The politics New York’s Is it time to

of shooting brooding make peace

a puppy man of letters with rats?
BEST AMERICAN OBITUARIES P36 LAST WORD P44
COLUMNISTS P15

THE WEEK
11 MAY 2024 | ISSUE 1487 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

Is victory in sight?
Labour’s election boost
Page 4

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

4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
A Tory drubbing
Rishi Sunak insisted that the result of the general
election was not a “foregone conclusion”, despite
his party’s worst set of local election results in
decades. The Tories lost 473 councillors across
England in last Thursday’s elections, securing
just 515 seats overall, compared with Labour’s
1,158 and the Lib Dems’ 552. In a by-election in
Blackpool South, held on the same day, Labour
won back the seat from the Tories with a 26-point
swing, the third-largest recorded post-war.
The results of the mayoral contests were also
grim for the Tories (see page 21). Their hopes
of an upset in London faded as Labour’s Sadiq
Khan easily won a third term, and Andy Street
lost by a narrow margin in the West Midlands. Starmer: on the road to power? progress, last week’s results were less of a vote
The sole Tory victor was Ben Houchen, in Tees
Valley. Former home secretary Suella Braverman conceded
that it was too late for Tory rebels to oust Sunak, but said he
would have to take a harder line on immigration and other
issues, or the Tories would be “lucky to have any MPs” left
after the general election. Street, by contrast, urged the PM
not to drift to the right. On Wednesday, the MP for Dover,
Natalie Elphicke, defected to Labour, saying the Tories had
“become a byword for incompetence and division”.
What the editorials said
“What a difference three years makes,” said The Sunday Times.
After the 2021 local elections, the Tories looked “unassailable”.
Keir Starmer later confessed that it was such
a “low moment” that he’d considered quitting.
Now the Labour leader is being swept towards
No. 10 on a “wave of dissatisfaction with the
Government”. Victory is in sight for Labour,
agreed The Economist. The Gaza issue cost it
support in heavily Muslim areas such as
Blackburn, and the Greens scooped up left-wing
voters in places such as Bristol, but Labour can
afford to lose some voters in these areas. It’s in
swing constituencies such as Swindon where
it needs to win – and it’s now doing that.
Maybe so, said The Guardian, but Starmer
shouldn’t get carried away. While he’s making
of confidence in Labour than a rejection of the
Tories. The public is heartily sick of the Conservatives, said
The Independent, and Sunak should ignore colleagues who
claim the answer to the problem is to move to the right. If that
were true, their candidate for mayor of London, the “devout
Trussite” Susan Hall, would have beaten the “slightly jaded
and not wildly popular Sadiq Khan”. As it was, she finished
about 200,000 votes behind him. The ideas of the hard-right
“have been road-tested and found wanting in every sense”.

What happened
The Rafah offensive
Israeli ground troops and tanks moved
into Rafah on Monday, and seized control
of the vital border crossing into Egypt,
which they later closed. The Israel Defence
Forces had earlier ordered 100,000 people
in eastern Rafah to evacuate ahead of
what it said would be a “limited” operation
there, and launched a series of air strikes
that killed at least 19 Palestinians. The
strikes followed the killing of four Israeli
soldiers by Hamas rockets at the nearby Israeli air strikes hit Rafah
Kerem Shalom border crossing, which was
then closed for several days. Israel’s PM Benjamin
Netanyahu says that an offensive in Rafah – where some
1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering – is necessary to defeat offensive in Rafah; the crossing there is the only one by which
Hamas; aid groups warn that such an operation would
worsen the dire humanitarian crisis in the Strip.
Hours before the offensive began, Hamas had announced
that it had accepted the terms of a ceasefire deal drafted by
Egypt, prompting celebrations in Gaza. Its terms are reported
to have included a pause in the fighting for an initial 42 days
to allow for the release of 33 hostages seized by Hamas on
7 October. Further hostages may then have been released in
stages. In return, scores of Palestinians would
have been freed from Israeli jails. The deal did
not meet Hamas’s demands for a permanent
truce, but would have bound both sides to
work towards a “sustainable calm”. But despite
growing internal pressure on him to secure
the release of hostages, Netanyahu rejected
the deal, saying that it fell “far from Israel’s
requirements”. One sticking point for Israel
is reported to have been concerns that some of
the 33 hostages cited by Hamas might be dead.
However, both sides have returned to the talks.
President Biden reiterated America’s opposition to a ground
humanitarian aid can reach Gaza from Egypt. The UN said
that a “full-blown famine” had now taken hold in northern
Gaza. Last week, Washington paused a shipment of thousands
of US-made bombs to Israel, the first time it has taken such
a step since 7 October.

It wasn’t all bad A girls’ under-ten

A tiny museum in North
Yorkshire has been shortlisted
for the Art Fund Museum of the
Year award, alongside such
cultural titans as the National
Portrait Gallery and the Young
V&A. Skipton’s Craven Museum,
which is in a town hall, began to
rise from obscurity 20 years ago
when an expert discovered that
it had one of Shakespeare’s First
Folios in a backroom cupboard.
The Folio is now on permanent
display, along with some
60,000 objects representing
millennia of local history.
THE WEEK 11 May 2024
football team
A Scottish bar singer found
himself performing in front of
that lost every 14,000 people last week, owing
game last season to Olly Murs’s flight being
has now won 28 cancelled. Daniel Rooney, 26,
in a row against was playing at a hotel near
all-boy squads. Glasgow’s Ovo Hydro arena
Woodlanders FC, when the news broke that Take
from Bradley in That were without a supporting
West Yorkshire, act. TV presenter Ross King,
became the first who was visiting the hotel,
girls’ side to win the Huddersfield Junior Football League Vase immediately phoned his friend
when it beat Howden Clough 3-2, having beaten a succession Gary Barlow, and said its bar
of other boys’ teams from across the region. “It’s a massive singer might just save the day.
achievement for the girls and they have shown they can play Minutes later, Rooney was
against boys and be more than a match for them,” said David taking to the stage. “I usually
Gilroy, the team’s coach. “The girls are an amazing bunch and have play to around 40 people,”
had a fantastic season. They have shown football is for everyone.” he said. “It’s madness.”
COVER CARTOON: NEIL DAVIES
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
The good news for Sunak, said Jason Groves in the Daily Mail, is that he has survived his Sunak seized on a Sky News
“May Day from hell” and will lead the Conservatives into the next election. The bad news, projection of the “national
of course, is that he’s “almost certainly” going to lose that election. The Tories lost around half equivalent vote” showing
of the council seats they were defending last week – a result that was “at the very worst end Labour would be 32 seats
of expectations”. The distribution of the defeats told its own story, said Robert Ford in The short of an overall majority
Guardian. It followed a consistent pattern: “the stronger the Leave vote in an area, the bigger if the local election results
the swing to Labour”. The “scar of Brexit on the electoral landscape” is healing. were replicated in the general
election. It’s a poor parallel,
If you dig down into the numbers, the picture isn’t quite so bleak for the Tories, said Stephen says Andrew Grice in The
Glover in the Daily Mail. One estimate put their share of the vote at 27%, and Labour’s at Independent, as people tend
34%. Compared with recent polls that have suggested a Labour lead of 20 percentage points to vote differently in general
or more, that’s not such an insuperable gap. Sunak still thinks he can turn things around, said elections. Moreover, Sky
John Rentoul in The Independent, and he may yet manage it. Labour supporters shouldn’t assumes that Labour will
underestimate “the potential for tax cuts and the prospect of more to come to persuade shy keep only its current one
Tories in the privacy of the polling booth”. As he seeks to defy expectations, Sunak can take MP in Scotland – where no
inspiration from the 2010 election. At one stage it looked as though David Cameron was going elections were held last week
to wipe the floor with a “terribly unpopular” Gordon Brown. But Brown fought the election – whereas the latest polls
with such skill and tenacity that he clawed back ground and denied the Tories a majority. suggest Labour is on course
to end up with 28 MPs.
By warning that Britain could be facing a hung parliament and a possible “coalition of chaos”,
Sunak has acknowledged the likelihood of a Tory defeat, said Philip Johnston in The Daily Sky may also have
Telegraph. Still, he’s hoping that new data showing an improving economy will at least help the underestimated the impact
Tories avoid a hammering. He shouldn’t count on it. The Tories’ historic defeat in 1997 came of Reform UK. The party
against the backdrop of a strong and improving economy. Conversely, when they won in 1992, contested only one in six
the economy was mired in recession. This suggests that Sunak’s smartest option today may not council seats, but intends
actually be to boast about how much better the economy is doing, but to warn voters about how to stand against every Tory
bad things still are, in the hope that they keep “a-hold of nurse” for fear of something worse. in the general election.

What the commentators said What next?

While the Israeli delegation took part in the ongoing ceasefire talks in Cairo this week, the Israel has encouraged the
country’s military was exerting a pressure of its own in Rafah, said Samer Al-Atrush in The people ordered to leave
Times. On Tuesday, Israeli soldiers “triumphantly raised their flags over the Gazan city’s border Rafah to travel to Muwasi,
crossing” and used a tank to mow down an “I love Gaza” road sign. By sending in tanks, a nearby coastal area that
Netanyahu intends to deliver a warning: “if Hamas does not compromise, the operation in it says is equipped with
Rafah will expand”. Israel knows that any major incursion risks angering the US and causing healthcare facilities and
a massive loss of life, but it may have no choice, said The Wall Street Journal. Rafah hosts materials for shelter. But
Hamas’s military leaders, four of its six battalions and a border crossing used for smuggling the area is already housing
weapons. Only when it is at risk of falling will Hamas – which rejected a generous ceasefire some 450,000 refugees,
offer in April – finally negotiate in good faith to hand over its hostages and end the fighting. many of whom are living
in squalid conditions, and
“Nothing about the attack on Rafah and the negotiations in Cairo are quite what they seem,” the UN has warned that
said Anshel Pfeffer in Haaretz. Israel’s operation in Rafah has so far been limited, because it it is not equipped to deal
allows Netanyahu to reassure his hard-right coalition allies that the Rafah assault they’ve been with an influx of thousands
demanding is still on the cards, while avoiding crossing what Biden has made clear is a “red more people fleeing Rafah.
line”. US officials say they’re not sure if the Rafah offensive is being used to extract better
terms from Hamas, said Julian Borger in The Guardian – or whether, in fact, the talks are just a UN experts warned last
smokescreen for Israel’s military preparations. Netanyahu’s hard-right allies “have threatened to week that the cost of
bring down his coalition if he makes peace with Hamas and forgoes a Rafah assault”. But there reconstructing Gaza (and
is broad public support for an agreement in Israel, said The Economist; and the gap between clearing 37 million tons of
the delegations in Cairo is not so great that a compromise cannot be reached. The question is rubble) after the conflict
whether Netanyahu is prepared to risk the consequences for his own career of accepting one. could exceed $40bn.

Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law

Being an influencer is now a real job. Objectively, I’ve known this
THE WEEK
Editor: Theo Tait
Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle Managing editor: Robin
for years, but I still find it hard to accept. Hundreds of thousands of de Peyer Assistant editor: Leaf Arbuthnot
City editor: Jane Lewis Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
people, maybe millions, make money by flaunting their lifestyles Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
and consumer goods on social media. If you have children, you’ll know that it works. When you Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Amelia Butler-
Gallie, Louis Foster Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
come home, the kids will suddenly be asking if they can make tanghulu (me neither), or “speed eat” Art director: Katrina Ffiske Senior sub-editor: Simmy
Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connell
noodles, or “melt down lots of gummy bears to make one giant gummy bear”. Why? Because Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
YouTube’s algorithm has led them to these strange places. The latest unlikely social-media craze
Production Manager: Maaya Mistry
infecting teenage boys is for “fragrance”. At my son’s school, cologne and aftershave are suddenly Account Directors: Aimee Farrow, Amy McBride
Business Director: Steven Tapp
big. I’ve heard of children selling their new coats to buy high-end perfumes. Inevitably, this is Commercial Head, Schools Guide: Nubla Rehman
Account Executive (Classified): Serena Noble Advertising
because of “fragrance influencers”. The undisputed king of this new breed is a flamboyant, white- Director – The Week, Wealth & Finance: Peter Cammidge
suited German with the nom de parfum of Jeremy Fragrance. His trademark move is sniffing Managing Director, News: Richard Campbell
SVP Subscriptions Media and Events: Sarah Rees
adolescents to identify their scent, while murmuring things such as: “It’s got a nice spicy cinnamon
vibe.” He also likes shouting “Kraft, Power, Strength!”, talking about Jesus, and doing topless press- Future PLC, 121-
141 Westbourne
ups. It’s not clear why, but that’s the point: surprising content goes viral. The medium is the message, Terrace, London
W2 6JR
as Marshall McLuhan said. The printing press gave us vernacular Bibles and mass literacy. TV gave Editorial office:
us the Kardashians and President Trump. God knows what the long-term effect of the 020-3890 3787 Future plc is a public Chief Executive Of昀椀cer Jon Steinberg

internet will be, but it seems likely to involve short videos of humans doing weird things. Theo Tait
company quoted on the Non-Executive Chairman Richard Huntingford
London Stock Exchange Chief Financial and Strategy Of昀椀cer Penny Ladkin-Brand

editorialadmin@ (symbol: FUTR)

www.futureplc.com Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244
theweek.co.uk

Subscriptions: 0330-333 9494; subscriptions@theweek.co.uk © Future PLC 2024. All rights reserved. The Week is a registered
trademark. Neither the whole of this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in
any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 11 May 2024 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week MoD data breach

Scotland’s new leader It has been widely reported

that China was behind a
cyberattack that targeted
“I have changed.” So declared John Swinney, the new SNP the payroll records of up to
leader, when he was sworn in as Scotland’s First Minister on 270,000 current and former
Monday – after winning the backing of 64 MSPs, a narrow British military personnel.
majority. Swinney said that he would discard the partisan Hackers are believed to have
politics that had dominated the SNP and Holyrood in recent accessed a Ministry of
Defence contractor’s IT
years, and take a more collaborative approach. The new First
system that contained the
Minister has a reputation both as a “deal-maker who can work names and bank details of
across parties” and as “a ferocious heckler of opponents”, all serving regular military
said Kieran Andrews and John Boothman in The Times; he personnel and reservists, as
promised that there would be no more “shouted put-downs well as those of thousands
from the front bench or heckling from a sedentary position”. veterans. A small number of
Swinney’s path to the leadership was cleared when his main addresses were also on the
competitor, Kate Forbes, stepped aside (see page 14). He is seen system. On Tuesday, Defence
as a “safe pair of hands”, said Simeon Kerr in the FT, the most Secretary Grant Shapps told
Swinney with the Seals of Scotland MPs that the Government
likely candidate to unite a party in disarray following Nicola
had reason to believe the
Sturgeon’s 2023 resignation and the collapse of its coalition with the Greens under Humza Yousaf. hack was the work of a
“malign actor”, but said that
“The coronation of John Swinney, a 60-year-old yesterday’s man” is “bleak news for the “for reasons of national
independence movement”, said Iain Macwhirter in The Spectator. When Swinney was last the party security” no further details
leader, early this century, he took the SNP to 20% in the 2003 European elections. In the 2004 about the incident would be
general election, the SNP won six MPs to Labour’s 41. “That was his legacy.” It was surely a bad released at this stage.
idea, said John Gray in The New Statesman, to choose a second “continuity candidate” after Yousaf’s
brief reign. Swinney has served, in recent years, as finance secretary, education secretary and deputy Oil and gas licences
first minister. The SNP’s problem is that, under Sturgeon, it “lost itself in hyper-liberalism”. Instead of Government officials have
approved a raft of new oil
addressing Scotland’s “long-standing failings in healthcare, education and the economy”, the party
and gas licences in the North
became “fixated” on causes such as transgender rights, anti-racism and “net-zero cultism”, wasting Sea. The 31 licences, which
political capital on the ill-fated Gender Recognition Bill, and the chaotic hate-speech legislation. were awarded by the North
Swinney has a cheek, too, to pose as a bipartisan peacemaker, said Euan McColm in The Scotsman. Sea Transition Authority, are
The First Minister conceded that he had, in the past, “contributed” to the toxic mood of Scotland’s projected to allow offshore
politics. That’s “quite the understatement”: Swinney was “one of the architects of an SNP strategy operators to extract fossil
that has demonised opponents, accusing critics of government failure of attacking Scotland herself”. fuels equivalent to 600
million extra barrels of oil,
Well, Swinney has proved a peacemaker so far, said Dani Garavelli in The Guardian. He persuaded with drilling carrying on for
several years beyond the UK
Forbes to throw in her lot with him, by promising to make her deputy first minister. And now,
net-zero target date of 2050.
leading a minority government, he is well aware that he’ll be able to do nothing without “building The UK has about 280 active
vote-by-vote alliances”. He says he’ll prioritise “bread and butter issues”: the cost-of-living crisis and oil and gas fields, but about
child poverty will come ahead of a second independence referendum. Swinney is not a bold visionary 180 of them are predicted to
who will lead Scotland to independence. “But he is the man best placed to restore stability.” have closed by 2030.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
Nearly one in four 18- to
34-year-olds never answer
their mobile phone, a survey
has found. Just over half
say that if they receive a call
out of the blue from family
or friends, they assume it
must mean “bad news”.
Almost half prefer to
communicate on social
media platforms such as
Instagram rather than
receive a call.
There are nearly 40% fewer
sex scenes in major films
than there were at the start
of the millennium, research
commissioned by The
Economist has revealed. It
shows that the 250 highest-
grossing films released in
the US last year had around
60% of the erotic content
found in the top 250 in 2000.
The decline was steepest in
the action genre, which
became around 70% less
erotic over that period.
Women, who can now join The Garrick Club – provided they Poll watch
have the necessary connections and can afford the membership 56% of British adults think
fees. In a ballot this week, almost 60% of the club’s members that Charles is doing a good
are believed to have voted to drop the men-only rule. Previous job as King. 60% believe
attempts to change the rule had failed, but this resolution only that Britain should keep the
required a 50% majority, rather than a two-thirds one. monarchy, though only 46%
Madonna, who ended her greatest hits world tour with what think that it would be worse
for Britain in the future if
may have been her biggest-ever concert. An estimated 1.6 million
the monarchy were to be
fans crowded onto Rio de Janeiro’s Copacabana beach for the abolished. 28% say Britain
free event; others leaned out of nearby apartment blocks, and should become a republic.
watched from boats. Some 3,000 police were deployed, and Ipsos/The Mail on Sunday
firefighters sprayed water at the crowd to keep people cool.
71% of adults in England
Bad week for: believe that smacking,
hitting, slapping or shaking
Inbound travellers, after the passport e-gates failed at airports a child is unacceptable, up
all over the country on Tuesday, leading to long delays. The Home from 67% in 2023. 52%
Office said the glitch at Border Force was fixed within four hours, support a ban on the use
and confirmed that it was not the result of a cyberattack. of physical punishment,
Southern Water, which faced criticism after thousands of up from 50%.
properties in Hastings and other parts of East Sussex were left YouGov/NSPCC
without water for up to four days, due to a burst water main.
23% of adults in Great
Many residents faced long queues at bottled water stations. Some
Britain think that public
resorted to collecting seawater in buckets to flush their toilets. protests are effective at
Boris Johnson, who fell foul of the photo ID rule he introduced achieving their goals. 63%
as PM when he went to vote. Having failed to persuade officers think they’re ineffective.
that his name and address on a mailed copy of Prospect magazine The rest don’t know.
would suffice, he went home to get his driver’s licence. YouGov

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 Europe at a glance
Paris Paris
Bruni questioned: Xi visits: China’s president, Xi Jinping,
Carla Bruni, the made a three-country tour of Europe this
wife of former week, his first state visit to the continent
president Nicolas in five years and one given urgency by the
Sarkozy, has been escalating tensions between the EU and
questioned as a China over trade and the war in Ukraine.
suspect by French A key aspect of Xi’s mission has been
police as part of to lobby against a slew of EU trade
the criminal case investigations into Chinese firms, notably
brought against an anti-subsidy probe into electric vehicle
her husband. production that could lead to EU tariffs
Already convicted on Chinese goods. For their part, President
of corruption and influence peddling, Macron and European Commission
Sarkozy now faces charges of having president Ursula von der Leyen, who met
accepted €5m in illegal campaign Xi in Paris, have expressed concerns over
contributions from the late Libyan despot the export to Russia of Chinese machine
Muammar Gaddafi, and with pressurising tools and other technologies aiding its
a witness to retract allegations that he had war effort. Xi went on to visit Hungary
done so. Bruni, 56, a model and singer, was and Serbia: both have pro-Russian
quizzed for nearly three hours over claims governments and are big recipients of
she’d deleted messages incriminating Chinese investment. Xi’s cultivation of
her husband in the witness tampering. them is seen as a move designed to
Sarkozy is due to stand trial next year. deepen divisions within Europe.
NEWS 7
Moscow
Putin’s new term: Vladimir Putin has
been sworn in for a new six-year term as
president at a Kremlin ceremony boycotted
by the US and most other Western
countries, but attended by representatives
from France, Hungary and Slovakia. Putin,
now 71, who has been in power either as
president or PM since 1999, won a fresh
landslide victory in a tightly controlled
election in March. “We are a united and
great people and together we will
overcome all obstacles and realise all
our plans,” he said, after being sworn in
before an audience of 2,500 dignitaries.
He also thanked the “heroes” of his war in
Ukraine, but said Russia “does not refuse
dialogue” with the West, despite its “policy
of aggression towards our country”.

Madrid
Bullfighting blow: To the consternation of
conservative Spain, the left-wing coalition
of Pedro Sánchez has scrapped the national
bullfighting prize. Bullfighting was declared
part of Spain’s “cultural heritage” under a
law of 2013, but Culture Minister Ernest
Urtasun, who has condemned it as “animal
torture”, said the decision reflected rising
public concern over animal welfare. This
was not acceptable to the main centre-right
opposition party, the PP, which slated the
government for not believing in “cultural
diversity or liberty”, and has vowed to
reinstate the €30,000 prize when it next
comes to power. Madrid and some other
regional governments also say they will
institute their own prizes. The popularity
of the bullfight has dramatically declined
in Spain: only 1.9% of Spaniards attended
one in 2021/22. But it has become a key
battleground in the country’s culture wars.

Ankara
Kyiv Israel spat: Turkey has suspended all trade
Russian plot: Ukraine’s SBU security service has with Israel in protest at what it describes
arrested two security officials on suspicion of as the “humanitarian tragedy” unfolding
plotting to assassinate President Zelensky (right) in Gaza. Tensions between the two nations
and other senior figures. The suspects are colonels have risen since Israel began its campaign
in the State Guard of Ukraine, responsible for in Gaza: Turkey’s President Erdogan
protecting the country’s leaders. They had has accused Israel of “genocide”, while
allegedly worked with the FSB, the Russian declining to call Hamas a terror group
intelligence agency, on a plan to take Zelensky and labelling the Israeli PM, Benjamin
hostage and then kill him. Their other targets are Netanyahu, the “butcher of Gaza”. Now,
said to have been Vasyl Malyuk, head of the SBU, and Kyrylo Budanov, Ukraine’s Ankara has upped the ante by ordering
military intelligence chief. The SBU said it has uncovered more than 6,000 Ukrainian all export and import transactions with
citizens who have “collaborated” with Moscow since the invasion of 2022. Zelensky Israel to be halted until an “uninterrupted
himself is believed to have survived numerous attempts on his life in the same period. and sufficient” flow of aid is allowed into
Meanwhile, in response to what it regards as threatening comments made by Gaza. Turkey is the sixth-largest source of
Emmanuel Macron and David Cameron, the Kremlin has given the go-ahead for imports to Israel, and its move will disrupt
tactical-nuclear-weapons drills, and has threatened to attack British military facilities a trading relationship worth around
should Ukraine use British weapons to strike inside Russia. The French president had $5bn last year. In response, Israel’s
said that Europe should consider sending troops to help defend Ukraine if Russian foreign minister, Israel Katz, accused
forces break through defensive lines there, while the British Foreign Secretary had Erdogan of behaving like a “dictator”
said that Kyiv had the right to use British weapons to strike inside Russia if it saw fit. and “disregarding the interests” of
Turkish people and businesses.

Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk 11 May 2024 THE WEEK

8 NEWS The world at a glance
Vancouver, Canada
Charges brought: Canadian police have charged three Indian
nationals with the murder of a Sikh activist who was gunned
down outside a Sikh temple in Vancouver last June. A few weeks
after the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar – a Canadian
citizen who had advocated for an independent Sikh homeland
in the Punjab – Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, claimed
there were “credible allegations” of Indian intelligence involvement
in the killing. New Delhi dismissed the claim as absurd, and
requested that Canada withdraw many of its diplomats from
India. However, in November the US revealed that it had foiled
a plot to murder a Sikh separatist in New York, and also linked
it to a government official. The three suspects, all in their 20s,
were arrested in Edmonton, Alberta, last Friday; all three had been
living in Canada for between three to five years on student visas.
Glendale, Wisconsin
Bus hero: A 14-year-old boy has
been hailed as a hero for grabbing
the wheel of his school bus when
its driver passed out. Acie Holland III
was on his way home from his school
in Wisconsin when the bus, which was
carrying 14 children, suddenly veered
into traffic. Realising that the driver
was unconscious, he took the wheel
and straightened the bus’s course, then
removed the driver’s foot from the
accelerator and pulled the vehicle over. Acie put his quick-thinking
down to time spent with his father, a mechanic, and his experience
driving a tractor. His headteacher said he’d averted a “tragedy”.

Ensenada, Mexico
Surfers killed: The bodies of three men who went missing
while on a camping and surfing trip to Mexico’s Baja
peninsula in late April were found dumped in a well
last week, heightening concerns about the safety of
tourists in a region that is plagued by warring drug
cartels – though the violence does not usually extend to tourist
areas. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson, 30 and 33,
and their friend Jack Carter Rhoad, 30, who lived in the nearby
US city of San Diego, had been en route to Ensenada, a resort
town popular with surfers, when they disappeared. Prosecutors
think that they were shot while trying to stop thieves from
stealing their pick-up truck in a remote coastal area.

Washington DC
Bribery charges: A US congressman has been charged with
accepting some $600,000 in bribes from a Mexican bank and
an oil company owned by the government of Azerbaijan. Henry
Cuellar, a Texas Democrat, is said to have been paid the money
through shell companies between 2014 and 2021; in return, he
allegedly sought to influence US foreign policy in Azerbaijan’s
favour, and push for measures such as changes to money-
laundering laws that benefit the bank. Cuellar – who could face
decades in jail if convicted – denied the charges and said he
planned to run for re-election in November. Although Cuellar
is a Democrat, Donald Trump sprang to his defence this week
claiming that he had been targeted by “DC thugs” for refusing
to play “Crooked Joe’s Open Border game”.

New York
Daniels testifies: Testifying at Donald
Trump’s hush-money trial this week, the
former adult film star Stormy Daniels
described the sexual encounter that
she claims to have had with the former
president in a hotel in Nevada in 2006.
Sitting just ten feet away from Trump,
Daniels said she had met him at a
celebrity golf tournament. He later
invited her to dinner, and she reluctantly
agreed to go after, she said, her publicist
told her it would make a “great story”
and said “what could possibly go wrong?”. When she arrived,
she recalled that Trump was wearing silky pyjamas. She says she Porto Alegre, Brazil
quipped, “Does Hugh Hefner know you stole his pyjamas?”, and Deadly floods: More than 75
asked him to change, which he did. They then chatted for a couple people have lost their lives in some
of hours, and she testified that she was “startled” when she came of the worst flooding in Brazil’s
back from the toilet to find that he’d stripped off to his boxer history, and scores more are missing. Days of torrential rain in the
shorts and T-shirt. She claims that the sex that followed was brief, southern state of Rio Grande do Sul left vast swathes of the region
and left her feeling ashamed. Trump denies the affair; his lawyer underwater last week, and with more rain forecast, some 150,000
suggested that Daniels had made up the story in order to extort people have had to leave their homes, and half-a-million have
money from him. He is accused of falsifying business records been left without power or clean water. In the state capital, Porto
to cover up a $130,000 payment to buy her silence in 2016. Alegre, entire neighbourhoods were submerged; roads and bridges
© KIMBERLY HOLLAND

Earlier in the week, Trump was warned that he could face jail have been damaged; and one city in the area, Eldorado do Sul,
if he continues to violate court-imposed gagging orders. Judge was described by its mayor as “100% destroyed”. The country’s
Juan Merchan held Trump in criminal contempt for a tenth time president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said Brazil had never before
on Monday, for criticising the jury selection process. seen “such a quantity of rain in one single location”.

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 The world at a glance
Jerusalem, Israel
Al Jazeera closed: Benjamin Netanyahu’s
government has shut down Al Jazeera’s
operations in Israel and the occupied
territories. Defending the decision, widely
condemned as an attack on press freedom,
it claimed that the TV news network had
been acting as a propaganda vehicle for
Hamas and presented a threat to national
security. Al Jazeera described this as a
“dangerous lie”. Shortly after the decision
was announced, its local offices were
closed, its equipment was confiscated,
its websites blocked and its links to cable
and satellite companies shut off. Israel has
denied most foreign journalists entry to
Gaza, and reporters from the Qatar-owned
broadcaster were some of the only ones on
the ground there. It had severely criticised
Israel’s military operation, and accused
Israeli forces of killing journalists.
Goma, DRC
Camp bombing:
The US has
blamed the
Rwandan army and
M23 rebels for the
deadly bombing of a
refugee camp in the Democratic Republic
of the Congo last week. At least nine
civilians, including seven children, were
killed in the attack on the Mugunga camp,
on the outskirts of the city of Goma in the
war-torn, mineral-rich eastern DRC.
Neighbouring Rwanda is widely believed
to be backing the ethnic Tutsi M23 militia,
which is currently the most powerful of the
rebel groups operating in the region. Last
week, US officials said they were “gravely
concerned” by the recent “expansion” of
the M23 and the Rwanda Defence Force
in the area. Rwanda denies giving any
© NEWS18
support to M23, and blamed last week’s
bombing on the Congolese army.
NEWS 9
Tehran Riyadh
Hijab enforcers: The Iranian regime is Activist jailed: A
believed to have recruited thousands of young woman in
women to enforce the country’s strict dress Saudi Arabia has
code, as part of a mounting crackdown been sentenced
on dissent launched since the anti-regime to 11 years in jail
protests of 2022 and 2023. Covered from for promoting
head-to-toe in long black robes, the female women’s rights.
“hijab enforcers” – also known as the Manahel
Ambassadors of Kindness – have been al-Otaibi, a
seen patrolling public places, restaurants 29-year-old
and universities in cities across Iran, and fitness instructor,
stopping women deemed to be in violation reportedly
of the requirement to wear a headscarf criticised the country’s male guardianship
and loose-fitting clothing in public. Those laws in social media posts, and appeared
deemed to have breached sharia law have in videos without an abaya (long robe).
been taken away for interrogation by the She was tried in secret under a loosely
morality police. The initiative is reportedly worded counter-terrorism law and
being led by the “Basij of Sisters”, a sentenced in January, but details of her
hardline militia group affiliated with the case only emerged last week in Riyadh’s
Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. formal reply to a UN information request.
Tokyo
Vacant homes: The
number of empty houses
in Japan has topped nine
million, up by more
than half-a-million since
2018, as the country’s
population continues to
steadily decline. Known
as akiya, the buildings
constitute 14% of the
country’s housing stock.
Most are in rural areas,
and are not on the rental
market. Vacant land
attracts higher taxes in
Japan, which discourages
landlords from
demolishing abandoned
dwellings, and
renovation costs
are high – so
many are
left to rot.
Hassan, India
Rape scandal: As
voting in India’s
general election
continues, PM
Narendra Modi
has become
embroiled in a
scandal involving Chauk, Myanmar
one of his political Deadly heat: The heatwave gripping
allies. Prajwal Southeast Asia has intensified, causing
Revanna (left) – dozens of deaths from heat stroke,
a leader of the destroying crops and forcing tens of
Janata Dal party, and the scion of a thousands of schools to close. The mercury
political dynasty – is accused of raping or hit an unprecedented high of 48.2°C in
sexually assaulting up to 400 women. He Chauk, Myanmar, last Monday, and record
left the country last week, shortly after temperatures of between 40°C and 47°C
USB sticks containing up to 3,000 videos were seen in other countries, including
he allegedly made of his crimes were left Indonesia, and meteorologists warned
lying around Hassan, in Karnataka. Modi that in many areas, the “heat index”,
and his officials are accused of having which factors in humidity to gauge how
carried on supporting Prajwal even after hot it actually feels, had exceeded the
learning of his alleged crimes. “very dangerous” 50°C mark.
11 May 2024 THE WEEK
10 NEWS
Clarkson’s local councillor
Dean Temple never wanted to
become Jeremy Clarkson’s local
councillor, says Liam Kelly in
The Daily Telegraph. A Tory,
he only stood in the election
in West Oxfordshire in 2021
to fill a vacancy for the party.
“I was told it was a nice, quiet
place where nothing ever
happens,” he recalls. Nothing
could have been further from
the truth: his ward includes
Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm;
Clarkson’s Farm premiered on
Amazon a month later; and
soon the council and its officials
were being cast as the villain of
the piece, for refusing to rubber
stamp Clarkson’s various plans
for a restaurant, shop and car
park. With his contact details
easily found online, Temple
(pictured) came under siege
from fans; at one point, it got
so bad he had to take time off
work. Now, having endured
two seasons of Clarkson’s
council bashing, he has stepped
down. He is not against the TV
presenter: he thinks Clarkson
really cares about the local
area; but he is suspicious of
some of his motives. For
instance, he says that Clarkson
could have got permission for
his restaurant, if he’d adjusted
the plans; but where would the
drama have been in that? “I
think with my cynical head on,
how much of it is him building
a restaurant because he would
like a restaurant, and how
much of it is him building a
restaurant because he’s sat in
the office with his production
team and saying, ‘So season
two, what should we do?
What’s good telly?’”
A difficult ending
The Netflix adaptation
of David Nicholls’
hit novel One
Day was loved
by critics and
viewers alike,
said Anna Bonet
in The i Paper.
But people still
want answers from
Nicholls about its
wrenching ending,
in which –
spoiler alert
– the heroine is
killed in a bike
accident. When the
book came out in
2009, its readers were
appalled; and “David
Nicholls needs to pay
for my therapy” more
THE WEEK 11 May 2024
People
or less sums up the reaction to
the TV series on social media.
Asked about this, Nicholls
smiles wistfully. “I completely
understand the objections to
the ending,” he says. “Someone
sent me a message the other
day saying, ‘I’ve got to talk
to you about the ending. Can
I DM you?’ And I thought,
‘Well, you can, but I don’t
know what I can do about it’.
I do think it’s important to
listen to people, but there’s
also a point where you can’t
do anything. There’s literally
nothing I can do except fret
about it, and I do that anyway.
I’ve thought about it more
than you can imagine.”
Marc Quinn’s shocking art
Marc Quinn became famous
in the 1990s by using his own
blood to make sculptures of
his head, says Alice Thomson
in The Times. Yet the stir they
caused was nothing to the
reaction he got in 2005, when
he made a more traditional
stone sculpture of his pregnant
friend Alison Lapper, an artist
who was born without arms.
People recoiled. “It shocked
me that we couldn’t even find
a sponsor,” he says. “No one
would go near it. No one
would buy it. It was too
controversial; we couldn’t
show it in New York. Alison
has a differently shaped body
carved into white marble –
I thought she looked like a
Greek statue and we idealise
the fragmented Venus
de Milo. [But] it
was too much
for some.” Yet
by the time of the
London Paralympics
seven years later,
attitudes had
changed, and
the piece
had become
so venerated
that an inflatable
version of it,
called Breath, was
floated over the
stadium. Like
everything else,
art goes in and
out of fashion,
he reflects.
“Something you
made five years
ago, suddenly
everyone picks
up on because
something else
has happened
in the world.”
Since the end of her TV partnership with her best friend and
fellow fashion adviser Trinny Woodall, Susannah Constantine has
struggled uncomplainingly with alcoholism, tinnitus, a midlife crisis
and a rare neurological condition that could have caused paralysis.
She admits to having had some low moments. “Not being Trinny
and Susannah any more was really tough,” she told Julia Llewellyn
Smith in The Times. “I became a great fat lardy arse. I became the
woman literally Trinny and I would help.” But, she says, “women
are very resilient”. Her stoical attitude was drummed into her by
her father, an Old Etonian businessman, and her mother, a manic
depressive who prioritised socialising over bringing up her children.
Their only expectation of Constantine was that she marry well.
“I expressed a vague interest in going to university. My father said,
‘My darling, you’d be much better off learning how to make beef
wellington.’” In her 20s, Constantine looked like she might fulfil her
parents’ hopes when she started dating David, Viscount Linley. He
never proposed, and after six years the relationship fizzled out. But
he did introduce her to a much-needed maternal figure: his mother,
Princess Margaret. “She was so contrary, so many things – good
and bad,” says Constantine. “It was from her I learnt to be fearless,
to not worry about being anything other than yourself.”
Viewpoint:
Farewell
Righteous appropriation Kris Hallenga,
“The keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian inspirational breast
scarf, is suddenly de rigueur for lots of cancer awareness
left-wing students, many of whom are campaigner, died
6 May, aged 38.
white. Which is fascinating because,
for ages, left-wing students have been Bernard Hill, actor
telling us, loudly and angrily, that best known for Boys
white Westerners shouldn’t wear the from the Blackstuff and
The Lord of the Rings,
traditional clothing of other ethnic died 5 May, aged 79.
groups, as it is ‘cultural appropriation’.
To be clear: I’ve got nothing against Peter Oosterhuis, one
© MIKE LAWN; JEFF GILBERT: SHUTTERSTOCK
white people wearing the keffiyeh. of the leading British
golfers of the 1970s
I just wish they had let the rest of and early 1980s,
us know. A memo, perhaps, saying: died 2 May, aged 75.
‘Cultural appropriation is no longer
considered a heinous offence against Frank Stella, influential
abstract artist and
marginalised and oppressed minorities. sculptor dubbed the
Instead, it is now considered a noble “father of minimalism”,
expression of solidarity with them.’” died 4 May, aged 87.
Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph
Desert Island Discs returns next week
 Briefing NEWS 13

Access to the countryside

A battle is being fought over access to England’s green spaces

Why is the issue in the news? Besides, about 10% of English farm
In 2020, a Right to Roam campaign revenue comes from tax subsidies, so the
was founded by the writers Nick Hayes nation as a whole arguably ought to have
and Guy Shrubsole. Since then, it has some benefit. Beyond these utilitarian
organised a series of “mass trespasses”: arguments, though, campaigners argue
on Dartmoor, in Cumbria, on the South that exposure to nature and the right to
Downs; on the 12,000-acre Berkshire walk in it are fundamental rights, and
estate of Lord Benyon, who was at that a new law would be a repossession
the time the minister responsible for of an ancient freedom. Much common
access to the countryside. At the most land was appropriated by landowners
recent event, at Cirencester Park in by the enclosure acts of the 18th and
Gloucestershire in March, more than 19th centuries. The right to walk in
500 people marched in protest at plans open country has been slowly reclaimed
by the Bathurst family, which owns over more than a century (see box).
the park, to impose an entry charge for
the first time in more than 300 years. What do landowners say?
The campaigners argue that much more The idea is unpopular among farmers
privately owned land in England should and landowners. “With littering and dog
be open to the public, so that they can Ramblers seeking a “right to nature” attacks on livestock at an all-time high,
have “easy access to open space, and the and a public lack of understanding when
physical, mental and spiritual health benefits that it brings”. it comes to the Countryside Code,” says Farmers Weekly, “a right
to roam could have serious implications.” Dogs savaging livestock
How much access do we have now? costs farmers in England and Wales some £2.4m a year. Human
The public has “open access” to only about 8% of England’s land: footfall, and that of dogs, causes environmental damage, notably
common land, national parks, land owned by the National Trust, the destruction of the nests of ground-nesting birds such as
coastline, and so on. It is estimated that the public only has curlews. Other critics have noted the dog excrement, barbecues
uncontested access to about 3% of the length of England’s non- and other litter left behind, and the gates left open, by visitors.
tidal rivers (they are often rented out to fishing clubs). This reflects Some ignore dangers from livestock and farm machinery; many
the distribution of land ownership. In 2019, research found that believe they already have a right to roam, and think this allows
half of England is owned by about 25,000 landowners – less than them to walk, swim and camp anywhere. The cost of repairing
1% of the population. Great swathes are devoted to shooting. damage falls on landowners. Additionally, in England and Wales,
Even in England’s ten national parks, much land is privately there is much less unused land than in Norway or Scotland. And
owned and off limits to walkers: about half of it, according to people already have access to the 140,000 miles of footpaths in
the Campaign for National Parks. In 2000, the New Labour England and Wales, which, as the Country Land and Business
government made an attempt to improve access to green spaces Association points out, would stretch around the world five times.
by passing the Countryside and Rights of Way (CRoW) Act.
Is a compromise possible?
Did the CRoW Act change much? Campaigners say the right to roam would be “contingent on
The law gave a right to roam, without sticking to footpaths, on adhering to a strict set of responsibilities” – teaching walkers
designated uncultivated land – mountain, moorland, heathland about the Countryside Code, and training dog owners to control
and downland. It also ordered a review of public rights of way: their animals. They argue that increased rights of access would
there are 140,000 of miles of footpaths in England and Wales. The improve people’s understanding of the natural world, helping
CRoW Act is, however, limited in scope: it specifically excludes to ensure that they treat it with respect. There are some shared
woodland and riverbanks. England, interests between the two sides.
Wales and Northern Ireland still do The Kinder Scout trespass The rural economy needs visitors.
not have a broader right of the kind On 24 April 1932, about 400 walkers committed “one of Many farmers now have holiday
that exists in Scotland. In 2003, the the most famous acts of civil disobedience in British lets, farm shops and the like.
Scottish parliament passed legislation history”, says Ben Mayfield on The Conversation.
conferring a “right of responsible Kinder Scout, a moorland plateau in the Derbyshire What is likely to happen?
access” that covers almost all of its Peak District near several industrial cities, had in the In May 2023, Labour pledged to
landscape except private gardens, past been popular among ramblers, but was by the introduce a Scottish-style right to
1930s fenced off by landowners who used it for
cultivated land (though field margins shooting. On Saturday 24 April, Benny Rothman, the
roam in England and Wales if it won
are permitted), industrial areas and 20-year-old Lancashire secretary of the British Workers’ the next election, saying that it would
the like. Such a right exists across Sports Federation (and a Young Communist) led a “replace the default of exclusion
much of northern Europe. In Austria mass trespass: ramblers from Manchester met up with with a default of access”. Within
it is known as wegefreiheit, in Finland, groups from Sheffield at Kinder Scout. The sight, six months, however, the party had
Norway and Sweden, allemansrätten, Rothman later recalled, was a striking one: “hundreds U-turned on that pledge, warning
or “every man’s right to nature”. of young men and women, lads and girls” gathered of a need to “tread very carefully”.
“in their picturesque rambling gear”. Even so, polls suggest that the public
Why should we have such a right? About four miles from Kinder peak, the ramblers were wants to see access to the countryside
The physical and mental health confronted by gamekeepers, and scuffles broke out. increased: almost two-thirds of
benefits of spending time outside are Trespassers broke through and reached the plateau, Britons support a Scottish-style right
well documented. But one in eight but six young men were later arrested for assault, to roam in England, according to
unlawful assembly and breaches of the peace; five
British households doesn’t have a were imprisoned for up to six months. The episode
YouGov; only 5% strongly oppose
garden, and according to a recent poll ignited a wave of sympathy for their cause, which was it. And the shadow environment
for Bupa, more than 52% of Britons taken up by the postwar Labour government. The first secretary, Steve Reed, says he would
do not have access to a public park national park was created in 1951, in the Peak District. be “astonished” if increased access
or common within walking distance. to nature isn’t in Labour’s manifesto.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

14 NEWS Best articles: Britain
Poor Kate Forbes. She could have made a great SNP leader, says
Sarah Ditum, but once again she’s been overlooked – and “largely IT MUST BE TRUE…
For the love of because of the God thing”. Asked last year about her views on
social issues, the devout Christian made the mistake of answering
I read it in the tabloids

God, Forbes honestly. She’d have voted against same-sex marriage, she said,
and was against pre-marital sex. She made it clear these were just
A seaside town in Sardinia is
to allow nudist weddings to

had to give way personal views, not a prospectus for government, but critics swiftly
take place on one of its
beaches in a bid to boost
cast her as a “retrograde menace”. That Humza Yousaf, the man tourism. Luigi Tedeschi, the
Sarah Ditum who beat her, was “also a person of committed faith” didn’t seem mayor of San Vero Milis, said
to matter: evangelical Christians are singled out for censure, not that the authorities had taken
The Times just because they offend against our national taboo on enthusiasm, the step after a German
but for snobbish reasons. With their “stumpy Victorian chapels” couple wrote to ask if nudist
and lower-class congregations, they’re “a little bit non-U”. We can weddings were allowed on
the beach, which has had a
enjoy a “glow of multiculturalism” with respect to Muslim leaders naturist-designated area for
such as Yousaf or Hindu PMs such as Rishi Sunak, who says his two years. “It will not be a
faith “guides me in every aspect of my life”. But it seems our love case of anything goes,” the
of “diversity” doesn’t stretch to the Kate Forbeses of this world. mayor warned, however. “All
the brides will need to wear a
Is this Government blind to the crisis afflicting our schools, asks nice veil for tradition’s sake.”
Gaby Hinsliff. Every year almost one in ten teachers quit the
Someone must profession, yet there aren’t nearly enough newly qualified teachers
(a third of whom leave in their first five years) to replace them. In
teach ministers physics, the worst-hit subject, recruitment is 83% short of targets;
in secondary schools across all subjects, it’s 50% short. Schools
about teaching now often resort to “reluctantly appointing”: giving jobs to
candidates they’d never normally consider, but without whom
Gaby Hinsliff “there’d be literally nobody to teach A-level chemistry”. They
also rely heavily on teaching assistants, who are only meant to
The Guardian lead classes in an emergency. The causes of this crisis are plain
to see: low pay, excessive workloads, unruly pupil behaviour, lack
of autonomy. Yet in the face of all this, the Government has just
decided to scrap funding for Now Teach, the charity that helps North Yorkshire Council
people retrain for a new career in the classroom. Ofsted brutally has faced a backlash from
marks down struggling schools as “inadequate”: that word should residents after announcing
really be applied to the Government’s response to this crisis. that it will phase out
apostrophes on street signs.
It’s never a good idea to force consumers to buy products they The council said that the
do not want, says Dominic Lawson. Yet that is effectively what punctuation mark would be
The traffic jam the Government is doing with the product “most beloved of
British consumers”: the car. In its drive to net zero, it now requires
dropped, “where possible”,
because they cause problems
on the road to carmakers to ensure that an ever-larger chunk of their annual sales
consist of electric vehicles (EVs) – 22% this year; 80% by 2030.
with its computer system.
“It riles my blood to see
net zero And they will be fined £15,000 for each non-electric car sold that
breaches the limit. The carmakers were fine with this at first: they
inappropriate grammar or
punctuation,” commented
Dominic Lawson even scolded Rishi Sunak when he postponed from 2030 to 2035 a postwoman (pictured) of
the date at which all cars sold must be EVs. But now that higher the new apostrophe-free
The Sunday Times prices, plummeting resale values and range anxiety have depressed sign for St Mary’s Walk
sales of all but cheap Chinese EVs, they’ve changed their tune. in Harrogate. Resident
Stellantis (which owns Vauxhall, Peugeot, Citroën and Fiat) now Anne Keywood agreed.
says the EV quota is “terrible for the UK”, and that the “natural” “I think we should be using
market share for EVs is half the current threshold; the car leasing apostrophes,” she said. “If
giant Hertz is selling off thousands of its Teslas; Tesla is shedding you start losing things like
14,000 workers. Consumers are now on a collision course with that then everything goes
government over EVs. And since consumers are also “voters”, it’s downhill, doesn’t it?”
likely to be government, even if it’s Labour, that will back down.
The footwear brand New
Balance has unveiled a
Last week, in the middle of a performance of Britten’s Les
new shoe that is a cross
Illuminations, the tenor Ian Bostridge finally cracked. Could between a sneaker and
Phone culture everyone please just put their phones away, he asked – they’re
distracting. What he didn’t realise, says Martha Gill, was that
a loafer. Dubbed the
“snoafer”, the shoe is the
is the enemy the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) hadn’t just
permitted concertgoers to video him, but encouraged them to do
“footwear equivalent of
a spork”, reported The Wall
of high culture so. Signs in the auditorium invite them to “clap whenever you like”
and to “take short snippets of film (and share them with us)”.
Street Journal. It will not
be available until August, but
© NAJ MODAK/BBC

The CBSO isn’t alone in pandering to phone culture. Last week, it is already attracting strong
Martha Gill reactions online. “I can’t wait
we learnt that the Mona Lisa may be moved to a new room in the
to mow my lawn in these bad
The Observer Louvre, the better to accommodate “hordes of visitors brandishing boys,” said one approving
selfie sticks”. We know why our cultural institutions are doing this, social media user.
of course. They’re hoping to generate publicity through online “This has
“influencers”. But in the process they’re creating a distraction that to stop,”
shatters the stillness required in collectively appreciating great art. pleaded
The curmudgeons are right: by chasing influencers, the cultural another.
institutions are “feeding a beast that will one day eat them”.

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 Best of the American columnists NEWS 15

The politics of puppy killing: what was Kristi Noem thinking?

“American voters have never been more
polarised,” said John Hendrickson in The
Atlantic, but there’s one thing they still all
agree on: shooting puppies is wrong. That
much is clear from the outraged reaction
to Kristi Noem’s new political memoir.
In No Going Back, the governor of South
Dakota – and would-be Trump running
mate – recounts how she disposed of a
rambunctious puppy named Cricket.
She describes how the “untrainable”
14-month-old wirehaired pointer ran wild on
a pheasant shoot, and attacked a neighbour’s
chickens. “I hated that dog,” Noem writes,
before detailing how she led Cricket to
a gravel pit on her family farm and shot it
dead. “It was not a pleasant job, but it had
to be done.” For good measure, she then shot
a family goat that was “nasty and mean”.
Noem: “gutsy gunplay”
Noem likely thought that this account of
gutsy gunplay would burnish her conservative credentials, said
Robin Abcarian in the Los Angeles Times, and you can see why
she might have got that impression. In recent years, a series
of ambitious Republican women have sought to “prove their
machismo”. It started with former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, person”, said a source, but he “understands that you can’t
the self-styled “mama grizzly”, who endorsed the controversial
practice of shooting wolves from helicopters
to cull numbers. Then there was Joni Ernst,
who boasted in her senate campaign of her
experience in castrating pigs. In a 2022
campaign ad, Marjorie Taylor Greene blew
up a Toyota Prius with a .50-calibre sniper
rifle to show how she would “blow away
the Democrats’ socialist agenda”. By
directing this “performative cruelty”
at pets, however, Noem crossed a line.
Ultimately, US voters prefer dogs to
politicians, said Peder Schaefer on Politico.
Mistreating them is a no-no. Lyndon B.
Johnson received serious flak after he held
up one of his beagles by the ears, and the
former GOP presidential candidate
Mitt Romney has never lived down the
revelation during the 2012 campaign that
he used to transport his dog in a crate on
the roof of the car on holidays. Noem may
well have doomed her political career. Trump campaign insiders
are “bewildered” by the story and claim that Noem has no
chance of being his vice-presidential candidate now, said
Diana Glebova in the New York Post. Trump “isn’t a dog
choose a puppy killer” as a running mate.

America hasn’t learnt many lessons from the Covid epidemic, says Zeynep Tufekci. If it had, it would
be taking the threat from H5N1 avian influenza far more seriously. The bird flu virus has already
The growing killed millions of birds and wild mammals around the world, and has now spread to at least 33
dairy herds in eight US states. Fragments of the virus have been detected in the commercial milk
threat from supply. Public health officials don’t know how many farmers have tested their cattle (they’ve only
just made it mandatory even to report positive cases), and they’re still trying to work out how the
bird flu virus is spreading. One theory is that it’s through cows’ feed, owing to the “fairly revolting fact”
that America, unlike the UK and EU, allows farmers to feed chicken litter – feathers, excrement,
Zeynep Tufekci spilled seeds – to their herds as a cheap source of extra protein. One person we know of so far has
contracted the virus (a Texas dairy worker got a mild infection), but no testing regime is in place for
The New York Times vulnerable farmworkers. Rick Bright, an expert on H5N1 who until 2020 headed the federal agency
responsible for fighting emerging pandemics, is alarmed by America’s lack of preparedness, should
the virus become more dangerous. “This is a live fire test,” he says, “and right now we are failing it.”

Social media “went kind of bonkers” last week, says Jonah Goldberg, after Johannah King-Slutzky,
a student at Columbia, addressed reporters. And no wonder. Her words, spoken outside a campus
Radical building illegally occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters, were beyond parody. Sporting a Palestinian
keffiyeh, she demanded “basic humanitarian aid” for those inside, asking, “Do you want students
roleplay to die of dehydration and starvation?”. A “digital activist” whose PhD sets out to apply a “Marxian
lens” to Romantic literature, King-Slutzky is just the sort of student these elite universities like to
on campus attract. To win entry to these colleges, you need good exam grades and other impressive qualities,
but it also pays to share the progressive values of the admissions bureaucrats. One applicant
Jonah Goldberg famously got into Stanford by answering the question “What matters to you, and why?” by writing
the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter 100 times. The colleges are struggling today with a crisis of their own
The Dispatch making. They went looking for students eager to wage transgressive war on “institutions of power”,
and encouraged them “at every stage to cosplay sticking it to the Man”. Now the people in charge
have discovered that they, too, “are the Man, whether they like it or not”.

Donald Trump’s trial in Manhattan is unprecedented, says Jackie Calmes – the first-ever criminal
case against a former US president. But even so, it’s creating powerful feelings of déjà vu, owing to
Who’s on trial, its resemblance to the big New York mob trials. As in those cases, there’s a gagging order to keep the
defendant in line. Worse, there are concerns about the safety of jurors, whose identities have had to
a politician or be kept secret. The same precaution was taken in Trump’s recent civil trial against the writer E. Jean
Carroll. The judge issued the “chilling” warning: “My advice to you is that you never disclose that
a mob boss? you were on this jury.” Former prosecutor Andrew Weissmann noted that he’d last heard a judge issue
such a caution after the conviction of the Genovese boss Vincent Gigante. Trump has often compared
Jackie Calmes himself to gangsters such as Al Capone and “Scarface”, and has a mob boss’s swagger. His model,
Trump told his biographer Timothy L. O’Brien, is “Teflon Don” John Gotti. “The thing he respected
Los Angeles Times about Gotti,” says O’Brien, was that he “sat there in court and he looked at the jurors and he looked
at the judge with a big F-U on his face”. No wonder the crowds outside Trump’s courthouse today
are quite small. “After all, if you’ve seen one trial of a mob boss in Gotham, you’ve seen ’em all.”

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: International
Georgia at a crossroads: is it heading for dictatorship?
“Not long ago, the nation was
completely united and happy,”
said Kviris Palitra (Tbilisi). In late
March, Georgia’s national football
team beat Greece to secure its
first-ever place in the European
Championships. To many, it seemed
like a symbol of a nation that was
heading towards EU membership
(it was given official candidate
status last year). But now Georgia
has been plunged back into chaos.
On 9 April, the ruling Georgian
Dream party reintroduced its
controversial “foreign influence”
bill, which would require any Protesters barricading entry to the parliament building
media organisation or NGO that
receives more than 20% of its funding from abroad to register
as a foreign agent. It is closely modelled on a Russian law that
Vladimir Putin has used to crush independent journalism and
stifle dissent. Last year, Georgian Dream tried to pass the law
but withdrew it after mass protests. But now the government
appears determined to press on once again. Since the law was
reintroduced, Georgia has been rocked by protests and violent
clashes between police and protesters. Tear gas, water cannon
and rubber bullets have been used; there are many reports of
police violence. The EU warned that the law will harm Georgia’s and the government is under pressure from the EU to carry out
ambitions of joining the bloc. “Georgia is at a crossroads,”
stated Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission.
Georgia’s foreign influence bill, if passed, will have “devastating
consequences for its freedom and democracy”, said Grigol
Julukhidze and Mariam Gubievi in New Eastern Europe
(Wrocław). Any organisation with funding from abroad, from
a charity for the blind to a news website with foreign investors,
will be officially dubbed a “foreign agent”. Georgia’s justice
ministry will then have the right to demand sensitive data, on
pain of hefty fines. This law is designed to crush critical media,
to isolate Georgia from the West. Last week, Bidzina Ivanishvili, other former Soviet republics: Belarus, Kazakhstan and of course
the “reclusive billionaire” who runs Georgian Dream,
“descended from his steel palace above Tbilisi to make a rare
public appearance”, said Open Caucasus Media (Tbilisi). In
“an unhinged rant filled with conspiracy theories and threats
of repression”, he denounced the
US, the EU and Nato as a “global
party of war”, which he blamed
for both the war in Ukraine and
Georgia’s own 2008 conflict with
Russia. He also raged against
Western LGBTQ+ “propaganda”.
If this sounds straight from the
Putin playbook, Ivanishvili is
a close Kremlin ally who made
his money in Russia. Ivanishvili
(who is not an elected official)
threatened retribution against
domestic critics and opposition
parties. Along this path lies “the
death of Georgia’s democracy, and
a descent into dictatorship”.
More than 80% of Georgians want to join the EU, said
Gabriel Gavin on Politico (Brussels), so why is Georgian Dream
doing this? First, because it thinks it can get away with it: the
opposition is fractured, and the law sailed through parliament
by 83-23 votes last week. Another explanation is that the party
is worried about the outcome of parliamentary elections in the
autumn, said Anton Filippov in Ukrainska Pravda (Kyiv). This
is going to be the first election without first-past-the-post voting,
judicial and electoral reforms. Both will undermine its position,
so it wants control over the press. Another popular theory is
that Ivanishvili is doing this because Putin told him to. Many in
the opposition see it as “a final turn by Tbilisi towards Russia”.
You can bet the Kremlin is watching the protests closely, said
Luke Coffey in Foreign Affairs. “The moment it appears that
Georgian Dream is losing its grip on power”, it’s likely that
Moscow will intervene. Such unrest, in “the Kremlin’s obsessive
worldview, would be a ‘colour revolution’ conspiratorially
engineered by the West”. It has acted in similar situations in
Ukraine. Russia already occupies 20% of Georgian territory. In
the most extreme scenario, it could invade “to bring Georgia
fully into the Kremlin’s orbit”. If that seems unlikely, so did
the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. “Nothing can be ruled out.”

Iran’s rulers are forever imposing new “red lines” that govern life there, says Samira Mohyeddin. The
IRAN latest crime they’ve come up with is “corrupting the Earth”. That’s the implausible-sounding offence
that Toomaj Salehi, the hugely popular 33-year-old rapper, has been jailed for. Salehi has never been
“Corrupting able to perform his songs about clerical corruption live in Iran, yet has nonetheless become the voice,
the Earth” is a not just for his generation, but for all Iranians: pensioners have joined protests calling for his release;
the Iranian diaspora has held similar demonstrations in cities across the world. In 2022 he was jailed
capital offence for his support for women’s rights, and when released, he broadcast a video revealing he had been
tortured. That he has now been arrested again for this absurd crime tells us much about the “geriatric
The Globe & Mail men and mindset that rule Iran”. It had been thought that the outpouring of support for his cause
(Toronto) would facilitate his release, that the ayatollahs would realise that to keep him in jail would cost them
whatever vestiges of support they still enjoy. But no. Defying the supreme court, which had asked
for some of the charges against him to be dropped, the regime has now sentenced him to death.

GERMANY Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which loves to accuse other parties
of wrongdoing, is now having to fend off damaging scandals of its own, says Nikolaus Blome.
Its troubles began in January, when the revelation that its leaders had been discussing the forced
The far-right deportation of foreign-born Germans triggered a steep slide in its poll ratings. Then, in early April,
party that can one of its MPs, Petr Bystron, found himself desperately having to deny that he’d pocketed €20,000
to spread Russian disinformation. Now comes an even bigger scandal: the AfD’s lead candidate in
do no wrong the forthcoming EU elections, Maximilian Krah, has been accused of taking payments from Russia,
and his closest aide has been arrested for spying for Beijing. In any other party such people would
Der Spiegel have been suspended, yet AfD leaders dismiss the allegations as smears. Do they take voters for
(Hamburg) fools? This is a party that derides the “presumption of innocence” as a hang-up of “the wimps of
the system parties and the left-green polluted media”. Yet when it is itself accused of serious wrongs,
it shrieks that it has been smeared. That is not just hugely hypocritical, it’s also “very funny”.

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 Health & Science NEWS 19

What the scientists are saying…

Personalised jab for skin cancer
Doctors in the UK have begun a phase-
three trial of the world’s first
“personalised” vaccine against the
deadliest form of skin cancer. For the
trial, led by a team at University College
London Hospital, scores of patients in
Britain will have jabs designed to stop their
cancer from returning. Based on mRNA
technology, the treatment works by
priming the patient’s immune system
to identify the specific proteins known
as neoantigens that are found on their
tumour – so that they attack any cells
bearing them. To create the custom-made
treatment, scientists analyse tissue from the
tumour extracted during surgery; the idea
is that the jab will lead to any cancer cells
left behind after the surgery being wiped
out, so that the cancer cannot return. In
phase-two trials, those who received the
vaccine alongside an immunotherapy drug
called Keytruda were half as likely to die
or have their cancer return as those given
the drug alone. For this final stage of
testing, the vaccine will be given to more
than 1,000 patients around the world.
Why you should take the stairs
It’s tempting to wait for the lift, but taking
the stairs could just save your life, a study
has found. Researchers analysed data from
nine studies on the topic involving almost
500,000 people aged 35 to 84. They found
that participants who reported regularly
taking the stairs had fewer heart attacks
and strokes than those who did not, and
had a 24% lower risk of early death. The
data indicated that the health benefits
increase in line with the number of stairs
climbed. More research is needed to
confirm this, said study author Dr Sophie
Paddock, of the University of East Anglia,
but what the study does show is that even
Rakus was observed using medicinal plants
brief bursts of physical activity can be
beneficial for heart health. So “whether at
work, home, or elsewhere, take the stairs”.
A “bioplastic” that eats itself
One of the properties of plastic that makes
it so very useful – its strength – also makes
it difficult to break down: a water bottle
made from PET, for example, takes about
450 years to decompose. Now, however,
scientists have found that it’s possible to
greatly speed up that process, by adding
plastic-eating bacteria to the production
process. A team from the University of
California San Diego took spores from
a strain of Bacillus subtilis, which has
a natural ability to degrade polymers.
They selected bacterial spores (a dormant
form of bacteria) because of their ability to
withstand extreme conditions, and then by
repeatedly exposing them to heat, created
a strain that was capable of surviving the
temperatures required to make plastic. For
the next step, they mixed these spores with
molten TPU (a soft plastic used in memory
foam) and fashioned them into thin strips.
This bioplastic turned out to be stronger
than normal TPU – and far more
degradable. When it was put in sterile
compost (without other microbes), the
spores started to germinate, and within five
months, 90% of the plastic had degraded,
says the report in Nature Communications.
The team is now trying to scale the process
up to industrial levels, and to apply it to
other types of commercial plastic.
Orangutan treats own wound
In a first for a wild animal, an orangutan
has been filmed applying a plant with
known pain-relieving properties to an
open wound. The orangutan, which lives
in the Gunung Leuser National Park on
the Indonesian island of Sumatra, was
observed plucking and chewing the leaves
of a type of climbing vine not usually eaten
by orangutans, but which is widely used by
people in Southeast Asia to treat pain and
inflammation. The adult male, known as
Rakus, then repeatedly used his fingers to
apply the juices to the wound on his face,
before covering it with the chewed plant.
Species of great ape have in the past been
seen foraging for medicinal plants and
swallowing the leaves; they’ve also been
seen rubbing themselves with the paste
of a chewed-up plant that humans use to
treat joint pain. But none had been seen
treating a wound in this way, said study
co-author Dr Isabelle Laumer, of the Max
Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour in
Germany. Apparently, the treatment did
the trick: the wound did not appear to
become infected, and within days it had
closed over. Rakus, who is thought to be
in his 30s, probably sustained the injury
in a fight with other males.

The spiders heading our way Underage drinking

Exotic spiders are flourishing in Britain, More than a third of children in England
owing to global warming making the aged 11 say they have had an alcoholic
climate more hospitable, and international drink – a higher proportion than in any
trade and travel making it easy for them to other of 44 countries examined for a
hitch a ride. Thanks to their mild climates, report by the WHO. In France, which
Cornwall and Devon are particular hot came 12th on the list, the figure was
25% for boys and about 17% for girls.
spots, with recent finds including a tiny Across all the countries studied, in
jumping spider called Anasaitis milesae. It Europe, central Asia and Canada, the
was probably imported from the Caribbean average proportion of 11-year-olds who
on plants, but was unknown to science had had a drink was 15%. The survey
until it was found on the University of also found that 12% of 13-year-old girls
Exeter’s campus in Penryn. Just 3mm to in England, and 9% of boys of that age,
4mm long, it “looks like a bit of old 1970s had been drunk at least twice in their
Grey house spider: now established in UK
carpet – brown and white and patterned”, lives. More than half of 15-year-old girls
Tylan Berry, of the British Arachnological Society, told The Guardian. had drunk alcohol in the past 30 days,
and around 30% of them had vaped, as
Badumna longinqua, or the grey house spider, normally found in Australia and had 17% of 15-year-old boys. The figures,
New Zealand, is particularly well established in Plymouth. Other arrivals include the which are from 2022, represent a sharp
false wolf spider, which is thought to have come over with holidaymakers returning rise from the last time the survey was
from Mediterranean areas. Around 50 non-native species have been recorded in all, done, in 2018. Back then, only 17% of
and as they spread, they are likely to compete with native species – some 15% of 11-year-old girls and 23% of 11-year-old
which are already threatened with extinction. boys said they had tried alcohol.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

20 NEWS Talking points
Campus unrest: are the protests backfiring?
On 17 April, a handful of tents appeared
on a patch of lawn on the campus of
Columbia University in New York, said
Jack Clover in The Times. That same day,
the college’s president, Minouche Shafik,
a former deputy governor of the Bank of
England, appeared before a congressional
committee, where Republicans accused
her of not having done enough to combat
antisemitism on campus since the start of
the war in Gaza. The next day, she called
in the NYPD to clear the pro-Palestinian
encampment. Some 100 students were
arrested, in an operation (condemned by
some as heavy handed) that “inflamed”
similar protests at campuses across the A pro-Palestinian protester at Penn State University trend that needs cracking down on by
country. Since then, some 2,000 people
have been arrested; Columbia has had to cancel its graduation
ceremonies; and copycat protests have sprung up at universities
in the UK, demanding similar concessions, notably the divestment
of university funds from Israel-linked companies.
So far, the British protests have been relatively muted, said
Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. They may peter out as the term
winds down. In the US, though, I am afraid we can expect to hear
a lot more noise from “entitled”, keffiyeh-appropriating students,
many of whom seem more concerned
about drawing attention to their own
revolutionary cosplay than the plight of “The youngsters are just doing
Gaza’s civilian population. Last month, what students do, and standing
one PhD student (dubbed Keffiyeh
Karen on social media) went so far as
up for what they believe in”
to demand “basic humanitarian aid” for
protesters at Columbia who’d smashed their way into the
building (see page 15) because they had paid for meal plans.
“The revolution will be televised,” we used to say in the 1960s. It
didn’t occur to us that “it should also be catered”. Other students
interviewed have seemed to scarcely know what cause it is they
are protesting, or what their slogans mean. At least, we have to
hope when they chant “river to the sea...” they don’t realise that
this is widely seen as a call to wipe out the state of Israel.
Nor are their demands realistic, said Tim Marshall on Reaction.
It’s not always possible to weed specific firms out of a huge stock
portfolio. You might have to ditch entire investment funds –
which “raises another issue”: trustees have a duty to maximise
returns (to fund scholarships for underprivileged students, among
other things). Dozens of colleges did manage to divest from South
Africa in the 1980s. But it took years, and it was far simpler than
this would be, not least because the Apartheid regime had few
supporters. Boycotting the Jewish state
would be far more fraught. It would likely
lead to legal challenges, and a sharp drop
in alumni donations.
Look, these are college kids, said Natalie
Shutler on Slate. Of course their message is
sometimes muddled; some of them will be
ignorant, confused and self-aggrandising.
And yes, the protests have sometimes
veered into bigotry – against both Jews
and Muslims. The “hateful sloganeering”
should be condemned, but the youngsters
camping in quads and occupying
buildings are not part of a worrying new
police in riot gear. They’re just doing what
students do, and standing up for what they believe in. No doubt,
there are some antisemites among them, said Patrick Cockburn
in The Independent. But the great majority of these students are
simply outraged by the “mass killings” of Palestinians in Gaza
and the West Bank (which are not “excused” by the war crimes
perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October); and are enraged by the way
their president has committed US “arms and political backing”
to an Israeli government “notorious for its extremism”. They
want it to stop, and their protest has right on its side.
Unfortunately, that is not how it’s
coming across to many Americans, said
Dov S. Zakheim in The Hill. They’ve
seen Jewish students being harassed and
accused of complicity in genocide; and
heard protesters support Hamas.
Such behaviour, combined with scenes of mask-wearing students
smashing windows, is likely to have alienated many US citizens
who’d previously sympathised with Gaza’s plight. The protests
may not alter Joe Biden’s stance, said Time: true, it is costing him
support among young voters, but most Americans back Israel’s
war, and even under-30s have many more pressing concerns than
Gaza. This student movement has been likened to the Vietnam
War protests that convulsed America in the 1960s, said Max Boot
in The Washington Post. In truth, it is minuscule by comparison.
But today’s protesters should bear this in mind: historians believe
that it was revulsion about campus unrest, and the sense that
America was out of control, that rallied the “silent majority”
behind Richard Nixon, and allowed him to keep the war going
for four more years. By “re-enacting some of the excesses of
the past”, allowing themselves to be organised by anti-Zionists,
and failing to condemn Hamas’s atrocities, today’s students risk
making the same contribution to Donald Trump’s campaign.

the late Italian PM has claimed. “Vladimir showed me a violent

Pick of the week’s According to Fabrizio Cicchitto,
a former senator, the incident
Gossip took place in 2013, at one of
Putin’s dachas. Putin proposed
side that I had not imagined in
such a kind and rational man,”
Berlusconi reflected afterwards.

Victoria Beckham isn’t known
for her sunny disposition,
but the designer reckons
she smiles more now than she
used to. “In the past I’ve always
looked at those red-carpet
pictures of me and seen a
woman who looks nervous and
insecure,” she told The Sunday
Times. “Everyone else saw a
woman who looked grumpy
and stern – I suppose that’s
how I got the reputation of
being such a miserable cow.”
Silvio Berlusconi did not relish
a hunting trip he once went on
with Vladimir Putin, an ally of
the hunting trip, and when he
spotted two deer, he urged
Berlusconi to take aim at one
of them. “That’s yours. Shoot,”
Putin said. Berlusconi refused,
so the Russian president
shot both, gave Berlusconi
a “satisfied look” and declared:
“Today I will present you with
an extraordinary meal.” He
then sliced into one of the deer,
wrenched out its heart and
offered the hunk of bloodied
flesh to Berlusconi, who was
promptly sick behind a tree.
Boris Johnson wasn’t the only
high-profile figure to forget
to bring photo ID to his local
polling station last week.
Tom Hunt, a Tory MP who’d
also backed the ID rule, had
to arrange an emergency
proxy vote as he was unable
to produce his passport.
He, however, blamed his
dyspraxia. “I do my best but
I do lose things,” he said.
“I find it shocking how Labour
figures locally have sought to
exploit this situation.”

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 Talking points
Metro mayors: an experiment in democracy
When he was chancellor,
George Osborne pushed for
England’s big urban regions to
have their own directly elected
mayors, because he thought
it would serve his party’s
interests, said The Independent.
The idea was that strong
“metro mayors” would
grab the Tories a foothold in
Labour-dominated areas, as
Boris Johnson had done as
London mayor. It hasn’t quite
worked out like that. In last
week’s elections, Labour won Andy Street: defeated
nine out of ten metro-mayor
contests. Some Labour victories verged on the
“North Korean”; in Liverpool City Region,
Labour’s Steve Rotheram took 68%. The results
from two newly created mayoralties, in
particular, will “terrify” Tory MPs because of
what they say about next year’s election, said
Paul Waugh in The i Paper. Labour won in the
key parliamentary battleground of the East
Midlands, and also in York & North Yorkshire,
a traditional Tory heartland and home to Rishi
Sunak’s own constituency.
But whatever your political persuasion, the
good news is that metro mayors are “starting
to transform” politics, said Trevor Phillips in The to power, it should abolish all the metro mayors,
Times. A further blow for the Tories was losing
Andy Street, the former John Lewis boss who’d
been West Midlands mayor since 2017. But
Street, who accepted defeat with grace, embodies that they provide. It a simple slogan: “a mayor
a new strain of impressive regional politician:
Slavery: did it make us rich?
“An awful lot of people” today seem to believe
that slavery made Britain rich, said Rod Liddle
in The Sunday Times. It is, if you think about
it, a strange claim. Slavery has existed since the
dawn of time. Britain exploited slaves only for
a couple of hundred years, and then abolished
slavery. Yet there is a feeling Britain benefitted
from it uniquely – and was “uniquely wicked”.
The Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, has
recently taken to challenging this belief, arguing
in a speech last month that the UK’s wealth is
not entirely down to slavery and colonialism,
and “white privilege or whatever”. Far more
important, she suggested, were Britain’s
institutions – its democracy, rule of law, free
markets and banks. She was, of course, shouted
down. But if you don’t believe her, take a look at
“Imperial Measurement”, a new paper from the
Institute of Economic Affairs, by the economist
Kristian Niemietz. He concludes that, even at its
height, colonial trade only comprised a “small
proportion” of Britain’s economy: from 7% to
15% of GDP. Slavery was even less lucrative.
At its peak, the income from sugar plantations
contributed no more than 2.5% of the UK
economy – less than sheep farming or brewing.
So Britain ran an empire for centuries that, at its
height, occupied nearly a quarter of the world’s
land area, said Will Hutton in The Observer.
NEWS 21
Wit &
a non-partisan pragmatist.
Similarly, the Conservatives’
sole winner, Ben Houchen
Wisdom
in Tees Valley, is so semi- “The problem with people
detached from his party that who have no vices is that
he “conveniently forgot” to you can be sure they’re
wear a Tory rosette on election going to have some pretty
night, and seemingly “couldn’t annoying virtues.”
wait to see the back” of Sunak Elizabeth Taylor, quoted
after an awkward victory in The Knowledge
photocall. For Labour, too, “The world is not driven
Andy Burnham is a self- by greed. It’s driven by envy.
proclaimed “place first, party Envy is a really stupid sin
second” mayor. Increasingly, because it’s the only one
these dynamic, independent- you could never possibly
minded politicians are have any fun at.”
standing up for their “democratic fiefdoms”, Charlie Munger, quoted
no matter who’s in power at Westminster. They on Foundation for
are helping to drain power from the centre, Economic Education
which is a welcome prospect.
“Truth is what you and
I’m all for more decentralisation and less people like you believe, and
partisan politics, said Camilla Cavendish in the can compel others to accept.”
FT. But I’m also in favour of accountability and John Gray, quoted in
simplicity. England and Wales have just voted for The Spectator
“a bewildering mosaic” of ten metro mayors, 37 “You can be a little
police and crime commissioners and 2,636 local ungrammatical if you
councillors. Yet “few normal people can say come from the right part
what these roles are responsible for or how they of the country.”
relate to the local MP”. When Labour returns Robert Frost, quoted
in Forbes
said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. They
“Why do we need to
should be replaced by mayors who actually run
make the rich richer to
their local authorities, and the crucial services
make them work harder,
but make the poor poorer
for every town and city, now. A proper one.”
for the same purpose?”
Ha-Joon Chang, quoted
in The New York Times
“Technology is anything
Yet the economic impact was “negligible”? Pull that was invented after
the other one. In the 18th century, Lancashire you were born, everything
emerged as Europe’s pre-eminent cotton else is just stuff.”
manufacturing area. All this began a few miles Alan Kay, quoted
from Britain’s largest slave port, Liverpool, on BBC News
and the factories used barbadense cotton from “The trouble with some
Barbados and other slave plantations in the women is they get all
West Indies. Of course, inventions – the spinning excited about nothing,
jenny, the water frame – made manufacture at and then they marry him.”
scale possible. But the finance for investing in Cher, quoted on
these expensive machines came from Liverpool The Huffington Post
merchants whose fortunes “originated in
transatlantic trade”. Slavery lies “at the heart” “Inside every revolutionary
of Britain’s early industrialisation: it had an there is a policeman.”
important role in shipping, banking and Gustave Flaubert, quoted
insurance. “No one argues that slavery caused in The Knowledge
the Industrial Revolution.” But to “minimise
and abstract” it, as Niemietz has done, is wrong.
Statistic of the week
Slavery was abhorrent, said Doug Stokes in The Almost 4% of children are
Critic. But the record shows that it was a fairly absent from secondary school
small sector. In 1792, the busiest year of the at least 50% of the time; that
British slave trade, there were 204 slave ships amounts to 157,000 children –
of a total 14,334 registered in Britain. It made triple the number before the
pandemic. In Cumbria, 8% of
some people rich; but it doesn’t explain Britain’s
children were severely absent
wealth. Without slavery and the sugar industry, last summer, whereas in parts
the economic historian Joel Mokyr remarked, of London, the figure was
“Britain would have had to drink bitter tea, but closer to 2%.
it would still have had an Industrial Revolution, The Times
if perhaps at a marginally slower pace”.
11 May 2024 THE WEEK
22 NEWS Sport
Formula 1: victory at last for a rising British talent
Three days before the Miami Grand Prix,
Lando Norris “sat in the McLaren hospitality
suite” and admitted the “circuit was not one
of his favourites”, said Molly Hudson in The
Times. Yet the British driver is likely to have
revised that opinion in the wake of Sunday’s
race. Competing in his 110th Grand Prix,
“the 24-year-old produced a mature, calm
drive to register his first Formula 1 race
victory”. Long hailed as a major talent, Norris
has had an unusual number of near misses
since making his debut in 2019, said Tom
Cary in The Daily Telegraph. Before Sunday’s Norris: no longer feeling cursed
triumph, he had been on the podium 15 times
– the most in F1 history without a win – and had finished second
on eight occasions. At times, he’d had such bad luck he “must
have felt cursed”. At the 2021 Russian Grand Prix he’d led for
most of the race but, having “stayed on dry tyres as rain fell in
the final laps”, was “caught at the death by Lewis Hamilton”.
Like many F1 drivers, Norris owes his start in the sport to his
wealthy parents, said Sathnam Sanghera in The Times. His
father, Adam Norris, is an investor thought to be worth more
than £200m. Norris grew up in Somerset and attended Millfield
School, but his already intense motorsport commitments meant he the public alike, this victory was a long-overdue “vindication”.
didn’t do his GCSEs. By his mid-teens, he was regularly winning
major go-karting competitions. After making the transition to car
racing, Norris joined McLaren’s young-driver
programme aged 17, and made his F1 debut
two years later, said Tom Cary. The Woking-
based team were emerging from a spell in the
doldrums, a period McLaren’s then-boss,
Éric Boullier, characterised as a “proper
disaster”. But recently their performances
have improved, and they’re “starting to look
seriously competitive again”.
Norris admittedly got lucky on Sunday with
the timing of a safety car, said Giles Richards
in The Guardian. When it was called, on lap
29, he alone of the leading drivers had yet
to change tyres – and so he was in the lead. Normally, that
advantage would have been temporary, but because he could
pit with the safety car out, he lost far less time than usual, and
remained ahead of the field when normal racing resumed. The
remainder of the race was “impossibly tense”, as second-placed
Max Verstappen loomed in Norris’s mirrors, desperately
looking for a chance to overtake. But under the most “intense,
pressurised” conditions of his career, Norris held firm for 24 laps,
and closed out the race “like a champion”. For someone who
has always been “much admired” by his fellow drivers and
Finally, Norris has shown the world that he has “the skill and
verve to compete with the best”, in fact even better – the very best.

Snooker: a new “grandmaster of the baize” at the Crucible

The final of this year’s Snooker World Championship Wilson’s path to the top has not been
was the first since 2005 “to have a guaranteed first- straightforward, said Aaron Bower in The Guardian.
time winner”, said Elgan Alderman in The Times. It The 32-year-old, who had dreamed of a snooker
pitted English 12th seed Kyren Wilson – a defeated career since early childhood, initially found life
finalist in 2020 – against Welsh qualifier Jak Jones. on the tour brutally tough – so much so that after
Jones had “needed almost 46 hours of play to reach a solitary season he returned to his home town of
his first major final” – nearly double the amount Kettering and combined practice with a job behind
required by his opponent – and “he was on fumes” a bar. Over the next few years, as he struggled to
as the match began: as a result, he lost the opening re-establish himself on the tour, he experienced
seven frames. Though he displayed great “gumption” many “bumps in the road”, and often considered
thereafter, Jones could never recover from his terrible quitting the sport. Even this year, his form has
start, and Wilson maintained a significant lead been indifferent, and “he was far from one of the
throughout, said Charles Richardson in The Daily favourites”. Yet his path was cleared by a string
Telegraph. When, on Monday night, the Englishman Wilson: holding his nerve of upsets – Ronnie O’Sullivan and Judd Trump
went 17-11 up, the match seemed as good as over, both lost in the quarter-finals – and he seized this
yet Jones continued to battle, and reeled off the next three frames opportunity to become “a new grandmaster of the baize”. After
– even coming close to a maximum 147 break in one. Under winning on Monday, he burst into tears, turned to the Crucible
immense pressure, Wilson “held his nerve to clinch the magic 18”. crowd and said: “I will never forget this moment, so thank you.”

A joyous return to the top for the “Tractor Boys”
There were scenes of “sheer,
unadulterated joy” on Saturday,
as Ipswich Town were promoted
to the Premier League after an
absence of 22 years, said Joe
Bernstein in the Daily Mail. The
Suffolk team’s 2-0 victory over
Huddersfield ensured they finish
second in the Championship,
guaranteeing a place in the top McKenna: “inspirational”
flight next season.
It has been quite the turnaround for the
“Tractor Boys”, who two years ago were in
League One, said Jason Burt in The Daily
Telegraph. But under manager Kieran McKenna,
they’ve become only the fifth side in history to
gain back-to-back promotions to the top tier.
What makes the achievement even more
remarkable is that they’ve done so without
transforming their squad: on Saturday, they
beat Huddersfield with
“effectively the same side”
as competed in League One.
McKenna, 37, has proved
himself inspirational, said
Martin Samuel in The Times. In
his previous job, as a first-team
coach at Manchester United, he
was sometimes dismissed as
an “over-promoted PE teacher”
– a reference to his sports
science degree from Loughborough University.
But at Ipswich he has thrived, and in many ways
it’s odd that he’ll still be managing Ipswich next
season. Times were when the “Premier League
elite” would have targeted such a manager. But
such is the “snobbery around our game now”
that “doing the best job in the English game
consistently across two seasons just doesn’t
count for as much anymore”.
Sporting headlines
Tennis Andrey Rublev battled
a virus to win the Madrid
Open, beating Felix Auger-
Aliassime in the final. In the
women’s final, Iga Świątek
saved three match points
against Aryna Sabalenka
before winning 7-5, 4-6, 7-6.
Rugby union Toulouse beat
Harlequins 38-26, to set up
a Champions Cup final
against Leinster, who beat
Northampton Saints 20-17.
Football In the Premier
League, leaders Arsenal beat
Bournemouth 3-0, while
Manchester City beat Wolves
5-1. Elsewhere, Chelsea beat
West Ham 5-0 and Crystal
Palace beat Man United 4-0.

THE WEEK 11 May 2024


Pick of the week’s correspondence
Vive la différence
To The Times
Your article about the
gastronomic differences
between UK and US armed
forces reminded me of even
greater ones with our friends
across the Channel. The late
Hubert Dunn QC told me years
ago that when he was a young
officer in Suez in 1956, he was
shown a French army cookery
book that had 100 or so
recipes for potatoes. The British
Army’s equivalent offered six:
boiled, mashed, baked, fried,
roasted and chipped.
Years later I came across
an account of the expedition
across central Africa between
1896 and 1898 by Captain
Jean-Baptiste Marchand.
Included in the 100 or so
tonnes of “necessities” for this
long and perilous journey were
generous quantities of paté de
foie gras, galantine laced with
truffles and tripes à la mode
de Caen. This thirsty work also
required 1,300 litres of claret,
25 bottles of cognac, 50 of
Pernod and an unspecified
amount of champagne.
As Churchill would remind
the Commons in 1942: “The
Almighty, in his infinite
wisdom, did not see fit to
create Frenchmen in the
image of Englishmen.”
Tony Lawton, York
Le Pen and the sword
To The Times
Adam Sage’s article (“French
love of duelling sets scene for
Paris Olympics”) reminds us
just how recently duelling
continued in France. Many
of these contests were filmed,
and combatants tended to use
the épée rather than pistols,
so duels usually ended in
minor cuts rather than death.
Some witnesses of such
events are still alive today. In
1958, the Marquis de Cuevas,
a theatre producer, and Serge
Lifar duelled after an argument
over choreography. De
Cuevas’s second was the
politician Jean-Marie Le Pen,
who can be seen in the photos.
Alun Evans, London
Tides of history
To The Times
If the Rwanda plan is a flight
of fancy, it is no more so than
believing there is anything the
Government can do to make
people more secure in their
● Letters have been edited
LETTERS 23
Exchange of the week to its left. Yet the response of a
number of Tories is to demand
A question of identification that the Government move to
the right, focusing not on the
To The Guardian haves but on the Havants.
I cannot agree with Andy Beckett’s condemnation of voter What was the adjective John
ID. The basic principle of voter ID is not objectionable: Stuart Mill famously applied
voter ID laws are commonplace across Europe. Are all to the Conservative Party?
these EU members also enemies of democracy? He called it the stupid party.
Furthermore, it is difficult to square claims that the Jonathan Allum, Amersham,
progressive vote was suppressed with the fact that the Buckinghamshire
Conservative vote collapsed and Labour – and left-wing
politics in general – were hugely successful last week. A wizard idea
Clearly, the hypothetical fears that the progressive vote To The Times
would be curtailed were simply not borne out in reality. Daniel Radcliffe says that he
Anecdotes of people being turned away for lack of ID is “really sad” about his fallout
are mostly just a small handful of dozy Tories forgetting their with J.K. Rowling over her
own laws, which does not make an election-rigging conspiracy. transgender views, adding that
Voter ID is simple to apply and reinforces confidence in our it would have shown “immense
election security. It demonstrably works well and should stay. cowardice” not to have said
Robert Frazer, Salford, Lancashire something. He might consider
he could have shown immense
To The Guardian bravery by disagreeing with her
Andy Beckett is right to highlight the “at least two million views but robustly defending
Britons” who have “no acceptable voter ID at all”. As a local her right to hold them.
election candidate standing on Thursday to retain my seat, Thomas Heaton, Chorley,
I spoke to a handful of people on polling day who were Lancashire
registered to vote but didn’t have photo ID. Given that I only
spoke to a small minority on polling day, it’s hard to know How the other half lives
exactly how many other people were affected. To The Guardian
Not everyone is politically engaged enough to plan in According to Polly Toynbee,
advance – voting can be a spur-of-the-moment decision on “younger generations are
the day – but for each person, they were denied the right refusing to turn Tory as they
to vote and this won’t form part of any official record. age, the way previous cohorts
Maureen McLaughlin, Warrington, Cheshire reliably did”. The problem with
this is that cohorts don’t vote,
homelands. No amount of 2019 election, Boris Johnson people do. And the people who
money is likely to appease the had less than 44% of the vote have voted Labour tend to be
warring factions in Sudan, or but gained 56% of the seats. from socioeconomic groups
create a homeland for Iraqi Another result is that both whose members die younger.
Kurds, or reconcile Palestinians parties are, in effect, coalitions. My father, who spent much
and West Bank settlers, or Their prime objective is to hold of his working life down the
provide a future for the on to power, which means their pit, died in 1980. He was born
exploding populations of sub- extremists have to be placated. on the same day as Captain
Saharan states sliding under Therefore, they do what is best Sir Tom Moore. The former
Russian influence. Investing for their party, rather than voted in 11 general elections;
in better border control might what is best for the country. the latter in 21. Demographics
help; but then, ultimately, not If we had a proportional are a neglected feature of
even the mighty legions of representation system, it’s likely democracy. Dying is not
Rome could withstand it would result in coalition. But a defection to the Tories.
the barbarian hordes. that would require government Peter Taylor, Tynemouth,
Sometimes we just have to cooperate and compromise Tyne and Wear
to accept that we are helpless – to the benefit of us all.
before the tides of history. Susan Alexander,
Dominic Kirkham, Manchester South Gloucestershire
In praise of PR The haves and Havants
To The Independent To the Financial Times
I hold no love for the Tories, Your editorial is right – last
but the mess that they are in is, week’s election results were
in part, the fault of our system about as bad for Rishi Sunak
of government. They are, of as they could have been.
course, largely responsible for His party lost a by-election,
that, since they have colluded one of the only two
with Labour in persisting with mayoralties it held, and
the first-past-the-post system. almost half the council
One of the effects of that seats in which it stood.
is that one of them usually has The vast bulk of these “Why do you feel the need
to return the stick every time
a majority of the parliamentary losses, with the exception of he throws it?”
seats but always with a two council seats in the town
minority of the vote. In the of Havant, were to parties © THE SPECTATOR
11 May 2024 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
All That Glitters
by Orlando Whitfield
Profile 336pp £20
The Week Bookshop £15.99
In 2020, the American art dealer Inigo
Philbrick was arrested by the FBI on the
Pacific island of Vanuatu “and brought to
Manhattan in handcuffs”, said Kathryn
Hughes in The Guardian. The 33-year-old
was “wanted for his part in one of the biggest
art frauds in history”: through a complicated
series of scams, including forging legal
documents and “double-dealing priceless
works of art”, he was accused of duping
art investors out of around $86m. Philbrick
(pictured) pleaded guilty, and was sentenced to seven years in
prison; he served just four, and was released earlier this year.
Now, Philbrick’s former friend and business partner, Orlando
Whitfield, has written a “compulsively readable” memoir, which
charts his rise and fall in “thrilling detail”.
The pair became friends in the late 2000s when both were
studying art history at Goldsmiths’ College, London, said
Georgina Adam in Literary Review. Both came from privileged
arty backgrounds: Whitfield’s dad had run Christie’s; Philbrick’s
was head of a museum in Connecticut. While still undergraduates,
25
they set up their own dealership – I & O Fine
Art – and Whitfield recounts many “amusing
anecdotes” from this time, including their
unsuccessful attempt to “prise a Bansky off
a wall and sell it”. Philbrick rapidly ascended
to the “upper echelons of the art world”,
befriending powerful figures such as Jay
Jopling and Sir Norman Rosenthal. While
Whitfield was involved in his early dealings,
the pair increasingly drifted apart: “I came
to feel like a parvenu around him, a Nick
Carraway to his Jay Gatsby,” Whitfield
recalls. By the time the “edifice came crashing
down in 2018”, when Philbrick sold a Rudolf
Stingel portrait of Picasso “not once but three
times”, they were barely on speaking terms.
All this is a “fascinating story”, said Susie
Goldsbrough in The Times. So it’s a shame
that Whitfield tells it so ineptly. “Majestically
self-regarding” and lacking in self-awareness,
he offers only limited insights into the “murky” art world, and
nor does he reveal much about the motivations of his “high-life-
loving” friend, for whom he was clearly always a “useful idiot”.
I found the book engaging and full of “telling moments”, said
Philip Hook in The Daily Telegraph – such as when a Goldman
Sachs trader admiringly lists practices common in the art world
(acting on inside information, artificially inflating prices) which
are forbidden on the trading floor. As for Philbrick’s motivations,
he himself put it best. When a judge asked him why he committed
his crimes, he simply replied: “For money, your honour.”

Magic Pill
by Johann Hari
Bloomsbury 336pp £20
The Week Bookshop £15.99
When a friend had a fatal heart attack in
her mid-40s, the journalist Johann Hari
made a “snap decision” to start injecting
the weight-loss drug Ozempic, said James
Le Fanu in Literary Review. Hari, who
had long struggled with his weight, knew
that Ozempic (pictured) – which had originally been licensed as a diabetes
medication – had “become a phenomenon” thanks to its “dramatic effects and
endorsements from the rich and famous”. Sure enough, Hari noticed its impact
immediately: served his usual breakfast at his local café – a large toasted bun
filled with chicken and mayonnaise – he felt full after a few bites. Within six
months, he was a stone-and-a-half lighter. But he also felt “pensive and tense”,
“emotionally dulled”, and began to worry about the drug’s “less pleasing
effects”. He has now written Magic Pill, which explores the impact of the new
weight-loss drugs. Written with “considerable verve”, it seems destined (like
Hari’s previous books) to become a bestseller.
These drugs are a “big deal”, said Tom Chivers in The Guardian. Sales have
been “astronomical”, and Novo Nordisk, Ozempic’s manufacturer, is “now the
most valuable company in Europe”. A serious book on them would be welcome,
but Hari has “failed to write it”. In 2012, he left his job at The Independent after
fabricating quotes and anonymously smearing rivals. And plenty here gives cause
for concern – from Hari’s shaky grasp of science (he doesn’t seem to know what
genes are) to his reliance on “convenient quotes from pseudonymous friends”.
I, too, was sceptical at first, said Paul Nuki in The Daily Telegraph. But Magic
Pill won me over: it is both “wonderfully accessible” and even-handed. Hari is
also “excellent” on the “booming ultra-processed food industry” – which creates
the need for so many to resort to weight-loss drugs in the first place.
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm
Novel of the week
The Ministry of Time
by Kaliane Bradley
Sceptre 335pp £16.99
The Week Bookshop £13.99
“It is only May,” said Ed Cumming in Literary
Review, “but Kaliane Bradley’s The Ministry of
Time might well be the loudest debut of the year.”
Sold in 20 languages, and soon to be adapted
by the BBC, it is a “gleeful romp across genres”
that “might have been specially bred to leap
into holiday-bound tote bags”. In a near-future
Britain where time travel is possible, the
government has established a Ministry of Time,
which recruits “expats” from different historical
eras to undertake various tasks. The narrator, an
unnamed British-Cambodian woman, works for
the ministry as a “bridge”, or expat-minder, and
is assigned Graham Gore, a real-life polar
explorer who perished c.1847 on HMS Terror.
This is not only a sci-fi thriller, but a romcom
too, said Ella Risbridger in The Guardian:
despite their 200-year age gap, Gore and the
narrator fall in love. Bradley has revealed that
she began it as “joke” for her friends, and it
does feel like it was “written for pleasure”: while
it tackles serious subjects, these are never at the
expense of the story. The result is a “joy to read”,
a “summer romp that also sparks real thought”.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

 26 ARTS Drama & Music
Theatre: The Buddha of Suburbia
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon (01789-331111). Until 1 June Running time: 2hrs 50mins ★★★★
Hanif Kureishi, who was left And the superb cast bring great
tetraplegic by a fall in Rome in “warmth, pain and humanity”
2022, has “spoken movingly” to their characters – led by Dee
about the sustenance he has Ahluwalia, who’s “outstanding”
drawn from the prospect of as Karim: funny, vulnerable and
this RSC staging of his debut charismatic. Yet the “episodic
novel, The Buddha of Suburbia nature of the piece does begin to
(1990), a coming-of-age tale tell: it feels busy, overstuffed and
set in 1970s London. So it’s starts to sag towards the end”.
a relief and a pleasure, said Even with a running time of
Dominic Cavendish in The Daily almost three hours, Rice doesn’t
Telegraph, to be able to report manage to pack everything in,
that director Emma Rice, who said Dominic Maxwell in The
also adapted the book, “has Sunday Times. Admirers of the
nailed it”, creating a funny, book may miss key aspects of
engrossing evening that you’ll the story about Charlie, Karim’s
leave feeling on a “rare high”. An “orgiastic odyssey” with a “playful, kaleidoscopic quality” punk friend. They may also find
Studded with comic sex scenes the edgy energy of the novel
and the pop music of the period, it is a “glorious” production, somewhat dissipated, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But
said Clive Davis in The Times. I found the novel’s prose “laborious what’s left is a lovable play, filled with deadpan humour and
at times”, but this staging is “preternaturally light and nimble”, joyful theatricality. “Angela Carter hailed Kureishi’s novel for
combining as it does the “knowing satire of the original with its humour and heart: this show comes with bundles of both.”
an extraordinarily fluid theatrical language”.
For a fairly short novel, The Buddha of Suburbia is a “big The week’s other opening
and unwieldy thing”, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. An Much Ado About Nothing Shakespeare’s Globe, London SE1
incident-packed, “orgiastic odyssey”, it follows Karim, a mixed- (020-7401 9919). In rep to 24 August
race bisexual teenager, from suburban Bromley to the London The Globe’s summer season gets off to a sunny, controversy-free
stage, and on to “druggy excess” in New York. This production, start with a fleet and funny Much Ado. Sean Holmes’s staging
for which Kureishi is credited as co-adaptor, has a “playful, features ravishing Elizabethan costumes, as well as entrancing
kaleidoscopic quality”, said Sarah Hemming in the FT. The period music, yet still feels “light and modern” (Guardian).
costumes and choreography revel in the period setting.

Albums of the week: three new releases

Yunchan Lim: Pet Shop Boys: St. Vincent:
Chopin Études Nonetheless All Born
Op. 10 & Op. 25 Parlophone Screaming
Decca £11 Total Pleasure
£13 Records/Virgin
£11

At the tender age of 20, South Korea’s
Yunchan Lim has secured a global
reputation as a “prodigiously gifted,
immensely exciting pianist”, said Andrew
Clements in The Guardian. Now he has
produced his debut studio recording –
“thrilling performances of Chopin’s studies,
the technique dazzlingly immaculate and
the musical impulses propelling it often
startlingly original”. If there are moments
of youthful impetuosity, they are few and
forgivable: the more consistent impression
is one of breathtaking brilliance.
It’s fascinating, said Richard Fairman in
the FT, to compare Lim’s recordings with
those of Maurizio Pollini, the late Italian
pianist whose Chopin Études remain a lofty
benchmark. It turns out that Pollini and Lim
“are polar opposites: where Pollini is cool-
headed perfection, Lim searches out
character, emotion, variety.” Lim “cannot
equal Pollini’s exact matching of tone and
© STEVE TANNER
It’s almost 40 years since their global hit
West End Girls introduced Neil Tennant and
his synth-playing partner Chris Lowe as a
“delicately calibrated hit-making machine”,
said Neil McCormick in The Daily Telegraph.
In the intervening decades, the duo’s lush
electro-pop sound – gleaming synthesisers,
luscious strings, parping horns and techno
beats – has expanded and deepened,
and their latest album is typically good:
“clever, fun, and at times very touching”.
On Nonetheless, the Pet Shop Boys
“refine and update the sound of their late-
80s imperial era”, said Damien Morris in
The Observer. It’s a fan-pleasing collection
that combines the simplicity of the band’s
1986 debut, Please, with the lush
orchestration of 1990’s Behaviour. New
London boy, about Tennant’s glam-rock
adolescence, is “gloriously affecting”.
Even better, musically, is the “handbag-
abandoning disco thump” of Loneliness.
For nearly two decades, St. Vincent (aka
Annie Clark) has revelled in a Bowie-esque
“gift for shapeshifting”, said Jordan Bassett
in NME. Her musical alter egos have
included an “asexual Pollyanna”, a latex-
clad dominatrix and, most recently – for
2021’s Daddy’s Home – a character based
on Andy Warhol’s transgender muse
Candy Darling. But on this seventh album,
the first on which she has taken sole charge
of production duties, she has ditched “the
artifice” to make her most generous, and
personal, music to date. At first “bracingly
dark and aggressive”, then more mellow
and lush, it’s invigorating, compelling stuff.
The “raw immediacy” of the music
makes this one of Clark’s best albums to
date, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian.
Her “thrilling guitar playing is at its most
distorted and spiky throughout”; the
songwriting is “restlessly inventive and
packed with ideas”; and the range of

balance on every note”; but he “does not The schlager hit parade doesn’t work so influences and explorations is thrillingly
stint on feelings” and “there is tenderness well, but it’s a rare misfire. “Essentially, eclectic, from Tori Amos and Nine Inch
aplenty. Why not have Lim and Pollini? there are three types of PSB albums: life- Nails to soft rock and electro-funk. This
They both demand to be heard.” changing, great and OK. This one’s great.” is a superb album from a great artist.
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 Film ARTS 27
Ryan Gosling “stole the show as himbo Ken in Barbie”, and he does it “all over again in David
Leitch’s The Fall Guy”, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. “For those who thought Ken should
have his own movie, here it is.” Gosling plays Colt Seavers, a stunt double who is recovering from an
accident on set when he lands a job on a schlocky action movie being directed by his ex, Jody (Emily
Blunt). “Colt is desperate to get back together with her”, but she wants to keep things “profesh”;
and when the film’s lead (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) goes missing, Colt is dispatched to go and find
him. Plot-wise, The Fall Guy “is basically the thinnest of Scooby-Doo mysteries”, but it is strung
out along a series of action set-pieces in which the director, himself a former stunt man, “shows
off his sense of timing and choreography”, while supplying Blunt and Gosling with plenty of “flirty
The Fall Guy banter”. Hollywood doesn’t make many films like this anymore, and the fact that it’s “actually good
2hrs 6mins (12A) is a minor miracle. The downside is it cost $125m, so go see it or they’ll never make another.”
The roles aren’t much of a stretch for Gosling and Blunt, but this is a “gloriously fun” film that
Action comedy starring is “crying out to be enjoyed with a big old bucket of popcorn”, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator.
“It’s also surprisingly interesting about stunt work itself.” Well, it struck me as pretty vacuous, said
Ryan Gosling
Wendy Ide in The Observer. The film (based on a 1980s TV show) is pitched as a celebration of the
and Emily Blunt work of stunt doubles. But there are so many pyrotechnic stunt sequences, you lose sight of the skills
★★★ involved and it ends up as just “empty noise”. The screenplay is so slapdash, you wonder if it has
suffered one too many knocks to the head; and Gosling’s performance feels “curiously half baked”.

The Idea of You
1hr 55mins (15)
Steamy romcom about
a 40-year-old who falls
for a boy band singer
★★★
“Anne Hathaway’s career in Hollywood began 23 years ago” in a film that dramatised a classic
teenage girl fantasy, said Johnny Oleksinski in the New York Post: in The Princess Diaries, she
played a geeky young woman who discovers she is actually royalty. Now, Hathaway has delivered
“a second dose of impossible escapism with The Idea of You”, a steamy Amazon Prime romcom in
which she stars as Solène, a 40-year-old single mother who falls for Hayes, a 24-year-old pop star.
Solène meets this Harry Styles-type character (Nicholas Galitzine), when she takes her daughter to
Coachella, and stumbles into his trailer backstage, having mistaken it for a VIP toilet. “Sparks fly”,
but she then flees and he has to track her down to the art gallery she runs in Los Angeles, thus
setting in motion an unlikely “celeb-and-normie courtship”. The film has bundles of charm,
a “smart script” and succeeds in large part thanks to Hathaway’s very “human” performance.
Hathaway and Galitzine do have chemistry, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, but the story is
“uneven” and “laughably predictable”, providing “loads of ‘rom’” and not enough “‘com’”. It might
have been better, too, if Hathaway looked more credibly middle-aged. “As it is, she is beyond radiant,
gleaming a lot brighter than all the younger females around her. So it’s no great surprise that Hayes
goes weak at the knees” for her. This “ghastly” film was adapted from a “‘mummy porn’ novel” by
the US writer Robinne Lee, and it throbs with “intense ‘fan fiction’ energy”, said Kevin Maher in
The Times. If you were being kind, you might say there were hints here of Notting Hill or Roman
Holiday. But you’re most likely to just wish you could demand your two hours back.

The British director Rose Glass “made a brilliant, disturbing debut with the 2019 psychological
chiller Saint Maud”, said Jonathan Romney in the FT. “She takes an unpredictable side turn with
her second film Love Lies Bleeding – an all-American slice of crime”, heavily laced with violence
and “blazing carnality”. Set in New Mexico at the end of the 1980s, it stars Kristen Stewart as Lou,
the lesbian manager of a rundown gym who is stopped in her tracks when Jackie (Katy O’Brian),
an amateur bodybuilder, blows in en route to Las Vegas. Smitten by Jackie’s “rippling muscles”, Lou
offers her a box of steroids. One “jab in the buttock” later, “red-hot sex ensues”; and soon, Lou and
Jackie are an item. Their relationship comes under pressure, however, when Lou’s sister is beaten up
by her husband, and Jackie takes brutal vengeance. Essentially a “superior B-movie”, the film loses
Love Lies coherence towards the end, but Stewart is good as a “trembling, tarnished waif”, and Anna
Baryshnikov is “nicely excessive” as her “cloyingly insistent admirer”.
Bleeding This “jaw-dropping” film is a “scoff-it-down dollop of outrageous gourmet pulp” shot through
1hr 44mins (15) with the same ambiguity that made Saint Maud so exciting, said Robbie Collin in The Daily
Telegraph. It’s the sort of film you “want to tuck under a mattress: hot, nasty and mouth-wateringly
Gory noir thriller disreputable”. The story unfolds with “wit and dramatic flair”, said Richard Brody in The New
★★★★ Yorker. But as it cuts from plot point to plot point, it forgets to give its two main characters traits,
interests, enthusiasms and backstories – giving rise to a blank “sense of emptiness”.

Shardlake: adaptation of C.J. Sansom’s first Tudor mystery novel

It’s been 20 years since the British novelist C.J.
Sansom, who died last month, sold the screen
rights to his first Shardlake mystery, said Vicky
Jessop in the Evening Standard. Now, Matthew
Shardlake, his “Tudor lawyer-slash-detective”, has
finally “made it to the screen” – and the four-part
series proves “worth the wait”. This is “tightly
plotted, gorgeously atmospheric” television.
The story unfolds in 1537. Thomas Cromwell
(Sean Bean) has been given the job of dissolving
the monasteries, and calls on Shardlake (Arthur
Hughes) for his legal services. But, seeing that
he is capable of more, Cromwell then sends
him to a monastery in Sussex, where an envoy
has been found decapitated. “There isn’t a lot of joy to be found
here”, but the series is satisfyingly tense.
Bean only pops up briefly, and the drama
“never quite kicks into a higher gear”, said Anita
Singh in The Daily Telegraph. But on the plus side,
it avoids “the current vogue for period dramas to
be arch”; and Hughes imbues Shardlake with a
sense of decency “without making him too much
of a goody-two-shoes”. Hughes is good, agreed
Rachel Cooke in The New Statesman. But the
series is “tediously anachronistic. A part of the
monastery is “‘closed for repair’, as if it were a
National Trust property”. A woman talks about the
harassment she has to “deal with”, as if she’s just
Hughes: a sense of decency finished Laura Bates’s Everyday Sexism. And there
is a lot of CGI. We don’t get “Merrye Englande”
but the ”Grand Anywhere we’ve come to know all too well in
the age of streaming, and it bores me to death”.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

28 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week Expressionists
Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, tate.org.uk). Until 20 October
Between 1911 and 1914, an are the clear highlight. The
international collective of painters “turbulent, almost overwhelming”
calling themselves Der Blaue Reiter early abstract works he realised
(“The Blue Rider”) instigated “a from 1912 “inundate the viewer
revolution in modern art”, said with squirming, extra-terrestrial
Daria Hufnagel in The Independent. or microbial forms and fireballs”.
Although based in Munich, the But his earlier, figurative work
movement’s leading lights hailed is captivating, too: a 1910 depiction
from all around Europe and shared of a cow, for instance, transforms
a belief that art could be used to its “boring, bovine” subject “into
express “personal experiences and a mystical creature covered with
spiritual ideas”: they used colour yolky blotches”. Almost as good
and compositional structure not is another cow painting, by Franz
to record objective reality, but to Marc, of a “multicoloured,
evoke mood and feeling. The group coruscating herd”. Sadly, however,
numbered several artists – including the curators seem determined not
the Russian Wassily Kandinsky, to dwell on individual genius.
the German Franz Marc and the Landmark canvases are relegated
Swiss Paul Klee – who would be to side walls, and there are far too
remembered as icons of modernism, many that “I doubt anyone would
plus many others who have since miss”, by the likes of Albert Bloch.
been “overlooked”. Though they
exhibited together just twice, their The show strikes a rather “pious”
efforts paved the way towards tone, said Laura Cumming in The
abstraction and made an immense Observer. But it’s good that some less
impact on the history of art. This well-known expressionists are finally
new exhibition at Tate Modern being given their due in this country.
charts the collective’s “remarkable” A case in point is Gabriele Münter,
story, tracing its emergence, Kandinsky’s pupil and, later, his
evolution and “lasting influence”. Werefkin’s The Red Tree (1910): “alien intensity” lover. Her “mirthfully original”
Mixing masterpieces by the more portrait of fellow artist Alexej
famous expressionists with canvases by its less-remembered Jawlensky imagines him as a “pink-faced” ellipse with “startled
talents, it invites us to rediscover a “transnational” group whose blue dots” for eyes; another likeness of Kandinsky himself sees
work “remains compelling and relevant to this day”. the painter “holding forth” at a dinner table. A wilder talent still
is Marianne Werefkin, whose Alpine scene The Red Tree (1910)
The show contains plenty of “ferociously glowing masterpieces”, shivers with an “alien intensity”, and who paints herself with
said Alastair Sooke in The Daily Telegraph. Many of these “eyes the lurid scarlet of some sci-fi monster”. This is a “rousing”
come courtesy of Kandinsky, whose “incandescent” paintings exhibition of a seminal group of modern artists.

Where to buy… The fugitive’s Auerbach

The Week reviews an A painting by
exhibition in a private gallery Frank Auerbach
estimated to be
Leo Park worth several
million pounds
at Carl Kostyál is to be sold by
the National
Crime Agency
The Swedish painter Leo Park’s (NCA), after
current exhibition at the delightful, it was
wood-panelled Carl Kostyál gallery recovered from
© FONDAZIONE MARIANNE WEREFKIN, MUSEO COMUNALE D’ARTE MODERNA, ASCONA

on Savile Row is not for the faint-
hearted. Drawing heavily on first-wave
surrealism – excellent as they are, some
of the works here are near-larcenous
borrowings from Masson and Dalí –
Beyond Pleasure plunges the visitor
into a weird and frightening world
in which disjointed body parts are
perforated by stylised orifices and
covered with runic tattoos. Park
(b.1980) sets his apparently random
formulations of flesh and bone against
backgrounds that veer from matte
black to generic Magritte-style blue
skies, depicting painted fingernails
as inflamed red traffic lights and rashes
as something like mountain ranges
Figure on Red Background (2023)
glimpsed on Google Earth. Nipples
become lava lamps, bottoms resemble
the slit canvases of the Argentinian-
Italian artist Lucio Fontana. You may
object to the transparent homages, or
to the confrontationally ugly imagery –
but this is compellingly weird painting.
Prices range from $8,500 to $18,000.
12a Savile Row, London W1
(07971-924322). Until 25 May
a convicted money launderer, says
Lanre Bakare in The Guardian. The work –
Albert Street (2009, pictured) – is part of a long-
running series by Auerbach. It depicts a street
in Camden Town, London, where the artist, now
93 and “widely regarded as one of Britain’s
greatest living painters”, has been based for
many decades. The painting was bought in a
private sale in 2017 for £1.6m by Lenn Mayhew-
Lewis, 69, who went on the run in 2023 having
been convicted of money laundering. The
NCA described him as someone who offered
“services that helped criminals blur the origins
of their cash by using multiple companies
to filter payments”. If he does not come
forward, the sale will go ahead. The proceeds
will go to the Home Office and a portion – up
to 50% – will go to the NCA.

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 The List ARTS 29
Best books… Jackie Kay Television
The poet and former Makar of Scotland chooses her favourite books. Programmes
Her new collection, May Day (Picador £10.99), is out now. She will be The Lost Scrolls of
appearing at the Charleston Festival on Thursday 16 May (charleston.org.uk) Pompeii: New Revelations
Professor Alice Roberts
Sula by Toni Morrison, 1973 her collections of poetry of the narrative; it is utterly investigates the work of a
(Vintage £9.99). I love all of and explores motherhood, compelling. It still feels as computer scientist attempting
Toni Morrison’s extraordinary sexuality and her African fresh as anything. Thank to read ancient unopened
work, including her essays. heritage in a startling way. goodness Alice Walker scrolls with the aid of ground­
But Sula is my comfort read. Lorde was a true pioneer – came along and rescued breaking AI software. Sun
Every time I return to it, we are all still playing catch- Hurston from oblivion. 12 May, C5 21:00 (60mins).
I marvel at the depiction up. “It is better to speak The Jennings v Alzheimer’s
of the friendship between remembering, we were never The Fire Next Time by Moving film about the
Sula and Nel, at the creation meant to survive.” James Baldwin, 1963 (Penguin Jennings family, who carry
of the place called the £8.99). James Baldwin is a genetic mutation that causes
“bottom”, at the notion Their Eyes Were Watching another writer whose voice early onset Alzheimer’s,
that without a creative outlet God by Zora Neale Hurston, rings across this century. and their contribution to
Sula’s creativity turned to 1937 (Virago £9.99). A gem I love his novels, particularly Alzheimer’s research. Mon
destruction. So much packed of a book from the Harlem Giovanni’s Room, but this 13 May, BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
in. So rich the prose. Renaissance and, through non-fiction book of two
The Gathering New six­part
its brilliant heroine Janie red-hot essays is as pertinent thriller about a Merseyside
The Black Unicorn by Audre Crawford, the first novel today as it was when it was community rocked by an attack
Lorde, 1978 (Penguin £8.99). I ever read that explores first published. It is urgent on a teenager at an illegal
I return often to Audre Lorde inner consciousness. Zora and clear. Baldwin’s complex rave; each episode is told from
– her essays, Zami, The Neale Hurston is a fabulous understanding of racism in the perspective of a different
Cancer Journals – but this is short-story writer and was all its forms, and of society, character. Tue 14 and Wed 15
the book that stole my heart. a well-known anthropologist. still illuminates, revealing May, C4 21:00 (60mins each).
It is the most unified of all I love this book for the voice the world we live in now.
Storyville: Praying for
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020­3176 3835. For out­of­print books visit biblio.co.uk Armageddon Documentary
about America’s Evangelical
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing Christians, and their impact
on US politics. Tue 14 May,
BBC4 22:00 (90mins).
Showing now
Henry Moore in Miniature is a “delightful” Tokyo Vice Second series
show featuring about 60 pieces from the start of the crime drama about
of Moore’s career through to his final years, a US journalist drawn into
none of which are more than 30cm tall (Daily the violent underworld of
Telegraph). Until 8 September, The Holburne the Yakuza. Tue 14 May, BBC1
22:40 and 23:40 (60mins each).
Museum, Bath (holburne.org).

London Craft Week rolls out in venues across Films

the city, with exhibitions, talks and workshops Clemency (2019) Alfre
Woodard stars in this powerful
on everything from ceramics to millinery. drama about a death­row
Highlights include a demonstration on watch- prison warden, haunted by
making at Jaeger-LeCoultre. 13-19 May, various two executions. Mon 13 May,
venues, London (londoncraftweek.com). Laura Knight’s A Dark Pool, from Now You See Us BBC2 00:01 (105mins).

The RSC hosts the European premiere of in Now You See Us, a new exhibition looking Carlito’s Way (1993) Al
English, the American playwright Sanaz Toossi’s at pioneering women artists across more than Pacino is the ex­con trying to
bittersweet Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, about 400 years. 16 May-13 October, Tate Britain, go straight in Brian De Palma’s
brash 1990s crime thriller.
four Iranian adults learning English. Until London SW1 (tate.org.uk).
Sean Penn co­stars as his
1 June, The Other Place, Stratford-upon-Avon sleazy lawyer. Fri 17 May,
(rsc.org.uk); 5-29 June, Kiln Theatre, London Chalke History Festival returns with the Film4 21:00 (170mins).
NW6 (kilntheatre.com). usual programme of talks, performances and
immersive experiences for all ages. This year’s
Book now speakers include Max Hastings and Bettany New to streaming TV
Artemisia Gentileschi, Angelica Kauffman and Hughes. 24-30 June, Church Farm, Broad
Gwen John are just three of the artists featured Chalke, Wiltshire (chalkefestival.com). Fiasco Entertaining
French mockumentary series
following a film director
The Archers: what happened last week making his debut feature.
Azra meets Lynda, who tells her about Ambridge’s many community events; Azra says she won’t On Netflix.
be getting involved. Chelsea grills Emma on which job offer she should take. Alice wakes to Jakob
banging on the door, sent by a worried Kate. He spots an empty wine bottle and insists he’ll tell The Tattooist of Auschwitz
Kate, but Alice convinces him not to. Chelsea ruffles feathers on her first day at the Tea Room. Jim Well intentioned but
agrees to stay at Ambridge Hall for a night, and encourages Alistair to spend the evening with ultimately “grotesque”
Denise. When their date night doesn’t quite work out, Denise suggests a weekend away. Jakob adaptation of the bestselling,
checks up on Alice, who lies about having talked to her sobriety buddy Lisa. Against George’s
fact-based novel about a love
© MARY MCCARTNEY

wishes, Eddie starts charging visitors for messages from Bartleby the horse. At the pub quiz, Alice
turns up drunk. Shocked, the Aldridges take her home, but on learning that Jakob knew she was affair in the concentration
drinking again, Brian throws him out. George takes Will and Emma out for dinner with his Bartleby camp (Guardian). On Sky
profits. Will asks Emma what she thinks of his name for the business; Emma remains evasive. Atlantic/NOW.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

30 Best properties
Houses mentioned by Nikolaus Pevsner
Gloucestershire:
Chantry Cottage,
Syde. This
characterful Grade
II cottage dates back
to the 14th century
and sits in an idyllic
position close to
Syde, a small
Cotswolds village
between Cirencester
and Cheltenham.
Originally built
as a chapel in
1343, this historic
property was
probably converted
into a house after
the Reformation
in the mid-16th
century. 3 beds,
family bath, shower,
kitchen, dining
room, 2 further
receps, garden,
parking. £1.5m;
Savills (01285-
627550).

Surrey: Great Tangley, Wonersh, Guildford. A substantial wing in this handsome Grade I Tudor-
fronted property with 11th century origins. Main suite, 4 further beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast
room, 2 receps, library, study, garden, parking. OIEO £2.95m; Strutt & Parker (020-7591 2207).
Northumberland:
Dukes House,
Fellside, Hexham.
The north wing of
this fairy-tale manor
house, built in 1873
and set within an
idyllic parkland
setting. It was
described by Pevsner
as a “country retreat
in the romantic-
gothic style”. Period
features include
elaborate stonework,
a circular turret
and castellated bay
window. 4 beds,
family bath,
shower, kitchen,
2 receps, garden,
parking. £550,000;
Finest Properties
(01434-622234).

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

on the market 31
Buckinghamshire:
Old Tile House,
Lillingstone Dayrell.
An impressive Jacobean
house that was
originally the home of
Sir Marmaduke Dayrell.
The property has many
period features and an
award-winning garden
including two lakes and
mature parkland. 7 beds,
4 baths, kitchen, 7
receps, garden, parking.
£2.75m; Knight Frank
(01865-264851).

Kent: Marine House,

Tunbridge Wells. This
townhouse was built
circa 1830, and has a
classical facade believed
to have been finished
with pebbles from the
beach in Brighton.
Main suite, 7 further
beds, 2 baths, kitchen,
2 receps, snug, garden,
parking. OIRO £2m;
Knight Frank (01892-
772947).
Devon: The
Manor House,
Bradninch. Built
in 1547, this
grand Grade I
manor house
is set in 7 acres
and boasts
many original
features, such as
decorative plaster
ceilings and
carved wood
panelling. 6 beds,
2 baths, shower,
kitchen, 5 receps,
study, swimming
pool, landscaped
gardens, lake,
parking, self-
contained 1-bed
flat. £2m;
Wilkinson Grant
(01392-427500).
Buckinghamshire: West Sussex:
The Red House, Amberley.
Wendover. Grade II A timbered
and with Elizabethan thatch cottage
origins, this property dating back to
has an attractive the 1600s. The
Queen Anne facade cottage, which
with Doric pilasters has many period
flanking the entrance. features, is in
Other original the village of
features include Amberley, which
17th century-style is nestled in the
panelling with in the cleft of
moulded and dentil the South
cornices. 6 beds, Downs Way.
2 baths, shower, 2 beds, family
kitchen/breakfast bath, kitchen,
room, dining room, 2 receps, garden,
3 further receps, summer house,
2-bed self-contained outbuildings,
cottage, garden, parking. OIEO
garage. £2.25m; £850,000;
Knight Frank GL & Co
(01494-689261). (01903-742354).

11 May 2024 THE WEEK


What the experts recommend
La Follia 2 Newts Folly, The Square, South
Harting, West Sussex (01730-923831)
There’s an “essential simplicity” to this
small Italian café, in the West Sussex
village of South Harting, says Tom Parker
Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. The room
is “cluttered in the best possible way” –
all fairy lights, antique dressers and
vintage kitchen equipment. And the food,
prepared by chef Lucy Green, is at once
sophisticated and charming. You won’t
find bowls of pasta or tagliata here;
instead, just sandwiches and toasties, as
well as a selection of excellent cicchetti
(small plates). Of the latter, you might be
offered “oozingly lactic” burrata with a
“whisper of chilli and shards of preserved
lemon”; or bruschetta topped with cacio
e pepe beans, in an “inspired take on
the Roman pasta classic”. But it’s the
“mighty” focaccia sandwiches that
most impress: mortadella and burrata
with pistachio pesto and aioli; or an
oozing mozzarella and prosciutto toastie.
Unsurprisingly, the room is “perennially
packed” with appreciative locals. “Book
early, or prepare to wait.”
Joséphine Bouchon 315 Fulham Road,
London SW10 (josephinebouchon.com)
Chef Claude Bosi and his wife, Lucy, have
opened three new restaurants in London
in just over a year, says Jay Rayner in The
Observer. First came Socca in Mayfair,
specialising in Provençal dishes. Next
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Joséphine Bouchon: “achingly old-fashioned”
up was Brooklands on Hyde Park Corner,
which soon “picked up a brace of
Michelin stars”. And now comes the
one I’m most excited about: a Lyonnais
restaurant named after Bosi’s grandmother.
Everything about the place is achingly old-
fashioned: the walls are covered in French
vintage posters, and the wine waiter
comes “armed with a ruler to measure
the amount of the house wine you have
poured from the bottle plonked on the
table”. The cooking fits the mould:
there’s “perfectly dressed” steak tartare,
leeks vinaigrette, and a selection of more
challenging Lyonnais classics, including
brawn and “arse-stinky andouillette”.
33
While you can certainly knock up an
impressive bill here, you can also eat
extremely reasonably – especially if you
stick to the menu de canut (“silk workers’
menu”), which is £29.50 for three
courses. A “beautifully executed act
of remembrance”, Joséphine Bouchon
is a “hand rested lightly on your back,
telling you everything will be alright”.
The Cotley Inn Wambrook, Chard,
Somerset (01460-62348)
The Blackdown Hills, on the Devon-
Somerset border, is a part of the West
Country with “much going for it”, says
William Sitwell in The Daily Telegraph:
it has swathes of ancient woodland, some
pretty hamlets, and “absolutely no phone
signal”. And if you visit, there’s also a
“mighty fine pub”, which is “gloriously
entrenched” in the culture of the region:
many of the ingredients are produced
locally, and even the crockery is fired in
a nearby pottery. Our meal begins with
impressive bar snacks: scampi with a crisp
skin and the “softest flesh”, and deliciously
crisp halloumi fries. The mains that follow
have “precision and poise” – notably a
“beautifully orchestrated” plate of red
mullet with fennel, butter beans and
chorizo – and for pud, there’s a “nice little
frangipane tart”. Service is charming, and
the wine list is “excellent”. We struggled
to tear ourselves away. Lunch for two:
£79, excluding drinks and service.

Recipe of the week: cauliflower caponata

Caponata is a masterclass in balancing sweet, sour and salty, says Anna Jones. It’s most often made with aubergine, which
you have to fry in lots of olive oil first, making it less than ideal for a weeknight. But this buttery cauliflower version is all done
in the oven, and to me it’s just as good as the aubergine one. It has the texture of a stew and can be eaten warm as an
antipasto – as is most common in Italy – on toast, or tossed through pasta.

Serves 4
1kg cauliflower, broken into roughly 4cm florets 3 red onions, peeled and cut into eighths 3 sticks of celery, cut into 2cm pieces
extra-virgin olive oil 3 tbsp white-wine vinegar 2 x 400g tins of plum tomatoes
100g green or black olives, stones removed (I use a mixture of both) 3 tbsp capers 50g raisins
½ a bunch of parsley, leaves picked warm bread, to serve

• Preheat the oven to 220°C/200°C fan. them in your hands as you do so, along
• Put the cauliflower, broken into florets, with 100g of stoned green or black
the 3 red onions (cut into eighths), olives, 3 tablespoons of capers and
and the pieces of celery into a large, 50g raisins. Give everything a good mix,
high-sided baking tray with 1 tablespoon mashing slightly with a fork, and return
of extra-virgin olive oil, 2 tablespoons of to the oven for about 40 minutes, or
white-wine vinegar and a little sea salt until everything is soft and sticky.
and pepper. • Once ready, and while the mix is still
• Toss the mixture to coat, then roast piping hot, add another tablespoon of
for about 25 minutes, until everything vinegar, toss through a handful of
is slightly charred and starting to soften. parsley leaves and serve. Finish with
Remove from the oven. a very generous dousing of extra-virgin
olive oil to bring it all together.
• Turn the oven down to 200°C/180°C fan.
Add the tins of plum tomatoes, breaking • Serve with warm bread.

Taken from Easy Wins: 12 flavour hits, 125 delicious recipes, 365 days of good eating by Anna Jones, published by Fourth Estate
at £28. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £21.99 (incl. p&p), call 020-3176 3835 or visit theweekbookshop.co.uk.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

34 LEISURE Consumer
New cars: what the critics say
What Car?
One of the best-handling
sports SUVs, the 2024
Stelvio Quadrifoglio (QV)
is based on its Alfa Romeo
sister car, the Giulia QV
saloon. It has the same
“fire-breathing” 512bhp
2.9-litre twin-turbocharged
V6 petrol engine for “razor
Alfa Romeo Stelvio Quadrifoglio sharp” acceleration, plus a
Price: from about £87,000 Maserati four-wheel-drive
system. It’s an “impressive
piece of kit”, capable of
0-62mph in just 3.8 secs
and an “eye-watering”
top speed of 176mph.
Evo Magazine
With its raft of updates
– LED matrix headlights,
better handling and
traction, increased power –
the “agile” new Stelvio QV
“remains the most exciting
of SUVs”. The steering is
quick and direct, “nicely
measured but responsive”.
It is “eye-openingly rapid”
when you put your foot
down, yet also “easy and
docile” pottering in town.
The rear suspension copes
well with big bumps, but
smaller lumps do jar a bit.
The Sunday Times
Inside it is “pretty plush”.
With black leather trim as
standard and “beautifully
supportive” seats, the
Stelvio QV feels like
“a quality car”. There’s
a central infotainment
touchscreen, but at 8.8in
it doesn’t dominate the
dashboard. The driver gets
a 12.3in digital instrument
display, as well as physical
controls. The large door
mirrors create quite a bit
of wind noise at speed, but
are excellent for visibility.

The best... handheld vacuum cleaners

Henry Quick This 2-in-1 Ryobi 18V One+ Great for a workshop
cordless transforms into a decent or garage, this has a rechargeable
handheld vacuum. It has a battery that is compatible with
simple 1-litre disposable bag 200 other Ryobi power
system and runs for up to 70 tools. It is simple to
minutes. At 3.2kg, it is relatively use, has decent
heavy, even in handheld mode. suction and an
You can buy scent pods (£8) that sit easy to empty 0.6-litre bin. It weighs 1.4kg
under the motor if you want to add and has a Hepa filter, but the battery only
fragrance to your vacuuming (£300; lasts 12 minutes (£100; uk.ryobitools.eu).
myhenry.com). Gtech
ProLite Eufy
Lightweight HomeVac
Shark Classic Handheld Pet (0.97kg) and H20 “Super
Vacuum The Classic’s battery powerful, with two powerful”
only lasts for ten minutes, suction settings, this yet lightweight
but it is “amazing” at dusting. has a rotating brush head (0.6kg), this is
The 0.45-litre bin is very easy attachment for carpets and perfect for the car. It
to empty, and it weighs just a light to illuminate the area comes with a handy

SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT

1.39kg. It comes with three you’re vacuuming. On the extension hose for hard-
accessories, including downside, the chunky to-reach areas, plus a car-
a pet tool, and shape is a bit awkward charging kit and a little torch.
a docking station to hold, and the battery The bin holds 0.09 litres, and
(£80; sharkclean. only lasts 20 minutes the battery lasts for 30 minutes
co.uk). (£130; gtech.co.uk). (£100; amazon.co.uk).

Tips… spring cleaning
your home
● Declutter before cleaning. With clothes,
ask yourself: does it fit? Do I love it? Do
I have room for it?
● Try an app such as Ziffit to help turn
unwanted books, DVDs and CDs into cash.
Just scan in the barcode via the app to see
what you could get for your old stuff.
● Clean room by room to avoid feeling
overwhelmed. Start from the top and work
down: ceilings, walls, furniture, floors.
● Put baking soda in your washing machine
drum to deodorise it. Run a dishwasher
cycle with a bowl of vinegar in the top
and clean the filter with a toothbrush.
● Clean your keyboard using a toothbrush
dipped in a solution of half-vinegar, half-
water, and scrub between the keys.
● Boil white vinegar and water in your kettle
to descale it. Immerse your shower head in
a bowl of white vinegar to declog the jets.
● To clean a microwave, fill a bowl with
slices of lemon and boiling water and
microwave it for five minutes; leave it to sit
for five minutes, then wipe down the walls.
And for those who
have everything…
Fans of the original Cinquecento
will love Fiat’s first nautical version:
the limited-edition 500 Offshore.
With a top speed of 24mph, this
4.7-metre day boat can take up to
five people, and comes with a digital
dashboard, stereo, fog lights, sun
loungers and a sunshade.
from £96,780; fiat.com
Where to find… the best
soundbars for your TV
At 114cm long, the Sonos Arc is a beast,
with spectacular audio quality. It has 11
digital amplifiers and eight woofers for
an immersive Dolby Atmos experience. If
space is tight, the Sonos Beam (Gen 2) is “a
brilliant little soundbar”, which, like the Arc,
works with Alexa and Google Assistant
(£899 and £499 respectively; sonos.com).
For a more budget option, the sleek Polk
Audio React is also Alexa-compatible and
works like a smart speaker. It doesn’t have
Dolby Atmos support, but is certainly an
upgrade from a TV speaker set-up, with
clear, sharp sound (£119; amazon.co.uk).
If budget allows, the 126.5cm Sennheiser
Ambeo Max is an exceptional home audio
system for a cinematic experience, with
a ton of features and Chromecast support
(£2,211; global.sennheiser-hearing.com) .
For gamers, the tiny Panasonic SoundSlayer
SC-HTB01 is a surround-sound powerhouse.
It connects to your phone via Bluetooth so
you can play music (£199; amazon.co.uk).

SOURCE: THE OBSERVER SOURCE: THE TIMES SOURCE: THE INDEPENDENT

THE WEEK 11 May 2024


This week’s dream: an elegant mountain resort in Japan
Surrounded by forested
mountains an hour by train
northwest of Tokyo, the resort
town of Karuizawa has long
been a retreat for wealthy
families fleeing the capital’s
summer heat, says Katie
Kitamura in Travel + Leisure.
It was here in 1957 that the
Emperor Akihito and Empress
Michiko met. Later, John
Lennon visited several times
with Yoko Ono, who said it
was “like the Hamptons, except
it’s in the mountains”. With its
Alpine-style buildings, forest
walks and outdoor onsen
(hot spring baths), it is a
deliciously quiet spot, with
a “timeless allure”. It’s also
lovely in winter, with good ski Hoshinoya Karuizawa: convincingly marrying old and new
slopes nearby. And in recent
years, renowned architects have built hotels and houses here,
lending it “a new and decidedly modern appeal”.
None of the town’s hotels marry old and new more
convincingly than Hoshinoya Karuizawa. Founded a century ago,
it now consists of a “sprawling collection of pavilions” set beside
a “burbling river” – a “minimalist fever dream” of a ryokan, or
Getting the flavour of…
Gourmet cuisine in the Highlands
“Wild fine dining” is a growing trend in
Scotland, and one of the stars of the scene is
Tim Kensett, says Antonia Quirke in The Times.
Formerly of the River Café, he is now based in
Glen Lonan, near Oban, where he cooks locally
sourced ingredients on an open fire, or on
embers. Like other chefs working in Scotland’s
wilderness areas, he works outside but serves the
food inside, on account of the weather and the
midges. In his case, guests sit in a “snug” stone
bothy with no electricity, but with hundreds
of candles, and sheepskin rugs to wrap yourself
in. Kensett’s eight-course meals are pleasingly
“delicate”, and include plenty of foraged
vegetables, herbs and flowers. You can stay
in one of the Inverlonan Estate’s three
“immaculately cosy” self-catering bothies
beside Loch Nell, or at Glencruitten House,
Home Farm (a pleasant holiday let dating to
1667), or No17 The Promenade, in Oban.
See inverlonan.com for more information.
Travel LEISURE 35
traditional inn. It has its own
natural onsen, and its restaurant
– which serves kaiseki, or multi-
course, cuisine – is excellent.
Also beautiful is Shishi-Iwa
House, a hotel with two
buildings designed by the
architect Shigeru Ban and one
by Ryue Nishizawa. One of
Ban’s buildings “curves its
way through the forest”,
while Nishizawa’s is “a playful
take” on the machiya, or
traditional wooden house,
with covered outdoor corridors
and courtyard gardens.
Among the indispensable
stops on a modern-design tour
of Karuizawa are Shiongama
(where ceramicist Shion Tabata
creates “unique” tea-ceremony
bowls), Kendrick Bangs
Kellogg’s Stone Church (“a marvel of organic form”), and
Nishizawa’s Hiroshi Senju Museum. There are also a dozen or
so superb private houses that marry avant-garde design with an
older Japanese sensibility, including TNA’s Ring House, a tower
with alternating layers of wood and glass – loveliest at night,
when the glass layers appear to be free-floating.
Hotel of the week
A luxury train across Southeast Asia
Wending its way through the jungles of the
Malay Peninsula, the Eastern & Oriental Express
(left) is a treat for lovers of “luxury retro rail
travel”, says Tim Moore in the FT. Following a
pandemic-induced hiatus, it is back in operation
this year, with three-night itineraries between
Singapore and Penang in northern Malaysia.
This service began in 1993, but the track it runs
on was laid more than a century ago, and the
train’s green-and-cream carriages are “a study
in period opulence”. The atmosphere onboard
is “convivial”, and the Asian-fusion cuisine in
the dining car is “sublime”. Daily excursions Casa Lucia
include a trip to the caves of the Taman Negara Buenos Aires
National Park and, after dark, you can sit in Housed in the 20-storey
the train’s open observation car, enjoying the Edificio Mihanovich
moonlight and the warm breeze. The trip costs (a “neo-classical icon” that
from £3,042pp incl. meals (belmond.com). was South America’s tallest
building on its completion
Blissful simplicity in Istria in 1928), the Casa Lucia is
With no great sights to stress you out, but “Buenos Aires’s most
“fairy-tale” views to enjoy wherever you exciting hotel launch in
forever”, says Stanley
go, the Croatian port of Rovinj is ideal for a Stewart in Condé Nast
relaxing short break, says Claire Irvin in The Traveller. With contemporary
Sunday Times. It sits on the Istrian peninsula, art on display, and a
70 miles by sea from Venice (its ruler for five wonderful cocktail terrace
centuries from 1283), and not far from the on the Calle Arroyo, it is both
handsome city of Pula (long the main naval fabulously glamorous and
base of the Austro-Hungarian empire). as soothing as an embrace.
Surrounded on three sides by “cornflower-blue” Rooms are “spacious and
seas, it is an exquisite warren of cobbled streets modern”; many have
balconies with great views;
and “bustling piazzas”, and has a café-lined and there’s a spa, a 16-metre
harbour packed with traditional fishing boats. pool, and a restaurant
There are glorious swimming spots on the “where the steaks would
nearby island of Veliki Brijun, and just across impress a hungry gaucho”.
the bay sits a stylish new hotel, the Grand Park, Doubles from £475 b&b;
with a Michelin-starred restaurant and great hotelcasalucia.com.
views back to the town.
11 May 2024 THE WEEK
36 Obituaries
Writer known as the “dean of American postmodernists”
Paul Auster, who has died
Paul Auster aged 77, was a prolific
1947-2024 novelist and memoirist
whose work – with its
fractured narratives, unreliable narrators
and deconstructions of identity – could seem
“primed for analysis” by students of literary
theory, said The New York Times. A leading
figure in the New York literary scene, he
was described as the “dean of American
postmodernists”, and the “most meta of
American meta-fictional writers”. But his books
were still highly readable, said The Times, and
there was something dazzling, and dizzying,
about the way he oscillated “between highbrow
and lowbrow”. As one reviewer observed: “If
the avant-garde gestures bore you, a gunshot
will soon ring out, or some unfortunate will
have his brains bashed in with a baseball bat.”
Paul Auster was born in Newark, New Jersey, Auster: his father’s death saved his life from Daniel, who’d become a drug addict.
in 1947. His father, Samuel, was a remote and
distant figure; his mother, Queenie, realised on her honeymoon
that she regretted marrying Samuel. Only years later did Paul
discover that when his father was six, he’d heard his mother shoot have gone off the rails himself, had it not been for his second wife,
his father dead. Paul found refuge from the strains at home in his
passions: baseball and reading. The latter was fuelled by an uncle
going abroad, and leaving boxes full of books at their house. But
the formative event of his childhood took place at summer camp,
when he was 14. He and some other children were in the woods
when a storm broke out. As they crawled under a wire fence to
get back, lightning struck and killed the boy just ahead of him.
It left him with the sense that random events can alter everything
in an instant, that we face “endless forking paths”. “We are
continually shaped by the forces of coincidence,” he told the New
York Times in 1995. “Our lifelong certainties about the world can more popular in Europe; in France, he had “rock star” status. His
be demolished in a single second. People who don’t like my work
say that the connections seem too arbitrary. But that’s how life is.” said that these belied his natural warmth, wit and generosity.
Guitarist for whom “the twang was the thang”
Once described as “the first
Duane Eddy real guitar superstar of the
1938-2024 rock’n’roll age”, Duane Eddy,
who has died aged 86, emerged
in the late 1950s, after the first flush of Elvis
Presley’s fame, and his instrumental recordings
dominated the charts on both sides of the Atlantic
until the mid-1960s. He sold tens of millions of
records, and pioneered a new sound, which was
signalled in the names of his albums, said Michael
Hann in The Guardian. His 1958 debut was
called Have “Twangy” Guitar Will Travel, and
was followed by The “Twangs” the “Thang”
(1959), $1,000,000 Worth of Twang (1960),
Twistin’ ’N’ Twangin’ (1962), “Twangin’” Up
a Storm! (1963), and The Biggest Twang of Them Eddy: profoundly influential
All (1966). Twang, he once said, was “a silly
name for a non-silly thing”. A low, “otherwordly” sound, it was
characterised by heavy bass and reverb; and if it could seem as
if Eddy was playing inside a giant water tank, “that was no
accident”. He and his producer, Lee Hazlewood, had salvaged
one from a junk yard, and used it as a rudimentary echo chamber.
For many of those who became teenagers in that period, Eddy’s
electric guitar tracks – Rebel Rouser (1958), Forty Miles of Bad
Road (1959), Peter Gunn (1959) – evoked a whole American
landscape. “Twang came to represent a walk on the wild side, late
1950s-style: the sound of revved-up hotrods, of rebels with or
THE WEEK 11 May 2024
He studied literature at Columbia University,
and then moved with his soon-to-be first wife,
the writer Lydia Davis, to Paris, where he
scraped a living by translating French literature,
and started to publish his own work in literary
journals. They returned to New York in the
mid-1970s with just nine dollars to their name;
their son Daniel was born in 1977. Auster
published a few volumes of poetry, which he
said had “no public life at all”. He tried, and
failed, to make money from a baseball card
game he’d devised; and his marriage collapsed.
His father’s death saved his life, he said: a small
legacy enabled him to write his first prose
book, The Invention of Solitude. It examined
his relationship with his father, and in it he
expressed the hope that he’d be a better father
to his own son. This came to seem yet more
poignant, said The Daily Telegraph, when it
emerged, years later, that he was estranged
Daniel died of an overdose in 2022, awaiting
trial for manslaughter over the death of his baby daughter, who
had ingested heroin and fentanyl in his care. Auster said he would
the novelist Siri Hustvedt, with whom he had a daughter, Sophie.
His first novel, City of Glass, a postmodern take on a detective
story featuring a character called Paul Auster, was rejected by 17
publishers, but ultimately became the first volume in his hugely
acclaimed New York Trilogy. He wrote nearly 40 books in all,
drafting them in longhand, then typing them up on a typewriter;
and in the 1990s, he branched out into screenplays, including
Smoke, set in his own neighbourhood of Brooklyn and starring
Harvey Keitel. Although he sold well in the US, he was even
brooding, saturnine looks may have helped in that, though friends
without a cause, an echo of the wild west on the
frontier of rock’n’roll,” wrote Michael Hill, when
Eddy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of
Fame in 1994. And though “the British invasion”
ended his run of hits, his work had a profound
influence on everyone from The Shadows and
The Beatles (notably on Day Tripper) to Blondie
(Atomic), Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run), Chris
Isaak and Ennio Morricone.
Duane Eddy was born in 1938 in Corning, New
York, where his father drove a bread truck. He
first picked up a guitar aged five. The family
moved to Arizona when he was 13 and, a few
years later, he left school to play in bars with the
musician Al Casey, who became a member of his
first backing band, The Rebels. Soon he had
developed his technique of playing lead lines on the bass strings,
to produce the “twang”, and met Hazlewood, who shepherded
him to chart success. The rockabilly revival in the 1970s led to
renewed interest in his work, said The New York Times and, in
the 1980s, he collaborated with the British synth-pop band Art of
Noise on a new cover of Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn theme tune,
which won a Grammy in 1987. In the 1990s, Rebel Rouser was
on the soundtrack to the film Forrest Gump, and The Trembler,
his collaboration with Ravi Shankar, was used in Natural Born
Killers. A self-effacing, good-humoured man, Eddy once suggested
that his greatest contribution to music had been “not singing”.
 CITY CITY 39
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
Apple: AI iPhone?
Until now, Apple boss Tim Cook has been “reluctant to talk about artificial intelligence”,
said Lex in the Financial Times. All change. During last week’s quarterly earnings call, he
declared that generative AI was a critical opportunity for the company. “The implication
is obvious: an iPhone with generative AI capabilities is coming.” Frankly, Apple could use
the boost. Despite having to contend with a US Department of Justice suit for running
a smartphone monopoly, its long-awaited virtual reality set, Vision Pro, hasn’t Seven days in the
contributed enough to the company’s $90.8bn quarterly revenues “to ameliorate a 10% Square Mile
drop in iPhone revenue”. Facing “saturated” markets in rich countries, and “growing
competition from national champions” in emerging markets, Apple needs “to breathe The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy
new life” into its core business, agreed The Economist. This week’s iPad revamp is a start. Committee met to set interest rates amid
mixed signals for the UK economy.
But what really cheered shareholders, said Yun Li on CNBC, was the announcement of a The OECD issued a gloomy prognosis:
$110bn share buyback – “the largest in company history”. Apple watchers were quick to downgrading growth forecasts for 2024
note that Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway “cut its gigantic stake” in the company by from 0.7% to 0.4%, and predicting the
13% in Q1, to $135.4bn. Is the 93-year-old “Sage of Omaha” getting cold feet about his UK will be the slowest-growing G7
once-favourite bet? Apparently not. At Berkshire’s annual meeting, Buffett said the sale economy in 2025. But the domestically
was for tax reasons following large gains. Apple’s stock gained a whopping 48% in 2023. focused FTSE 250 index signalled better
times ahead – rising by 2.34% in the five
HSBC: Tucker’s choice trading days before Wednesday. The
Noel Quinn’s surprise departure as CEO of HSBC has “placed fresh focus on an British Retail Consortium reported that
retail sales fell at an annual rate of 4%
uncomfortable dilemma” for the old “Honkers and Shankers”, said Michael Bow in The in April (following a 3.5% rise in March).
Daily Telegraph. Will Quinn’s exit “tilt the London-based bank’s centre of gravity more
S&P Global reported that the top 50
firmly towards its dominant market in Hong Kong?” Several internal candidates are
stock gainers during the pandemic have
already in the frame, including finance chief Georges Elhedery. But there has been lost some $1.5trn in value since the end
speculation that the new chief could come from the ranks of HSBC’s Asian businesses – of 2020 as lockdown trends faded, with
perhaps as a sop to its largest shareholder, the Chinese insurer Ping An, which has been technology groups particularly badly hit.
trying to strongarm the bank into spinning off its Asian wing. Chairman Mark Tucker Video-conferencing company Zoom was
refused to be drawn on who he will appoint as the third CEO on his watch. Tucker is among the worst performers, suffering
“an apex predator”, who “brutally fired” Quinn’s predecessor, said Oliver Shah in an 80% (or $77bn) fall in market value.
The Sunday Times. But since Tucker is scheduled to sling his own hook in 2026, this is Auditors PwC and EY were fined £4.9m
“dubious choreography from a governance point of view”. Far better that a new chair and £4.4m respectively for failures in
appoint their own chief executive “than inherit Tucker’s choice”. Whoever lands the job their audits of “mini-bond” firm London
can expect a return to risk reward, said Lawrence White on Reuters. After a change in UK Capital & Finance, which collapsed in
policy, shareholders have backed a resolution to lift a cap on the size of HSBC bonuses. 2019. The Financial Reporting Council
concluded that they didn’t “understand”
LCF’s business. The bankrupt crypto
Boeing: bad dream exchange FTX indicated that most
The scheduled “first launch” of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft, which was supposed to account-holders will get their money
carry two astronauts to the International Space Station and back, was called off this week back after selling around $15bn worth
after an issue was found with a component, said DealBook in The New York Times. of venture capital investments. TSB’s
Who’s surprised? Still, that was the least of the planemaker’s problems. US regulators Spanish owner, Sabadell, rejected a
have just opened another inquiry into Boeing, already under scrutiny on its 737 Max 8 £10bn bid from rival BBVA, saying it
planes. The new target is its flagship 787 Dreamliner, following the discovery that undervalued the bank. Boohoo, the
“required inspections” of the aircraft’s wings may have been “skipped”. Boeing has been troubled fast-fashion chain, posted
widening annual losses.
in crisis all year, said Bloomberg. There’s no sign of it “catching a break any time soon”.

Driverless cars: Wayve scoops Europe’s biggest AI investment

The electric-car market might be stalling,
but the promise of driverless cars continues
to excite investors, said Julia Kollewe in
The Guardian. The latest beneficiary is a UK
startup, Wayve, which has scooped $1.05bn
in a funding round led by Japan’s SoftBank
to develop “the next generation” of
AI-powered vehicles. The move – also
backed by chipmaker Nvidia and Microsoft
– “is the biggest investment to date in a
European AI startup”, and a welcome piece
of good news for UK plc. PM Rishi Sunak
claimed it “anchors the UK’s position as an Kendall with the PM at Wayve HQ
AI superpower”.
Top marks for hyperbole. But this deal is certainly “significant”
for Britain, which has ambitions of being a global hub of AI
expertise, said Peter Campbell and Tim Bradshaw in the FT – “but
has largely failed to grow or retain its most promising companies
in the field”. It also confirms SoftBank boss Masayoshi Son’s
“renewed hunt for AI investments”, having
been “slow to deploy capital in the sector”.
Wayve’s system “allows vehicles to learn
while driving” – avoiding the need for
costly mapping and laser-based sensors
that have hindered larger US rivals, such as
Alphabet’s Waymo. Rather than developing
its own fleet, the company is in talks with
several carmakers and also hopes to
expand its “embodied AI” tech to other
kinds of robots.
Founded in a garage in 2017 by two
Cambridge University students, Alex
Kendall and Amar Shah, Wayve has “steadily raised capital over
the past five years”, said Katie Prescott in The Times. In a test
drive, “the car behaves in a strangely human-like way”, while
hopefully eliminating “human error”. The future could arrive
sooner than we think. There is “growing optimism” that
autonomous vehicles will be on UK roads by as soon as 2026.

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

40 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: all eyes on the Bank
The timing of rate cuts has political implications, but the market impact will be greater
At the start of the year, this week’s
meeting of the Bank of England’s
monetary policy committee was
“circled in red on the calendar as
the likely start of rate cuts”, said
Andy Silvester in City AM. “Things
changed.” The consensus in the City
ahead of this week’s meeting was that,
barring a complete shock, the Bank
would hold rates again at 5.25%.
It’s been a whirlwind ride for traders
trying to divine the next move, said
Kate Beioley on FT.com. Earlier this
week, bets against the pound reached
a 16-month high – suggesting Will the Bank lead the charge?
“investors now expect the BoE to cut
earlier and faster than the Federal Reserve”, which is struggling
with sticky inflation. The earlier assumption that the central banks
would move in lockstep has been rethought. Traders now reckon
there’s a “near-50% chance” the BoE will join the European
Central Bank, which has signalled it will begin cutting in June.
“The BoE turns at the pace of a supertanker,” said Marcus
Ashworth on Bloomberg. But a signal that “lower borrowing
costs are coming” is important for the UK economy. The ECB’s
anticipated move on 6 June would “provide useful cover for a
BoE easing a fortnight later”. It makes sense “to tailgate” euro
rates: the two economies – benefitting from disinflation but
struggling with growth – have much more in common than either
has with the “relentless” US economy.
Ideally, Bank governor Andrew Bailey
would lead the charge, said Alex
Brummer in the Daily Mail. With a
general election pending, it would
certainly suit the Government. But
Threadneedle Street won’t want its
independence to look compromised.
The Bank’s “decisions over the next
few months have more of a political
angle than at any time I can remember
since it was given independence in
1997”, said David Smith in The
Sunday Times. But would “a couple
of rate cuts” between now and the
election really make much difference
in terms of “suddenly sparking the economy into life”? I doubt it.
Foreign exchange markets will be most affected by the timing
of these rate cuts, said Katie Martin in the FT. The old currency
traders’ adage – “buy dollars, wear diamonds” – certainly looks
like a decent bet this year. But strain from the stronger dollar is
already “spilling over in Asia and emerging markets”. In Japan,
the dollar is trading at levels not seen since the 1980s and the euro
is hovering at around $1.07 – its weakest in two decades. Barclays
thinks a second Trump presidency, with new trade tariffs, “could
push the exchange rate down towards parity”. It’s hard to argue
that “the US should let inflation rip higher and cut rates”. But the
dollar is fast becoming “a source of broader market volatility”.

Making money: what the experts think British biotech

● Darling buds
There seems to be no
stopping the FTSE
100, which hit another
record high this week
as stock markets
globally continued
to rally, said Anna
Wise in the Evening
Standard. Investor
spirits were lifted by
hopes of a pause in the Reeves: “downbeat”
Israel-Hamas conflict.
But the “feelgood factor” is strong in
London, said Susannah Streeter of
Hargreaves Lansdown, as “buds of May
hopes unfurl” about interest rate cuts.
Economic data is expected to show the
UK has formally emerged from recession,
said BBC Business. But the shadow
chancellor, Rachel Reeves, struck a
warning note in a City of London speech –
accusing the Government of “gaslighting”
Britain over the economy. Suggestions of
a feelgood factor, she said, are “out of
touch with the realities on the ground”.
● Labour appetiser?
Reeves might be downbeat about the
economy, said Eir Nolsøe in The Daily
Telegraph. But some in the City are
pretty upbeat about her. Charles Hunt,
of investment bank Peel Hunt, believes
a Labour government would boost the
London stock market “by making Britain
more attractive to foreign investors”. UK
shares are now “sold
at a 20-25% discount
relative to rivals on
markets overseas”. But
if a new government
reverses Britain’s
reputation for
instability, it could chip
away at this discount.
What foreign investors
need, he said, is the
assurance that “there
are grown-ups back
in the room”. Investors are still facing “a
crisis of confidence”, said Ruth Sunderland
on This is Money. According to the
Investment Association, March marked
“the 32nd month in a row” of net
withdrawals from UK equity funds.
More than £38.1bn was withdrawn
in 2023 – the worst year on record.
● Home patch
Is confidence returning to the housing
market? Up to point, said Sam Unsted on
Bloomberg. Halifax data showing prices
rose by 0.1% in April contrasts with a
“decline” reported by Nationwide. Overall,
the picture is of “a stagnating UK housing
market”. Estate agent Savills reckons the
medium-term outlook is much brighter
as the “mortgage crunch eases”, said The
Daily Telegraph. It has upgraded its five-
year price growth forecast from 17.9%
to 21.6%, forecasting a £61,500 rise in the
average house price, to £346,500, by 2028.
The UK is an international leader in
biotech, said Kate Burgess in the FT.
How best to ride the risks?
Specialist managers
● Peel Hunt likes Syncona – a FTSE 250
“closed-ended” investment trust, linked
to the Wellcome Foundation – with a
portfolio of cell and gene therapy start-
ups. It’s done well in “commercialising”
the sector, but shares trade at a 30%
discount to assets.
● Paul Angel of AJ Bell rates the
Worldwide Healthcare Trust, managed
by New York-based OrbiMed, which
holds “a nice mix” of healthcare and
emerging biotech stocks. Again, recent
performance has been disappointing.
● London-listed International
Biotechnology Trust (IBT) is committed
to small UK biotechs – some 15%
of the fund is managed by former
vaccine tsar Kate Bingham’s SV Health
Investors. Also trading at a discount.
Open-ended funds and ETFs
Buying units in “open-ended” biotech
funds, such as Axa Framlington’s or
Polar Capital’s, is “less complicated”
and both have performed well. Still, it’s
harder “to ride out market extremes” –
the risk is a fire sale if backers withdraw.
For peace of mind, an index-tracker or
exchange-traded fund (ETF) – such as
ARK Genomic Revolution, iShares
Global Healthcare, or Vanguard’s Health
Care Index fund – might be better.

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 Commentators CITY 41
The People’s Bank of China has been at the forefront of the recent
central bank gold-buying spree – making purchases for 17 City profile
What’s behind successive months. “This is not necessarily anything sinister,”
says Julian Jessop: “the Chinese authorities may just have been
Shari Redstone
Growing up in the suburbs
China’s gold- playing a rising market extremely well”. But there could equally
be more to this story. There are clear strategic advantages to
of Boston, Shari Redstone
watched her irascible father,
buying spree? China – a massive investor in US Treasury bonds – diversifying
out of American assets. As Russia has shown, the switch to gold
Sumner, transform a “small
cinema chain into a global
Julian Jessop provides “a war chest safe from US sanctions”. Perhaps more media conglomerate” he
significantly, China’s stockpiling also conveys a tacit warning. called Viacom, said the FT.
The Daily Telegraph If it were to dump US bonds, it “could drive up the cost of It was a tough upbringing.
borrowing”, not just in the US but across the Western world. Redstone, now 70, later
wrote that her mother was
Longer term, the impact of this policy could be even more “verbally and physically and
profound. Some commentators have spent decades predicting the financially abused by him
demise of the dollar as the world’s international reserve currency. every day of her life”. Shari
And, indeed, the proportion of central bank holdings held in US herself was deemed her
assets fell to a 25-year low in 2020. The current gold rush, led father’s favourite child, but
by China, is evidence that more “cracks are starting to appear”. their relationship was volatile
and equally insult-ridden. He
TikTok has mounted an official challenge to a law signed by “publicly dangled” the idea
President Biden banning the “wildly popular app” unless its she would succeed him,
“then said the opposite”.
TikTok takes Chinese parent, ByteDance, sells it to a US owner. The company’s
central claim, says Alexandra S. Levine, is that the ban – framed
When the old man died in
2020, she finally took over –
the fight to within a new law called the Protecting Americans from Foreign
Adversary Controlled Applications Act – is “targeted” and
changing the name of the
business to its best-known
congress... unconstitutional: “a violation of its own First Amendment rights”
and “the free speech rights of 170 million Americans”. Lawyers
asset, Paramount, and laying
out an ambitious strategy
Alexandra S. Levine argue it creates a “two-tiered speech regime with one set of rules “to take on Netflix” in the
for one named platform, and another set of rules for everyone streaming wars. It has been
Forbes else”. Even national security concerns, they claim, cannot override a rocky run ever since.
the constitution. The legal case is bound to re-open the debate on
whether TikTok is used “to surveil Americans” or “manipulate
public discourse”. It also highlights the practical difficulties
inherent in the ban. Some experts argue that, even were a sale
agreed, it would be “all but impossible” to unravel TikTok’s
“opaque” algorithm – exactly the thing that makes the app
valuable – from ByteDance. Prepare for a “protracted” fight.

Were TikTok to disappear, it would have big consequences for

a host of other industries, not least publishing, says Lex. “Social
...but BookTok media should, in theory, be an enemy of the publishing industry
given the competing pressures on consumers’ time.” In fact, it has
gives a boost helped the sector avoid a “hard landing” following the bursting of
the pandemic sales bubble. It has produced growth for once-niche
to booksellers genres, such as fantasy, and propelled little-known authors onto
bestseller lists. Book groups on YouTube and Instagram have Now this “media heiress”
Lex played a part, but it is BookTok – a community within TikTok – wants out, said The Wall
that has really “shaken up the sometimes fusty literary world”, Street Journal. But her bid to
sell off her controlling stake,
Financial Times turbocharging sales of authors such as Sarah J. Maas, Colleen while securing the Redstone
Hoover and Alice Oseman. Sales of Maas’s books alone have legacy, has unleashed
helped propel the shares of Harry Potter publisher Bloomsbury “mayhem” within “the
to record levels; analysts are delaying their 2025 projections for storied Hollywood company”
the company until they know when her next book will come out. behind The Godfather. The
“Publishing has inadvertently scored a win in the competition for CEO has quit in protest, amid
eyeballs. It should capitalise on social media trends all it can.” shareholder fury. Redstone
reportedly favoured a deal
New skyscrapers sprouting in London are packed with “wellness with David Ellison’s
Skydance over an alternative
facilities”, says Martin Vander Weyer. Perhaps because their “sci-fi joint bid tabled by Sony and
The “joyless strangeness” often makes occupants feel unwell. During a recent
visit to the “Scalpel” – a 38-storey tower in the City’s insurance
the US asset management
giant Apollo. But the former
towers” of quarter – it was disconcerting to be “alone in a buttonless lift,
robotically programmed to stop only at the floor I was authorised
deal is “dead”, according to
The Hollywood Reporter, and
London to visit”. What a relief, on leaving, “to find a hubbub” of drinkers
in Leadenhall Market. A recent Policy Exchange paper, by Ike Ijeh,
the situation is in limbo.
Described as “chatty” and
Martin Vander Weyer describes London’s skyline as “discordant and chaotic”. London “always keen to discuss
is not New York or Shanghai and these structures will always feel baking recipes or her
favourite TV shows”,
The Spectator out of place. We’re told the capital needs more space, but people Redstone is now pondering
are voting with their feet. Witness the decline of Canary Wharf, her next move, said the FT.
“that displaced North American business district”, whose value has The likely sale of Paramount
fallen by £1.2bn in the past year. As for places to live, Ijeh argues marks “the first big casualty
that “mid-rise” (five to 12 storeys) has always been better “both of the streaming wars”.
for aesthetics and quality of life” – and can provide the necessary It may not be the last.
density. “Let’s stop peppering our capital with joyless towers.”

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 43

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
Alcon Chemring Group Law Debenture Corporation Games Workshop
The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph The Times
The world’s biggest contact lens The defence firm remains UK stocks are “back in vogue”
10,750 Director sells
and surgical eye equipment- undervalued despite the – good news for this income- 7,500
maker has flourished since its industry boom, and rate cuts focused investment trust whose 10,500
2019 spin-off from Novartis. could further boost defence holdings include Rolls-Royce, 10,250
Channelling money into R&D spending. “High-quality” with Shell, BP and GSK. Doubles
10,000
in a growing market; profits strong cashflow, improving as a professional services firm,
and margins are rising. Buy. profits and a growing order specialising in pension trustees 9,750
CHF 72.26. book. Buy. 375p. and whistle-blowing. Yields 9,500
3.8%. Buy. 852p.
Amazon Domino’s Pizza 9,250

The Times The Sunday Times Spectra Systems Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May
Cloud computing and web The summer looks bright for The Mail on Sunday

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

services drove up Q1 revenues
by 13%, with profits surging to
$10.4bn – putting Amazon on
a “solid footing” for a genAI
push. Should benefit from huge
demand for genAI productivity-
enhancing tools. Buy. $179.
this fast-food franchise chain,
given a high-yielding new
app and the kick-off of Euro
2024 in June. Opening 70
stores – aiming for 1,600 by
2028. Liberum Capital names
a 500p target. Buy. 322p.
After nine years on the board,
This security specialist’s fraud CFO Rachel Tongue is leaving
detection systems are used to the fantasy miniatures maker,
authenticate postage stamps but her £712,000 sale
and bank notes. The Cartor shouldn’t be taken as a dip
acquisition, ensuring a move omen. Performance has been
flat, yet a revenue boost is
into printing, is a gamechanger. on the cards via an Amazon
Profits should soar. Buy. 217p. tie-up for film and TV.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

Bioventix Cohort Mondi Shares tipped 12 weeks ago

The Daily Telegraph
Bioventix, which makes
antibodies used in diagnostic
applications, is outperforming
thanks to strong Chinese
demand. A £5.5m cash holding
provides scope for investment
in research. Long-term
growth potential, but not
cheap. Hold. £43.25.
Card Factory
Investors’ Chronicle
The card and gifts retailer has
resumed divis after revenue
and profit progress. Store
sales are up by 8.7%, driven
by 26 new sites, and online
brand sales have risen for five
months in a row. Hold. 107p.
The Mail on Sunday
This “nimble, fast-growing”
defence firm majors in
high-tech systems and
software: customers include
the Royal Navy. Performing
well with “plenty of
potential”. Hold. 816p.
Diageo
The Times
The Tanqueray gin, Johnnie
Walker whisky and
Casamigos tequila owner
has been hit by “shaky
trading” in the US, where
drinkers are trading down.
Still, it enjoys a chunky 27%
operating margin and yields
3%. Hold. £27.26.
The Daily Telegraph Best tip
The paper and packaging Fidelity China Spec. Sitn.
giant’s profits have halved The Daily Telegraph
following the lockdown up 26.76% to 234.5p
home-shopping boom, and
it has walked away from a Worst tip
Naked Wines
bid battle for DS Smith. Yields
Investors’ Chronicle
near 4% while waiting for the down 21.44% to 50.2p
cycle to turn. Hold. £15.33.
Whitbread
The Times Market view
The Premier Inn owner is
“There’s probably too much
growing its hotel business optimism about the US in
“at an impressive pace”, and terms of growth, and too
the German expansion is set much pessimism about
to break even. Shares have the rest of the world.”
fallen, but it yields 3.8%, Luca Paolini, of Pictet.
and is buying back shares. Quoted on Bloomberg
Hold. £31.67.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for
for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
7 May 2024 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 8,300
FTSE 100 8313.67 8144.13 2.08% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 4522.99 4430.25 2.09% Standard Chartered 750.60 +8.80 8,200

Dow Jones 38914.23 38083.13 2.18% Flutter Entertainment 16200.00 +8.50

8,100
Berkeley Holdings 5115.00 +8.50
NASDAQ 16384.44 15855.07 3.34%
Persimmon 1414.00 +8.40 8,000
Nikkei 225 38835.10 38405.66 1.12%
Hang Seng 18479.37 17763.03 4.03% Barratt Developments 492.80 +8.40
7,900
Gold 2294.45 2333.50 −1.67%
Brent Crude Oil 83.19 86.22 −3.51% FALLS 7,800
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.54% 3.59% Melrose Industries 591.20 –6.40
UK 10-year gilts yield 4.22 4.45 Whitbread 2996.00 –5.40 7,700

US 10-year Treasuries 4.46 4.66 EasyJet 510.20 –5.30

7,600
UK ECONOMIC DATA Haleon 326.70 –3.80
Latest CPI (yoy) 3.2% (Mar) 3.4% (Feb) BP 503.70 –3.20 7,500
Latest RPI (yoy) 4.3% (Mar) 4.5% (Feb)
Halifax house price (yoy) 1.1% (Apr) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER 7,400
0.3% (Mar) Tritax EuroBox 63.40 +14.20 Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May
£1 STERLING: $1.248 €1.162 ¥193.786 Bitcoin $63,778.00 TBC Bank 2880.00 –16.80 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
Source: FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 7 May (pm)

11 May 2024 THE WEEK

44 The last word

Vermin invasion: the horrors

and virtues of the rat
Joe Shute examines how one small mammal achieved world domination, and asks whether
we should learn to cohabit peacefully with rats, perhaps even to love them

In the 2007 animated film Ratatouille, the rodent in The Tale of Samuel Whiskers. Alongside
protagonist, Remy, is taken by his father to see the his wife, Samuel attempts to kidnap and
shop window of a Parisian rat catcher for a lesson eat a kitten. Even the great Sir David
in the laws of the universe. Alongside shelves Attenborough has acknowledged his own
packed with lethal rodenticides, dead rats swing fear. “I really, really hate rats,” he has said.
by their necks from a makeshift gibbet. This, “I don’t mean that I mildly dislike them as
Remy is warned, is what happens when rats I dislike, let us say, maggots. I mean that
dare get too close to humans. Their world if a rat appears in a room, I have to
is one that belongs to an enemy. work hard to prevent myself from
jumping on the nearest table.”
The inspiration for the shop portrayed in
the film is Maison Aurouze, said to be the We have long been obsessed as
oldest rat catcher’s in Paris. Founded in a society with the notion of rats
1872 and still going today, the shop’s invading. In 1813, the Yorkshire-
polished glass frontage displays assorted born journalist Charles Fothergill
taxidermy rats that have been collected in attempted some brief arithmetic
various states of misfortune. Any on rat reproduction. He calculated
passing rat would be wise to that, left to their own devices, a
heed the warning, for ours single pair of rats would produce
is an ancient enmity. And three million young during their
nowhere are the battle three-year lifespan. Fothergill
lines more pronounced concluded that “the whole surface
than in Paris, which, of the Earth in a very few years
alongside New York and would be rendered a barren and
London, is one of the great hideous waste, covered with myriads
ratropolises of the Western world. of famished grey rats, against which
man himself would contend in vain”.
The French even have a word for it: “Muscular, ferocious, and with incisors stronger than steel”
This is the sort of dodgy mathematics
dératisation, which translates loosely that has led to the adage that
as “the ridding of rats”. Throughout much of the past 100 “you are never more than six feet away from a rat”, or that there
or so years, Parisians have been engaged in a process of all-out is a rat for every person in Britain. In fact, nobody knows the true
war on their rodent residents. In the summer of 1920, after rat number. Much of what is floating around the internet is peddled
populations that had boomed along the trench networks of the by the pest-control industry itself, which clearly has a vested
Western Front streamed into the city alongside returning soldiers, interest in an over-inflated public perception of the threat.
the city pledged to eradicate the “grey invasion”. Citizens formed Estimates of Britain’s rat population range from 10.5 million,
vigilante groups, patrolling the streets with dogs, clubs and guns. to in excess of 200 million.
Some 500,000 rats were killed in a year, but to little overall effect:
a century on, Paris is still teeming with rodents. You can spot There are two species of rat in the UK: the brown rat (Rattus
them scurrying over the manicured gravel of the Tuileries and norvegicus) and black rat (Rattus rattus). While there is
along the banks of the Seine. evidence of black rats present
A one-star review of the Eiffel in Roman Britain, they are
Tower on Tripadvisor is “In 1813, a journalist calculated that, left to now restricted to just a few
headlined simply: “Rats.” their own devices, a pair of rats would produce population clusters, having
been gradually displaced by
Yet a truce is in the offing, one three million young during their lifespan” the larger brown rat. Both
that could have implications for are invasive species (brown rats
us all. The Parisian authorities are considering a novel approach originated in China, and black rats in the Indian subcontinent)
to rodent control, which is increasingly being recognised in other and have followed humans wherever they have gone. Now found
urban conurbations. In June 2023, the Paris deputy mayor for on every continent except Antarctica, rats are one of the most
public health announced that a committee was being established populous and successful mammals on Earth. Nearly the most
to consider the prospect of “cohabitation” with the city’s rats. destructive, too – although that particular mantle belongs to us.
This marked a significant departure from previous policies. The It would be disingenuous to suggest that rats are not a pest and,
decision could herald a new dawn in Paris’s relationship with its in the right circumstances, a threat. It would, in fact, be difficult
rats, one that has not been entirely well received. to envisage a more effective harbinger of pestilence than the rat:
muscular, ferocious, with incisors that are stronger than steel and
Rats represent the worst of us, or at least that is what we tell bodies capable of squeezing through the tiniest of gaps to access
ourselves. They are rapacious, over-sexed, destructive and food sources in our homes.
pestilent. The term “rat” is an insult; a verb as well as a noun.
During the witch trials of the 16th and 17th centuries, rats were Rats, along with other rodents, pilfer one-fifth of the world’s food
regarded as familiars of the devil. Modern cultural references harvest and can devastate populations of animals and seabirds.
are hardly more favourable. Beatrix Potter, who had her own They are also a reservoir of pathogens known to cause more than
pet fancy rat called Sammy, cast them in an unfavourable light 70 diseases. Rats have been found to harbour bubonic plague,

THE WEEK 11 May 2024

 The last word
cholera, typhus, leptospirosis, cowpox and
hantavirus infection. A 2014 study from
Columbia University found that the average
New York City subway rat carried 18 novel
viruses not yet detected in humans, along
with dozens of familiar pathogens.
However, researchers have recently
attempted to exonerate rats as single-
handedly spreading plague. One 2018 study
of Black Death mortality data conducted
by researchers in Norway and Italy
claimed human-borne fleas and lice were
more likely responsible for causing the
14th century epidemic, which killed up to
half the population of Europe. Meanwhile,
another study, published in the prestigious
journal Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences in 2015, argued
that the Black Death could have originated
from gerbils in Asia, rather than rats.
The link to the plague, as well as a desire
to maximise food production at all costs,
drove the rat wars of the 20th century. In
1908, the first ever “rat destruction bill”
was introduced to the House of Commons.
A decade later, following intensive lobbying
by a group of landowners known as the Etching of a 17th century ratcatcher
Vermin Repression Society, the British
government passed the Rats and Mice (Destruction) Act 1919,
placing a legal obligation on every private individual to destroy
rodents and deal with any infestation on land or property they
owned, or face a £5 fine. According to the chairman of the Vermin Still, rats aren’t entirely in the clear. Rentokil has an experimental
Repression Society, Alfred E. Moore, it was “the sacred duty of
every living one of us to take his or her place in the world war
against these living emblems of depredation, filth and disease”.
Moore encouraged various
methods of extermination:
fumigating hedgerows with “Studies have shown that rats are capable
high-strength sulphur dioxide of empathy, altruism and regret. They grieve decide how best to dispose of the
gas, flooding rat burrows with
tar and beating any escapees
and have been known to bury their dead”
to death with sticks. The Boy
Scouts and Women’s Land Army were later deployed to dispatch
any rat they could find across the nation’s farms, including
pumping Cymag (a now-banned cyanide gas) into burrows.
The slogan the authorities adopted was: “Kill that rat! It’s doing
Hitler’s work.” But the rats had the advantage of any guerrilla
army: an ability to launch nocturnal raids and retreat into
burrows, and a hugely effective spying operation, combined
with an indefatigable ability to adapt and survive.
Over the past few years I have experimented myself with a closer
form of co-existence. During lockdown I acquired a pair of pet
fancy rats, Molly and Ermintrude. “Fancy rats” have been bred
in Britain since the Victorian era. They are the same species as
the brown rat, but with variegated colours on their fur and often
larger ears. There is even a National Fancy Rat Society which
hosts shows around the country, akin to a ratty version of Crufts.
I was once terrified of rats, but my own pets opened up to me
their tenderness and playfulness and the strong emotional bonds
they form. When tickled, rats even emit ultrasonic giggles
inaudible to the human ear. Studies have shown rats are capable
of empathy, altruism and regret, and possess impressive powers
of memory, as well as the ability to judge the passage of time.
One recent study by researchers at the University of Tokyo
showed that rats like to dance, making them the only species
alongside humans to display an innate enjoyment of music
and instinctively move to its beat. During the experiment, in
which rats were played one-minute excerpts of Lady Gaga,
45
Queen and Mozart’s Sonata for Two
Pianos in D major at different speeds, it
was found they kept the best time at 132
beats per minute – exactly the same as us.
Rats also grieve and have been known
to bury their dead. When Molly died,
Ermintrude pulled a scrap of cloth partially
over her sister’s lifeless form and lay next
to her until we retrieved the body.
Gradually, humanity is starting to
overcome its entrenched aversion and
reconsider the rat. At the Apopo project
in Tanzania, rats are trained to detect
landmines (due to their extraordinary
powers of smell) and deployed to conflict
zones around the world. To date, the
rats have cleared more than 160,000
landmines and other explosives in
countries including Cambodia, Angola
and Mozambique. Similarly, the rats are
also used to screen tuberculosis samples,
sniffing out compounds produced by the
bacteria that cause the disease at a speed
and precision far greater than human
detection. Apopo has also started training
up rats which are able to locate survivors
in the wreckage of buildings. The rats
wear a backpack containing a camera,
a two-way radio and a geo-locating
device. When they reach their intended human target, they pull
at a switch around their necks to alert their trainers.
facility in Sussex ominously dedicated to “innovation”, where the
firm trials the latest scientific methods in rat catching. In January
2023, it announced that it had been developing new facial-
recognition surveillance technology in partnership with Vodafone
to track infestations and feed
back real-time analysis to a
command centre, which can
rat. There is also work taking
place to assess the potential of
genetic engineering to render
rats infertile (a technique already employed on mosquitos). In
2017, researchers at Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute announced they
were investigating the feasibility of releasing genetically modified
male rats with an “x-shredder” code inserted into their DNA,
meaning they could only ever pass on the y chromosome and
never have female pups. In 2022, researchers at the University
of Adelaide progressed this concept by announcing the results
of a study into causing infertility in female laboratory mice.
Using computer modelling, the researchers found that introducing
250 mice genetically modified with something called t-CRISPR,
which alters a female’s fertility gene, into an island population
of 200,000 rodents could wipe them out within 20 years.
Such technology remains theoretical, but it could in time equip
humanity with the ability to finally fully eradicate rats. It also
poses a minefield of ethical questions. Rats may prove destructive
in the environment, but they are also a vital food source for other
animals. If we remove them from the food chain, who knows
what the knock-on effects would be? There is also the question of
where this all leads. If the rat is ultimately expunged, would other
unpopular species, such as the urban fox or carrion crow, follow?
And above all, in the midst of an extinction and biodiversity crisis
caused by human activity, what right do we have to deem which
animal is permitted to share the Earth with us, and which is not?
Extract from Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat
by Joe Shute (Bloomsbury, £18.99). Previously published in
The Daily Telegraph © Telegraph Media Group Limited 2024
11 May 2024 THE WEEK
 Crossword 47
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1413 This week’s winner will receive
Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the Week-branded items including
first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 20 May. a notebook, coffee mug and tote
Send it to The Week Crossword 1413, 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 Talk endlessly about right look
for a tart (9)
6 Composer in catalogue heard (5)
9 Pamphlet seen in vehicle or
shed (5)
10 Sweet drink with sorbet (9)
11 Loose madam with nice rear
is aspiration abroad (8,5)
14 One record agent brought
back support for climbers (7)
16 Broadcast recalled after
celebrated Spanish drink (7)
17 Understand Bishop’s office (3)
18 Numbers going round gallery
seen in records (7)
20 Horse takes outsize bits of
early barley from this? (7)
22 Innocent chaps loaded
vehicles (13)
25 TV presenter with weight
on board? (9)
27 Lady seen in lovely
diamonds (5)
28 Separate European resort (5)
29 Drove moped, for example (4,5)
DOWN
1 Switching off is why a mouse
might jump around (10)
2 Some of the team at Euros
not paid (7)
3 One may be after strip club (5)
4 Lofty adult has church office
in US capital (11)
5 Part of an address in Sloane
Square (3)
6 Solo needs to be improved?
Unfinished business (5,4)
7 Cook needing hour inside
to shine (7)
8 Kicked contemptible creature
mentioned (4)
12 Scanned this roughly and
is let down (11)
13 Huge climb is epic (5-5)
15 Utter a couple of instructions
to quit (3-3-3)
19 Capitol riots in the news (7)
21 Make wider route in Scottish
mountain (7)
23 Small key one left in place (5)
24 Lots of shopping right under
your eyes (4)
26 Cleaner gets work after end
of term (3)

Name
Address
Clue of the week: A source of tea cups and saucers (5) Tel no
Quick Cryptic by Jalna, The Times
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1411

ACROSS: 1 Resides 5 Perusal 9 Glissandi 10 Omega 11 Trifle
12 Cantatas 14 Nincompoop 16 Stun 18 Pitt 19 Main course
22 Teenager 23 Tirana 26 Heard 27 Transport 28 They say 29 Oceanic
DOWN: 1 Right-on 2 Sci-fi 3 Disallow 4 Sane 5 Prima donna 6 Roosts
7 Spectator 8 Leads on 13 Apparently 15 Notre Dame 17 Hot issue
Big picture news,
18 Potshot 20 Elastic 21 Pandas 24 Adorn 25 Sago
Clue of the week: Patronise all the locals turning up to fight outside
clubs (3,5) Solution: PUB CRAWL (UP reversed + c inside brawl)
balanced views
The winner of 1411 is Elizabeth Frank from Bury Join over 300,000 readers today and enjoy a refreshingly
unbiased view of the news, every week.
The Week is available from RNIB Newsagent for the benefit of blind and
partially sighted readers. 0303-123 9999, rnib.org.uk/newsagent
Why subscribe?
Sudoku 955 (easy)
Get your 昀椀rst 6 issues
Fill in all the squares so that for free
each row, column and each
of the 3x3 squares contains Continue to save up to 56%
all the digits from 1 to 9 on the shop price
Solution to
Solution to Sudoku
Sudoku 954
228
Try a digital subscription
for subscriber newsletters,
unlimited access to
theweek.co.uk and more
Cancel or pause at any time

Get your first 6 issues free

Visit theweek.co.uk/offer Offer code
Or call 0330 333 9494 P1487

For binders to hold 26 copies of The Week: modernbookbinders.com, £9.50 Calls charged at your standard network rate. Direct Debit offer. 6 issues free then continues from £45.99 every 13 issues for print (29% off the shop price)
or £50.99 every 13 issues for print + digital (56% off the shop price). Your subscription is protected by our Money-Back Guarantee.
Cancel anytime and we will refund on any unmailed issues.

Charity of the week

Surrey Docks Farm is a working city farm and charity that occupies
a 2.2 acre site on the south bank of the Thames, in Rotherhithe. The
farm works with local Southwark communities to provide unique
opportunities for people to learn about farming, food production
and the natural environment, and be actively involved in the working life of
the farm. We run a range of educational projects targeted to engage those
who would benefit most, and are supported by dedicated volunteers who
attend on a weekly basis. Animals reared on the farm include goats, sheep,
cows, pigs, geese, donkeys and a pony. We are free to visit from 10am-4pm
every day, including bank holidays! Please visit surreydocksfarm.org.uk.
The Week is a member of the Independent Press Standards
Organisation (which regulates the UK’s magazine and
newspaper industry). We abide by the Editors’ Code of
Practice and are committed to upholding the highest
standards of journalism.
If you think that we have not met those standards and want to make
a complaint please contact editorialadmin@theweek.co.uk. If we are unable
to resolve your complaint, or if you would like more information about IPSO
or the Editors’ Code, contact IPSO on 0300 123 2220 or visit www.ipso.co.uk.

Registered as a newspaper with the Royal Mail. Printed by Wyndeham Bicester. Distributed by Marketforce (UK) Ltd.
Subscriptions: subscriptions@theweek.co.uk
11 May 2024 THE WEEK
9000 9043