court
was “brutal”. She accused Sunak of betrayal, by reneging on pointed to the failure of a
a secret deal he’d agreed in exchange for her support. In this similar deal between Israel
and Rwanda. Reed stressed
document, he had promised, she said, to introduce specific “The darling of the Right” that the policy fell foul
measures to bring down immigration, among other things. He not only of the European
was either “incapable” of keeping his promises, she said, or had had “no intention” of doing so. Convention on Human Rights
but also the UN convention
Braverman had to go, said Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer. It’s unbelievable that this reckless for refugees. Rishi Sunak
person was given such a sensitive role. Two fundamental principles of our society are “that politicians said the ruling was “not what
don’t issue operational orders to the police”, and that they don’t interfere with the legal right to we wanted”, but insisted that
protest. Braverman tried to do both. Although tensions were running dangerously high over the he was still determined to
Gaza protests, she consciously tried to increase them; it’s hard not to conclude that she emboldened make the Rwanda plan work.
the far-right protesters who clashed with police at the Cenotaph on Saturday. And this was only her
latest offence. She had already called the protesters “hate marchers”, and claimed that homelessness NHS waiting lists
NHS waiting lists in England
was a “lifestyle choice”. I’ve said this so many times that it hardly feels worth repeating, said hit a new high of 7.77 million
Matthew Parris in The Times, but Tory leaders must stop trying to make peace with the party’s hard- at the end of September,
right. “There’s no accommodating these people.” They will be “the death of modern Conservatism”. new figures have shown.
More than a million patients
What rot, said Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph. Braverman was quite right. The police clearly are on multiple waiting lists.
do “play favourites”: weekly displays of vicious antisemitism and extremism on our streets since According to The Times,
7 October have largely gone unpunished. Sunak relied on Braverman, “the darling of the Right”, to NHS England has launched
get into power, and has since only let her down. The problem for Sunak is that “Suella-ism” will be an independent review into
why it is admitting slightly
harder to get rid of than Braverman herself, said Tom McTague on UnHerd. She has a powerful story
fewer patients for routine or
to tell: that the Tory party has failed. “It won elections, but failed to change the country. Yes, it took emergency care now than
Britain out of Europe, but the Blob remains in charge.” The courts thwart her attempts to deport before the pandemic, despite
asylum seekers. Schools promote woke ideology. Police give Hamas sympathisers free rein. Whatever having higher budgets and
you think of it, it’s a narrative that resonates. What story, by contrast, does Sunak have to tell? more doctors.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
A secondary school in
Pontypool has been forced
to deny rumours that it is
providing litter trays for
children who identify as
cats. “Whilst we are an
inclusive and welcoming
school, we do not make any
provision for any pupils who
might identify as an animal
of any kind,” reads a letter
to parents from the deputy
head of West Monmouth
School. “This kind of
behaviour is not acceptable
at school, and as such, no
provision is in place.”
Almost 80% of adults in
Great Britain think it is very
or fairly important to mark
Remembrance Day. That
includes 90% of baby
boomers (born between
1946 and 1964), 81% of
Gen X-ers (1965-1980), 74%
of millennials (1981-1996)
and 65% of members of
Generation Z (1997-2012).
Nigel Farage, with reports that he is being paid a rumoured Poll watch
£1.5m to appear in I’m A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!, Were an election to be held
making him the highest-paid person to take part in the jungle- tomorrow, Labour would
based reality show. In common with other politicians who have win by a landslide, polling
appeared on the ITV show, the former UKIP and Brexit Party suggests. The party would
leader, 59, said he was doing so to connect with younger voters. win 431 seats, leaving the
Tories with 156. Labour’s
Ridley Scott, 85, who received generally favourable reviews for majority, of 212 seats,
his epic drama Napoleon, in advance of its cinema release next would be 33 seats bigger
week. Critics praised the central performances, by Joaquin than the one it had in 1997.
Phoenix as the doomed emperor and Vanessa Kirby as his wife Survation/UK Spirits
Joséphine, and the spectacular battle scenes, but warned that the Alliance
158-minute-long biopic is not a history lesson.
Two-thirds of British adults
do not know what words
Bad week for: such as mascarpone and
Nestlé, which provoked dismay and outrage by announcing the torte mean. Three-quarters
discontinuation of the Caramac. The multinational said sales of have no idea what a coulis
the caramel-flavoured bar had been in “steady decline”. Caramac is and eight in ten are
– the name is a portmanteau of caramel and Mackintosh, the bar’s baffled by a posset.
original manufacturer – was launched in 1959. Pots & Co/Guardian
Michael Matheson, the Scottish Health Minister, who caved in According to a poll taken
to pressure to repay £11,000 in roaming charges that he had put before the event, only 16%
on expenses. Matheson had taken his official iPad when he went of British adults aged over
on a week’s holiday to Morocco, and had failed to follow the 65 said they thought that
official advice to switch off roaming or get a roaming package. the pro-Palestinian march in
Anne Hidalgo, Paris’s mayor, who was criticised for going on London should be permitted.
Electoral Calculus/
a three-week, part taxpayer-funded trip to French Polynesia, while
Find Out Now
posting photos on social media that implied she was in Paris.

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

 Europe at a glance
Paris
Leaders march:
Around 100,000
people, including
senior politicians,
marched through
Paris on Sunday
to protest against
a sharp rise in
antisemitism.
Nearly 1,250
antisemitic acts
have been
recorded in France since 7 October – nearly
three times as many as in the whole of last
year. Politicians from all sides joined the
march, including Marine Le Pen, leader of
the far-right National Rally, PM Élisabeth
Borne (pictured) and former presidents
Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande.
President Macron, who has called for a
ceasefire in Gaza, did not attend (but said
he’d be there “in my heart”); radical-left
leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon boycotted it.
Madrid
Mass protests: Tens of thousands of people
took to the streets of cities across Spain
this week to protest against plans to grant
an amnesty to those involved in Catalonia’s
illegal independence effort in 2017. Pedro
Sánchez, the country’s acting Socialist PM,
agreed to introduce such a law last week,
as part of a deal he made with Catalan
parties whose support he needs to secure
another term in office following July’s
inconclusive election. Those who would
be covered by the amnesty include Carles
Puigdemont, the Junts party leader who
fled to Belgium after the independence
referendum to avoid arrest. Alberto
Feijóo, the leader of the conservative
People’s Party, which finished first in the
election, but which was unable to form a
government, has called for mass protests in
support of fresh elections. Members of the
far-right Vox party clashed with police.
Madrid
Politician shot:
Spanish police
are investigating
claims that the
regime in Tehran
may have
been behind
the attempted
assassination of
a right-wing
politician in
Madrid last week.
Alejo Vidal-Quadras, a former regional
leader of the centre-right People’s Party,
who later co-founded the far-right Vox
party, was shot in the face in broad
daylight by a gunman on a motorbike. A
member of a pro-Israel lobby group, Vidal-
Quadras, 78, was put on a terrorist list by
Tehran for supporting a group whose aim
is to overthrow the Islamic regime. His
jawbone was fractured by the attack.
Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk
Antwerp, Belgium
Cocaine threat: Port authorities in Antwerp
have been forced to move 25 tonnes of
seized cocaine, worth an estimated €2bn,
to a maximum-security vault in a secret
location, to prevent it being stolen back
by drugs gangs. The Belgian port has
become the main entry point of cocaine
into Europe: officials there are now seizing
up to 40 tonnes of the drug a month.
But, owing to a shortage of incinerator
capacity and the need to comply with
environmental laws, drug hauls are often
having to be stored for months before they
can be burned. Now, this accumulated
“cokeberg” is being targeted by gangsters,
who are believed to have started inserting
tiny tracking devices into consignments in
order to keep tabs on their whereabouts.
Earlier this month, two port staff were
bound, gagged and beaten by knife-
wielding criminals who stole several
bags full of cocaine that were being
stored in a nearby container.
Brussels
Expansion plans: Brussels has given the
green light for formal EU membership
negotiations to open with Ukraine and
Moldova, as part of a drive that could
lead to the biggest expansion of the bloc
in 16 years. The European Commission’s
recommendation is dependent on Kyiv,
which applied for membership last year,
meeting conditions including judicial,
anti-money-laundering and anti-
corruption reforms. Moldova has already
completed many of the reforms requested
of it. However, no final process can begin
until all 27 existing member states agree
to it, and Ukraine is unlikely to gain
accession while it is at war. Commission
president Ursula von der Leyen hailed the
decision, saying: “Completing our union is
the call of history.” In a further sign of the
EU’s plans to expand eastwards, Georgia
was given candidate status – an earlier
stage in the process than accession.
NEWS 7
Bakhmut, Ukraine
Eastern front: Russian forces intensified
their assaults on eastern Ukraine this week,
as Moscow sought to gain ground in areas
around the key frontline cities of Bakhmut
and Avdiivka. Ukrainian military officials
said the Russians were trying to recapture
positions they’d lost near Bakhmut (a city
they seized in May, after months of brutal
fighting) and were continuing their weeks-
long push to encircle Avdiivka, about 55
miles south. Separately, Kyiv said that its
naval drones had sunk two Russian boats
carrying armoured vehicles near occupied
Crimea. This week, the UK Government
released figures suggesting that Russia
has now lost more than 300,000 military
personnel (killed or wounded); tens of
thousands more have deserted.
Vatican City
Trans baptisms: The Catholic Church’s
doctrinal office has issued a statement,
approved by Pope Francis, saying that
transgender people can be baptised, act as
witnesses at church weddings and serve as
godparents, as long as there is no risk of
“generating a public scandal or confusion
among the faithful”. The statement – a
response to questions sent by a Brazilian
bishop – was described by Catholic
LGBTQ+ groups as a welcome sign of
progress. In 2015, the doctrinal office, then
run by an arch-conservative theologian,
ruled that transgender people could not
be godparents. The new ruling, signed
by Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández,
an Argentinian ally of Francis, has been
interpreted as a victory for Francis’s vision
of a more inclusive Church. The New York
Times said the response of the Catholic
hierarchy in the US, which has taken a
more conservative line, had been “muted”.
18 November 2023 THE WEEK
8 NEWS The world at a glance
Toronto, Canada
Tycoon guilty: The Finnish-Canadian former fashion mogul Peter
Nygård has been found guilty by a court in Canada of sexually
assaulting four women. Prosecutors alleged that between the 1980s
and 2005, the 82-year-old had used his “status” to lure young
women he’d met at social events to his firm’s HQ in Toronto.
There, he’d give them a tour which ended up in a private office,
which contained a bed and sliding doors that he could lock using
a keypad. Nygård, who denied the charges, has been in jail since
late 2020 and will be sentenced later this month. He is facing two
other cases in Canada, and is fighting extradition to the US, where
he is suspected of trafficking girls as young as 14. Many were
allegedly assaulted at his mansion in the Caribbean, where Prince
Andrew and his family were among his VIP guests. There is no
suggestion that the prince was aware of Nygård’s alleged crimes.
New York
De Niro payout: A New York court has
found Robert De Niro’s company liable
for gender discrimination against his
former assistant. Graham Chase Robinson
(pictured) was promoted to vice-president
of production and finance, on a salary of
$300,000 a year, but said she’d been
given “demeaning” tasks such as washing
De Niro’s sheets. She was awarded $1.2m
in damages. She had sought $12m, saying
De Niro had subjected her to sexually
inappropriate behaviour, but although he
admitted that he’d once asked her to scratch his back, and called
her a “bitch” and a “brat”, he was not found personally liable.

Los Angeles, California

Strike ends: Actors in the US were finally able to return
to work this week, thanks to the biggest actors’ union
– Sag-Aftra – reaching a provisional agreement with
studios and streaming giants to end its 118-day
strike. The deal includes a significant increase in
actors’ minimum pay, new residual payments for shows that are
streamed, and “consent and compensation” guarantees against
their voices and images being replicated by AI. Sag-Aftra members
are expected to ratify the deal by early December. The Writers
Guild of America called off a similar action seven weeks ago.
New series of the TV dramas White Lotus and Stranger Things
are among the high-profile productions delayed by the strike.

Los Angeles, California

Film fury: The screening of a film showing graphic footage of the
Hamas attacks of 7 October triggered a brawl on the streets of
Los Angeles last week. During the screening of Bearing Witness
– which had reportedly been co-organised by the Israeli actress
Gal Gadot – rival groups carrying Israeli and Palestinian flags
assembled outside the venue, the Museum of Tolerance. The
screening of the 43-minute-long film was not disrupted, but
fighting broke out later. On social media, supporters of the
Palestinian cause accused Gadot of peddling propaganda in
support of an “ongoing genocide”. She has also been criticised by
Israelis for denouncing Israel for “killing innocent Palestinians”.

Washington DC
Panda diplomacy blow: Shortly
after President Nixon visited
China in 1972, Mao Zedong sent
two giant pandas to the US. The
bears were housed at the National
Zoo in Washington, and came to
symbolise the thawing of post-
Cold War relations. More
followed (though from 1984, they
were leased rather than given) as part of the practice known as
“panda diplomacy”. But in recent years, requests from US zoos
for new leases have been denied, and last week – days before
President Biden was due to meet President Xi in San Francisco –
the last three pandas in Washington were flown home.

Barrancas, Colombia Buenos Aires

Footballer’s dad freed: The father of Liverpool footballer Luis
Díaz was reunited with his family last Thursday, 12 days after
he was seized by Colombian guerillas from a petrol station in
Barrancas, his home town near the Venezuelan border. Luis
Manuel Díaz, a 58-year-old football coach, had been held in the
Serranía del Perijá mountains by the leftist National Liberation
Army (ELN), which runs extortion and drug-trafficking rackets. It
insists that kidnappings for ransom do not violate the terms of the
ceasefire it signed earlier this year, but described Díaz’s abduction
as “a mistake”. He has said that no money exchanged hands to
secure his release. His case has caused outrage in Colombia, where
kidnappings have risen 70% year-on-year in 2023. Footballers’
relatives have long been considered lucrative targets for gangs.
Thatcher praise: Days before
the run-off vote in Argentina’s
presidential election, the far-right
populist candidate Javier Milei courted controversy by describing
Margaret Thatcher as one of the “great leaders in the history of
humanity”. Milei has often expressed admiration for Thatcher’s
free-market policies, and in a TV debate, his rival, the left-wing
economy minister Sergio Massa, had asked him if she was his
“idol”. His answer angered veterans of the Falklands War, in
which 649 Argentinians died. Milei, who has been likened to
Donald Trump, has let it be known that he thinks the residents of
the islands should have a say in their destiny. Polls taken ahead of
Sunday’s run-off vote suggested that the race was too close to call.

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

 The world at a glance NEWS 9
Albu Kamal, Syria
West Bank, Palestinian Territories US strikes: The US has conducted air
Expanding conflicts: While the focus of world strikes on a training facility and safe house
attention has been on the conflict in Gaza, violence in eastern Syria, which it claims were being
has also flared up on Israel’s borders with Lebanon used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
(pictured) and the West Bank. In Lebanon, the According to a monitoring group, at least
Iran-backed militia Hezbollah has fired missiles eight non-Syrian fighters were killed in the
into Israel, killing a civilian who was repairing strikes. A US official described the attack
power lines damaged in an earlier attack. In the – the third since 26 October – as a “self-
occupied West Bank, controlled by the Fatah- defence strike”, in response to “continued”
dominated Palestinian Authority, Israeli settlers drone and rocket assaults on US bases in
have stepped up attacks on local farmers, and at least 14 Palestinians have been killed Iraq by Iran-backed militias since the start
in clashes with the Israel Defence Forces raiding the Jenin refugee camp. The Israeli of the Israel-Gaza war. More than 56
newspaper Haaretz reports that more than 170 Palestinians have been killed in the US personnel have been injured. The US
West Bank since 7 October, and that settler militias, with the encouragement of some maintains that the strikes were in defence
members of Israel’s coalition government, have been running wild. President Biden of American interests and not coordinated
likened the settlers’ actions to “pouring gasoline on a fire”, and his administration has with Israel. “Our military actions do not
taken the unusual step of demanding assurances from Israel that US weapons will not signal a change in our approach in the
be made available to Israeli civilians in the West Bank. Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right Israel-Hamas conflict,” said a Pentagon
national security minister, dismissed the concerns about settler violence as exaggerated. spokesman, “and we have no intentions
of escalating conflict in the region.”

Kathmandu
Media crackdown:
Nepal’s government has
banned the social media
platform TikTok, on the
grounds that it “disturbs
social harmony and
disrupts family structures
and social relations”.
Other tech companies
have been given three
months to open liaison
offices in Nepal or face
similar bans. TikTok, a
Chinese-owned company,
has already been banned
in India and the US state
of Montana. Many other
governments, including
the UK’s, have
banned its use on
government-
issued
phones.

Nairobi
Seedling day:
Kenya launched
a national holiday
last week, with a
view to getting every
Kenyan to plant at
least two trees. The country’s forest cover
decreased from 12% to just 6% between
1990 and 2010, according to UN figures,
leading to widespread soil erosion and
other environmental problems. National
Tree Growing Day, on 13 November, saw
150 million seedlings handed out from
public nurseries, with only schoolchildren
sitting exams not given the day off. It is
part of a government initiative to plant
15 billion trees by 2032, the aim being
to bring tree cover to 90% of the country
within ten years. Two million people have
already signed up for a new app to track
the reforestation effort – vital in a country
that gets 70% of its energy from fuelwood.
Mogadishu
Historic
disaster:
Devastating
floods in
Somalia,
which have
displaced
more than
300,000
people and killed at least 31, have been
described by the UN as “a once-in-a-
century event”. Following a terrible
drought last year, which killed as many
as 43,000 people, Somalia has been hit
by extreme rainfall. Camps that had been
inundated with people trying to escape
an Islamist insurgency have been flooded,
causing people to flee for a second time.
In the expectation of yet more rain, the
UN has released £20.5m of emergency aid,
warning that about 3.7 million acres of
farmland are at risk of destruction.
Rarotonga, Cook Islands
Pacific deal: Australia has agreed to
provide refuge for a limited number of
emigrants from Tuvalu, an island nation of
11,200 people under threat from rising sea
levels. Under a treaty agreed at the Pacific
Islands Forum in Rarotonga, Australia will
open an immigration “pathway” for up to
280 Tuvaluans a year, and contribute to
climate change adaptation projects there.
In exchange, Tuvalu has given Australia an
effective veto over security deals with other
countries, a security deal between China
and the Solomon Islands last year having
caused disquiet across the Pacific region.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

10 NEWS
Resisting the lure of Marvel
For years in the 2010s, Jeremy
Allen White (pictured below)
plugged away in relative
obscurity in the US version
of the TV comedy drama
Shameless. Then he won the
lead role in The Bear. It proved
a huge hit, said Cam Wolf in
GQ, and he became a global
star almost overnight. The past
year, White admits, has “been
insane”. He has had to learn
how to handle paparazzi, as
his most mundane moments
are now deemed news events
(whether he is “Taking A
Post-Lunch Walk”, or “Out
Running Errands”). Not long
ago, he was standing naked in
a spa in LA, when a stranger
came up and started talking
to him about a script. So what
comes next? He’d love to do
some work on stage, but that,
he says, means pushing against
the expectation for rising
stars, which is that they’ll
cement their new status by
appearing in a Marvel film.
“I’m confused at how the
pinnacle of an actor’s career
has ended up in that place.”
The bad boy violinist
At 66, Nigel Kennedy has not
mellowed with age, said Claire
Allfree in The Daily Telegraph.
The violinist passionately
believes that classical music
should be for everyone, and
the first thing he does every
morning is to play two hours
of his beloved Bach. “It sets
me up for the day, helps me
remember I’m a musician and
not some business monkey,”
he says. But he rarely attends
classical concerts (“I find
them boring”); regards
Mozart as “coffee table
music for the
bourgeoisie”; and
won’t join in the
chorus of despair
about funding
cuts to the sector.
“We’ve got far too
many orchestras,”
he says. Classical
musicians “sitting
in their ivory
tower” should
get up and raise
their own funds,
as they do at
the Oxford
Philharmonic.
“Maybe some of
the money could
then go to more
pertinent forms of
music, like young
THE WEEK 18 November 2023
People
singer-songwriters or big band
jazz.” But one thing he will
agree on is the state of Radio
3. “They need to stop telling
people how to feel,” he says.
“As a performer, we do
our best to communicate
something, but it’s really up to
the listener to decide whether
Bach makes them think of
church spires or trees.”
Monty versus Montagu
Monty Don has two personas,
says Emine Saner in The
Guardian. There is Monty,
who appears on the BBC’s
Gardeners’ World, and then
there is the man he is at
home with his wife Sarah,
who knows him as Montagu.
“Montagu is probably more
gloomy, more serious, more
difficult than Monty, who gives
people what they want, to a
degree,” he reflects. “I always
think of myself as Montagu.”
Don has battled depression
for years. Gardening helps,
he says. It’s an “investment in
a future. You’re growing hope,
and that’s wonderful medicine
for depression, anxiety and
grief. It gets you through
dark times because seeds will
become a plant, and plants will
flower, and flowers will fruit.”
But there are other things that
can boost his mood too. “My
wife always says the best thing
for my mental health is being
successful, and she doesn’t
mean that as a compliment.
I know what she means –
people saying nice things about
you and puffing your ego tends
to make you feel better, up to
a point.” He’s also become
something of a sex symbol;
how does he feel about
that? “Well, I feel
slightly embarrassed,
sort of smirky,” he
admits. “My wife
would say:
‘Look at you
smirking at
that question.’
I’ve been
living with
somebody for
43 years, who
I love more
and more,
so on one
level, it’s so
irrelevant as
to be silly. On
another level,
I’m human –
I’d rather that
said about me
than not.”
Oksana Lebedeva runs a restaurant and fashion business. But last
year, the Ukrainian entrepreneur’s career took a very different turn,
when she felt compelled to do something to help the thousands of
orphans being created by Russia’s invasion. “I worried our children
might become consumed by hate,” she told Christina Lamb in The
Sunday Times. “A bit of hate and a lot of desperation and you will
have Taliban. Hate is not what I want for the children of my country.”
She started fundraising, gathered an expert team, and set up Gen
Ukrainian, which runs camps for children whose parents have been
killed in the conflict: often deeply traumatised, they are the war’s
“invisible wounded”, she says. The children do 18 sessions of
therapy over their 21-day stay, and also have fun, with everything
from make-up sessions to film nights (Harry Potter, being an
orphan himself, is a favourite). “The peculiarity of children grieving
is they can laugh, grieve and play.” At first, it was hard to persuade
families to send children. “People were saying we don’t need
therapy, we’re strong.” But word spread, and they’ve now helped
well over 300. “We make a safe environment for them where they
can leave their grief, and find in three weeks we can change them
almost like magic,” explains the project’s lead psychologist Vanui
Martyrosian. “It’s not grief into happiness, but grief into resilience.”
Viewpoint:
Farewell
Storm Debi Frank Borman,
“Whenever a new storm name comes commander of Apollo 8,
the first crewed rocket
up, I suspect I’m not alone in making to orbit the Moon, died
fun of them. What’s all this about Storm 7 November, aged 95.
Babet and Storm Ciarán, I ask the telly.
Now we’ve got Debi, with Elin, Fergus Heather Rogers KC,
libel barrister whose
and then Gerrit the next in line. So I clients included Private
looked up how these storms are named. Eye and Elton John, died
The process is a joint effort by the Irish, 18 October, aged 64.
British and Dutch meteorological
Anna Scher, drama
services. The names honour workers teacher whose school
striving to keep everyone safe. Ciarán produced actors such
Fearon, for instance, is employed by as Daniel Kaluuya
© OKSANA LEBEDEVA/INSTAGRAM
the Northern Ireland Department for and Kathy Burke, died
Infrastructure. Debi Garft worked for 12 November, aged 78.
the Scottish government’s flooding Maryanne Trump Barry,
team. So the nomenclature is basically a judge who considered
shout-out to decent, ordinary folk doing her brother, Donald, an
sterling work. I feel a tiny bit ashamed.” unprincipled liar, died
13 November, aged 86.
Robert Crampton in The Times
Desert Island Discs returns next week
 Briefing NEWS 13

The assassination of JFK

Sixty years ago, on 22 November 1963, the US president was shot dead in Dallas, Texas

Why was JFK in Dallas? he was a trained sharpshooter – and had

In November 1963, John Fitzgerald been court-martialled twice. In 1959, he
Kennedy was nearly three years into his had defected to the Soviet Union, and
first presidential term, having narrowly had spent over two years there, but had
beaten his Republican opponent Richard returned, with his Russian wife, Marina.
Nixon in the 1960 election. He was the Upon his arrest, Oswald denied having
youngest man ever to be elected to the killed Kennedy, claiming he was
White House; charismatic, photogenic “a patsy”, a fall guy. But while being
and married to the glamorous Jackie, he transferred from Dallas Police HQ on
seemed to embody a new era. Having 24 November, he was shot dead on live
assumed office at the height of the Cold TV by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner.
War, he had navigated the Cuban Missile Ruby claimed that he had been deeply
Crisis in 1962, and was certain to seek upset by the assassination, and had killed
the Democratic nomination to fight Oswald in order to spare Jackie Kennedy
the 1964 election. Texas was a key from having to testify at Oswald’s trial.
battleground, and on 21 November
1963 – with an eye on the coming vote So there was never a trial?
– Kennedy departed with his wife on Air No, but the Warren Commission was set
Force One for a two-day, five-city tour of JFK and Jackie Kennedy en route to Dealey Plaza up by President Johnson to investigate. It
the state. After stops in San Antonio and was chaired by the US chief justice, Earl
Houston, he spent the first night at the Hotel Texas in Fort Worth. Warren, with six others, including four politicians and former CIA
director Allen Dulles. It reported by September 1964. The central
How did the events of 22 November unfold? conclusion of its 888-page report was that Oswald acted alone,
In his hotel suite, Kennedy was shown a black-bordered advert firing three bullets from a sixth-floor window, the third of which
in that day’s Dallas Morning News, which accused him of pro- killed Kennedy. It offered no “definitive” motive and dismissed
Communist sympathies; he mused about how easy it would be suggestions of Russian involvement, finding “no evidence” that
to assassinate a travelling president. After taking a short flight Oswald was “part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign”. It also
to Dallas Love Field Airport, Kennedy got into the back seat of concluded that Ruby acted alone, and had no prior relationship
a convertible limousine alongside Jackie. John Connally, Texas’s to Oswald or organised crime. The US establishment accepted all
Democratic governor and his wife, Nellie, were in the same car, this, but by 1966 less than 40% of Americans were convinced.
sitting in front of the president and his wife; Kennedy’s vice-
president, Lyndon B. Johnson, and his wife Claudia were in Why was the Warren Commission doubted?
another car. A 150,000-strong crowd had come to greet them. It was widely felt that the commission’s cut-and-dried conclusions
At around 12:30pm, Kennedy’s car turned onto Dealey Plaza in simply didn’t explain a very murky series of events. Three of the
downtown Dallas. As it passed the Texas School Book Depository, commission’s members later doubted its findings, and it has since
gunfire was heard: Kennedy was hit by one bullet in his neck, and emerged that the Johnson administration had pushed hard to find
another – fatally – in the back of his head. “They have killed my Oswald solely responsible – in order, it seems, to avoid conflict
husband,” Jackie cried out. “I have his brains in my hand.” with the Soviet Union. In some respects the report was plain
wrong: it found that the CIA had little intelligence on Oswald,
What happened to Kennedy next? and played down his links to Cuban groups, because the agency
His car went directly to the Parkland Memorial Hospital, around had misled it. To prop up the lone-gunman verdict, it supported
four miles away, but it was soon apparent that he couldn’t be the “single-bullet theory”: that one bullet had hit both Kennedy
saved. A Catholic priest administered the last rites and, at 1pm, and Connally, causing a total of seven exit and entry wounds.
Kennedy was pronounced dead, aged In 1979, the Select Committee on
46. At 2:38pm, a stony-faced Lyndon The conspiracy files Assassinations produced a new report
B. Johnson took the oath of office on concluding that JFK was probably
Conspiracy theories existed before the death of JFK:
board Air Force One at Love Field there was a long tradition of suspicious political killed as the result of a conspiracy.
Airport. Jackie, still in blood-stained thinking in the US, particularly on the Right. But the
clothes, stood next to him. Kennedy’s assassination helped conspiracist thinking become a What have we learnt since?
body was then taken to Washington cultural phenomenon. It began in earnest with Mark In 1992, congress passed the
where, over 21 hours, 250,000 people Lane’s 1966 book, Rush to Judgment, which critiqued JFK Records Act, calling for the
paid their respects as it lay in state. the Warren Commission. As the official theory fell out release of all assassination-related
Kennedy was buried in Arlington of favour, alternatives were proposed: JFK had been documents within 25 years. The tens
National Cemetery on 25 November. killed by the Soviet or Cuban governments; by Cuban of thousands released since then have
exiles; by the CIA, with which he often clashed; by the
By then, though, media attention was included revelations that the FBI had
Mafia; by Texan right-wingers. In 1967, the New Yorker
focused on the fate of Lee Harvey noted that amateur experts – “assassination buffs” warned Dallas police of a threat to
Oswald, the prime suspect. – were poring over every detail: the ballistics; the kill Oswald; that Oswald spoke to a
autopsy; the 8mm film taken at the scene by Abraham member of a KGB assassination unit
What happened to Oswald? Zapruder; unconfirmed reports of a second shooter on weeks before the killing; that the CIA
Witnesses saw a man firing from the the “grassy knoll” in Dealey Plaza. About 40,000 books had an extensive file on him, which it
sixth floor of the Texas School Book have been published about Kennedy, and, according later hid. The White House says that
Depository, where Oswald worked. to the author Vincent Bugliosi, doubters of the lone 99% of records have now been made
He left soon afterwards, and 90 gunman theory have accused 42 groups and 82 public. However, more than 14,000
assassins of being involved. Oliver Stone’s 1991 film
minutes later shot dead a policeman, documents remain fully or partly
JFK turbocharged the conspiracists. In retrospect, the
J.D. Tippit, who tried to arrest him. assassination marked an inflection point in US history locked away, ostensibly to protect
Oswald, then 24, was an emotionally – aided by Vietnam and Watergate – when suspicion of still-living agents and informants.
disturbed high-school dropout, who authority became a major feature of American life. Inevitably, this feeds suspicions about
had joined the US marines at 17 – the events of 22 November 1963.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

 Best articles: Britain NEWS 15
“An Israeli child hostage; the perfect pumpkin spice latte; bodies
in the rubble in Gaza; try this simple cure for neck pain; corpses; IT MUST BE TRUE…
A diet of cakes, cake.” That was the “satanic mix” delivered to me as I flicked
through the stories on my Instagram feed the other day, says Mary
I read it in the tabloids

corpses, kittens Wakefield. And this is how the young get their news these days –
Snapchat and other social media sites serve up a restless mix of
An Australian police officer
has been sentenced to two
years of community service,
and cruelty real-world stories, internet memes and updates from friends. But
what does it do to their brains, I couldn’t help wondering. The
for pointing his gun at a
colleague who threatened to
Mary Wakefield platforms talk of delivering “curated” news feeds, of offering their give away the plot of the film
customers a “personalised” experience. Sounds cosy, but the real Top Gun: Maverick. Dominic
The Spectator aim is to keep people glued to their devices. Lure them in with Gaynor, 30, was behind the
war footage, then keep them there by interspersing the horror counter at a Sydney police
with gossip, targeted ads and funny videos. It profits the platforms, station in May 2022 when a
colleague said he’d just seen
but what does it do to a child’s sense of empathy? “What does the film, adding: “I’ll spoil it
it do to a developing brain to feed it a non-stop ticker-tape of for you.” Gaynor retorted:
ultraviolence cut with kittens?” Nothing good, I suspect. “Don’t spoil the movie, c**t,”
before pulling out his Glock
“The world is burning,” says The Observer. This year is likely to handgun. Gaynor’s lawyer
prove the hottest on record. Around two billion people – almost admitted there had been
The Tories are a quarter of the planet’s population – have endured at least five
consecutive days of extreme heat in 2023, an “unprecedented
an “unfortunate lapse of
judgement”. He has been
fiddling while level of meteorological misery that claimed thousands of lives”. It
would be nice to think that the upcoming Cop28 Climate Change
suspended from the force.

Earth burns Conference in the UAE might prompt urgent action to arrest this
trend, but it’s hard to hold out much hope. The world is forecast to
Editorial be belching out about 22 billion more tonnes of CO2 in 2030 than
the maximum level needed to keep global temperature rises below
The Observer the 1.5°C limit agreed at the 2015 Paris climate meeting; and the
level of determination needed to eradicate those emissions is in
perilously short supply. Britain used to be a leader on the climate
front, but the Tories’ backsliding on green pledges has put paid
to that. At Cop28 the UK looks set to align itself with the likes of
Saudi Arabia and backtrack on the pledge to phase out the use of
all fossil fuels. We are turning our backs on an impending calamity.

Until last week, when the studios agreed “to offer striking stars
protection from robotic rivals’’, Hollywood was at a standstill,
There was panic in the
AI will help says The Economist. Worried about the threat of AI, authors
such as John Grisham and actors such as Scarlett Johansson have seaside town of Ladispoli,
Darth Vader been taking out lawsuits to protect their words and images. Their
worries are misplaced. Tech doesn’t dim star power, it enhances it.
35km west of Rome, last
week, when a lion escaped
live for ever The advent of film, seen as such a threat to stars of the stage, gave
rise to “the superstar”. Then TV, which sparked a similar panic
from a circus and roamed
the streets for hours. In
Editorial (and a huge Hollywood strike in 1960), turned superstars into a video of the incident,
“megastars”. And now stand by for “the omnistar”: AI-powered a woman can be heard
The Economist dubbing allows actors to speak to foreign audiences in their own exclaiming: “Mamma mia!”
voice – even to get their lips to match the new language. It allows as the lion strolls by. Rony
them to perform alongside others without being in the same room, Vassallo of the Rony Roller
the result being that in-demand actors can star in far more films... Circus, insisted the lion,
even posthumously. (Disney has acquired the rights to the voice Kimba, which was eventually
of the 92-year-old who voiced Darth Vader: James Earl Jones.) caught by circus staff,
Just as YouTube and TikTok have made hits by the biggest artists posed no threat to humans.
even bigger, so AI will magnify the fame of the biggest names. It His main worry had been
is not them but the mid-ranking artists who need to be fearful. that someone might hurt
Kimba “out of fear or
People moan about the commercialisation of Christmas, says excess enthusiasm”.
Harry Wallop, yet there’s nothing like a Christmas TV commercial
A Utah man was left in shock
Cash tills to bring the nation together, “either in joy or idiocy”, says Harry
Wallop. Look at the row over this year’s festive offering from
after he received a cup full
of urine rather than the
ringing Merry M&S. No sooner had the ad been released than people were up in
arms that its depiction of green, red and silver party hats burning
milkshake he’d ordered via
a food delivery app. Caleb
Christmas in a fire was a deliberate reference to the Palestinian flag. John
Lewis’s ad has similarly prompted fury. Why, asked critics, does
Woods told reporters that he
realised his drink was “warm
Harry Wallop the family include a mother and grandmother but not a father? All urine” the moment he poked
very silly, of course. But at a time when the TV ad market has been a straw into the polystyrene
The Times cup and took a sip. He then
devastated by the drift online, it’s actually rather reassuring to see
confronted the delivery driver,
that Christmas ads still have the power to stoke public passions. who admitted that he had
Those who see it as a sad reflection of how commercialised relieved himself in his car –
Christmas has now become don’t know their history. Back in the and mixed up the cups.
1890s, George Bernard Shaw was raging about Christmas being Woods was given a refund
“forced on a reluctant and disgusted nation by the shopkeepers for the cost of his meal, but
and the press”. Arguing about this stuff is a time-honoured festive not for the delivery fee or tip.
tradition. Glad to see it’s still alive and kicking.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best of the American columnists
US state elections: a great night for the Democrats
What a relief for the Democrats, said
Ronald Brownstein in The Atlantic.
They began last week in a panic after
a poll showed President Biden trailing
Donald Trump in key swing states. But
then came a string of morale-boosting
state election results. In Ohio, voters
rallied behind a measure to protect
abortion rights. In Kentucky, they
elected a pro-abortion Democratic
governor. And in Virginia, Democrats
held the senate, and won back the
House, despite an all-out campaign by
Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin
to win both chambers. The Virginia Glenn Youngkin: failing to crack the code
results were particularly striking, said
Greg Sargent in The Washington Post. Youngkin had made his
ambition to pass a law banning abortions after 15 weeks a
central feature of those races. Some thought he had “cracked
the code on how to wrap right-wing culture-warmongering in
non-threatening packaging”. But it seems voters aren’t buying it. anti-Maga majorities pretty much every time voters” have gone
Everyone agrees the results were a big win for the Democrats,
said Alex Shephard in The New Republic. The elections showed
that abortion restrictions have become a major liability for the
Republicans. Whether this will help Biden’s re-election chances,
however, is unclear. Dogged by a sluggish economy and
mounting questions about his age,
Biden is “heading into an election year
with the worst approval ratings since
Jimmy Carter – and we all know how
that turned out”. These low-turnout
elections tell us nothing about 2024,
agreed Jonathan Chait in New York
Magazine. Perhaps Biden’s
unpopularity is not a big drag on
other Democrats, but it is “definitely
a big drag on Biden” – and he’s the
one standing for president.
On the contrary, said David Brooks
in The New York Times, I think the
Democrats can take a lot of heart
from these elections. The results are further proof that you
shouldn’t judge voters by what they say in opinion polls, which
they use to vent their frustrations. The reality is that since the
end of Trump’s first year in office, there have been “significant
to the voting booths. The “median-voter rule” – which holds
that parties win when they stay close to the centre of the
electorate – still applies. “Biden doesn’t have to become
magically popular; he just has to remind the tens of millions
of Americans who voted against Maga multiple times before
why they need to vote against Maga again.”

“Seattle, you will always have a piece of my heart.” So declared Jeff Bezos the other day as he
announced his decision to relocate from Washington state, his home for almost 30 years, to
Soak the rich – Florida. The Amazon founder says he’s moving to be nearer his parents, says Jeff Jacoby. He’ll also
be closer to Cape Canaveral, an increasingly active base for his Blue Origin rocket company. But
and they’ll be tax considerations may also have been a factor. The move will save him a lot of money. Washington
has a new capital gains tax, which takes a 7% bite from all investment gains above $250,000. It’s
off to Florida estimated that Bezos saved nearly $1.1bn by selling shares of Amazon stock in 2020 and 2021 before
that tax kicked in. His future stock sales will now likewise remain untouched. Washington also has
Jeff Jacoby the joint-highest death tax in the US, with a top rate of 20% on estates worth more than $9m. Florida,
on the other hand, has no estate tax. As Bezos is worth more than $160bn, the move could save his
The Boston Globe heirs some $30bn. Bezos will also escape a mooted 1% wealth tax on billionaires. Washington, like
other high-tax states that are losing residents to the likes of Florida, Texas and Arizona, is learning
an economic fact of life: that “when you try to soak the rich, you’re apt to lose the rich”.

The current slate of Republican presidential candidates differ in many ways, says Jeffrey A. Friedman,
but they strike a uniformly hawkish tone when it comes to foreign policy. They’ve almost all
The politics endorsed taking military action against Mexico’s drug cartels, and adopting a much tougher line
with Iran and China. Ron DeSantis says the US should treat Beijing as it treated “the Soviets”; Nikki
of talking Haley says China is leading a global “axis of evil”. On the face of it, these aggressive stances seem
curiously out of touch with public opinion. A recent poll found that just 29% of US voters approved
tough of unilateral attacks on Mexico’s drug cartels. One survey in January found that only 22% of
Americans considered China an adversary. The mismatch reflects an abiding paradox of US politics:
Jeffrey A. Friedman that while voters hate costly overseas endeavours, they “like tough, combative presidents”. Electoral
logic encourages politicians to sabre rattle, to look strong. Unfortunately, they then often feel obliged
Foreign Affairs to follow through by making decisions in office that are “more hawkish than what Americans want”.
If US voters want their leaders to act differently – to limit defence spending and keep the US out of
open-ended wars of choice – they “will ultimately need to change how they evaluate them”.

This summer I found myself at Newark Airport, rushing to grab a pre-flight bottle of water from
a self-checkout kiosk, says Olivia Reingold. “What a rip-off” I thought, as the $8 price appeared on
We’ve reached the screen. But then I swiped my card and up popped another notification: “Would you like to add
a tip?” It proposed three options: 15%, 18% and 20%. This is what things have come to in 2023.
the tipping Inflation has pushed up the price of coffee, petrol and other staples by 19% since 2020 – and now
even robots are demanding our spare change. Tipping is out of control. Buy a $6 latte in Brooklyn
point on tips that becomes a $9.08 latte after the upcharge for oat milk, ice and tax, and you’re still expected to
pay a 20% tip. The internet is awash with complaints about this trend. One person has described
Olivia Reingold how when they paid a $40,000 home improvement bill, an online form invited them to show their
“appreciation” by adding a 5% to 15% tip. Others complain about boutiques and discount travel
The Free Press
sites asking for tips during the checkout process to “show support for the team”, and restaurants
charging for supplementary “employee wellness fees”. Our empathy may be limitless, but our funds
are not. At a time when most Americans are struggling to make ends meet, this “tip creep” must stop.

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

 Best articles: International NEWS 19

Radical responses to Europe’s migration crisis

“Olaf Scholz is getting desperate,”
said Matthew Karnitschnig on
Politico (Brussels). The financial
pressures and public upset caused
by the rising tide of asylum seekers
is making his coalition government
increasingly unpopular. Germany
is already home to three million
refugees – Ukrainians included;
and this year has already seen a
70% rise in asylum applications,
and there are still two months
to go. So Scholz found himself
hammering out a deal last week
with Germany’s 16 state governors
aimed at curbing the numbers. “I Scholz: jumping over his own shadow
don’t want to use big words,” the
famously subdued chancellor said afterwards, “but I think this
is a historic moment.” He may well be right, but only because
this hugely underwhelming agreement could well mark “the
beginning of his political end”. Its array of “cosmetic measures” Yet that’s the way the wind is blowing, said Benjamin Fox on
includes a plan to ensure that new arrivals wait three years
before receiving welfare payments; an increase in federal aid for
state governments; and ambitious (but unattainable) targets to
speed up deportations. But the radical steps needed to have any
chance of reducing numbers? These are entirely missing.
The agreement may be imperfect, said Daniel Friedrich Sturm
in Der Tagesspiegel (Berlin), but at least it shows Scholz’s centre- between Italy’s PM Giorgia Meloni and Albania’s Edi Rama
left coalition has finally grasped the urgency of the issue, and is
willing to work with its opponents in states run by centre-right
Christian Democrats to address it. In any case, the problem isn’t Rome’s support in its push to join the EU, Italy urgently needs
as dire as people make out, said Gesine Schwan in Süddeutsche
Zeitung (Munich). Even if asylum applications hit 350,000
this year, that’s still less than half the 745,545 applications
submitted in 2016. The impression of being overwhelmed is
due to the one-off influx of a million Ukrainians last year, all
admitted without the need to apply for asylum.
Maybe so, said Cécile Boutelet in Le Monde (Paris), but the
recent rise in numbers is still a hugely divisive issue: 73% of
Germans say they’re dismayed at the government’s handling of
it; one in five say they may vote for the hard-right Alternative
for Germany (AfD) party, which is
enjoying a surge of support. That’s
why last week’s deal included
a provision to at least consider
a radical “course correction” in
policy, said Oliver Maksan in
Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Zurich).
Until now, the idea of relocating
asylum procedures abroad has
been off limits for Germany. In EU
Council negotiations in June, for
example, Scholz’s government had
insisted a “connection criterion”
must apply to any asylum seekers
being sent to a third country – it
had to be a country they already
had some connection with. In now
calling for an inquiry into the merits of “extraterritorial asylum
centres”, the government is “jumping over its own shadow”.
Euractiv (Brussels). Austria has linked up with Britain in a plan
to fly asylum seekers to Kigali for their claims to get processed
(though unlike Britain, they won’t then have to stay in Rwanda
if their application is successful). Denmark is working on setting
up an asylum processing centre in a central African nation; and
most striking of all, Italy struck a deal last week to build two
offshore holding centres for migrants in Albania. The agreement
came “like a bolt from the blue”, said Alessandro Sallusti
in Il Giornale (Milan). It’s a win-win deal. Albania needs
a radical solution to managing the migratory flows across the
Mediterranean. All credit to Meloni for grasping the nettle.
On the contrary, the deal is a mirage, said Andrea Bonanni
in La Repubblica (Rome). The 36,000 people a year rescued
from the Mediterranean who’ll be sent to the centres in Albania
financed and managed by Italy can’t stay there indefinitely: if
denied asylum, they’ll simply make their way back to Italy via
Croatia. This deal, and others like it, won’t solve the difficulties
encountered in trying to repatriate such people. Don’t be fooled:
“the Albanian patch won’t be able to cover the Italian hole”.

“When the public doesn’t even want free money, you know you’re in trouble,” says Gearoid Reidy.
JAPAN Japanese PM Fumio Kishida is overseeing a booming economy, but with real wages in decline, his
popularity has plummeted to “worrying new lows”. He has overcome bad poll ratings before; but
Another PM opposition to his centrepiece tax-cutting policy suggests he’s in a really tight spot this time. Under the
afflicted by the plan, each voter would receive a one-off payment of ¥40,000 (£213), with a further handout for low-
income households. Kishida says this will help with living costs; but some 64% of voters disapprove
two-year itch of the package, viewing it as a “cynical ploy” to win support in a possible snap election. It looks to
me as though Kishida is suffering from a problem familiar to many Japanese premiers: “the two-year
The Japan Times itch”. Leader after leader has found that, following initial high hopes for their administrations, the
(Tokyo) public simply loses interest after a while. The notable exception was Shinzo Abe – who, despite some
rocky patches, managed eight years in power. “Kishida seems unlikely to have such staying power.”

Venezuelans could soon see the back of Nicolás Maduro, says Roberto Patiño. The left-wing successor
VENEZUELA of the firebrand Hugo Chávez, who died ten years ago, the authoritarian Maduro has presided over
economic collapse and a mass exodus of people. He faces elections next year, and there’s a pervasive
Falling out of belief he’ll win again. But this thinking is flawed. As an activist in the barrios, I’ve seen firsthand how
places where Chávez once enjoyed huge support now overwhelmingly back the opposition. People
love with a left- say they won’t vote for politicians who “dine like royalty” while they barely have enough to eat. The
wing dictator opposition boycotted elections in 2018 – a move it now sees as a mistake – but this time has united
around a single candidate, María Machado, an economic liberal who won a strong mandate in a
The New York Times primary vote last month. That the vote happened at all owed much to pressure from the US, which
relaxed sanctions in exchange for assurances of democratic reforms. The result was later annulled
by a supreme court stacked with Maduro appointees, on bogus claims of fraud; but Maduro’s
regime will be hit by more US sanctions if it persists on that course. Make no mistake: as long as the
international community keeps up the pressure and the opposition stays united, “Maduro can lose”.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

 Health & Science NEWS 21

What the scientists are saying…

A “statin” for breast cancer
A daily pill that can slash the risk of
breast cancer is to be offered to hundreds
of thousands of women in England.
Anastrozole has been used to treat breast
cancer for years, but has now been licensed
for use as a preventative measure, in much
the same way as statins. Recent trials have
shown that post-menopausal women who
are at moderate or high risk of the disease
are almost 50% less likely to develop it if
they take the pill once a day for five years.
It has been estimated that almost 300,000
women – mainly those with a strong
family history of the disease – will be
eligible for the pill, which costs just 4p a
day. Some may opt not to take it, as it has
potential side effects including hot flushes,
arthritis and depression; but if a quarter of
the women who are eligible complete the
five-year course, NHS England estimates
that it will prevent 2,000 cases of breast
cancer, and also save the NHS £15m.
Does adding salt lead to diabetes?
Too much salt, we are often told, raises the
blood pressure; but it seems that regularly
adding it to food also increases the risk
of type 2 diabetes. For a study, 400,000
adults who were free of diabetes were
asked how often they sprinkled salt on
their meals. Their health was then tracked
for 12 years, during which time 13,000 of
them were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes.
Analysis of the figures revealed a clear
link between salt consumption and the
condition: people who said they added
salt to every meal were 39% more likely
to develop type 2 diabetes than those who
rarely or never used it. Those who said
they usually added salt had a 20% higher
risk; and only sometimes adding it still
raised the odds by 13%. The study wasn’t
able to prove that salt was the culprit. But
A simulation of Theia crashing into Earth
the researchers note that adding salt
encourages people to eat bigger portions,
which increases the chances of obesity and
inflammation – which are both risk factors
for type 2 diabetes, noted study leader Prof
Lu Qi, of Tulane University. Cutting back
on salt is not difficult, he said – and it
could have a big impact your health.
The “blobs” from outer space
In the 1980s, seismologists made a
startling discovery: two continent-sized
blobs of unusual material, one lying 1,800
miles beneath Africa, the other under the
Pacific. Their origins were unclear, but
according to a new paper, these vast iron-
rich deposits may be the buried relics of
an ancient planet known as Theia, which
crashed into the young Earth 4.5 billion
years ago, sending up a shower of debris
that is believed to have eventually
coalesced into the Moon. Now, computer
simulations of this event, by geophysicists
in the US and China, have suggested that
this massive collision melted the upper
half of the Earth’s mantle, allowing large
chunks of Theia – perhaps 10% of the
planet – to penetrate Earth and gradually
sink towards its core, where they shifted
around, and eventually formed the
two masses (technically known as large,
low-velocity provinces) that exist today.
“To my knowledge, our work is the
first one proposing this idea,” co-author
Dr Qian Yuan, of the California Institute
of Technology, told The Guardian. Other
experts described the paper as bold and
interesting, but not conclusive.
A big step closer to synthetic cells
A UK-based international team that has
spent the past 15 years trying to create
the first complex cell with a synthetic
genome has succeeded in creating
a strain of baker’s yeast, in which half the
chromosomes had been rewritten from
scratch. The researchers have synthesised
the rest of the chromosomes; the challenge
now is to put them all together to create
a single human-made strain, which they
hope to do within a year. Building the
genome from the bottom up (as opposed
to tinkering with it using gene-editing
techniques) will enable scientists to really
“shuffle the genomic deck”, said co-author
Dr Jef Boeke of New York University –
and start producing yeast “that can do
things that we’ve never seen before”.
Although yeast is mainly associated with
baking, distilling and winemaking, it is also
used to produce ethanol for the biofuels
industry and drugs including insulin.
Scientists have written genomes for viruses
and bacteria before, but yeast would be
the first eukaryote – a group of organisms
including plants and mammals whose cells
have a nucleus – to be synthesised.

Starfish are disembodied heads A nation of binge drinkers

We think of starfish as having five arms, and British women are the joint heaviest
they appear to have no head. But according binge drinkers in the world, a new report
to new research, the starfish is essentially one has warned. Some 26% of women in the
large head “crawling along the sea floor”. The UK binge drink, meaning they consume
starfish has long been a puzzle to scientists. Most at least 60g of pure alcohol (equivalent
animals have bilateral symmetry, meaning they to about six small glasses of wine) in
a single sitting at least once a month.
have a left and a right side that mirror each The figure is more than twice the global
other. But starfish are made up of five equal average of 12% and is matched only
sections – raising the question of how they by Denmark, according to the analysis
evolved this distinctive shape. The new study of data from 33 countries by the
suggests that their ancestors once had bilateral Organisation for Economic Cooperation
symmetry, but over time, they dropped the rest Starfish: a scientific puzzle and Development (OECD). Denmark had
of their bodies, leaving only their heads behind. the highest proportion of binge drinkers
The scientists looked at which genes were active in starfish, and compared them overall, with 37% of adults indulging at
with other animals . They found that the genes that code for the head in bilateral least once a month. The UK came joint
third with Luxembourg, after Romania,
animals were switched on in starfish’s arms and centre – but the genes for torsos and on 35%. By contrast, 21% of adults in
tails were present only at the very tips of the creatures’ arms. “The arms of a starfish France binge drink, along with just 6%
are not like our own arms, but more like extensions of the head,” said co-author in Spain and 4% in Italy. Britons also
© HERNÁN CAÑELLAS

Dr Jeff Thompson of the University of Southampton. “To summarise starfish anatomy, drink more overall than people in other
I would say it’s a mostly head-like animal with five projections, with a mouth that English-speaking nations, including
faces towards the ground and an anus on the opposite side that faces upwards.” Ireland and Australia.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

22 NEWS Talking points
The Gaza protest: was it a “hate march”?
“Is this a hate march?” a black-clad man that also present were a large number of
was asked at a pre-march rally in east antisemites whose intention seemed very
London last Saturday morning. “Yes, far from peaceful. There were ceaseless
absolutely,” he told The Times’ reporter chants of “from the river to the sea,
with a smile. “We all hate Suella Palestine will be free” – widely seen as a
Braverman.” The group of pro-Palestinian call for the elimination of the Jewish state
demonstrators then travelled en masse and its residents – and numerous banners
four miles into central London, where depicting the Star of David intertwined
they met up with thousands more people with a swastika, likening Gaza to
who were streaming out of Tube stations Auschwitz, and so on. A woman was
around Hyde Park, waving Palestinian filmed shouting “Death to all Jews”; two
flags and letting off flares in its colours, as men were photographed wearing Hamas
passing vans and cars beeped in support. headbands. If even only one in a hundred
of Saturday’s 300,000 demonstrators
Tensions about this march had been agreed with the hateful sentiments being
growing all week, said The Independent. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators in London expressed in the banners they marched
But in the event, it passed off peacefully. alongside, that would make it the largest
Children walked hand in hand with their parents; hundreds of antisemitic demonstration in modern British history.
Jewish socialists filtered in at one point; further along, a fringe
group of ultra-Orthodox Jews had gathered. They chanted I wish the march had not gone ahead, said Andrew Neil in The
“Judaism is OK, Zionism no way” and were applauded. Then, at Mail on Sunday. It was disrespectful, provocative and unnecessary.
3pm, the cacophony of this vast crowd subsided, as demonstrators But I am glad that it was not banned. The right to protest is a
paused in remembrance of the thousands who have died in Gaza mark of a free society; and “it is a right especially to be upheld
in the past few weeks. This two-minute silence was designed to when we don’t agree with the protest”. Even more important is
serve as a pointed response to the former home secretary, who that politicians do not decide who gets to march and who does
had characterised a protest in support of peace as a “hate march”. not. The law specifies that for a march to be banned, police chiefs
must have a reasonable belief, backed
What violence there was, was sparked by intelligence, that it poses a risk of
by the far-right, said Mark Townsend in “The march was disrespectful, “serious public disorder”. This threshold
The Observer. Long before the march provocative and unnecessary. But had not been met. But just as politicians
began on Park Lane, scores of football are not above the law, nor are protesters.
fans had gathered in Whitehall. Many
I’m glad it was not banned” Racism and antisemitism are rightly
were wearing balaclavas and carrying outlawed, and police must take firmer
beer cans. Quite a few said they’d been inspired to travel to action against protesters who hurl such obscenities. Those who
London by Braverman’s comments; others had been rallied by call for rights for Palestinians can’t be allowed to leave Britain’s
Tommy Robinson, co-founder of the English Defence League, who 292,000 Jews feeling unsafe in the cities in which they live.
had had his Twitter account reactivated days earlier. They chanted
“England till I die”, and spoke of “defending” the Cenotaph from Are the police biased? There has been a lot of talk about officers
the “Palestinian mob” – but it was they who broke through police turning a blind eye to “hate crimes” at some protests, said Janet
cordons and surged towards it, throwing missiles, shortly before Daley in The Sunday Telegraph – while finding time to investigate
the two-minute silence at 11am. And it was some of them who (in “non-crime hate incidents” by feminist campaigners. It’s easy to
a “cat and mouse” game with the police) then sought to get across see this as bias; but I think there are other things going on. One
London, in order to confront pro-Palestinian marchers. is that the police’s overriding function is to maintain civil order,
and they will desist from making arrests (or banning protests)
The media has been rightly disgusted by the behaviour of these when they judge that to do so will fuel such disorder. A second
“far-right thugs”, said Stephen Pollard in the Daily Mail. But is that the police share the “national confusion” about what is
it has also used it to divert attention from the other hatred on “now morally acceptable to say and do”. That debate is not
display that day. On the BBC and elsewhere, the Palestine march trivial: it reflects serious disagreements about what values our
was depicted as an uplifting family occasion. And I’m sure most society should uphold. But we can’t expect the police to solve
people on it were marching for peace. But we can’t ignore the fact it. It will “require serious political leadership to deal with this”.

that capacity she was once a bit dull, and eventually

Pick of the week’s
Gossip
Angela Merkel was no great
fan of Donald Trump. Yet
according to a new book about
the former president, Trump
repeatedly boasted to a US
congressman that the German
chancellor had privately
complimented him on the size
of his rallies, telling him there
was “only one other political
leader who ever got crowds as
big”. It seems that Trump may
not have realised that Merkel
was likening him to Hitler.
Sherlock star Louise Brealey
(above) was a journalist before
she became an actress, and in
invited to meet Michael Caine
on a set. They got chatting in
his trailer, then Caine asked,
“‘Would you like to marry
me?’” Brealey told The Sunday
Times. “I blushed and started
stammering at him. And then
he politely pushed a little dish
in my direction and I realised
that he’d actually said: ‘Would
you like a Murray Mint?’”
The late Queen was given an
early lesson in the importance
of looking interested when
she was taken to an event
for a medical charity by her
grandmother. The young
princess found the proceedings
yawned. This, says royal
biographer Robert Hardman,
earned her a stern ticking off
from Queen Mary, who told
her: “We are the royal family ...
and we love hospitals.”
The journalist and author
Bernard Levin wrote many
millions of words over the
course of his life, but he had
little regard for those who
thought writing was a job
anyone might do, reports The
Times. “That’s silly,” he told
an aspiring writer who thought
they had a novel in them. “It’s
like saying to a cabinet-maker, ‘I
think I have a wardrobe in me.’”

THE WEEK 18 November 2023


Nadine Dorries: has she lost the plot?
I need to make a confession,
said Andrew Rawnsley in The
Observer. I’ve been oblivious to
the biggest political story of our
era. Like the rest of the country,
I believed that Iain Duncan
Smith, Theresa May, Liz Truss
and Boris Johnson were all
ousted as Tory leaders for
various kinds of incompetence
and mendacity. It now emerges,
in a story that “can be told at
last thanks to the tenacity and
courage of Nadine Dorries”, that
they were all brutally dispatched
by a “clandestine cabal” –
known as The Movement – that
has controlled the Conservative
Taking on “The Movement”
party for decades. Dorries’s
“bizarre” new book The Plot: The Political
Assassination of Boris Johnson, describes this
cabal in detail, said Christopher Howse in
The Daily Telegraph. Its prime movers include
Dominic Cummings (apparently known as “the
Dark Lord”), an adviser called Dougie Smith
(known as “Wolf”), Michael Gove (known, at
least to Dorries, as “Voldemort”). Behind them
all is a sinister unnamed fixer she calls Dr No.
Has Dorries “lost the plot”? It would seem so.
To give her credit, “Nads” – as Johnson calls
her – is “delightfully frank” about her research
methods, said Alan Rusbridger in The
Independent. She simply regurgitates what her
50 or more anonymous sources have told her.
“By the bucket load.” With no effort at verifying
Self-service tills: the backlash begins
Congratulations to Booths, the
supermarket chain known as
the “Northern Waitrose”, on its
“joyous decision” to rip out its
self-service checkouts, said Michael
Deacon in The Daily Telegraph. By
removing the machines from all
but two of its 28 stores, Booths is
bucking a baleful trend. It claims
that the decision is about customer
service, said Claire Moses in The
New York Times. “Delighting
customers with our warm Northern
welcome is part of our DNA,” said
a spokesman. But there may be
another reason. One study showed Navigating the bagging area No wonder, said Rod Liddle in
that, at stores with self-service tills,
shoplifting increases to more than double the
industry average: the machines make theft less
detectable, and “tempt shoppers to act in
ways they normally would not”.
Whatever the reason, it’s a blessed relief, said
Emily Watkins in The i Paper. For a “supposedly
time-saving innovation”, automated checkouts
certainly waste a lot of time, what with selecting look at the “psychotic rage” you so often see
and weighing loose produce, summoning staff
to verify your age for booze purchases – and,
of course, removing unexpected items from the
bagging area. There are many areas of life in
Talking points
it, or providing context. Buried
somewhere in this book, there’s
an important story about
Westminster’s dysfunctionality,
said Patrick Maguire in The
Times: “the abuses of power, the
rotten culture, the venality, the
unaccountable aides”. But it is
buried very deep, in among the
strange ramblings about “how
sexy Iain Duncan Smith must
have been in his prime”, about
old men winking, and about
why you don’t see many proper
country pubs “these days”. This
is, ultimately, the “single weirdest
book I have ever read”.
Dorries does certainly conjure
up a “tawdry” world of Westminster “dark
arts”, agreed Tim Shipman in The Sunday Times.
Particularly disturbing is the picture of “an
incestuous network fixing public appointments”.
They tried, for instance, to put their preferred
candidate in charge of Ofcom. It’s “revealing”,
too, that Sunak’s path to power was smoothed
by Dougie Smith, who found him his seat
(Dorries hates Sunak, and describes him
as a “clockwork toy”, and a “Manchurian
candidate”). Her central claim, that Johnson
was the victim of a conspiracy, doesn’t stack up:
there were plots against him, of course, but only
because Tory MPs had lost faith in him, which
was his fault. Still, this story of betrayal may
appeal to the Tory grassroots. For all its oddities,
this “has the potential to be an influential book”.
which “supposed digital advances
have come a little unstuck”, said
Stefano Hatfield in the same paper
– opening the door for the old
ways to return. Vinyl record sales
have surged; UK publishers sold a
record 669 million physical books
last year; some banks are pledging
to maintain bricks and mortar
branches; and plans to close
railway ticket offices in England
have just been abandoned. These
are all signs of “a yearning for
analogue simplicity”.
The Sunday Times. Over the past
20 years, automation has saved business and
government a lot of money. My suspicion,
though, is that it will end up “costing us all a
lot more in the long run”. Increasingly, we have
to conduct business “via (fairly stupid) robots”.
We shop online, “so we don’t even have to
see other people, let alone interact with the
bastards”. This changes our behaviour: just
on social media, which you’d never get face
to face. Loss of human contact “encourages
us to shed civility and inhibitions”, at the
supermarket till and “everywhere else”.
NEWS 23
Wit &
Wisdom
“Only in logic are
contradictions unable to
coexist; in feelings they quite
happily continue alongside
each other.”
Sigmund Freud, quoted on
The Conversation
“You can observe a lot
just by watching.”
Yogi Berra, quoted in the
Greensboro News & Record
“The remarkable thing
about Shakespeare is that he
really is very good, in spite
of all the people who say
he is very good.”
Robert Graves, quoted in
The Sunday Telegraph
“I do not believe that friends
are necessarily the people
you like best; they are
merely the people who
got there first.”
Peter Ustinov, quoted
on Forbes
“I don’t see any good art
made out of happiness.”
Marina Abramovic, quoted
in The New York Times
“All of us labour in webs
spun long before we
were born.”
William Faulkner, quoted
in The Knowledge
“The surest way to work
up a crusade in favour of
some good cause is to
promise people they will
have a chance of maltreating
someone. To be able to
destroy with good
conscience, to be able to
behave badly and call your
bad behaviour ‘righteous
indignation’ – this is the
height of psychological
luxury, the most delicious
of moral treats.”
Aldous Huxley, quoted
in The Spectator
Statistics of the week
63% of the doctors who
joined the medical register
last year had trained
overseas, up from 44%
seven years ago.
GMC/The Daily Telegraph
Thames Water has released
at least 72 billion litres
of sewage into the River
Thames since 2020.
The Guardian
18 November 2023 THE WEEK
24 NEWS Sport
Football: Chelsea thwart City in Stamford Bridge thriller
The “pressure was enormous” on Chelsea’s Cole
Palmer as he stepped up to take his 95th-minute
spot-kick last Sunday, said Ian Ladyman in the
Daily Mail. The 21-year-old knew that, with his
team trailing 4-3 to Manchester City, his penalty
was realistically their last hope of salvaging
something from the game. Not only that, he was
facing – in Ederson – a goalkeeper who knew him
well: Palmer had been a City player until August,
before “very suddenly” being sold to Chelsea. Yet
if Palmer was nervous, he showed no sign of it:
he struck his shot “so purely and so true” that
Ederson had no chance of keeping it out, even
though he guessed the right way. It was the last
significant act of a match that had “flipped and
flopped like salmon left on a riverbank”. Having
led three times, City will feel they should have won Palmer: nerves of steel
it, but ended up being frustrated by a determined
Chelsea, who finally seem to be “moving in the right direction”
under Mauricio Pochettino. After a wretched start to the season,
the Blues have now won five of their last eight games in all
competitions – and are slowly climbing the league table.
This will surely be a contender for game of the season, said Jason
Burt in The Daily Telegraph. Aside from a winning goal, it was a
contest that had “absolutely everything”. There was the obligatory sort of epic that shows why the Premier League remains the
VAR controversy, with many questioning City’s 25th-minute
penalty – from which Erling Haaland opened the
scoring – after replays suggested the Norwegian
had tugged at the shirt of Marc Cucurella before
being pulled back himself. There were the constant
momentum swings, and a breakneck final half-
hour that was “the definition of end-to-end, more
like basketball than football”. But the “biggest
takeaway” was the revelatory performance of
Palmer, who has blossomed since joining Chelsea.
Very much a “Guardiola player” (he spent years
in the City academy), his passing and movement
were superb, and he nearly scored a wonder goal
in the second half, as he dribbled past several City
defenders before losing balance as he shot. Pep
Guardiola may well regret selling him.
With City chasing an unprecedented fourth
consecutive league win, many feared this would be
a predictable season, said Martin Samuel in The Times. And true
enough, you won’t find too many betting against a City triumph.
But the beauty of the Premier League is that it reliably throws up
surprises. This match was one: Chelsea, a team with an “outside
crack of reaching a minor European competition at best”, fought
“as if their lives depended on it”, and “refused to succumb to the
inevitability of a City win”. Stamford Bridge was treated to the
biggest – and the best – “domestic competition in the world”.

Cricket: what the white-ball side can learn from Bazball

“To sighs of relief all round”, England rounded off
their “tortured World Cup campaign” with a couple
of decent performances, said Simon Wilde in The
Sunday Times. After beating the Netherlands in their
penultimate match, they played even better against
Pakistan, bowling them out for 244 after posting an
imposing 337 for 9. They went about the match as
they “should have gone about things all along” –
with a sense of a coherent plan. Yet you can’t read
too much into this result, said Geoffrey Boycott in
The Daily Telegraph. “Winning does not matter
when the pressure is off.” Only one question is
important now: where do England go from here?
Stokes’s swashbuckle needed tour of the West Indies is full of imports from the Test
Their first step is to acknowledge that they were
hugely complacent, said Lawrence Booth in the Daily Mail.
Having won the World Cup four years ago, England “arrived
in India buoyed by the conviction they could do it all over again,
at the flick of a switch”. That was always unrealistic
– particularly as English players have traditionally
struggled in Indian conditions. The recent focus on
Test cricket probably hasn’t helped, said Ali Martin
in The Guardian. When Rob Key took over as team
director in April last year, it was actually the “Test
side that needed urgent work”, the 50-over side
being viewed as a “well-oiled machine”. But as Ben
Stokes’s Test team has racked up victories – and
become known for its swashbuckling style – it’s the
white-ball side that has “failed to evolve” and lost
its “aggressive identity”. It’s therefore no surprise
that England’s squad for their forthcoming white-ball
team, notably the “Test top three of Zak Crawley,
Ben Duckett and Ollie Pope” and the fast bowler Josh Tongue.
The focus on Bazball may have damaged England’s chances at the
World Cup – but it is “seemingly now also part of the solution”.

Commentary box Sporting headlines

Billie Jean Cup success
Great Britain’s women’s tennis
team had a “potential banana
skin” to overcome in their quest
to retain their place at the elite
level of the Billie Jean King Cup,
said Stuart Fraser in The Times:
they needed to beat an “injury-
depleted Sweden” at London’s
Copper Box Arena. When Jodie
Burrage lost the tie’s opening Arundell: “wondrous acceleration” Charles Richardson in The Daily
match to world No. 372 Kajsa
Rinaldo Persson, a “stunning upset” looked on
the cards. But Britain fought their way to a 3-1
victory, with two wins for the country’s leading
player, Katie Boulter, and another for Harriet
Dart. Britain now move forward to April’s
qualifiers for next year’s final, where their
chances should be boosted by the return from
injury of Emma Raducanu.
Arundell shines in France
Henry Arundell served notice
of his “prodigious talent” while
making his debut for French
side Racing 92. The 21-year-old
utility back – a “fringe player”
for England at the World Cup –
showcased his “wondrous
acceleration” as he scored a
hat-trick against Toulon, said
Telegraph. The performance
gave a “snapshot” of what Arundell might
achieve for his country. Despite joining a French
team, he is eligible for next year’s Six Nations,
under the RFU’s “exceptional circumstances”
clause (his previous team, London Irish, went
into administration last season). But to play for
England beyond the Six Nations, he will need
to sign with a Premiership club next season.
Tennis Andy Murray has split
with his long-time coach Ivan
Lendl after an unsuccessful
third stint together. World
No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz suffered a
defeat on his debut at the ATP
Finals in Turin, losing in three
sets to Alexander Zverev.
Cricket India maintained their
perfect record in the World
Cup group stage with a 160-
run defeat of the Netherlands.
In the semi-finals held this
week, India took on New
Zealand, and Australia faced
South Africa.
Football In the Women’s
Super League, Arsenal beat
Leicester City 6-2. Leaders
Chelsea beat Everton 3-0.

THE WEEK 18 November 2023


Pick of the week’s correspondence
Forgetting to remember...
To The Daily Telegraph
I was stunned a few days ago
when, after arriving at London
Bridge station on a trip to the
capital, I saw virtually nobody
wearing a poppy, nor anyone
selling them, though I walked
for miles through the city.
Is this a sign of the times?
Tom McKenzie, Stonegate,
East Sussex
...the silent dead
To The Daily Telegraph
Tom McKenzie was stunned by
the paucity of poppy sellers in
London. When I started selling
poppies in 1986, I was joined
on the streets by veterans of the
Second World War and Korea.
Twenty years later, I was
joined by their widows.
Today, all are gone or simply
too frail to stand in frost
and rain for an hour, and
nobody is taking their place.
Quite simply, with most of us
untouched by war or interested
only in the socio-political cause
du jour, we are – despite our
noble words – forgetting the
men of Flanders Fields, Sword
Beach, Kohima, Enniskillen,
Imjin, Fitzroy and Kajaki; they
are faceless people from other
times, whom – let’s be frank
– we want to forget about.
This is why, for all the
bluster, political parties should
unite in protecting Armistice
Day and Remembrance
Sunday as national events
of fundamental importance.
Sometimes we need to be
reminded to remember, and to
contemplate the fact that those
who shout the loudest do not
speak for us or our silent dead.
The best thing Mr McKenzie
could do next year is pick up
a tin and a tray and join us –
and bring along some friends.
Victor Launert, Matlock Bath,
Derbyshire
A foreign policy reset
To The Times
The appointment of David
Cameron as Foreign Secretary
presents Rishi Sunak’s
administration with a powerful
opportunity to reset itself. The
Foreign Office was frozen out
on Israel-Gaza by a cast of
zealous ministers who held
domestic portfolios. This
risked making the UK look
like part of the problem.
Those who have been
marching for Palestine do
O Letters have been edited
LETTERS 27
Exchange of the week arrogance, lectured her about
not burying our heads in the
Homelessness: the hard truth sand. Now I, like Jenkins, don’t
even turn the news on.
To The Guardian Susan Hofsteede, Bangor
As a temporarily embarrassed billionaire who has slept rough
for many years, I can’t work up too much loathing for Suella How not to fix the NHS
Braverman after her comments about homelessness being To The Times
a lifestyle choice. Like most of the public, the [former] home To assume that an increase
secretary will be ill-informed about how people can become in doctors, nurses and budget
trapped in this situation. Drugs, alcohol and mental health will bring much needed change
issues are only superficial causes; many, perhaps most, in the NHS fails to highlight
homeless people have none of these afflictions. The real the fundamental problem:
causes are housing costs, which have gone through the the infrastructure is failing.
stratosphere, driven by a demand for housing that has Hospitals are falling down and
increased dramatically in the past 20 years. We are only the “improved” IT software,
offered dire accommodation by organisations that cynically with no investment in the
exploit this situation to charge sky-high rents. hardware, has slowed processes.
Suella, I can’t really recommend homelessness to you Squeezing NHS staff even
as a career path, but if you fancy a swap, let me know. more will not yield benefits.
Alex White, London Dr Siobhan Carroll, consultant
anaesthetist, Guildford, Surrey
To The Guardian
The Botley Bikers, one of the projects run by Food for Talking shop
Charities, delivers food and toiletries by bicycle to people To The Guardian
experiencing homelessness. We can confirm that rough I am delighted that Booths is
sleeping is very much a lifestyle choice: between sleeping on removing self-service tills from
the street and an abusive relationship; a shelter where drug most of its stores. My mother
dealers circle like vultures; violent neighbours; or being lived alone in Lancashire until
moved 100 miles away from one’s children, etc. she was 102 and visited her
Imagine just how bad things have to be to make such Booths store daily. It was
a lifestyle choice. Suella Braverman should have dealt with a major part of her social
the causes, not the symptoms, of homelessness – both of contact and she knew all
which have been worsened by her government. the staff. When she died ten
Riki Therivel, director, Food for Charities years ago, aged 104, two of
them attended her funeral.
so not out of hate, but out of keep. If she is concerned about I’m not sure how good the
a sense of justice. They object the plight of Palestinians, chatter was for Booths’ profits,
to Israeli settlers demolishing there are more practical ways but it was certainly good for
Palestinian homes and illegally of helping than marching my mother. I hope other shops
annexing Palestinian land. alongside extremists. will follow suit, as I dislike
That is also long-standing UK Gareth T. L. Kreike, Bury the idea of a self-service till
government policy. While the attending my funeral.
Netanyahu government was Unhealthy news Felicia Olney, London
becoming ever more extreme, To The Guardian
we failed to challenge it, and Thank you to Simon Jenkins A sobering thought
we failed to side with moderate for his article about how to To The Guardian
Israelis and Palestinians. stay aware of what’s happening It is likely that Harold Wilson
I urge Cameron to block in the world while preserving would have approved of
the influence of lobby channels our own sanity. The impact of tongue-twister tests for
and rely instead on the FO and a constant bombardment of intoxication. He only took
the apparatus of government images of suffering people another glass if he could
to shape policy and comment, and blasted homes desensitises faultlessly say: “I am president
and thereby restore our us, damaging our mental health of the Royal Statistical Society.”
standing on this critical topic. and discouraging us from doing Richard Rawles, honorary
Sir Alan Duncan, foreign what small things we can do. research fellow in
minister 2016-19 In 1969, I came back to the experimental psychology, UCL
UK after a couple
In good company? of years with
To The Daily Telegraph Voluntary Service
In her letter, Clare Gardner Overseas in east
suggests that participating in a Africa. The Biafran
pro-Palestinian march is merely War was on the
a display of solidarity with the news, complete
ordinary people of Gaza. Given with pictures of
the number of antisemitic starving children.
placards seen and chants heard My mother, a kind-
at these marches, she should hearted woman,
remember that many consider switched the TV “Friends are nice, but what I really want
is a large fan base I can monetise.”
the quality of a person by off, and I, in my
looking at the company they 23-year-old © BARBARA SMALLER/THE NEW YORKER
18 November 2023 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Erotic Vagrancy
by Roger Lewis
Riverrun 656pp £30
The Week Bookshop £23.99 (incl. p&p)
When Richard Burton first met
Elizabeth Taylor, on the set of the 1963
film Cleopatra, which was being filmed
in Rome, he told her: “You’re much
too fat, but you do have a pretty face.”
Perhaps surprisingly, Taylor wasn’t put
off. “I get an orgasm listening to that
voice of his,” she said. The actors – both
then married – soon embarked on a libidinous and very public
affair, said Anthony Quinn in The Observer. Their antics at the
Cinecittà studio complex earned them a rebuke from the Vatican,
which described Taylor as an “avaricious vamp” and fulminated
against the pair’s “erotic vagrancy”. The latter phrase has now
been adopted by Roger Lewis as the title of his joint biography
– a work whose “outsize” nature seems all too fitting, given the
famed excesses of the “Burton-Taylor partnership”, which lasted
until 1976 and spanned two separate marriages. Disdaining
standard biography, Lewis bounces back and forth between
eras, and devotes many pages to minor characters. His book is
“exhausting” at times, but “the reader does hear a singular voice
at work” – one that’s “funny, provocative, acute, insistent”.
29
Although Taylor and Burton had
very different backgrounds, both were
“imprisoned by their childhoods”, said
Andrew Billen in The Times. Born in
England, Taylor grew up in the US
and became a child Hollywood actor.
Premature stardom “pampered her into
permanent infantilism”. Burton (born
Richard Jenkins) was the 12th child
of an alcoholic Welsh miner, and was
raised by one of his sisters, after his
mother died when he was two. He
changed his name in his teens, after
becoming the legal ward of one of his
schoolteachers, Philip Burton – whom
Lewis suggests sexually abused him.
Despite his “innate puritanism”,
Burton quickly adjusted to an opulent lifestyle after he met
Taylor, said Lynn Barber in The Daily Telegraph. The couple
had a retinue of “about 12 people” and Burton once gave Taylor
a £127,000 diamond ring “simply because it was a Tuesday”.
While Lewis doesn’t shy away from the darker side of the
relationship (the endless drinking, the violence on both sides), he
presents it “more comically” than others have done, said Hadley
Freeman in The Sunday Times. Full of “joyful” writing, his book
really does – as its subtitle promises – tell you “Everything about
Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor”, from what they ate to her
favourite sexual position. It is a “delicious triumph” – a work as
“hilarious, fascinating, self-indulgent, sad, sex-obsessed, snobby
and irresistible as Burton and Taylor once were themselves”.

A Death in Malta
by Paul Caruana Galizia Novel of the week
Hutchinson Heinemann 336pp £18.99 Tackle!
The Week Bookshop £14.99 by Jilly Cooper
Bantam 448pp £22
On 16 October 2017, the Maltese journalist The Week Bookshop £17.99
Daphne Caruana Galizia “climbed into her grey
Peugeot and set off for the bank”, said Christina Jilly Cooper’s latest novel – her 11th set in
Patterson in The Sunday Times. Moments later, Rutshire – marks an unlikely shift in direction,
a huge explosion sent her car flying 50 metres said Cleo Watson in The Daily Telegraph. Rather
into a field. Caruana Galizia had been killed by than being about polo or opera, it is set in the
a car bomb – “the favoured method in Malta of world of football. Rupert Campbell-Black,
removing people who were inconvenient”. It was Cooper’s swaggering hero, has just bought
in many ways “a death foretold”, said Oliver a local team, Searston Rovers FC, and “with
Balch in the FT. In her columns and blogs, the 53-year-old had dedicated herself the kind of determination that only an Olympic
to exposing corruption among Malta’s business and political elites. While this had show-jumping gold medal can instil, he sets his
made her a celebrity on the island nation of 500,000 people, it had also brought sights on winning the Premier League”. This
endless threats: her dogs had been killed, her house set on fire, and almost 50 libel ambition is amusingly challenged by his players
suits issued against her. Now her son, the London-based journalist Paul Caruana (led by star striker, Facundo Gonzalez), who are
Galizia (pictured with his mother), has written a “devastatingly compelling” more interested in wife swapping than on-pitch
memoir, exploring the lead-up to her assassination and its repercussions. glory. Cooper has always offered “huge
As well as being a personal tragedy, this is also a “story of global significance”, pleasure”, and I found it a struggle not to
said Daniel Trilling in the TLS. Malta, a socially conservative society dominated “gobble” this novel up “in one go”.
by the Catholic Church and a small political elite, had long been prone to Although Tackle! contains the “reliable
corruption. Against expectations, the problem worsened after it joined the EU Cooper quotient of rising penises” and “lithe
in 2004, as economic liberalisation turned the island into a “conduit” for foreign women with high breasts”, she also weaves in
money. The terrible irony is that it took Galicia’s murder to finally improve darker themes, said Lucy Beresford in Literary
matters, said John Simpson in The Guardian. The public outcry that followed Review. A sub-plot dealing with cancer is subtly
her death led to the ousting of Malta’s “irredeemably corrupt” Labour done, as is another exploring the impact of
government, and its democratic institutions have since been strengthened. growing up in a children’s home. “With this
Now Paul Caruana Galizia has given his mother another “lasting monument: novel, Cooper shoots again and scores.”
a book which is unforgettable, beautifully written, and deeply honest”.
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

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

30 ARTS Drama & Podcasts
Theatre: Backstairs Billy
Duke of York’s Theatre, London WC2 (0844-871 7623; atgtickets.com)
Backstairs Billy is “the best
new play about the royals
since Peter Morgan’s smash-hit
The Audience”, said Dominic
Cavendish in The Daily
Telegraph. Packed with
witty lines, it imagines the
relationship between the late
Queen Mother and William
“Billy” Tallon, the flamboyant
Clarence House steward
(an “elevated Coventry
commoner”) who was her
trusted right-hand man for
many decades. Marcelo Dos
Santos’s comedy has shades
of both Noël Coward and Joe
Orton, said Dominic Maxwell Wilton as the Queen Mother: “Rolls-Royce” casting
in The Sunday Times. He
weaves together farcical shenanigans (in one sequence, Billy passes “all slips down easily”, but there’s no “emotional underpinning”.
off a pick-up from the night before as a visiting African prince)
with “nimble dialogue, a keen sense of absurdity and traces of
tenderness too”. The two leads – Penelope Wilton as the Queen
Mother and Luke Evans as Billy – are superb. And it’s very funny
– it made me “laugh more than any other play this year”.
Still, it is a very odd affair, said Sarah Crompton on What’s on
Stage. The play has all the trappings of a West End hit: “zinging
one-liners”; a sumptuous set; “Rolls-Royce” casting. But “for the
life of me, I couldn’t work out why I was watching it or what it
was really about”. In other hands, it might have developed into
either a “sensitive and amusing study of the bonds that can grow
Podcasts... on haunted houses, hip hop, and politics
The journalist Tristan Redman’s new
podcast has an “unremarkable” title, but
the tale Ghost Story tells is astonishing
and gripping, said Fiona Sturges in the
Financial Times. It’s a haunted-house
story, in that it begins with a Victorian
house in London – Redman’s childhood
home – and sightings of a ghostly faceless
woman. But it is also a real-life murder
mystery: Redman discovers that in 1937
his wife’s great-grandmother, Naomi
Dancy, was killed in the house next door.
She was shot in the face, supposedly by
her brother, who had returned from the
First World War with shrapnel in his
brain. “I hesitate to reveal more, though
I can tell you that there is a spy subplot
and a cameo from the crime writer
Dorothy L. Sayers.” The podcast
has many narrative strands, and features The Fresh Prince and Jazzy Jeff: the Class of ’88 How to Win an Election, the terrific
a series of jaw-dropping coincidences
and connections, yet to his great credit, Redman holds it all
together to create a “hopelessly addictive” treat.
These days, Will Smith is known as the man who “wrecked the
biggest moment of his life”, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer Street, and Labour’s Peter Mandelson. Chorley sets a buoyant
– pivoting in an instant from “beloved Oscar winner to out-and-
out loser” by assaulting Chris Rock on stage at the Academy
Awards ceremony last year. But before Smith even turned to
acting he was a hip-hop star, one half of DJ Jazzy Jeff & the
Fresh Prince (“Smith was the Fresh Prince, young ’uns”). Listening News for You vibe. “It’s fantastic. I’m not just saying that.”
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)
THE WEEK 18 November 2023
Running time: 2hrs 15mins +++
between servant and mistress”,
or an exploration of why
people love the fallible royals.
Instead, it “ricochets off into a
messy mixture of farce, politics
and class critique” while veering
wildly in tone.
Having brought his characters
nicely into focus, Dos Santos
seems to have been “uncertain
what to do with them”, agreed
Nick Curtis in the Evening
Standard. The play’s
“worshipful approach” to
the Queen Mother doesn’t
help, said Arifa Akbar in The
Guardian. The arrival of corgis
onstage raises “ahhhhs” and it
At one point, the Queen Mother explains that “she likes TV
comedy where people do accents and walk into things”. This
“anodyne” drama would surely have been right up her street.
The week’s other opening
The Box of Delights Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-
Avon (01789-331111). Until 7 January
The RSC’s adaptation of John Masefield’s mystical adventure has
a fantastical sweep and a profusion of carols to create a festive
mood. It “won’t set the world on fire – but it will leave young and
old alike feeling pleasingly giddy” (Daily Telegraph).
to his “tremendous” new podcast series
about the music of that era, Class of ’88,
there’s no trace of the troubled actor.
Instead, there’s “laughter and warmth”,
and a mix of gossipy anecdotes – such as
the time Smith went on a date with Pepa
from Salt-N-Pepa – and more serious
reflections on “what it felt like to be
called a sellout”. Featuring some stellar
interviewees (Run DMC, Queen Latifah,
Chuck D, Rick Rubin), this is a fascinating
account of the era when rap broke
through to the mainstream.
As an “ethically minded” critic, said
James Marriott in The Times, I try to
avoid reviewing shows by my “splendid
and charming” colleagues. But it would
be perverse and “foolish” to ignore
new Times podcast chaired by Matt
Chorley, timed to lead us into an election year. The panel is made
up of a trio of election strategists from the three main parties:
Daniel Finkelstein, who has worked with several Tory leaders,
Polly Mackenzie, who worked alongside Nick Clegg in Downing
fast pace; Finkelstein brings his “political mega-brain” to
proceedings; Mackenzie has a quick wit; and Mandelson slots
© JOHAN PERSSON
in as a “drier, downbeat presence”. What sets it apart from other
political podcasts is that it’s funny, with a bit of a Have I Got

Dream Scenario
1hr 42mins (12A)
Nicolas Cage haunts
people’s dreams in this
high-concept comedy
++++
Film ARTS 31
In “the right mood and in the right film”, Nicolas Cage can be brilliant, said Matthew Bond in The
Mail on Sunday. And he’s “on absolutely top form” in Dream Scenario, in which he appears (almost
unrecognisably) as Paul, “an ageing professor of evolutionary biology” whose students are bored
by him and whose teenage daughters are embarrassed by him. Balding, bearded and dressed in
“ill-fitting dad gear”, Paul couldn’t be “less prepossessing” – until, that is, “people start dreaming
about him”. First it’s one of his daughters, then an ex-girlfriend, then nearly everyone on the planet.
He doesn’t do much in their dreams – he might be raking leaves, or just hanging around in the
background – but his ubiquity grants him celebrity; and soon, people around Paul (and Paul
himself) are rushing to cash in. This is a “‘high concept’ comedy in the tradition of Groundhog Day
and The Truman Show”; and though it “struggles to sustain the joke” for 100 minutes, Cage is
superb, and nicely supported by a cast that includes Julianne Nicholson and Michael Cera.
Cage “has never turned in a boring performance”, and he is “grippingly not-boring playing this
boring man”, to whom he gives “vulnerability and soul”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator.
The rest of the film is not as good as its star, and it rather unravels in the last third; but it’s mostly
entertaining, and it made me laugh. “Silly, strange and very funny”, Dream Scenario is a “psycho-
comic drama with a peak Cage Renaissance performance powering it”, said John Nugent in Empire.
As the dreams people are having about Paul morph into nightmares, the film also turns into “a lightly
existential look at paranoia and fear, and how that is wrapped up in our uncontrolled subconscious”.

In this “sinuous” French drama, the “phenomenal” Sandra Hüller plays an author accused of
murdering her husband, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. Aspiring writer Samuel (Samuel Theis)
has fallen, jumped or been shoved out of a third-floor window at his and Sandra’s chalet in the Alps.
When an inquest fails to rule out the possibility of foul play, Sandra finds herself on trial for murder,
and in court the “flaws and faultlines” in her relationship with Samuel are teased out. “Perhaps
more than most genres, the courtroom drama succeeds or fails on the strength of its screenplay.”
And the “layered and rewardingly intricate script” co-written by director Justine Triet and her
husband Arthur Harari ensures that “this solid, unshowy film” keeps you guessing to the end. It’s
a “restlessly dynamic and compulsively watchable” film that rarely loosens its “throttling” grip.
Anatomy of a Fall Anatomy of a Fall won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year, and though “industry prizes aren’t
2hrs 31mins (15) always much guide”, the bauble was well deserved in this case, said Danny Leigh in the Financial
Times. With clear nods to Alfred Hitchcock, Triet has crafted a “top-drawer thriller” whose
Gripping French ambiguity “makes us doubt the clean lines of other crime dramas”. A word of warning, however:
with its dissection of “the raw, sad details of married life”, the film could prove an uncomfortable
courtroom drama
choice for couples on “date night”. It’s an “intellectual thriller of rare calibre”, and assembled “so
+++++ precisely” that it “takes your breath away”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Hüller proves
Triet’s “perfect accomplice”, and Milo Machado Graner, who plays Sandra’s blind 11-year-old son,
also turns in a remarkable performance. You’ll be thinking about this “enthralling” film “for days”.

When I told a friend I was off to see The Marvels, “she thought I meant a Motown girl group on a
reunion tour”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. “If only.” What I was actually seeing was the “33rd
salvo from the Marvel Cinematic Universe”, a notional sequel to 2019’s Captain Marvel, with “girl
power” the central theme. Iman Vellani plays Kamala Khan, a schoolgirl from New Jersey “who
happens to have superpowers, much to the amazement of her parents”. They are even more startled
when Captain Marvel (Brie Larson) and her protégée Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) pitch up
at the family home, and whisk Kamala off to engage in a space battle with an evil alien played
(“rather politely”) by Zawe Ashton. The “decidedly perfunctory plot” is driven by urgent cries
such as: “It seems the surge has had some residual effect on the jump point!” – lines that left me
The Marvels “floundering”, but seemed to make perfect sense to the audience at Cineworld in Leicester Square.
1hr 45mins (12A) This is the shortest MCU film so far, yet somehow it is also “the most interminable”, said Robbie
Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Only those who know their Marvel lore back to front will be able
More underwhelming to make sense of the plot, which ties five Marvel sub-franchises into the sort of knot you might
MCU fare find on the string of a kite that has just been retrieved from the attic. “‘Higher, further, faster’ ran
++ the original Captain Marvel’s rousing tagline. ‘Have we reached the bottom yet?’ would be an apt
one for this.” Well, I found the film pacy and fun, said Helen O’Hara in Empire. No, it doesn’t have
“the overwhelming impact” of, say, Guardians 3, “but this is the MCU back on fast, funny form”.

Robbie Williams: the Take That star looks back on his roller-coaster life
“It’s a boom time for celebrity documentaries,”
said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. “David
Beckham and Coleen Rooney currently have their
vanity vehicles. Now we have the four-part Robbie
Williams (Netflix), a deep dive into the former
Take That star’s tortured psyche.”
Each episode involves Williams looking at
footage of himself in his heyday, and commenting
on it. Williams is pretty candid about his life (“he
doesn’t even put his trousers on” for most of the
documentary, and is mainly seen in his pants or
under his duvet). And though it feels like “an
extended therapy session”, and endless shots
of the singer pacing around his palatial home in
LA become rather deadening, the series offers
some valuable insights into the costs of fame.
As a “hardened” Robbie fan, I was really looking
forward to this series, said Camilla Long in The
Sunday Times. There is a wealth of material here:
30 years of private footage of Williams “baring
his arse”, pulling faces, going on mega-tours. But
every time something crazy happens, we cut back
to the star, now 49 and all skinny, sitting in bed,
telling us about his misery, anger and resentment.
By the end, I wanted never to be in the presence
of this “tedious, withered ‘want monster’” again.
This is in many ways “a familiar story of fame,
excess and a late-in-life descent into civilised
domesticity”, said Nick Hilton in The Independent.
But it’s also a “tender portrait” of a star, which
combines “titillation and pity as effectively as its
Williams: pretty candid namesake does braggadocio and vulnerability”.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

32 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week David Hockney: Drawing from Life
National Portrait Gallery, London WC2 (020-7306 0055, npg.org.uk). Until 21 January
David Hockney is “justifiably “dashed off, but utterly precise”.
proud of his drawing skills”, said Another, drawn in Paris, is
Mark Hudson in The Independent. “mesmerising”, featuring “not
Like most artists of his generation, one wayward mark, even among
he underwent “years of enforced the thickets of lines describing
practice” drawing nude models, Birtwell’s hair”. Yet it becomes
a discipline which “left him with a increasingly clear that Hockney
confidence and fluency in capturing was at his best using “the simplest,
immediate reality with pencil, pen time-honoured tools”: there are
or brush that today’s young artists mercifully few of his “wretched”
can only dream about”. This iPad drawings, and the quality
exhibition of his drawings of his work since the 1980s is
originally opened at the National distinctly variable.
Portrait Gallery in early 2020,
but was forced to close after just The most recent portraits, mainly
20 days owing to the pandemic. depicting friends and visitors to his
Following the gallery’s three-year Normandy home, are far from his
refurbishment, it has now “best work”, agreed Hettie Judah
reopened, bolstered with 30 new in The i Paper. A much-trailed
portraits realised since the end of likeness of the pop star Harry
lockdown. Featuring everything Styles, for instance, is forgettable,
from his very earliest 1950s while other pictures seem
self-portraits to pictures created marred by an uncharacteristic
on his iPad, it charts Hockney’s hesitancy. Happily, however,
innovations and experiments in the there is much to enjoy elsewhere.
form, focusing principally on five It’s particularly exciting to see
sitters: the fashion designer Celia Hockney’s “ability to constantly
Birtwell; Gregory Evans, his friend see the same sitter in fresh ways”:
and sometime lover; the master Celia, Carennac, August 1971: Hockney’s “imperial phase” one moment, Gregory Evans
printmaker Maurice Payne; his is depicted “looking moody and
mother, Laura; and the artist himself. The show “provides the romantic in a trench coat”, the next “naked but for his gym
perfect opportunity to assess whether Britain’s favourite artist has socks”. Best of all are the drawings of his mother. In a 1982
lived up to his formidable gifts as a draughtsman”. photo-collage portrait, she is “engulfed in a green raincoat” amid
the ruins of Bolton Abbey, the artist’s brogues “just visible in the
There’s no doubting Hockney’s early brilliance, said Ben Luke in foreground”. It is a “wonderful” memento of “a widowed mother
the Evening Standard. Take his extraordinary portraits of Birtwell and adult son on a damp day out, surrounded by the architecture
from his 1970s “imperial phase”, for instance. One “exquisite” of death and commemoration”. For all its faults, this is “a show
sketch, created over lunch at Langan’s Brasserie in 1970, is of thoughtful delicacy” that testifies to Hockney’s genius.

Where to buy… The Prado’s rear view

The Week reviews an “The Prado
exhibition in a private gallery has decided
to turn its
Georg Baselitz back on its
visitors,” says
at Cristea Roberts Gallery Sam Jones in
The Guardian.
Those visiting
Georg Baselitz (b.1938) is a giant of Reversos, a
© DAVID HOCKNEY. PHOTO RICHARD SCHMIDT. COLLECTION THE DAVID HOCKNEY FOUNDATION

German contemporary art. Although new show at

it is frequently divisive, his style is
instantly recognisable: notable among
his hallmarks is his tendency to turn
his canvases upside down, forcing the
viewer to contemplate his textures and
mark making, rather than what they
represent. Belle Haleine, the first of
two shows, displays a 2002 series of
monumental prints based on 19th
century erotic postcards. Measuring
up to two metres in height, they are
imposing and just a bit bombastic,
pitting masses of jagged white lines
against night-black backgrounds; and
in place of the subjects’ genitalia, the
artist has superimposed large white
circles – an act of knowing self-
censorship. A companion exhibition,
Deer IV (2021): 86.9cm x 64.9cm
Prints, 2017-2021, is a quieter affair.
In its course, Baselitz gives us some
delicate studies of hands; a series
of stags, hewn from tangles of lines;
and even an unlikely, but rather nice,
likeness of Tracey Emin. Prices on
request, but are likely to be steep.
43 Pall Mall, London SW1 (020-7439
1866). Until 22 December
Madrid’s national art museum, are “greeted not
by the full splendour of its most famous work,
Velázquez’s Las Meninas, but by an austere
and lifesize recreation of the reverse of the
painting”. Some of the 100 or so works are
displayed facing backwards, while others can
be seen from both sides – so that visitors can
see the “messages, stamps and sketches that
decorate” them. A part of an obituary of Lord
Granville, a diplomat, from The Times in
January 1846, is pasted on the back of Salomon
Koninck’s 17th century painting A Philosopher.
Battered wooden beams from the original
stretcher frame of Picasso’s Guernica are on
display. But the most eye-catching exhibit
is Martin van Meytens’ Kneeling Nun, circa
1731. Its front shows a devout nun at prayer;
its reverse shows the nun “with her habit
hitched up over her naked bottom”.

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

 The List ARTS 33
Best books… Gavin Esler Television
The journalist and broadcaster will be discussing his new book, Britain Programmes
Is Better Than This (Apollo £18.99), with Lisa Nandy and Jennifer Nadel The Princes in the Tower:
at the Hay Festival Winter Weekend on 25 November; hayfestival.com The New Evidence Philippa
Langley – who helped find
The Adventures of Death of a Naturalist by brilliant and incisive, and it Richard III’s grave – presents
a fresh investigation into
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Seamus Heaney, 1966 (Faber also mirrors another 1920s another royal mystery. Sat
Twain, 1884 (Penguin £7.99). £12.99). The first book of Austrian propaganda expert, 18 Nov, C4 20:00 (105mins).
This is the greatest novel by poetry I could relate to as a Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf.
an American. Jim, a slave, teenager. Physical language When Blondie Came to
flees south down the – frog slobber in the pond; Selected Poems by John Britain Documentary charting
Mississippi. An odd plot digging the turf in peat bogs; Donne, 1633 (Penguin £9.99). Britain’s part in Blondie’s
is redeemed entirely by the writing as a physical effort. Donne always demands a bit global success, from their
humanity of the relationship I interviewed Seamus a number of work and repays that work arrival in Bournemouth in
between the young white boy of times and he generously a hundred times. My dream 1977 to their headlining set
at Glastonbury in 2023. Sat
Huck Finn and Jim himself. gave of his time, and a number pub night would be a table 18 Nov, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
of his books. We are poorer filled with food and good ale
Middlemarch by George without him. and a discussion between John Scrublands Australian
Eliot, 1871 (Penguin £8.99). Donne and Seamus Heaney. crime drama. A year on from
The great novel of change Propaganda by Edward a mass shooting by a young
in England. The stuck-in-the- Bernays, 1928 (Ig Publishing Darkness at Noon by Arthur priest, an investigative
past pedant Casaubon is £14.99). Bernays was born in Koestler, 1940 (Vintage £9.99). journalist arrives in a rural
an early 19th century Austria, became an American, Koestler was not the nicest town to follow up on the story.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a living and is regarded as the father of men, but he is the greatest Sat 18 Nov, BBC4 21:00 and
21:50 (50mins each).
fossil. Eliot’s masterpiece of the modern public relations storyteller of the politics
is full of life and insight industry. I quote Bernays at of ideology in the 1930s. Kin Gangland drama set in
interwoven with the strains length in Britain Is Better Than Grim and fascinating on Dublin. When a boy is killed,
of an England in flux. This, because Propaganda is man’s inhumanity to man. his family go to war with a
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk drug cartel. Aidan Gillen is
among the stars. Sat 18 Nov,
BBC1 21:35 and Tue 21 Nov
Book now for Christmas 22:40 and 23:30 (50mins each).
Three classics get a dusting of Christmas sparkle.
Amol Rajan Interviews:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Ronnie O’Sullivan The
promises “winter wonder” (Daily Telegraph); snooker player talks about
until 28 January, Birmingham Rep (birmingham- the struggles that have
rep.co.uk). There’s swashbuckling fun in a marked his astonishing
musical Treasure Island; until 6 January, career. Wed 22 Nov, BBC2
Barn Theatre, Cirencester (barntheatre.org.uk). 19:00 (45mins).
And in Sonali Bhattacharyya’s retelling of the
Arabian Nights, a young woman takes on a Films
tyrannical king; 23 November-6 January, Bristol Now, Voyager (1942) Bette
Old Vic (bristololdvic.org.uk). Davis plays a repressed
young woman who goes
on a cruise to escape her
For a second year, Christmas at Bute Park
domineering mother. Sun
sees the 130 acres of gardens and woodland 19 Nov, BBC2 14:25 (115mins).
illuminated by a spectacular light show, with A novel take on a classic: Scottish Ballet’s Cinders!
performers and audio installations along the Ladies Only (2021)
trail. 24 November-1 January, Bute Gardens, 8 December, Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford Documentary exploring the
Cardiff (christmasatbutepark.com). (followthestars-macmillancarols.com). lives of some of the women
travelling in the ladies’
Simon Armitage’s version of Hansel and Gretel Olivier Award-winning choreographer Drew compartment of Mumbai’s
is “pointedly topical” (Daily Telegraph). For ages McOnie’s jazz-infused Nutcracker transforms trains. In Hindi with subtitles.
London’s Royal Festival Hall into a cabaret club Mon 20 Nov, C4 01:50 (90mins).
5+. 8 December-7 January, The Globe Theatre,
London SE1 (shakespearesglobe.com). (until 6 January; southbankcentre.co.uk); while
in a similarly novel take on a classic, Scottish
Celebrities gather for readings and music at Ballet’s Cinders! features gender-swapping and New to streaming
the annual Follow-the-Stars – Macmillan art nouveau sets (9-31 December, Theatre Royal, The Crown The final season
Carols for Macmillan Cancer Support; Glasgow, then touring; scottishballet.co.uk). of the royal juggernaut drops
in two parts; the first features
The Archers: what happened last week Diana’s doomed romance
At Bonfire Night, Eddie ignores rumours of Oliver’s plans to sell Grange Farm land. Overwhelmed with Dodi Fayed. On Netflix;
by office tasks, Jazzer has second thoughts about Hannah’s job. Eddie and Ed are stunned when part two from 14 December.
Oliver announces he’s selling ten acres; it will ruin Ed’s Texel business. Helen learns that Jack is
insisting on meeting Rob; Joy comforts her, saying Jack will lose interest. Alan is worried about A Murder at the End of
church finances and considers desperate measures – Usha suggests a fundraising event. Emma the World In this dark
tells Ed to stop whingeing and make new plans for his flock; meanwhile Oliver reassures her that
the sale won’t affect Little Grange. Hannah realises that Jazzer doesn’t want the job; he’s afraid to
whodunnit, Emma Corrin
tell Tracy, but she’s fine. Hannah is staying on anyway after finding a room at Stella’s. Emma tells stars as an amateur sleuth
faced with solving a murder
© GAVIN SMART

George that Martyn Gibson is coming to look at the land; George wonders if he can put him off.
Kirsty advises Helen to stop Jack from seeing Rob at all costs, but Helen feels she can’t risk Jack at a billionaire’s retreat.
resenting her forever. George’s plan to dissuade Martyn fails, but it cheers up Eddie. On Disney+.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

34 Best properties
Idyllic retreats for less than £700,000
London:
Powerhouse, Chelsea
Waterfront, SW10.
Built in 1905, the
Lots Road Power
Station once powered
the Underground.
2 beds, 2 baths,
kitchen, open-plan
living/dining room,
communal gym, pool
and spa. £1.7m;
Powerhouse Chelsea
(020-7352 8852).

Isle of Wight: Fairytale Cottage, Niton Undercliff. New England-style house close to Rocken End beach. 2 beds,
family bath, open-plan kitchen/living/dining room, garden. £600,000; Spence Willard (01983-200880).

West Sussex: Kithurst Farm Road, Storrington. A delightful cottage on the edge of the South
Downs National Park. 2 beds, shower, kitchen, recep, garden. £450,000; Savills (01444-446000).

Suffolk:
The Causeway,
Peasenhall.
This handsome
Grade II house
is near the coast.
4 beds, 2 baths,
kitchen, 2 receps,
orangery, garden.
£675,000; Inigo
(020-3687 3071).

Wiltshire:
Michaelmas
Cottage, Upavon.
Gorgeous timber-
framed, thatched
cottage. 4 beds,
2 baths, kitchen,
4 receps, garden
office, garden.
£600,000; Fine
& Country
(01672-511211).

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

on the market 35

Surrey: The Cottage, Charlwood. Charming 15th

century cottage with many original features, including
wooden beams and an inglenook fireplace. 2 beds,
family bath, kitchen, dining room, recep, garden.
£550,000; Hamptons (01737-400228).

Suffolk: St Peters Guildhall, Bardwell. A characterful

15th century Grade II house overlooking the village
church. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen, dining room, recep,
garden. £475,000; Bedfords (01284-769999).
Devon:
Colleton Hill,
Exeter. An elegant
townhouse within
the Riverside
Conservation Area.
3 beds, family bath,
shower, kitchen,
2 receps, study,
garden. £550,000;
Wilkinson Grant &
Co (01392-427500).

Oxfordshire:
Chapel Street,
Watlington. A Grade
II, 18th century
cottage in an
attractive market
town. 2 beds, family
bath, kitchen, recep,
annexe, garden.
£475,000; Savills
(01491-843000).

Hertfordshire: Moss Rose Cottage, Payne End. Picturesque 18th century thatched cottage.
2 beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, garden. £575,000; Fine & Country (01920-443898).

18 November 2023 THE WEEK


Can any steak be worth £760?
Last month, a Japanese steak restaurant
opened in Mayfair that is “so discreet, the
only outward sign of its existence is the
name in Japanese on a brass bell plaque”,
says Damian Whitworth in The Times.
But as the media swiftly noted, there is
“nothing restrained” about the prices at
Aragawa, the first overseas outpost of
a lauded Tokyo eatery. Steaks here start
at £500, and go up to £900 for a 400g
sirloin. The reason for these prices lies with
the beef, which comes from the “super-
premium Tajima strain of wagyu cattle”.
The cows are “reared indoors with all
manner of fussing” – including “soothing
music” and “exquisite hoof trimming”.
The result is exceptionally well marbled
meat, which is cooked in a kiln fired with
Japanese binchotan charcoal. The chef uses
no temperature gauges, as he claims he can
tell how done a steak is by the “sound of
the sizzle on the coals”. My £760 sirloin
is actually “sensationally good: buttery,
meltingly soft” – but unless you’re a steak
connoisseur with exceptionally deep
pockets, I think it would be wiser to
spend the money “on a return flight from
London to Tokyo”.
The perfect roastie: a definitive guide
How to cook the perfect roast potato?
It’s a simple question, but in Britain,
a highly contentious one, says Eleanor
Steafel in The Daily Telegraph. From the
fluffing technique to the type of fat, every
stage inspires strong feelings. I recently
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Aragawa: “nothing restrained” about its prices
conducted my own experiment to see if
I could nail the perfect roastie – and “10kg
of potatoes and two litres of fat later”,
I believe I have got it. Variety is the “least
important element”: Vivaldis and Désirées
have a nice buttery texture, but Maris
Pipers and King Edwards also work well.
What does matter is how you cut the
spuds. I reckon that following Nigella’s
advice, to “cut each potato into three
by cutting off each end at a slant so that
you are left with a wedge or triangle in
the middle”, results in the best balance
between crunch and fluff. Then introduce
the potatoes to cold, well-salted water,
bring to the boil and cook until you can
“easily fluff up the edge” when you lift
one out. Drain, and cool in a colander for
37
ten minutes, then put back in the pan and,
with the lid on, shake the pan vigorously
so that the “edges get beaten up”: this is
the all-important “chuffing”. Now cook
the spuds in a tray containing 1cm of
sunflower oil, which you’ve preheated for
at least 15 minutes at 220°C/200°C fan.
Roast for 50 minutes, turning once after
30. Remove, sprinkle with salt, and serve.
A “flavour-bomb” of a seasoning
Parsley stalks and lemon peel often end
up getting thrown away, says Tom Hunt
in The Guardian. That’s a shame, because
they can easily be “upcycled” into a
“magical seasoning that is somehow
far more than the sum of its parts”. I am
talking about gremolata, a mix of finely
chopped parsley, raw garlic and lemon
zest. In Italy, this “belter of a flavour-
bomb” is traditionally used as a garnish
for ossobuco alla milanese – or slow-
cooked Milanese veal shank. That
gives you an idea of what it pairs with:
basically, any fatty cut of meat or fish, or
fried vegetables. I like it with pig’s cheek,
sprinkled over beef brisket, or with a fish
head that has been braised in herbs, butter,
garlic and white wine. It’s also pleasingly
adaptable, so use lime or grapefruit zest if
you don’t have lemons, and substitute any
soft herb for parsley. To make gremolata,
separately chop 15g parsley stalks, 10g
lemon zest and 1 garlic clove – aiming for
about 1mm dice. Combine the ingredients,
toss them with 1tsp sea salt, and store in
the fridge until it’s ready to use.

Recipe of the week: nasu dengaku (miso aubergine)

This is a dish I make for people unfamiliar with Japanese home cooking, because it is an instant winner, says Emiko Davies.
Silky aubergine and intensely flavourful sweet miso sauce is just an unforgettable combination. You can eat nasu dengaku as
a side dish, in which case this is enough for four to share, or turn it into a meal on its own with a crunchy, zingy cabbage salad.
In either case, you need a bowl of freshly steamed rice nearby as a foil for the richness of this wonderful dish.
Serves 4 as a side dish
1 large aubergine vegetable oil, for frying 2 tbsp brown miso 1 tbsp soy sauce 1 tbsp mirin
2 tsp sugar (I like raw demerara/turbinado sugar here)
To garnish: sesame seeds or finely chopped spring onion (green parts only)

• Cut the aubergine in half lengthways, then
score the flesh in a criss-cross pattern about
2cm wide to make it easier to eat with
chopsticks. I also like to trim a small (5mm)
section of the skin on the bottom so that the
aubergine doesn’t wobble, and sits flat.
• Heat a 1-2cm depth of vegetable oil in a
frying pan and fry the aubergine halves until
they become deep brown and tender, about
3 minutes on each side. Frying is the secret
to the silky texture. Remove carefully from
the oil and let drain on a wire rack.
• Heat the grill element of your oven (or heat the oven to
220ºC/430°F/gas 8 if you don’t have this function).
• Mix the miso, soy sauce, mirin and sugar together to make
a smooth paste and warm in a small saucepan
to dissolve the sugar. If it is too thick, add
a splash of water to loosen a little and mix
until smooth, then remove from the heat.
• Place the aubergine, with the criss-cross
sides up, on a baking tray and cover with a
thick coating of the miso mixture, about 1-2
tablespoons. Place under the grill until the
miso paste is bubbling around the edges,
about 2-3 minutes (if using the oven to roast,
place the tray on the top shelf and bake for
several minutes or until the miso paste
begins to bubble and brown slightly).
• Serve sprinkled with the toasted sesame seeds or finely
chopped spring onions.

Taken from Gohan: Everyday Japanese Cooking by Emiko Davies, published by Smith Street Books at £26. Photography by
Yuki Sugiura. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £20.99 (incl. p&p), call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

 Consumer LEISURE 39

New cars: what the critics say

Evo
Launched in 2020, the
ID.3 was regarded as a
competent electric family
hatch, but some elements –
cabin quality, infotainment
software and ergonomics –
weren’t up to scratch, so
VW is tackling these with
an early facelift. The 2023
Volkswagen ID.3 2023 ID.3 has a restyled front
Price: from £37,255 end and new colours, and
inside the quality is better.
There are just two battery
options: 58kWh (ID.3 Pro)
and 77kWh (ID.3 Pro S),
both with 201bhp.
Top Gear Magazine
The cheaper Pro is slightly
quicker – it does 0-62mph
in 7.4secs instead of 7.9
– because it’s 100kg lighter
than the Pro S, which has
an impressive 347 mile
WLTP range (the smaller
battery does 266 miles).
On the road, the new
ID.3 is stable, smooth and
quiet, with precise steering,
acceleration and braking,
but there’s no feedback
or engagement. So while
it is satisfying to drive, it’s
just not that much fun.
Car Magazine
The weakest area of the
old ID.3 was the interior,
and quality is much
improved. The new model
has upgraded soft-touch
plastics on the door panels
and dash. Thanks to the
long wheelbase and higher
roofline, it’s “seriously
spacious” inside, with lots
of leg- and headroom and
385 litres of boot space.
The 10in touchscreen
has new software and is
easier to use, but the voice
control is still quite useless.

The best… waterproof coats Dryzzle Futurelight North Face’s Dryzzle

has been around for a few years, but this
Arc Eco Waterproof Rab’s new model is more breathable and offers
hi-tech fabrics are among the good protection from the elements,
best, and the Arc Eco is made while being light enough to jog or
from breathable, three-layer, hike in. Stylish and lightweight, with
chemical-free recycled Pertex a handy zipped chest pocket, it has an
Shield Revolve material. adjustable hood and storm flap, but
It will keep you bone dry, is too short at the back for cycling
and has tailored sleeves (from £158; thenorthface.co.uk).
to protect you
from the wind
too (£235; rab.
equipment).

SOURCES: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH/HOUSE & GARDEN

Verglas Infinity Shell
Great for extreme
weather, this Helly Hansen Poncho 3.0 Made
Pack & Go Shell Great jacket is made from tough from lightweight
for travelling, this recycled three-layer fabric, Japanese polyester,
waterproof has a pocket and has double-zipped this poncho is designed
that becomes the carry pockets. It offers great to withstand very
case. It’s made from breathability and has heavy rain while
a breathable two-layer good underarm vents – still allowing airflow,
Texapore Ecosphere stretch but it is a bit heavy, so and is great for cyclists.
fabric, with a recycled not ideal for the warmer Available in five colours,
plastic mesh lining (from seasons (from £266; one size fits all (£76;
£90; jack-wolfskin.co.uk). hellyhansen.com). thepeoples.co).

Tips... buying a And for those who Where to find...

refurbished phone
OThe best used phones are manufacturer
refurbished and can be bought direct from
them. These are like new, but will cost
more than third-party refurbished devices.
OHigh street retailers CeX and Game
sell refurbished phones with warranties.
Envirofone and musicMagpie sell online,
and give a 12-month warranty. Back Market
is a marketplace for small refurbishers who
are vetted for quality; but do check reviews.
OCheck the model is still getting software
updates. Many Android phones only get
three or four years of updates; Apple,
Google and Samsung offer five to ten years.
OBattery life is always an issue, so check if
the battery has been replaced. Look out for
signs of damage in the charging port, which
is one of the first parts to break. Check the
buttons are all working fine.
OIf you buy from a business, you have
30 days to return the phone under the
Consumer Rights Act 2015 if it isn’t as
described or doesn’t work.
SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN
have everything…
Inspired by the De Stijl movement, Wildlife
Garden’s Multiholk De Stijl birdhouse
doubles up as a bird feeder and a nesting
box for small birds. It is made from wood
treated with environmentally friendly
paint, and can be mounted on a pole
(not supplied), wall or tree.
£65; twentytwentyone.com
SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES
specialist repairs in the UK
The Clock Clinic is a family-run business in
London where specialist clock repair skills
are being kept alive (clockclinic.co.uk).
The Workhouse Gallery in Powys restores
antique rugs and carpets, and sells bespoke
dyed carpets (01544-267864).
The Seam is a UK tailoring service offering
virtual consultations to connect users with
local dressmakers and tailors (theseam.uk).
Scottish knitwear firm Collingwood-Norris
specialises in the “visible mending” of
moth-damaged knits, worn elbows and
so on (collingwoodnorrisdesign.com).
Stairway to Kevin, in London’s West End,
mainly fixes guitars, but will repair fretted
instruments from all over the world; by
appointment only (stairwaytokevin.com).
The Audio Centre in Croydon has been the
go-to place for repairing old hi-fi equipment
for the past 50 years (theaudiocentre.com).
KPA Shoe Repair and Services in northwest
London fixes designer handbags and
luggage as well as shoes (kparepairs.co.uk).
SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

 Travel LEISURE 41
This week’s dream: a slice of heaven in the far west of Ireland
With its blue mountains, “colossal” following your nose down the
skies, and wide empty beaches, “narrow, meandering” lanes
Connemara is “a country unto that criss-cross the landscape,
itself”, and the most beautiful “pitching and turning” like roller-
region in the west of Ireland, says coaster tracks around mountains
Stanley Stewart in Condé Nast and loughs, and past signposts
Traveller. Oscar Wilde, whose with “musical names:
father had a summer house by Ardnagreevagh, Shanafaraghaun,
Lough Corrib, spoke of its “savage Claddaghduff”. They lead to “all
beauty”. His contemporary Oliver the best places – ruined towers,
St John Gogarty called it “half roofless abbeys, tiny pubs that
of heaven”. And the early 20th double as grocers – and to the
century revolutionary Patrick smell of peat fires and the sea”.
Pearse – who was executed for his “Half of heaven”: Connemara is “a country unto itself” On my most recent trip,
part in the Easter Rising – was one I wandered the walled garden
of a circle of Irish patriots who believed “the soul of Ireland, at Kylemore Abbey, and listened at a pub in Letterfrack to a band
the essence of the country” lay in Connemara, which contains that played “adrenaline-fuelled reels” and traditional airs of heart-
Ireland’s largest Gaeltacht, or Irish-speaking area. melting sweetness and melancholy. On the island of Inishbofin,
Several of the region’s best hotels – Currarevagh, Delphi I cycled remote bog roads to a long sandy beach “that would
Lodge, Ballynahinch – were once grand houses; there is also the have Brazilians salivating”, and in Rosroe I stood at night alone
“splendidly Victorian” Lough Inagh Lodge (great for fly fishing) on the quay, where Wittgenstein, visiting in the late 1940s, found
and The Quay House, a former harbour master’s house in Clifden. what he considered to be ideal conditions for thinking. It was,
You might stay at any or all of them, and explore by car, he wrote, “the last pool of darkness in Europe”.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of…

Cap Karoso Indonesia
A raft of new resorts have opened
on the wild Indonesian island of
Sumba in recent years. Among the
freshest and most ambitious is Cap
Karoso, a peaceful “sanctuary”
at the island’s remote western tip,
says Maria Shollenbarger in the
Financial Times. Created by a
Parisian couple, Evguenia and
Fabrice Ivara, it sits beside a long,
sandy beach, and has a spa, two
restaurants, and its own three-
hectare organic farm. The design is
“sleek”, both in the main building,
where there are 47 rooms, and in
the villas – “single-storey havens”
made of timber, glass and stone,
with handmade furniture, infinity
pools, terraces and outdoor
kitchens with barbecue decks.
Doubles from £245;
capkaroso.com.
A historic beach town in Florida
Founded by the conquistador Tristán de
Luna in 1559, Pensacola is the oldest
European settlement in the US. It is also
a near-perfect seaside town, says Jonathan
Thompson in The Times, with vast white-
sand beaches, “calm turquoise waters” and
“handsome” old streets. For “an excellent
twin-destination trip”, you might fly in to
New Orleans, which lies an easy, scenic
three-hour drive away (much closer than
Miami), and spend a few days there before
moving on to Pensacola. This will doubtless
remind you of the bigger city – it has the
same “raised Creole houses, pocket-sized
courtyards and grand cast-iron balconies”,
together with some “stellar” restaurants and
“intriguing” galleries and museums. But it is
also a “water-sports heaven”, with more than
100 wrecks for divers to explore off its coast,
and it hosts “a bevy of annual festivals”,
including April’s Interstate Mullet Toss – a
fish-throwing competition and beach party.
Walking in southern Andalusia
The poet Rilke called the Spanish town of
Ronda – known for its spectacular setting
on a deep gorge – “the city of dreams”.
These days, it is deluged with “day-trippers
from the Costa del Sol”, said James Stewart
in The Sunday Times. But on one of Pura
Aventura’s Andalusian walking trips, you
can visit briefly and then get out into the
surrounding countryside, where there are
far fewer visitors. It’s a region of strange
beauty, scarcely changed by the centuries, its
“muscular” mountains shining with “fierce
bronze light”, its air heavy with the scent
of wild herbs. Among the highlights of the
operator’s eight-day itineraries are beautiful
white villages such as Montejaque and
Grazalema, small hotels with gardens “like
a Moorish dream of paradise”, and visits
to boutique wineries specialising in grape
varieties “long lost elsewhere”, including
corchera, blasco and la melonera.
A delightful small city in Romania
Located in the far west of Romania – closer
to Budapest and Belgrade than to Bucharest
– Timisoara is one of Eastern Europe’s
loveliest small cities, but still “relatively
undiscovered” by foreign tourists, says Andy
Trincia in The New York Times. Best known
for its role in the revolution of 1989, it is rich
in colourful baroque and Viennese secession
(art nouveau) buildings, all dating from the
long period of Austro-Hungarian rule. It’s
a delightful place to while away a long
weekend, with some good restaurants (try
Miorita and Vinto for traditional Romanian
fare), several “verdant” parks along a willow-
lined canal, and a few interesting museums
(go soon for the major exhibition of the
sculptor Brâncusi’s work, which is at the
National Museum of Art until 28 January).

Last-minute offers from top travel companies

Last-minute Tenerife break
Jet off for a 7-night stay at the
five-star Hard Rock Hotel, a
vibrant beachfront resort with
three pools. From £1,229pp
b&b (incl. flights). 020-7084
6500, trailfinders.com. Selected
November departures.
Eight-day Tuscany tour
Experience the Italian region’s
picturesque charm, with
stops in Florence and Pisa.
From £1,049pp half-board
(incl. flights). 020-3966 5882,
traveldepartment.co.uk.
Depart 11 April. Code TW50.
Rhodes escape
Stay 7 nights at the Oceanis
Park Hotel, set next to the
beach and a short drive from
Rhodes Town. From £622pp
all-inclusive (incl. flights). 020-
3451 2688, firstchoice.co.uk.
Depart 4 May.
Four nights in Marrakech
The four-star traditional style
Diwane Hotel is located in
the French Guéliz district
of the city. From £178pp
b&b (incl. flights). 020-4586
2408, planmytour.co.uk.
Depart 3 February.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

42 Obituaries
Finnish diplomat who won the Nobel Peace Prize
One night in June 2000, the
Martti
former Finnish president
Ahtisaari
Martti Ahtisaari met Cyril
1937-2023
Ramaphosa (the former
secretary-general of the ANC, and future South
African president) and flew with him to Dublin.
From there, this “unlikely duo” were taken to
an IRA safe house in the city’s suburbs, said
The Times. Early the next morning, first in
a car, and then in the back of a windowless
van, they were driven through the countryside
to a remote farmhouse with drawn curtains.
When darkness fell, their hosts led them to an
abandoned barn, where rubbish was cleared
away to reveal a trapdoor. Only Ramaphosa
was slim enough to descend the ladder. There,
he found a workshop full of tubes and other
parts used to make weapons, which he lashed
together and sealed with plastic. In his memoir,
Ahtisaari recalled that the pair were then
guided across fields to another building, where, Ahtisaari: honorary citizen of Namibia
in what resembled a potato cellar, they were
shown a cache of guns, which they also bound with plastic.
“When the weapons had been bundled up and we climbed out of
the dark cellar, I said to Cyril: ‘There must be a better way to earn Miloševic, to accept Nato’s plan to stop the hostilities in Kosovo
one’s living.’ The tension ebbed and everyone burst out laughing.”
The pair went on three of these nocturnal adventures. Carefully
negotiated, they were an agreed means of providing independent
verification that the IRA was abiding by its commitment to put
some of its weapons beyond use. Ramaphosa and Ahtisaari
reported that they were confident in this regard, and though it
would be another five years before the IRA formally ended its
armed campaign, their report was hailed by The Irish Times as
the most significant breakthrough in the peace process since the
signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. For Ahtisaari,
who has died aged 86, it was another entry on the long list of
Pioneering magician who “froze” Piccadilly Circus
David Before Uri Geller, and long
Berglas before Derren Brown and
1926-2023 David Blaine, there was David
Berglas – a refugee from Nazi
Germany who became one of the first magicians
on British television. A master of prestidigitation,
auto suggestion and misdirection, he amazed
audiences with his card tricks and ability to make
objects levitate, said The Daily Telegraph, but also
pulled off a series of extravagant televised stunts.
He drove around central London blindfolded,
and once made all the activity – cars, pedestrians,
even a dog – on Piccadilly Circus freeze at his
command. Having apparently suspended time, he
then gave the order “Carry on, London”, which
brought the scene back to life. The feat had been Berglas: performed for Churchill Berglas. He performed for Winston Churchill,
meticulously organised. He’d hired a dog that
had been trained to freeze on the spot, recruited a trick cyclist to
do likewise, briefed friends to arrive (on foot and in cars) at the
same time, asked street vendors to play along, and even persuaded His most famous trick was the Berglas Effect. One audience
an ad company to turn off one of Piccadilly’s famous neon signs
at the appointed moment. TV producers were then urged to focus
their cameras on the key areas – and hope for the best.
David Berglas was born in 1926, the son of a Jewish textile
manufacturer, and brought up in Berlin. In 1936, he sat less than
50 metres away from Adolf Hitler at the Berlin Olympics. Two
years later, the family fled. He spent four years at a boarding
school in Surrey, then towards the end of the War he lied about
THE WEEK 18 November 2023
diplomatic accomplishments that would win
him the 2008 Nobel Peace Prize.
He was born in 1937 into a military family in
Karelia, in eastern Finland. When the Soviets
invaded in 1939, the family was forced to
flee; the area was later ceded to the USSR, and
they never went back. “Along with 400,000
Karelians I became an eternally displaced
person in the rest of Finland,” he recalled. After
leaving school, he worked in development in
Pakistan before joining the foreign ministry.
He was made ambassador to Tanzania in
1973, and later served as UN commissioner
to Namibia, which was then under the
control of Apartheid South Africa. In the
following years, he played a crucial role in
its UN-supervised transition to independence;
he and his wife were made honorary citizens
of the newly independent nation.
Elected his country’s president in 1994,
Ahtisaari oversaw the referendum that took it into the EU. As an
EU mediator, he helped persuade Serbia’s then-president, Slobodan
in 1999; later, he developed a plan that provided the basis for
Kosovo’s declaration of independence, said The Daily Telegraph.
After leaving office in 2000, he founded the Helsinki-based
Crisis Management Initiative, which was approached by the Blair
government to help overcome the impasse in Northern Ireland
over decommissioning. In 2005, he mediated a treaty that granted
the Aceh province “special autonomy” within Indonesia, and so
ended 30 years of fighting there. As a negotiator, he was tough,
said The Guardian. Sofyan Djalil, an Indonesian minister, recalled
that he was even openly angry at times. This “seemed strange
to us at first. But his directness made an impression. He always
said, ‘Don’t waste time if you are not in earnest.’”
his age in an effort to get into the RAF. That
failed, but after the War he was recruited by the
US army to do intelligence work in Germany.
Berglas returned to Britain in 1947, and got
hooked on magic after going to see a professional
magician perform on stage. He started practising
tricks obsessively, and also studied psychology
and hypnosis. In the early 1950s he developed
a variety act, which led to him being given
a slot on BBC radio, on which he conducted
“nationwide psychological experiments” in which
he predicted listeners’ behaviour. Billing himself
as “the international man of mystery”, he started
presenting his own TV show in 1954, Meet David
opened for the Rolling Stones, and served as
president of the Magic Circle from 1989 to 1998.
member would be asked to name a card, another to give a
number. A third would then count the cards until they reached
that number – which would be the named card. Versions of this
trick (Any Card At Any Number; or ACAAN) have been around
for centuries, but only Berglas did it without touching the cards.
Even other magicians found it spine-tingling. It was a real trick
(no stooges involved) but so complex, involving improvisation as
well as a formidable memory and various different techniques, he
reckoned it would take a skilled magician two years to learn it.
 CITY 45
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
M&S: back in fashion
Four years after it fell out of the FTSE 100
in disgrace, Marks & Spencer has turned
around its fortunes so conclusively that
it is now “the UK’s best retailer for
womenswear”, said Ellie Violet Bramley in Seven days in the
The Guardian – and a fashion-forward one,
to boot. The once-frumpy chain has found
Square Mile
a sweet spot appealing “to women with Inflation in both the US and the UK
one eye on Vogue and the other on value”. fell more sharply than expected in
Analysts praise the input of former Topshop October, to 3.2% and 4.6% respectively,
fashion director Maddy Evans and the boost fuelling optimism on the stock markets.
from third-party brand partnerships, such Wall Street’s S&P 500 enjoyed its
as Nobody’s Child. Recruiting the actress biggest one-day jump since April,
Sienna Miller (pictured) as the face of the autumn campaign conferred extra cachet. Still, rising by 1.9%. The International
Energy Agency added to disinflationary
the real force driving M&S’s 56% rise in pre-tax profits over the first half was “bumper momentum by predicting that the oil
food sales”, said Oliver Ralph and Euan Healy in the FT. Excited investors sent shares market would return to surplus in early
flying about 10%. But M&S “shouldn’t get too cosy” in the current economic climate, 2024, even if Saudi Arabia extends the
said Andrea Felsted on Bloomberg. Maintaining performance, as CEO Stuart Machin production cuts that have tightened
cautioned, will be “altogether tougher” as the effect of “the highest interest rates in 20 supplies this year. But it cautioned that
years” kicks in. Paying a dividend for the first time in four years is “another tick in the prices could remain volatile, depending
box for a sustainable turnaround”. Yet there’s no room for complacency. M&S has still on current global conflicts.
to prove that “its nascent recovery isn’t as flimsy as its sequin-embellished party wear”. China’s president, Xi Jinping, arrived in
San Francisco for talks with President
Diageo: a taste of the hard stuff Biden, amid deepening cracks in the
Investors in the world’s biggest spirit-maker have every reason to feel dispirited, said Paul Chinese economy – predicted to spur the
country’s attempts to stabilise economic,
Summers on The Motley Fool. Diageo shares suffered their “steepest fall in 25 years”
trade and investment relations with
last week, on evidence of “significant belt-tightening by drinkers” in the key markets the US. There was speculation that the
of Latin America and the Caribbean. There, an expected 2% sales rise over the first half leaders may announce a working group
has morphed into a decline of more than 20% – with sales of premium whiskies, such to discuss artificial intelligence.
as Johnnie Walker, particularly affected. Patient investors of a “glass half-full” persuasion Jeremy Hunt signalled that business
could see this as a “fantastic” buying opportunity. But Diageo’s new CEO, Debra Crew taxes are set to fall in next week’s
(who took over on the death of Sir Ivan Menezes in June), “might well need a stiff Autumn Statement. Apple’s €14.3bn
drink”, said Lex in the FT. News of the sudden jolt, for which Diageo could supply no tax dispute with the EU, over back taxes
hard explanation, ensured the share price “sank quicker than a cocktail cherry” – falling owed to Ireland, was reignited amid
by 15%. It was hardly the ideal prelude to her debut strategy meeting with investors calls for an earlier ruling to be shelved.
this week. The bottom line, said Patrick Hosking in The Times, is that “surprises are Royal Mail was fined £5.6m by regulator
getting punished” across the board. “Money is tight for the first time in 15 years,” Ofcom for failing to meet its target of
delivering 93% of first-class letters
and “managements with even modest disappointments to confess” should “beware”.
on time; its actual performance was
73.7%. Shell sued Greenpeace for $2.1m
Flutter Entertainment: transatlantic drift following a protest on one of its oil
Flutter Entertainment – the Irish gaming group formerly known as Paddy Power Betfair vessels. Four years after his Virgin Trains
– has finalised plans to list in New York in 2024, said Dominic Chopping on Barron’s. ended operations in Britain, Sir Richard
The betting giant will cancel its Dublin listing as a result; it is also listed on the FTSE 100 Branson was reported to be preparing to
in London. You can understand the reasoning, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. “After break Eurostar’s monopoly on Channel
years spent cleaning up on the 2:30 at Plumpton”, Flutter has bet big “on the razzmatazz Tunnel rail services with a new venture.
of American sports”, and dire results elsewhere show the wisdom of the move. Almost
£2.5bn was wiped off its value after it warned that profits in its non-US operations
this year would come in “at the very bottom” of previous guidance. Flutter’s hint that
London shouldn’t count on retaining the more important primary listing is bound to feel Ding dong!
“morale-sapping” in the City, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian – further evidence of the Avon, the 137-year-old travelling
“transatlantic drift”. Stamp duty on share purchases (0.5% in London, zero in the US) is cosmetics company famous for its
certainly a factor. “Yet the duty generates minimal lobbying attention versus complicated slogan “Ding dong! Avon calling!”,
may be coming permanently to a
proposals around freeing up pension capital.” City champions, take note. “Persuading
neighbourhood near you, said The
HM Treasury to give up any receipts is a tough gig, but you’ve got to try.” Guardian. The company, owned since
2019 by the Brazilian beauty group
Lloyd’s of London/Freshfields: slavery reckoning Natura, is opening its first UK stores, in
An estimated 3.2 million enslaved African people were transported by Britain’s shipping partnership with Superdrug. “We are on
industry before the slave trade in the British empire was abolished in 1807. More than the cusp of new frontiers,” said Avon
two centuries on, said Adam Mawardi in The Daily Telegraph, Lloyd’s of London – the CEO Angela Cretu. It is the last standard-
world’s largest and oldest insurance market – has acknowledged its “significant role” in bearer for Natura, which is divesting
the trade, and will invest £52m in “racial equality initiatives” in recognition. Archival famous brands at a rate of knots, said
the Daily Mail. Having sold Aesop to
documents, unearthed by researchers from Johns Hopkins University, reveal that Lloyd’s
L’Oréal for around £2bn, it has now
brokers “used their expertise and influence to develop and defend slavery systems”, and offloaded The Body Shop to private
that several senior figures were slavers themselves. Lloyd’s “reckoning” has put pressure equity group Aurelius for a knockdown
on other vintage City firms to confront their own pasts. The “magic circle” law firm £207m. Call it a new beauty regime.
Freshfields (established in 1743) has launched an inquiry. More should follow.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

46 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: Sunak’s inflation win
The headline figure may be tamed, but there’s still the problem of a stagnant economy
When Rishi Sunak announced in January Harriett Baldwin, the Tory Chair of the
that he wanted to see inflation – then Commons Treasury Committee, reckons
running at an average quarterly rate that, despite the economy’s travails, it
of 10.7% – “halve” by the end of the will be a “feel-good” statement. That
year, plenty of people “were inclined would ignore the bigger picture, said
to smirk”, said Simon English in the Phillip Inman in The Observer. “Slower
Evening Standard. Given that the main price growth, due partly to tighter
drivers of inflation lay in global factors Treasury purse strings, won’t lift the
beyond his control, the pledge seemed gloom of a flatlining economy”, which
like a hostage to fortune. Well, fair play has expanded by just 0.6% over the past
to the PM, a man “who seems not overly year, with little hope of imminent change.
blessed with good luck”, for pulling it The Bank of England has signalled that
off. This week’s figures showed a sharp interest rates will remain at their 15-year
fall in headline inflation to 4.6% in high of 5.25% for much of next year. In
October (a big drop from September’s the meantime, “the long-term outlook
6.7%), all but ensuring that he’ll keep for UK plc will be increasingly dismal”.
his promise. The fall is largely down The PM: declaring victory
to the end of the “energy crunch” and 14 Is inflation really licked? One thing
consecutive interest rate rises – but it’d be “churlish not to give the muddying the waters, said Kate Andrews in The Spectator, is
PM a tip of the hat”. On this score, at least, he can declare victory. this week’s wages update, which showed that annual growth
in regular pay rose by 7.7% between July and September – the
Tory officials view the announcement that Sunak has met the first “fastest in two years”. The worry is that a “wage-price spiral”
of his “five priorities” as a “pivotal moment”, said George Parker could lead to “a secondary wave of price hikes”. There are plenty
in the FT: the juncture at which they can “start mapping out a of reasons to be sceptical: “the underlying causes of inflation” are
more optimistic economic picture” ahead of next year’s expected more closely linked to monetary decisions and “influxes in money
general election. “Better news on inflation is expected to be supply”; and wages have only been rising in real terms for a few
mirrored by a better than expected fiscal situation” when the months. But it matters because BoE policymakers “are inclined
Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, delivers his Autumn Statement next to lean into” the wage/spiral theory. Markets may think that
week – giving him “some modest scope for targeted tax cuts”. we’ve reached the peak of rate hikes; but it isn’t a done deal yet.

Making money: what the experts think Isa overhaul

O Housing snapshot
No one seems able to
agree on what house
prices are doing. Hot
on the heels of last
week’s news, from
the Halifax building
society – that average
prices defied pressure
from higher interest
rates in October to rise
by 1.1% – comes a Picasso’s Femme à la montre
more downbeat survey
from Rightmove, said Ed Magnus on This
is Money. The property website reports
that, so far in November, average new
seller asking prices have fallen by around
£6,088 to £362,143 – reflecting a 1.7%
monthly drop and a 3% fall from May’s
peak. It’s also taking longer to sell: an
average of 62 days, compared with 40 this
time last year. According to Rightmove’s
director of property science innovation,
Timothy Bannister, asking prices usually
drop at this time of year as “serious sellers” based insurer Sompo Holdings paid a
price more competitively to attract buyers
before Christmas. But this “November
drop” is the largest in five years.
O Hot spots
Although there’s a consensus that prices
have been falling for much of this year,
“there is lots of debate about the extent
of the slump”, said Marc Shoffman on
MoneyWeek. Estate agent Savills predicts
a 4% drop in 2023; its “more pessimistic”
rival, Knight Frank,
expects a 7% fall.
And most forecasters
reckon that the rout
will continue well into
next year, before prices
recover in 2025 “as
mortgage affordability
improves”. Still, there
are some hot spots
continuing to defy
gravity, said Helen
Cahill in The Times.
Leading the list is “sparsely populated”
Powys in Wales, where average prices have
jumped by a remarkable 17.4% in the past
12 months, according to Halifax. Other
areas resisting the slowdown are East
Lindsey in the East Midlands (up 13.3%)
and Moray in Scotland (up 10.7%).
O Peak Picasso
Shortly before the Black Monday stock
market crash in October 1987, the Tokyo-
record £33m for Vincent van Gogh’s
Sunflowers, said Alex Brummer in the
Daily Mail. At the time, the sale was seen
as “the peak of Japanese exuberance
before the country’s lost decade”. Last
week, Picasso’s 1932 painting, Femme à la
montre – depicting his lover and muse
Marie-Thérèse Walter – sold at Sotheby’s
New York for £114m, making it “the most
valuable piece sold at auction in 2023”.
Could it be “time to erect the safety nets”?
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt has signalled
his intention to overhaul tax-free
savings and investment accounts in the
Autumn Statement, said Claer Barrett in
the Financial Times. Here are five ways
“he could put more fuel in the tank”:
O Raise the £20,000 annual Isa limit. A
request that is unlikely to be answered,
but for many people it would solve
“a looming savings tax problem”.
O Killoff the Lifetime Isa. Martin Lewis,
of the Money Saving Expert consumer
advice site, has branded the Lifetime Isa
a “dead duck” – unless the Chancellor
fixes the “property price cap penalty”
and removes “complicated rules”
that mean “none of the major banks”
currently offer the “Lisa” to customers.
O Bring back the Help to Buy Isa. The
need to help first-time buyers is “a
huge election issue”, and “I would be
flabbergasted if there is nothing in the
Autumn Statement to address this”.
O Let people pay into more than one
Isa. You can pay into more than one
pension in a given tax year – so why
not extend that to Isas?
O Resolve the fractional shares
situation. Fractionals enable investors
to buy stakes in expensive US stocks,
such as Apple, Amazon and Tesla
from just £1 – rather than saving up
hundreds of pounds to purchase
a single share. These should be
allowed to be held in an Isa.

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

 Commentators CITY 49
Help is in sight for the many “homeowners” who do not own the
freeholds of their properties, says Merryn Somerset Webb. A bill City profiles
Homeowners in the King’s Speech, making it easier and cheaper to buy them
– or, if that’s not possible, increasing the standard lease extension
Alison Rose
The former NatWest boss
who don’t own from 90 to 990 years – should correct abuses such as fee and
ground-rent “gouging”, and prevent properties from becoming
is counting the financial, as
well as reputational, cost of
their homes “wasting assets” as the years pass. The irony is that just as
leaseholders are finally being awarded “a few crumbs of the
being kicked out of her plum
job following the Nigel
Merryn Somerset Webb rights of real ownership”, so too are those who are not themselves Farage/Coutts “debanking”
owners at all – tenants. A proposed rental reform bill aims to ban debacle, said The Times. She
Bloomberg no-fault evictions and limit fixed-term tenancies: a system already has just “forfeited” £7.6m
prevailing in Scotland, which has also capped rent rises at 3% from a package that could
have topped £10m because,
a year, while forcing homeowners to buy “expensive licences” to although no findings of
“let out rooms… or, even more ridiculously, house swap”. Clearly, “misconduct” were made,
there is always a tension between absolute ownership and social she didn’t qualify for “good
obligations to tenants. But Scottish landlords are reacting to this leaver” status. The taxpayer-
“loss of property sovereignty” by using one of the last rights of backed bank is now “trying
ownership they still have – and selling up. to draw a line” under the
scandal. Good luck with
“Big price increases can pop up in the most unexpected of places,” that. Farage has instructed
says Patrick Hosking. Take the average cost of an ordinary tooth lawyers to take action for
“breach of confidence” and
A gnashing filling – up by 27% in less than a year to £124. True, the NHS
price is fixed at a more modest £70.70, but that’s no comfort to
“lying” – and hopes to make
it “a class action”. NatWest
of teeth in the the millions of Britons “who have resorted to private treatment
in the face of a desperate shortfall in NHS capacity, or just gone
confirmed, however, that
Rose would continue to
waiting-room without treatment”. This rampant inflation coincides with
a big shift in the profession, as locally owned and managed
receive her salary, share
allowance and pension
Patrick Hosking dental practices increasingly give way to “corporatisation”: the during her 12-month notice
largest UK provider, Integrated Dental Holdings, now owns 650 period, amounting to £1.75m.
The Times practices and consolidation continues apace. In theory, increased
scale should send prices lower. That it isn’t happening is cause Bim Afolami
for concern. This feels like a marketplace – similar to funerals
or care homes – where competition isn’t working, and where
“irresponsible players” may be tempted to exploit customers’
reluctance to swap providers. It’s surely time the competition
authorities subjected this opaque but essential industry to a full
examination. “The nation’s neglected gnashers deserve no less.”

Electric-vehicle startups hit a red light on the US stock market

last week, as Rivian and Lucid reported mixed quarterly results,
The fruitless while Fisker delayed its earnings, says Stephen Wilmot. Investors
sent shares of all three tumbling. The big surprise was that Rivian
search for – “the biggest and best-funded of the new brands looking to take
on Tesla” – was lumped in with the others, particularly after it
the next Tesla upgraded its production outlook. It probably boils down to hard
cash concerns. Given that Rivian is still making gross losses of Spare a thought for the
Stephen Wilmot $30,648 per vehicle, investors are understandably focusing on former City minister Andrew
the “long road to profitability”. To some extent, the carmaker Griffith, who was forced “to
The Wall Street Journal is being held back by the segment it focuses on: “heavy, boxy grin and bear it” at the Lord
pickup trucks are harder to electrify profitably than aerodynamic Mayor’s Banquet on Monday
evening, when news of
sedans”, as even Tesla has found with its Cybertruck. But that’s his move to the Business
little solace for investors who piled in “in the hope of getting Department landed “halfway
an early ride on the next Tesla”. The bottom line is that there’s through the confit duck”,
still no such thing. For years, the pioneer “had the US market said Andy Silvester in City
more or less to itself”. It’s still leaving rivals in the dust. AM. The City can take heart,
though, that his Eton- and
Change is afoot in the world of dating apps, says The Economist. Oxford-educated successor,
Bumble’s founder, Whitney Wolfe Herd, is stepping down as CEO, Bim Afolami, 37, is even
more zealous about “smart”
When should confessing to “her lack of enthusiasm for the drudgery of running
a public company”. Although Bumble has lost some 82% of its
regulation. As a “former
Freshfield and HSBC man”,
a founder value since listing in 2021, her replacement, Slack boss Lidiane
Jones, got the cold shoulder on Wall Street; investors have long
he certainly knows his
way around. Last year, he
step down? favoured founder-led companies. The venture capitalist Ben
Horowitz thinks it’s because “founder-bosses can spot shifts
founded the “Regulatory
Reform Group” to push for
Editorial in technology better than imported ones” and tend to take a post-Brexit freedoms. Back
longer-term view. “Yet there are signs that the so-called ‘founder in May, said the FT, Afolami
The Economist premium’ may be waning in a world where capital is no longer was a prominent critic of
cheap and investors prefer jam today to jam tomorrow.” Even the competition watchdog’s
decision to block the
those still in place, such as Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, have had giant Microsoft/Activision
to temper lofty ambitions and reinvent themselves as “fastidious merger – challenging it
stewards of capital”. Wolfe Herd plans to stay on at Bumble to consider Britain’s
and “carve out a role” more to her liking. But she may find “international reputation”.
herself at odds with the “pragmatic priorities” of the new boss.

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 51

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
Dotdigital Group JP Morgan Emerging PPHE Hotel Group Rentokil Initial
The Mail on Sunday Markets Investment Trust The Sunday Times
650
Dotdigital provides tech The Daily Telegraph The Park Plaza and art’otel
services to help clients – Majoring on IT, financials and owner’s shares are down 19%
from Volkswagen to the NHS consumer staples in India and in a year. But it has invested in 600

– understand their customers China, this trust has been new properties and spruced up
and improve comms. R&D shunned due to economic older ones, and revenues and 550

investment is paying off, with and geopolitical worries. That occupancy are rising. Assets 3 directors
strong growth in sales, profits overlooks its excellent record, are undervalued. A “two-year 500 buy 91,504
and divis expected. Buy. 88p. large discount and “growth play”. Buy. £10.40.
potential”. Buy. 101.2p. 450
Greencoat UK Wind Target Healthcare Reit
The Times Marks & Spencer Group The Mail on Sunday
Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov
This investment trust has The Times Target develops energy-

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

interests in 40 onshore and
offshore UK wind farms. Its
valuation has sunk as interest
rates have soared, but it offers
a well-covered 7% yield and
has embarked on a buyback
programme. Buy. 142.2p.
Better food sales have propelled
first-half profits to £360m –
ahead of expectations. Cost
cutting has helped, cash
generation is stronger and debt
is down. Clothing and home
sales improving. Buy. 244.1p.
The pest control giant’s shares
efficient, high-quality care are down 30% in six months
homes, with good amenities – spooked by softer US
– and rents them to thoroughly demand following the
vetted operators. Aiming to acquisition of Terminix. Yet Q3
double the portfolio size results have prompted bosses
to hoover up shares worth
to 200 and grow divis. £400,000. “Bed bug fever”
Yields 7%. Buy. 78p. could provide a further spring.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

AG Barr ITV Shell Shares tipped 12 weeks ago

The Daily Telegraph
The Irn Bru maker’s profits
have stagnated under sugar
regulation, the pandemic,
CO2 shortages and input cost
inflation. Still, newer brands
– such as Moma and the fruit
drink Rio – offer potential.
Yields 3%. Hold. 509p.
The Times The Daily Telegraph Best tip
An expected 10% decline The oil giant is a leading Just Group
in ad revenues has hit the provider of “energy security”, The Mail on Sunday
broadcaster, which has also amid war in Ukraine and the up 3.13% to 85.6p
cut the revenue growth outlook Middle East. With capex on
for its studio business. Moving a tight rein, cashflow is strong. Worst tip
CVS Group
some dramas to next year may Returns beat the bank rate,
The Times
save costs, but profit forecasts inflation and gilt yields. down 21.96% to £16.03
have been cut. Avoid. 61.48p. Hold. £26.45.

Auto Trader Metro Bank Holdings Smiths News

The Times
A recovery in used car volumes
is good for Auto Trader, which
provides a digital marketplace
for motor dealers. As well as
selling advertising space, it
offers financing bundles for
buyers. First-half profits
rose 10%. Hold. 689.2p.
The Times
The beleaguered lender,
whose USP was a strong
high-street presence and good
customer service, has been
rescued by a £325m capital
raise and refinancing. It
may not prove a long-term
solution. Avoid. 43p.
Investors’ Chronicle Market view
The newspaper and magazine “For much of the past 15
distributor may face structural years ... we had the perfect
decline, but it has cut £5.8m in cocktail for equities. This is
different, and I think it’s going
costs, slashed debt and locked
to be different for some time.”
in revenues till 2029. Boosted David Donabedian, of CIBC,
by the 2022 World Cup and on the end of the easy money
the coronation, it currently era. Quoted in the FT
yields 8.5%. Hold. 49p.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for
for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
14 Nov 2023 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,800
FTSE 100 7440.47 7410.04 0.41% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 4056.79 4017.63 0.97% DCC 5248.00 +14.36 7,700
Dow Jones 34833.74 34163.65 1.96% Marks & Spencer Gp. 253.50 +12.57
Auto Trader Group 705.00 +12.19
NASDAQ 14050.78 13642.30 2.99%
Rightmove 506.60 +8.85
Nikkei 225 32695.93 32271.82 1.31% 7,600
Hang Seng 17396.86 17670.16 −1.55% Unite Group 1003.00 +8.73
Gold 1931.15 1984.60 −2.69%
Brent Crude Oil 83.35 82.25 1.34% FALLS 7,500
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.95% 3.99% Diageo 2898.50 –9.08
UK 10-year gilts yield 4.32 4.44 Vodafone Group 73.11 –6.47
US 10-year Treasuries 4.45 4.59 Entain 880.80 –6.40 7,400

UK ECONOMIC DATA Flutter Entertainment 12775.00 –5.72

Latest CPI (yoy) 4.6% (Oct) 6.7% (Sep) BT Group 119.55 –3.63
7,300
Latest RPI (yoy) 6.1% (Oct) 8.9% (Sep)
Halifax house price (yoy) –3.2% (Oct) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
−4.7% (Sep) OSB Group 388.80 +15.60 Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov

£1 STERLING: $1.247 s1.147 ¥187.854 Bitcoin $36,281.30 FDM Group 395.50 –15.60 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
Source: Refinitiv/FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 14 Nov (pm)

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

52 The last word

Growing up in the shadow

of Aung San Suu Kyi
In 1989, Aung San Suu Kyi became the world’s most famous political prisoner. For her youngest son, Kim Aris, it was
the start of a lifetime of separations. He talks to Richard Lloyd Parry about his extraordinary mother

Half a lifetime has passed It was her mother’s illness

since Kim Aris’s existence that took Suu Kyi back to
turned on a pivot, but at the Rangoon (now called
moment it happened he had Yangon), but her ascent to
little idea of what was going leadership was driven by her
on. He was ten years old at long-dead father, Burma’s
the time, living with his family independence leader and
in a house in Oxford. His national hero, Aung San.
father was an academic at She was two when he was
the university, a brilliant and assassinated by a political
dreamy man who specialised rival, a tragedy that plunged
in the languages and culture the country into decades of
of the Himalayas. His mother, chaos and dysfunction. Suu
known to her British friends Kyi escaped the worst of it,
as Suu, was a housewife, who going to school in India,
shopped, cooked and took graduating from Oxford, and
care of her husband and settling down there as Aris’s
two sons. One evening wife. But she was burdened
in 1988, she received a by a sense of unfulfilled duty.
phone call from the place “I only ask one thing,” she
of her birth, the country wrote to Aris during their
then known as Burma. courtship, “that should my
people need me, you would
Her elderly mother had help me to do my duty by
suffered a stroke and was them… Sometimes I am beset
gravely ill in the capital, by fears that circumstances
Rangoon. The following day, Kim Aris pictured with his mother in 1995 in Yangon
and national considerations
Suu was at the airport flying might tear us apart.”
out to nurse her. “I had a premonition that our lives would change
for ever,” her husband, Michael Aris, said later, but her younger None of this was discernible to her sons. “I consider my
son had no such forebodings. “I can’t remember very much about upbringing to have been fairly normal,” says Kim. “My mum
it, to be honest,” says Kim. “I was just a child, and life flows over was at home, doing the cooking, taking us to school.” There
you at that age, doesn’t it?” were occasional visits to Burma;
the summer after her abrupt
By chance, his grandmother’s “I consider my upbringing to have been departure, the boys flew out to
final illness came at a time of fairly normal. My mum was at home, doing join their mother in the big old
unprecedented tumult in Burma, family house on University
now known as Myanmar, the cooking, taking us to school” Avenue, Yangon. Inside, their
where student activists were grandmother lay in her final
demonstrating against the military junta that had oppressed the illness. Outside, young Kim played in the jungly garden.
country for 26 years. In between her nursing duties, Kim’s mother “I remember I horrified my mother by collecting cockroaches in a
became involved in the movement against the dictatorship, at first matchbox and dragging them around in front of her houseguests,”
cautiously and reluctantly, then with increasing confidence and he says. The visitors were the founders of the nascent National
passion. In less than a year, Suu, the north Oxford housewife, had League for Democracy (NLD), who were pleading with Suu
become famous across the world as Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader Kyi to lend her family name and authority to the anti-junta
of a peaceful movement aimed at toppling a cruel and murderous movement. The situation was becoming grimmer by the week:
regime. Within 18 months she was a political prisoner; within in August 1988, soldiers opened fire on protesters on the streets,
three years she had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. In killing thousands. Later that month, Suu Kyi relented to the
the decades since, Suu Kyi has lived through 15 years of house pressure and delivered an electrifying speech at the symbolic heart
arrest, five years as her country’s elected leader and now, following of Myanmar, the Shwedagon Pagoda. “It was extremely crowded
a coup in 2021, imprisonment once again. and hot,” Kim remembers. “I had to dress up for the occasion,
which I resisted, as I still do. But even I was able to grasp the
To many Burmese, she is Mother Suu, or simply “the Lady” – a horror of it all. Even though I didn’t realise quite how significant
serene, almost mystical figure of inspiration and self-sacrifice. To my mother’s position was, I realised she was in a unique position.”
plenty of people outside Myanmar, she is a heroine turned villain,
who abandoned her principles to turn a blind eye to the ethnic The following year, she was placed under house arrest in
cleansing of the Muslim Rohingya. For Kim Aris, she is “Mum”. University Avenue. In Oxford, Kim embarked on the divided
For 30 years, his life has been lived in the shadow of the woman existence that he has lived ever since. To all appearances it was
who left to catch a plane when he was a child, and never came a calm life of modest middle-class privilege – boarding school,
home – and of the fate of the country that he is now barred from holidays with his father and the extended Aris family. But all the
visiting. Until now he has almost never talked publicly about his time he was looking towards Yangon. “We couldn’t write too
life. “I probably learnt how to close off my emotions,” he says. much of significance, because we knew the letters would be pored

THE WEEK 18 November 2023

 The last word 53
over,” he says. “But we could send care with her. “When I was with her under house
packages – Lindt chocolate, Toblerone, cheese, arrest, strange as it may seem, it was actually
English delicacies.” Then one of the parcels quite a nice period for me,” he says. “Because
was opened up and its contents – including I had her all to myself.” In 2010, Suu Kyi was
lipstick and a Jane Fonda workout video – released by the latest junta leader, a reformist.
were photographed by the Burmese state Two years later, she was able to make a
media. The point was to discredit Suu Kyi short visit to Britain. She saw Kim and her
by showing how well she lived in comparison grandchildren, and addressed both Houses of
with the poor people she claimed to represent. Parliament. This was the peak of her prestige
After that, she refused all deliveries from and authority, and leaders and celebrities
outside, even letters from her sons. from all over the world – from Barack Obama
to Bono – hastened to be photographed
For a few years, Aris and the boys had been alongside the liberated heroine. In 2016,
allowed to come and go – the junta’s thinking she became national leader. Her ascension
was that they would persuade Suu Kyi to felt like the vindication of precious hopes
return home with them. When it became clear and principles. But within two years, her
that this wouldn’t work, it refused them visas, reputation was irreparably soiled.
in the hope that enforced isolation from the
world would have the desired effect. This In August 2017, the Myanmar security forces
was what set her incarceration apart from responded to small-scale attacks by militants
other prisoners of conscience such as Andrei to launch a murderous campaign against
Sakharov or Nelson Mandela. At any moment, Aris has become a full-time campaigner villages populated by an ethnic group known
with a word to her guards, Suu Kyi could have as the Rohingya, a stateless Muslim people
been on her way to the airport. But she knew that, once she had who had long faced discrimination and oppression by the
left Myanmar, she would never be allowed to return, and the Buddhist majority. A UN report would later describe the bestial
young men and women who had sacrificed so much blood would violence used against the defenceless villagers: women and girls
be leaderless. “She talked for a while about Alexander and Kim,” as young as 13 raped, some of them with sticks and knives. More
a Burmese friend recorded in her diary. “She had tears in her eyes, than 700,000 people were driven over the border into Bangladesh
she said nothing more… I could see that she was trying not to cry. where they live even now in the world’s largest refugee camp.
Then she said, I had better concentrate on my new sons.” Almost as shocking as the violence, for many people outside
Burma, was the attitude of Aung San Suu Kyi. Her failure to
From Kim Aris’s reluctance to speak to a journalist, I had denounce the ethnic cleansing aroused the horror of those
expected someone more obviously troubled and withdrawn. But around the world who had cheered her the most. To Kim in
in person he is a dry, droll and Britain, it was unexpected,
good-humoured man of 46, who confusing and deeply painful
puffs at roll-ups and laughs with “Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to denounce the but, as he talks about it today, he
a smoker’s wheeze. “Compared ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya aroused the is fiercely, even bitterly, defensive
with what the people of Burma
have had to go through, I’m
horror of those who had cheered her the most” of the decisions she made.
lucky,” he says. “Part of the “What was said and done [by
shutting down of emotions is that other people have been through her] at the time was completely misrepresented,” he says. “She
so much more – why should I get upset about my lot? Maybe was taking every action possible to rectify the situation without
it’s affected me in ways I can’t appreciate – being exposed to more bloodshed. She was condemning what the military were
everything that’s been happening in Burma, cutting myself off doing. It’s just that people weren’t interested in the way she was
emotionally.” He has never undergone therapy, and wonders if he saying it. She wanted rule of law. People are bored by things like
should. “I’m sure I’m totally screwed up,” he says, with that laugh. that. She wants justice to be done in an orderly manner.” He
“But no – if I wasn’t affected by things, then I’d be screwed up.” blames the media for her loss of reputation. “They’ll build idols
up and then tear them down even quicker,” he says. To have
His youth was far from smooth. He dropped out of his private spoken out on behalf of the Rohingya, it was said, would have
school, and walked away from a place at Durham University provoked the army into deposing Suu Kyi. But in the end, she
after a week. He settled back in Oxford, trained as a carpenter, threw away her moral credibility – and there was a coup anyway.
and lived for seven years with his girlfriend, Rachel, before they Today, the situation of the country is worse than ever. Every few
separated. He is reticent about the details; at one point, he tells weeks comes news of a new atrocity against civilians. The war
me that some of his memories have been lost in a haze of drinking looks unwinnable by either side, and the non-violence insisted
and drugs. The couple had two children – Jamie, now 24, and on by Suu Kyi is a quaint relic of the past.
Jasmine, 21. Neither was planned, but both were a delight to
their father, and saved him from his family’s greatest crisis. Suu Kyi is 78 and is serving a 27-year sentence for invented
crimes. “From what I know she’s being held in barracks within
In January 1999, after months of backache, Michael Aris was the [Naypyidaw] prison compound,” Kim says. “She’s not even
diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer. He applied for a visa allowed to mingle with the other prisoners.” Reports over the
to visit his wife; it was refused. Friends and supporters, including summer said that she was suffering from gum disease, which was
the then Prince of Wales, now King Charles, pleaded on his being inadequately treated. “I’m very worried,” says Kim. “If you
behalf, but in vain. In a nauseating display of hypocrisy, the can’t eat, then you won’t live much longer, will you? That’s almost
junta expressed sympathy – but in such a case, it explained, it was the hardest thing – just not knowing what’s happening.” He has
the duty of the wife to go to her sick husband. Kim was with his now given up his carpentry to become a full-time campaigner.
© GRAEME ROBERTSON/GUARDIAN/EYEVINE

dying father during his last days. “It was one of the hardest points “I’ve never really felt like she left me,” he says. “She’s still alive.
in my life,” he says. “I remember having a phone call with my We still have a relationship at the end of the day. Like I said,
mother. She was desperately sad that she couldn’t be there... That’s I always thought myself lucky. I feel privileged to have had the
the only time I asked her to come back. I feel terrible for having upbringing I did – and happy I had the time with my mother
done so.” Michael Aris died in March 1999, on his 53rd birthday. that I did have. We had a wonderful time together as a family.”

After her arrest in 1989, Suu Kyi spent 15 of the next 21 years A longer version of this article appeared in The Times
under house arrest. In the better periods, Kim was able to stay © Times Media Limited 2023

18 November 2023 THE WEEK

 Crossword 55
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1389 This week’s winner will receive
Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first Week-branded items including a
correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 27 November. notebook, coffee mug and tote
Send it to The Week Crossword 1389, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email bag, as well as two Connell Guides
the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

ACROSS
1 Ideas that mean moving
put out (13)
8 One-time running rival of S Coe
beat it! (5)
9 Paper run from temporary
accommodation (9)
11 Ravel opera in unenclosed
space (4-3)
12 Place for cuttings in new Surrey
newsroom primarily (7)
13 Places to park behind country
abodes (5)
15 Rare red meat sandwiches
not available in M&S? (5,4)
18 Problem around waist area
not the most important? (4,5)
19 Some find missing son tried
hard (5)
21 Dire Straits? (7)
24 Cared about restricting trade
union in Illinois city (7)
26 Difficult issue for King
Edward? (3,6)
27 Prepared money (5)
28 William perhaps nasty and
different? I don’t believe it! (4,2,7)
DOWN
2 Bermudians (not British) working
as one with small charges? (9)
3 Mostly dull pop in US resort (5)
4 It’s supporting record
complaint (9)
5 Nothing coming up about
millions for promoter (5)
6 Mostly protect male, one
opposed to the regime? (9)
7 Scratch before boxing for
instance (5)
8 Rash notices (5)
10 Iconic sports car of European
origin? (1-4)
14 Tube that’s often jam
packed (5,4)
16 Dutch town house in Nepal
demolished (9)
17 One mug admits match is
a reversal (5-4)
18 Second TV series is a hit (5)
20 Type of bird not quite topless (5)
22 Article is about income tax and
property tax (5)
23 Express, say (5)
25 Trace out mark for the editor? (5)

Name
Address
Clue of the week: Two-time two times? (6-5 first letters DO) Tel no
Toughie by Elgar, The Daily Telegraph
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1387

Restore your
ACROSS: 1 Prostrates 6 ASAP 10 Refresher 11 Amass 12 Holed
13 Andalusia 14 Sisters 16 Megrim 19 Lottie 21 Speak up 23 Rotatable
25 Twill 27 Natal 28 Relief map 29 Espy 30 Borderline

news-life balance
DOWN: 1 Purchase 2 Offal 3 Trendiest 4 Ashrams 5 Earldom 7 Slapstick
8 Pascal 9 Mail 15 Short-stop 17 Great Bear 18 Apple-pie 20 Embargo
21 Shelled 22 Orange 24 Till 26 Iambi
Clue of the week: Do – but not does? (4,5)
Solution: STAG PARTY
The winner of 1387 is Sarah Dixon from Reading

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