ISSU E № 75 | 4 M A RC H 202 3

WHY
WOMEN
ARE
MAD AS
HELL

and not afraid to show it

R E P O R T PA G E 1 2
 CONTENTS
S AT U R D AY
The Guardian
Kings Place
90 York Way, N1 9GU
— Actor, author and artist
Byline illustrations:
Delphine Lee
Spot illustrations:
Lalalimola
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04.03.23 ISSUE
UEE № 7755
5 31 59
CU T TINGS C U LT U R E LIFESTYLE
Pages.............................. 5-11 Pages...........................31-57 Pages..........................59-78
Smart shot True Brit Home untruths
What caught one Swansea’s had its From strong colours to
photographer’s eye on moment in the sun, south-facing gardens,
the steps of a closed Glasgow several. Our cacti to high ceilings:
shop in Sarajevo critics pick the films that forget everything you
P5 put their favourite UK thought you knew about
places on the big screen how to make the most of
Q&A P31 your patch
Singer Belinda Carlisle P59
(below) on being Music..................................37
a Pamela Anderson fan, Stage...................................38 Blind date
falling over on stage and What to do this week ....40 Sam meets Yolanta
what she’d like to edit Visual arts........................42 P62
out of her past
12
P7 Books Tim Dowling
Mandela and more Can someone tell the
Experience At 24, Gary Younge tortoise it’s too soon to
I went to Disneyland (below) covered South wake up?
every day for eight years Africa’s first democratic P63
P8 elections. What has
changed for the Black You be the judge
Dining across F E AT U R E S diaspora since then? Should my husband
the divide Pages...............................................................................12-29 P45 stop cutting his nails
Can two strangers agree everywhere we go?
on car use, capitalism All the rage Nonfiction reviews........48 P64
and diversity in ultra- From NHS workers who had a tough time during the Fiction reviews................51
Orthodox schools? pandemic and women infuriated about everyday Ask Annalisa Barbieri
P9 misogyny following the death of Sarah Everard How did men come to I’ll miss my office
to teenagers pulverising toasters, female anger is rule the world? “hubby” after we’ve
Flashback everywhere. Gaby Hinsliff finds out what’s going on Angela Saini on both retired
P12 tackling the patriarchy P65
Jessie Cave looks back P54
at her four-year-old self, They saw it coming … Style & Body.....................66
her time on Harry Potter How does it feel when your warnings of doom are The big idea Plants (above)..................69
and the healing power of right? Simon Usborne asks the people who knew Should governments
a birth after a death that al-Qaida would attack, Putin invade, Trump run more experiments? Travel
P10 win, Covid spread from animals to humans and P57 20 of the best budget
Lehman Brothers and other big banks go bust beach holidays
P18 Plus Nazia Parveen
looks back at the
My life as Dolly Parton childhood holidays
A photographer who channels the “Backwoods that made her fall in
Barbie” turns her camera on other superfans (above) love with the coast
who dress like their heroine on the bus, in the P70
launderette, to do the grocery shopping …
P26 Puzzles..............................78
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 3
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P E O P L E , I S S U E S & C U R I O S I T I E S of M O D E R N L I F E

Smart shot
The best
pictures taken
on phones
Magdalena
Szurek
Fusion 2022
Shot on iPhone 13 Pro
Last year, Magdalena
Szurek wanted to fulfil
all the travel plans the
pandemic had stalled,
and she saw Sarajevo as
her “dream destination”.
“I have family from
Croatia,” says Szurek,
who lives in Poland.
“So I used to visit the
Balkans every year, but
only its coast. I’d heard
a lot about Sarajevo,
the capital of Bosnia-
Herzegovina. It’s a city
that has experienced
a lot of pain and sadness
but today Muslims,
Catholics, Orthodox
Christians and Jews live
side by side in harmony.”
Szurek had just
arrived and was looking
for somewhere to stop
for a coffee. “There were
two places next to each
other, and these women
were sitting on the
steps outside a closed
shop. Asking them to
pose would have been
against the rules of
street photography.”
Szurek used the
Snapseed app to
emphasise the contrasts
a little. “Architecture
is mainly a background
for me. Strangers
bring the character and
story. You don’t need
to know the history of
Sarajevo and its people
to see the symbiosis
of the city.”
Grace Holliday

5
 CUTTINGS
The Go-Go’s singer on admiring
Pamela Anderson, being told she sings
like a goat and choosing sex over fame
Belinda Carlisle
Interview: Rosanna Greenstreet
FR A ZER HARRISON/GET T Y IMAGES FOR SIRIUSXM
B
orn in California, Belinda What do you most dislike about
Carlisle, 64, played drums in your appearance?
the punk band Germs. In 1978
she co-formed the Go-Go’s, which
I’ve accepted myself. I am very
comfortable in my own skin.
became the first all-female band who
wrote their own songs and played What is your most unappealing habit?
their instruments to have a US No 1 I’m a whistler. I whistle all the time.
album with their 1981 debut, Beauty
and the Beat. In the mid-80s, Carlisle Which book are you ashamed not
went solo, releasing successful albums to have read?
such as Heaven on Earth and Runaway I am a big reader, but I’ve never read
Horses. Her hits include I Get Weak anything by Dickens.
and the Grammy-nominated Heaven
is a Place on Earth. Her new single, What did you want to be when you
Big Big Love, is out on 10 March. She were growing up?
is married to film producer Morgan A travel agent, so I could see the world.
Mason
M , has a son and lives in Mexico.
What is the worst thing anyone’s ever
Which
W living person do you most said to you?
admire
ad and why? “You sing like a goat.” When I did my
Pamela
Pa Anderson, because I love French album [Voila], this French
her strength
he and honesty and woman – a supposed friend – said to
vulnerability
vu at the same time. my face: “It’s fantastic but, how come
you sound like a chèvre?” It was like
What
W was your most someone had hit me in the stomach.
embarrassing moment?
em
On
O stage in Tasmania, I tripped over What is your guiltiest pleasure?
a fl
a  oor monitor and landed on my A super trashy reality show called
back 
ba like a turtle, kicking my legs in 90 Day Fiance. It got me and my
the
th air trying to get back on my feet in husband through the pandemic.
front
fr of about 5,000 people. But when
I got
I g on my feet, the whole crowd Have you ever said “I love you”
roared
ro in triumph. without meaning it?
Totally.
Aside
A from a property, what’s the most
expensive
ex thing you’ve ever bought? If you could edit your past,
I’ve
I’v been doing pilates for 25 years what would you change?
and I
an swear by it. I decided to kit out I wouldn’t take back the drugs,
a room
a  with pilates equipment – and but there are a few boyfriends that
I think
I t it’s the most expensive thing I’d edit out of my life.
I’ve
I’v invested in.
What do you consider your
Describe
D yourself in three words greatest achievement?
Work
W in progress. Having a career that’s lasted 47 years,
especially when I felt like an impostor
What
W makes you unhappy? for so many of them.
Watching
W the news. I have to put
myself
m on 40-day news fasts because Would you rather have more sex,
I get
I g so worked up. My motto is: money or fame?
ignorance
ig is bliss. Sex.
How would you like to
be remembered?
As a singer who did everything
her way, no compromise.
What is the most important lesson life
has taught you?
I wouldn’t take To stay in the moment and live each
day to the maximum. You never know
back the drugs,
b when it’s going to be taken away.
but there are a few
b What happens when we die?
b
boyfriends I would I believe that we go back to divine
consciousness. I don’t really think
e
edit out of my life there is any such thing as death.
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 7
CUTTINGS
Experience
I went to Disneyland every day
for eight years
As told to Elizabeth McCafferty
O
n Friday 13 March 2020,
the Covid-19 pandemic
put an end to my
2,995-day streak of
visiting Disneyland
in California daily.
In 2011, a long and difficult bout of
unemployment had made finding
entertainment for free a necessity, but
it was also nearly impossible.
However, that Christmas, I was
gifted an annual pass to Disneyland,
which gave me free entry for the year.
I thought: “Why not make the most of
it and try to visit every single day for
an entire year?”
I already had a great love for Disney.
Tron is by far my favourite film.
Growing up, my family would take me
there for special occasions, such as
birthdays or Easter, and my aunt was
8 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
even a cast member at Walt Disney
World in Florida for a while. I’ve also
collected more than 3,000 Disney-
themed badges along the way.
And so each day throughout 2012,
I visited the park. It’s open every day
of the year – in fact, before Covid,
Disneyland California had only two
full-day unscheduled closures since
opening in 1955, bar unexpected
weather closures. After that first year
I kept going, because I had so much
fun. It felt like a regular part of my life.
The world of Disney became my
sanctuary. It was a place where I made
friendships with people from all over
the world. When times were tough,
being able to visit Disneyland at no
extra cost was a joy, and I could lose
myself within the park and all its
attractions for hours.
My favourite place was the Star Wars:
Galaxy’s Edge area, which opened in
2019. The park was less busy from
January to March, though my pass let
me skip the queues at all times. It was
only a 20-minute drive from home, and
it was better to be in Disneyland than
moping around at mine. A bonus was
my pedometer counting thousands of
steps a day as I explored.
That first year I’d spend hours
applying for jobs at home before leaving
It was only 20
minutes away – and
better than moping
around at home
Portrait: Bradley Meinz
Disneyland,
California
Jeff Reitz: ‘People
ask if I ever took
days off. I didn’t’
to spend the rest of the day in the park.
I’m a US air force veteran, and
eventually got a job at a veterans’
hospital. I’d finish around 3pm, and go
to the park after hours.
People often ask me if I ever took
any days off from my Disneyland
visits. I didn’t, but if I was ever feeling
a bit under the weather, I’d wear a
mask and stay for just an hour. I’m
lucky, as I don’t get sick easily. Perhaps
Disney is good for the immune system.
During my first 200 days, I would
post about my visits on social media. I
now treat my Instagram like a personal
Disney photo album. On day 60 of my
challenge, I met a reporter who ended
up sharing my story and I started
going viral. I even ended up on a red
carpet at a Disney movie premiere.
Soon I started getting recognised by
other guests, who wanted to get
pictures with me. It became really
crazy when actual celebrities started
messaging me. One year into my
streak, Disney gifted me the Dream
Suite at their hotel for a night, above
the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction.
It was very special to stay there.
I kept going to Disneyland after my
one-year challenge because I never
stopped having fun. I could have a bad
day at work and then be cheered
straight up again. I could climb
treehouses, watch movies, try all the
restaurants, and watch the fireworks.
Every day was different, so it didn’t
feel like I was repeating the same
things. People often asked why I didn’t
just work for Disney, but part of the
magic was the escape from work.
I haven’t been back since 2020,
which surprises people. The pass
system has changed since Covid-19:
not only is it much more expensive – a
premium annual pass in 2012 cost
$649 (£536); now it is $1,599 (£1,320) –
and now you also have to book. I didn’t
like the idea of doing that.
To keep myself busy after work,
I’ve started hiking and completed
24 scuba dives last year. Disney was
a huge part of my life but I now
enjoy trying new outdoor
experiences instead.
A lot of people thought I was crazy
for the amount of trips I did, but the
annual pass made it possible and
cheap, and you can’t please everyone.
Disney has the magical power to bring
people together and I’ll always be
thankful for that.
Jeff Reitz
Do you have an experience to share?
Email experience@theguardian.com
 CUTTINGS
Isaac, 22 – thinks we can’t preach diversity
then tell ultra-Orthodox schools what to teach
Eli, 41 – says schools in his community don’t
need sex ed because the pupils don’t have sex
Dining
Eli, 41, London
Occupation Owns a kosher food business
Voting record Is not a big voter as
across the it’s “a bit of a waste of time” voting
Conservative in his area
Amuse bouche Is a part-time mentalist
divide and does mind-reading shows
Can breaking
Isaac, 22, London
Occupation Meeting and events
coordinator, hoping to become a teacher
bread bridge Voting record Labour in the one election
of his adulthood – fat lot of good it did
Amuse bouche Is in a band called
political House plant
For starters
differences? Isaac I had a salt-beef sandwich, with
mustard and stuff, beef tacos to start.
Eli I had ox tongue and a beef carpaccio,
then a burger and croquettes. And
a creme brulee for dessert.
Isaac He was friendly and welcoming.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING: KIT T Y DR AKE
We quickly established a good rapport.
He was very open about what his
religion means to him and his life.
Eli Overall, I think he was more into
listening than pontificating. I’m happy
to sit and pontificate for hours. We
were similar in that we’re both from
backgrounds that are the opposite of
diverse. I’m from the Hasidic Jewish
Interview: Zoe Williams community, not really mingling with
Portrait: Sophia Evans
anyone of the broader community,
and he’s from a village in Yorkshire
that is mainly white.
The big beef
Isaac He thinks ultra-Orthodox schools
get criticised by inspectors because
they don’t have regard for protected
characteristics – race, disability,
homosexuality. They have to make
specific mention of these things and
accept them as OK. Obviously, they
can’t do that – they’re almost
puritanical in what they teach.
Eli Our schools don’t have sex
education at all. I question the
necessity of it. Maybe in the general
population, where sex is happening
at the age of 14, 15, 16, 17. But, in our
community, the mingling of the sexes
is not happening. You don’t need to
be taught how to use a condom when
you’re not having sex. There’s no
need to say, “Don’t use the word
‘gay’ as a slur”, when no Jewish boy
would ever use the word “gay”.
They wouldn’t know what it meant.
Isaac I take his point – that it’s
impossible to preach diversity and
say we have to be accepting, and then
tell Orthodox Jewish schools that
they’re not adhering to British values.
But a lot of his problem with diversity
Want to dine
across the divide?
Scan here to apply
circles back to saying western beliefs
are superior to others. I don’t want to
paint him in a bad light, but that is
what he said.
Eli While all humans are equal, not all
religions are equal. I don’t think it’s
hateful or there’s anything wrong with
saying that.
Sharing plate
Isaac I got the impression he doesn’t
care about climate change. I do. He
seems not to care about the emissions
that he causes. He doesn’t deny it,
but he doesn’t think it’s anything
to be concerned about. I came out
thinking, “Who am I to question his
traditions?” It’s not compatible with
my position at all, but ultimately
I’ve come to my own conclusions.
I haven’t been told by a higher being
what to believe. So I found it hard to
say: “You’re wrong.”
Eli I don’t think we have that much
influence. I’m just a bit sceptical. I think
the benefit of using cars far outweighs
the benefit of stopping climate change.
Let’s say in 100 years there’ll be
7 billion humans instead of 8 billion –
OK, so be it. Life will continue. We’ll
adapt and probably thrive.
For afters
Isaac We agreed that capitalism is
ultimately a good thing, but I feel
it’s hard for it to be ethical on the scale
it is now, because it’s so engorged.
I don’t have any issue with the theory
– it raises living standards. But it’s not
working right now.
Eli A lot of the ills we blame capitalism
for are just reality. If you put someone
on a desert island and they don’t
fend for themselves, they won’t eat.
I’m not entitled to your money just
because I’m poor. The eat-the-rich
mentality, I’m against. Nobody owes
anyone anything.
Isaac He kept asking me what I would
do if I was rich. And I was, like,
“I don’t know – I don’t expect to be
a multimillionaire”. But I would feel
obliged to do more for the country
that made me.
Takeaways
Isaac He was a really nice man, but
I don’t feel as if we would go into any
theological discussions.
Eli He was a very nice, well-meaning
person – I mean it in a genuine way.
Eli and Isaac ate at Asado, London E5;
asado.restaurant. Want to meet
someone from across the divide?
Go to theguardian.com/different-views
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 9
CUTTINGS
Flashback
B
orn in London in 1987,
the second eldest of
five siblings, Jessie Cave
is an artist, author
Actor, author and and actor. Her first
major role was as Ron
Weasley’s girlfriend, Lavender Brown,
artist Jessie Cave in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood
Prince. She went on to appear in TV
programmes including Black Mirror
on babies, losing
and Grandma’s House, before
establishing herself as an illustrator
and comedian, taking confessional
her brother,
shows such as I Loved Her and Sunrise
to the stage. In 2021, she published her
bestselling debut novel, Sunset, and is
currently starring in sitcom Buffering
and her ‘sporty on ITV2. She lives in London with her
four children and partner, the
comedian Alfie Brown.
Von Trapp family’ I was four years old and painting in
our house in west London in this
photo. I can’t quite figure out what I’d
drawn – it looks as if it’s the word
Interview: Harriet Gibsone “rent” bleeding out from another piece
Main portrait: Pål Hansen of paper. Which would be a strange
Styling: Andie Redman thing for a small person to write, but
also funny, because decades later, rent
remains a huge bleed on my life.
If you were to zoom out of this
photo, you would have seen toys and
mess everywhere. I loved being the big
1991 I don’t remember being
creative. I wasn’t a prodigy
sister and helping my mum look after
my siblings. Around this age, I never
stopped asking for a baby sister, and
I’m so grateful they did have [Cave’s
sister, the actor] Bebe, because she is
my everything and gave me a purpose
from a very young age.
There were five of us in total, but
my mum was very good at maintaining
calm in the chaos – letting it be –
whereas I am quite anal and tend to
tidy up my kids’ toys constantly
throughout the day. There’s a pot on
the stove behind me, but I am pretty
sure the house wouldn’t have smelled
of dinner; there wasn’t much cooking
going on, and there isn’t much going
on in mine now, either – we eat the
same thing most nights. Which is
mostly nuts. There is always a bowl of
wholesome nuts on the table – pecans
and walnuts for the hit of zinc, and
cashews as a treat.
I find it very comforting to see
photos where I am little and busily
drawing, because I don’t remember
being overly creative at all. I was never
a child prodigy type when it came to
art, so when I hear about kids who
were “always writing or painting”,
I think: “I must be a fraud, because
that wasn’t me!” My parents never
pushed us into doing anything, it all
10 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
happened organically, and to this day
I believe that creativity for the sake of
it is beautiful. Making something for
the fun of it is my favourite thing. As
you get older, it becomes very easy to
lose sight of that.
Growing up, we were an active
group, almost like a sporty Von Trapp
family. Mum would have to take me
and my siblings to different sporting
tournaments, all five of us tagging
along. To make it fun, she would create
a play area for the younger ones. Those
are some of my fondest memories. To
this day, my mum and babies come
with me for whatever job I’m doing.
We make a home wherever we are.
As I got into my teens, I stopped doing
sport [Cave was a former county-level
swimmer and national tennis player]
and decided I wanted to focus on art.
I chose to do an art foundation, which
mainly happened as I was following
a boy I liked on to that course. I am
so grateful that I did, though – not
because of the boy; that didn’t work
out – but because it’s something I now
do for a living.
I was a little bit odd when I was
young. I was an extroverted introvert,
which has carried on to this day. I was
never very lucky at school in terms of
finding a nice group of friends. As well
as terrible peer groups, I wasn’t too
compatible with education either.
While doing my art foundation, I felt it
was unrealistic – I couldn’t be an artist!
So I dropped out and did English at
Manchester instead. Within six
months, I realised I couldn’t write
essays either. I was also terrified of the
social drinking at university. I was
HAIR AND MAKEUP: SADAF AHMAD. ARCHIVE IMAGE: COURTESY OF JESSIE C AVE
frightened of how feral it felt to see
everyone losing control.
While I was studying, I started
considering acting, and totally
lucked out with getting a role in Harry
Potter on my third audition. It was
a perfect experience of what being on
a film set could be; so friendly and fun.
It was, however, a totally inaccurate
representation of the industry in
general. It was a shock to the system
when I went for jobs after that,
and those negative experiences
shaped and haunted me. I was very
innocent, and there was not enough
safeguarding – unlike today. Nothing
serious happened, but there was an
unpleasantness to the auditioning
process [when it came to focusing on
appearances] that made me very
self-conscious and cynical.
Thankfully, I’ve had way more joyful
acting jobs recently. I’ve had two
 babies in the pandemic, both of whom
joined me on the set of Buffering, and
it has been a reminder of how great
working as an actor can be.

I got pregnant with my third baby

a year after my brother Ben died
[in an accident in 2019, aged 27].
While wanting another child felt like
a primal urge – my way of having some
kind of control over life – a sudden
death also makes you distrust the
world. When I got pregnant I had no
faith or hope that it would be OK.
I thought something would go wrong.
Then it did go wrong [Tennessee was
born prematurely and contracted
Covid], but everything worked out in
the end. That was a hugely educational
experience: just because something
bad happens once, it doesn’t mean it
will happen over and over again.
There was a special significance
to the birth of my fourth baby
[Becker] as well. The induction was
scheduled to fall on the anniversary
of Ben’s death, and it became a hugely
emotional experience as a result.
I was determined that the baby would
arrive on the exact same day, so
when midnight approached and he
hadn’t arrived yet, I became frenzied,
obsessed by the symbolism. Gradually
I learned to trust the process, to let
go. I now appreciate that both births
have been hugely healing. That said,
I hope it doesn’t mean I’ll keep going,
that by the time I have my 10th I’ll be
fully healed.

Ben’s death changed my life in so

many ways, and especially the way
I approach my creativity. It’s now
important to only do things that are
meaningful. It’s taken me a long
time, almost four years, but I feel
ready to start working on something
new. I finally have the courage to
stand on a stage and not feel that the
audience will be looking at me,
thinking: “You shouldn’t be funny,
because your brother died.” It’s as if
I am opening up to myself again –
trying to be brave and not to let the
darkness win.
My instinct when I look at this
photo is to grab that girl and protect
her, her social awkwardness, in the
same way I want to protect my little
girl who is six and identical to me.
But I also want to tell her that good
stuff is around the corner. That you
have to make the most of what is left

2023 When I see that photo, my instinct is to grab that girl and ride the wave of uncertainty. Life
is tough and amazing, rent is expensive,
and protect her – as I want to protect my six-year-old but there is so much happiness too.

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 11

LET
IT
Once upon a time, women
showing their anger was
frowned upon. But the
gender anger gap is
widening, and women’s
wrath is on the rise.
From police brutality to
domestic inequality,
Gaby Hinsliff reports on
the age of female rage

ALL
OUT
T
here is a jar of severed heads
sitting on the windowsill of
Gemma Whiddett’s waiting
room. China heads, to be
precise, that customers have
gleefully smashed from the
shoulders of figurines she finds
in charity shops. She drops the
latest head into the jar, with a
satisfying clink: all ready for the
next session.
Whiddett manages Rage
Rooms in Norwich , where
customers can make an
appointment to smash up heaps
of unwanted crockery, small
electrical appliances and
miscellaneous jumble, using
scaffolding poles. The concept
first caught on in Japan as a way
of working off stress, before spreading across the US
and Europe, and is promoted as a fun, liberating means
of venting everyday frustrations. And in Norwich
around two-thirds of the customers are women.
“We had a group of little old ladies come in and I did
wonder if they knew what they’d booked. But they
absolutely got stuck in,” says Whiddett, a cheerful
40-year-old who reckons the most satisfying smashables
are breadmakers (“They last for ages”). They get a lot
of primary school teachers, she says, but this afternoon’s
booking is for three impeccably mannered teenagers.
Maddie’s parents have driven her up from Suffolk
for a belated 18th birthday celebration with friends
Annabel and Kitty. The girls, fresh from trawling
Norwich’s vintage clothes shops, explain that they’ve
never done anything like this before. But they all know
the episode of the Netflix series Sex Education where
a bunch of teenage girls cathartically smash cars in a
scrapyard, and they’ve all seen rage room videos on
TikTok, where they’re often pitched as the antidote to
relationship angst. “Block his number and smash up
a printer instead,” as TikToker @vickaboox urges her
almost 800,000 followers.
Seventeen-year-old Annabel, who recently did her
A-level mocks, admits being “a bit nervous” as they’re
ushered off to don protective boiler suits, boots and
masks. Minutes later, she is hurling plates at the wall
and pulverising a toaster as everyone else watches
on camera in the waiting room. “It feels weird at first
because you know everyone’s watching you, but once
you get into it, it’s great,” she enthuses as Whiddett
sweeps up the remnants. Later, the rubble will be
carefully sorted for recycling.
Once upon a time, women showing anger in public
might have been deemed unladylike, even shameful.
Yet ours is increasingly an age of rage. Last December,
the BBC crunched data from the Gallup World Poll –
an annual snapshot of emotional reactions across 100
countries – and found that while both sexes reported
similar anger and stress levels in 2012, women’s were
on average six points higher than men’s by 2022. The
gap widened significantly during the pandemic.
Female wrath can be a powerful catalyst for change,
channelled into movements such as #MeToo, the
protests against sexual violence in India and Pakistan,
and the recent Iranian women’s uprising against the
regime’s “morality police”. But not all anger is so
productive. It’s harder to know what to do with the blind
fury that often accompanies grief, hot menopausal rage,
or the everyday stresses of work and parenting.
Smashing crockery, punching pillows or communal
screaming – as practised by a group of Massachusetts
mothers, whose fi lm of themselves howling across
an empty football field went viral last year – may feel
cathartic. But it doesn’t solve the root causes of stress,
and some psychologists question whether hitting things
might strengthen the association between anger and
aggression for some people. Kevin Bennett, professor
14 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, has
argued that “if you have aggressive tendencies to begin
with, going to a rage room seems counterproductive”.
But in Norwich, Whiddett maintains she has never
had to stop a customer getting too overheated; they get
lots of hen dos, and lately she’s noticed more people
using their visit to process emotions. “Perhaps they’ve
recently gone through a breakup or they’re grieving.
We’ve had a lot of people who have lost someone close to
them.” They regularly see NHS and “blue light” workers,
professions that have had a particularly difficult time
during the pandemic, and sometimes, she says, it can
be oddly moving. “Some people will come out and cry.
Some will come out hysterically laughing. Some get
really shaky because it’s a rush of adrenaline. It’s a total
release.” Is that what many women crave?
IN CASUAL CONVERSATION with Lia, a good-humoured
50-year-old of British and Ghanaian heritage, you might
never guess she was angry about anything. But she has
a private list of things that infuriate her, from racism
to lockdown. When the order came in March 2020 to
stay at home, one of her three adult daughters was
pregnant. Lia was furious at being separated from her
new grandchild and her elderly mother. “To me, it felt
really dangerous telling people what to do for the greater
good. The overwhelming majority of people I knew were
very happy to go along with that narrative. It was like,
‘We’re doing as we’re told – if you don’t, you’re selfish.’
That made me so angry,” she says. “As an intelligent
woman, I didn’t feel I needed a man telling me how to
live my life and run my family. I thought it should be
down to individual families to assess the risk.”
In retrospect, she suspects that lockdown triggered
memories of growing up as a teenager, resenting the
police. “I felt very angry with authority then. When
‘GIRLS ARE TOLD
TO BE QUIET, TO
NOT SHOUT, SO
WE INTERNALISE
THAT ANGER’
I became a mum I tucked all that way.” The murder
of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer in May
2020, sparking Black Lives Matter protests worldwide,
only heightened those feelings. “My daughters were
all sending messages and videos, and talking about
racism. I knew they’d experienced racism at school,
but they were suddenly talking about the pressure to
look a certain way, to straighten their hair,” Lia recalls.
Her job involves providing equalities training and she
was swamped with emails from people anxious to
respond to Black Lives Matter. “Some were wanting
me to work for free – ‘Can you just look at this?’ – some
just saying, ‘I hope I never did anything to upset you.’
I’d been doing this work for 20 years and these people
never once reached out to me before.”
But what brought the strands of Lia’s anger together
was the murder of 33-year-old Sarah Everard by a
serving police officer in March 2021, and the heavy-
handed policing of a vigil for her. Again and again when
researching this piece, I hear women identify that as a
catalyst that unlocked anger about how men had treated
them in the past.
Jess, an occupational therapist from London who
mainly treats women in their 20s and early 30s, says
that after Everard’s death she noticed an increase in
the number of clients raging at everyday misogyny,
whatever their original reason for seeking help. “Young
women were coming to me saying, ‘I can’t go for a run
because this has happened. I get these comments on
the street.’ It was like the scab had been knocked off and
everyone was bleeding,” she recalls. She’s also noticed
a broader backlash at feeling lied to, strung along or
abused by men on dating apps. “During lockdown there
seemed to be this boom in horrible behaviour – just
using women for lockdown relationships, then binning
them off afterwards,” she says. “There’s a lot of anger,
but where does it go? Because men don’t want to hear it.”
Meanwhile, Lia remembers spending the Mother’s
Day after Everard’s death furious. “It really hit me for
the first time: I am black, I am a woman – the duality of
that, the misogynoir. It’s good that these things have
a lot of media attention; it opened people’s eyes. But it
seemed to really take over – the feelings of anger and
not knowing what to do with them.”
Lia says that among her left-leaning friends she can
open up about that now. But there are still things she
feels she can’t raise because they contradict the
“acceptable” left view. On the subject of lockdowns,
she says: “I still don’t feel safe to say what I really think
online, and it’s also like that with the whole transgender
conversation. I would never say to my female friends
what I really think – which is not that I want to
discriminate against anyone, far from it, but I do want
to see women’s rights kept safe.” Her frustration with
feeling silenced or scolded is widely echoed by gender-
PREVIOUS PAGES: PETER MARSHALL/AL AMY. OPPOSITE: HANNAH MCK AY/REUTERS; BRYAN
OLIN DOZIER/NURPHOTO/SHUT TERSTOCK; OMER KUSCU/DIA IMAGES VIA GET T Y IMAGES
critical women on the left, with the Labour MP (and
domestic violence survivor) Rosie Duffield saying it felt
like being in an “abusive relationship” with her party.
Yet there is arguably female anger on both sides of this
issue, with YouGov polling last year showing women
more supportive overall than men of trans rights.
Lia follows arguments on social media but holds back
from commenting publicly. In real life, too, she avoids
confrontation, wary of being stereotyped as an “angry
black woman”, especially in the very white rural area
where she lives. “I try to be nice, because they may
never have met a black person before.” Towards the
end of our conversation she confides: “I’m scared of
expressing my feelings, so I can’t get them out of me.”
She has previously experienced anxiety attacks, and
in lockdown sometimes felt depressed.
Anger, as John Lydon sang, is an energy. Or, put
more scientifically, it serves an important biological
and social purpose. Fear of angering our peers makes
humans follow social norms – perceived injustice or
rule-breaking is a classic trigger for anger – and rage also
primes us physically to counter threats. It makes hearts
beat faster, blood sugar levels rise, breathing quicken
and senses sharpen. But preparing for fight or flight isn’t seeing anger portrayed as empowering in popular
much help when the trigger is a traffic jam or Twitter culture: Beyoncé joyously smashing car windows
spat, and unnecessarily raising your blood pressure may with a baseball bat in the 2016 video of Hold Up or the
have downsides. Chronic anger and stress are linked Disney comedy She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, which
to increased risk of heart disease and stroke, as well as reinvents the angry green monster as a hotshot female
depression and self-harm (the latter are more commonly lawyer enraged by mansplaining. Naomi Alderman’s
reported by women). Anger is a tool most of us could sci-fi novel The Power, about women discovering the
benefit from learning to use better, according to Boiling ability to electrocute people at will, has been adapted
Point, a landmark 2008 report from the Mental Health for an Amazon Prime series this month, and even the
Foundation, and doing so would help people “achieve #anger on Instagram is full of inspirational quotes about
goals, solve problems and nurture social relationships” “honoring” rage because “if your anger isn’t flowing
as well as improve mental and physical health. out of your body, it’s probably turned inward on to
Anger is surprisingly little studied compared with yourself”. But for a generation that grew up watching
sadness or fear, says the foundation’s head of applied angry women portrayed on screen as bunny boilers,
learning, David Crepaz-Keay, perhaps because it doesn’t letting it flow may take rather more practice.
have a lucrative market in treatments. But research
suggests that men typically project rage outwards ON A GREY AFTERNOON in January, a small group of
while women are prone to turning theirs in against women gathers outside the anonymous black door of a
themselves. “One of the reasons why you see higher Georgian townhouse in Marylebone, central London.
levels of reported self-harm in women than men, if you Ranging from their mid-20s to early 60s, they have
control for other things, is that women have internalised been drawn together by word of mouth or Instagram
it and men have gone out fighting,” he explains. “That messages. Having started out as strangers, what they
is a form of self-harm, too, but it’s not pathologised as are about to do is curiously intimate. The only clue to
such.” His hunch, however, is that younger generations what connects them is the discreet white badges some
are “less gendered” about emotions, accepting more wear stamped with the words Anger Ambassador.
readily that men can be sad or women boiling mad. This is only the second meeting of the Women
Are Mad (Wam) group, which seeks to normalise
WHEN PRAGYA AGARWAL was growing up in India, conversations about anger. It was brought together by
she remembers repeatedly being told she was too Jennifer Cox, a psychotherapist. She insists this isn’t
“emotional”. That sparked a lifelong curiosity for therapy, even though the conversations do go deeper
the behavioural scientist, who is visiting professor than venting to friends over a glass of wine. “Therapy
of inequities and social justice at Loughborough is about releasing the pressure so you can carry on and
University, and author of Hysterical: Exploding the feel, ‘Well, I’m not the only one,’” she explains, offering
Myth of Gendered Emotions. “I always wondered shortbread biscuits baked by a Wam member in the
about those boundaries on emotional expression,” shape of the group’s initials. “Whereas this group is
she says cheerily over Zoom from Ireland, where she’s more about sitting with the pain of this and getting
researching another book. “When do you become ‘too into the sources of the anger.”
angry’ or ‘too sensitive’? I was always told, ‘Girls aren’t She created the group and its @WomenAreMad
angry’ or asked, ‘How will you ever get married?’” Instagram rallying point after realising how often
In fact, she says, there’s little evidence of biological she saw patients in her private clinic with symptoms
differences in men’s and women’s capacity for anger. ranging from anxiety, depression and eating disorders
But anger often involves confronting to migraine and eczema, who turned out to be furious
or demanding something from others, From top: police at diverging in 2017, the year the Italian and whose conditions seemingly improved after
which makes it a “high status” emotion a vigil for Sarah Everard actor Alyssa Milano tweeted: “If you’ve exploring that anger. “If you lift the lid, you very quickly
associated with power. Lower-status in London, March 2021; been sexually harassed or assaulted end up with this kind of well of rage. And women are
individuals, who risk being punished rallies in the US and write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.” very frightened of expressing it or calling it anger, but
for asserting themselves, learn to Turkey in January this The outpouring of experiences that the relief when you do is huge.” Could more women
mask it. Research shows that girls are year, and in London last followed exemplifies the power of benefit, she wondered, from that relief? When she
encouraged to regulate their emotions March (previous pages) what Agarwal calls “collective anger” opened the group’s first meeting by asking what made
from babyhood, she says. “It’s the in driving change. In mass social media, them angry, answers varied from the brutal crushing
implicit and explicit messages parents give: you with its global reach and algorithmic preference for of Iran’s anti-hijab protests to matters more domestic.
shouldn’t shout loudly in a supermarket or use your highly emotive content, female anger found the perfect Jenny Berglund, a freelance executive coach, says
outside voice,” she says. “But if you tell girls to be quiet, vehicle to spread virally. But #MeToo also perhaps that since joining she has become more conscious of
or reward them for being quiet, tell them not to shout reflected a growing sense, after Donald Trump won infuriating workplace incidents she might previously
loudly, not to take risks, we’re telling them that that’s the 2016 US presidential election despite being caught have brushed off – citing a colleague who declared that
what we expect from them. boasting about “grabbing” women, that playing nicely Sarah Everard “should have learned self-defence”. But
“So women internalise that anger, and it’s expressed wasn’t working. Hillary Clinton had made herself stay expressing anger in professional settings is difficult,
in terms of despair or sadness. We learn that crying is calm and measured when debating Trump, to avoid she points out. “Work is a place where anger is taboo.
seen more sympathetically.” That’s especially true, being called shrill or emotional, and much good it You don’t want to be Dominic Raab-ing it all over the
she says, for women of colour. When she first moved did her. The unashamed anger of #MeToo, however, place and shouting at people.”
to Britain more than two decades ago as a student, seemingly got results. In her 2018 bestseller Rage When Cox mentions women being encouraged
Agarwal remembers feeling that she “needed to be a Becomes Her, the American activist Soraya Chemaly to self-soothe with meditation and yoga rather than
‘good person’ to fit in” and not to create a fuss. argued that the shaming of female anger had silenced explore what is actually bothering them, the group
Now, she tries not to rebuke her six-year-old twin too many women for too long; a Ted talk she gave nods vigorously. “Yoga makes me angry,” groans Juliet
daughters for getting angry, encouraging them instead that year arguing that anger could not remain “the Cowan, 49, an actor and single mother of three who
to reflect on why they feel that way. “What I’m trying moral property of boys and men” has been viewed prefers writing as an outlet. The standup show she’s
to do is not to judge the emotion but say, ‘Why are you almost 2.5m times. That autumn, when the US senator performing at London’s Vault festival this month,
feeling angry at the moment? Do you want to change the Elizabeth Warren was branded overly aggressive while covering midlife challenges, from menopause and
situation or do you want to express it in the right way running for the Democrat presidential nomination, parenting teenagers to her divorce, is called Fuck Off
– how can you do that without hurting yourselves or she embraced it. “Over and over we are told women and Leave Me Alone. Yet even this group struggles with
anybody else?’” Would a fairer society, in which women are not allowed to be angry,” she wrote. “It makes us the idea that expressing anger makes you a witch, a nag,
felt freer to let rip, inevitably be an angrier one? Not unattractive to powerful men who want us to be quiet.” a “crazy bitch”. What do they think would happen if
quite, she says: “I suppose an equitable society would She lost to a man, but her words resonated, particularly women everywhere were truly honest about why they
be one where emotions are not gendered or generally with younger women. are furious? “I think most of us would feel in physical
labelled, but where all of us can learn to navigate To generation Z, it is anger that increasingly looks danger,” Cowan says. “You would be pariahs in the
different emotional thresholds without being judged authentic, while suppressing it is deemed, at best, bad community,” Cox agrees. “You wouldn’t
or penalised for it.” for mental health and, at worst, complicit with injustice. have any sex ever again,” says Olivia
Gallup’s female and male anger scores first began Unlike their mothers, young women have grown up Lee, 43, a comedy writer whose work

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 15

 regularly explores maternal anger and whose personal female-only course filled up so quickly that Mind now
flashpoint is invisible domestic load (her children are runs several a year, with a waiting list. Some people
seven and two). seek help voluntarily, but others are referred by police,
“I feel that what’s happening now is we’re working, probation officers and social workers, including after
we’re paying half the bills – why are we still doing so incidents of domestic violence. “Studies show that a lot
much more at home? It’s almost like feminism has got of women’s anger is more directed towards loved ones
us to that point and it’s stalled. We need to make the – their partner, the kids,” Pegg says over Zoom from
balance fairer so we can work and not go mad, not be Sheffield with her colleague Dovile Vilkeviciute, who
furious and overwhelmed.” Her husband constantly recently took over running the course. “Historically,
volunteers to help, she says, but she still carries the public displays of anger aren’t something we see as
mental list of everything that needs doing. “I’m like, often in women.”
‘That’s the whole problem – I need everything that’s The course covers deeper drivers of rage, including
in my head to be in your head.’ That for me would childhood experiences, and aims not to eliminate anger
be equality.” She can’t remember feeling so angry but to help clients channel it so that it doesn’t emerge
five years ago, so what changed? “I thought I had it as aggression. Techniques involve slowing down and
sorted: we both work, we both have good careers, interrupting the thought process leading to rage, so
this is equal. And then you have kids, and you realise that you can engage more rational thinking instead.
that it’s not.” A 1996 study from the US that Agarwal “It’s a skill – it takes practice,” Pegg says.
unearthed for her book found anger levels increased Clues that it might be time to consider an anger
with every child added to a household, more so for management course include loved ones “starting to
mothers than fathers. walk on eggshells” around you, Vilkeviciute says.
Another red flag is stewing over things: are you still
THE IDEA THAT SMALL CHILDREN can occasionally thinking about someone who cut you up in traffic last
drive you mad is not new. Sixty years ago in her week? Passive-aggressive behaviour, Pegg says, is still
feminist classic The Feminine Mystique, Betty a form of anger: “People say, ‘At home if somebody
Friedan described frustrated suburban housewives upsets me I will give them the silent treatment’ – is
swallowing tranquillisers like cough sweets to numb that something that lasts for days and days? How often
their feelings. But parenting through lockdown brought are you losing it – every other day or once a month?”
it alive again, with a government study of mental health
under Covid finding women more likely than men to ALEX WAS 29 when she realised she needed help
have significantly adapted their lives to accommodate controlling her temper. She had always been fiery, she
childcare and housework, linking this to higher levels explains over the phone, lashing out verbally if she felt
of psychological distress. rejected or criticised. “I just thought, ‘That’s how I am
Anna Mathur ’s children were five, three and one and if people are too sensitive to deal with it, that’s their
when lockdown began, and she was in the middle of problem.’” She rowed with her landlord, walked away
trying to write a book. She vividly recalls “a bubbling from relationships and was “making enemies” at work.
sense of rage” rising up. “Something would fall out of The final straw, she says, was getting into a screaming
the cupboard and I’d find myself wanting to scream argument with a stranger in Tesco. “I knew it wasn’t
and shout and throw things,” she says. Everyone’s a normal reaction to somebody being a bit rude to me
patience snaps occasionally, she reasoned, but this in the milk aisle.”
felt different. “That’s where the shame comes in – am Looking for help, in 2020 she stumbled across the
I just a bad person, have I changed? The Mind course. With sessions shifted online due to Covid
archetype of motherhood is that patient, ‘It feels weird at carer. She hasn’t had a holiday for six restrictions, Alex initially kept her camera off, nervous
loving maternal figure, and I was feeling first, but once you years and, although she pays care about introducing herself to strangers as a “crazy
more like I wanted to run away from get into it, it’s great’: workers so that she can hold down a job angry person”. She cried at times, reflecting on what
my kids.” When Mathur, a trained teenagers Maddie, working with children with disabilities, anger had cost her in the past: “You might say or do
psychotherapist, started discussing Annabel and Kitty have looking after her father consumes something that’s really bad or hurtful, and someone
anger on her website and her podcast a smashing time at Rage almost all her free time. else just doesn’t want to put up with it, or with you …
The Therapy Edit, responses flooded in Rooms in Norwich He was always a difficult man, she It’s really painful.”
from women saying they’d never been says, and illness has made him very But anger was never demonised on the course, she
on such a short fuse. frustrated. “I have lost it with him a says, which felt like a “very safe space”. She still uses
Even in normal times, she points out, the pressure on few times, and a few home truths have come out. But the techniques she was taught, including identifying
mothers can be explosive. “I remember talking about all that stress – if I kept it in, it would probably have the early sensations of anger building up and walking
self-care once and encouraging mothers to think of repercussions. I try not to lose my temper with him, I away or asking to get back to the person later. Today,
what tiny little acts you can put in the day that you could try to walk away, I try to use strategies we use at work. Alex sees anger in a more positive light. “I used to see
devote just to yourself, and people were saying things But I don’t feel nice about it.” it as: ‘This is what protects me and it makes me scary
like ‘Brush my teeth’ or ‘Have a shower’. Those are basic A Carers UK spokesperson says it’s “understandable and brave.’ Now I definitely still really value anger, but
fundamental acts of self-respect. Even people in prison to feel frustrated” looking after a loved one, advising I see it more as: ‘How do I want to use it?’
get those.” While her book The Little Book of Calm for people to set aside time for themselves, not bottle up “We would joke about it on the course – will we ever
New Mums offers advice for managing stress, she says feelings and join its online meetups, or see their GP if be Zen and completely at peace? No. But I definitely
women shouldn’t be shamed for feeling it in the first they’re worried about their own mental health. think anger is a real motivating force. I want to use it
place. “If your boss was screaming in your face, you’d For mothers at the end of their tether, Mathur suggests for passion projects, for drive and for being brave.”
walk out. Just because it’s your child doing it doesn’t burning off stress with exercise and apologising in an But if control is what matters most to Alex, for many
mean you’re not going to have a physiological reaction.” age-appropriate way to children if you do shout. If you women the magic is in sweet release. Back in Norwich,
But while maternal rage is increasingly really feel yourself losing it, she says, “literally step Whiddett says she thinks that smashing stuff takes
acknowledged, the frustrations of daughters in caring away” for a moment; take deep breaths, or focus on people back to being kids again, the last time they felt
roles is more taboo. When Nasreen’s widowed elderly something outside the window. “Another little thing is this free to let loose. She has cleared the last shards
father had a heart attack in 2007, she was living in just to look at their eyelashes or their little hands. Look of Annabel’s session and resets the room for Maddie,
America, where she had built a career she loved. at your teenager and think, ‘I remember when you were who emerges exhilarated after breaking up a hairdryer.
Nonetheless, she dropped everything to return to a baby.’ Try to re-engage with that maternal feeling. But it’s Kitty, the quietest of the three, who seems to
ANTONIO OLMOS/THE GUARDIAN

London and nurse him. “I had a life where I was able They’re just a child trying to negotiate the world and find her turn most cathartic. “It was just feeling like
to do things that I probably would never have done you’re a grownup.” everything’s coming out,” she says. “I feel a lot lighter.”
here, but also just being able to be me,” she says over But what if you get so angry that deep breaths And, with that, the girls gather their shopping, thank
the phone. “Then suddenly I was at home looking after aren’t enough? Three years ago, psychotherapist Julia everyone politely and exit into the unexpectedly warm
him. There was anger then, definitely.” Pegg was running a men-only anger management February sunshine •
Her father recovered from heart surgery, but then programme for the Sheffield branch of mental health Some names have been changed.
broke his hip, and a stroke has left him unable to speak. charity Mind when she found herself increasingly @WomenAreMad is planning a Scream on the Green
A decade and a half later, Nasreen, 63, is still his live-in fielding inquiries about places for women. Her fi rst on 26 March in London.

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 17


THE RIGHT
SIDE OF
HISTORY
From the man who could have
stopped 9/11 to the woman who
knew Wall Street was about
to crash: how does it feel to
foresee future disasters?
Simon Usborne finds out
Illustrations: Nicolás Ortega
Ali Soufan warned of al-Qaida attacking the US
In October 2000, Ali Soufan, a 29-year-old Lebanese-
American FBI agent, was driving across Brooklyn Bridge
when his pager beeped. More than 7,000 miles away, off
the coast of Yemen, suicide bombers in a fishing boat
had blown a hole in the side of the USS Cole, a missile
destroyer, killing 17 American sailors.
Soufan was being summoned to the office, where his
mentor John O’Neill, head of the FBI’s National Security
Division, would put him in charge of the investigation.
O’Neill and Soufan were rare voices in the FBI and
beyond in sounding the alarm about the scale of the
threat posed to the US by al-Qaida.
“It all started for me in 1997 when I wrote a memo
to the FBI warning about this guy Osama bin Laden,”
says Soufan, who had only just completed a master’s
in international relations before sending his CV to the
FBI, partly because he loved The X-Files. “That memo
became more important after the east African embassy
bombings in 1998. And the rest is history.”
A team led by Soufan and O’Neill flew straight to
Yemen, where they quickly established links between
the USS Cole attack, al-Qaida and the US embassy
bombings in Tanzania and Nairobi, in which more
than 200 people had been killed. More significantly,
Soufan connected the USS Cole plotters to a one-legged
al-Qaida lieutenant called “Khallad” and two meetings
in Thailand and Malaysia.
While establishing a trail of people and money,
Soufan suspected something bigger was afoot – and
that the Malaysia meeting was of particular importance.
“The threat matrix was blinking red,” he says. But when
he asked the CIA about that meeting, the agency said
it had nothing. In fact, the agency knew all about it
but decided to keep its intelligence to itself. Crucially,
it would fail to tell the FBI that two other jihadis in
Malaysia had flown on to California, where they
enrolled at a flying school without raising suspicion.
Soufan grew up in Beirut, where his father was a
journalist and his mother a teacher. He was 16 when
the family moved to Pennsylvania to escape war.
American virtues seduced the teenager: freedom,
opportunity, justice. “It was the American dream,”
he says. But as a young agent, his idealism and talent
were butting up against more mundane themes. A
culture of mutual suspicion and rivalry was blocking
the flow of information between the CIA and the FBI. It
probably didn’t help that Soufan had outwitted the CIA
in a separate investigation in Jordan, then rebuffed its
attempts to recruit him. (He found a box of evidence the
agency had missed, which included a map of proposed
jihadi bomb sites and led to the conviction of 22 plotters.)
Back in New York, in late August 2001, Soufan said
goodbye to O’Neill, who was leaving the FBI. O’Neill,
who had been a father figure to Soufan, was about to
start a quieter life – as head of security at the World
Trade Center. Soufan flew back to Yemen to follow up
some USS Cole leads. He was at the US embassy on 11
September. “When I saw the second plane hit, I knew
this was al-Qaida,” he says.
The FBI ordered Soufan and his team to fly home
the next morning. Moments before takeoff, Soufan
was told to call the CIA. It ordered him to return to the
embassy, where an agent handed Soufan an envelope.
It contained surveillance photos and reports of the
Malaysia meeting. “It had all the answers to the
questions that I’d been asking since November 2000,”
he says. “I literally went to the bathroom and threw up.”
Soufan couldn’t get through to O’Neill and assumed
– correctly – that his mentor was dead. Now he had
learned that the CIA had withheld information that
could have cracked the 9/11 plot – and that the same
agency wanted him to prove al-Qaida was responsible.
“I honestly don’t think I know how it felt at the time,
and I still don’t,” he says. “I didn’t have time to think.”
Working without sleep for days,
Soufan interrogated one of the USS Cole
plotters, who mentioned a jihadi who had
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‘I FELT SURE WE
WERE GOING TO
HAVE A PANDEMIC
AND WE WEREN’T
READY FOR IT.
MY DAUGHTER SAID
LATER: HOW DOES
IT FEEL TO WATCH
THIS AND KNOW
YOU PREDICTED IT?’
known one of the 9/11 hijackers and happened to be in
Yemen. After days of questioning, Soufan got the man
to identify the terrorists.
Soufan’s high profile made life difficult and he left
the FBI in 2005. Now in his early 50s, he runs the Soufan
Group, a global security consultancy. He has been the
subject of books and TV shows, becoming known as
“the man who could have stopped 9/11”. “I don’t want
to put that burden on my shoulders … that I could have
stopped it,” he says. “But I do think about these things
sometimes, it’s something I have to deal with.”
Since 9/11, Soufan has warned the world about
emerging threats, including domestic white supremacy
and its “disturbing parallels” with the rise of al-Qaida.
“When I’m warning about threats, I think people say,
‘You know what? These guys really tried to tell us before
about al-Qaida and we didn’t heed their warnings, so
maybe we should pay attention now,’” he says.
Robin Marantz Henig foresaw a pandemic passed
from animals to people
In 1990, Robin Marantz Henig started researching a book
about viruses. A year earlier, more than 200 virologists
had gathered at a conference in Washington DC to
consider future threats and to counter a complacency
that seemed to exist about the possible emergence of
a virus that could cross oceans and cause a pandemic.
Henig remembered the early terror of Aids, fi rst
observed in 1981 in New York City, where her brother
was working as a doctor at the time. In 1983, Henig, who
was 29 and already a talented science writer, published
a magazine feature about Aids in the New York Times, a
few weeks before scientists identified HIV as the virus
behind it. “So my editors said, ‘OK, now we’re gonna
put you on the Aids beat and you’re going to figure out
which lab is going to cure it, and we’ll be there on the
ground floor,’” says Henig, now 69 and liv ing in New
York. “And I thought, ‘That’s not how it works!’ It took
another 10 years for Aids to stop being a death sentence.”
Henig says the postwar development of antibiotics
and vaccines – perhaps most notably against polio in the
50s – had closed minds to the threat of viruses and the
difficulty of containing them. “We thought infectious
diseases were taken care of, so making the case that this
was something we still needed to pay attention to was
an uphill battle, even in the context of Aids,” she says.
In her book A Dancing Matrix, which came out in
1993, Henig considered how aviation and the proximity
of growing human populations to wildlife, including
bats and rodents, were creating fertile ground. She
was struck by the lack of investment in surveillance
systems. “I became sure that we were going to have
a pandemic in the not too distant future, and that we
weren’t ready for it,” she says.
A year later, The Hot Zone by Richard Preston and
The Coming Plague by Laurie Garrett were bestselling
books with similar themes. “I like to say that I wrote
the prequel,” Henig says. Yet still the world remained
unprepared. Henig also blames prejudice for a collective
failure of imagination. In her book she quotes a weary
unnamed scientist: “Ask a field virologist what
constitutes an epidemic worth looking into and he’ll
answer with characteristic cynicism, ‘The death of one
white person.’”
Later threats, including Ebola and Sars, were
confined to specific regions in the global south.
Aids had struck at the heart of major western cities,
but even that disease was, as Henig puts it, “easy to
compartmentalise”, at least for those not directly
affected. “It all fed into our worst instincts to think
that we weren’t facing an existential threat and so we
could ignore these diseases,” she says.
That denial was intact when the coronavirus
pandemic took hold in early 2020. Henig remembers
a sense of “vertigo” as she watched the crisis unfold.
“My daughter said to me, ‘So how does it feel to be
watching this and knowing that you predicted it all?’”
And I didn’t have it in my mind in that way, but it did
feel like everything I had outlined was what we were
now living.”
In 2020, Henig phoned Stephen S Morse, a virologist
who had chaired the 1989 conference and featured
prominently in her book. He was dismayed by the
world’s failure to heed his warnings. He shared with
Henig his favourite quote, from a management guru
called Peter Drucker, who was once asked, “What is the
worst mistake you could make?” According to Morse,
Drucker replied: “To be prematurely right.”
Allan Lichtman predicted that Donald Trump
would win the 2016 US election
Days after the 2016 US presidential election, Allan
Lichtman received an envelope. Inside, the history
professor found a print-out of an interview in the
Washington Post, in which he had predicted a win for
Donald Trump. Trump had posted the piece to Lichtman,
scrawling on it in thick marker pen: PROFESSOR –
CONGRATS – GOOD CALL – DONALD TRUMP.
“I keep this on my wall,” Lichtman says, at home
in Washington DC, where he teaches at American
University. Speaking via Zoom, he’s holding up the
framed article. “My wife wanted me to burn it.”
Lichtman, 75, has little time for Trump’s politics. But
as a renowned forecaster of US presidential elections,
who has correctly predicted the popular vote since 1984,
the nattily dressed professor was tickled to receive a
note from a winner. “I didn’t get a message from Joe
Biden in 2020,” he says, ruefully.
Lichtman says 2016 was his toughest call in 10
elections over almost 40 years. “I was virtually alone
among professional forecasters and you can imagine
it did not make me popular in DC, which is over 90%
Democrat,” he says. “I tried to explain to people that it
wasn’t an endorsement.” He was prepared to go out on
a limb, he says, because his analysis told him to. Before
each election, he goes through the same 13 true-or-false
statements. His “keys to the White House” prediction
system (also the name of a book he published in 1984)
includes factors such as when “there is no serious contest
for the incumbent party nomination” and “there is no
sustained social unrest during the term”. Only two keys
directly relate to a candidate’s character. The statements,
which also concern midterm election performance and
foreign policy, are broadly crafted to measure the
strength of the incumbent party. Answers of “true”
favour re-election. But if Lichtman judges six or more
answers to be “false”, he calls it for the other party.
The “keys” date back to a fateful meeting with a Soviet
seismologist. In 1981, Vladimir Keilis-Borok got chatting
to Lichtman about his ambition to apply mathematical
pattern recognition to politics. Democracy being in
short supply in the Soviet Union, he suggested a joint
focus on the US. “I thought the guy was either nuts or
KGB,” Lichtman says.
The Russian, who died in 2013, formed an unlikely
partnership with Lichtman. Their work included a
study of presidential elections going back to 1860. “In
seismology, they look at what patterns are associated
with stability and earthquakes in the physical world,”
Lichtman says. “We looked at what patterns are
associated with political stability and earthquakes.”
History told the men a sitting president has a major
advantage over a new candidate from the same party,
making the end of a second term especially fraught (the
US has a two-term limit for presidents). This was part
of his Clinton calculation in 2016, which also followed
Obama’s midterms trouncing. The academic was
working for Al Jazeera in Doha when he watched the
2016 results come in. “I took a bit of sardonic pleasure
in watching the conventional pundits twist themselves
into knots trying to explain this thing they’d all assured
us couldn’t possibly happen.”
The pressure to be right mounts with each success.
“If I’m wrong, a ton of bricks are going to fall on my
head because so many people are just itching to prove
me wrong,” Lichtman says. His critics have included
pollsters, about whom he is withering: “Polls should
never be used for prediction, they are just
snapshots at a given point in time.”
It’s too early to call 2024, but Lichtman
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 2 1
says Biden’s fitness to stand for a second term is vital.
With the disadvantage of a fight to elect a new candidate,
as well as the absence of a unifying heir, he says that the
Democrats would be two keys down before they’d even
beg un campaigning. “They must run Biden,” he says.
Leon Charles predicted the disaster of
a 2C climate target
In the 1990s, Leon Charles worked as a geography
teacher in Grenada, the Caribbean island where he
was born. He followed weather patterns and tracked
hurricanes, and was increasingly worried. “The timing
of the seasons was changing,” he says. “And in some
places people would point to a spot in the sea and say,
‘That was land 20 years ago.’”
In 1999, after a stint as a businessman, Charles, 65,
got a job with the government to coordinate Grenada’s
role in the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate
Change, the body whose most recent annual meeting
was 2022’s Cop27. He devoured the scientific literature,
and the earliest reports of the Intergovernmental Panel
on Climate Change (IPCC).
Charles did not predict the climate crisis; for more
than a century, scientists have warned the world about
the warming impact of carbon dioxide emissions and
the role of industrialisation. But, while working for a
country with a population smaller than that of Norwich,
he would play a vital role on the global stage in predicting
the scale of disaster for coastal populations everywhere,
should the world fail to take sufficient action.
Charles was particularly concerned about what
already seemed to be an unquestioning pursuit of a 2C
target for limiting the rise of global temperatures above
pre-industrial levels. Yet scientists were predicting such
a rise could lift sea levels by almost a metre by 2100,
among other calamities – game over for places like
Grenada. By 2004, when Hurricane Ivan devastated
the island, the climate crisis was impossible to ignore
there. Charles’s earliest work had been devoted to
raising awareness, including better teaching in schools.
“We were starting from zero,” he says. But awareness
at home could achieve only so much; small islands are
damned by emissions produced far beyond their shores.
The most vulnerable countries had started to
organise as the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis).
When Grenada assumed the chair in 2006, Charles spied
an opportunity. In 2008, he flew to Poznań in Poland as
lead negotiator for Grenada at Cop14, to propose a 1.5C
target as an achievable, less catastrophic goal. He then
hoped to campaign for it to be adopted in Copenhagen
the following year. “But most of the developed world
didn’t take us seriously,” he recalls. “They told us that
2C was safe enough.”
Weeks before Cop15 in Copenhagen, President
Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives staged an
underwater cabinet meeting in scuba gear to hammer
home the threat and further burnish Aosis as a
formidable negotiating force. Grenada’s delegation
arrived in Denmark with high hopes – and the
backing of more than 100 countries. But during heated
negotiations, China tried to remove any mention of 1.5C.
“How can you ask my country to go extinct?” Nasheed
shot back. In the end, the Copenhagen Accord included
1.5C as a long-term goal to be revisited by 2015 – if further
science supported it. “We were just happy that it wasn’t
thrown out,” Charles says.
Undeterred, Aosis worked hard to promote further
study and support. At the Paris climate conference
in 2015, Grenada was again a key part of negotiations
that resulted in the legally binding Paris Agreement. It
set the goal to limit warming “to well below 2”, while
“pursuing efforts” to target 1.5C. The UN also asked the
IPCC to report on the impacts of the lower target. That
report, which came out in 2018, detailed how the half-
degree difference would spare more than 10 million
people the worst effects of sea level rises. A 1.5C target
was not only preferable, it said, but feasible with urgent
action. “That’s when the ground really shifted,” Charles
says. “We treated it as a victory.”
When I first speak to Charles in November last year,
he’s standing in the sun outside Cop27 in Egypt. A year
earlier, in Glasgow, countries had agreed
once and for all to focus on 1.5C, the goal
he has fought for for 15 years. As success
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 2 3
 P OW
EM

ER
WOM

ING
E
N
‘I TOOK SARDONIC
PLEASURE IN
WATCHING THE
PUNDITS TWIST
THEMSELVES IN
KNOTS TRYING
TO EXPLAIN THIS
THING THEY’D
SAID COULD
NEVER HAPPEN’
continues to hang in the balance – the UN said in October
that there was “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” –
the geography teacher turned negotiator, who has a
grown-up daughter, tries not to think too much about
the fate of future generations on Grenada. “You have
to be a pragmatist to do what I do,” he says. “But when
I look at where we’ve come since 2008, when we had
nothing, it tells me there will continue to be progress.”
Meredith Whitney predicted the 2008 financial crash
Life for Meredith Whitney changed in a flash on
Halloween 2007. She was 37 and had built up a solid
career as a Wall Street analyst specialising in banks
and brokers. Beyond occasional appearances as a
TV pundit, including one where she met a champion
wrestler turned financial adviser whom she would later
marry, she operated below the radar as (her words) “a
research nerd”.
But Whitney, 53, was really good at research – and
increasingly concerned. The global financial crisis was
brewing, largely as a result of the industrial-scale
flogging of sub-prime mortgages and the knock-on
effect on the banks that had invested in them. As things
got worse, Whitney dug deep into one bank and didn’t
like what she saw. Her 2007 market report laid out how
Citigroup had been on a huge acquisition and dividend
spree without raising capital. Unless it cut dividends
or sold assets, it would go under. As Michael Lewis wrote
in The Big Short, his book about the financial crisis, “By
the end of trading, a woman whom basically no one had
ever heard of … had shaved 8% off the shares of Citigroup
and $390bn off the value of the US stock market.”
“I was used to making a call, hearing crickets, and
having it come true later,” Whitney tells me from her
home in Washington DC, where she lives with John
Layfield, the wrestler. “I didn’t expect this one to cause
an immediate global eruption … I remember watching
TV at my desk the next morning and this reporter
dismissing it, saying, ‘I’ve never heard of her.’ And I
got a lot of angry calls.”
But Whitney, who would also predict peril for other
banks, including Lehman Brothers, was right. Within
days, Citigroup’s CEO resigned and dividends were
slashed. An outsider had thrown doubt into the heart
of the financial system. Soon she was being hailed as
the “Oracle of Wall Street” and blue-chip clients were
buying her wisdom for $100,000 an hour.
By summer 2008, Whitney feared the worst. “It feels
as if I’m at the centre of the biggest financial crisis in
history,” she told CNN. She wasn’t alone in predicting a
disaster. Michael Burry, the investor played by Christian
Bale in the film adaptation of The Big Short, had bet on
a mortgage crisis as early as 2005. But Whitney stood
out as an analyst in a world dominated by male egos.
“I was a relatively young woman – and the only woman
doing what I was doing – and I was challenging the entire
system,” she says. (It’s interesting to note that, while
she played a pivotal role in Lewis’s book, there was no
place for her in the movie.) Her response was to work
incredibly hard – she remembers sleeping three hours
most nights – and make a virtue of her status. “It’s such
a massive advantage to be underestimated,” she adds.
Whitney had grown up outside Washington and
excelled as a history student at Brown University on
Rhode Island. Weeks after appearing on the cover of
Fortune magazine for “calling the credit meltdown”,
she was back home visiting her mother, a former
executive recruiter, when the crash climaxed with the
dramatic collapse of Lehman Brothers in September
2008. “I knew it was about to get much worse but …
when you see it in front of you, oh my gosh it was so
shocking,” she says.
Notoriety could be tricky. In 2010, Whitney stunned
the markets again by predicting on live TV that
municipal bonds, which she had researched for months,
were the next debt bubble waiting to burst. Big names
including George Soros had said similar things, but
when events didn’t precisely follow Whitney’s prognosis,
the backlash was severe. “I probably didn’t appreciate
that I had such a target on my back,” she says.
Whitney stands by the broad assertions she made in
2010, but the episode was tough. Tightening regulation
in Wall Street also presented her with less to get her
teeth into. After running her own advisory fi rm for
several years, she has since worked for startups and
sat on boards. She looks back on 2008 with a sense more
of sadness than vindication. “None of it ever made me
happy,” she says. “People lost everything.”
Paul Miller predicted Russia would invade Ukraine
In March 2012, the Republican presidential candidate
Mitt Romney told CNN: “Russia, this is, without
question, our number one geopolitical foe.” In a
televised presidential debate six months later, Barack
Obama quoted Romney’s words back at him and said:
“The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy
back, because the cold war’s been over for 20 years.”
The zinger was well received by Democrats, but not
everyone was impressed. As a foreign policy adviser
to the Romney campaign, Paul D Miller, then 34,
had contributed to its assessment of Russia’s threat.
Vladimir Putin’s 2008 invasion of Georgia was, to his
eyes at least, a pretty clear statement of intent.
“And there were seeds even earlier than that,” Miller,
45, says from his office at Georgetown University in
Washington DC, where he is a professor of international
affairs. In 2000, early in his first term as president, Putin
resurrected the Soviet national anthem. In 2007, he
suspended a key cold war-era arms agreement. “And
then after 2008 it became more and more clear what his
grand strategy was,” Miller adds. “He wants to live in a
world without Nato or any challenge to his authority.”
Not long before the Romney/Obama debate in 2012,
Miller had cited Putin’s Georgia invasion when arguing
that the world should “look for a sequel in Ukraine”.
His eyebrows hit the roof when Obama appeared to
joke about Putin. “It was a very dismissive thing to
say,” Miller says. “I think the Obama campaign really
congratulated themselves for a clever comeback. And
then, two years later, Russia invaded Crimea.”
When Putin invaded Ukraine last year, Miller shared
none of the shock of many other supposedly well-
informed observers. “People were saying, ‘He wouldn’t
dare do this.’ Have a look at history! A dictator invades
a foreign country? That’s not surprising.”
The fall of the Berlin Wall is one of Miller’s earliest
memories of world events. “My dad sat me down in front
of the TV and said, ‘You will never forget this for the rest
of your life.’” He studied government at Georgetown
and Harvard before joining the US army’s intelligence
school in Arizona, where he was stationed on 9/11. “I
was mobilised three days later,” he says.
After a spell as an army intelligence analyst at the
Bagram military base in Afghanistan, Miller worked for
the National Security Council and the CIA. He believes
allied failure in Afghanistan, culminating in the 2021
troop withdrawal, only emboldened Putin. Yet for
more than 20 years, world leaders had willed cold war
politics to be over. In 2001, after Putin’s first meeting
with President George W Bush at Bush’s ranch in Texas,
a journalist asked both men if Russia could be trusted.
“I could ask the very same question [of America],” Putin
said, smiling. Bush immediately followed: “I looked the
man in the eye, I found him to be very straightforward
and trustworthy … I was able to get a sense of his soul.”
“After the cold war there was widespread
triumphalism,” Miller says. “People believed Russia
was on a transition to a liberal democracy. And I think
many continued to believe that narrative long after it
had essentially been disproven. It was naive liberal
internationalism. We wanted it to be true but it wasn’t.”
Miller is now focusing on China, where he is far
from alone in predicting what he calls “some kind of
militarised crisis” over Taiwan or Korea in the next five
to 10 years. “I feel heartened that far more people seem
willing to recognise that than recognised the threat
from Russia 10 years ago,” he says. “And that is what
might prevent it from happening, which is the point. By
warning about something, I hope to be proved wrong
in my prediction.” •
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 2 5
 HELLO,
DOLLYS
Everybody loves Dolly Parton.
Especially photographer
Alice Hawkins who has spent a decade
dressing up as her heroine – and
meeting fellow devotees along the way.
Words: Joe Stone
WORKIN’ IT 9 TO 5
Alice Hawkins is herself
one of the Dollyalikes
she has photographed:
she’s seen here in a self-
portrait (far right) in
Nashville, 2011, and with
Trixie Malicious (below
and right) in London, 2019.
Others on whom she has
turned her camera include
Claire Moore, in Wash and These and other
Dry launderette (previous images appear in
pages) and her bedroom Dear Dolly by Alice
(right, top and centre) Hawkins, published
in Peckham, London, by Baron Books at
2021, and Kelly O’Brien, £80 and available
in St John the Baptist for pre-order at
church (above) and the baronbooks.co.uk.
village store (below, Readers can get a 15%
far right) in Aldbury, discount by using the
Hertfordshire, 2021. code deardolly.
I
n an age of political discord, endless culture wars
and the continuing existence of Piers Morgan, only
one force on Earth is powerful enough to unite the
divided masses. Her name is Dolly Parton. Beloved
by everyone from the Christian right to the global
drag queen community, Dolly achieves a rare
alchemy by at once representing traditional values and
progressive ideals, homespun charm and worldwide
appeal, artifice and authenticity.
She is the “ Backwoods Barbie” who became a
feminist icon – the apolitical star who has donated
almost 200m books to preschool children, and quietly
helped fund the Moderna Covid vaccine.
Among her many devotees is photographer Alice
Hawkins, who spent a decade travelling the world as
Dolly, communing with a cast of fellow superfans along
the way. “Dolly has been a vehicle for me to fulfil my
dreams – to imagine I’m as brave and ostentatious as
my subject,” Hawkins says. But how did people react
to seeing a Dollyalike in the wild?
“Some acted as if it was completely normal, others
were more excited. In Dollywood, a queue formed to
get a photo with me – and a man outside the Grand Ole
Opry picked me up and swung me around. At a drag
club, I ended up leading a conga.”
I have been blessed enough to experience Dolly’s
majesty first-hand. Aged 22, I was flown to Nashville
to interview the singer at her compound (as my
introduction to a career in journalism, this would prove
to be … unrepresentative).
Towards the end of our time together – in which
I’d barely contained my rapture, gushed in a pitch
familiar to dolphins and at one point, I’m sorry to
say, joined her for a rousing chorus of Coat of Many
Colors – I explained that I was speaking to her on
behalf of Europe’s bestselling gay magazine. Leaning
in conspiratorially, she touched my knee, locked eyes
and drawled: “I sensed … that you were gay.” Who says
that she can’t do understatement?
Moments like this – at once achingly camp and
wholly sincere – are Dolly’s stock in trade. In a world
that can feel lacking in it, she has become a byword for
joy. Hawkins’ pictures are as vibrant, escapist and at
times surreal as Dolly herself •

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 2 9

 PINNED
TO YOUR
SEATS
From Brighton Rock to Trainspotting, take the scenic route with our great British film map
CULTURE
From aliens cruising around Glasgow
and punks rocking Belfast, to bhajis
in Blackpool and migrants in Margate,
most regions of the UK have had their
moment in cinema. Our critics take
us on a tour of the best of Film Britain
Scotland
Beats (2019)
Livingston, 1994, and just as the
Criminal Justice act is about to end the
illegal rave era, two young friends set
off to have a mad one. Brian Welsh’s
rhapsody to rave reminds us of that
important part of British youth culture
we left somewhere in a field in West
Lothian. Ellen E Jones
My Childhood (1972)
Based on director Bill Douglas’s own
wartime childhood, this was made
in the Scottish mining village of
Newcraighall, where PoWs were
confined. One shot shows
Newcraighall Colliery, known as
Klondyke, which closed in the 1960s.
Peter Bradshaw
Ratcatcher (1999)
The great Lynne Ramsay made her first
feature with a Scottish reverie, set in
the Glasgow of 1973 (and, briefly, on
the moon). The result is filled with
brilliant, mournful poetry, a boy’s life
captured amid creaking tenements and
the Forth and Clyde Canal. Danny Leigh
Trainspotting (1996)
The film’s “choose life” scene in
which Mark Renton, played by Ewan
McGregor, shoplifts and sprints away
down the pavement, takes place on
Princes Street in Edinburgh. PB
Under the Skin (2013)
To watch Jonathan Glazer’s modern
classic is to see Glasgow through new
eyes. The gaze belongs to a predatory
alien played by Scarlett Johansson; we
come to share her experience of
Trongate, Celtic Park and the
unnerving hum of the Buchanan
Galleries shopping centre. DL
Wales
Blue Scar (1949)
Documentarist Jill Craigie made this
fiction feature about a young woman
who moves away from her hometown
mining community to London. It is
shot partly on locations in Aber/
Blaengwynfi in south-west Wales: a
(now demolished) colliery, Commercial
Street and the Pithead Baths. PB
3 2 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
The Proud Valley (1940)
The principled Paul Robeson was
selective about his movie roles, but lent
his Hollywood glamour and beautiful
baritone to the south Wales coalminers’
cause in this Ealing Studios drama. The
miners reciprocated, pledging support
and hosting tribute concerts, even
during Robeson’s McCarthy-era
blacklisting. EEJ
Sleep Furiously (2008)
The seasons pass over the rural Welsh
community of Trefeurig, but what
defines this place all year? Such is the
question asked by Gideon Koppel’s
deadpan portrait of his childhood
home: a world of silent farmland and
flashes of sly absurdity. DL
Submarine (2010)
Oliver is a precocious 15-year-old in
Swansea whose lopsided view of love
leads to melodramatic moments,
with the placid Welsh coastline as
a backdrop. Submarine is also
the feature-directing debut of
Richard Ayoade, AKA “that bloke off
the panel shows”. EEJ
Twin Town (1997)
This raucous comedy crime drama
stars Rhys Ifans and his brother Llŷr,
and it’s unsentimentally set in Port
Talbot and Swansea. With sweeping
shots of the seaside, we also see
Constitution Hill and Langland Bay
beach huts. PB
Northern Ireland
Boys from County Hell (2020)
A crew of construction workers
unearth the ancient legend of
Abhartach – a blood-sucking revenant
and inspiration for Bram Stoker’s
Dracula – in this comedy-horror
caper set in County Tyrone.
Particularly good craic is had
by reluctant local hero Francie
(Nigel O’Neill). EEJ
Good Vibrations (2012)
This affectionate comedy about
1970s punk entrepreneur Terri Hooley
is set in Belfast, with city locations
including Rugby Road near the
Botanical Gardens, and the Lanyon
Building of Queen’s University. PB
Hush-a-Bye Baby (1990)
Margo Harkin’s sparkling, Derry-set
teenage romance (co-starring Sinéad
O’Connor) was twice ahead of its time.
The backdrop of the 1983 Irish abortion
referendum prefaced the 2018 Repeal
the Eighth campaign. Also, Harkin’s
quartet of school pals were very much
the original Derry Girls. DL
Odd Man Out (1947)
Director Carol Reed made Vienna the
setting for one noir masterpiece in The
Third Man. With Odd Man Out, he did
the same with Belfast, with James
Mason playing a wounded republican
fugitive on the run. DL
England
North-west
24 Hour Party People (2002)
Set in Manchester – or Madchester, to
be more specific – this proudly
postmodern biopic of Factory Records
founder Tony Wilson is a night out
at the Haçienda in filmic form, and
also a high point in the fruitful
Steve Coogan-Michael Winterbottom
collaboration. EEJ
Bhaji on the Beach (1993)
A day out at Blackpool’s famous
seaside is the occasion for much
introspection, confrontation and
home-cooked snacks in Gurinder
Chadha’s debut. Singa longs to
the Punjabi-language cover of
Cliff Richard’s Summer Holiday
should be included in the British
citizenship test. EEJ
A Taste of Honey (1961)
Every line a quote-in-waiting, the
film of Shelagh Delaney’s stage
play hinges on teenage renegade
Jo – and the backdrop of Salford.
But let’s not forget the supporting
role played by the tawdry joys of
Blackpool’s Central Pier. DL
Withnail and I (1987)
Much of the most rain-soaked film in
British cinema is set in Camden Town.
But it would be half the glorious
comedy it is without an even wetter
Lake District, to which the titular
out-of-work actors go on holiday
by accident. DL

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Location, location,
location (Clockwise from
far left) Under the Skin;
Ratcatcher; Atonement;
Billy Elliot, Robin Hood:
Prince of Thieves;
Withnail and I; After Love;
and Bhaji on the Beach
North-east
Billy Elliot (2000)
Billy Elliot contains some wonderful
location work in Durham, which is
lovingly evoked: the street with the sea
view down which Billy dances is
Embleton Street in Dawdon, and the
street where Julie Walters’s teacher
character drops Billy off after his lesson
is just by the old Easington Colliery. PB
Get Carter (1971)
Like the struggling actors of Withnail
and I, Michael Caine’s gangster Jack
Carter travels north from London. For
him, though, the destination is
Newcastle upon Tyne, on the trail of
revenge and a beer in a thin glass. DL
Lady Macbeth (2016)
Out in the wilds of 19th-century
Northumberland, an unhappily
married woman may stray from the
path of moral righteousness.
Florence Pugh shows us just how far,
in her breakthrough role as the titular
antiheroine. EEJ
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991)
The 90s Robin Hood, featuring Alan
Rickman as the scene-stealing sheriff,
was filmed around England and France
but very prominently at Alnwick Castle
in Northumberland – notably when the
Bishop of Hereford falls from a window
of the tower after trying to take a lot of
gold with him. PB
Yorkshire
Billy Liar (1963)
We meet the young fantasist Billy
Fisher (Tom Courtenay) in an
anonymous Yorkshire town, mostly
played on screen by Bradford. But the
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 3 3
real setting for this dark comedy of
imagined self-improvement is the
inside of Billy’s head – the stage for his
endless daydream heroism. DL
God’s Own Country (2017)
Britain’s answer to Brokeback Mountain
is a sensuous Yorkshire romance
starring Josh O’Connor as a young
sheep farmer from near Keighley,
whose outlook on life and land is
transformed by a burgeoning new
relationship with a Romanian migrant
worker (Alec Secăreanu). EEJ
Kes (1969)
Ken Loach’s searing and funny film
is set south of Barnsley, in the small
town of Hoyland in South Yorkshire.
Many of its streets have been
demolished, but the hillside of Grange
View is where Billy reads his Dandy
comic and he trains the kestrel itself
on Hoyland Common. PB
Threads (1984)
In which the world ends with a ground-
level view of Armageddon, as
experienced by Sheffield and its South
Yorkshire surrounds. The film remains
a late cold war landmark, a nuclear
endgame broadcast on BBC One. DL
East Midlands
The Lair of the White Worm (1988)
Hugh Grant and Amanda Donohoe star
in Ken Russell’s horror film based on
the Bram Stoker novel, and in its
opening shot the film features the
beautiful but faintly eerie natural
limestone cavern called Thor’s Cave
in the Derbyshire Peak District, which
is here the purported home of the
dreaded “Worm”. PB
The Last Tree (2019)
There’s a soul-stirring visual
comparison between the Wash in
Lincolnshire and a Lagos beach here,
as writer-director Shola Amoo rejects
the usual cliches of young Black
British male representation in favour
of something transcendent and
Terrence Malick-esque. EEJ
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(1960)
Two stars were born for the price of
one in the seething Saturday Night and
Sunday Morning, and both in
Nottingham’s Raleigh
bicycle factory. The first
was Arthur Seaton, the
CULTURE
magnetic rebel at the heart of the story
– the second Albert Finney, the young
actor playing him. DL
This Is England (2006)
The title’s bold claim is fully justified
by Shane Meadows’s film set in an
unidentified Midlands town in 1983
about a skinhead youth gang infiltrated
by far-right ideology. Seen through the
eyes of troubled 12-year-old Shaun,
played by Thomas Turgoose, it’s also
about much more. EEJ
West Midlands
Atonement (2007)
Joe Wright’s movie, based on Ian
McEwan’s novel, is notable for its
mysterious and intense scenes at
the family home of the Tallis sisters;
this is in fact the magnificent
Victorian mansion Stokesay Court in
south Shropshire, with its prospect
over the Clee Hills. PB
The Card (1952)
The Card is the story of a cheeky
young man on the make, who hails from
the Potteries. The film uses the town of
Burslem on the Fowlea Valley a great
deal. In the opening shot, taken from
the rooftop of its Dale Hall Pottery, the
location is shown in a panorama. PB
Handsworth Songs (1986)
The 1985 riots that shook Handsworth,
Birmingham are a starting point for
artist-film-maker John Akomfrah. But
Handsworth Songs has a wider lens,
too: a dense, dubby bricolage
of Windrush, English racism and
colonial history. DL
Locke (2013)
Technically, the location of Locke is
the BMW driven for the entire running
time by Tom Hardy’s regretful
construction foreman. But his journey
down the M1 starts in Birmingham,
and the story is rooted there, too, on
familiar ground for writer-director
Steven Knight. DL
East of England
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013)
Is Norfolk proud of Partridge yet? The
bard of modern media mediocrity
hasn’t done much for broadcasting,
but he did prove himself an action
hero in this rarest of treats: a sitcom-
to-cinema adaptation that actually
manages to stay funny. EEJ
Chariots of Fire (1981)
This patriotic hit cheated with many of
its locations – the “Great Court Run”
was actually filmed at Eton, not Trinity
College, Cambridge – but the film uses
the actual King’s Parade in Cambridge,
whose hustle-bustle of students and
local people is not so different now. PB
Fish Tank (2009)
Andrea Arnold’s 2010 best British film
Bafta winner is set in that suburban
hinterland where London becomes
Essex, and a girl becomes a woman.
First-time actor Katie Jarvis leads,
while then rising star Michael
Fassbender demonstrated unsettling
charisma in a key supporting role. EEJ
The Go-Between (1971)
The beauty of Norfolk and East Anglia
is used to great effect in Joseph Losey’s
classic. Brandham Hall, the family
home where the young hero spends his
summer holidays, is the Elizabethan
country house Melton Constable Hall,
with its handsome park. PB
South-east
After Love (2020)
The white cliffs of Dover take on a new
significance in Aleem Khan’s
intimately cinematic debut about
widow Mary Hussain, played by
Joanna Scanlan, who discovers her
late husband’s secret life, then takes
daring steps to infiltrate it. EEJ
Brighton Rock (2010)
If all seaside towns have an
underbelly, Graham Greene’s tale of Last Resort (2000)
teenage crime and punishment could A Russian immigrant (Dina Korzun)
only have been set in Brighton: in with a romantic soul is trapped in
pubs thronged with day-tripping Margate, with no means of making
Londoners, with a sun-kissed money. Arcade manager Alfie (Paddy
beach made out of stones. DL Considine) might be her salvation, but
A Field in England (2013) film-maker Paweł Pawlikowski is too
Ben Wheatley takes us all back to our honest to resort to easy sentiment. EEJ
folk horror roots with this English civil
war psychedelia set in Surrey. Shot in South-west
black and white, it is unlike anything Bait (2019)
you’ve seen and uncannily familiar North Cornwall is shown with icy
at the same time. EEJ clarity in Mark Jenkin’s experimental,

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 lo-fi, handheld feature, its surfaces
described as having the glittering sheen
of Cornish granite. Shooting took place
at Gooninnis House in St Agnes and on
the West Penwith peninsula. PB
Java Head (1934)
Los Angeles-born Anna May Wong
was considered Hollywood’s first
Chinese-American star, but she also
made several British films, including
this romantic tragedy set in 1800s
Bristol, in which she radiates
a mesmerising glamour. EEJ
Nuts in May (1976)
Ah, the great British camping holiday!
Idyllic, isn’t it? That is until someone
else pitches their tent too close. Mike
Leigh taught us that in this comedy
classic set in Dorset, but the likes of
Keith and Candice-Marie, played by
Roger Sloman and Alison Steadman,
will never learn. EEJ
The Shout (1978)
Regions to be cheerful This disturbing psychological chiller,
(Clockwide from top left) about a man who claims to practise
A Field in England; My a lethal “terror shout”, is set in and
Beautiful Launderette; around the beautiful north Devon
ROOK FILMS/SPORTSPHOTO/ALLSTAR;
BBC FILMS/SPORTSPHOTO/ALLSTAR;
and Fish Tank, filmed in coast, with scenes at Hartland Abbey
CHANNEL FOUR FILMS/ALLSTAR
Surrey, south London and and also shots of Saunton Sands near
Essex respectively the River Taw estuary and the sand
dunes of Braunton Burrows. PB
London
Babylon (1980)
No discussion of London movies could
take place without a mention of
Babylon, Franco Rosso’s vivid
portrait of sound system culture and
Black London life. From a production
office above a Deptford church, the
movie cast a pinpoint eye across
a south London that cinema had
previously little noticed. DL
My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)
Thatcher-era south London is the
setting for this still-fresh film about
a young British-Pakistani man, played
by Gordon Warnecke, running a
laundrette with Daniel Day-Lewis as
his white punk boyfriend. It’s a
representation landmark, but wears
that status as lightly as soapsuds. EEJ
The Long Good Friday (1980)
Did any film map a new era as precisely
as The Long Good Friday? In 1980,
with London’s Docklands set to
become an investors’ playground,
Bob Hoskins’ gangster declared
himself a businessman and a
Londoner. And in London, business
would never be the same. DL
Victim (1961)
The seedy, racy nastiness that lay
beneath the surface of London’s West
End in the early 60s, with its hypocrisy
and evasion, is brilliantly captured
in this drama of blackmail and
homophobia. Dirk Bogarde plays the
barrister with a troubled past, while
sinister lowlife figures drift around the
pubs and drinking dens of Cecil Court
and Charing Cross Road. PB
CULTURE MUSIC
Flying
without
wings
Marley Munroe spent decades toiling away
in hotel bars and on a Christian label. But
now, as Lady Blackbird, her powerful soul
vocals have caught the mood of the times
– and the attention of Taylor Swift
Words: Ammar Kalia
Photograph: Christine Solomon
I
’m pretty damn persistent,”
Marley Munroe laughs. “It’s
been a long, often gruelling
road, but I’m finally here.”
Munroe, AKA Lady
Blackbird, has just walked off
stage at the BBC’s Maida Vale Studios,
after belting out three note-perfect,
jazz-referencing songs backed by
a symphony orchestra for Radio 2’s
Piano Room Sessions. Adorned in her
signature peroxide afro and oversized
gold collar, she is capping off a
whirlwind three years after decades
spent searching for recognition.
“I’ve done it all, from the cover gigs
in hotel bars to rock, R&B and soul,”
she says, ensconced on a red sofa in
her dressing room. “I had so many
moments where I thought it was
happening and then the rug was pulled
out. I kept wondering: ‘When is it
gonna change? When will it catch?’”
It was in 2020, only days after the
murder of George Floyd, that Munroe’s
stripped-down cover of Nina Simone’s
Blackbird caught. Backed only by an
acoustic double bass and trills of piano,
Munroe’s yearning vocal power
brought Simone’s 1963 civil rights
anthem into new light. Although the
timing of the release was coincidental,
Blackbird’s message of resilience in the
face of oppression mirrored another
moment of reckoning for Black
America. “Once we found that sound,
things started moving,” Munroe says.
“People began responding in an
entirely new, emotional way.”
Munroe’s ensuing debut album,
Black Acid Soul, was released in 2021 to
critical acclaim. The album comprises
jazz covers such as Blackbird, which
Munroe took as her stage name for the
project, as well as folk covers and
several haunting originals, but it is the
Munroe’s husky vocal that keeps the
listener compelled. Sold-out European
tours followed, as well as a slot opening
for Gregory Porter and a performance at
the Queen’s platinum jubilee concert.
In October, Munroe sang on Graham
Norton, receiving praise from fellow
guests Bono and Taylor Swift.
“This whole process has felt like
going back home because this soul
music is what I grew up singing,”
Munroe says, referencing her love of
greats such as Gladys Knight, Ella
Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. “I was
leaning back into my vocal after trying
everything else and luckily it worked.”
Munroe, who grew up in the small
town of Farmington, New Mexico,
remembers singing that soulful music
as soon as she could walk. “My mother
realised I had a voice and she started
shaping me as a performer. She would
put me forward to sing the national
anthem at local basketball games. She
would even try to get [department
stores] Sears or JC Penney to sponsor
my outfit! She was my first manager.”
By 12, Munroe had been signed to
a Christian record label based in
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 3 7
Nashville and begun working with
the rap-rock crossover group DC Talk.
But by 18 she realised that “religion
wasn’t sitting well with me and
I didn’t want to make music in that
direction any more”.
Munroe’s journey through the
industry continued, with her working
as a session vocalist and songwriter
for other artists, including pop singer
Anastacia. In 2013, she had another
breakthrough, signing to Epic and
releasing two hook-laden, pop-leaning
singles under her own name. It should
have spelled the start of her career
proper, but the deal wasn’t to last.
“Epic wanted more of an R&B
direction. We ended up having some
creative musical differences,” she says
with a pause. “I expected my career
to really get going once I signed to
a major, but it crashed and burned.
I had to go back to the drawing board.”
A decade on, things are very
different. Munroe is about to embark
‘I always think
30 people will show
up for my shows,
since that’s what
I’m so used to’
on a European tour, including Italian
dates backed by another symphony
orchestra, but is still taken by surprise
each time she plays to a packed room.
“I always think there’ll only be 30
people who show up, since that’s what
I was so used to,” she says. “Doing
the symphony shows and having
people bring me flowers on stage, it
makes me feel like I’m living in the
Lady Blackbird biopic!”
A second album is in the works,
maintaining the pared-back sound
Munroe and producer Chris Seefried
have made their signature, while
adding new songs with a decisive
message. “The new record is
shaping up to be about women’s
empowerment,” Munroe says with
a smile. “It’s about having the
freedom to be who the fuck you
want with no need for an explanation,
since that’s how I feel now.”
Feeling free to be herself means
singing the music closest to Munroe’s
heart, as well as having the choice to
wear what she wants on stage. It makes
her Lady Blackbird performances feel
like an intimately poised jazz show
fused with the rock star theatricality
she had initially sought out. “I can’t go
up there and perform in jeans and a
T-shirt. I’m gonna sound the same but
why would I want to?” Munroe says
with a laugh. “I just want to inspire my
listeners with the same sense of
freedom. It might be a long time
coming, but it does happen.”
Lady Blackbird plays O2 Shepherd’s
Bush Empire, London, 14 March.
CULTURE STAGE

A
Set in Nazi Germany, Waldo’s Circus
of Magic & Terror features a cast relishing
the chance to shine a light on the kind of
heroes often airbrushed from history
a couple of metres into the air.
ctor Abbie Purvis is
sitting in what looks
a leading role in the upcoming Waldo’s
Circus of Magic & Terror, she was
like the outline of quickly put through her paces with
a harp, suspended
by a rope from the
a number of circus tricks, aerial harp
and tightrope included. “It’s been
ceiling, as she’s lifted eventful, for sure,” says a smiling
Purvis when we sit down afterwards.

Who
“I’m holding on for dear life,” she
jokes, though a fall would certainly
result in a nasty injury. Yet she looks
completely comfortable, rehearsing
a scene with fellow performer
“I had no circus skills whatsoever, so
I’ve just been chucked in at the deep
end!” She wasn’t the only one: Purvis’
co-star Owen had to train up for his
part, with a wire set up in his garden.

dares
Dominic Owen, before twirling
around in the harp once she’s lowered
down. Next, she’s walking on
a tightrope, raised about a foot above
“It was very much a thing where
I said yes, and then figured it out
afterwards,” he says.
I meet Purvis and Owen in early

wins
the ground. Did I mention she’s
singing at the same time?
Rewind 10 months, and Purvis
couldn’t do any of this. Although
already a confident musical theatre
performer with a few pantomimes to
her name, she had never performed
Words: Ella Braidwood circus before. Still, after being cast in
February at the Bristol Old Vic, where
this show – which combines musical
theatre and circus – opens before going
on tour. What can we expect? The
co-director Billy Alwen – who is also an
artistic director at the inclusive circus
troupe Extraordinary Bodies, one of the
show’s producers – promises that the

3 8 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian


show will “be vibrant, will be exciting,
but also telling elements of a really dark
story”. That much is clear from the
synopsis: set in 1933 Nazi Germany, the
show follows the lives of Waldo (Garry
Robson) and his eclectic circus troupe
of deaf, disabled and non-disabled
performers, which is being reflected
in the real-life cast.
As the outside world gets ever
darker, a romance blossoms between
Krista (Purvis), the star of the circus,
and Gerhard (Owen), a member of the
Nazi party. While the circus troupe
itself is fictional, the show takes
a n unflinching look at the Nazis’
persecution of disabled people, with
the play set in the same year as a law
was passed by the party legalising
their forced sterilisation. In total, an
estimated 250,000 disabled people
were murdered under the Nazi regime.
It was a few years ago when
playwright Hattie Naylor began
working on the script, after watching
Tod Browning’s 1932 film Freaks,
about a fictional American circus
troupe that included disabled
performers. The film, she says, was
“really pivotal and seminal, in that
the disabled people in that show are
portrayed as heroes”. Naylor initially
planned to write a play based on
Freaks, but was unable to secure
the rights. Instead, she decided to
research traveling circuses in Nazi
Germany, inspired by the stories she
came across. She found, for example,
that some disabled performers were
smuggled to safety out of the country
via circus networks.
This historical research informed
her script, with Extraordinary Bodies’
Jamie Beddard brought on as a
co-writer a couple of weeks in,
incorporating his own perspectives as
a disabled person. “In Waldo’s Circus,
the skills rather than physicality or
appearance of our performers are
highlighted,” says Beddard. “The
differing perceptions of ‘freaks’,
whether othering or reclaiming, is
inevitably part of Waldo’s Circus
and inherent to the experience of
disability. However, this is peripheral
rather than central to our story.”
The show, he says, is a “warning of
STEVE TANNER; PAUL BL AKEMORE
what can happen, really easily”. With
the play set during the Holocaust,
a Jewish advisory group has been
consulted throughout the process
and helped to develop the script.
The production also features an
original score by the composer
Charles Hazlewood, artistic director
of Paraorchestra, an orchestra of
Super troupers
The cast, including
(below, from top)
Abbie Purvis; and
Tilly Lee-Kronick and
Jonny Leitch
professional disabled and non-
disabled musicians. “It brings
elements of punk, it brings elements
of funk, it brings elements of disco,”
says Alwen of the score. “So it is very
eclectic.” Drummer Jonny Leitch
adds: “We’re gonna have a lot of
synths and chaos!”
Leitch, an accomplished aerialist,
also stars as trapeze artist Renée, who
is disabled and queer. For disabled
performers such as Leitch and Purvis,
the production is of personal
significance. “Me and Abbie [Purvis]
have talked in the past of [how] we
both had exactly the same experience
of half a sentence in history class in
school being our disabled history,”
he says. “That’s it. And it was a very
throwaway, kind of weird line.”
Waldo’s Circus, he says, presents
‘It challenges “the opportunity to tell that, and
give weight to these characters, but
audiences ... honestly there is so much inspiration
from – there has to be so much
it’s a human story, inspiration – from real life”.
For that reason, it has been difficult,
and it’s passionate too. “Just doing research, and going
and beautiful’ through some of the scenes, it’s hard
– we really want an audience to get
that,” Leitch continues. It is, he says,
“my history, not from the 1930s, in
parts from way later, even now”.
When it comes to disabled history,
Purvis says, “no one ever speaks about
it”. There was also a personal
connection to her character. “What
drove me to the project was the
relationship between Krista and
Gerhard,” she says. “Because I come
from a mum who was small, and a dad
who was average height. And that story
has never been told.” Purvis hopes that
audiences seeing diverse relationships
on stage will mean “it’s gonna become
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 3 9
normal if you see it, so it’s fun to be
part of that”. Owen, meanwhile, hopes
“it challenges audiences to think
differently, and get rid of any stigma
that they might have, and just strip
everything back because it’s a human
story, it’s passionate and beautiful.”
The experiences of disabled and
non-disabled performers have also
informed the production. For the
co-director Claire Hodgson, also
co-founder of Extraordinary Bodies,
this collaboration is key to ensuring
“that multitude of experience” which,
she says, is needed to “really make
sure that what we’re saying is
authentic and true. People aren’t there
only as performers, they’re there as
people with lived experience of the
identities we’re portraying. So that
people can say: ‘This doesn’t feel right,
this doesn’t feel true.’ There are
Jewish artists, there are disabled
artists, there are deaf artists.”
This awareness extends to the set
itself: for example, Purvis’ aerial
harp and Leitch’s trapeze were made
bespoke to suit the performers’
needs. All performances will be
“chilled”, so audience members can
leave for breaks or the toilet, along
with being BSL interpreted, captioned
and audio described. “If you want your
audience to reflect the diversity on
stage, you have to reflect that back to
your audience,” adds Alwen. “If we
want to change who accesses these
buildings, who sees this work, you
also have to make those changes on
stage or else people won’t see the
work as being relevant.”
What does Purvis want people to
take away from the show? “For the
audience to witness something that
isn’t necessarily ever told,” she says.
For his part, writer Beddard wants
to highlight the skills of disabled
people and what they can bring to the
stage. “I’ve always been keen on
shining light into the shadows – and
disabled people, their talents and
stories are often confined to the
shadows,” he says. “Art should be
about exploring new perspectives, so
those previously marginalised are in
the box seat to deliver.” In the end, he
hopes it will be an enthralling evening
that prompts the audience to reflect: “I
am keen the audience are entertained
and provoked. Provoked to think
afresh about the themes of the shows,
the talents before them and,
ultimately, the world we all coexist in.”
Waldo’s Circus of Magic & Terror
is at Bristol Old Vic, 11 March to 1 April;
touring to 7 June.
CULTURE
Out
Going
Watch
out
Close
Out now
Lay off the mascara, this one’s a
Staying weepie. Belgian director Lukas Dhont
coaxes supremely sensitive
performances out of his young leads
in (above) in this story of two 13-year-old
boys (Eden Dambrine, Gustav De
Waele) and a friendship blighted by
A cultural primer tragedy. It saw Dhont take home the
for the week ahead, Grand Prix at the Cannes film festival.
whether you’re Creed III
Out now
out on the tiles or This latest instalment of the Rocky
out cold on the sofa … franchise sees Michael B Jordan’s
Adonis Creed square up against a new
antagonist, in the form of man of the
moment Jonathan Majors. He plays
Creed’s childhood friend “Dame”
Anderson, recently released from
prison and hoping to settle old scores.
I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking)
Out now
A timely tale about how on earth a
mother is expected to explain to her
child that they are homeless. In the
case of recently widowed hairdresser
Danny (Kelley Kali, who co-directs
with Angelique Molina), the answer is
to pretend they are going camping for
fun, while working desperately to
figure out a long-term solution.
Glasgow film festival
To 12 March
One of the UK’s most charming film
festivals, Glasgow presents a canny
mix of rewatchable retrospectives and
brand new films, this year including
the UK premiere of comic tech-bro
disaster biopic BlackBerry, about the
rise and fall of the mobile device,
starring Jay Baruchel. Catherine Bray
4 0 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
Gigs
Isaiah Rashad
Birmingham, Sat; touring to 8 March
The cult Tennessee rapper arrives in
the UK in support of 2021’s acclaimed
second album, The House Is Burning, a
woozy collection featuring SZA and Lil
Uzi Vert. More low-key mood music
than in-your-face party starters, this
will be a gig to zone out to. Michael Cragg
Sir Harrison Birtwistle: A Tribute
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, Sunday
Harrison Birtwistle died last April. The
London Sinfonietta gave premieres of
more than 20 of his works, and their
tribute, conducted by Martyn Brabbins,
includes four: from the first, Verses for
Ensembles, to In Broken Images, first
performed in 2011. Andrew Clements
Emma Rawicz Jazz Orchestra;
Isobella Burnham Group
Ronnie Scott’s, London, Wednesday
An International Women’s Day double
bill showcasing fast-rising newcomers.
Burnham, bassist with Deptford
collective Steam Down, celebrates
both her Caribbean heritage and the
stylistic mashups of the London scene.
Young sax firebrand and composer
Rawicz unveils new music with her
talent-packed big band. John Fordham
C2C: Country to Country
Fri to 12 March, The 02, London;
OVO Hydro, Glasgow; 3Arena, Dublin
The cream of the country music crop
descend once again for this annual
hoedown. Lady A, Thomas Rhett
and the Zac Brown Band headline,
while support comes from relative
newcomers such as Lindsay Ell (below)
and Mitchell Tenpenny. MC
Art
Unseen
Towner, Eastbourne, to 14 May
Andy Warhol in Eastbourne?
Absolutely, says this exhibition of
contemporary art in the Towner
gallery’s collection; this is where
he belongs. The seaside institution
may be celebrating its centenary but
this show demonstrates its collection is
far from frozen in 1923. Elizabeth Price,
Clare Woods (work pictured, above),
Richard Billingham and others star
alongside Andy.
Islanders: The Making of the
Mediterranean
The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge,
to 4 June
The sun-kissed islands of the
Mediterranean are not just holiday
dreams but repositories of ancient
culture. Crete, with its Minoan cities,
frescoed palaces and bullish legends,
features here alongside Cyprus and
Sardinia, two islands whose histories
are less renowned but similarly
fascinating. Sardinia’s indigenous
Nuragic culture was truly unique.
Poor Things
Fruitmarket, Edinburgh, Sat to 21 May
How does your social class influence
the way you make art? This sculpture
exhibition, whose title echoes a
compassionate novel by the Glasgow
visionary Alasdair Gray, seeks to
question relationships between art,
class and “cultural capital”, with works
by Penny Goring, Eric Bainbridge,
Emma Hart and more (see page 42).
Nalini Malani
National Gallery, London, to 11 June
KRIS DEWIT TE-MENUET; CL ARE WOODS; AP
The pioneering Indian video artist
Malani is the National Gallery’s first
contemporary fellow. She shows
animated videos that interact with
famous paintings in its collection
while also bringing images of global
poverty into this palace of high
culture. Among the masterpieces she
transforms are paintings by Bronzino
and Caravaggio. Jonathan Jones
 Stage
Crybabies
Soho theatre, London,
Tue to 11 March
You don’t see a lot on TV,
but narrative sketches
account for much of the
most creative and
consistently funny
comedy around. And
Crybabies are becoming
masters of the craft (see
also: Max & Ivan; the
Delightful Sausage).
Catch this revival of
their extremely clever
and impeccably
executed Edinburgh hit
Bagbeard. Rachel Aroesti
Sleepova
Bush theatre, London,
to 8 April
Lynette Linton’s Bush
theatre has a buzz about
it right now. Matilda
Feyisayo
. . Ibini’s new play
is an ode to Black women,
as three girlfriends
gather over sugary
snacks to share secrets,
dreams and struggles.
Miriam Gillinson
Beginning
Royal Exchange theatre,
Manchester, to 11 March
Your last chance to catch
David Eldridge’s tender
and truthful romantic
comedy, about two
people falling for each
other in the aftermath of
a house party. Erin
Shanagher and Gerard
Kearns star. MG
Turn It Out With Tiler
AFP/GET T Y IMAGES; MICHELLE GR ACE HUNDER; CHO GI-SEOK
Peck & Friends
Sadler’s Wells, London,
Thur to 11 March
US ballerina Tiler Peck
brings her own show to
London. The mixed bill
includes a live version of
William Forsythe’s film
The Barre Project, one of
the best things to come
out of lockdown. There’s
also a collaboration with
tap dancer Michelle
Dorrance and a pas de
deux by Alonzo King.
Lyndsey Winship
In Albums
Ruel – 4th Wall
Out now
At the tender age of 20, British-
Australian Ruel van Dijk (above) has
already toured with Shawn Mendes,
scored a Top 3 in Australia (with 2019
EP Free Time), and collaborated with
the likes of Denzel Curry and Gracey.
On this debut album, he showcases his
Brain food
brand of keening, emotional soft-pop. Bot Love
Podcast
Slowthai – Ugly As AI text generation
Out now gets increasingly
Launched via an eight-hour livestream sophisticated, the
in which the Northampton musician potential to develop
sat alone in a glass box, Ugly finds relationships with
Streaming Slowthai unpacking his emotions in
typically raw ways. Leaning into his
automated bots is
becoming more of a
Chris Rock: Selective Outrage childhood love of rock and punk, the reality. This new series
Saturday, Netflix pulverising Feel Good is thick with (above) compassionately
The co-star of the Oscars Slap (above) irony, while the multi-layered Selfish tells the stories of those
redirects attention to his original is his attempt at a blown-out epic. who have already fallen
claim to fame – being one of America’s for an AI companion.
most successful standups – with this Mimi Webb – Amelia
piece of Netflix history. Selective Out now Korean Film Archive
Outrage is its first live broadcast With a Brit nomination and six Top 40 YouTube
comedy special. Hopefully, all bums
will remain firmly on seats this time.
Games hits under her belt, 22-year-old Amelia
Webb finally releases her debut album.
A treasure trove of
classic Korean cinema is
No Longer Home Meant to reflect her two personalities available to watch in full
We Need to Talk About Cosby Out now, PS4/5 – Mimi the pop star v Amelia the on YouTube, thanks to
Sunday, 9pm, BBC Two, iPlayer A thought-provoking, homebody – it features both the this comprehensive
The good art v the bad artist debate gently surreal game bolshie banger Red Flags and plaintive archive. Among the
rages on, with comedian W Kamau Bell (above) about the recent single Roles Reversed. hundred films to choose
struggling to square the allegations nowhere months at the from are arthouse
against Bill Cosby with the TV star’s end of university and Kali Uchis – Red Moon in Venus classics selected
cultural legacy – he was known in the the pain of saying Out now by Oscar winner
80s as “America’s dad” – in this goodbye, now available The Colombian-American neo-soul Bong Joon-ho.
impressively uncomfortable four-part on the PlayStation after singer Kali Uchis (below) returns
doc, finally available to UK audiences. its earlier release on with her third album, the follow-up MH370: The Plane
Nintendo Switch, Xbox to 2021’s TikTok-assisted success, That Disappeared
Moonshine One and PC. Sin Miedo (del Amor y Otros Wednesday, Netflix
Friday, Amazon Freevee Demonios). Led by the dreamy single Since its disappearance
With season four of Succession still Do Not Feed the I Wish You Roses, it features guest in 2014, the MH370 flight
weeks away, here’s another inheritance- Monkeys 2099 vocalists Summer Walker and from Kuala Lumpur to
based family drama crammed with Out Thur, PC Omar Apollo, plus production from Beijing has remained
awful people to tide you over. The In this dystopian Darkchild and Benny Blanco. MC a tragic mystery, despite
motel-owning Finley-Cullens may be comedy, your job is to one of the most
grottier and weirder than the Roys, but surveil unsuspecting expensive search
this Canadian series is similarly frantic, characters and invisibly operations in history.
layered and outrageous. manipulate their This series interviews
behaviour to sell videos the people still searching
George Michael: Outed to your mysterious for an explanation.
Monday, Channel 4 paymasters. Will you Ammar Kalia
Once a panel show punchline, now the do it unquestioningly?
very public outing of the Wham! Keza MacDonald
frontman feels like a watershed
moment in the fight for gay rights. This
documentary re-examines the late
musician’s 1998 arrest and subsequent
unabashed and articulate discussion Want more?
of his sexuality with the help of those For cultural picks direct
who were close to him at the time. RA to your inbox, sign up to
the Guide newsletter
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 41
CULTURE VISUAL ARTS
Rebecca Moss
Thick-skinned, 2019
“Thick-skinned is filmed
in a field near the artist’s
family home in Essex,”
says Poor Things’
co-organiser Dean
Kenning. “When a
balloon-clad figure finds
a barbed-wire fence
blocking her path, she
attempts to squeeze
through a tiny gap. We
love the slapstick and the
way Moss transforms
herself into something
monstrous and hilarious.”

Emma Hart
Spoiler (Blue/Yellow),
2021
“I want to make noisy,
in-your-face sculptures
– but how can a sculpture
be too loud?” Hart asks.
“How can a sculpture feel
awkward, or feel like it’s
made a fool of itself?
My four, large, ceramic
megaphones might act
as gatekeepers to the
exhibition but, like me,
they are prone to loudly
saying the wrong thing.”

Class action O
n the occasion of an
exhibition opening,
there is a short and
rather predictable
list of gifts that an
artist might expect
Art is still stubbornly seen as a snobby, to receive. Lavish bouquets and
extravagant champagne are usual
stuffy, middle-class pursuit. Can a new – Tupperware boxes filled with
exhibition challenge that idea? homemade sandwiches are,
however, rather less so. Yet, at the
launch of her first exhibition, this
is exactly what Emma Hart’s
Words: Philippa Kelly mother gave her.
This loving gesture left Hart
embarrassed – and not for the first
time. As an artist from a working-
class background, she had often felt
at odds with the rigid expectations
of the art world. In an industry
where economic, cultural and social
capital can all be paramount to
success, the pressure to say or do
the “right thing” can be immense.
But in a new exhibition, organisers
Hart and fellow sculptor Dean Kenning
attempt to confront and dispel this
pressure, which all too often goes

4 2 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian


unacknowledged. Through the work
TOM C ARTER; GUSTAVO MURILLO FERNANDEZ-VALDES
REBECC A MOSS; EMMA HART/THE SUNDAY PA INTER;
of 21 contemporary artists, Poor
Things places sculpture in the context
of class, posing questions about who
makes art and who can access it.
Open at Fruitmarket in Edinburgh,
from today, it’s an exhibition
organised – not curated, the pair aren’t
keen on that term – with joy, humour
and exploration at its heart.
“The word ‘things’ is interesting,
because the art world often refers to
sculptures as ‘objects’,” Hart says
from her collaborator’s south London
‘It’s actually
ungenerous
to make art
that thinks
it’s more
important
than the
people 
looking at it’
studio, where the pair are perched side
by side on mismatched chairs. “You
have all these ‘objects’ in a gallery,
but in real life you’re surrounded
by ‘things’. I’ve always found this a
problem – it’s just another barrier.”
Attempting to break down these
barriers is Kenning’s anthropomorphic
piece Renaissance Man, which sits
on the floor beside the duo. “The work
rubs up against these protocols of the
way art should look, the way it should
be taken seriously, the way people are
supposed to behave when confronted
Simeon Barclay
What You Make of It
(Trace), 2022
“This work came out of
Barclay thinking about his
father, who arrived in the
UK in the 1950s from the
Caribbean,” says Kenning.
“It’s about the humanity
of those journeys, taking
a leap and inhabiting
different spheres. We are
interested in the different
narratives of working-
class experience, the
dynamics of identity.”
with it,” Kenning says as he plugs in
his sculpture, which springs into
somewhat unwieldy motion.
Hart’s contribution to Poor Things
is four brightly painted megaphones,
which protrude audaciously from
the wall. As she describes them,
it becomes clear that they offer
a strong example of what the pair
have worked to create. That is, not
a definitive commentary on working-
class reality, but a selection of
experiences designed to engage
audiences in art without judg ment.
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 4 3
Dean Kenning
Renaissance Man, 2018
“I imagined myself
metamorphosed into
a mechanised animal,
on all fours, locked in
a repetitive seesaw
movement,” Kenning
says. “I relate it to my
own family background,
the obsessive character
of skilled manual labour.
It is an agitated figure,
not at ease in the
refined art world.”
“It sounds like a really simple
thing to say, but it’s actually
ungenerous to make art that thinks
it’s more important than the
people who are looking at it,” Hart says.
“You can see in my work the colours
have all got twisted and come out
wrong, which is my experience of
being a working-class artist in a
middle-class bubble. I’m conscious
of my voice all the time, always worried
about saying the wrong thing.”
Poor Things is at Fruitmarket,
Edinburgh, to 21 May.
 Where will YOUR story
take you?

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Witness
to history
At 24, Gary Younge was sent to report for the Guardian
on South Africa’s first democratic elections.
Thirty years on, he reflects on a career writing about race,
politics and people - and what still needs to change
CULTURE BOOKS
Mandela had described
his political journey as
‘the long walk to freedom’.
This was the final march

O
N T H E E V E OF South
Africa’s fi rst demo-
cra tic elections I
slept at the home of a
family in Soweto so I
could accompany
them to the polls the
next day. A thick fog
hung low over the
township that morn-
ing and was only just
beginning to burn off
as they went to cast their ballots. Beyond those closest
to you, all you could see were shoes and trouser hems,
the number of ankles growing with every step and
every  block as more joined us on our way to the
polling station. Dressed in Sunday best, nobody was
talking. Nelson Mandela had described his political
journey as “the long walk to freedom”. This was the
final march.
It was a huge day for me personally. As a 17-year-old
I had picketed the South African embassy in Trafalgar
Square with my mother, calling for Mandela’s release;
as an 18-year-old I had set up an anti-apartheid
organisation at my university in Scotland. And now
here I was, watching the mist burn on the moment.
But it was important for me professionally, too. The
Guardian had sent me to South Africa, aged 24, to “try
and get some of the stories white journalists couldn’t
get”. I had stayed in Alexandria township for several
weeks, and travelled to Moria, near Polokwane, in a
minibus with members of the Zion Christian Church
for their Easter pilgrimage. But my main assignment
had been to follow Mandela on his campaign trail.
There was just one catch: I couldn’t drive. Mandela’s
campaign took him to far-flung areas of a country with
precious little public transport. To get the job done I I gave it to David Beresford, the Guardian’s senior story that I began to receive a number of internal
had to organise an elaborate network of favours. I got correspondent in South Africa at the time, who went messages, each one coming up separately on my
lifts to rallies with journalists, paying for their petrol through it slowly, giving precious little away. He handed computer, as though on ticker tape: first peers, then
and keeping them company. Once there, I would then it back with “&” signs where he thought I should expand desk editors, then the deputy editor and fi nally the
ask if anyone was heading back to the nearest big town it and “£” signs where I should shorten it. “It’s all there,” editor (a first), all complimenting me on the article. And
and do the same again. During one of those trips a film he said. “There are some wonderful bits. But you’ve so it was that I sat in a house in Soweto with my eyes
crew dropped me off at a petrol station and told me been working on it so long you can’t see them. You need welling up, feeling a mixture of relief, accomplishment
they’d arranged for others to take me the rest of the to take a break from it.” I had to file it the next day. “Let’s and regret that my mother, who had stood alongside me
way. The people who picked me up were Mandela’s go and get something to eat,” he said, “and talk about on those night-time pickets, was not there to read it.
bodyguards. We got chatting. They found me amusing something else, and then you work on it overnight, and This was the article that launched my career, and
(more accurately put, I made it my business to amuse it’ll be great.” within a few months I was offered a staff job. Originally
them). We had things to talk about. I had studied in the I don’t know if he really believed that. But I didn’t. I had wanted to be the Moscow correspondent. But in
Soviet Union (my degree was in French and Russian), I spent all night on it, moving things around, chopping 1996 I was awarded the Laurence Stern fellowship,
as had many of them; I had been involved in the anti- bits out and adding information elsewhere, as he’d which sends one young British journalist to the
apartheid movement; and I was from England, where suggested. When morning came, I sent it over to the Washington Post every year to work for a summer on
a number of them had spent some time in exile. They paper, convinced I had delivered an incoherent mess the national desk. I fell in love with an American. Within
let me hang around with them on a regular basis. and that the notion of sending a young Black journalist three years I had written a book about travelling
So there I was, an occasional extra in Mandela’s to cover a huge story would be forever tarnished. Then through America’s deep south; within seven I was the
extended entourage, with a ringside seat on history. I headed for Soweto to stay with a family for the night Guardian’s New York correspondent.
The trouble was, I still had to write the article. It was to before going to the polls with them. I have covered six UK general elections, seven US
occupy the most coveted slot in the paper at the time, Communications back then were relatively basic. I presidential elections, the Occupy Wall Street
and I felt the pressure keenly. Just a day before I had to didn’t have a mobile phone, so I had no idea how the movement, the Tea Party and Brexit. I have reviewed
fi le I was still lost in the piece and couldn’t pull the piece had been received. I spent the day with the family books, films and television shows and commented on
various strands together. I’d never felt so out of my depth. as they went to vote. It was only when I went to file that the wars in Bosnia, Iraq and Libya, the Arab Spring,

4 6 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian Cover photograph: Sarah Lee


migration, gay rights, terrorism, Islamophobia,
feminism, antisemitism, economic inequality, social
protest, guns, knives, nuclear weapons, the Roma in
eastern Europe, Latinos in America, Turks in Germany
and Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. I
have examined the impact that McDonald’s apple-
dippers will have on the agricultural sector and why
children love spaghetti.
I’ve also focused on issues emerging from the African
diaspora, including the Caribbean, Zimbabwe, Sierra
Leone and Europe, as well as Britain and the US. This is
a path that, from the very outset, I was warned not to
take. To become too identified with issues of race and
racism (Black people, basically) would, some said, see
me pigeonholed.
That advice, which came from older white journalists
(pretty much the only older journalists available when
I started out), was rarely malicious. They thought they
were looking out for me. A fear of being “pigeonholed”
is one of the most common crippling anxieties of any
minority in any profession. Being seen only as the thing
that makes you different by those with the power to
make that difference matter really is limiting.
There were other, older, white editors (pretty much
the only editors available when I started out) who
wanted me to write only about race. One of the first
columns I wrote for the Guardian, about the Nato
bombing of Bosnia, was spiked because the Comment
editor at the time thought I should stick to subjects closer
to home. “We have people who can write about Bosnia,”
he said. “Can you add an ethnic sensibility to this?”
The problem with both of these requests is that they
didn’t take into account the fact that I might want to
write about the things I was interested in and knew
about. Race in particular, and Black people in general,
were a couple of the subjects I wanted to focus on. They
weren’t dealt with particularly well or at all
comprehensively at the time, so there was lots to write
about and improve on. In almost three decades of
reporting, no Black person has ever approached me and
asked me to write about them less, even if they weren’t
always in agreement with what I wrote.
But Black people and race were never the only things
I was interested in. (Looking back, they are covered in
fewer than half of my articles.) My advice to young Black
L O U I S E G U B B / C O R B I S / G E T T Y I M A G E S; R E U T E R S /A L A M Y
journalists has always been to write about the things
they are interested in and passionate about because
that’s what they’ll write about best. If it’s race, great. If
it’s fashion, finance or travel, that’s great, too. They’ll
still be Black.
In his 1926 essay, The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain, Langston Hughes writes about a young Black
poet who insisted he wanted to be known as a poet, “not
a Negro poet”. “And I was sorry the young man said that,”
reflected Hughes, “for no great poet has ever been afraid
of being himself.” Or as the artist Chris Ofili told me,
when I asked him during an interview how he responded
to the threat of pigeonholing: “Well, pigeons can fly.”
I have no problem being regarded as a Black writer.
It’s an adjective, not an epithet. It’s not the only adjective
Main: Nelson Mandela campaigns at a rally before
the first democratic elections in South Africa, 1994;
below, supporters in New Orleans watch Barack
Obama’s presidential victory speech in 2008
available, and I have no interest in being confined by
it. But I’m not in flight from it either. In the words of the
late Toni Morrison, when asked if she found it limiting
to be described as a Black woman writer: “I’m already
discredited. I’m already politicised, before I get out of the
gate. I can accept the labels because being a Black woman
writer is not a shallow place but a rich place to write
from. It doesn’t limit my imagination, it expands it.”
The Black diaspora has indeed provided an incredibly
rich source to write from and about. I got drunk with
Maya Angelou in her limousine on the way back from
a performance. (“Do you want ice and stuff [with your
whisky]?” her assistant asked her. “I want some ice,
but mostly I want stuff,” came Angelou’s reply.) I had
Archbishop Desmond Tutu nearly fall asleep on me,
speech slowing and eyelids drooping, punished by a
schedule that would wear out a much younger man. I
have had the privilege of chatting to Stormzy in his
living room, Angela Davis in her office, and of counting
Andrea Levy as a close friend.
It has at times been heartening, such as spending
election night with African Americans in a bar in
Chicago’s South Side as Obama emerged victorious, or
watching the St Louis suburb of Ferguson rise up in
protest against police brutality. At other times it could
be incredibly distressing, such as when witnessing the
effects of civil war in Haiti and Sierra Leone, or entering
New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
At times I’ve written not reportage but analysis –
attempting to momentarily shift the reader’s gaze – so
that we might understand the world differently;
imagining, for example, how Boris Johnson would fare
if he were a Black woman, or what a good White history
month might look like. I’ve written both in defence of
Uncle Tom, the much-maligned 19th-century fictional
character, and for the right to riot against state
oppression and structural inequality.
Sometimes it’s about bearing testimony to the
moment. The article I wrote about the acquittal of
George Zimmerman for the murder of Trayvon Martin
was written at an angry, late hour, filed quickly in the
hope that it would help shape whatever discussions
came afterwards; the account of the night of Obama’s
victory was written in the early hours of the morning,
after no sleep, and as the results were still coming in.
But it took me three years to find Claudette Colvin, who
was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in
Montgomery, Alabama, in March 1955 – nine months
before Rosa Parks – but who had not been championed
until relatively recently, and I spent a year shuttling to
and from New Orleans after Katrina.
In many ways, the world I write in now is hugely
different to the one into which the piece about Mandela’s
campaign was published. South Africa has been a stable
multiracial democracy for almost three decades; the
US has had a Black president, now has a Black vice-
president, and has trebled the number of people of
colour in its supreme court. There are almost eight times
the number of Black MPs in the UK parliament than
there were then, and Black actors, artists and writers
who would once have struggled to gain a platform are
now far more prominent. Meanwhile, almost a decade
of intermittent Black Lives Matter protests, which
crescendoed after the murder of George Floyd in 2020,
have raised popular awareness about the issue of
racism, to the point where two-thirds of Britons are
aware of the terms “institutional racism” and “systemic
racism”. The language has changed; the conversation
is better. We are not where we were.
And yet despite all that has changed, what is most
remarkable is how much has remained the same. South
Africa is still the most unequal society in the world, while
the gaps in both wealth and unemployment between
Black and white Americans rose during Obama’s tenure,
as did the Black poverty rate. In Britain, the Windrush
scandal saw Black citizens deported or deprived of their
basic rights because they could not prove they were
British to a sufficient threshold. Black incarceration grew
and young Black men, in particular, found themselves
persistently and disproportionately at risk of being
stopped and searched in the streets by the police.
The disproportionate number of Black deaths across
the globe during the Covid-19 pandemic exposed the
degree to which racism remains a hardy virus that adapts
to the body politic in which it finds a home, developing
new and ever more potent strains. We are neither where
we need to be nor have we travelled quite as far as some
think. Indeed, if those protests have taught us anything,
it is how little has changed, beyond the urgent realisation
that so little had changed for so many for so long.
I am by nature an optimist. But I am not delusional.
Over more than two decades spent reporting from the
frontline of the Black diaspora, I have seen how much
change is possible and the potential of humanity to rise
to those changes, but I have also witnessed the power
systems have to thwart those aspirations, openly and
covertly. The progress we seek will not come about
through benevolence and enlightenment, but by will
and resistance. It will come, as Mandela arrived and as
thousands poured on to the streets to protest more
recently, because we demand it.
This is an extract from Gary Younge’s Dispatches from
the Diaspora: From Nelson Mandela to Black Lives Matter,
published by Faber.
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 47
CULTURE BOOKS NONFICTION
D
Under the volcano O YOU H AV E a personal eruption plan,
if you don’t mind me asking? This is
the term used to describe how one
An urgent account intends to get away in the event of a
volcano going off. Even if you don’t live
near one – such as the underwater
of how natural Kolumbo volcano near Santorini, which has recently
been scanned to reveal a filling magma chamber – really
big eruptions can have planetary consequences,
disasters have through the climatic effects of the ash they pump into
the atmosphere. Indeed, though we worry more about
asteroids or nuclear winter, volcanoes have probably
shaped civilisation been responsible for more of the abrupt climatic shifts
in our species’ history than anything else. Unfortunately,
the historian Peter Frankopan writes, “almost no
sheds fresh light on investment of time, planning or funding has been
spent on the potential implications of major volcanic
eruptions” in our own time. Whoops.
modern problems So runs one urgent message of this rich and
fascinating book, which sets out to tell the story of
Homo sapiens from the point of view of how we have
Steven Poole suffered natural ecological disasters, and engineered
our own in turn. Humanity has survived historical
swings in climate more severe than global heating
presently threatens, including the “megafloods” that
occurred during the thawing of the last ice age (ancestral
memory of which arguably inspires the Old Testament
and other sacred texts); a volcanic eruption that blotted
out much of the sun for a few years in the sixth century
C L I M AT E might have influenced the Norse myths. Genghis Khan
The Earth could perhaps thank unusually heavy rains in Mongolia
Transformed for his military success (they increased the amount of
An Untold History pasture for his horses), but his armies also spread the
Peter Frankopan Black Death everywhere they rampaged. Agriculture
BLO OMSBURY, £3 0 in turn has transformed the planet, Frankopan shows,
4 8 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
A volcanic eruption outside
Reykjavik, Iceland, in 2021
as well as the development of global trade in spices,
cotton and enslaved people, and even the
transplantation of tomatoes and potatoes from the
Americas to Europe. Introducing a disquisition on the
latter root, Frankopan does not hesitate to write: “The
humble potato changed the world.”
This is one of those books that aims to tell the whole
story of everything from a cute new angle, so inevitably
there are longueurs where the focus on climate is
temporarily forgotten and a few pages of potted history
or comparative religion take over. A mini-essay on the
geopolitics of oil in the 20th century cannot compete
with specialist books on the subject, for instance Helen
Thompson’s brilliant Disorder, while those interested
in the climatic effects of nuclear tests will find more
detail in Serhii Plokhy’s Atoms and Ashes. And because
every subject is special, it can end up feeling as though
none is. “The period up to c3000BC was one marked
by considerable ecological and demographic change,”
we learn, which is to say that it was, in those respects,
exactly like every other period in history. “All around the
world,” we learn to not very much surprise later, “the 
period from c800 to c1200 was one of profound change.”
Much of this is speculative, but then so is all narrative
writing about the past, even when one is not explicitly
doing counterfactual history. Climate change, we are
told, “has been suggested” as one reason for the decline
of some cities and the growth of others; drought,
flood, and disease no doubt often had as powerful an
effect as the edicts of kings, if not more so. Still, while
a volcanic eruption did not make Cleopatra’s life easier,
“other factors explain the sequence of events that
ended with the Queen’s death in 30BC”. This kind of
hedging is to be applauded, since it is the opposite of
what dishonest writers of sweeping nonfiction
habitually do, forcing everything to fit their neat scheme.
What then shall we do now? The author’s list of
potential remedies for our present carbon emissions
includes the obvious (clean energy) and the less-often
hymned (teach cows to use latrines), some of which we
might hope to be as effective as Pope Pius V ’s
16th-century excommunication of a plague of locusts
in St Peter’s Square. Such measures might, Frankopan
hopes, mitigate “the unsustainable way that we live in
the twenty-first century”.
Indeed the book does end up implying that our real
problem is, simply, other people. To say, for example,
that the “green revolution” of the mid-20th century – the
advances in agricultural technology led by Nobel prize-
winning Norman Borlaug which, it is usually estimated,
saved hundreds of millions from starvation – was
“counterproductive” because it didn’t also solve political
problems is rather odd. But then there are hints that
Frankopan might belong to the more misanthropic end
of the green spectrum. He disapproves of cities, which
indeed consume many resources and emit much waste,
even though living in a city is more energy-efficient
than not. Geoengineering – trying to change the climate
technologically on a planetary scale – is obviously
dangerous, though, and anyway a supervolcano might
soon do the same thing for us, only too effectively, with
J E R E M I E R I C H A R D /A F P/ G E T T Y I M A G E S
accompanying tsunamis and crop failures. Meanwhile
scientists are forecasting the return of El Niño later this
year, sending global temperatures “off the chart”.
It is hard to feel sunny about all this, and The Earth
Transformed ends in a vision not so much pessimistic
as quasi-apocalyptic, hoping at the very best for a future
Edenic age in which a far smaller number of humans
now live in harmony with nature. How such a mass
global depopulation is to be achieved in non-murderous
ways is left as an exercise for the reader.
To buy a copy for £25 go to guardianbookshop.com
 A master class
How to get good at
almost anything
Matthew Cantor
POLITICS
The Real Work
On the Mystery of Mastery
Adam Gopnik
QUERCUS, £14.99
W
hat does it mean to master
a skill – drawing, dancing
or driving – and how do you
actually do it? That is the question
New Yorker writer Adam Gopnik asks
in The Real Work, and it becomes the
springboard for a discussion of art,
family, empathy, mortality. Via
memoir, analysis and criticism he
assembles a celebration of the flaws
that make us human.
The “real work” is a term used
by stage magicians to describe
“the accumulated craft, savvy and
technical mastery that makes a great
magic trick great”. The magician
credited with having achieved the
“real work” for a given trick, Gopnik
explains, isn’t necessarily the one
who invented it, but rather the first to
master every detail of its performance.
The book is structured round Gopnik’s
interactions with practitioners of
various crafts, from baking to boxing:
he becomes an apprentice of sorts,
learning just enough of each skill
to develop an understanding of
what mastery may mean.
In the process, he picks up on
three themes: first, that mastery is
the “slow carpentering of fragments
into a harmonious whole”. The expert
creates the illusion of something
unified by learning each tiny step –
whether those steps are the small
melodic ideas of a jazz pianist or the
rhythmic pattern of a boxer’s jabs.
Second, mastery is about humanity,
not perfection. “We never really love
an artist’s virtuosity, or if we do, it
feels empty,” Gopnik writes. “We
love their vibrato, their … way of
entangling their learned virtuosity
within their unique vulnerability.”
WIK TOR SZ YMANOWIC Z /NURPHOTO/RE X /SHUT TER STO CK
Third, it’s not about “life rules,
but real lives”. Gopnik thinks mastery
can be found everywhere, from his
mother’s kitchen to his driving
teacher’s car. “We always overestimate
the space between very good and
uniquely good,” Gopnik says: we know
the names of the Michael Jordans and
the Leonardos, but there are countless
people who are nearly, if not quite
equally, brilliant. And even if most
of us won’t become household names,
“we are all more varied and capable
than we are often allowed to seem”.
Gopnik studies drawing with an
artist who takes a strict realist
approach; he learns to combine the
fragments of a whole, and deploys
tools of the trade – certain shapes and
techniques, the endless utility of an
eraser. It’s also an opportunity for him,
as an art critic, to discuss the concept
of representational art, pulling from
the work of psychologists and historians
as he considers why “collections of
shrewdly borrowed shapes and broken
lines strike us as real”.
Elsewhere, he discusses magic with
David Copperfield, David Blaine and the
normally mute Teller, partner of Penn.
He learns to drive with an instructor
who repeatedly urges him to “become
the noodle”, meaning to fully relax into
the task – mastering driving, Gopnik
notes, is about learning to pretend what
you’re doing isn’t incredibly dangerous.
Baking with his mother leads to
reflections on childhood and ageing,
and what children owe their parents.
In one revealing chapter, Gopnik
describes his struggle with paruresis, or
shy-bladder syndrome – an inability to
urinate in public toilets. In late middle
age, he begins cognitive behavioural
therapy, touring the city’s public toilets
on his bike with his therapist as he
practises peeing in increasingly
stressful situations. Thus, he masters
an elusive target: his own mind.
Gopnik is at his most moving when
addressing the limited time we have
on Earth; the roughly established
number of heartbeats we are given to
achieve whatever means most to us. In
this context, he writes, mastery may
have nothing to do with impressing
some great portion of the public;
instead, what counts is ourselves and
a few people close to us. Mastery,
he concludes, is “emphatically not
transcendent”. Instead, in Gopnik’s
conception it is thoroughly democratic
– something we all can achieve, and
in many cases already have.
To buy a copy for £13.04 go to
guardianbookshop.com
Bergdorf at the London
Trans Pride march last year
All change
A trans woman’s memoir
of trauma and triumph
Rebecca Nicholson
MEMOIR
Transitional
In One Way Or Another,
We All Transition
Munroe Bergdorf
BLO OMSBURY TONIC, £16.9 9
I
n August 2017, Munroe Bergdorf
was riding high. Aged 29, she
had been hired as L’Oréal’s first
transgender model. A few days
before, violent white supremacists
had marched in Charlottesville,
Virginia, and she posted, to a smallish
audience on Facebook, her furious
condemnation of white racism. After
the L’Oréal campaign was announced,
someone she went to university with
sent a screenshot to the Daily Mail
and what happened next made her
notorious. “The conservative press
was having a field day, labelling me
a racist for daring to point out that
racism exists and it benefits white
people,” she writes. L’Oréal sacked
her (though they rehired her in 2020),
other brands dropped her and she
received horrific abuse on social
media. Her reaction was not to
shrink away, but to accept the
mountain of requests to speak on
news and panel shows. “I took every
single opportunity to tell my side of
the story.”
In writing a memoir, Bergdorf
is taking that opportunity again,
and in much greater depth. On the
page, she becomes a human being,
rather than a headline. She writes
about growing up middle class in
a satellite commuter town, near
to London but very much in the
countryside. She was Black, of mixed
heritage, in a town where the only
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 4 9
other Black people she saw were
two girls who had been adopted
by white parents; she was an
effeminate boy, repeatedly ostracised
and bullied for being different, not
only by her peers, but by her peers’
parents, too. The ghoulish section
28 still loomed over her education;
teachers would not step in when
she received homophobic abuse.
Her depiction of the isolation she
felt is precise. She could not tell her
parents why she was being bullied
because she felt unable to come out
to them. When she did, it was
painful, and she writes frankly
about how long it took that
relationship to heal.
By the time she left home and
moved to Brighton for university,
there were other transitions to
navigate. Each chapter covers a
broad theme: adolescence, sex,
gender, love, race and purpose.
Many memories are traumatic, and
her resilience is astonishing. Not
everyone survives those experiences,
as the book’s affecting dedication
makes plain. As she contemplates
her purpose, in the final chapter,
she suggests that she is moving –
or in the language and spirit of this
book, “transitioning” – towards a more
tranquil place. “I think I’m tired of
chaos, and would like some peace
now,” she writes.
There was one element of
Transitional that I particularly liked,
though it’s in the margins, rather
than centre stage. Bergdorf writes
about the lack of role models she
had growing up. She finds self-
expression in pop culture: bedroom
walls covered in Buff y and Britney
posters, an obsession with Madonna,
“a woman who didn’t give a fuck
about the opinions others had of
her”, watching Queer As Folk on TV.
“Role models show us that we are good
enough as we are,” she writes, and her
testament to what other role models –
including lecturers, mentors and
elders – did for her is joyful and
moving. There is no denying the power
of representation and how much it
matters to see yourself reflected
positively in the world.
The slightly gauzy selling
point of Transitional – that all of us
transition, all the time, in different
ways, and that should unite us –
gives it a veneer of self-help, but it is
much more effective as a memoir
than a guide. The idea that we must
navigate difficulties and heal from
trauma is so vague that it feels almost
as if Bergdorf is trying to make herself
believe it. Still, when trans people are
facing such a hostile climate in the UK,
it is hard to begrudge her this open-
arms gesture, one that aims to speak
to all human experience, rather
than simply her own.
To buy a copy for £14.78 go to
guardianbookshop.com
CULTURE
Snow on Snow
The news reader tackles
privilege and politics
John Harris
SOCIETY
The State of Us
The Good News
and the Bad News
About Our Society
Jon Snow
B A N T H A M, £ 2 0
T I
he morning after the Grenfell
Tower disaster, Jon Snow
arrived at the offices of Channel
4 News, the programme he had been
hosting since 1989. Initially, he and his
colleagues did not have much sense of
the significance of a story that was just
starting to become clear. But after he
arrived at the scene having impulsively
cycled across London, he realised that
he was about to front his channel’s
coverage not just of an unimaginable
tragedy, but of glaring truths about
the modern United Kingdom.
Fifty days before, Snow and the
Microsoft founder Bill Gates had been
the judges of a public-speaking contest
organised by a charity called Debate
Mate. The winner, by some distance,
had been 12-year-old Firdaws Hashim,
a student at the Kensington Aldridge
Academy. Two days into a run of
bulletins broadcast from Grenfell,
he suddenly saw her image on a
“Missing” notice. “This brilliant girl
lived with her family on the twenty-
second floor,” he writes. “I knew
precisely what the poster meant …
And at this moment, I burst into tears.”
Snow’s appreciation of what all
this signified was at the heart of the
MacTaggart lecture he gave at the
Edinburgh TV festival that August,
in which he charged the media with
standing “comfortably with the elite,
with little awareness, contact or
connection with those not of the elite”.
This uneasy realisation – Snow is open
about his own privilege, rooted in a
private education – obviously festered.
Now, just over a year after his exit from
Channel 4 News, he has developed it
into a 288-page exploration of
inequality, and the kind of social and
cultural changes that might reduce it.
His tone is that of someone
suddenly liberated from the restraints
of supposed impartiality. Snow mixes
autobiography with polite polemic,
and tumbles through a range of
subjects and locations: education,
housing, the reform of parliament,
apartheid South Africa, Iran, the
invasion of Iraq and its long slipstream
– and, in the book’s second half, the
media, and the narrow range of
perspectives it presents. In a ranking
of the most powerful media figures
published in 2019, 43% came from
5 0 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
BOOKS NONFICTION
privately educated backgrounds: here,
he rightly suggests, is a big part of the
reason why so much news seems to take
the people who deliver it by surprise.
But even if he now feels unbound,
some of his own arguments are proof of
those same limitations. He presents the
House of Lords as the embodiment of so
much of what he decries, but can only
propose “an independent commission
to look at what would be the best
solution”. His analysis of recent political
history finds him being too generous to
David Cameron and George Osborne,
and overly kind to post-Thatcher
Conservatism more broadly (is it really
true that “racist language” is not “in the
tradition of the party” and that Nigel
Farage sits outside the parameters of
Tory politics?). In general, he hangs on
to a Whiggish optimism that sometimes
fails to stand up to scrutiny. He also has
a habit of extending his criticisms of the
media’s highest-profile elements to
journalism as a whole. Before the
Brexit referendum, he says, “I do
not believe any part of the media
appreciated the scale of the citizenry’s
economic woes”. Some of us did.
The oversights are occasionally
maddening, but Snow is usually
redeemed by the self-awareness that
underpins most of what he says. The
essence of his talents as a news anchor
came down not just to his unquenchable
interest in his fellow humans, but
an urbane, unrufflable disposition
traceable to an early life spent among
“giant doors, vaulted ceilings and
esoteric codes of conduct”. In the future
he seems to want, voices like his would
recede, leaving the news to be delivered
by people closer to their audiences. At
that point, perhaps, the “us” in his title
might at last mean what it ought to.
To buy a copy for £17.40 go to
guardianbookshop.com
Reflections on
inequality from
Jon Snow
Noted at last
In praise of Britain’s
great female composers
Erica Jeal
MUSIC
Quartet
How Four Women
Changed the
Musical World
Leah Broad
FA BER, £2 0
n 1977, 90-year-old Rebecca
Clarke was at Alice Tully Hall in
Manhattan to hear a performance
of her Viola Sonata, written more than
half a century earlier. Clarke had been
a successful composer, the Sonata her
breakthrough work – and yet for most
of the audience her music was still an
unexpected discovery. “Had she not
been a woman composer,” conceded
the New York Times, “Miss Clarke
might be heard more today.” Soon
afterwards, Clarke reflected that
there had always been people who
could not believe that her muscular,
modern, “unfeminine” music was
written by a woman: “I take this
opportunity,” she wrote wryly, “to
emphasise that I do indeed exist.”
Emphasising that female composers
did (and do) exist, even though they
have often been left out of musical
history, is what drives this biography
of extraordinary women by Leah Broad.
Clarke is one of four composers whose
lives she weaves into a chronological
account that to some extent doubles
as a social history of Britain.
The first, Ethel Smyth, is the
most familiar thanks partly to the
fact that her life makes such a good
story. A tweed-suited, cigar-puffing
suffragette whose lovers included
Emmeline Pankhurst and Virginia
Woolf, she courted ridicule from the
all-male musical establishment – “the
Machine”, as she called it – yet self-
promotion brought her considerable
success: her opera Der Wald was, in
1903, the first by a woman to be
performed at the august Metropolitan
Opera in New York (and the only one
until Kaija Saariaho’s L’Amour de
Loin in 2016). The scene of Smyth in
Holloway prison conducting her
fellow suffragette inmates with a
toothbrush as they paraded around
the prison yard has been recounted
many times before, but Broad goes far
beyond that here: the tenderness of
her letters, and the mixture of rash
temper and tenacity with which she
bore her disappointments, reveal a still
more intriguing character.
Smyth wrote copious memoirs; the
other three women left less material,
but still emerge brightly. After Clarke,
we meet the unassuming Dorothy
Howell, whose 1919 orchestral work
Lamia brought her acclaim aged just
21 – and the support of the conductor
Henry Wood, founder of the Proms
and an important gatekeeper. After the
second world war she settled into life
away from the spotlight, writing
mainly for children. Lastly there is
Doreen Carwithen, a rising star as a
student whose career was subsumed
into that of her tutor William Alwyn,
whom she would marry following a
20-year affair. Carwithen was elusive
– even her own sister didn’t know she
had been a very successful film
composer until after her death.
Broad has researched widely and
thoroughly, and has a good line in
anecdote: we read of Smyth’s first
offer of marriage, from Oscar Wilde’s
brother, shortly after she had been
seasick on him, and how when
Carwithen had tea with Ralph Vaughan
Williams he gave the first slice of cake
to his cat. Other female composers flit
tantalisingly across the pages – for
instance Elizabeth Poston, director of
music for the BBC’s European Service,
whose insistence that Howell’s
wartime piano broadcasts followed
strict timings might have meant she
was sending coded messages to the
resistance. Broad’s eye for character
is allied to a way of describing music
that makes you want to hear it
immediately, so the discography
she provides is a welcome inclusion.
Those recordings are being added
to all the time, and interest in music
by female composers is gaining
momentum, yet, as Broad cautions
in her epilogue, such enthusiam has
always been followed by a backlash.
Perhaps the only thing out of place
D AV I D L E V E N E / T H E G U A R D I A N
in this readable and inspiring
biography is its subtitle, How Four
Women Changed the Musical World:
in fact, the stories it tells serve to
illustrate how stubbornly change
has been resisted.
To buy a copy for £17.40 go to
guardianbookshop.com
 FICTION
An activist collective campaigns for ‘radical, widespread,
and lasting social change’ in Catton’s third novel

conceived, enormously readable. It might seem like

cavilling to suggest that what it lacks is an original or
surprising sense of our riven world. But without this kind
of vision – without insight that reaches beyond good and
evil – you risk creating only a superbly polished mirror,
one that shows us the world as we already know it.
Literary novels, as opposed to the sort of thriller that
pitches goodies against baddies without much moral
shading, ideally do more than this. And, in fairness,
Catton’s publisher is calling Birnam Wood “a gripping
psychological thriller”. Political thriller might be more
accurate, since it is really about the schemas and
deadlocks of our contemporary politics. Birnam Wood
– the forest that moves to Dunsinane Hill to herald the
fall of Macbeth – is the name chosen, semi-ironically,
by an “activist collective” based in Christchurch, New
Zealand. Birnam Wood’s founder, Mira Bunting, hopes
for “nothing less than radical, widespread, and lasting
social change”; her group’s contribution to this change
takes the form of guerrilla gardening projects, reclaim-
ing waste public and private land to grow food crops.
Is Mira Macbeth? She might be; she enters into a deal
with the novel’s villain, billionaire Robert Lemoine, a
Peter Thiel-resembling “doomsteader” who seems to
be buying up a tract of rural New Zealand so he can build
a luxury bunker and ride out the apocalypse. Then again,
Lemoine himself might be Macbeth. His doomsteading

I
Hippies v N A L I T E R A R Y M A R K E T P L A C E that
sometimes seems oversupplied with novels
about brittle intellectuals feeling alienated
project, we quickly learn, is a front. Secretly, he is
extracting rare-earth minerals from Korowai national
park. He toys with Mira and invests in Birnam Wood

billionaires from their emotions, or twentysomethings

grinding axes about their exes, there is the
wonder of Eleanor Catton: a novelist of lavish
largely for the hell of it – because he is, as the novel
exhaustively, and at points hilariously, makes clear, a
total psychopath. Birnam Wood moves its operations

The Booker winner
technical gifts who addresses herself to the world,
broadly and richly conceived.
Catton’s fi rst novel, 2008’s The Rehearsal, was a
to Lemoine’s doomsteader tract. Will this herald his fall?
It’s hippies versus billionaires: a scenario full of
comic potential, of course. To spike the mixture, Catton

captures our small miracle. Leaping acrobatically between fictional

and metafictional modes, it tells the story of a
secondary-school scandal (male teacher, female
throws in a righteous young aspiring journalist, Tony
Gallo, and a recently knighted New Zealand business
maven, Sir Owen Darvish, and his loving wife, Lady

collective despair student) restaged by trainees at a local drama school.

There is something almost Brechtian about the way it
shocks you out of familiar fictional comfort zones, and
Darvish (as with Sir Owen’s fictional predecessor, Sir
William Lucas in Pride and Prejudice, “The distinction
had perhaps been felt too strongly”).

in a thrillerish novel
something almost Wildean in the way it lobs its arch
perceptions, like glittering little hand grenades, at all
sorts of social and artistic pieties.
The first half of the novel, setting all this up, is hugely
entertaining. Catton, you think, can do anything fiction
requires: she can write funny social satire; she can stage

about climate crisis Catton’s second novel, 2013’s The Luminaries, was
a large miracle (it won her the Booker). Running to 821
pages, and set among the gold fields of 1860s New
a convincingly self-defeating fight among leftist radicals;
she can notice “the hash of oily streaks and fingerprints”
on a locked phone screen. You keep waiting for her to

Kevin Power Zealand, The Luminaries is structured around two

highly artificial conceits. At one level it spins an intricate
pastiche-Victorian mystery revolving around gold,
opium and changed identities. At another, its structure
follows elaborate astrological rules – a prefatory
“Character Chart” notes which characters are “Stellar”
and which “Planetary”, and so forth. It is brilliant; a
virtuoso performance. But, like most virtuoso
performances, it does leave you with the nagging
suspicion that virtuosity itself is the point.
Take the novel’s characters, each one carefully
painted but nonetheless in thrall to Catton’s great
determining structures. The luminaries have
personalities but not really that much in the way of life.
Catton’s marvellously imagined 19th-century world
revolves, and the astrologically directed people go
about their tricksy business, but it is difficult not to feel
A N D R E A S A R N O L D /A P
do something astonishing with her setup – to give us a
novel that doesn’t just crash dishevelled goodies
(Birnam Wood) into a suave baddie (Robert Lemoine).
But instead of ushering us into a world of surprising
insights, Birnam Wood relies – no spoilers – on a finely
spun web of misunderstandings and coincidences to
drive its increasingly thrillerish second half. The fictional
craftsmanship is above reproach. But it’s hard not to feel
a bit disappointed that such a beautifully built novel just
tells us the same old, same old: billionaires bad! Leftwing
radicals good, if sometimes misguided and hapless!
Then again, Birnam Wood does efficiently dramatise
a specifically contemporary pessimism: its theme is
our collective despair about the locked social geology
that prevents meaningful action on climate change. It’s
an important subject. And maybe we should expect
our schematically unequal world to produce schematic

Birnam Wood that the machinery underneath it all is the real star of
Eleanor Catton the show. As with certain CGI blockbusters, you marvel
G R A N TA , £ 2 0 at the spectacle and wonder about the vision.
Birnam Wood, Catton’s third novel, raises the question
of vision once again. Technically speaking, it’s another
virtuoso performance: elaborately plotted, richly
fiction – stories about goodies and baddies, poor people
and billionaires, peasants and kings. Catton is not wrong;
she is certainly showing us the world we know. But our
culture is already rife with calls for moral simplicity.
Isn’t it the duty of the literary novel to go deeper?
To buy copy for £17 go to guardianbookshop.com

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 51

CULTURE
Sadness, SF and sass
Atwood shows mastery
of the short form
Sam Leith
SHORT STORIES
Old Babes in the Wood
Margaret Atwood
CH AT TO & W IND US, £2 2
M
ost of the characters in
Margaret Atwood’s latest
book are old, or heading that
way, and their stories unwrap what TS
Eliot called the gifts reserved for age.
There are chips and fragments of lives,
full of sass and sadness. The book is in
three parts: a miscellaneous collection
of stories is sandwiched between
sections called Tig and Nell and Nell
and Tig. The Nell and Tig stories tell
the tale of a long and loving marriage,
and what comes after. (The book is
dedicated to Atwood’s partner,
Graeme Gibson, who died in 2019.)
When we meet Nell and Tig they
are on a first aid course: they need a
certificate to give talks on a cruise ship.
The guests on the cruise ship, they
reflect, will be “older than Nell and
Tig. Truly ancient. Such people can be
expected to topple over at any minute,
and then it will be certificates to the
rescue.” Not that Nell and Tig expect to
be of any use in such a crisis. The story
– told, as we discover, in long retrospect
– is really about their companionable,
conspiratorial laughter at the foibles of
their instructor; and their reflections
on the danger that we live with and,
when we’re young, ignore.
Many of these stories dwell wanly
on how love flourishes, as time goes on,
amid the most crosspatch and cussed
of human interactions. Two Scorched
Men describes friends of Nell and Tig,
both dead by the time the story is being
narrated: a “short, roundish, genial
Frenchman” and a “lanky, explosive
Irishman” who says of Atwood’s home
city Toronto: “Stuff Toronto, timid
prudish provincial mud puddle.”
Bad Teeth is about two female
writers, Csilla and Lynne. Csilla,
writing a memoir of the 1960s, claims
Lynne had an affair with a man with
terrible teeth. She made it up for her
book, she eventually admits. “You’re
dead to me is what the younger
generation might say,” Lynne thinks.
“But Csilla is far from dead to her.
Csilla is in fact part of her.” The
protagonists of these stories regard
the strident moral certainties and
bruising cancellations of the “younger
gen” with amusement and alarm.
They are too old to bear grudges.
Atwood is a literary writer who
entirely sees the point of science
fiction, and her speculative instincts
5 2 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
BOOKS FICTION
Visions of ageing and apocalypse
from Margaret Atwood
are on show in several of the stories
here. The cheery jeu d’esprit Impatient
Griselda, for instance, is a monologue
by a many-tentacled alien creature,
employed by the entertainment
department of an “intergalactic crises
aid-package”, telling a collection of
quarantined humans a fairy story.
The tone is Joyce Grenfell by way
of Futurama:
One day a rich person of high
status, who was a Sir and a thing
called a Duke, came riding by on
a – came riding by, on a – If you
have enough legs you don’t have
to do this riding by, but Sir had
only two legs, like the rest of you
[…] the Duke scooped her up onto
his ... I’m sorry, we don’t have a
word for that so the translation
device is no help. Onto his snack.
Why are you all laughing? What
do you think snacks do before
they become snacks?
Another post-apocalyptic story
touches on Handmaid’s Tale territory:
a virus that makes Covid look like
a runny nose has roared through
humanity, and the uninfected are
made to breed through arranged
marriages while, confined to
lawless “Freeforalls”, the rest of the
population gets on with living and
loving and (mostly) dying. And in
Metempsychosis there’s a delightful
description of a snail’s dismay as it
finds its soul transferred into the body
of a human being.
A worldview open to science fiction
is no less resonant, and piercingly so,
in the ostensibly realist stories. In the
final section Nell is in widowhood,
“now that Tig” – the phrase truncated
because its conclusion is not sayable.
Yet Tig is still around her everywhere.
“There are portals in space-time,
opening and closing like little frog
mouths. Things disappear into them,
just vanish; but then they might
appear again without warning. Things
and people, here and gone and then
maybe here. You can’t predict it.”
Those little frog mouths are
everywhere. In A Dusty Lunch Nell goes
through the papers of Tig’s father, the
Jolly Old Brigadier. Before his death,
the JOB had complained that people
appeared in his apartment – “sometimes
people he knows, sometimes not,
sometimes alive, sometimes not” –
but would not talk to him. His papers
hint at wartime trauma, at a romance
that may or may not have happened.
But in the end it’s irrecoverable.
The theme of the collection is right
there in that first story, First Aid:
“‘We aren’t going to make it out of
here alive,’ Tig used to say as a joke,
although it wasn’t one.”
To buy a copy for £18.70 go to
guardianbookshop.com
Under the knife
The ethical crimes
of a doctor in freefall
Tanjil Rashid
Tell Her Everything
Mirza Waheed
MELVILLE HOUSE, £20
A
lthough reared on different
academic diets, doctors and
novelists have the same quality
at heart: empathy. No one lacking this
trait is going to excel at writing a novel
or treating a patient, and anyone who
has succeeded in doing both must
have had it in droves – Dr Chekhov,
for instance, who shows us how
aligned literature and medicine are
as humane pursuits concerned with
understanding the condition of others.
His classic novella Ward No 6 is about a
doctor learning the value of empathy,
that “to cultivate indifference to
suffering is to aim at a living death”.
That’s a lesson worth learning, whether
you are writing fiction or prescriptions.
Tell Her Everything by the Kashmiri
writer Mirza Waheed is about a doctor
who betrays the principle of empathy.
But it is through the empathic act of
writing – of putting pen to paper and
reckoning with those who have suffered
at his hands – that he succeeds in
recovering his humanity and coming
back from his own living death.
Dr K is the son of fallen Muslim
aristocrats who have retained,
even amid poverty, their entitled
sensibility. An uninhibited zeal for
advancement, in order to restore
wealth and standing to his name and
his offspring, has seen Dr K rise from
small-town India via a prestigious
education in London to a high-ranking
position in an unnamed Gulf state.
Now retired, from his luxury flat on
the Thames K recalls his material rise
and moral fall in a series of unsent
letters – notes for a conversation he
envisages having with his estranged
American daughter.
K’s economic uplift, a familiar
tale of the transformative impact
of Gulf petrodollars on the lives of south
Asians, is inevitably less interesting
than the story of his ethical corruption.
As a well-paid hospital surgeon, K
eagerly takes on more and more
responsibilities until these ultimately
include duties such as hand-chopping
for the Department of Corrections. As
with so many historic misdeeds, there
isn’t one dramatic moment when the
protagonist steps out of the light and
into the darkness. The evil insinuates
itself slowly into the life of an otherwise
normal, refined, jazz-loving family
man, “starting with tending to
botched procedures at Corrections,
healing messed-up hands, and then
having to do it ourselves”.
Amputating the hands of thieves
is an infamous sharia punishment,
legal in very few countries, including
Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Out of this
fascinating, grisly phenomenon, Tell
Her Everything has been plotted with
great care. Hands are a leitmotif, as the
gifted dexterity of a surgeon becomes
the means of severing the hands of
others. Ghostly, disembodied fingers
wag their accusations in guilty
hallucinations. Playing on the oriental
DEREK SHAPTON/ THE GUARDIAN
trope of kismet, or destiny, K claims at
one point the choice wasn’t his, “it was
prewritten in the lines of my palms”.
His own best friend, Biju, an Indian
doctor struggling with addiction, is
eventually convicted of stealing. It’s
when Biju raises his maimed stump
for a farewell handshake that K truly
grasps his culpability.
 Reviewing this novel (which has
been out for three years already in
India, where it won the Hindu literary
prize), critics have invoked comparisons
to Kazuo Ishiguro, and K is something
of an unreliable narrator in that vein.
He hopes to vindicate himself to his
daughter, whom he sent away to
boarding school to protect her from
his own ethical degradation. “We
merely helped improve and bring it
in line with proper clinical practices,”
K intends to say by way of justification.
But if it was so inoffensive – progressive,
even – why the need to send his
daughter away? K’s confession grasps
this contradiction. His writing is not
really about persuading his daughter
or himself, it ultimately becomes
a method of self-inquiry – and the
narrator even knows it. “The denial
of self-deception is the ruse of self-
deception,” K declares, introspectively.
Although the subject and setting are
far from Kashmir, Tell Her Everything
is reminiscent of Waheed’s debut,
The Collaborator, shortlisted for the
Guardian first book award, in which
a well-meaning, intelligent young
Kashmiri works on behalf of the
Indian army during its murderous
occupation. He betrays the cause of
his compatriots, just as K betrays his
vocation’s Hippocratic principles.
Waheed’s novels function a bit like the
glass backing of a watch that allows you
to glimpse inside its mechanics; only in
this case, behind the crystal glass, you
can see the cogs of his characters’
guilty consciences whirring. As we
read about them in their studied
transparency, we realise that these are
consciences that might have been any
of ours, confronted with the prospect
of treachery and collusion in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
To buy a copy for £17.40
go to guardianbookshop.com
Among the oligarchs
Confessions of a tutor
to the super-rich
Sheena Patel
Queen K
Sarah Thomas
PROFILE , £14 .9 9
S
arah Thomas’s debut immerses
the reader in a Kardashianesque
world of Russian oligarchs, beige
interiors and intimacy issues. Melanie
is a private tutor to the children of
the extremely rich, lulled into the
job because it promises ease. In the
Kemerov household, she occupies the
coveted position of being just below
the family but above all the staff. BOOKS OF THE MONTH
Poetry
Capitalising on her insider knowledge
of the English boarding school system,
she has been employed by Kata, a
billionaire’s wife hoping to penetrate
the English upper classes through her
daughter Alex’s education.
Melanie is transfixed by Kata, and
much of the book is taken up with her An American great; a celebration of nature; vivid
observation of the family, her envy of memories of Grenfell; poems for a fictional brother;
their wealth complicated by a feeling
of belonging and yet a need to hurt and young lust in Brooklyn. By Rishi Dastidar
them, too. Ambient threat is provided
by Ivan, the shady husband, as the
intermittent presence of his entourage
shifts the dynamic in the house. In her “Yes, the flower is / Brother Poem
quest for legitimacy within the English saying something Will Harris
upper classes, Kata makes a beeline for somehow / and we must G R A N TA , £ 10.9 9
Tatiana, a former pupil at Alex’s school let it.” He also translates A series of “memory
and now an influencer. They strike an some of the Old English exercises”, many of the
unspoken exchange: Kata’s money for riddles found in the poems in Harris’s second
Tatiana’s cut-glass contacts. Thomas 10th-century Exeter collection address a
does a great job at seeding enough Book. His version of De fictional brother. Harris
doubt that we’re not sure who is creatura is a gorgeous uses this conceit to
scamming whom, and this is revealed evocation of the majesty interrogate what happens
to be closer to home than Kata thinks. and mundanity of life on when we mourn what
Melanie starts to flex what power she Balladz Earth: “my scalp spills hasn’t existed in our
has over the family by weaponising Sharon Olds braids of gold / around lives. As in his Forward
her invisibility, revealing or JON AT H A N CA PE , £12 my shoulders and down prize-winning first
withholding information. “Climbing the stairs, my back, / and I shine collection, Rendang,
The novel is told in three time- slowly, on my palms / … where I stand and when realities are destabilised
hopping sections across Geneva, / how much difference I walk / sunlight hangs through precise, reflexive
Monaco and the Maldives as we is there, anymore, / off my head in chains.” language, generating an
witness the family dynamic change between me and a enigmatic beauty that
over time and Melanie’s opinion of cadaver?” Judging by Was It for This draws you in: “I woke to
Kata seesaw back and forth. Is she a the now 80-year-old Hannah Sullivan wake-up in / a cloudless
victim or is she playing the game? Sharon Olds’s new FA BER, £12 .9 9 dream, my / tonsils rapt
Melanie is witness to the family trait of collection, the answer Another Eliot prize in cotton wool.”
withholding love, which is echoed in is: a lot. Across five parts winner follows her
her own life and friendships. “When the book covers the debut with three more Couplets
we were kids together at that school it death of her partner, long poems that Maggie Millner
seemed we were ordered by our wits … spending the first fruitfully extend the FA BER, £12 .9 9
In the end of course, we are ordered by Covid quarantine alone philosophical concerns A debut verse novel set
our capital, it is cruel, it is merciless.” and a tribute to Emily of 2018’s Three Poems. in Brooklyn, where an
The capitalist action of accumulation Dickinson in the form of Happy Birthday is a unnamed woman in
corrupts the simplest interaction Amherst Balladz. Olds’s playful exploration her late 20s leaves her
between people, stacking them on top familiar subjects of of what it means to boyfriend to start an
of one another, making it hard for the family, sex and the body turn 41, while the title affair with another
haves and the have-nots to reach out are here, but also an poem’s blocks of prose woman. Millner is
to one another. awareness of her poetry focus on the brilliant at showing how
Thomas also takes us back to privilege: “For a moment relationships we early moments of lust
Russia for the family’s origin story,
explaining how they got their wealth,
the core of my life /
was not desire, but
have with our
neighbourhoods.
can be existentially
unmooring: “Those days,
which is where the pace slowed down
for me. The entourage characters
the knowledge of my
unearned luck.” Drawing
Tenants draws on
testimony from the
I was something else: / a
soft vacuity. A sort of net.
surrounding the couple feel a bit
remote, cutouts rather than people,
on an unflinching
interrogation of the
Grenfell inquiry, taking
us into the disaster
/ No guilt, no age. No
epithet.” The heroic
and I’m unsure whether Thomas fully
delivers on the delicious premise of
self, these poems
pulse with energy.
and its aftermath.
Sensitively approached,
couplets she deploys
are pleasing in their wit,
Melanie’s malevolence. it’s a difficult but especially in the lovers’
Queen K is as compulsive as a Material Properties necessary read that text messages to each
Netflix binge, the bouncy prose Jacob Polley vividly brings the other: “In one, I praise
propelling you forward, but it also PICA D OR, £10.9 9 night back. the wild face she made in
asks timely questions about status The aliveness of the sex. / In others, we share
and what constitutes a dignified life. natural world is the travel plans: Trieste.”
In the Maldives, Kata throws a big main theme of Polley’s Reminiscent of Vikram
blowout party replete with flowers in first collection since Seth’s The Golden Gate,
temperature-controlled containers the TS Eliot prize- Couplets is deft, delicate
and an ostentatious display of winning Jackself. The and unexpectedly fun.
priceless art. It’s this that triggers poems have an unforced
her downfall, and so Thomas proves charm, delighting in Rishi Dastidar is co-editor
her point. It was hard to feel sorry for the wonder that of Too Young, Too Loud,
a billionaire’s wife. surrounds us, such as Too Different: Poems
To buy a copy for £13.04 when trying to explain from Malika’s Poetry
go to guardianbookshop.com a flower to his son: Kitchen (Corsair).
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 5 3
CULTURE
Reporter Angela Saini has written acclaimed
books tackling race science and gender
inequality. Next up, the patriarchy – which
is neither natural nor inevitable, she argues
‘Equality is not
progress for everyone’
Words: Katy Guest
O
n the day Angela Saini
talks to me from her
book-lined study
in New York, the
patriarchy is hard
at work all over the
world. Anti-abortion protestors are
getting ready to march on the Supreme
Court in Washington, the Metropolitan
police force is caught up in yet more
accusations of rape, Jacinda Ardern
has resigned as prime minister of
New Zealand after years of misogynist
abuse, and Iran is executing protestors
after the death in custody of Mahsa
Amini. In this context, it’s easy to see
how patriarchy operates but harder
to explain exactly what it is.
“Patriarchy is one of these words
that has lost some of its meaning
through overuse,” Saini says. “We
rarely interrogate what we really think
it means, and that’s part of what I was
trying to do with The Patriarchs.” The
subtitle of her new book, “How Men
Came to Rule”, is a simple question
with a fascinating and complicated
answer, which boils down to: “In
various ways, in different places, but
not everywhere, not always and not
necessarily.” Just as her 2017 book,
Inferior, challenged the idea that
gendered inequality is rooted in our
biology, and Superior in 2019 exposed
the lie of “race science” as it began
to creep chillingly back into the
mainstream, this book shows that
the dominant system we have come to
accept is neither natural nor inevitable.
This refusal to accept injustice has
characterised Saini’s career. Her
first book, Geek Nation: How Indian
Science Is Taking Over the World, was
published in 2011. She had recently
left a reporting job at the BBC to go
freelance shortly after her six-month
investigation into bogus universities
won a Prix Circom European television
award. According to Saini, while she
was working on that documentary,
there were several attempts to give
her story to other reporters in the
5 4 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
BOOKS
newsroom. “Maybe it was because
of my age, I really have no idea why …
but those reporters were always white
men.” She managed to keep the story
by threatening to leave, she says, and
then she did. “It’s one of my faults,
maybe, that I have too much pride, and
I make my career decisions based on
things like that. I just couldn’t stay.”
Since then, Saini has made a name
for herself with her series of books
with short titles and massive subjects.
These have tended to meet first
with resistance among scientific
communities, then with approbation
and set-text status, and finally with
attacks from the far right and white
supremacists that have largely forced
her off social media. Now The
Patriarchs is calling into question
the basic idea that men are in charge
because they are stronger, smarter
or better suited for it. Matrilineal,
matrilocal societies, as the book shows,
are “very much part of the fabric of
human history and society … not these
super rare, unusual worlds in which
somehow the laws of nature have
been overturned,” Saini says. “What is
odder for me is that male-dominated
societies are so common. When you
think of all the different ways in which
we could live, why is it that this one
system has … spread so widely?”
In the course of writing, Saini domination that somehow just swept Saini grew up in southeast London,
looked at new genetic research and the world in a very homogeneous way,” with parents who encouraged her and
archaeological scholarship; visited Saini says, “and it became clearer that her two sisters to think about big
Neolithic ruins in Çatalhöyük, Turkey; there were different patriarchies that ideas, and to ask: “Why is the world
talked to Onondaga Nation people in took different forms in different times the way it is?” Her dad had been an
Seneca Falls, New York state, and the and places around the world.” engineer, and her parents “split
Khasi community in Meghalaya, Patriarchy is not something that everything down the middle. They
northeast India; and met women in men did to women at some point in still do. There was no sense for me and
Germany, Hungary and the Czech history, but a fragile system whose my sisters that there was men’s work
Republic. She found ancient societies perpetuation we all participate in and women’s work.” The area was not,
that contradicted modern, binary ideas every day. “I’m not saying that it’s she says, “the greatest place to be an
of gender; matrilineal systems that had patriarchal to take your husband’s ethnic minority in the 1990s.” (She
been subverted by colonialism; and name,” she offers as an example. remembers one day calling a friend,
patriarchal rules that were ended at a “But that is one of the mundane who was from a Chinese family, to ask
stroke on the whim of governments. ways in which these systems stay if she fancied going to the shops. Her
“For me, it seemed less obvious alive. And there are thousands, if not friend’s mum wouldn’t let her because
that there was this one monolithic, millions, of them in cultures all over fascists were marching through the
conspiratorial, overarching plan of male the world.” town centre.) “I was made to be acutely
 Angela Saini:
‘Challenging our
culture is really hard’
aware of these things from a young age,
and I think that is why, when I got to
university, I became very involved in
anti-racism activism.” She became a
co-chair of the student union’s
anti-racism committee, which led to
writing for the student newspaper, and
that sparked an interest in journalism
and a traineeship at ITN. She also has
a master’s in engineering from Oxford
University, and another in science and
security from King’s College London
(which she took in her “spare time”
while working at the BBC).
It seemed inevitable to Saini that
she would return to the subject of race
in her work, but at the time Superior
was commissioned – before George
Floyd’s murder and only just after
the election of Donald Trump – the
persistence of racist, eugenicist
ideas was not a big part of public
conversation. “There was this
feeling that we were getting past this,”
she recalls. “But for many of us, it’s
obvious that these things are always
lying under the surface. When politics
shifts, these ideas come back into the
mainstream – and that’s exactly
what has happened.”
Saini brings her own background
and experiences to her work, and
that’s something she acknowledges
repeatedly in The Patriarchs. Given
how successfully she has exposed
scientific bias, it is interesting to see
her acknowledge her own. “Well, I
think we can only see anything through
our own cultural lens,” she laughs. “So
either we can ignore it and pretend that
we’re like gods, seeing it from a
distance from some privileged point of
view … Or we can acknowledge it,
incorporate that into the way we look
at our work, and have the humility to
try and see it from other people’s point
of view as well.”
Seeing things from other cultural
perspectives is one of the best things
about moving to live in the US, she
says. British people tend to think that
we know the country, but you don’t
have to travel very far from her home
in New York to find very different
stories from the ones we see in the
movies. At Seneca Falls, for example,
she learned about indigenous
American cultures, their approaches
to gender and how those were changed
as a result of colonialism. She has also
found a different mode of discussion
BEN ZUCKER / THE GUARDIAN
there. “I feel that the tone of the
public, mainstream debate and what
plays out in the newspapers around
race and gender [in the UK] is
sometimes so reactionary, so
dehumanising ... I was finding it very
difficult by the end.”
Though Saini, her husband and her
‘When you think
of all the different
ways in which we
could live, why is
it the patriarchal
system that has
spread so widely?’
nine-year-old son do plan to return to
the UK eventually, it felt like a relief
when her husband was offered a job
in New York. In 2020, she had applied
to be a commissioner for the UK’s
Equality and Human Rights
Commission and was disappointed
not to make it to the first round.
The subsequent appointment of the
journalist David Goodhart, who had
defended “hostile environment”
immigration policies and “white
self-interest”, came as a shock. Soon
afterwards, the Sewell report was
published “and I quickly realised that
this government was doing things that
were … running counter to what the
equalities agenda had been for a very
long time.” Then the culture secretary
Oliver Dowden began a campaign
against what he saw as “woke” policies
in museums. At the time, Saini was
sitting on the Natural History
Museum’s board for naming and
representation, and “I could see that
affecting the conversations we were
having. There was a kind of underlying
anxiety or fear. And I think for many of
us who work in academia or cultural
institutions, there is no doubt that the
Tory government’s policies over the
last few years have had a really chilling
effect on efforts to combat racism, and
Tom Gauld
efforts to improve the safety and lives
of transgender people, for instance.
And in the UK they feel mainstream.”
The Patriarchs makes it clear that
progress is not linear, nor slow, nor
the preserve of the good guys. To find
a society that legislated for women’s
equality, we don’t have to go back
to prehistory but to Soviet Russia.
“One of the primary tasks of the
Soviet Republic is to abolish all
restrictions on women’s rights,”
said Vladimir Lenin in a 1918 speech.
The Communist party gave women
the right to vote, easier divorce and
legalised abortion. In the “free” US
in 1957, a Gallup poll found 80% of
Americans agreed that “a woman
who chose not to marry was sick,
neurotic, or immoral”. At the same
time, Soviet women made up 79%
of the country’s doctors, and were
divorcing when they felt like it and
smoking in the streets. But these
freedoms can be taken away as quickly
as they are won, and not many people
look at present-day Russia as a utopia
for women. When Putin and others
argue for “traditional” values, they
only have to associate women’s rights
with Communist values to argue that
gender equality is a terrible idea.
If governments could just decree
the end of patriarchy at a stroke,
like the Soviets came close to doing,
why don’t they? “Because, unless
we live in an authoritarian state …
there has to be discussion with the
public,” Saini says. “And the public,
frankly, are divided on these things …
Equality is not progress for everyone.
Sometimes [people] don’t want more
equality, they just want more power.”
Even more uncomfortably,
patriarchy “is not ‘they’; it’s all of us”.
And changing it would mean losing
many of the things many people
cherish. “To really radically create
a completely equal society would
mean rethinking everything
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 5 5
fundamentally,” she says. “Marriage,
childcare, how we structure societies
… work, pay, everything. It would
mean challenging class, capitalism
... monarchies … We’re not just
creatures who want to live equally.
We’re also creatures who care about
the cultures that we’re in. And
challenging culture is really hard.”
Saini recognises there aren’t
simple solutions to the problems
patriarchy presents today. Even
when revolutionary struggles seem to
overthrow a patriarchal system – such
as in Soviet Russia or revolutionary
Iran – somehow not everyone gets
what they want. “It always comes
back to the fact that everyone has
a different idea of an ideal society,”
says Saini. But it’s the struggle
towards an ideal of equality
on which we ought to focus.
The Patriarchs is an optimistic
book, therefore. Not least, it shows
that more equal societies are possible
and do thrive – historically, now and
everywhere. Seeing things from other
cultural perspectives really does
reveal the way we live in a very
different light.
In the afterword, Saini writes:
“Some will claim that oppression
is permanently woven into who we
are. They will say that humans are
inherently selfish and violent, that
entire categories of people are
naturally dominant or subordinate.
I have to ask: would we still manage
to care about each other so much if
that were true?” What systems of
oppression do is undermine that real,
human instinct, she says. If we really
want to smash the patriarchy, “what
we really need is to rediscover our
ability to love and care for each other”.
Angela Saini will be discussing The
Patriarchs (4th Estate) with Zoe Williams
at 8pm on 15 March in a livestreamed
Guardian Live event. Tickets are available
at membership.theguardian.com/events
 From

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CULTURE BOOKS
THE BIG IDEA
Should governments
run more experiments?
We’re used to randomised trials in medicine. Why not
apply the same rigour to policy, asks Stian Westlake
I
F YOU ’ R E L O OK I NG for recent reasons to be
proud of Britain, it would be hard to fi nd a
better example than the Recovery series of
clinical trials. Conceived in haste in the early
days of the pandemic, Recovery (which stands
for Randomised Evaluation of Covid-19
Therapy) sought to fi nd drugs to help treat people
seriously ill with the novel disease. It brought together
epidemiologists, statisticians and health workers to
test a range of promising existing drugs at massive scale
across the NHS.
The secret of Recovery’s success is that it was a series
of large, fast, randomised experiments, designed to be
as easy as possible for doctors and nurses to administer
in the midst of a medical emergency. And it worked
wonders: within three months, it had demonstrated
that dexamethasone, a cheap and widely available
steroid, reduced Covid deaths by a fifth to a third. In
the months that followed, Recovery identified four more
effective drugs, and along the way showed that various
popular treatments, including hydroxychloroquine,
President Trump’s tonic of choice, were useless. All in
all, it is thought that Recovery saved a million lives
around the world, and it’s still going.
But Recovery’s incredible success should prompt us
to ask a more challenging question: why don’t we do
this more often? The question of which drugs to use
was far from the only unknown we had to navigate in
the early days of the pandemic. Consider the decision
to delay second doses of the vaccine, when to close
schools, or the right regime for Covid testing. In each
case, the UK took a calculated risk and hoped for the
best. But as the Royal Statistical Society pointed out at
Illustration: Elia Barbieri
the time, it would have been c heap and quick to
undertake trials so we could know for sure what the
right choice was, and then double down on it.
There is a growing movement to apply randomised
trials not just in healthcare but in other things
government does. Overseas development is perhaps
the most advanced example. The results of trials run
by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL),
for example, have deeply influenced how the UK
government spends aid money.
Applying scientific rigour to government
programmes seems unobjectionable, especially in a
world of fake news and backfiring populist policies. So
why hasn’t it taken off faster?
One obvious objection is that experimental methods
simply don’t apply to the questions that government
deals with. You can’t run an experimental budget to
test out whether the bond markets like it, much though
that might be desirable. And many decisions that
governments take are not straightforwardly about
“what works”, but more about values. A randomised
trial cannot tell you the correct ethical stance on
immigration policy or the redistribution of wealth.
Further reading Spike
Three books for Jeremy
Farrar
a deeper dive and Anjana
Ahuja
PROFILE , £9.9 9
But these concerns shouldn’t be overblown. The fact
is that the vast majority of what governments do on a
day-to-day basis is deeply practical, concerned with
how to get things done, rather than with ideology. If
the scientific method can make the small things work
well, that is incredibly useful.
Another objection to the use of trials is that they
undermine the knowledge and expertise of people
who deliver public services, from teachers to police
officers to aid workers. There is a long and ignoble
tradition of inappropriate targets and overcentralised
control being used to dampen the initiative of staff in
the public sector. Aren’t experiments, with their
presumption of scientific authority, just another
bureaucratic imposition?
As it happens, similar concerns were raised about
randomised trials in medicine when they were first
developed in the 1940s. Doctors feared that they would
undermine the authority of the medical profession, by
giving research fi ndings priority over professional
judgment. Over time, though, doctors came to accept
that controlled trials were an important complement
to their practice, rather than a threat to it.
Then there is the question of whether it’s fair to
randomly allocate which citizen gets access to grants
or publicly funded programmes, even in the interests
of learning how to make them work better. Medical trials
are sometimes stopped when the superiority of the
treatment being tested becomes so clear that to give
some subjects a placebo instead would be unethical; in
the early days of the Aids crisis, some doctors prescribed
antiretrovirals before they had been proven effective,
because they felt they had an ethical duty to help
patients who otherwise were expected to die.
Of course it would be wrong to deprive people of
vital services even in the interests of research. But there
is already plenty of variation when it comes to how
many government policies are delivered. Introducing
experiments is unlikely to make anyone worse off than
random chance or “postcode lotteries”.
So if ideology, professional autonomy and ethics are
not deal-breakers, what’s the problem? Politics is the
obvious place to look. After all, the risk of running a
trial is that it might show that a policy the government
has advocated is actually no good, and politicians do
not like being forced to admit they are wrong.
But recent evidence suggests that it might not just
be politicians’ fault. Researchers found that ordinary
members of the public disapproved of experiments,
even when they approved individually of all the
different policies or interventions that were being
tested. If “experiment aversion”, as the study’s authors
call it, is something we all feel, it is hard to blame
politicians for giving voters what they want.
This may seem depressing. But in fact it points to a
way forward. Those who want to see better government
need to beat the drum for the experimental mindset,
making the case not only to officials and politicians,
but to citizens directly. We need to show people how
experiments free us from bad policies, allow us to
take calculated risks to change things for the better,
and ultimately improve people’s lives. This kind of
campaigning may be uncomfortable ground for scientists
and technocrats, but it is a battle worth fighting.
Stian Westlake is CEO of the Royal Statistical Society.
Doing Good A Field
Better Guide to
William Lies and
MacAskill Statistics
AV ERY, £2 0.9 4 Daniel
Levitin
PENG UIN, 10.9 9
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 5 7
 LIKE YOU MEAN IT

Beds, Sofas and Supplies for Champion Loafers

 ADVICE STYLE BEAUTY TRAVEL
My office How to The base 20 best
‘marriage’ build your layers that budget
is coming outfit from really beach
to an end the shirt up do last breaks
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LIFESTYLE
FESTYLE

naturally shifted towards the ‘broken’ plan, whereby

sliding room dividers, glazed screens, curtains and
changes of level are deployed to provide separation,”
he adds. “Period properties, of course, have a lot of
this built in as standard.”

Avoid draughty period properties

“Yes, period properties are draughty,” says Hill.
“Older building techniques were less precise, but
homes also needed draughts to stop the buildup of
damp.” But there are practical and stylish ways to
solve this. “You need to insulate,” Hill says. “Invest
in thick, floor-sweeping curtains, which can also be
a fantastic decorative feature. Fit brush seals on the

It’ss not actually all Home myths

Kids should have their own room
about location. And It’s fine for children to bunk down in one room,
provided they have a “timeout space” – a room they
no, high ceilings and can go to to be on their own – says clinical psychologist
Dr Linda Blair. “Siblings will get closer even if they
south-facing gardens argue. Powerful emotions will help them form
lifelong bonds,” but give them things of their own.
aren’t always best … “Hang curtains off bunk beds, and give each child
their own light and pinboard for their precious
Our experts bust things,” says interior designer Nicola Harding.
bottom of doors and letterboxes. Try secondary or
micro double glazing. Loft insulation – with wool or
some other natural material – can make a big
difference.”
High ceilings are best
Ideally we want lofty spaces for socialising and
smaller ones to retreat to, says Gibberd: “If you look
at a Georgian townhouse, the ceiling heights change
as you go up,” he says. “On the ground floor, they
tend to be high to portray a sense of grandeur. On

common home and It’s all about location

gardening myths
Words: Nell Card and Jack Wallington
Illustrations: Leon Edler
“As someone whose mother moved our family from
London to Dorset just to be in a particular Arts and
Crafts house, I understand that a home can drive
your buying decisions more than location,” says
Albert Hill, co-founder of the historic-homes estate
agency Inigo (the team behind The Modern House).
“It can help people get out of their geographic
comfort zones – possibly into cheaper areas.

Bathrooms need windows

“A window is usually seen as a practical way to
refresh the air rather than to look out at scenery,”
says architect Laura Jane Clark. “Typically,
bathrooms are sited close to the drainage, yet the
view is usually obscured by opaque glass. By tucking
bathrooms away internally, it allows these windows
to become part of bedrooms or living spaces.”
Open-plan living is better than having more,
smaller rooms
Rooms act like containers, allowing us downtime,
says Matt Gibberd, the other co-founder of Inigo.
“Lockdowns changed how we regard open-plan
living – and contemporary home design has
the upper floors, where bedrooms are, they’re
lower.” Large rooms are inevitably more expensive
to heat, and the acoustics a challenge, especially
if you have hard floors. “Smaller rooms tend to
be cosier, less draughty and more welcoming,”
Gibberd says.
Reducing the number of bedrooms will affect your
house’s value
“Most estate agents will advise you to never lose a
bedroom,” says Ellie Rees, co-founder of the estate
b
agency Brickworks. “But if, for example, you have a
a
tthree-bedroom house with a downstairs bathroom,
it would be wise to lose a bedroom and shift the
bathroom upstairs. Generally, downstairs
b
bathrooms are unpopular.”
b

Wooden worktops are unhygienic

W
They’re far from being unhygienic, says Toby Hall,
T
ffounder of kitchen makers Inglis Hall. “Even a
gnarly, well-loved wooden worktop will have innate
g
antibacterial properties.”
a
“A simple sand and reseal can bring it back to life,”
ssays Adrian Bergman, the design manager at British
Standard by Plain English. “Accept and embrace that
S
it will build a patina over time.” Move around items
tthat live on it regularly as all worktops change colour
over time, he adds. This enables them to age evenly.
o

6 0 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian


Strong paint colours make a room feel smaller
“Strong colours enliven small spaces and – contrary
to common belief – don’t always make rooms feel
smaller,” says Farrow & Ball’s colour curator Joa
Studholme. “Richer colour can blur the boundaries
of the room – corners are difficult to read so the room
feels bigger.” This rule extends to your ceilings, too.
Lace curtains are old-fashioned
Not according to vintage guru Pearl Lowe – but they
do need a modern facelift. The solution? Introduce
some colour. “I was looking for a piece of fabric to
hang in my bathroom window that prevented people
on the street from seeing in, but allowed light in. I
found a piece of vintage cotton lace and dyed it
bright pink,” Lowe says (she now sells them at
pearllowe.co.uk). “If you want to dye your own, just
make sure they’re cotton and not polyester.” NC
Garden myths
South-facing gardens are best
In our warming climate, that blazing south-facing
garden may now seem less appealing than cooler,
moisture-retaining shade. Woodland planting is lush
and architectural, with many plants becoming
drought tolerant when established. Try Digitalis
purpurea (foxglove) and Polypodium cambricum
(creeping fern) alongside Eurybia divaricata (white
wood aster), Brunnera macrophylla (siberian
bugloss), Tiarella cordifolia (foam flower) and
Viburnum tinus (French white shrub). Or for more
colour, Geranium psilostemon (Armenian cranesbill)
and Astrantia major ‘Ruby Star’.
You can ignore cacti
Cacti can survive naturally for months without
water, but ignore them at your peril. Like all plants,
they need water in summer, and respond best with
fertiliser diluted at half strength when they’re
growing. What they hate is soggy compost. The
other cactus killer is insufficient sunlight: when
the label says direct sunlight, it means it.
Lawns are low maintenance
Lawn grass is one of the highest-maintenance plants
you can grow – nothing else needs cutting as often
through spring and summer. Reduce your workload
by letting it grow a bit longer with fewer cuts, and
leave the weeds for insects. If you don’t use your
lawn, replace it with a two-cut-a-year-meadow or
low-maintenance ornamental planting.
Growing in pots is easier than the ground
Pots and containers can feel more manageable,
particularly when it comes to controlling weeds, but
they are more labour intensive. A lack of root space
means regular fertilising, lots of watering and
lugging compost for repotting. Plants in the ground Weeds are bad
have none of these problems. If weeding feels Although some weeds can impact the growth of
laborious, plant more densely to ensure there is no edible crops if they’re allowed to swamp them, they
bare soil in which weeds can germinate (or see right). are just wild plants that really like your garden’s
conditions. Many are beautiful, easy to grow and
great for wildlife, such as Centaurea nigra
(knapweed), Leucanthemum vulgare (ox-eye daisy)
and Achillea millefolium (common yarrow). All have
amazing drought resilience.
Winter is a quiet time
Many plants might be taking a nap but unwanted
perennial weeds still grow and need dealing with.
Thin deciduous shrubs might need pruning or
thinning to improve shape, as do apple and pear
trees to encourage stronger fruiting. Order seeds
and compost in winter to lighten the workload in
busy spring.
Soapy water gets rid of aphids
While soapy water can suffocate aphids by blocking
their openings for breathing, getting the mix right
is difficult because all products vary – and the
chemicals may affect plant growth. It’s better to
rub aphids off with fingers, spray off with a hose or
leave your houseplants outside for hoverflies and
ladybirds to eat them. JW
Pampas grass is for swingers
Despite a rumour that it signifies a saucy household,
it’s a total myth. It was likely linked to the plant’s
popularity among the middle classes in the 1970s. So
fill your garden with it, safe in the knowledge no one
will come knocking (there are plenty of apps for
that). Cortaderia richardii is an elegant species.
Never water when the sun’s out
This comes from the principle that water evaporates
when the sun is warmest, which is true. Many plants
also wilt in hot sun as a defence mechanism, giving
the impression that soil is dry when it might not be.
It is better, then, to water in the morning or evening.
But if you have no choice, water in the sun rather
than not at all.
Raised beds are essential for veg
Raised beds may look good but they’re rarely
needed. The edges are an ideal home for slugs, while
the raised soil level will dry out faster. Unless you
need the height for mobility reasons or to raise
plants from water-logged soil, go with beds at
ground level.
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 61
LIFESTYLE
M AT C H M A K I N G G U A R D I A N R E A D E R S S I N C E 2 0 0 9
‘I showed him a scar from my
recent woodworking class’
6 2 | S AT UR DAY | 04.0
03.23 | The Guardia
04.03.23
Sam
29, therapist
What were you hoping for?
A fun evening and good conversation.
First impressions?
Stunning, great smile and worth the
wait! She was a little late …
What did you talk about?
Lots, we were there for four hours.
Yolanta’s ever growing list of talents:
Danish stool making, scriptwriting,
painting, magazine and film editing.
And the time she met the Queen.
Most awkward moment?
I was quite early, and she was a little
late, so I spent a fair while sat at the
table alone wondering if I was about to
be stood up for a Blind Date.
Good table manners?
Impeccable.
Best thing about Yolanta?
She seems to be someone who isn’t
afraid to try new things, and when she
does she really goes for them.
Would you introduce Yolanta to
your friends?
Yes.
Describe Yolanta in three words.
Intelligent, engaging, beautiful.
What do you think Yolanta made
of you?
Strong eyebrows apparently … I think
that’s a good thing?
Did you go on somewhere?
No, she had a 5am wake up for a shoot.
I walked her to the station.
And … did you kiss?
No.
If you could change one thing about
the evening what would it be?
I would have dressed up a little more.
(I live on a boat and can’t power an
iron so felt a little scruff y.)
Marks out of 10?
9. Loses a point for the late arrival, but
otherwise a great evening.
Would you meet again?
Yes, we exchanged numbers.
Guardiann
Yolanta
31, advertising creative
What were you hoping for?
Someone creative with a similar love
for film, art and making things. And
putting myself out there to meet
someone new.
First impressions?
I was 10 minutes late and he was very
early, but he was so nice and didn’t
make me feel bad about it. He had a
calming energy and was easy to talk to.
What did you talk about?
He’s travelled to some really awesome
places and so have I. Fixing up his
houseboat, which looks epic. My love
for courses – I showed him my scar
from a recent woodworking class.
Most awkward moment?
Maybe the odd silence between
conversations but it felt comfortable.
Good table manners?
We were as bad as each other: we
didn’t take ourselves too seriously.
Best thing about Sam?
He came across as a lovely person.
Would you introduce Sam to
your friends?
My friends are inquisitive and
emotionally intelligent, so they’d get
on like a house on fire.
Describe Sam in three words.
Adventurous. Kind. Empathic.
What do you think Sam made of you?
I hope he also had a good time.
Did you go on somewhere?
No, but he walked me to the station in
the freezing cold, which was sweet.
And … did you kiss?
I don’t kiss on the first date and he
didn’t try to, which I appreciated. I like
to take things slow to be sure about the
connection before anything physical.
If you could change one thing about
the evening what would it be?
Honestly, it’s hard to think of anything.
Marks out of 10?
8.
Would you meet again?
Yes, we exchanged numbers.
Yolanta and Sam ate at Macellaio RC
D AV I D L E V E N E / T H E G U A R D I A N
Soho, London W1. Fancy a blind date?
Email blind.date@theguardian.com
LIFESTYLE
Spring has
I
am standing in the kitchen,
a knuckle pressed to my lips,
trying to remember why I
came in here, when I feel eyes
not yet on me. I turn around to see the
tortoise in the middle of the
floor, gazing up with his usual,
sprung, vaguely pissed-off expression.
“Well, well, well,” I say. “Where
have you been?” This is rhetorical: the
but the
tortoise has been lying stone still, legs
and head tucked in, beneath the
washing machine for the past 40 days.
tortoise
“Lettuce?” I say.
The tortoise is the perfect harbinger
of spring, in that he always turns up
prematurely and spends three weeks
has stomping around the kitchen, the
embodiment of disappointed
expectation.
I throw a few leaves of lettuce on
the floor and make myself a coffee, in
case that’s the thing I came into the
kitchen for in the first place. As I stand
drinking it, the cat walks up and rakes
its claws down my trouser leg.
“That hurts!” I say.
“Miaow,” the cat says.
“You’ve been fed,” I say. “We both
know this.”
“Miaow,” the cat says.
“Fine,” I say. I feed the cat again.
The tortoise plods straight over the
lettuce to watch the cat eat. The
tortoise really likes cat food, much in
the way the cat really prefers dog food.
A little later my wife comes out to
Tim Dowling my office.
On modern life “The tortoise is awake then,”
she says.
“What’s he doing?” I say.
“I didn’t see him,” she says. “Just the
lettuce. Shall we put the deck chair out?”
“Now?” I say, looking at the sky. My
wife has clearly taken the sighting of
Edith Pritchett On millennial life
chewed lettuce on the kitchen floor as
an early sign of spring. Too early.
My wife finds the deckchair under
some stuff along the side of the house,
and lays it flat before me. Every year it
takes me a little longer to remember
how it unfolds, and how the canvas
seat attaches. One year I won’t be able
to do it at all, but I’m hoping it will fall
apart before then, and we can get one
that presents less of a puzzle.
The chair creaks as my wife sits, but
it holds together: one more year.
“Nice,” she says. “Do you want a go?”
“No,” I say. “I’m cold.”
“Shall we go to the garden centre
tomorrow?” she says.
“It’s winter,” I say.
The next morning I’m at a large
garden centre which looks all the more
spacious for having so few plants on
display. I go inside where it’s warm,
buy a packet of seeds, and find my
wife looking at the doormats with
disapproval.
“They all say things on them,” she
says. “Like Welcome, or Hello.”
“And you don’t feel you can stand
by any of that.”
“I just want blank,” she says.
“Fine, let’s go,” I say.
“Wait,” she says, pointing toward
the aquarium section at the back of the
The tortoise watches
the cat eat. The tortoise
really likes cat food,
much in the way the
cat prefers dog food
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 6 3
building. “I was just going to buy my
dad some fish. Something for him to
stare at.”
“Does he want fish?” I say.
“If I ask him he’ll say no,” she says.
“So I’m just going to get them.”
My wife disappears into the dimly lit
fish department, but I get no further
than the entrance where, as usual, I am
transfixed by a gallery of faded photos:
pictures of men who, for unspecified
reasons, are banned from this area.
The gallery has grown considerably
since I was last here, and now includes
a few women and at least one person
who appears to be wearing the liveried
fleece of a garden centre employee.
Some of the pictures were taken
hastily with a phone; others have been
pulled from CCTV. In this context
everyone looks sinister, and wholly
unrepentant.
“What did they do?” my wife says,
appearing at my shoulder.
“Unspeakable things,” I say. “Did
you get any fish?”
“They didn’t have any good ones,”
she says. “Just carp.”
“Perhaps it’s for the best,” I say.
“Is it sexual?” she says, looking at
the photos.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe they
just have lots of fussy rules.”
“Either way, you don’t want to end
up on this wall,” she says.
“That,” I say, “is why I never go
in there.”
My wife drops me at home before
heading off to another fish place. I
walk into the kitchen just in time to
see the tortoise upend the cat’s bowl
with his front foot, sending dry cat
food everywhere. As he turns to track
down one of the scattered nuggets, I
think: spring is just around the corner.
LIFESTYLE ADVICE

You be The prosecution

Edwina
I can’t stand seeing him
the judge clip his nails then finding
pieces of them all
Should my over the house

husband There are quite a few gross things that

men do, but at my age you just learn to
put up with them. My husband,

stop Trevor, and I have been married for

over 40 years, but one thing he’s never
stopped is his nail-cutting habit,

cutting
which I still find repulsive.
Since I’ve known him, Trevor has
always carried an all-in-one pocket

his nails
knife and nail-clipper around in his
trouser pocket, along with tissues or
a hanky. He will whip out the clippers

in front
at any given opportunity to snip away
at his nails. He sometimes even
picks the dirt out from under them

of me?
and wipes it on his handkerchief.
I always chastise him for it because
who wants to watch a man do that?
He’s learned not to do it in polite
company, but I still have to put up
with it.
Interviews: Georgina Lawton I even recall him doing it as we sat
outside a cafe many years ago. Our
daughter was very little and we were
just married. I gave him a right telling
off. His clippings were flying all over
the place. But every so often Trevor
will surprise me and still do it openly.
This Christmas Day we had our
daughter over with her children as
usual. After dinner we were sitting
down watching the telly. Our
grandkids were playing with their new
toys and I was dozing off. Then
suddenly I hear this “snip … snip …
snip”. I know we were among family,
but it was really quite repulsive. I said:
“Don’t do that! It’s Christmas Day.”
Trevor said he would tidy up the
clippings, except he never does.
I can’t stand it when I clean the
house and find all these bits of nail
everywhere. Trevor worked as a
gardener for years before he retired,
and was always getting soil and dirt
under his nails. That has fostered in
him, I think, a desire to look and stay
clean all the time. He still can’t have a
speck of dirt under his nails. And he is
always clipping them, even if they are
really quite short. I say, “There’s
nothing left to chop”. He could afford
to leave them alone for a bit longer.
And he should make sure to clip them
in the bathroom and not in front of me.
I’ve really had enough.

6 4 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian

The defence The jury
Trevor of Guardian readers
If I see a speck of dirt Should Trevor stop cutting his nails in
under my nails I just have front of his wife and in public?
to clean it out. That’s how This is a simple matter of respect for
I’ve been brought up one’s partner. After 43 years of being
A man needs to make sure his hands
are clean and his nails are short. I
think it’s quite unsightly when
someone has dirt underneath their
nails. I always think: well, they must
have very poor personal hygiene.
I have always carried around a little
pocket knife and nail clippers because
that’s how I’ve been brought up. When
I was a boy, my mother taught me to
keep neat and clean. She used to say:
“Clean boy, clean mind. Dirty boy,
dirty mind.”
I worked outside as a landscaper
and gardener for practically all of my
career, dealing with soil, grass and
fertiliser. It has made me obsessed
with cleanliness, because sometimes
I’d spend the whole day covered in
mud. If I see a speck of dirt under my
nails, I just have to clean it out.
Edwina and I have been married for
43 years. You learn to put up with
people’s habits after that long, I
suppose. I’m grateful to her for not
getting too annoyed with my nail-
clipping and dirt-scraping, but I can’t
say I’m sorry for doing it. When we
were courting, I probably hid it from
her a little more, but then I suppose
I got lazy. She’s told me off so many
times for doing it in public, but I only
do that when I’m outside and the
nails can sort of disappear. On a park
bench or outside in a cafe – those
sorts of places.
I have got better over the years and
generally only do my nails when
Edwina is not around, because she
starts shrieking at the sight. In the
shower is best, of course, but
sometimes the moment just comes
upon you. The Christmas episode was
just because I had spotted some dirt
under them at that very moment. Our
daughter and her children have never
said anything, only Edwina. If a man
can’t cut his nails in the privacy of his
own home, where can he do them?
Edwina says I don’t collect the
cuttings, but I most definitely do.
Sometimes it’s quite hard to find them
though. That’s my excuse, anyway. I
try to make sure I only clip and clean
my nails when Edwina isn’t around,
but it’s like a compulsion.
Illustration: Joren Joshua
told off, the fact that Trevor continues
to do it regardless sounds like
downright laziness, which he openly
admits. I respect the effort he puts
into his cleanliness, but cutting your
nails outside a cafe? Yikes!
Carmen, 29
Trevor, I think you can find a way to
restrict your nail clipping to the
bathroom. If it has upset your wife
this much for this long, surely you can
nip to the loo when you find a spot of
dirt under your nails.
Jennifer, 42
Trevor is driven by his compulsive
need to keep his nails clean. Edwina
is right to complain at his whimsical
nail-cutting antics in public and
around the house. Bathrooms exist
for a reason: personal hygiene.
Justin, 49
There is nothing inherently wrong
with wanting to have good hygiene
and clean nails, and Trevor clearly has
a deep-rooted desire, bordering on a
compulsion. Perhaps he should stick
to doing it indoors and in privacy, but
the act itself is not something he
should be ashamed of.
Damian, 42
Trevor is guilty – and I say that as a
fellow nail-clipping obsessive. We
need to respect the things that our
partners find gross. I agree with him
that it’s unsightly to have dirt under
your nails, but deal with it in the
bathroom, like everyone else.
Maddy, 30
THE VERDICT
Guilty Edwina has Trevor nailed
Not guilty This dispute cuts both ways
You’ve heard the cases,
now you decide ...
Scan to vote on this week’s dispute,
share your own, or be one of the jury
I’ll miss my
office hubby
after we’ve
retired. How
do I get to
keep him?
Ask
Annalisa Barbieri
Five days a week for 20 years I have
shared an office and a train home with
a chap I’ll call T. He calls me his “work
wife”. He does have a real wife and
family; I’m many years divorced. Our
relationship is very sibling-ish, and
we’ve become very close – we share
things we don’t share with our “real”
friends and family and, just by virtue
of the time spent together, we have
shared a lot of our lives. But we have
never socialised outside work and have
never been to each other’s homes.
We’re both retiring this year. The
chances are we won’t see each other
again, as that’s not the relationship we
have. I know I will miss him.
I’ll miss the everyday closeness, the
banter, the laughs, the rants. I imagine
he feels the same at some level. How
does one navigate ending relationships
like this? Because I know it will end –
4 it’s not that we don’t have things in
1 common, but without the framework
of work, would we have anything real?
It’s the only drawback to retirement
for me. I have other (female) work
friends who I will see because we do
socialise outside of work, but I shall
miss T. Any suggestions for finding a
way to maintain a relationship, or
should I accept that this is one of the
things retirement does, and let it go?
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 6 5
I talked with psychotherapist Chris
Mills about the intense friendships
one can have with work colleagues,
neighbours, school-run friends –
anything which exists, as you say,
within a “framework” – and what
happens when that goes?
Work gives us an excuse to cultivate
very close friendships that, outside the
“office” may require more explanation.
It’s a safe way, as Mills says, to get very
close to someone. “In a way,” he says,
“we protect ourselves with this frame
we put around certain friendships.”
Mills also feels it was key that the
one person you could be discussing
this with, you’re not. “There seems to
be fear around what could happen if
you tried to change this friendship, and
take it outside work. Work is like the
parent, it has allowed you a boundary
so you haven’t had to think about your
friendship. Now that is about to end, it’s
up to both of you what happens next.”
Can you maintain this friendship
outside of work? Perhaps. It’s certainly
worth trying, isn’t it? Because it sounds
like you both get on really well. But will
you be “allowed” to? A lot depends on
how he feels, and his wife feels, about
your friendship. Despite living in a
supposedly enlightened society,
heterosexual men and women being
“just friends” is still difficult for some
people to come to terms with.
“There’s going to be a massive loss
of routine when you stop work,” says
Mills, “so I imagine the potential loss
of him is intertwined with that.”
You seem perfectly OK about
retirement and seem to have a good life
outside of it, but this is a big step and
one you should allow yourself to feel.
Mills says: “You could suggest
something like, ‘Why don’t we meet
for lunch in three months’ time after
we’ve retired?’ You could do it in a fun,
light way, not a heavy ‘We need to
form a new friendship’. If he says no,
that’s a disappointment, but at least
you’ll know. If he says yes, that may
determine for both of you that there is
something you both want to continue.”
Nearer the time, said Mills, you may
also be the one who backs out. If you
do do lunch “you may find that you
only have the past to talk about. But it
could be like one book closing and
another opening. Either way you’ll
know.” So it’s definitely worth a try.
Be brave, do it. Please keep us posted.
If you would like advice on a personal
matter, email ask.annalisa@
theguardian.com. See theguardian.com/
letters-terms for terms and condition s
LIFESTYLE STYLE
Building your
outfit around
a coloured
shirt feels
effortlessly
grown up
Jess Cartner-Morley
On trends
R
ecently I stumbled
across the concept of
getting dressed
“shirt-first”, and it’s my
new favourite thing.
Please try it. A great
shirt turns out to be a magic ingredient
that pulls an outfit together in
moments. Getting dressed shirt-first is
a speedy, drama-free morning formula
that makes you feel like an effortlessly
competent grownup. It works, it feels
fresh without being try-hard and, well,
I just think you should give it a go.
The cotton button-down shirt that I
used to think of as a Work Shirt is now
a hero piece around which to build an
outfit. In fashion speak: the Power
Shirt is a thing. This is a non-trend
trend too, which aims to look current
rather than shoutily fashionable – like,
say, a trenchcoat – and tends to hold
steady for years without overexposure.
I’m not talking about the Perfect
White Shirt. I know fashion people are
supposed to worship these but I am
too much of a magpie. I find them a bit
boring, if I’m honest. Also, the perfect
white shirt is only perfect until it
creases or gets a smudge on it. I am
constantly fidgeting, taking jumpers
off and putting them on again,
carrying too much stuff and in a rush.
As a result, the just-pressed ideal lasts
6 6 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
about five minutes. Clothes should
make your day easier, not set up a
boobytrap that might derail your day
when you take a gulp of coffee.
A striped or coloured shirt is both
lower-maintenance and has more
main character energy than a white
one. Win-win. A good striped shirt (a
happy medium between pinstripe and
deckchair) can cross the floor from
work to weekend. It gives good Zoom,
H A I R A N D M A K E U P: C A R O L M O R L E Y AT C A R O L H AY E S M A N A G E M E N T U S I N G S C U L P T E D B Y A M Y. M O D E L: K I T AT B O D Y L O N D O N . S H I R T, J E A N S A N D L O A F E R S: A L L B O D E N . G R E Y K N I T: M A R K S & S P E N C E R
because even reduced to tile-size on
screen it will sell you as bringing a
pencils-sharpened energy to the
meeting. Worn loose with the cuffs
flipped back, it has a breezy weekend-
morning vibe; unbuttoned, it can take
you all the way to beach cover up.
Shirt-first dressing sets out a helpful
set of guardrails for the rest of your
outfit. It works with trousers, jeans or
a structured skirt, which is just
enough choice to give you options but
not so many you get decision fatigue.
When you need another layer on top, a
good rule of thumb is that if it’s a
structured piece like a blazer then you
leave the collar of the shirt unbuttoned
so that it shows a little skin and
doesn’t look stuff y. With a soft top
layer like a cardigan or V-neck sweater,
then you button the shirt up to the
top so that it lies flat and doesn’t
look scruff y.
Arket does a quality striped poplin
for £69. Reiss is more expensive – the
Emma shirt is £148 – but worth a look
because Reiss tends to use very good
buttons and buttons are important on
a shirt. A quick secondhand trawl
might uncover a decades old Ralph
Lauren buttondown, for a snip. But my
top tip would be to treat yourself to a
shirt from With Nothing Underneath,
and have the cuffs monogrammed
with your initials. This takes the price
from £110 to £125 but makes you feel
like royalty every time your wrists are
in your line of vision – which, if you
work on a keyboard, is a lot of the time.
A quick housekeeping note before
you go: striped shirts need careful
washing. Is it just me or is it incredibly
annoying when the label on a
multicoloured garment says “wash
with similar colours”? Not helpful,
guys! Which colours? My learnings in
this department are: don’t buy a
red-and-white striped shirt, because
A good striped shirt red dye is more likely to bleed than any
other colour. (There is a reason why it’s
can cross the floor always a red sock that ruins your white
from work to weekend, wash, not a black one.) With a blue or
green stripe, you should be OK putting
and gives good Zoom the shirt in your white wash at 30C.
Ready to wear again tomorrow.
Tom J Johnson. Styling: Melanie Wilkinson
 BODY
When it
comes to
foundation,
stamina
trumps finish
all day long
Sali Hughes
On beauty
Y
ou may have observed
the huge trend for
“clean foundations”
– that is, (usually)
American makeup bases
that mostly just adhere
to existing European ingredients and
safety guidelines, throw in some
lovely natural oils, and are marketed
as disruptive innovation. Many have
beautiful textures, packaging and
finishes, and I’m pro all three, but
here’s what no one admits: they don’t
last. If you’re someone whose skin
type or lifestyle encourages makeup to
fade, streak or break for the border by
lunchtime, you’ll need a foundation
designed specifically for stamina if
you want it to stick around – and
the longest-lasting ones are made
by huge companies with fortunes
to spend on research.
The most famously durable base
is Estée Lauder Double Wear (£38.50),
a product so successful that it alone is
bigger than many major brands.
Double Wear would hold steady in a
tornado, promises 24-hour wear and
comes in a commendable 60 shades,
none of which alter on skin (inferior
foundations turn orange on oilier
types), so there’s no chance of not
finding one to suit. Its texture (oil-free)
and finish (shine-controlling) are not
It looks like one of
the ephemeral,
hipster foundations,
but performs like
a sturdy stalwart
for everyone – drier skins will prefer its
younger sister, Futurist Hydra Rescue
(£39), or Nars’ Natural Radiant
Longwear Foundation (£39) – but as any
Double Wear devotee will tell you, there
is nothing better for its specific job.
For a glowier finish that won’t
budge, head to Dior. Forever Skin
Glow (£45) is exceptionally good if you
like a radiant finish but your oily,
combination, exerted or menopausal
face struggles to hold on to anything
dewy. It gives lasting coverage with
Photography: Martina Lang. Illustration: Edith Pritchett
some brightness and is good for long,
tiring days like weddings.
If you’d like all of the staying power,
none of the shine but less of the
camouflage associated with long-
wearing bases, Bobbi Brown
essentially invented the solution. Skin
Long-Wear Weightless Foundation
(£38) can be worn as sheer coverage
(apply with fingertips) to full (use a
brush) and in either case, is a great
mimic for real skin. Think of it as a
foundation that looks like one of the
ephemeral, hipster variety, but
performs like a sturdy stalwart.
Convincing, long-wearing
foundations came at a premium until
L’Oréal Paris’s brilliant Infallible 24H
Fresh Wear Foundation (£12.99). This
is a terrifically resilient, colour-true
base that looks as natural as medium
coverage can, feels much lighter than
many, and is the frugal ideal if you get
through foundation like water.
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 6 7
Anita Bhagwandas
Trends on trial
Can blackheads be
removed with tissue
paper and egg white?
The hack
Using a DIY nose strip to get rid of
blackheads.
The test
Pore strips – the kind you buy, wet and
pop across your nose – are weirdly
addictive as a way of “remov ing”
blackheads, the mix of oil and dead
skin cells that oxidises and turns black
when exposed to air. There is a gross
thrill to pulling one off and seeing
what gunk you’ve exhumed, but I’ve
never found them efficient for actual
blackhead removal. More often, my
strip is covered in little spikes of
sebum – hairs that can look like
blackheads and dead skin.
Can a DIY home version work
better? I follow the method of
influencer @creative_explained: apply
egg white to your nose with a brush,
apply a strip of tissue paper the same
size as a pore strip, repeat the process
and let it dry for 10 minutes until it
feels tight – then pull it off. I did
exactly that but it didn’t quite have the
grip of pore-strip adhesive. I inspected
what was on the strip: a little sebum
and dead skin was the sum of it. The
strips – whether DIY or bought – don’t
fi x the issue, which can be managed by
using, say, a salicylic acid cleanser.
The verdict
Cheap and worth a go, but not effective
for me. I might use the occasional
Garnier Charcoal Nose strip for grim
pleasure, but prevention is more
effective. If blackheads are a recurring
issue, that’s the way to go.
CLASSIFIED
 LIFESTYLE PLANTS
Dwarf irises
bring colour
and glamour
to the start
of spring
Alice Vincent
On flowers
E
very year, it’s the same:
I am caught out by the
violet flash of Iris
reticulata and it makes
my day. Being the first
flowers of the year to
bloom, snowdrops get a lot of hoo-ha,
but irises offer a spangly cocktail dress
to the Galanthus’s fey Victorian
nightdress: bolder, showier and
sometimes in leopard-print shoes.
From unprepossessing little bulbs
– not unlike a fat, hairy clove of garlic
– these miniatures arrive in the depths
of nearly spring. I’ve grown them since
I started experimenting with
gardening on a north-facing London
balcony nearly a decade ago, and
they’re the one plant I’ve unfailingly
grown every year since. They sum up
everything I love about gardening:
beauty, surprise, resilience and sweet
G E T T Y I M A G E S; P R I C K L D N
anticipation – a dollop of wonder on an
otherwise ordinary March morning.
Making magic from something small
and overlooked, celebrating the quiet
wonder in the natural world around
us, bringing the outdoors in – this is
what I’ll be writing about here, as well
as offering inspiration and hard-won
advice to help you grow things that
make life a little more cheerful.
I am an urban gardener. I share my
beloved garden (north-facing, biggish
for London, good Victorian wall) with
pigeons and foxes and slugs, but over
the two years I’ve been growing here
(since graduating from that balcony),
I’ve ushered in an ecosystem of birds,
spiders and earthworms by using
organic practices. I make my own
compost, I let the weeds grow and I
avoid peat like the plague.
Early dwarf irises, then. I throw
these easy bulbs into pots in autumn
– from October is fine. They’re so
dinky that I opt for old terracotta
I share my garden with
pigeons, foxes and slugs,
but I’ve also ushered in
an ecosystem of birds,
spiders and worms
seedling pots, but a healthy number in
a broader container works too. They
can get easily lost in the flowerbed, so
pots or window boxes offer maximum
impact for close admiration.
Supermarkets often offer growing
iris bulbs in paper pots around now,
and I have descended upon them with
abandon. You can also buy potted
bulbs online from late winter: simply
put the whole lot in a nicer bowl or pot
and leave on your kitchen table.
Keeping the soil slightly moist will
help the flowers last longer.
In either case, noting varieties you
admire elsewhere is a gift to your
future self when you come to order
bulbs in late summer. Chelsea Physic
Garden has a spectacular theatre of
irises, where the pale blue ‘Katharine
Hodgkin’, with yellow on the falls (the
three lower petals) caught my eye.
‘Purple Hill’ is Quality Street-coloured
and sturdy while ‘Alida’ is a searing
sky blue. Finally, ‘Pauline’ is usually
on my list: a deep, gothic violet with
white spots on the falls. They are a
fabulous start to the growing year – one
I’m looking forward to joining you for.
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 69
Gynelle Leon’s
Houseplant
of the week
Croton
Why will I love it?
The Codiaeum variegatum var. pictum
is colourful and flamboyant. Its foliage
is decorated with a bold, batik-like
design of yellows, greens, reds and
almost black. For me, it’s an instant
mood-lifter, as it reminds me of
summers spent in my granny’s garden
in St Lucia.
Light or shade?
Bright, indirect light.
Where should I put it?
On a cute plant stand in indirect
sunlight.
How do I keep it alive?
Getting the light levels right is your
main concern as your croton can be
pretty fussy: too much direct sunlight
will bleach the leaf colours, while not
enough will dull them. Also, it likes a
warm, humid environment, so mist
the leaves often, keep the room at a
minimum temperature of 15C, and
avoid exposure to draughts. The
croton prefers moist soil during the
growing season, from spring to
autumn, so water little and often using
tepid water. During winter, reduce the
frequency to allow the top inch of soil
to dry out in between waterings.
Did you know…
Crotons belong to the Euphorbiaceae
family, which means all parts of the
plant are toxic when ingested by pets
and humans.
Bold red
and yellow
leaves
LIFESTYLE TRAVEL
Nazia Parveen first saw the sea on a day trip to north
Wales. Now she plans budget family beach breaks
with lessons learned on those early ‘holidays’
The thrill of Rhyl:
the childhood trips
that still inspire me
M
y memory of first
seeing the sea sits
quietly in my
subconscious.
Once a year during
the endless, sticky
summers in Birmingham we would go
on a day trip. This would be planned
with military precision, as it was a
holiday of sorts for my parents, who
worked in a cotton factory and took
very little time off. A minibus would
be booked. Cousins, aunts and uncles
would assemble to discuss logistics
and, most importantly, the food rota.
No one was going anywhere without
paratha, pakoras, samosas and
desi-style tea.
Having seen TV adverts of golden-
haired children frolicking in the waves
and looking impossibly happy on
white, sandy beaches, I had been
pestering my parents to make one of
these annual days out a trip to the
coast. I would usually lose this battle,
and we’d all head to a theme park. I
hated rides; still do. But aged eight,
and using all the persuasive powers I
could muster, I finally convinced
them. So one early August morning,
off we headed – all 23 of us – to Rhyl.
7 0 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
The writer (left) aged
eight, with her cousin
This would have been around 1990
and, completely oblivious to Rhyl’s
not-so-salubrious reputation at the
time, I approached the trip with gusto.
My face pressed against the minibus
window, I was taken with the neon
lights of the gaudy arcades and the
sickly pink candy-floss. From what I
remember, perhaps with a splash of
storyteller’s licence, that blustery
north Welsh coastline was the single
most beautiful thing I had ever seen –
though in reality the sea was a dirty,
brown colour.
We spent the day getting windswept
along the streets, our traditional
Pakistani clothing flapping around us,
and we quickly became acquainted
with the crunch of sand in our food.
The experience was completed by
curious looks from locals and other
day trippers. I climbed back into our
van with salty hair and glowing red
cheeks. This simple day out sparked my
love affair with the seaside.
It must have been a moderate
success for the rest of my family, too,
as we ended up going on many more of
these annual coastal pilgrimages,
which would always follow the same
formula: we’d take our own food and
share the transport, and my mother
would resolutely shepherd us away
from the clusters of shops selling
“plastic tat”.
At the time, I would have given
anything for a doughnut-shaped
inflatable, or one of those easily
breakable fishing nets, or even a
random, never-to-be-used-again
rubber duck. But these days, with
two young children of my own, it
seems I’m destined to repeat the same
catchphrases and thrifty routines as
my frugal mother, and to find ever
more inventive ways of saying no.
Since childhood, and having left
Birmingham, I have spent my holidays
pitching up at beaches across the UK
and Europe, always following this
familiar pattern. We book a house
(self-catering) or camp just a short
walk away from a beach, spend most
of our time playing endless games of
cricket, building sand dams and trying
C O U R T E S Y O F N A Z I A PA R V E E N; R U YA N AY T E N /A L A M Y
to encourage our youngest into the sea
(she says the salt stings!), with picnics
of sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil.
Some might not see this as a
“proper holiday”, but in a fortnight
we eat out a handful of times, usually
for lunch, which is cheaper. In the
evening we tend to cook; in France
the supermarkets are superb, and in
Italy I can spend hours wandering
around the outdoor food markets,
selecting ingredients.
To some, our holidays may seem like
an endurance exercise, but they are far
from it, and I have learned through
 The writer and her children,
left and bottom, on Île de
Ré; and at Spiaggia di
Sansone on Elba, below

Sunset at Rhyl, above, and

on the Luštica peninsula in
Montenegro, left

trial and error that the simpler they
are, the happier we seem to be. We
have tried hotel breaks, package deals
(both all-inclusive and half-board) and
staying at resorts that lay on loads of
child-centred activities, but we always
return to our uncomplicated, self-
catering beach holidays.
Last year, we went to the chi-chi
French island of Île de Ré. We camped
for a fortnight at the wholesome
Camping Les Baleines, within earshot
of the coast with the rhythmic muffled
roar of the surf as a constant backdrop.
Our children had the freedom of
cycling around until dusk while we
cooked on the communal barbecue.
Days were spent beachcombing,
swimming, crab hunting,
birdwatching and riding, with stops
in pretty village squares for tangy
sorbets and at oyster shacks dotted
along the shore. It was pared back
and wonderful.
A few years earlier we had enjoyed
a similar experience when we spent
the summer in the Balkans, which has
appealingly low prices yet all the
sunshine and charm of the more
popular European beach destinations.
We stayed in a hilltop villa in Lučići
village in Montenegro, near the coastal
town of Herceg Novi, just across the
Bay of Kotor. At the time, the area
was relatively unknown, so our
accommodation, complete with a
shared infinity pool, was incredibly
reasonable.
My mornings did often start at a
less-than-relaxing 5am – my unborn
daughter’s prodding and kicking
had me up and about – but it meant I
was awake in time for glorious
sunrises over the Adriatic. Down at the
harbour, there was delicious good-
value seafood and a chance to board
daily boat trips to glorious, pebbled
beaches on the Luštica peninsula,
where we even allowed ourselves the
“luxury” of renting a sunlounger (for
just a few euros for the whole day).
There were hikes to Mount Orjen,
where we spotted geckos, moths,
insects and butterflies, and one trek
included a spectacular thunderstorm,
which our eldest still talks about to
this day.
Italy is another firm favourite and
we have travelled far and wide in
search of the perfect beach. Four years
ago we landed on the island of Elba, off
the coast of Tuscany, where Napoleon
had the good fortune to be exiled.
Little known by the British – which is
perhaps why it didn’t break the bank
– it is an island of true escapism, with a
weekly food market full of fresh
produce from local farmers and
beaches for every taste. Once again we
camped, this time at Camping
Rosselba le Palme, but most of our
time was spent on Spiaggia di Sansone
and descending into rocky coves, lured
by the clear sea. There were more
meals out on this trip than usual, as it
was hard to resist the stuffed mussels
in a glossy tomato sauce, and the pasta
di calamari, all washed down with
carafes of fresh vermentino.
There have also been trips to
countries that wouldn’t be considered
regular beachy destinations. The
Netherlands, for example, is a good-
value choice for families who are
restricted to peak-season summer
holidays. Car hire can be a snip in
comparison with elsewhere in Europe,
and travel to the country can also be
relatively cheap and sustainable, with
ferries from Harwich, Hull and
Newcastle. There is also the Eurostar,
which takes about four hours from
London to Amsterdam.
The rewards are a stunning
coastline and serene countryside
which is easy to explore by bicycle on
well marked routes, making it almost
impossible to get lost. Our favourite
spot was the Wadden Islands, a few
miles off the coast, with nature
reserves teeming with wildlife and
cycle trails curving alongside wide
expanses of white sand beaches. There
are options for good-value camping
and self-catering across the country
(check out Landal Resorts), and we
have done both. Our several holidays
there have always been laid-back
affairs, with family-focused facilities
on tap.
Without realising it, those early
experiences of touring the UK’s
kiss-me-quick resorts have led to an
appreciation of shedding the
unnecessary. Given the cost of living
crisis, for many families it is more
important than ever that this year’s
holiday will be purse-friendly. Keeping
costs down by camping or by booking
self-catering away from the hotspots
would be my advice. Once at your
destination, pack a picnic, make a
beeline for the beach, find a good spot
and bed down for the day.

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 7 1

LIFESTYLE TRAVEL

Black Sea coast, north of the resort

From camping by the Black Sea to a cool
Portuguese surf house, these great places to stay
across Europe start at just £50 a week in summer
Under £100 a week
Southern Montenegro
MCM Camping is on a long, blue-flag
beach in southern Montenegro with
pitches under the pines for tents,
town of Varna, near the border with
Romania. The site has 300 shady tent
pitches beneath the trees, 80 places for
campervans and caravans, and five
types of bungalow (120 in total). Bar

20 of the best
campervans and caravans. There are
also bungalows with garden or sea
views and facilities include an outdoor
pool, children’s playground and
barbecue areas. There is a beach club
Sunrise is a party spot in the summer,
with live music, an arts festival and
cinema screenings. It serves fish
specialities, homegrown fruit and veg,
plus cold beers and homemade brandy.

budget beach
vibe, with swing seats, cabana-style
loungers and a restaurant on the sands
that’s open until midnight every night
and serves traditional Montenegrin
dishes, plus seafood, pizza and
From £48pp for seven nights camping,
krapecbeach.bg
Aran Islands, Ireland
Three camping fields overlook

holidays
cocktails. The campsite is four miles
from pretty Ulcinj, which has several
beaches and a walled old town, near
the Albanian border.
From £65pp for seven nights camping,
mcmcamping.me
Black Sea, Bulgaria
Camping Krapec is backed by
Words: Rachel Dixon woodland and four miles of wide
sandy beach which is part of a nature
reserve on Bulgaria’s northernmost
white-sand Frenchman’s Beach on Inis
Mór, the biggest of the three Aran
Islands in Galway Bay. Aran Islands
Camping and Glamping also has 24
glamping pods, based on ancient
beehive-shaped stone huts that used
to be occupied by religious recluses
and are still scattered over the island.
Buildings are made from sustainable
materials – the reception block is made
from stones that washed up on the
beach during winter storms – and hot

7 2 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian

 Tossa de Mar on Spain’s
Costa Brava, left;
Brännskär island in
Finland, right
water and lighting is solar-powered.
The site is a short walk from the
island’s main town, Kilronan, which
has shops, bars, restaurants and the
ferry port.
From £93pp for seven nights camping,
irelandglamping.ie
Northern Greece
Tent pitches are set among olive,
eucalyptus and pine trees next to two
private white-sand beaches on
family-owned land on the Sithonia
peninsula in Halkidiki. Areti Camping
& Bungalows also has 19 wooden
cottages and eight stone bungalows to
rent. Campers can swim to three small
Aegean islands 300 metres from land;
other activities include watersports,
tennis, volleyball and hiking. The
closest town is Neos Marmaras, seven
miles away and it’s a day trip to the
Unesco-listed rock formations and
monasteries of Meteora.
From €63pp for seven nights camping,
coolstays.com
Under £250 a week
Slovenia
Slovenia may only have 30 miles of
coastline but Camping Adria makes
the most of it, with six pitches right on
the beach and many more
close to it. There are 430 pitches in
total, spread over 17 acres, some
further back in the pine and cedar
trees. There is an Olympic-size
salt-water pool by the sea, a
watersports centre, a sports area with
beach volleyball, and a gym and spa.
Restaurants and bars include a taverna
with sea views and a beach cafe. The
campsite is part of the Adria Ankaran
resort, which includes a hotel in a
former Benedictine monastery. The
A N N A Y O R D A N O VA A N D E U R O P E-S PA I N , B O T H A L A M Y; S A M I TA K A R A U T I O
resort is 10 minutes from the medieval
port town of Koper, halfway
between Trieste in Italy and Piran
in Slovenia.
From £197pp for seven nights,
adria-ankaran.si
Åboland, Finland
Brännskär, an island and old fishing
homestead in Finland’s Åboland
archipelago, is a now a nature lover’s
adventure playground called Living
Archipelago. There are beaches and
a nature trail, plus paddleboards,
kayaks, boats and fishing hire. Log
cabins are available to rent, and from
1 June four furnished tents are being
added, sleeping up to four each, with
sea views. There are compost toilets,
plus showers, barbecues and a
swimming beach 300 metres away.
Breakfast can be served at the tent or in
the cafe or restaurant. A beachside
wood-fired sauna, campfire and regular
live music complete the experience.
From £226pp for seven nights glamping,
livingarchipelago.fi
Costa Brava, Spain
Cala Llevado is a wooded, rocky
campsite overlooking a large bay,
reached by steep paths and steps.
There is access to four beaches: a big
sandy one, a pebbly one that is good
for kayaking, one with a bar, and a
rocky cove for nudists. The site also
has a large pool with sea views and
paddling pool. Pitches (tents, camper
vans and caravans) are in the pine and
cork oak forest, with those closest to
the sea reserved for tents. There are
also mobile homes and glamping pods,
plus a bar-restaurant, shop and kids’
club. The site is two miles from Tossa
de Mar on the Costa Brava, between
Barcelona and the French border.
From €122.50pp for seven nights
camping, calallevado.com
Swimming with dolphins
off the Aran Islands, left;
Areti Camping and
Bungalows in Greece, below
left; kitesurfing on the
Black Sea, Bulgaria, below
Near Perpignan, France
A new waterfront aparthotel opens on
28 April in Saint-Cyprien, a village near
the Mediterranean town of Perpignan.
Les Bulles de Mer has bright one- to
three-bedroom apartments with
terraces, plus beach access, an outdoor
pool with a bar and a restaurant
serving food from the local market.
Guests can hire paddleboards and
bikes, do daily yoga and pilates, and
destress in flotation tanks in the spa.
A free shuttle runs from the beach to
the centre of the village, which has
Cayrou architecture, a Romanesque
church, an excellent gallery (based on
the painter François Desnoyer’s art
collection) and Catalan festivals.
From €240pp for seven nights,
pierreetvacances.com
Under £350 a week
Guernsey
Six simple apartments overlook big
sandy Pembroke Bay,
and 100 metres away
The Bay’s family-run
The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 7 3
Readers’ travel tips
European beach stays
Winning tip
Peninsula campsite, Galicia,
Spain
Camping Bayona Playa (pitches from
€111 a week) occupies a peninsula of
white sandy beach shaded by trees.
The varied accommodation makes for
a great base to explore the Rías Baixas
region. We enjoyed sunsets from the
beach bar, incredible seafood and ferr y
trips to the Cíes islands. Prices geared
towards locals and reasonable. Deirdre
Glorious beaches, France
Last year we stayed in a static caravan
at Camping Front de Mer in Argelès-
sur-Mer (£450 a week in June,
eurocamp.co.uk). The accommodation
was great, the pools fabulous and vast
town beach glorious. The real star
though is the surrounding area of Côte
Vermeille with its secluded beaches,
green mountains plunging into a
sparkling sea, and quaint towns such
as Collioure overlooked by Fort
Saint-Elme. Ed Brook
Eco-friendly, Croatia
All-inclusive resorts can feel soulless
and environmentally damaging, but at
Pine Beach in Pakoštane (€2,478 a
week for a mobile home for four, all-
inclusive), accommodation is in eco-
friendly thatched bungalows
overlooking a white sand beach. Jack Ang
My own cove, Greece
The Goatshed (from €500 a week,
sleeps 4) is a small converted cottage
on the western Peloponnese within
walking distance of Koroni’s tavernas
and beautiful beaches. Fida is the
perfect host and will give you a
personal tour of the area on arrival.
Putu Winchester
Hut heaven on Gran Canaria
Soaking up the rays on the beach and
by the pool, laughing with new
friends, the greyness of London behind
me … Blue Ocean Camp – Tasartico
(from €250 a week for a hut for two) is a
travellers’ heaven. The luxury is in the
peaceful, hilly surroundings, while
the simple, budget-friendly wooden
hut provides all I need: solitude,
sanctuary and sleep.
Paula D’Souza
To enter our readers’ tips competition
and see the terms and conditions, visit
theguardian.com/readers-travel-tips
(you must be a UK resident enter). The
best tip of the week, chosen by Tom Hall
of Lonely Planet, wins a £200 voucher to
stay at a Coolstays property. This is a
selection of tips – see more on our website.
LIFESTYLE TRAVEL

apartments sleep two to six and share

a swimming pool, tennis court and
barbecue area. Two other beaches
aren’t much further, and there are a
couple of restaurants and the bus stop
to St Peter Port, the island’s “capital”,
right on the doorstep. Guests get
discounts on trips to Herm island.
From £267pp for seven nights,
thebayguernsey.co.uk

Istria, Croatia
Croatia’s “first full glamping site”,
Arena One 99 is in a pine forest in
Pomer on the southern tip of the
Istrian peninsula, near Medulin and
Pula. Two hundred lodge tents,
sleeping two to six, have proper beds
and bathrooms, private decks and top
tech (Bose sound systems, Illy
espresso machines); bigger tents have
kitchenettes and a second bedroom
– some even have another storey.
There is a windsurfing centre on
pebbly Pomer beach, a yoga deck in
the forest, a sauna and hot tubs, spa Arena One 99, Croatia’s
treatments and a beach-based kids’ 'first full glamping site',
club. Self-caterers have a grocery store above; in front of Noah's
on-site, and there is a cafe, two beach Surf House, Portugal, left;
bars and a restaurant. an iHouse in Greece, below
From £276pp for seven nights,
arenaglamping.com

Northern Greece
A trio of ultra-modern wood and glass
cabins sit by the beach on the
Kassandra peninsula, Halkidiki. The
iHouses have huge sliding glass doors,
sea-facing balconies, open-plan living
spaces with sleek, custom-made
wooden furniture, and shower rooms.
They share an outdoor kitchen, a
wooden terrace and a barbecue area –
guests can buy fish from the nearby
small port. Paliouri beach is a few
steps away, where there is a beach bar
and restaurant. Paliouri village is a
10-minute drive.
From £326pp for seven nights,
hostunusual.com
Northern France
Hotel Les Tourelles is the former home
of the perfumer Pierre Guerlain, who
popularised the resort of Le Crotoy in
northern France in the 19th century.
Its long sandy beach is the only one in
northern France that faces south, and
inspired painters including Sisley,
Toulouse-Lautrec and Seurat. Today,
the 35-room hotel has the same
panoramic views over the Somme Bay,
but the decor is a more modern Nordic
style. There is a seafood-heavy
restaurant and a terrace facing the
beach. A steam train chugs around the
bay from Le Crotoy to St Valery.
From £308pp for seven nights,
lestourelles.com
Under £450 a week
Galicia, Spain
This four-bedroom beach house has a
garden out front and the beach behind.
The stone property, which was built in
the 1950s and has been recently
refurbished, is less than a mile from
the town of Boiro. It has two double
bedrooms and two singles, an open-
plan lounge/kitchen with sea views,
three bathrooms and a balcony. Barrana
beach is a quiet two-mile stretch of
sand with a promenade for walking or
cycling (two bikes are included), while
livelier Carragueiros beach is within
walking distance. It is a 40-minute
drive to Santiago de Compostela.
£398pp for seven nights,
oneoff places.co.uk
Near Lisbon, Portugal
Noah’s Surf House in Santa Cruz has
eight rooms and 13 bungalows facing
the sea, plus a rooftop with a whirlpool
bath and sunset deck; a pool, gym and
skatepark; a restaurant and an organic
vegetable garden. The cheapest rooms
sleep up to eight in bunkbeds, hanging
beds or mezzanines. The eye-catching
building is made from concrete, glass,
cork and wood; it uses solar panels,
heat pumps and a rainwater system,
and incorporates green roofs and lots
of upcycled design features. Prices
include breakfast and all group
activities (skateboarding, trekking,
yoga, fitness etc) except surf and
paddleboard lessons.
From £460pp for seven nights B&B and
activities, noahsurfhouseportugal.com
Puglia, Italy
A three-bedroom villa, 10 metres from
a sandy beach, Beach House I Gelsi has
been recently renovated by its interior
design-trained owners. It has a garden
with an allotment and grape vine,
outdoor dining area with a barbecue,
and a terrace. Torre Chianca is a quiet
Puglian summer resort – there is a bar,
but the nearest shops (baker, butcher,
greengrocer) and restaurants (a cafe,
pizzerias, fish
restaurants) are a
five-minute drive away

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 7 5

 Sailing from
Isle of Man
Heysham (Lancashire) & Liverpool

Kids Go Free
from
*
£156.00 each way

Take your vehicle

Sandcastle competitions, gentle waves tickling your knees, blankets laden with No luggage fees
tasty picnic treats, and sea swept treasures collected as keepsakes. This is what
Convenient connections
family holidays are all about. All this and more is just a relaxing sail away.
Stretch your legs on board

Book now at Pack more in Fresh air on deck

steam-packet.com Sail by ferry

*Terms and conditions apply, see website for full details. Prices correct at time of publication. Subject to availability. A combination of ports should be considered. Valid for travel between 27/06/2023 and
24/08/2023 inclusive. Via Liverpool or Heysham midweek only - Tuesday to Thursday. Kids means children aged between 4 and 15 inclusive. Infants under 4 travel for free. All passengers under 16 must be
accompanied by an adult.
 LIFESTYLE TRAVEL
Menton, left, is known as
'the pearl of the French
Riviera'; a beach on
Lanzarote, below

cafe. It is 20 minutes’ walk north to

Kalami Bay, a beach resort where
novelist Lawrence Durrell once lived.
From £529.50pp for seven nights in July
(£710 for seven nights from 12 July
onwards), agnibeachcottage.com

in Frigole, while baroque Lecce is
seven miles south.
From £405pp for seven nights (£315pp
first week of July), essentialitaly.co.uk
Madeira
Cottage do Mar is a cosy fisherman’s
place for two near Calheta, above what
is essentially a private beach for a
handful of properties. The cottage is
open-plan, with doors that open the
full width, giving sea views. Plenty of
original features have been retained,
such as the old bread oven. The
bougainvillea-bedecked yard has a
table, barbecue and sunbeds. The beach,
30 metres below, is reached by a stepped
path, and has a beach hut (shared with
two other cottages). Car hire is essential
to reach the secluded property.
From £455pp for seven nights,
ourmadeira.com
across the island, from yurts and
cottages to penthouse apartments.
From £462pp for seven nights,
lanzaroteretreats.com
Côte d'Azur, France
Menton, despite being known as “the
pearl of the French Riviera”, is much
more affordable than its glitzy
neighbours Saint-Tropez, Cannes and
Monaco. The Napoleon hotel on the
seafront, right across the road from one
of the 11 beaches of the Bay of Garavan,
is a budget but stylish option. The 44
contemporary rooms have a white and
blue palette with artworks by Jean
Cocteau and Graham Sutherland, who
both had connections with Menton, and
views of either the sea, the mountains
or the hotel’s tropical gardens. There is
a solar-powered pool, a gym and bar.
From £510pp, napoleon-menton.com
Corfu
Agni Beach Cotttage is a converted
cafe that has been in the Katsaros
family since it was built in 1898, and is
now a cosy beachfront bolthole. It is an
end-terrace one-bedroom cottage with
a kitchen, lounge and shady terrace
with a hammock, barbecue and two
sunbeds. The cottage is on Agni Bay, a
white-pebble beach in Gimari, 17 miles
north of Corfu town. There are jetties
for swimming, snorkelling and
boating, plus three tavernas and a bar/
Güllük, Turkey
Med-Inn is a laid-back, family-friendly
beach hotel on the Bay of Güllük, 25
miles from Bodrum (and more than
500 miles from the earthquake zone of
eastern Turkey). As well as a private
beach, there is a jetty with sunloungers,
a pool and gardens. All 26 rooms are
suites with sea views and balconies
(family suites have twin beds in the
living room). There are two restaurants
specialising in seafood and a top-floor
dining room. The nearest village is
Güllük, which has a handful of cafes
and shops. Guests can also book a
sailing trip on a gulet, take a boat trip
to the ancient Greek city of Iasos,
spend a day in Bodrum or beach hop
along the Bodrum peninsula. A stay
here will just break the budget, but you
have to factor in the generous buffet
breakfast that's included.
Seven nights from £565pp, i-escape.com

Under £550 a week

Lanzarote
A former oceanfront restaurant in
Charco del Palo has been converted
into a villa. Eco Romantico Beach,
which opens in April, has five en-suite
bedrooms with kitchenettes (two yurt
bedrooms will be added later), a living/ A beachside taverna
dining area, roof terrace and solar- in Agni Bay, Corfu,
heated swimming pool. Guests can above; Turkey's Bay
also swim in the sea pools below the of Güllük, right
villa. Charco del Palo is the island’s
only naturist resort, so clothes are
BT WIMAGES, IMAGE PROFESSIONALS AND HEMIS, ALL AL AMY

optional. The property is owned by

Lanzarote Retreats, which has rentals

Answers to quiz 8 Stoke-on-Trent. Nato alphabet: Answers to I A D O N S

Puzzle by Thomas Eaton 9 Canals in Scotland.

10 Carpal bones
Charlie;
Mike;
Weekend
Crossword
D N
D
I P
E
R O
N
D V O R
E W
A
N
K

solutions 1 Joan of Arc. in the wrist Oscar; by Sy

D I
G
E S B
A
I S M A
A Y
R C
H
K

(puzzles on page 78) 2 Leopards. (name derivations): Romeo and Juliet(t);

D O N E T S K G O G O L
3 Florida Keys scaphoid; Victor. X S K U
4 Zoroastrianism (Parsi). capitate; 13 Approximate values on I B R O X T H E T O W N
5 I-Spy books. lunate; the pH scale. A R Y E A
6 Wimbledon pisiform. 14 Appeared in Pizza S I N C L A I R I A G O
men’s singles. 11 Duetted with Hut adverts. K I L S R N
7 Ishmael Elton John. 15 Said to have B A S S E T O C A S E Y
L T A N E R
(in Moby-Dick). 12 First names in the been cursed.

The Guardian | 04.03.23 | S AT UR DAY | 7 7

 SATURDAY
The kids’ quiz
Molly Oldfield
This quiz answers questions posed by children
— will you get a better score than your parents?
1 Douglas, 5, asks:
what is fire made of?
A It’s made of light
and magic
B It’s made of heat,
light, carbon dioxide and
water vapour
C It’s made of sunlight
that’s released from
wood or coal
D It’s made from oxygen
and sparkles
2 Eleanor, 6, asks:
how do you know how
old a tree is?
A By counting the wrinkles
on the bark
I L L U S T R AT I O N: H E N N I E H AW O R T H
B By looking inside it and
counting its rings
C By measuring the lengths
of its branches
D By seeing how tall it is
3 Sam, 11, asks:
what is the fastest
speed anyone has ever
pitched a baseball at?
Stephen Collins
7 8 | S AT UR DAY | 04.03.23 | The Guardian
Scan the code to
send Molly a question
for a future quiz
Answers (no peeking!)
1 B. Fire occurs when
a chemical reaction called
combustion takes place. This
happens when fuel (such as
wood, paper, ethanol or gas)
is heated up to such an
extent that it ignites. The
reaction produces heat and
light and mostly carbon
dioxide and water vapour,
which is the fire we see.
2 B. If you cut a tree down
and slice into its trunk, you
will notice it has rings inside.
Each ring represents a year
of the tree’s life; they’re
darker or lighter coloured
depending on the weather,
soil, temperature and other
conditions the tree was
A 105.8 miles per hour experiencing at the time.
B 102.3 miles per hour This method of dating a tree
C 80.7 miles per hour is called dendrochronology.
D 78.4 miles per hour 3 A. The fastest anyone has
ever pitched a baseball was
4 Esther, 7, asks: 105.8 miles per hour! It was
how many cells does the thrown by Aroldis Chapman
human body have? on 24 September 2010, in
A 254 million cells San Diego, California.
B 75.7 billion cells 4 C. Scientists estimate that
C 37.2 trillion cells there are about 37.2 trillion
D 3.4 quadrillion cells cells in our bodies.
5 A. Lattice windows are little
5 Alex, 8, asks: panes set in criss-crossing
why do windows strips of wood or metal.
sometimes have They have been around for
diamond shapes centuries, maybe because in
inside them? the past it was hard to make
A It’s a tradition that big windows and easier to
started centuries ago put lots of little ones together!
B Because you can see fun
shapes through them Molly Oldfield hosts
C It means that the Everything Under the Sun,
window is made out a weekly podcast (and
of diamonds book) answering children’s
D It was a way to indicate questions. Does your child
that you were engaged in have a question? To submit
the olden days one, scan the QR code above
Weekend crossword
Sy
1 2 3 4
7 8
9 10
11 12
15 16
19
20
22
Across
7 Ukrainian city once known as
Yekaterinoslav (6)
8 Antonín ......, Czech composer
known for his Slavonic Dances (6)
9/21D The day of wrath in
a requiem mass (4,4)
10 Otto von ........, German
diplomat (1815-1898) (8)
11 City and region annexed by
Russia in 2022 (7)
13 Nikolai ....., Russian short
story writer whose works
include The Overcoat (5)
15 The home of Rangers FC (5)
17 2010 crime thriller directed
by and starring Ben Affleck (3,4)
20 Sadie ........, Patsy Kensit’s
character in Emmerdale (8)
21 Othello’s antagonist? (4)
22 Short-legged dog breed (6)
23 Seán ......, Irish dramatist (6)
Down
1 Colour between blue and violet
on the visible spectrum (6)
2 What Mark Wahlberg
found when he crashed
Quiz
Thomas Eaton
5 6 1 Who was posthumously
cleared of heresy in 1456?
2 Which big cats often hide
their prey in trees?
3 Which US archipelago
is connected by the
Overseas Highway?
4 In which religion are
13 the dead left on towers
called dakhmas?
14
5 Charles Warrell
17 18 created what series of
spotters’ guides?
6 Which sporting trophy is
topped by a pineapple?
21
7 Who was the sole survivor
of the wreck of the Pequod?
8 Etruria is a suburb of
23 which English city?
What links:
9 Caledonian;
Crinan;
on to their planet in 2001? (4) Forth and Clyde;
3 Russian name for the region Union;
of eastern Ukraine including Monkland?
Luhansk and 11 (7) 10 Boat; head; moon;
4 Ukrainian port made pea (plus four more)?
famous in Eisenstein’s 11 RuPaul;
Battleship Potemkin (5) Dua Lipa;
5 1987 thriller starring Kevin LeAnn Rimes;
Costner and Sean Young (2,3,3) George Michael;
6 ...... Panza, companion to Kiki Dee?
Don Quixote (6) 12 Cocaine;
12 The ........, 1973 horror film sound transducer;
starring Ellen Burstyn (8) fi lm award;
14 Ukrainian port city retaken in Shakespearean lovers;
November 2022 (7) winner?
16 Russian lake, the world’s 13 Bleach (13);
largest by volume (6) water (7);
18 ...... Group, Russian private coffee (5);
military contractor (6) lemon juice (2)?
19 Ukrainian city where 14 Mikhail Gorbachev;
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin Donald Trump;
met in February 1945 (5) Stuart Pearce and
21 See 9 Gareth Southgate?
15 Hope Diamond;
Solutions to Crossword James Dean’s car;
and Thomas Eaton’s quiz Boston Red Sox;
page 77 Tutankhamun?
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