Oscar winner How to break The writer

who spent 23 a Guinness who cancelled

years as an MP world record herself
OBITUARIES P42 LAST WORD P52 TALKING POINTS P23

24 JUNE 2023 | ISSUE 1441 THE BEST OF THE BRITISH AND INTERNATIONAL MEDIA

The mortgage crisis

How bad will it get?
Page 4

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

4 NEWS The main stories…
What happened
The Partygate report
In the Commons on Monday, MPs gave their
overwhelming backing to the long-awaited, and
highly critical, report into Boris Johnson’s role
in the Downing Street parties scandal. The
Commons Privileges Committee found that
the former prime minister had committed
five contempts of Parliament. These included
deliberately misleading the Commons on several
occasions, and being complicit in a “campaign to
abuse and intimidate” the MPs who conducted
the inquiry. Had Johnson still been an MP, the
report would have recommended suspending
him from Parliament for 90 days. It also said
that he should be denied the privilege of the
parliamentary pass usually given to former MPs.
Johnson: “Trumpian tactics” Standard. Some of its members, for instance,
Labour forced a vote on the report, which was
passed by 354 votes to seven. In total, 118 Tories backed it.
Theresa May accused Johnson of damaging public faith in
parliamentary democracy, and Penny Mordaunt, Leader of the knew exactly what his staff were up to – although a competent
Commons, called his resignation honours list a “debasement”
of the system. Rishi Sunak, along with most of the Cabinet,
did not attend the vote. He pleaded a prior engagement, but
the Liberal Democrats accused him of a “cowardly cop-out”.
What the editorials said
When the Partygate report came out last week, Johnson
proclaimed it a “dreadful day for MPs and for democracy”,
said The Guardian. That was the very opposite
of the truth. The committee has in reality
done the country a great service by robustly
defending the integrity of our parliamentary
system. Its inquiry, conducted over 14 months,
was both “meticulous and fair”. With his rants
against the panel – he called it a “kangaroo
court” whose findings were “deranged”
and “beneath contempt” – Johnson has
“increasingly descended into denialism and
Trumpian tactics”, said The Independent.
“Not once has he disputed the actual evidence
assembled by the committee.”
The report wasn’t perfect, said the Evening
appeared less than impartial: the chair, Harriet
Harman, had “made her hostile views known in advance”.
And there remain “nagging doubts” about whether Johnson
PM surely should have done. It was a biased, vindictive report
from a committee filled with opponents of Johnson, said the
Daily Mail. The only surprise about the verdict is that Harman
“didn’t put on a black cap while delivering it”.

What happened What the editorials said

The mortgage crunch
The Bank of England was this week poised
to raise interest rates for the 13th time in
a row, as it scrambles to bring down
stubbornly high inflation. Figures released
on Wednesday showed that annual inflation
remained stable at 8.7% in May: it had been
expected to fall, to 8.4%. Core inflation,
which excludes volatile food and energy
prices, rose from 6.8% in April to 7.1%,
its highest level since 1992. The figures piled
pressure on the Bank, which is tasked with Mortgage holders face a timebomb
keeping inflation at 2%. Its Monetary Policy
Committee was widely expected to raise rates from 4.5%
to at least 4.75% when they met on Thursday.
As the average rate on a new two-year fixed-rate mortgage
exceeded 6%, Jeremy Hunt, the Chancellor, acknowledged
the “enormous pressure” on people renewing their
mortgages. However, he ruled out providing taxpayer-
funded support for struggling mortgage-holders, saying
that such a step risked making inflation “worse, not better”. medicine must “hurt to work”.
“A timebomb is about to explode under millions of families,”
said The Mail on Sunday. Most mortgage holders have been
insulated from the effects of recent interest
rate rises, because they’ve been on fixed-
rate deals. But now these deals are starting
to expire: the Resolution Foundation think-
tank estimates that 800,000 people are due
to remortgage next year. With the average
rate on a two-year deal likely to hit 6.25%
by the end of 2023 – “more than twice as
high as a year ago” – they’ll have to find
an extra £2,900 a year, on average.
People who took out big mortgages in
recent years were hardly reckless, said The Times: the Bank of
England “encouraged them to borrow”. Five years ago, it said
that rates would stay low for decades; and even when inflation
started to bite last year, its governor, Andrew Bailey, expressed
confidence that high rates would prove temporary. Yet now,
the Government finds itself under pressure to bail out families
facing huge hikes in their mortgage payments. It should resist.
Rate rises are an effective tool for tackling inflation – but the

It wasn’t all bad A 21-year-old from California

Amazon has pledged to hire at
least 5,000 Ukrainian and other
refugees across Europe over
the next three years, as part of
a wider drive to support people
fleeing persecution. The scheme
is being coordinated by the
charity Tent Partnership for
Refugees, and 40 firms have
signed up to it, including Hilton,
Marriott and Starbucks. They
have committed to hire more
than 13,000 refugees between
them. In addition, agencies such
as Adecco have pledged to help
152,000 refugees find work.
THE WEEK 24 June 2023
has broken the world record
A man who had so many
health problems he was told to
for fastest time solving a “never run” has become the
Rubik’s Cube. Max Park, who oldest Briton to complete 100
was diagnosed with moderate marathons. Martin Ward, 64,
to severe autism as a toddler, suffered two collapsed lungs
pulled off the feat in just 3.13 in his 20s, and was blighted
seconds, at an event in the by severe back problems in
US. Like all “speedcubers”, his 30s. When he registered
he’d been allowed to spend as disabled, doctors told him
a few seconds looking at the to “keep fit but never run –
puzzle first. Park was taught certainly not a marathon”;
how to solve a Rubik’s Cube but earlier this month in
at the age of nine by his Milton Keynes, he joined the
mother, who was looking for exclusive 100 Marathon Club,
ways to refine his fine motor skills. Attending competitions turned a group made up of around
out to also help his social development, as he learnt how to take 500 people who have run
turns, stand in queues, and greet new people. 100 marathons or more.
COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM
 …and how they were covered NEWS 5
What the commentators said What next?
“Of all the sins for which Boris Johnson deserved to lose his job as prime minister, his public The committee is due to
mutterings about office parties would not even make the top 20,” said Fraser Nelson in The produce a supplementary
Daily Telegraph. It’s unfortunate, then, that the committee’s “absurd overreaction to his “special report” about the
Partygate excuses” has enabled him to pose as a martyr. Was he unaware of all those “wine- attacks mounted on the panel
time Fridays”? Knowing something of his chaotic working practices, it wouldn’t surprise me. by other MPs, which could
“The use of legal technicalities to destroy political opponents is, overall, a deplorable trend.” trigger more Tory infighting.
The report is expected as
Johnson hasn’t been forced out over trifling rule-infringements, said Robert Shrimsley in FT. He early as next week.
has been forced out because he repeatedly lied. Johnson might still have survived this report had
he accepted its initial, milder verdict, said Ian Dunt in The i Paper. But when the committee sent Speculation abounds,
him an early draft version under condition of confidentiality a fortnight ago, he leaked its main meanwhile, about Johnson’s
findings and set out to publicly denigrate and undermine the committee. This was an egregious plans, says Tim Shipman in
attack on the legitimacy of the Commons, and it rightly prompted the committee to escalate its The Sunday Times. Johnson
proposed suspension to 90 days. Johnson behaved like a “thug”, agreed Camilla Cavendish in has been reminding people
the FT. Never before has a British PM acted in such a way. “This is our Watergate: and the that Churchill didn’t become
attempts to trivialise it demonstrate what was wrong with the Johnson regime.” PM until he was 65, but allies
have dismissed claims that he
Rishi Sunak’s effort to distance himself from the affair is disappointing, said Rafael Behr in will run as an independent at
The Guardian. The PM has expressed confidence in the committee but otherwise maintained the next election, start a new
a studied neutrality. This isn’t good enough. He should be standing up for the principle that party with Nigel Farage, or
“politicians should tell the truth”. Sunak’s allies insist he has “only contempt” for Johnson run for London mayor again.
and is holding his tongue simply because he doesn’t want to “poke the beast”, said Andrew Insiders reckon he’ll wait to
Rawnsley in The Observer. But the PM is deluding himself if he thinks peace can be had with see what happens in the next
his predecessor. Johnson now has a new column in the Daily Mail (typically, he failed to clear election and perhaps try for
it with the appointments watchdog) and he’s bound to use this platform to make trouble for a return when the next Tory
the Government. Sunak must definitively cut Johnson adrift – if only for reasons of self-interest. leader wobbles in, say, 2026.

What the commentators said What next?

This week’s inflation figures certainly made for “grim reading”, said Kate Andrews in The Some Tory MPs are so
Spectator. True, food and fuel price rises seem to be slowing; but a worrying rise in core spooked by the potential
inflation suggests that underlying inflationary pressures are going to be much more difficult impact of rising mortgage
to budge. No wonder markets are now predicting that the base rate could reach 6% before it rates that they want the
peaks. Britain increasingly looks like a global outlier in its failure to curb inflation, said Andrew PM to call an early election,
Neil in the Daily Mail. In the US, it is now at 4% and “falling fast”; in France, it’s 5.1%; and in before things get even
Germany, it’s 6.1%. So what can be done? Alas, the Bank has little choice but to hold its nerve worse, says Katy Balls in
and persist with rate rises, at least for now. But it must tread carefully. Pushing interest rates The Spectator. It’s not likely
above 6% would be too much for many mortgage holders to bear, raising the prospect of to happen; but No. 10 is
tens of thousands of people losing their homes. Better to let the full impact of the rate rises expected to face growing
implemented already be felt before “increasing the dose” of this painful medicine too quickly. pressure to help alleviate
voters’ financial pain.
For all the gloomy predictions of a “mortgage timebomb”, said Jeremy Warner in The Daily
Telegraph, things are nothing like as bad as they were in the late 1980s or early 1990s. Back In a worst-case scenario,
then, “foreclosures, repossessions and forced selling became commonplace” as interest rates hit Lloyds Bank has warned
14%. Today, by contrast, more people own their homes outright (some 58% of owner-occupied that rising mortgage rates
homes are mortgage-free), and lenders are under “intense political pressure” to show leniency to could trigger a 36% fall
struggling borrowers. Even so, the idea that today’s owners are “whiny crybabies” is misplaced, in house prices in the next
said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. Yes, interest rates were higher in the past; but house four years. That would be
prices were a lot lower, meaning that people had to borrow less and were less exposed to rate the biggest drop since at
rises. The whole mortgage system needs reform, said Will Hutton in The Observer. In other least the 1950s, dwarfing
countries, notably the US, most mortgages are fixed for between 15 and 30 years to insulate the 20% fall that followed
borrowers from short-term interest rate spikes. Isn’t it time we tried something similar here? the 2008 financial crash.

THE WEEK
Editor-in-chief: Caroline Law
Liar, liar pants on fire. Politics and truth have never made easy Editor: Theo Tait
Deputy editor: Harry Nicolle
bedfellows in modern democracy, and many now feel that in the City editor: Jane Lewis Assistant editors: Robin de Peyer,
era of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, they’ve become fatally Leaf Arbuthnot Contributing editors: Simon Wilson,
Rob McLuhan, Catherine Heaney, Xandie Nutting,
estranged. Well maybe so, but it’s still worth asking how high we want to raise the bar on truth-telling Digby Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood, William Skidelsky
Editorial: Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, Fiona Paus,
and what lies, if any, we might, or even should, tolerate. Should we, for example, apply the same Billie Gay Jackson Picture editor: Annabelle Whitestone
Art director: Katrina Ffiske Senior sub-editor: Simmy
standards to personal lies, lies designed to save the politician’s own skin (“the rules were followed Richman Production editor: Alanna O’Connelll
Editorial chairman and co-founder: Jeremy O’Grady
at all times”), from policy lies (“we send the EU £350m a week”)? I don’t think so. The standard of
Production Manager: Maaya Mistry
integrity required in dealing with parliamentary colleagues is of a different order from that in dealing Account Directors: Aimee Farrow, Steven Tapp,
Amy McBride
with the electorate. Parliament can’t function without a high level of honesty, democracy can’t easily Classified Sales Executive: Nubla Rehman
Advertising Director – The Week, Wealth
function with it: we the voters don’t want to hear the downside, don’t want to be told we must bear & Finance: Peter Cammidge
the cost of needed reform. Take Joe Biden’s IRA (see p.13): it is clearly inflationary, but calling it the Managing Director, The Week: Richard Campbell
Inflation Reduction Act enabled it to pass. Or take the crisis in social care (see p.14). Raising funds SVP Lifestyle, Knowledge and News: Sophie Wybrew-Bond

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any form or by any means without the written permission of the publishers 24 June 2023 THE WEEK
6 NEWS Politics
Controversy of the week The missing submersible

Abortion and the law Extensive efforts were under

way this week to rescue
the five occupants of the
“How should we, as a society, respond to a woman who submersible that went
doesn’t want to carry a pregnancy to term?” asked Vicky missing while diving down
Spratt in The i Paper. The answer, according to a judge passing to the wreck of the Titanic on
sentence at Stoke-on-Trent Crown Court last week, is “to send Sunday. Surveillance aircraft
her to prison” for more than a year, taking her away from the picked up banging sounds in
the area on Tuesday, and a
children she already has. The court heard that the woman in
French ship carrying a robot
question, Carla Foster, had terminated a pregnancy during capable of diving beyond
lockdown in 2020, when she was 32 to 34 weeks pregnant the 3,800 metre depths of
– beyond the current 24-week abortion limit – using pills sent the Titanic was en route on
to her in the post by abortion services. She’d told them she Wednesday. But there were
was only seven weeks pregnant. There were many mitigating fears that if the 6.7 metre
factors. Foster was suffering “emotional turmoil”: she had Titan was stuck on the ocean
moved back in with her ex-partner during lockdown while floor, it would be challenging
pregnant with another man’s child, which she was trying to to find it and bring it up in
Protesters in London last Saturday
time. The best hope seemed
hide. Since the abortion, she has been plagued by guilt. Yet
to be that the vessel had
prosecutors saw fit to charge her. What happened to “her body, her choice”? The case should spark a surfaced and would be
rethink of our “archaic legislation”, said The Guardian. Abortion is a “routine health procedure”. Yet spotted, semi-submerged in
it remains illegal except under the limited exceptions of the 1967 Abortion Act. That must change. the North Atlantic, before its
oxygen supplies ran out (it
The outrage this case has aroused is baffling, said Melanie McDonagh in The Times. “The woman cannot be opened from the
effectively committed prenatal infanticide.” I don’t know what else you’d call it. She aborted her baby inside). The Titan, which
girl – “OK, call her a foetus if it makes you feel better” – at eight months or more, about six weeks carries five people sitting
before what would have been her natural birth. Foster’s internet searches showed that she knew she on the floor, was described
as an “experimental” vessel,
was at least 28 weeks pregnant. Yet we’re told that charging her was inhumane. Why? Apparently,
and various people had
because lockdown was hard. And because she’s a mother, who’s very sorry about it all. But most of previously warned that it
all, “because the baby hadn’t been born yet”. The premise of the pro-choice lobby is that the foetus, was unsafe. Passengers had
at whatever age, is the property of the mother. This can’t be right. You rarely hear this discussed, said paid $250,000 for the trip.
Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph, but UK law is worryingly out of step with other European
countries. In most European nations – Belgium, Denmark, Finland – the limit is 12 weeks. In liberal More teacher strikes
Sweden it’s 18 weeks. Britain’s 24-week limit is “getting harder and harder to defend”. Teachers in England will
strike for two more days next
So this is where we find ourselves in 2023, said Camilla Long in The Sunday Times: with one side month. NEU members will
shouting for decriminalisation, and the other for draconian new restrictions. “Where is the moderate walk out on 5 and 7 July, as
part of their ongoing dispute
argument?” What about the quiet majority who think our abortion laws work well as they are?
over pay. The NEU is urging
In England and Wales, women are treated liberally and they, in turn, “take abortion seriously”. the Government to publish
Only 1% of abortions take place after 20 weeks. Nearly 90% take place before ten weeks. If we its official pay review: leaks
start messing around with our laws, we could lose this, amid a US-style abortion culture war. suggest it recommended
“I reckon the less said, the better, because this is one of the few areas where we’ve got it right.” a rise of 6.5% next year.

Good week for:

Spirit of the age
A secondary school in East
Sussex found itself at the
centre of a social media
storm this week, after a
teacher was recorded calling
a pupil “despicable” for
refusing to accept that there
are multiple genders. The
row erupted when the Year
8 girl questioned a fellow
pupil identifying as a cat.
According to The Daily
Telegraph, there are other
schools where children
identify as non-humans:
it found one case of a pupil
identifying as a dinosaur;
another as a moon.
Three types of zero-alcohol
beer were on sale at
Manchester’s recent Parklife
festival, reflecting a growing
trend for sober revelry.
Factors behind the shift
are believed to include
Gen Z-ers not wanting
footage of them drunk
turning up on social media.
Al Pacino, who celebrated the birth of his fourth child. The Poll watch
boy, named Roman, is the 83-year-old actor’s first child with A survey of adults in 29
his girlfriend, film producer Noor Alfallah, 29. countries has found that
Dame Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of Vogue magazine, who British people have the
was one of only three people made Companion of Honour in third most positive attitude
to refugees, behind Spain
the King’s birthday honours. The other two were the novelist
and New Zealand. 56%
Ian McEwan and Sir John Bell, Regius professor of medicine at of UK adults believe
Oxford University. Among those knighted were Mark Thompson, refugees make a “positive
the former director general of the BBC, and the late Martin Amis, contribution”, compared to
who had accepted his honour shortly before his death in May. the global average of 45%.
Ipsos/The Guardian
Bad week for:
Labour is on course to beat
Hunter, makers of the wellies once prized by everyone from King the SNP in Scotland at the
Charles to Kate Moss, which went into administration with debts next election, according to
of more than £100m. The collapse has been put down to factors Panelbase. It predicts that
such as dry weather in the US stalling demand, but it’s also the Labour will take 26 seats,
case that customers had reported a sharp fall-off in quality since up from one, and that the
production moved to China in 2008. SNP will lose 24 seats,
leaving it with 21.
Glyndebourne, after a performance of Poulenc’s opera Dialogues
The Sunday Times
des Carmélites was interrupted by Just Stop Oil protesters armed
with air horns and glitter cannon. In London, police used their Nicola Sturgeon’s net
new powers to break up slow marches by the group. favourability rating in
Final year students at Cambridge, with warnings that half Scotland has dipped into
of them won’t graduate this summer due to the marking boycott. negative figures for the first
Academics nationwide are refusing to mark papers as part of a time. It now stands at -7.
Savanta/The Daily
pay dispute, but at some other universities, students are being
Telegraph
allowed to graduate without their papers being fully marked.

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 Europe at a glance
Warsaw
Migrant pushback: The leader of Poland’s
ruling Law and Justice party, Jarosław
Kaczynski, has threatened to hold a
national referendum in order to block
a migration pact that was agreed by a
majority of EU member states last week.
Under the deal, a proportion of the
migrants arriving in border states such
as Italy and Greece would be relocated to
other EU nations, unless their governments
pay €20,000 per migrant into a central
fund to have them sent elsewhere. “We
will not agree to it, neither does the Polish
nation,” Kaczynski told Poland’s lower
house of parliament last week, before MPs
voted overwhelmingly against ratifying the
deal. Kaczynski argued that since Poland
had received less than €100 per head
from the EU for the more than 1.5 million
Ukrainian refugees it has taken in since
Russia’s invasion, it was “discrimination”
to expect it to pay €20,000 for each
migrant it declined to host.
NEWS 7
Moscow Moscow
New trial: Alexei Sabotage threat: The former Russian
Navalny has president Dmitry Medvedev has claimed
gone on trial on that Russia has the moral right to destroy
extremism charges its enemies’ undersea communications
that could result cables, given what he described as Western
in his jail term complicity in the bombing of the Nord
being extended Stream pipeline last September. A close ally
by up to 30 of Vladimir Putin, Medvedev – who is now
years. The deputy chair of Russia’s security council –
anti-corruption was once seen as a relatively liberal figure,
activist is but has been one of the regime’s most
currently serving hawkish voices since the invasion of
nine years for embezzlement, a charge Ukraine. Senior Nato figures have recently
widely believed to be politically motivated. warned that Russia could try to cause
The new trial is taking place behind closed severe disruption in the West by targeting
doors at the maximum security penal undersea infrastructure including internet
colony east of Moscow where he is being cables. Western nations have denied any
held in solitary confinement. Outlined in involvement in the Nord Stream blasts.
3,828 pages, his new alleged crimes include
“rehabilitating the Nazi ideology”. In a
message on social media, Navalny, 47,
urged Russians to “join forces in the
fight against Putin’s lies”.

Bucharest
Tates charged: Prosecutors in Romania
have charged the controversial influencer
Andrew Tate with human trafficking, rape
and forming a criminal gang to sexually
exploit women. His brother Tristan has
also been charged, along with two of their
associates. The brothers – who have dual
US and British nationality – were arrested
at their home in Bucharest in December;
in March they were moved from custody
to house arrest. Officials have seized some
£10m of their assets, including £440,000
in cryptocurrency. The indictment names
seven women who say they were recruited
by the brothers using false promises of love
and marriage, before being intimidated,
assaulted and coerced into making porn
films which were shared online. Andrew
Tate (who now has 6.9 million online
followers, far more than he had before
his arrest) is accused of raping one of
them. The Tates insist they are innocent.

Piatykhatky, Ukraine
Pylos, Greece Small gains: Ukraine has made further
Tragedy at sea: The UN has called for an inquiry small gains in the counteroffensive it
into Greece’s response to a stricken migrant vessel launched earlier this month, retaking
that sank off the coast of the Peloponnese last a village in the southern part of
week, with the loss of up to 650 lives (see page Zaporizhzhia province. Deputy Defence
16). The Greek coast guard has said that the Minister Hanna Maliar said the capture of
overcrowded trawler, which was en route from Piatykhatky brought the tally of liberated
Libya to Italy, was moving steadily until minutes villages to eight; in total, Kyiv is believed
before it capsized, and that passengers on board to have wrested back more than 100 sq
had refused assistance. But NGOs have said that km of territory. Russian military bloggers
they received several calls for help from passengers in the ten hours before the sinking, confirmed that Russian forces had lost the
and maritime lawyers have argued that the state of the vessel should have prompted village after three days of intense fighting.
an immediate rescue, regardless of what passengers may have said. Maritime tracking The progress of Ukraine’s forces in both
data also reportedly indicates that the boat was stationary for hours before it sank, the east and south of the country has
and some of the survivors have claimed that it was an attempt by the coast guard to been slow, with most of its new brigades
tow the ship that caused it to capsize – a claim the coast guard has vigorously denied. and much of the heavy weaponry
Survivors have described horrific conditions on the boat, where they claim they recently donated by Kyiv’s Western allies
were beaten by traffickers, while women and children were locked in the hold. Nine apparently yet to be committed to battle.
survivors, all Egyptian men aged 20 to 40, have been arrested in Greece on suspicion With Russian lines defended by tank
of trafficking. Suspected traffickers have also been arrested in Pakistan. More than traps, minefields and artillery, analysts
300 of the passengers were from Pakistan; most are presumed dead. have warned that months of artillery
duels and trench warfare may lie ahead.

Catch up with daily news at theweek.co.uk 24 June 2023 THE WEEK

8 NEWS The world at a glance
Wilmington, Delaware
Hunter Biden’s deal: Hunter Biden, the
son of President Joe Biden, has reached a
deal with federal prosecutors that will see
him plead guilty to two misdemeanours,
while avoiding jail time. These concern
his failure to pay $200,000 in tax, in
2017 and 2018, before the deadline.
He has also “resolved” a felony firearms
charge, relating to him possessing a gun
while being an active drug user. House
Republicans slammed the deal as a sign
of the Justice Department’s double
standards (citing the indictment of Donald Trump) and vowed
that their investigations into the Biden family would continue.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Harvard body parts scandal: An extraordinary case, centred on
Harvard University’s famous medical school, has cast gruesome
light on the black market in human body parts in the US. So far,
seven people have been indicted in the case, including the manager
of the school’s morgue. Cedric Lodge, 55, has been charged with
selling heads, brains, skin and bones taken from corpses that had
been donated for research or educational purposes. Most of the
others indicted are his alleged buyers, who are believed to have
been part of a large network. One is a doll-maker named Katrina
Maclean, who runs a shop called Kat’s Creepy Creations. “Some
crimes defy understanding,” said US Attorney Gerard M. Karam.
Relatives of the deceased have now filed a class action lawsuit
against Harvard, arguing that it breached a state law requiring
that human remains be treated with dignity.

Washington DC
China relations: Joe Biden claimed this week that his
secretary of state, Antony Blinken, had done a “hell
of a job” on his much delayed two-day visit to Beijing.
The most senior US official to visit China in five
years, Blinken met various senior officials, and was
also granted a surprise 35-minute meeting with President Xi.
Both sides agreed that progress had been made in stabilising the
strained relations between the two countries – exacerbated by the
recent incident in which the US shot down a suspected Chinese
surveillance balloon in its air space. However, a US request to
restore military-to-military contact, to avoid miscalculations
leading to conflict in Taiwan in particular, was rebuffed.

Fort Stewart, Georgia

Soldier terrorist: A 22-year-old US soldier has pleaded guilty to
trying to help Islamic State militants kill US military personnel.
Cole Bridges, a cavalry scout based at Fort Stewart, Georgia, now
faces up to 40 years in jail. According to the Justice Department,
Bridges put himself on the FBI’s radar by indicating his support
for Islamic State on social media after enlisting in 2019. An agent
posing as an IS member then made contact with him online.
Bridges explained to the agent that he was disillusioned with the
army. He shared incriminating videos he had made, as well as a
US army training manual, advice on attacking US soldiers in the
Middle East, and a list of possible targets in New York City.

Miami, Florida
Trump trial: Donald Trump’s trial
for allegedly mishandling classified
documents has been scheduled to begin
in Florida on 14 August. However, it
is expected to be delayed by pre-trial
arguments. US district court judge Aileen
Cannon has a history of setting early
deadlines, then allowing delays, and
Trump’s lawyers are likely to push for
them. Nevertheless, her schedule is being
seen as an indication that she wants the
case to proceed rapidly. Trump is also
facing a possible indictment in Georgia, for allegedly asking
officials there to falsify the result of the 2020 election.

Babahoyo, Ecuador Caraá, Brazil

Double death: An Ecuadorean woman who woke up in her own
coffin has since died in intensive care. Bella Montoya, 76, was
first declared dead at a hospital in the central city of Babahoyo
on 9 June, following a suspected stroke. However, five hours after
she’d been placed in a coffin at a funeral parlour, her relatives
heard a knocking sound coming from inside it. Opening it
up, they found her wrapped in a sheet, breathing heavily. The
retired nurse was rushed back to hospital, where she remained
in intensive care until her death last Friday. “This time my mother
really did die,” said her son, Gilberto Balberán. According to
some reports, she had catalepsy, a condition that causes a person’s
body to become rigid. An inquiry has been launched into how the
first death certificate came to be issued.
Devastating cyclone: An
extratropical cyclone tore through
southern Brazil last week, killing 13
people, including a four-month-old baby, and leaving 3,000
homeless. Some towns in Rio Grande do Sul received almost
ten inches of rain in 18 hours; thousands of buildings were
damaged, and cars were blown along by fearsome winds. By
Sunday, more than 84,000 people were without power. With
many households stranded by flood waters, officials said that
2,400 rescues had been carried out in two days, but warned
that they were “deeply worried” by the situation in the badly
hit town of Caraá (pop. 8,300), where rescue efforts were still
ongoing this week. More rainfall is forecast next week.

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 The world at a glance NEWS 9
Kuala Lumpur
West Bank, Palestinian Territories Migrant abuse: Almost a third of migrant
Settlement policy: The US is “deeply troubled”, it domestic workers in Malaysia are trapped
says, by Israel’s plans to expand Jewish settlements in “forced labour”, according to a survey
in the occupied West Bank, which would see 4,560 by the International Labour Organisation
new homes built there and reduce the need for of 1,201 migrants employed as carers,
high-level scrutiny of future settlement approvals. cooks and cleaners. The survey shows 29%
Israel’s cabinet recently transferred approval claim they’d be threatened if they tried to
responsibility for such plans from the defence leave, whereas in Singapore only 7% and
minister to the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, in Thailand only 4% said the same (though
a far-right settlement activist who advocates Israeli annexation of the West Bank. The in all three nations respondents said they
settlements, built on land Israel captured in 1967, are widely seen as illegal and a bar worked far more than the maximum legal
to any two-state peace deal involving the formation of an independent Palestinian hours and earned less than the minimum
state in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. On Monday, Israel used combat wage). The high figures for Malaysia may
helicopters in the West Bank for the first time in almost two decades, a sortie to reflect the fact that domestic workers there
arrest two suspected Palestinian terrorists in Jenin having met fierce resistance: five (80% of whom are Indonesians) tend to
Palestinians were killed, and seven Israelis and 91 Palestinians injured. Violence has “live in” with their employers. The report
flared there since early last year, when Israel began mounting raids after a spate of calls for domestic work to be considered
Palestinian attacks. “The time has come,” Smotrich tweeted on Monday, “to replace “skilled labour”, and for measures to
the tweezer operations with a wide-ranging campaign to eradicate the nests of terror.” ensure that employers comply with the
minimum wage and maximum hours limit.

Tokyo
Consent law: Japan has
raised the age of sexual
consent from 13 to 16, as
part of a major reform of
laws on sexual offences.
The existing age, defined
in its 1907 penal code,
was the lowest among
G7 nations. Japan’s legal
system has come in for
fierce criticism recently,
in the wake of a string of
high-profile acquittals in
rape cases. The new bill
also tackles voyeurism,
and widens the definition
of rape to include cases
where a victim, though
not overpowered
physically, may be
intoxicated
or “caught
off-guard”.

Bangui
Russian base:
The Central
African Republic
(CAR) has offered
to host Moscow’s
first major military
base in Africa since the fall of the Soviet
Union, The Times reports. The proposed
facility could accommodate up to 10,000
troops, and agreement on construction
could be reached within weeks, according
to the CAR’s ambassador to Moscow.
The soldiers would join 1,500 members
of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group
who have been stationed in the CAR since
2018, when President Touadéra called on
them to repel rebel forces from the capital.
Moscow has been extending its influence
in the diamond-rich state and neighbouring
countries in recent years, amid a regional
jihadist insurgency and resentment against
France, the former colonial power.
Mpondwe,
Uganda
School massacre:
A group linked
to Islamic State
killed at least 41
people, including
38 children, in
an attack on a Hong Kong
school in western Song pulled: Hong Kong’s justice secretary
Uganda last week. has filed a petition in the territory’s high
Members of the court to criminalise the unofficial anthem
Allied Democratic of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement,
Forces (ADF) reportedly hurled firebombs sung by protesters since 2019. Glory to
into the dormitory of Lhubiriha secondary Hong Kong encourages secession from
school in Mpondwe, burning 17 boys China, he says, and “isn’t compatible with
to death. Other pupils were killed with the national interest”. The song, which
machetes. Although largely suppressed in includes the lyrics, “Arise! Ye who would
Uganda since its founding in 1995, the ADF not be slaves again / For Hong Kong, may
has gained a foothold in the neighbouring freedom reign!”, briefly disappeared from
Democratic Republic of the Congo, from streaming services in the territory after the
which it has launched numerous attacks petition was announced, but downloads
on civilian and military targets. of the song have since surged.

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

10 NEWS
The accidental artist
Maggi Hambling is one of
Britain’s most prominent
painters, says Rachel
Campbell-Johnston in The
Times; but art wasn’t her first
ambition. As a child growing
up in Suffolk, she dreamed of
becoming a TV newsreader, she
says, because “I thought they
made it up as they went along.
And next, when all the other
girls were hoping to be ballet
dancers or something, I wanted
to be a Wrens admiral. I loved
all those uniforms.” It was only
by chance that she discovered
her talent for art. “There was a
school exam and I did nothing
but flick paint at people and
generally draw attention to
myself,” she says. Left with
just ten minutes to finish, she
chose the subject “laziness”,
and drew a woman lying on a
chaise longue with a half-open
book that she can’t be bothered
to read. A few weeks later, she
found that she had come top
in the exam. “I thought: this
must be worth looking into.”
Behind the Litvinenko photo
In 2006, a photo was released
of the poisoned former Russian
intelligence agent Alexander
Litvinenko, lying – pallid and
hairless – in a hospital bed.
The photo became an enduring
symbol of a malign Kremlin, as
Litvinenko had hoped it would;
but his wife, Marina, hadn’t
wanted him immortalised in
that way. “In my memory
Sasha is completely different,”
she told Caroline Frost in
Radio Times. “He is smiling,
and he was very handsome.”
He died three days after the
People
photo was taken; and in the 17
years since, Marina has worked
hard to keep his story alive –
not least for the sake of others
who fall foul of the regime in
Moscow. At the same time, she
is conscious that her own life,
and that of their son, has to
go on – and that her husband
wanted them to be happy.
“I wouldn’t want Sasha to
see us as lost people,” she says.
“I live my life for him. I lost
this part, but I can continue.”
Bryan Cranston’s lists
The Breaking Bad actor Bryan
Cranston is offered a lot of
roles – and he has devised an
elaborate system for vetting
them, says Anna Peele in GQ.
He calls it the Cranston
Assessment of Project Scale
(CAPS), and it contains five
elements: story, script, role,
director and cast. Each is given
a score; and the total must add
up to at least 13 for him to
take the role. He used a similar In 2007, Elliot Page starred as the teenager who becomes pregnant
system when he was travelling by accident in the smash hit comedy-drama Juno. In the next few
around the US with his brother years, the Canadian actor would become similarly well known for
in his early 20s. While they coming out twice, first as a gay woman, then as a man. Growing
were deciding on their itinerary, up in Nova Scotia, he’d never felt he was really a girl, he says. Even
they plotted the locations of all aged four, he tried peeing standing up. Desperately ill at ease, he
the girls they’d hooked up with started self-harming; acting proved a release, but as a teenager in
on a map, to ensure that they’d Hollywood, he was targeted by predators. And the strain of hiding
never be far from someone his identity (never holding a partner’s hand in public, never bringing
who was likely to offer them a girlfriend to an event) became so intense he almost quit. He finally
a free place for the night. He came out as gay in 2014, and as trans six years after that. We hear
called this the GIDGT – the a lot about gender dysphoria, says Simon Hattenstone in The
Geographically Incredibly Guardian, but less about the “body euphoria” some people feel
Desirable Girlfriend Tour. when they transition. Has he felt that? He smiles. “Every single day.
Actors are often thought of as When I say that I was always consumed by discomfort, I mean it...
chaotic, free-spirited. Cranston I never thought I would just feel: ‘Oh here I am and I’m going about
acknowledges that, perhaps as my day.’ So for me body euphoria is the obvious stuff – getting out
a result of having had a chaotic of the shower, seeing myself in the mirror, walking down the street
childhood, he is the opposite. with my shoulders back and just feeling like I can engage with the
“I’m a list maker,” he says. world.” “Of course,” he adds, “we all have our days. But [they’re
“An orderly minded person.” not] comparable to how I felt before. Not. Even. Comparable.”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint:

This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured
Farewell
the writer Adam Kay Berlusconi’s “charm” Daniel Ellsberg, military
“Many news reports used similar analyst who leaked the
1 Chopsticks by Euphemia Allen (Arthur de Lulli), performed
by Liberace
euphemisms to describe Silvio “Pentagon Papers”
Berlusconi: he was ‘colourful’, ‘larger about the Vietnam War,
2 Mis-Shapes by Jarvis Cocker, Mark Webber, Russell Senior, died 16 June, aged 92.
Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Nick Banks, performed by Pulp than life’, ‘flamboyant’. What those
3 Waltz No. 14 in E minor (Op. posth.) by Frédéric Chopin,
words actually mean is that he was Sir Ben Helfgott MBE,
performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy a convicted tax fraudster, an alleged Polish-born Holocaust
Mafia associate and an astonishingly survivor and Olympic
4 Sit Down, You’re Rocking the Boat by Frank Loesser, performed weightlifter for Britain,
by Stubby Kaye and Original Cast Chorus of Guys and Dolls prolific user of prostitutes, including
died 16 June, aged 93.
5 Forgot About Dre by Andre Young, Marshall Mathers and at least one who was underage.
Mel-Man, performed by Dr. Dre featuring Eminem Nearly every article written about Michael Hopkins,
him includes the words ‘bunga-bunga award-winning architect
6 Poisoning Pigeons in the Park, written and performed
responsible for the
by Tom Lehrer parties’, a forgiving, Benny Hill-esque Mound Stand at Lord’s,
7 A Lady of a Certain Age by Neil Hannon, performed by phrase, given it refers to his orgies, to died 17 June, aged 88.
The Divine Comedy which young women were procured by
8* San Diego Serenade, written and performed by Tom Waits vast pimping networks. Like Johnson Ronnie Knight, former
husband of Barbara
and Trump, Berlusconi let himself
© CATHERINE OPIE

Windsor, career criminal

Book: York Notes for The Complete Works of Shakespeare be treated as a joke so the public and nightclub owner,
Luxury: a diary and a pen * Choice if allowed only one record
wouldn’t realise the joke was on them.” died 12 June, aged 89.
Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 Briefing NEWS 13

The green arms race

Massive US subsidies for green technology are causing major shifts in the world economy

What are these subsidies? protectionist piece of legislation in

The Biden administration’s Inflation decades. There are fears that its lavish
Reduction Act (IRA), which came into subsidies could steer investment and
effect last August, is sending shockwaves expertise towards North America, away
through not just the green technology not just from its strategic rivals, but also
industry, but through the entire global from long-term allies. The EU believes,
economic order. The IRA is a misnomer, and most experts agree, that it violates
designed to make it politically palatable: World Trade Organisation free trade
it will have little effect on inflation, at rules. It is also part of a wider pattern:
least in the short term. Rather, it is the the third major recent law designed to
largest climate bill in US history. Although strengthen US manufacturing, along
it also has other provisions, on healthcare with the CHIPS and Science Act (which
spending and tax collection for instance, allocates $280bn to encourage advanced
the IRA is primarily designed to tackle microchip manufacturing – currently
climate change and to boost America’s dominated by Asian nations – in the US),
clean energy sector. Because of the and the Infrastructure Investment and
vagaries of US politics (it passed the Jobs Act of 2021. These amount to
senate by a single vote) it does this not by “the most significant attempts to revive
regulation and by imposing carbon taxes, The Inflation Reduction Act: overtly protectionist industrial policy in the Western capitalist
as orthodox economics would decree, but world” since the aftermath of the Second
with subsidies: it is almost all carrot, and no stick. The act World War, said Anne-Sylvaine Chassany in the FT.
allocates federal investment for green tech (initially projected at
$369bn) mostly in the form of tax credits, as well as some grants. How is this affecting the world?
The IRA has been a roaring success. Not only does the US have
What does the Biden administration hope to achieve? light regulation, low energy prices and a vast internal market;
The IRA’s main aims are to reduce emissions and create millions it now also subsidises investment in green tech to an extent no
of new jobs in the technologies of the future: renewable energy other nation can afford. The results have been dramatic. In the six
(solar panels, wind turbines); heat pumps; batteries and grid months after the act passed, clean energy companies announced
storage; electric vehicles; hydrogen; carbon capture. It hopes that more than 100,000 new jobs in the US, with investments totalling
the subsidies will unleash trillions in private sector investment as $89bn. Tesla has paused plans to make battery cells in Germany.
well. The act is also specifically designed to help the US to reduce From BMW and Honda to the Swedish battery-maker Northvolt,
its dependence in such industries on China, which it regards as a foreign manufacturers have chosen to expand their US operations.
security threat and a strategic rival. Its provisions are designed to
tempt manufacturing back into the US, known as “onshoring”. What is the EU doing about it?
The EU is contesting the IRA on free trade grounds, and is
How does the act encourage onshoring? negotiating to secure tax credits for European products. The
To take one example, the US now offers a tax credit of $7,500 for European Commission has also proposed its own Green Deal
buyers of most electric and hydrogen-powered cars. However, this Industrial Plan, designed to encourage net-zero technologies
is conditional on final assembly taking place in the US or countries and manufacturers by loosening state aid (subsidy) rules and
with which it has free trade agreements: chiefly Mexico and simplifying regulation. Although some have called for an EU-wide
Canada. There are also so-called “domestic content” rules: the green subsidy programme, this does not exist yet; but most big
more components and raw materials sourced in North America, European nations are already subsidising green technology, so
the higher the tax credits available. Conversely, credits will not the bloc’s overall level of state support is comparable to the US’s.
be available if critical minerals or
parts come from a “foreign entity of The return of industrial policy What about the UK?
concern”, including China, Russia or The debate about whether nations should manage and The UK “risks being squeezed by its
Iran. So it will encourage producers to protect their industries, or open them up to the world, two largest trading partners”, said
cut China out of their supply chains. is one of the oldest in economics. On the one hand, the think-tank IPPR in a report that
many believe that governments need to nurture the described the Government’s response
Is the law a good thing? industries of the future. America in the 19th and early as “completely inadequate”. Labour
In some ways, very. The Economist 20th centuries, France after WWII, Japan in the 1960s, has outlined a green industrial policy
and South Korea in the 1970s have all done so, to
called it “America’s most serious (see page 22). As for the Conservatives,
great effect. Conversely, there is the argument that
effort yet to face up to climate governments are very bad at “picking winners”: spending public money even on
change”. It is estimated that the IRA Britain’s postwar experiences are a case in point. It’s strategically vital industries goes
will help greenhouse gas emissions in also true that free trade has made the world rich. against their instincts: Jeremy Hunt
the world’s largest economy to fall by During the period of the 1990s and 2000s, economies has criticised Biden’s policies. The
30% or 40% by 2030 on 2005 levels, around the world opened up their markets and Government has provided relatively
around 10% more than they would embraced globalisation. That period saw the creation little support for UK green industries.
have done without it. This will benefit of the World Trade Organisation, establishing a rules- There is now just one large battery
the entire world. It will also greatly based system of non-discriminatory trade, which plant in the country. Leading electric
speed up the “green transition” by limited state subsidies. Most economists regard the carmakers – Jaguar Land Rover,
heavily incentivising US industry to IRA as a step back because it profoundly interferes Stellantis (Vauxhall) – are threatening
develop green solutions. However, with and distorts the market. However, many also to leave the UK. Britain doesn’t have
accept that the prospect of catastrophic climate change
it has also attracted much criticism. the money to subsidise on the US or
changes the calculus. As Paul Krugman put it in The
New York Times, it will be no consolation to say: “Well, EU scale. Ministers are promising
Why has it been criticised? we cooked the planet, but at least we preserved the smarter regulation and targeted
Because, underneath the green rules of the World Trade Organisation.” support for promising industries,
rhetoric, this is America’s most overtly but there is little to show for it yet.

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

14 NEWS Best articles: Britain
Are the US and UK true meritocracies? Not to judge by their top
universities – the “main gateway to the adult elite”, says Simon IT MUST BE TRUE…
How Oxbridge Kuper. On both sides of the Atlantic, “the happy few” selected for
entry come disproportionately from rich families. But at least the
I read it in the tabloids

is outshining UK is trying to change. Oxbridge colleges take pains to diversify

their intake by making admissions “contextual” – so “getting
The 666 bus route to Hel in
Poland is to be renamed, its
operator has announced. PKS
the Ivy League seven As at a school where the average is four counts more than
getting seven at a school that averages ten”. And the strategy is
Gdynia said it had decided to
change the number to 669, in
Simon Kuper working. Last year, state schools provided a record 72.5% of response to complaints from
Cambridge’s undergraduate entries; and 28% of Oxford students Christian groups that the
Financial Times identified as “black and minority ethnic”. Contrast this with, say, bus to Hel bears the Biblical
Harvard, where 43% of the white intake from 2009 to 2014 “number of the beast”. The
were either children of alumni, faculty or staff; or “on the route is mainly used by
tourists travelling to
dean’s interest list” (typically relatives of donors); or recruited beaches on the picturesque
as athletes: 75% would not have got in otherwise. This could Hel peninsula in the Baltic.
change if Ivy League colleges set less store by donations Religious conservatives have
(Harvard’s endowment is more than six times that of most long accused the bus route
top British universities). But it appears they don’t want to. of “spreading Satanism”,
expressing outrage that some
Britain is heading for a crash on the electric-car front, says Ben saw the issue as a “joke”.
Marlow. At the start of the year, Britishvolt, the exciting battery
The UK needs start-up that was going to transform the port of Blyth with its
gigafactory plans – ignominiously collapsed. Now, AMTE Power,
a fresh assault our last homegrown commercial battery cell maker, is pleading
for an emergency bailout. Worse still, Elon Musk, the key mover
on batteries in the industry, has no plans to set up one of Tesla’s coveted
gigafactories on our shores. On his recent European tour he
Ben Marlow visited France (he had two meetings with President Macron) and
Italy. The UK isn’t even on “his shortlist” it would seem. Which
The Daily Telegraph is grim news for our car industry. Vauxhall’s owner Stellantis and
other manufacturers say that, if they can’t access batteries here,
they’ll have to abandon the UK as they’ll otherwise be subjected
to punitive post-Brexit EU tariffs. No. 10 and the Treasury should
be frantically competing with the US and EU to woo corporations
with subsidies. Instead, they’re tinkering with taxes and
regulation. “It is myopic government at its very worst.”

For a case study in failure, it’s hard to beat Britain’s handling A craze is sweeping Chinese
of social care, says James Kirkup. It’s a chronically understaffed social media in which users
Social care is sector with 150,000 vacancies. And it’s going to get a lot worse
as so many care workers are either retiring (28% of the workforce
make and eat “white people
food”, such as bland
broken and we is over 55) or quitting for better paid jobs (the social care median
wage is close to the minimum wage). Add in the fact of an ageing
sandwiches, carrots sticks
and canned tuna, as a form
just won’t fix it population, and we’re going to need another half-a-million carers
over the next decade. The Government put a sticking plaster on
of self torture. “The point of
the white people’s meal is to
James Kirkup the crisis last year by adding social care to the list of “shortage” learn what it feels like to be
occupations and attracting 58,000 low-wage migrant workers. dead,” one social media user
The Times That’s just a temporary fix, though: as long as wages are too low explained under a photo of
to attract British staff, the crisis will grow. And there’s the rub. The a ham and cheese sandwich.
only way to enable wages to rise is to get more money to flow into Ideally it should have no
the system, which means raising more money (after death) from spices and impart no
the estates of those being cared for. Yet the politicians baulk at this enjoyment. Another dubbed
for fear of upsetting the voters. So we’ll just go on being “unhappy it the “lunch of suffering”.
about NHS waiting lists, unhappy about high immigration levels
and unhappy about poor care for the old and vulnerable”. A Paisley man has caused
alarm by sunbathing in
a park with up to 20 of his
When you put a litre of petrol in your car, are you really getting pet snakes. The Friends of
a litre? Does that 500g packet in the shop actually contain 500g? Barshaw Park Facebook
Regulations are We assume people check such things, says Polly Toynbee, but in
the UK that’s increasingly not the case. Savage budget cuts have
group was contacted by
several people who had
useless without led councils to shed ever more of their trading standards officers
(TSOs). Their number has halved in the past decade: 2,500 skilled
“concerns” about his
behaviour. “Nope. Ban it.
regulators professionals have been lost. Enfield Council in London is sacking
three of its last four TSOs to save money. The fourth is resigning
Ban him. No no no,” was
one Facebook user’s reaction.
Council rules, another
Polly Toynbee in protest. Does this matter? Yes, it does. We take the low-profile pointed out, do not allow
work of TSOs for granted, but they enforce more than 290 pieces snakes in the park. Others
The Guardian of legislation, inspecting everything from gas appliances and leapt to the man’s defence.
fireworks to car tyres, building cladding materials and personal “He is a lovely person, very
protection equipment. We rely on them to check that shops aren’t friendly, knowledgeable and
selling fake batteries, e-cigarettes with untested levels of heavy always willing to answer any
metals or counterfeit vodka. Given how often spot checks uncover questions,” said a local. “His
dodgy behaviour, it’s “hair-raising how little now gets inspected”. snakes are calm and I have
What’s the point of safety rules if there’s no one to enforce them? held them several times.”

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 Best of the American columnists NEWS 15

Biden’s dilemma: should he pardon Trump?

“To everything there is a season – a
time to build, a time to reap, a time
to sow. And a time to heal. This is the
time to heal in America.” So declared
President Biden in his 2020 victory
speech, said Marc A. Thiessen and
Danielle Pletka in The Washington
Post. It’s time for him to honour those
words – by pardoning Donald Trump.
That the former president mishandled
classified documents, and obstructed
the FBI’s efforts to recover them from
his possession, seems incontrovertible.
But putting him on trial would be
dangerously divisive. Many Americans The former president is set to stand trial in Florida
do not accept the legitimacy of the
indictment. About 80% of Republicans view the charges as
politically motivated. They see a “troubling pattern”: Hillary
Clinton wasn’t charged for mishandling classified material;
Trump is being hounded by various prosecutors. For the sake
of the nation, the president should pardon him.
A trial “will not bring closure but rather more angst”, agreed
Margaret Carlson in Washington Monthly. Already, there
have been threats of violence. Kari Lake, hailed as a rising
Republican star when she ran for Arizona governor last year,
said that to get Trump, prosecutors were “going to have to go
through me and 75 million Americans
just like me... And most of us are
card-carrying members of the NRA.”
There’s no guarantee in any case that
a trial would lead to a conviction. The
case is being tried in South Florida,
where the chances of a “few MAGA
loyalists” sneaking through the jury
selection process are higher than in
Washington DC. The randomly
selected presiding judge is Aileen
Cannon, a Trump appointee who
has been overturned twice in the
past for showing bias in his favour.
Trump doesn’t appear to be
expecting a pardon from the president, said Jeff Mordock in
The Washington Times – and Biden would struggle to get away
with such a move today. It would prompt “intense, scathing
criticism from within his party” and undercut a key message of
his re-election campaign, which is that Trump is “an extremist
who poses a threat to democracy”. Other leaders who have
issued controversial pardons have paid a price. President Ford,
for instance, saw his poll ratings plummet after he pardoned
Richard Nixon in 1974. Biden’s ratings are already low, stuck
at roughly 40%. The reality is that he may be in too weak
a position to show clemency to Trump, even if he wanted to.

In US elections, winning the most votes doesn’t always win you the White House, says Jason Willick.
The elections of 2000 and 2016 are cases in point: Democrat candidates won the popular vote in
The problem both those ballots, but were denied by the electoral college system, under which each state apportions
electoral votes, generally on a winner-takes-all basis. It’s a source of frustration for Democrats, but
with the some of them have been busily working on a solution. They want states to sign up to a pact, pledging
to award their electoral college votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote, even if
popular vote that candidate lost their state. The pact would take effect once states carrying 270 combined electoral
votes – the threshold to win the presidency – sign up. Already, 17 states have passed legislation to
Jason Willick join the pact, with Minnesota the latest to do so last month. Preventing popular-vote losers taking
the White House might seem a noble goal, but the truth is that this initiative would open a Pandora’s
The Washington Post box. Red and blue states “would be at one another’s throats” over their differing election policies. In
2020, Donald Trump “showed how a determined presidential loser can create a crisis in the post-
election period”. The last thing we need is a popular-vote pact that “creates more paths to crisis”.

The golf world is in uproar over a recent merger deal that gives Saudi Arabia control of the men’s
professional circuit. Forgive me if I don’t join in the protests, says Ray Brescia. My beef is with the
Golf courses: game itself, and the privileged treatment it enjoys in the US. Golf courses are an “environmental
blight across the country”, using tonnes of pesticides and fertilisers, and vast quantities of water,
a blight on the to maintain their manicured lawns. They impose significant costs on the places where they operate
– costs that, thanks to the generous tax breaks enjoyed by US golf courses, are paid by everyone,
environment whether or not they play the game. Take the Los Angeles Country Club. Its 300 acres of prime
real estate is assessed for tax purposes at only around $18m, despite the fact that the area’s median
Ray Brescia property price is $2m. Why should all Southern California residents have to underwrite the operation
of this and other golf clubs, when many of them might prefer the land to be used for something
Los Angeles Times else? At the very least, higher taxes on private clubs should be used to help fund affordable prices
at public courses. The LIV-PGA Tour mega-merger suggests that there’s “still big money in Big Golf”
today. “If that’s the case, it’s high time American taxpayers stopped subsidising it.”

Las Vegas is going upscale, says Henry Grabar. Fewer people visited it in 2022 than in 2019, but
its gambling revenue rose by more than 25% thanks to higher minimum bets and raised prices. The
Having a good “gentrification” of casinos is part of a wider trend in America’s leisure, hospitality and consumer
goods industries. Companies are recalibrating to serve “a smaller, richer clientele”. Take the theme-
time is going park operator Six Flags. Its visitor numbers are down, but so far this year customer daily spending at
its poshed-up parks is above $65 a person, almost twice the 2019 figure. Movie theatres are offering
upmarket reclining chairs and other perks, and charging accordingly. Automakers are prioritising larger, more
expensive cars, and discontinuing cheaper models. Ski resorts, too, are aiming at higher-end clientele.
Henry Grabar “The walk-up price of a day ticket at Vail is an astonishing $275, up from $85 in 2006.” What
explains this turn away from mass-market consumers? It may be down to pent-up post-pandemic
Slate demand outstripping supply. Or it may reflect the “ongoing bifurcation of Americans into two
groups, rich and poor, and away from the postwar middle-class consumer society”. Whatever the
reason, having a good time in America is “getting more expensive and exclusive”.

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

16 NEWS Best articles: International
Shipwreck off the Peloponnese: another migrant disaster
The fishing vessel had set sail on
Saturday 10 June from the Libyan port
of Tobruk, said Kathimerini (Athens).
It was dangerously overloaded: there
were at least 500 people on board,
possibly as many as 750 – mainly
Syrian, Egyptian, Afghan and Pakistani
nationals, who had paid up to $7,660
to be taken across the Mediterranean
to Italy. By Tuesday, it was clear that
the boat was in trouble. But according
to the Greek coast guard, when it
offered assistance, the crew refused,
saying that they wanted to continue
to Italy, and asked only for food and As many as 750 people “crammed” onto the boat
water. In the early hours of Wednesday,
in deep water about 50 miles off Pylos in the Peloponnese (while life. These people, now facing prosecution, are the real villains.
a coast guard vessel was at the scene), the engine of the vessel
stopped working. The boat moved erratically, perhaps because
passengers moved suddenly; then it capsized and sank. Coast
guards rescued 104 survivors, and recovered 78 bodies. The rest, who have “built their careers on resentment” towards refugees
reportedly including dozens of families, are presumed dead.
“How many people, children, women, young people, were lost
in the deep waters off Pylos?” asked Avgi (Athens). We may
never know the true number. But the worst migrant shipwreck
in a decade seems to mean little to the Greek government: “a
few hundred more in the death stats”, to add to 2,800 in the
Mediterranean in the past year, and
than 27,000 since 2014. Greece’s policy
has been increasingly harsh in recent
years. Under Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s
administration, arrivals have reduced
by 90%. Migrants crossing the Aegean
from Turkey are likely to be interned
for long periods or even illegally
pushed back. That is why these people
chose the more dangerous route to
Italy. But why is this our government’s
fault, asked Apogevmatini (Athens).
Legal borders have to be respected.
The refugees were “crammed” into
a derelict vessel by “criminal human
traffickers” with no respect for human
The government declared three days of national mourning, said
Kaki Bali in Deutsche Welle (Bonn). Even populist politicians
“appeared deeply moved”. This time, many have also been
shocked by evidence suggesting that the Greek coast guard did
its best to avoid rescuing the boat, presumably to avoid taking
responsibility for the migrants. Even so, nothing will change.
There is a strong “anti-migrant consensus” among Greek voters.
Next week’s elections are set to result in a clear majority for
Mitsotakis. Greece is committed to “Fortress Europe” policies.

Something very worrying is happening in France, says Clément Pétreault. Young people “aren’t
FRANCE making love any more”. Earlier this year, an Ifop poll showed that 43% of French people aged
15 to 24 had not had any sexual partners during the past year. “This abstinence (voluntary or not)
Why the young is accelerating.” Eight years ago, the figure was “only” 25%. In fairness, this is not just happening
in France. There’s a “sex recession” in the US and across much of the West. Why? The truth is that
are giving up today, “a thousand factors” conspire against the libido of the young. It’s not just Netflix and iPhones
on sex in the bedroom that come between couples – one survey revealed that 36% of young Americans had
recently turned down sex in favour of the TV. There is also a moral dimension: thanks to the influence
Le Point of “soft American puritanism”, infidelity has fallen out of fashion. It’s said that “eco-anxiety”
(Paris) inspires a kind of sobriety, “even in bed”. But of course online porn is probably the deciding factor:
the French lie third in the global ranking of Pornhub users. It’s ironic. The Church has been failing
to push chastity on the young for centuries. US Big Tech has managed it in a couple of decades.

The St Petersburg International Economic Forum, dubbed “Russia’s Davos”, used to be one of the
RUSSIA highlights of Vladimir Putin’s year, says Pyotr Kozlov. It was an opportunity to make “blockbuster”
business deals and show off his home town to world leaders. Past attendees have included Angela
Putin’s Davos: Merkel, and leaders of Italy, Japan, India and China. But thanks to Russia’s isolation, this year’s
event flatlined. Even the Kazakh president refused an invite; star visitors were Hungary’s foreign
a world-class minister and the leaders of Algeria, Cuba and Armenia. (Guests were advised to bring dollars and
embarrassment euros in cash, as foreign credit cards no longer work in Russia.) Right up to the wire, the organisers
struggled to lure high-profile Western business leaders like former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, who
The Moscow Times all refused, expressing their support for Ukraine. Getting anyone to attend was a “nightmare”,
(Amsterdam) organisers complained: tickets cost $25,000, and who wants to pay “the price of a car” when no
one of consequence will be there? Realising the event would be a PR disaster, the Kremlin yanked
the accreditation of Western journalists at the last minute. The event served “no real purpose”, said a
manager at a state-owned company – except as “a symbolic representation of everything being fine”.

In 2001, the Taliban leader Mullah Omar ordered the destruction of two giant 6th century Buddhas
AFGHANISTAN carved into a cliff face in Bamiyan, declaring them to be false gods. But now the Taliban, back in
power, is having second thoughts about its most notorious act of vandalism, says Rick Noack.
The Taliban’s Strapped for cash, the group sees tourism as a vital source of income, and the remnants, in an
impoverished central region of the country, have been reopened to visitors: Afghans are reportedly
softening line charged 58 cents (and foreigners $3.45) to visit. It reflects, perhaps, a wider shift – a sign of “a regime
that’s more pragmatic now than when it first ruled from 1996 to 2001”. The government claims that
on false gods more than a thousand guards are protecting cultural heritage across Afghanistan. “Staffers at Kabul’s
The Washington Post national museum were surprised last month to see senior Taliban officials at the inauguration of a
section of the institution dedicated to Buddhist artefacts.” It’s not at all clear that the leadership truly
wants to look after its rich cultural heritage, or is capable of it. But there are certainly signs of a
change of heart. In Bamiyan, visiting Taliban soldiers are “stunned” by the beauty of the site. “This
is the identity of our country,” said one, Kheyal Mohammad. “It shouldn’t have been bombed.”

THE WEEK 24 June 2023


What the scientists are saying…
Light drinking tamps down stress
Several studies have found that light
drinkers seems to have a reduced risk of
heart disease, but scientists have struggled
to explain why that might be the case.
Now research in the US has suggested that
one factor may be alcohol’s ability to tamp
down a stress response in the brain. The
large-scale study, involving 53,000 people,
confirmed that light to moderate drinkers
– one drink a day for women, one or two
a day for men – had a 21% lower chance
of heart attacks than teetotallers; and the
reduction was even greater in people with
pre-existing anxiety. Scans then showed
that the drinkers had less activity in the
amygdala, the part of the brain that
processes fear and threats – although
they had no alcohol in their blood at
the time of the scan. When the amygdala
is overexcited, it ramps up the nervous
system, putting the body into fight or flight
mode, which in turn leads to higher blood
pressure and increased inflammation. The
researchers say that by decreasing activity
in the amygdala, light drinking may over
time have a cardiovascular protective
effect. However, they are not advocating
drinking, because any amount of alcohol
raises the risk of cancer. Their hope is that
the finding will help find other ways of
calming the amygdala – exercise, perhaps,
or meditation, or even a drug.
The chemicals in our water
More than 50 chemicals – including
a range of pesticides, and prescription
and illegal drugs – have been found in the
waters off the south coast of England. For
an ongoing project aimed at examining
the impact of sewage discharges, scientists
from Portsmouth and Brunel universities
collected and analysed samples of water
and crustaceans from 22 sites around
Was the frail boy king really a warrior?
Tutankhamun has long been described as a
sickly boy king – a frail Pharaoh with a club
foot. But at the Cheltenham Science Festival,
biomedical Egyptologist Sofia Aziz argued
that, in fact, Tut may have been a hunter
and a warrior. Her analysis of his leg bones,
she explained, did not show the signs of
stress associated with limping – raising
the possibility that what looked like a
deformity was just a distortion caused
by the mummification process. As for his
missing toe, it may simply have got lost.
Items found inside his 3,000-year-old
tomb back up the theory that he was an
active young man. Leather armour and an
ostrich-feather fan hint that Tut was a soldier and a skilled hunter, while the 130 sticks
he was buried with may have been not mobility aids, but status symbols: some are
decorated with images of his enemies. Aziz argues that he was buried with six chariots
because he drove a chariot – and may have been killed in one. He is thought to have
died, aged 19, from complications of a broken leg. Possibly, he crashed or fell from
a fast-moving chariot because he was drunk: he was also buried with jars of wine.
Health & Science
Chichester Harbour: high levels of E.coli
Chichester and Langstone harbours. So
far, they have detected the presence of
more than 50 compounds including the
insecticide clothianidin, which is banned
for outdoor use in the UK (suggesting
it may have been lingering for years),
drugs used to treat diabetes and bladder
infections, and a chemical produced by
the liver after cocaine use. There were
also high levels of E.coli bacteria in some
samples. One, taken after a storm from
near the outflow pipe of a waste-water
treatment plant, contained 760 times the
levels of E. coli deemed safe for bathing
by the EU. “We need to go beyond talking
about poo in the water – now we are
looking at what’s in that human waste,”
said Bianca Carr, of the Clean Harbours
Partnership that coordinated the research.
“Now we know the chemicals that are in
it, the next step will be to look ... at what
cocaine and other human drugs are doing
to our water, to our food chain.”
King Tut: artefacts suggest an active life
NEWS 19
The alarming return of El Niño
Scientists at the US National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration
have confirmed the official arrival of
El Niño – the climate system fluctuation
associated with extreme conditions. The
phenomenon, which occurs every two to
seven years and typically lasts nine months
to a year, is caused by warm water building
up along the equator in the Eastern Pacific,
and is often accompanied by the slowing
or reversal of easterly trade winds. It
increases the risk of drought in Southeast
Asia, and of heavy rain and floods in
South America; and it is likely to have
an impact on everything from sugar crops
(and prices) and fisheries to sea levels and
electricity supplies. In the past, strong
El Niños have led to record warmth,
and in an already warming world, 2024 is
now predicted to be the hottest year ever,
globally. Separately, oceanographers
produced data showing that sea surface
temperatures in the North Atlantic are
1.09°C up on the mean dating back to
1982; in some areas, they are 4°C higher
than normal. A number of factors were
cited as possibly being behind the record
temperatures, including El Niño, wildfires
in Canada, and climate change.
Medical file
A groundbreaking blood test that can
detect the presence of up to 50 cancers
before symptoms appear could be offered
to a million people next year as part of
a new NHS trial. The Galleri test works
by looking for the DNA of tiny tumour
fragments, and can also predict where
in the body they may have originated.
It is currently being trialled on around
140,000 people, and The Times reports
that if the results prove successful, a much
larger trial will begin next summer.
Solar space stations
The UK could eventually derive its
electricity from solar power plants
floating in space. So said the Energy
Security Secretary Grant Shapps last
week, as he unveiled £4.3m in funding
to support the development of space-
based power by private companies and
universities. The technology involves
capturing energy from the Sun using
solar panels attached to satellites; the
energy is then beamed in the form of
radio or microwaves to a receiver on
Earth, for conversion into electricity.
Unlike Earth-based farms, the orbiting
panels would be almost constantly
bathed in light, providing a continuous
source of power. Although it sounds like
science fiction, researchers at Caltech, in
Pasadena, say they have just managed
to capture and send a small amount
of energy to Earth from a prototype
station, and China has ambitious plans
to switch on a space plant in 2028.
24 June 2023 THE WEEK
22 NEWS
Pick of the week’s
Gossip
The late Glenda Jackson
(see p.42) was unimpressed
by life at Westminster when
she became an MP in 1992.
She was dismayed when
a fellow MP asked her:
“What do you want to come
here for? You’re famous
already.” And she found her
colleagues uncollaborative
and ill-disciplined. “The
kind of behaviour you saw
in Parliament would not be
tolerated for 30 seconds
in a professional theatre,”
she said. “There’s a lack of
professionalism, very poor
timekeeping, a great deal
of wasting time, and egos
the size of which I’ve never
seen in my life before.”
Liz Truss has said the media
is partly to blame for the
failure of her premiership.
Speaking at a conference
in Dublin, she accused the
press of spending too much
time generating “froth”,
and lamented that it treats
politics as “a branch of the
entertainment industry”.
As for last year’s Daily Star
cover, in which the tabloid
wondered what would last
longer – a lettuce or her
tenure as PM – Truss was
not amused. “I just think
it’s puerile,” she said.
Before his death in 2013,
the novelist Tom Sharpe
revealed to his biographer
that, well into old age, he’d
carried around a briefcase
full of pornographic
magazines featuring
“women dressed in rubber
or latex”, along with “other
objects of a sexual nature”.
The story reminded The
Times’s Carol Midgley of the
joke about the man who is
caught watching porn by his
wife, and quickly switches
to the fishing channel.
“You should keep it on
the sex one,” she tells him.
“You know how to fish.”
THE WEEK 24 June 2023
Talking points
The Sussexes: the end of their $20m deal
“When the Duke and Duchess
of Sussex announced their
$20m, multi-year deal with
Spotify in 2020, it was hailed
as the centrepiece of the
couple’s growing business
empire,” said Nadia Khomami
in The Guardian. Last week,
however, news broke that the
partnership was coming to
an end. The decision was
described as mutual, but
insiders reported that the
couple had failed to meet
a “productivity benchmark”,
and would not be getting the
full payment. In other words,
said Reaction, Spotify had Harry and Meghan: “grifters”?
looked at their total output
– 12 episodes of Meghan’s dreary Archetypes
podcast, in which she interviewed some of her
famous friends about the “labels that hold
women back” – and concluded that it just
wasn’t good enough. One senior executive
went rather further, by implying that the couple
had conned the firm. Speaking on his own
podcast, Bill Simmons declared that Meghan
and Harry should have produced a show called
“The F**king Grifters”.
To be fair, this isn’t just about the Sussexes, said
James Warrington in The Daily Telegraph. It’s
also “the latest sign that Spotify’s big bet on
podcasting has gone sour”. Four years ago, the
music-streaming giant started splurging millions
on headline-grabbing podcast deals, hoping that
Clean energy: Labour unveils its plan
Edinburgh was “a brave choice as the venue
for the launch of Keir Starmer’s new energy
and climate policy”, said Fiona Harvey and
Severin Carrell in The Guardian. It “showed
a willingness to face head-on Labour’s energy
dilemma”: how to move the UK to a low-
carbon footing, without destroying jobs. With
a 200,000-strong North Sea oil workforce, and
nearly half of the UK’s onshore wind farms,
Scotland is “caught between the fossil fuel past
and the renewable future”. Starmer’s message
was that it could have both, with a carefully
managed transition: a Labour government will
end new North Sea oil and gas exploration, but
will honour projects that have already been
approved. It will also create a publicly owned
green energy company, based in Scotland,
which will coordinate a “Local Power Plan”.
Communities across the UK will receive
discounts – such as council tax reductions –
if they sign up to new “clean energy” projects.
“No serious politician questions the wisdom
of a transition to clean energy,” said The Times.
And Starmer’s plans are mostly “convincing”, at
least in principle. It makes sense, for instance, to
lift the de facto ban on onshore wind farms in
England. But the North Sea moratorium seems
“myopic”. Whatever happens, Britain will use
oil and gas for decades to come. Why should it
“ad dollars would follow”.
It even created a dedicated
campus in LA called Pod City.
But the expected revenue
hasn’t materialised, and it is
now laying off staff and
rethinking expensive deals.
Signing the Sussexes generated
useful media buzz, but relative
to other podcasters, Meghan
produced very little content,
and seems not to have hauled
in the listeners: having initially
topped the charts, her series is
no longer even in the top 100.
That doesn’t surprise me, said
James Marriott in The Times.
In a market crowded with limp
celebrity podcasts, the show was notably bad –
the “distilled essence of purest Californian
banality” – and Meghan was awful on it: she
introduced fascinating guests, then covered
them in “gush” (“you’re choosing liberation
and newness; I love that so much”) until they
became boring, which is “the opposite of good
interviewing technique”. Spotify doesn’t release
listener figures, but my guess is that Archetypes’s
were very low, and that is worrying for the
Sussexes. They can’t keep droning on about the
horrible royal family. What with Harry’s book
and the Netflix documentary, it’s a story they’ve
“milked to within an inch of its life”, and there
are signs that people are getting tired of it. But
the failure of Archetypes suggests that no one
wants to listen to them talk about anything else.
not be British oil and gas, funding “well-paid
jobs in Scotland”? Labour’s position is a sly
compromise, said David Bol in The Herald.
Letting the Tories give the green light to
some new projects – including possibly the
“controversial and gigantic” Rosebank oil field
off Shetland – allows the transition to take place
over a longer period. But it also means that this
Government will do much of the “dirty work”.
Labour’s plans are fairly chaotic, said Martin
Ivens on Bloomberg. Until last week, the party’s
flagship policy was to spend a colossal £28bn
a year on green growth – more, relative to the
UK economy, than even the US is spending in
subsidies. But after a “battle royale” between
the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and the
energy spokesman, Ed Miliband, this plan has
now been put on ice. The race to net zero is
supposedly the great political goal of our time,
said Tom Harris in The Daily Telegraph. But the
debate lacks one important ingredient: honesty.
Both Labour and the Tories are promising new
green jobs in the hundreds of thousands, cheaper
heating bills, less reliance on foreign energy.
We’re also being asked to believe that this will
happen “at zero financial cost”. This cannot be
right: there will be winners and losers; for some,
there will be pain. Our leaders must come clean.
We know there is no such thing as a free lunch.
 Talking points NEWS 23

The Covid Inquiry: searching for answers Wit &

“Every time we think we’ve
seen or heard the worst of it,
another shocking detail rears
the more stringent policies
followed by Taiwan and
Singapore, but make no
Wisdom
its head,” said Katie Strick in mention of the looser measures “Success didn’t spoil me; I’ve
the Evening Standard. Footage followed by Sweden, which always been insufferable.”
emerged last weekend showing ended up with one of the Fran Lebowitz, quoted
dozens of young Tory staffers lowest excess-mortality rates. in Forbes
drinking and dancing at a It’s telling that witnesses to “When I have to cry, I think
“jingle and mingle” party in the inquiry, as well as staff, are about my love life. And
Conservative HQ at the height all being urged to take lateral when I have to laugh, I think
of the pandemic in December flow tests – a ridiculously about my love life.”
2020. The clip is mortifying, outdated precaution. Such a Glenda Jackson, quoted
agreed Tim Stanley in The body, one suspects, is “unlikely in The Guardian
Daily Telegraph – and not just to spend much time exploring
on account of the “novelty the possibility that the “Making the decision
braces” and “ugly jumpers”. restrictions were excessive”. to have a child – it is
It was an unwelcome reminder momentous. It is to decide
of the double standards of Tory staff at the “jingle and mingle” This “painstaking” inquiry, for ever to have your heart
many officials during the which has years to run, is go walking around outside
lockdowns – their contempt for the rules they about learning from the past, not scoring your body.”
helped impose on others. The hypocrisy of the political points, said Zoe Williams in The Elizabeth Stone, quoted in
political class during that bleak time explains Guardian. Its first module is examining The Daily Telegraph
why “anger towards the Tories is so intense”, Britain’s resilience and state of preparedness for
“Hating the things other
and why there was such a charged atmosphere a pandemic, and it has already heard interesting
people like is not a reliable
at the first public hearings of the Covid Inquiry evidence. For example, the epidemiologist
sign of superiority.”
last week. “Relatives came carrying photographs Michael Marmot explained that the crucial
James Marriott in The Times
of the dead. They want answers.” factor in our experience of Covid was the
underlying health of the population, which “My wealth has come from
Whether this inquiry will deliver useful ones has suffered since 2010 as a result of austerity a combination of living in
remains to be seen, said Daniel Hannan in The measures. More such criticism will doubtless America, some lucky genes,
Sunday Telegraph. The first batch of questions be heard over the months to come, but the and compound interest.”
sent to ministers – which asked, among other exercise isn’t designed to pin blame on a single Warren Buffett, quoted
things, why face masks weren’t mandated from administration or PM. “It’s not there to justify on The Motley Fool
the start, and whether the PM really used the lockdowns or regret that Brexit eclipsed
phrase “let the bodies pile high” – seemed more everything else. It exists for the one thing we “Fashion is a form
polemical than interrogative. The questions cite don’t want to think about: the next pandemic.” of ugliness so intolerable
that we have to alter it
every six months.”
Elizabeth Gilbert: a writer cancels herself Oscar Wilde, quoted
in The Spectator
On 4 September 1939, the day were upset, said Arabella Pike in “While the main purpose
after Britain declared war on The Sunday Times. But really it of a door is to admit,
Germany, the BBC Proms opened was “the keyboard warriors of its secondary purpose
with pieces by Richard Wagner. In Goodreads” who brought the is to exclude.”
the following weeks, said Kenan book down. Gilbert was the Edith Wharton, quoted
Malik in The Observer, works by victim of “review bombing” on in The Paris Review
Bach, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, the website, which is famous for
Brahms and Strauss were played. its “woke” pile-ons: hundreds of “Democracy is the theory
Even when fighting the Nazis, angry one-star reviews were left that the common people
Britons found it “possible to by people who can’t all have know what they want,
appreciate the culture of an enemy received advanced copies. Gilbert’s and deserve to get it
country” as part of their common decision to cancel her own book good and hard.”
civilisation. Compare and contrast was a “drastic overreaction”, and H.L. Mencken, quoted
that admirable sentiment with the disturbing at a time when many in USA Today
hysteria that caused the American publishers are already showing
author Elizabeth Gilbert (of Eat, A “drastic overreaction”? a “woeful lack of courage” on
Pray, Love fame) to withdraw her hot-button issues. Statistics of the week
forthcoming novel, The Snow Forest, in response University admissions staff
I found Gilbert’s reaction rather refreshing, said spend only two minutes on
to what she called an outpouring of “anger,
average reading each
sorrow, disappointment and pain”. Her offence? Emma Brockes in The Guardian. It’s rare to see personal statement – the
She had set her book in Russia. a writer take a political stand so at odds with 4,000-character essays
their commercial interests. You don’t have to students must submit as part
The criticisms make no sense at all, said Jane agree with that stand to applaud her sincerity. of their applications.
Shilling in The Daily Telegraph. The novel is I disagree entirely, said Franklin Foer in The The Guardian
about a family who escaped Stalin’s terror by Atlantic. “The war in Ukraine is one of the great
living for decades in a remote part of Siberia. moral struggles of our time, because it is being 829,000 days were lost to
© THE DAILY MIRROR

Obviously it’s not pro-Russia, let alone pro-
Putin. But at the time of the Ukraine War, the
“mere fact of a Russian setting was enough to
condemn it”. It seems that some Ukrainians
waged on behalf of the liberal order.” Gilbert’s strike action in the UK in
decision to bow to the keyboard warriors – “to December, the most in any
month since 2011.
indulge in the spirit of illiberalism in the name The Independent
of Ukraine” – is to “disrespect the cause itself”.

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

24 NEWS
Cricket: “Bazball” tactics fall short in Edgbaston thriller
Since becoming England captain last summer,
Ben Stokes has repeatedly said he’s on a mission
to make Test cricket entertaining, said Mike
Atherton in The Times. And it cannot be denied
that in the first Ashes Test at Edgbaston, England
gloriously achieved that goal. This was a “brilliant,
absorbing Test” that will be “inked into the
history books as a classic”. And yet while England
made “all the running”, they still somehow
contrived to lose the match, said Paul Newman
in the Daily Mail. Set 281 to win, Australia got
over the line on a rain-affected fifth day with
just two wickets to spare. England had appeared
overwhelming favourites when Joe Root “held on
to a spectacular return catch” from Alex Carey
to leave Australia eight down with 54 runs still
required. Yet in an agonising final hour, Australia’s Stokes: “If you fail, then you fail” held up as proof of his towering genius. And the
captain Pat Cummins – partnered by off-spinner
Nathan Lyon – nervelessly knocked off the remaining runs to
give Australia a one-nil lead.
England’s approach throughout this match “embodied both the
genius and the recklessness” of “Bazball”, the remorselessly
attacking philosophy named after head coach Brendon
McCullum, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph. It was
Stokes’s commitment to this approach that “emboldened Zak
Crawley to lash the opening ball of the Ashes for four”, and
Sport
which led Joe Root to begin the fourth day
“with an absurd attempt at reverse-ramping
Pat Cummins”. Yet the same spirit of adventure
produced crucial errors, including England’s
“bizarre” first-innings declaration before they’d
even reached 400, and some “wacky final-day
field placements when they had their chance to
put Australia to the sword”. Stokes will be sure
to ignore the grumbling – it’s a tenet of Bazball
that there should be no recriminations – but you
do have to wonder if this is “a judicious way to
negotiate a 6½-week Ashes series”.
Yet if England had won, the post-mortem would
be different, said Andy Bull in The Guardian.
Every unorthodox decision Stokes made would be
margins were painfully fine. With Australia still
30 runs short, Lyon offered a chance to Stokes – a “leaping one-
handed catch” that England’s captain only just failed to cling on
to, but which could well have changed the final result. Bazball
has a high degree of risk built into it, and Stokes has made clear
he’s willing to accept this. “If you fail, then you fail. So what?”
he said before the match started. England “might well do a little
tinkering” in the weeks ahead – the odd change to their starting
line-up; a few different fielding placements – but anyone expecting
Stokes to “change direction now hasn’t been paying attention”.

Football: France’s superstar could soon be shining in Spain

It may be the “greatest football transfer story ever
told”, said Barney Ronay in The Guardian. Ever
since Kylian Mbappé emerged a decade ago as one
of the game’s most remarkable talents, Real Madrid
– the club he idolised as a child – have been on a
mission to sign him. A deal has looked imminent on
several occasions, but the Frenchman has always
eluded the Spanish superclub. As a 14-year-old, he
signed for Monaco – his parents wanted him to stay
in France; and in 2017 he turned down Real to join
Paris Saint-Germain – on the guarantee he’d get first-
team action. Then, a year ago, another offer from
Real looked certain to lure the superstar from PSG –
only for the French club to offer their prize player a Mbappé: the Real deal?
three-year contract worth a reported €250m, as well
as a – “frankly quite weird” – say in how the club should be run.
And now the saga has taken yet another turn, said Ian Hawkey in
The Times. It seems Mbappé has notified PSG “by formal letter”
that he won’t be triggering the optional third year on his current
deal. And that paves the way for him to leave on a
free transfer next summer. Desperate to recoup some
of the millions they’ve spent on the player, PSG will
very likely be forced to sell him this summer.
Mbappé’s move seems to have caught PSG unawares,
but there was nothing remotely surprising about it,
said Jonathan Wilson in The Observer. What on earth
made them think that Mbappé – a player who clearly
knows his worth – was “going to toddle along” to
the office of owner Nasser Al-Khelaifi and “cheerily
sign an extension”? It’s not just that the club’s two
other major stars have moved on – Lionel Messi
played his final game earlier this month; Neymar is
linked with a move to Saudi club Al Hilal – it’s that
Mbappé’s “extraordinary gifts” are “wasted” in the French league,
where the mediocrity of the opposition means he’s rarely
stretched. The best players “want to test themselves against the
best” – and for Mbappé, that makes a move to Real seem logical.

Commentary box Sporting headlines

Murray seals another title
“Andy Murray’s hopes of
positioning himself for a deep
run at Wimbledon” received
a boost at Nottingham last
Sunday, as the Scot beat Arthur
Cazaux to claim his second
consecutive grass-court title, said
Tumaini Carayol in The Guardian.
The 36-year-old, who skipped
the French Open to focus on
his grass-court game, played McIlroy: “getting closer”
“smooth, quality tennis” against
the Frenchman, beating him 6-4, 6-4. This
victory, following on from his win at Surbiton,
lifts Murray to 38 in the rankings, raising his
hopes of a valuable seeding at Wimbledon. And
it was a double victory for Britain at Nottingham, McIlroy afterwards. “When I do finally win this
as Katie Boulter clinched the women’s title,
beating compatriot Jodie Burrage
6-3, 6-3 in the final.
McIlroy narrowly pipped
“Rory McIlroy’s agonising nine-
year wait for a fifth major” came
tantalisingly close to ending last
Sunday, but the Northern
Irishman ended up second best at
the US Open to a 125-1 outsider,
said James Corrigan in The Daily
Telegraph. Wyndham Clark’s
previous best placing in a major
had been “a tie for 75th”. But at the LA Country
Club, the American found the form of his life,
resisting the world No. 3’s challenge to prevail
by a single shot. “I’m getting closer,” said
next major, it’s going to be really, really sweet.”
Football England beat Malta
4-0 and North Macedonia 7-0,
making it four wins out of
four in their Euros qualifiers.
Formula 1 Max Verstappen
claimed the 41st race victory
of his career – equalling
Ayrton Senna’s tally – by
winning the Canadian
Grand Prix. Aston Martin’s
Fernando Alonso came
second. Lewis Hamilton
of Mercedes came third.
Cycling Swiss cyclist Gino
Mäder has died at the age of
26. The former Giro d’Italia
stage winner sustained fatal
injuries after crashing into a
ravine at the Tour de Suisse.

THE WEEK 24 June 2023


Pick of the week’s correspondence
AI cannot do God’s work
To The Daily Telegraph
At Mass last Sunday, after his
sermon celebrating Corpus
Christi, our parish priest
confessed that he hoped
nobody would congratulate
him on his sermon, as it had
been written by AI in seconds.
After the service, he told me
of the parameters he set, and
that the sermon was as given,
except that he asked for a joke
to be included. This turned out
to be unsuitable for repetition
in a church (or anywhere else
in polite society). The verdict
was that the sermon was
nowhere near his normal
standard. So much for AI.
Dr Chris Topping, Pilling,
Lancashire
One country separated...
To The Times
Apropos your report – “Army
could get shot of ‘male’ ranks”
– in Old English the suffix
“-man” indicated a human
being of either sex, while the
noun meaning a male person
was “wer” (hence “werewolf”).
During the Norman period
“wer” was replaced by “man”,
while also retaining its original
meaning. There is thus nothing
exclusively male about terms
such as rifleman, chairman
or spokesman. Context makes
clear what an ambiguous word
means. No one would read
your headline as meaning that
the Army was getting a bullet
fired at it or being offered
a small glass of whisky.
Rev Stephan Harker, Lancaster
...by a common language
To The Economist
The entire history of English
is that of mergers and
acquisitions. As Jorge Luis
Borges observed, in English
there are two words for every
idea: one Saxon and one Latin
(credit the Norman Conquest
in 1066 for the latter). “Dark”
versus “obscure”, “regal” vs.
“kingly”, “spirit” vs. “ghost”
were among his favourite
examples. Fast forward to
William Dalrymple’s chronicle
of The East India Company,
which notes upfront that
“loot” comes from a
Hindustani word for plunder.
The evolution of English takes
the path of least resistance.
Expect a few Ukrainian
words to be appropriated next.
Yacov Arnopolin, US
O Letters have been edited
LETTERS 27
Exchange of the week his local example. We live in
the same area, but our road is
The law and the right to choose one of the few not bollarded,
and hence is now used as a rat
To The Guardian run by drivers previously using
I have always supported a woman’s right to abortion and other roads. The result is a
will continue to do so – within the law, up to 24 weeks. It is huge increase in traffic, danger,
a woman’s right to choose what happens to her body and pollution and disturbance.
the choice to do so should not be criminalised. But I had Some (mainly richer) residents
a premature daughter at 33 weeks who is now a thriving gain; others lose greatly.
24-year-old. I do not believe the right to choose extends that Peter and Jen Golding,
far. I know nothing about the woman in question and cannot Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne
imagine the trauma that she went through, taking abortion
pills at that late stage. But there was access to healthcare and Students forever in debt
support even during Covid. Why did she not seek alternatives? To The Daily Telegraph
The law is out of date and unbalanced, and the courts Your recent article on student
continue to treat women far more harshly than men, who debt struck a chord. I
tend to commit more violent crimes more often, but I am graduated in 2015 and started
uncomfortable with the blanket application of a social media working in corporate London.
slogan in this situation. It implies that women have the right My first salary put me above
to choose an abortion at that late stage. We don’t. the threshold to begin paying
Alison Holman, Nottingham back my loan of £43,000.
I have been paying my loan
To The Guardian off consistently since (it comes
Under the current law a woman’s right to life takes priority right out of my pay cheque).
over that of the foetus at every stage, but the right to choose I now pay off £400 per month.
abortion fades as pregnancy advances. Our current abortion Last week I checked my
law does not really explain why the foetus has growing balance. It read £48,672.86.
importance, since it is not a person and therefore has no rights. The interest fluctuates, so it’s
Using the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act makes no unpredictable. I’ll continue
sense, since this act sets out rules about what cannot be done to repay my debt (as though
to other living people (it was intended to protect women from I have a choice); I suppose it’s
abortionists, not foetuses from mothers). Our fundamental all written off after 30 years,
problem is that the law cannot treat a foetus as to any extent so that makes it worth it, right?
a person, yet it is clear that we recognise that, by 32 weeks, to Jennifer Redman, London
some extent it is. The arcane legal rule that a foetus is a legal
person only if born alive can only be changed by Parliament. Covid Inquiry take note
It is time that Parliament, when determining how to treat To The Times
those who kill a foetus, considered whether a foetus is to any Many years ago, when training
extent a person, whether it could hold increasing rights as officer cadets, our debrief
pregnancy advances, and how we, as a society, agree such focused on three questions:
rights should be balanced against the rights of the gestator. what went well, what went
Until then the courts, as they have this time, have no option badly and what would you do
but to work with the established legal rules. differently next time? Baroness
Mary Lowth, researcher, Dickson Poon School of Law, Hallett [who is leading the
King’s College London Covid Inquiry] could save a
lot of money by asking each
Unproductive servants hostility towards him. If he had agency to submit a response
To The Daily Telegraph at any time before the hearings on these simple lines.
If Jeremy Hunt is to increase genuinely thought this might Rhiannon Carvel, Whitby,
the productivity of the civil be the case, his legal team North Yorkshire
service, it may be salutary would have been obliged to ask
to note that despite a 24% that Harman stand down. Had
increase in the number of civil she declined, the hearing would
servants from 2016, and an have opened with a submission
increase in expenditure for that unless she recused herself,
consultants from £700m in the process would be invalid.
2016 to £2.8bn projected None of this happened.
for this year, productivity What the law will not do
is down by 5%. Perhaps one is allow an individual facing
conclusion is that there are a judicial hearing to keep an
too many doing too little. allegation of bias in their
Paul Cook, Hayling Island, back pocket and produce
Hampshire it only if they lose.
Stephen Sedley, former lord
Johnson’s hindsight justice of appeal “It’s a small studio
To The Guardian flat, but your mortgage
repayments will make
Boris Johnson now alleges The road more travelled it feel like a much
that the Privileges Committee’s To The Guardian grander property”
findings are vitiated by Harriet Alec Collerton praises low-
Harman’s long-standing traffic neighbourhoods, citing © MATT/THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
24 June 2023 THE WEEK
 ARTS
Review of reviews: Books
Book of the week
Blue Machine: How the
Ocean Shapes our World
by Helen Czerski
Torva 464pp £20
The Week bookshop £15.99
From our land-based perspective, it is
easy to view the oceans as little more
than the “salty, wet bits in between”
the world’s continents, said Graham
Lawton in New Scientist. But in her
fascinating and timely book, the
oceanographer Helen Czerski points
out how wrong this perspective is.
The oceans, she says, are not only
extraordinarily complex and varied, Some turtles cry 80 times an hour
but “vastly important” for the rest of
the planet. She likens them to a “machine” or “engine”, one that
powers many of the Earth’s other systems. This engine “controls
the weather and climate, provides terrestrial species with food
and other resources, and creates a life-saving buffer against the
wild swings of temperature between night and day and across the
seasons”. We are familiar with scientists discussing the “weird and a powerful sense of “just how underappreciated the oceans are”.
wonderful biodiversity” hidden in the ocean depths, but less used
to them analysing the “salinity and density” of the water. Czerski
mostly writes about the ocean’s physical features: submarine
mountains, volcanoes, abyssal plains, ocean basins. Czerski has
such a “lovely way with words” that she makes even abstruse
ocean physics “fascinating”.
Cormac McCarthy: a novelist of the “apocalyptic sublime”
The American writer Cormac McCarthy, who
died last week aged 89, was a novelist “utterly
wedded to the apocalyptic sublime”, said Rob
Doyle in The Guardian. Over a career that
produced 12 novels and two plays – and
spawned some excellent film adaptations,
notably the Coen brothers’ No Country for
Old Men – he wrote obsessively about the
“darkness, violence, horror and chaos he
perceived at the core of all creation”. He
did so, however, not with the “hysterical
terror of H.P. Lovecraft, but with an ecstatic
lyricism more like that of Muslim mystic-
poets rapturously praising their holy-beloved”.
It was McCarthy’s fifth novel, Blood
Meridian (1985), that “exploded” his
“Uncomfortable in the spotlight”
reputation, and is today regarded as his
masterpiece. Set in the US-Mexico borderlands of the mid-
1800s, this “revisionist western” follows a gang of bounty
hunters searching for Native American scalps. Notable for its
“epic, extravagant savagery”, it also features McCarthy’s most
unforgettable creation, the “Luciferian” Judge Holden, one of
whose utterances – “Whatever in creation exists without my
knowledge exists without my consent” – has “become a
meme-slogan of the internet age”.
© MARION ETTINGER
The darkness was there from the start, said Robbie Millen in
The Times. McCarthy’s first novel, The Orchard Keeper (1965), to write a book, you probably shouldn’t be talking about it.”
To order these titles or any other book in print, visit
theweekbookshop.co.uk or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835
Opening times: Monday to Saturday 9am-5.30pm and Sunday 10am-4pm
29
It helps that she’s a superb storyteller
who illuminates her scientific
arguments with well-chosen anecdotes,
said Horatio Clare in The Daily
Telegraph. “She explains how the
Chinese ships rode the monsoons to
Africa and back”, and why leatherback
turtles cry 80 times an hour (to rid
themselves of the salt they imbibe
while eating jellyfish). She even comes
up with a theory for why Mark Antony
and Cleopatra lost the Battle of Actium
– one that counters Pliny the Elder’s
suggestion that a multitude of remora
fish prevented their ships ramming
into Octavian’s fleet. Much more likely,
Czerski insists, is that they were slowed
by “dead water” – a phenomenon
common in the Ionian Sea, where
fresher water sitting on a saltier layer
creates forces that can stop a ship dead.
In the hands of a mediocre writer, a book such as this could have
felt “vast and formless”, said Tom Whipple in The Times. Czerski,
however, is “far from a bad writer”. Drawing on her own ocean
experiences – both scientific and recreational – she leaves us with
And she shows how dangerous that lack of care is, at a time
when climate change is interfering with its functions, said David
Abulafia in The Spectator. Wisely, Czerski doesn’t fill her book
with “constant alerts” about our folly. What she does – and does
“extremely well” – is “set out clearly and calmly the design of
the ocean engine”. Her book is both “excellent and important”.
opens with an attempted murder. In his second,
Outer Dark, there is “incest and infanticide”,
while his third, Child of God (1973), follows a
psychopath. Yet McCarthy did later vary his
tone. His Border Trilogy in the 1990s (All the
Pretty Horses, The Crossing and Cities of the
Plain) was notable for being “set in a less chilling
version of the American west”, and found a
wide audience. The Road, his Pulitzer-winning
2006 novel about a father and son in a post-
apocalyptic America, was “heartbreaking” as
well as terrifying. After The Road, McCarthy
lapsed into a “16-year silence”; he devoted time
to his interest in science, and tried his hand at
screenwriting. Last year, “to everyone’s surprise”,
he published two novels: The Passenger and
Stella Maris. Neither was well received.
McCarthy grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee. He lived there
for much of his life, before moving to New Mexico with
his third wife. Although he was widely seen as a recluse, the
truth was more that he lived “determinedly outside the literary
mainstream”, said Dwight Garner in The New York Times. He
only ever granted a “handful of interviews”, one of which –
improbably – was to Oprah Winfrey, after she chose The Road
for her book club. “He seemed uncomfortable in the spotlight”,
telling Winfrey: “You spend a lot of time thinking about how
24 June 2023 THE WEEK
30 ARTS Drama & Music
Musical: 42nd Street
Sadler’s Wells, London EC1, until 2 July, then touring (42ndstreettour.com) Running time: 2hrs 35mins ++++
In 2021, the success of Anything Standard. But the show is
Goes at the Barbican proved packed with classic songs –
that there remains a strong including We’re in the Money
appetite for “classic tune and toe and Lullaby of Broadway. And
shows”, said Fiona Mountford Baisden turns in such a superb
in The i Paper. And this new performance, it would “perfectly
production of 42nd Street – mirror the arc of her character”
a musical that was first staged – had she not already wowed
in 1980, but which is based audiences in Anything Goes.
on a 1933 Busby Berkeley The “gossamer thin” and
choreographed film – is sure to wildly “outdated plot” is a
delight. The archetypal showbiz problem, said Claire Allfree in
story, it is about a chorus girl The Daily Telegraph: with no
who becomes a star, and in this “decent book to anchor them”,
revival, it has a dream leading the song and dance routines
lady in Nicole-Lily Baisden, as “seem to float free in their
well as “exquisitely expressive” Energy and pizzazz abound in a “classic tune and toe shoe” own ether”. But in that sense
tap routines from choreographer 42nd Street is all about the
Bill Deamer – and all the “energy and pizzazz” you could hope big numbers – and they really are fabulous. The tap dancing
for, from the show’s opening scene to its “shimmering finale”. sequences are “so mesmeric and weightless, they induce a sort of
Set during the Depression, 42nd Street’s message is one of trance”, while the songs “send the soul soaring. If you want to feel
“bright positivity”, said Lyndsey Winship in The Guardian: “buck the beat of the dancing feet, this really is the only show in town.”
up, lace up your dancing shoes, get out there and put on a show.
And also, be young, pretty and ever so nice, and good fortune The week’s other opening
will come your way.” Some recent musical revivals (Oklahoma!, Romeo and Juliet Almeida Theatre, London N1 (020-7359
Carousel) have been updated for modern audiences. For this 4404). Until 29 July
co-production with the Leicester Curve (which will be going on Rebecca Frecknall was behind the recent hit productions of
a nationwide tour), director Jonathan Church has opted to retain Streetcar and Cabaret. Her fast-paced Romeo and Juliet is “not as
the feel of the period, with mild sexism, “deco sparkle”, and black radical a reconceptualisation, but has its own stylistic inventions
and white newsreel of the unemployed. Some of the supporting and brings a beguiling intensity in its faithfulness” (Guardian).
cast are strangely lacklustre, said Nick Curtis in the Evening

Albums of the week: three new releases

Cuarteto Christine and Amaarae:
Casals: the Queens: Fountain Baby
J.S. Bach – The Paranoïa, Golden Child/
Art of Fugue Angels, True Interscope
Harmonia Love
Mundi Because Music
£14 £13

Bach’s The Art of Fugue is “one of the
musical world’s most striking wonders”,
said Geoff Brown in The Times. A
“pinnacle of the contrapuntal art”, it is
usually performed by keyboard players,
but string quartets, chamber ensembles –
even a quartet of saxophones – have all
had a go. This latest interpretation is by
the Barcelona-based string quartet Cuarteto
Casals, and it is “gripping”. Performing on
period instruments, with period bows, the
musicians “inject passion and warmth
into everything they touch”, and the
“conversations and arguments built into
Bach’s textures” shine through brilliantly.
There is no definitive version of The
Art of Fugue, said Andrew Clements in
The Guardian. Bach seems to have written
it to “satisfy himself”; he added pieces
and reordered the sequences before it
was published, and did not specify what
instruments it should be played by. The
The new album from Christine and the
Queens (an alias for the French musician
born Héloïse Letissier, now known as
Chris) is a “howl of despair sublimated into
astonishingly beautiful experimental pop,
drenched in warm celestial light, punctured
by spikes of confused pain”, said Rachel
Aroesti in The Guardian. Chris, who last
year began using male pronouns, has long
specialised in “immaculately cool, obliquely
catchy, 1980s-flavoured synthpop” that
muses on queer identities. But this may be
his “masterpiece”. “Hypnotically melodic,
clever, stylish, serious, fun, addictively
unexpected and euphorically danceable, it’s
the kind of pop they don’t make any more.”
I found it “sometimes heavenly,
sometimes testing”, said Helen Brown in
The Independent. Featuring Madonna as a
“sexy-sage” narrator, and taking inspiration
from the Aids drama Angels in America, the
album is sprawling and “occasionally self-
When Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae
(Ama Serwah Genfi) released her superb
2020 debut album The Angel You Don’t
Know, she was “immediately dubbed an
alté-pop pioneer” – a fusion genre that
combines elements of afrobeats, dancehall,
reggae, hip hop and alternative R&B, said
Christine Yemi on NME. On this “thrilling”
follow-up, the 28-year-old “pushes the
boundaries of African music to new,
glorious highs”, with a sensational
collection of “electric anthems”, and a
sound that takes in orchestral strings,
melodic rap and experimental pop.
If Amaarae’s debut was “blissful”, this
album feels both more ambitious and more
confident, said Tara Joshi in The Observer.
And the sonic palette is even broader than
before: there are flashes of humid dancehall,
flamenco, breathy dream pop, Japanese
folk, sultry highlife and heady trap. There’s
even, on Sex, Violence, Suicide, “riot grrrl-
© JOHAN PERSSON

Cuarteto performances are “cooler and indulgent”. But even if it’s too “rambling” adjacent punk and scuzzy surfer guitars”.
more austere” than the Richter Ensemble’s to win many new fans, it is the sound of With Amaarae’s sultry vocals completing
excellent recent version, “but they unfold a singular talent. “Give it time to grow its the mix, this is a “sparkling snapshot of
each movement with marvellous clarity”. wings”, and it “can really lift you up”. borderless youth in 2023”.
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 Film ARTS 31
“Pretty Red Dress is a debut feature starring a one-time X Factor winner so, you know, kill me now,”
said Deborah Ross in The Spectator. That was my thinking before I went to see it; but how wrong
(and patronising) I was: “This is a terrific film.” Alexandra Burke plays Candice, a supermarket
worker and aspiring actress who lands an audition for the lead role in a musical about Tina Turner.
When she spots a red dress in a vintage shop that would be perfect for the casting, her partner Travis
(Natey Jones) gets a job in his brother’s restaurant so that he can buy it for her. Newly released from
prison, Travis is a “tough, respected fella on their Lambeth estate”, but he has a secret: “he likes
to wear women’s clothes”. He also takes a fancy to the dress; and thankfully, it turns out to have
“plenty of stretch”. The film is “original, has heft, is magnificently performed, and it blew me away”.
Pretty Red Dress Written and directed by Dionne Edwards, this is a “movie about masculinity that could have
1hr 50mins (15) been solemn and prescriptive”, but instead it pulses “with humanity”, thanks in part to the
“tremendous” lead performances, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. “The inevitable watch-it-
Warm family drama through-your-fingers moment”, when Candice comes home early one day to find Travis wearing
her sparkly dress, is pulled off with real “flair”. Although the film “opens like a classic ex-con rite
starring The X Factor’s
of passage”, as we see Travis adjusting to life outside prison, it quickly “swerves into something else”,
Alexandra Burke subverting your expectations, said Kevin Maher in The Times. There are moments of real dramatic
++++ tension, and there is an “11th-hour eruption of violence and self-hatred. But mostly it’s a sweetly
played story that celebrates warmth and understanding.”

Greatest Days
1hr 52mins (12A)
Cheesy musical featuring
songs by Take That
+++
Adapted from a jukebox stage musical, Greatest Days is “made with heart and pluck and the very
best intentions”, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. Even so, it just isn’t very good. The plot
follows a paediatric nurse called Rachel (Aisling Bea, “doing her best”) who wins four tickets to a
reunion gig by the boy band she loved as a teenager. “This generically hunky quintet sing all of Take
That’s songs, but for some reason are categorically not Take That” (in fact, they are “an improbably
diverse bunch, given their purported early 1990s vintage”). Rachel decides to give the other tickets to
three of her best friends from school, with whom she’d lost touch years earlier, and at this point the
film starts jumping back and forth between two timelines: the past, in which the friends (played by
a younger cast) “weather the storms of adolescence with moral support from their idols”, and the
present, in which they get up to high jinks while singing Take That hits. Sadly, they’re not very good
singers; the comic moments tend towards the “forehead-smashingly crass”; and the film has enough
“amateurish feel-good British bonhomie to ruin your week”.
As someone who would rather “have her skin flayed off” than listen to Take That, I was perhaps
not destined to love this film, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. “But even with that caveat in mind”,
this is “weak stuff”. While all the “predictable story beats” are hit, the film amounts to little more
than “a nostalgic marketing vehicle for a collection of anodyne pop songs”. The story is “on the
thin side”, said Matthew Bond in The Mail on Sunday; but once the “wonderfully silly singing and
dancing got under way”, I found it “rather lovely. And a bit emotional too, if I’m honest.”

The first Extraction film came out on Netflix during the summer lockdown, “when there was a
certain vicarious appeal in the spectacle of rugged Chris Hemsworth kicking down doors to release
an innocent captive”, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. “Now, he’s at it again. In fact, I have an
uneasy feeling that he might be turning into the new Liam Neeson, destined to kick down doors
into his 70s.” Our hero, you’ll recall, is “a former ‘special ops’ soldier – with an iron six-pack – by the
name of Tyler Rake”, who can “extract anyone from anywhere”, as long as it involves “hanging off
a roof at least once”. This time, he is tasked with rescuing his ex-wife’s sister and her two children,
who have been captured by gangsters. The film is basically one “mighty melee of chasing, fighting
and killing”, featuring all the “cars, boats, planes, trains and helicopters” you’d expect. “There’s also
Extraction 2 loads of hand-to-hand combat in which the baddies obligingly come at Rake one at a time, having
2hrs 2mins (15) not worked out from a century of cinema that queueing up “is, frankly, asking for trouble”.
It’s very high octane, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. At one point, Hemsworth batters
Proficient sequel to thugs “out of the way with a fist that’s literally on fire”. You find yourself rooting for him, though,
Netflix’s 2020 hit and much of the film really flies. It was written by Joe Russo, one of the Russo brothers known for
their work on Marvel films, and it “has that curious mixture of proficiency and unmemorability
+++ that is the hallmark of a Russo brothers production”, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times.
“There’s not an idea in it whose path has not been smoothed by its use elsewhere.”

Best Interests: shattering drama starring Sharon Horgan and Michael Sheen
“It was with a huge sense of trepidation” that I
tuned into BBC One’s new four-part drama Best
Interests, said Nick Hilton in The Independent.
Written by Jack Thorne, it tells the harrowing
story of a couple who must decide whether
doctors should keep treating their desperately
unwell daughter. Nicci (Sharon Horgan) and
Andrew (Michael Sheen) have dedicated the past
decade to caring for 13-year-old Marnie, who
has muscular dystrophy. When a chest infection
sends her to the ICU, the hospital suggests
withdrawing care, and the once tight-knit family
begins to splinter. This is the stuff of nightmares,
but the acting is superb, and the writing
manages to remain “witty and lively” even as
the gut-wrenching power of the story encroaches.
Sheen and Horgan: harrowing
Best Interests is a bit overlong, said Barbara Ellen
in The Observer; given the amount of repetition,
“at least one episode could have been chopped”.
Still, “Thorne gets his essential messaging
through (disabled lives have worth; disabled
people are people), and, by God, he knows how
to make the breaking human heart speak”. There
are clichés here and there, said Carol Midgley
in The Times: within the first ten minutes, for
instance, Andrew and Nicci have sex on a cluttered
kitchen worktop, despite there being “non-crumby
surfaces nearby” (this, of course, “never
happens”). But overall, this is a “wonderful, heart-
shattering piece of work” that succeeds in making
Marnie not a legal case, but a joyous, rounded
person. “I defy anyone not to cry.”

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

32 ARTS Art
Exhibition of the week Capturing The Moment
Tate Modern, London SE1 (020-7887 8888, tate.org.uk). Until 28 January 2024

There is “a lot going on” following year in

in Tate Modern’s new response to the Spanish
exhibition, said Laura Civil War. In another,
Freeman in The Times. we see what is arguably
Subtitled A journey David Hockney’s “best
through painting and painting”: Portrait of an
photography, the show Artist (Pool with Two
is a huge and ambitious Figures), a work inspired
attempt to explore the by two unrelated
relationship between photographs Hockney
painting and photography found on his studio
from the early 20th floor. The juxtaposition
century to the present of images prompted
day, examining how a the artist to create
diverse range of artists this ingenious work
have sought to capture depicting his lover,
“a fleeting moment with Peter Schlesinger, staring
the click of a shutter or down at a bather in
the flick of a brush”. a swimming pool full
It features “painting of “stylised ripples”
from photographs and against a background
photographs of paintings, David Hockney’s “ingenious” Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972 of “verdant” hills.
photographs collaged on
to paintings and photographs that are as staged as paintings”. Yet In the first few rooms, it is just about possible to follow the
while it poses some “interesting questions” and includes a number curators’ intent, said Francesca Peacock in The Daily Telegraph.
of “fabulous pictures” by the likes of Lucian Freud, Andy Warhol As photography became “commonplace”, painters made aesthetic
and Gerhard Richter, it also features a lot of “second-rate” works shifts: in place of creating the kind of “lifelike portraits” that could
and offers scant analysis. Ultimately, “it’s diffuse, it’s difficult and now be captured by photographers, artists such as Picasso and
it doesn’t really hang together”. Francis Bacon adopted other “visual languages” to reinvigorate
their medium. Later, artists would play with and manipulate
The focus of the show is certainly “blurry”, said Ben Luke in the photographs. Paula Rego’s War (2003), for example, takes
Evening Standard. This can perhaps be explained by the fact that an image of the Iraq conflict and gives the figures in it “rabbit
it consists entirely of works from a private collection founded by heads”. Or there’s Jeff Wall’s “painstakingly staged” 1993 picture
a Taiwanese electronics billionaire mixed in with selections from A Sudden Gust of Wind, a modern recreation of a Hokusai
the Tate’s own holdings. Nevertheless, it compensates with some woodcut. It’s a work no more “true” than “a portrait painted over
“stonkingly great” pictures. One room pairs Migrant Mother, months of sittings”. But thereafter the show becomes directionless
Dorothea Lange’s “defining” 1936 photograph of Depression-era and baggy. You can’t help feeling that “there is the shadow of a
poverty, with a “devastating” Picasso portrait painted the brilliant exhibition here” that the Tate has “failed to capture”.

Where to buy… The Standard Bearer returns

The Week reviews an A heroic self-portrait
exhibition in a private gallery of Rembrandt as a
militia man has come
Caragh Thuring “home” to the Dutch
national museum,
at Thomas Dane Gallery the Rijksmuseum
in Amsterdam, says
Bruno Waterfield
Painters who paint works chiefly about in The Times. The
the act of painting itself can easily seem Standard Bearer
like a boring and self-indulgent bunch. (1636) was one of the
Not so in the case of Belgian artist first works the artist
created after moving
Caragh Thuring (b.1972), who makes
to Amsterdam. It shows him, then 30, posing
the process of questioning her own as one of the soldiers who led Dutch troops
work as an artist through her pictures into battle against their Spanish rulers in the
look infectiously fun. In The Foothills 80 Years War, which resulted eventually in
© DAVID HOCKNEY/YAGEO FOUNDATION COLLECTION, TAIWAN

of Pleasure, her current show, she
takes as a starting point her 2022
canvas of that name: an oddball,
surrealist-tinged work peopled by
fragments of postcards tacked to
a wall, pink bricks, a mountainous
horizon and some cartoonish cacti.
It’s something that could have been
created by Leonora Carrington, had
she been a 21st century hipster.
The other works, created in response
to it, are almost like remixes of a classic
The Foothills of Pleasure, 2022 (detail)
song, chopping and changing imagery,
or laying new visual criteria (a hot pink
grid, for instance) over a composition
derived from the source picture. Self-
referential it might be, but it is far too
exuberant to be in the slightest bit
alienating. Prices on request.
11 Duke Street, St James’s, London
SW1 (020-7925 2505). Until 15 July
independence for the Netherlands in 1648. It
was bought for €175m from the French branch
of the Rothschild family, which had owned it
since 1844, after a “diplomatic tussle” with the
French government; private donors paid $25m
and Dutch taxpayers the rest. It now hangs
alongside Rembrandt’s epic The Night Watch
(1642), for which The Standard Bearer was a
“pilot project”. Entry to the museum was free
on Saturday to allow more people to see the
painting. Eight classes of schoolchildren bearing
banners were there to celebrate the opening.

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 The List ARTS 33
Best books… Laura Cumming Television
The Observer’s art critic chooses her favourite books. She will be discussing Programmes
her memoir, Thunderclap (Chatto & Windus £25), at the Chalke Valley Princess Anne: The Plot
History Festival on 28 June (cvhf.org.uk). The book is published on 6 July to Kidnap a Royal Now 72,
Anne has crept up to become
In Memory of Memory magnificent prose-poem is an Dictionary: an icebreaking one of the most popular of
the royals. This documentary
by Maria Stepanova, 2017 elegy to lost love and regret double biography of a minor examines the attempt to
(Fitzcarraldo Editions £14.99). whose charm and sadness figure (literally called Minor) kidnap her in 1974. Sun 25 Jun,
Stepanova’s sweeping narrative never fail to hold their power. and a major public intellectual C4 20:00 (60mins).
of her family’s history in Russia in a Victorian mystery set in
begins with the knick-knacks The Madonna of the Future London, Oxford and The Clinic Documentary
in her aunt’s Moscow flat and by Arthur Danto, 1997 (UCP, Broadmoor Hospital. charting the rise and fall of
runs all the way back to life out of print). A philosophy the Tavistock Centre’s Gender
under Stalin. Memory versus professor who doubled as art The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Identity Development Service,
reminiscence, anecdote versus critic for The Nation, Danto is Sebald, 1995 (Vintage £9.99). which was ordered to close in
2022 after three decades. Sun
actuality: the truth is tested my favourite art writer – sage, Apparently the account of a 25 Jun, ITV1 22:20 (65mins).
here in a brilliantly new kind passionate, humorous, original, journey through the flatlands
of meta-memoir. bringing his spectacular of East Anglia, it seems to Boris, the Lord & the
intelligence to bear here in meander, like its author, from Russian Spy: Dispatches
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott essays on everyone from eerie stories of lost knights An investigation into Boris
Fitzgerald, 1925 (Penguin Michelangelo and Vermeer to and Chinese empresses to Johnson’s friendship with
£7.99). Is there a more perfect Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst. herring fleets and submerged press baron Evgeny Lebedev –
short novel? The enigmatic villages, taking in poetry, now a member of the House
zillionaire who never seems The Surgeon of Crowthorne philosophy and art along of Lords – and his father, a
former KGB agent. Tue 27 Jun,
to appear at his own dazzling by Simon Winchester, 1998 the way. Is it truth or fiction? C4 22:00 (65mins).
parties; the married woman he (Penguin £10.99). Madness, This spellbinding book
loves; her husband’s affair; two genius, murder and the changed for ever my idea The Trouble with KanYe
sudden murders. Fitzgerald’s making of the Oxford English of what a memoir could be. Journalist Mobeen Azhar
Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit biblio.co.uk travels to America to find out
how the one-time hip-hop
The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing megastar became a
mouthpiece for hate speech
and antisemitism. Wed 28 Jun,
Showing now BBC2 21:00 (75mins).
A new comedy imagines two of the 20th
century’s greatest playwrights sharing their love Inside the Iranian Uprising
of cricket. Stumped stars Stephen Tompkinson Using first-hand footage
as Samuel Beckett and Andrew Lancel as uploaded by protesters, this
Harold Pinter. Until 22 July, Hampstead Theatre, documentary gives a shocking
London NW3 (hampsteadtheatre.com). insight into the wave of anti-
regime protests in Iran, and
the response. Thur 29 Jun,
Old Masters from the Duke of Bedford’s
BBC2 21:00 (60mins).
ancestral home are on display in Birmingham.
Mastering the Market: Dutch and Flemish
Paintings from Woburn Abbey includes Films
works by Rembrandt, Frans Hals and others. Misbehaviour (2020) Quirky
comedy-drama recounting the
Until 24 September, The Barber Institute of Andrew Lancel and Stephen Tompkinson in Stumped disruption of the 1970 Miss
Fine Arts, Birmingham (barber.org.uk). World beauty contest by
returns to its splendid setting with the usual mix feminist protesters. Keira
Book now of garden displays, talks and demos, nurseries Knightley stars. Sat 24 Jun,
Renowned world music ensemble Shakti and and a market. 4-9 July, Hampton Court Palace, BBC1 22:20 (100mins).
soul singer Kandace Springs are among the East Molesey, Surrey (rhs.org.uk).
international acts performing in the capital Dunkirk (2017) Christopher
as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival Here’s an autumn ticket that’s bound to sell Nolan’s gripping drama
about the evacuation of Allied
Summer Series. 27 June-15 July, various out fast: Kenneth Branagh directs and stars
troops in 1944. Sun 25 Jun,
venues, London (efglondonjazzfestival.org.uk). in a new production of King Lear, for 50 BBC2 21:00 (95mins).
performances only. 21 October-9 December,
A highlight of the horticultural calendar, the Wyndham’s Theatre, London WC2
RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival (kinglearbranagh.com). Coming up for auction
There’s a chance to see works
by the likes of Lucian Freud,
The Archers: what happened last week Barbara Hepworth and Henry
As Stella weighs up her options with Brian, Justin urges her to bide her time. Lee and Tom go on Moore before they go back
their mission to see Rob, but Lee ends up knocking Rob to the ground, and they flee. Harrison calls
into private collections when
to question Lee, and Helen learns about the altercation – Rob is accusing Lee of assault. Helen is
furious at Tom: Lee might get jail time and it could help Rob’s access case. Freddie quits at Lower Sotheby’s presents a week of
Loxley to focus on his DJ career; later Vince tries to make him see sense. Uncomfortable about auctions including Face to
© SUKI DHANDA; PAMELA RAITH

Justin’s scheme to end Home Farm’s BL contract, Stella apologises to Brian and agrees to return. Face: A Celebration of
Helen tells Kirsty she’s contacted Rob – she needs to see him and take control. Nervous Rob tells Portraiture (27 June) and
Helen his version of events. He agrees to a Community Resolution Order with Lee, but insists he the Modern British Art sale
wants access to Jack. When Helen tries to leave, he turns steely, then collapses in a seizure. At the (28 June). Sotheby’s, 34-35
hospital, terrified Helen worries the seizure is linked to the fall, but tests show nothing. Rob tells New Bond Street, London W1
Helen he’s fine – it’s probably just the intensity of seeing her again. (sothebys.com).

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

34 Best properties
Houses for golf lovers

Oxfordshire: Crown Cottage, Nuffield. Brick and flint cottage dating back to the 1700s and adjoining Huntercombe Golf
Club. Main suite, 4 further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen, 5 receps, garden. £1.75m; Knight Frank (01491-844903).

Worcestershire:
Main Street, Bishampton.
A Grade II cottage near
The Vale golf course,
which enjoys views over
the Malvern and Bredon
Hills. Main suite, 2
further beds, family
bath, kitchen/dining
room, 2 receps, garden.
£725,000; Savills
(01905-734734).

East Lothian: Hilltop

Cottage, Gullane. Three
18-hole golf courses lie
within walking distance
of this property. Main
suite, 3 further beds,
family bath, kitchen/
dining room, recep,
garden, parking. OIEO
£1.145m; Rettie (0131-
220 4160).

Renfrewshire: Jalna, Kilmacolm. Formerly three station Kent: Grove Road, Seal. Built in 1871 in an Area of
cottages, this conversion sits close to the course at Kilmacolm. Outstanding Natural Beauty overlooking Wildernesse
Main suite, 3 further beds, wet room, kitchen, 2 receps, Golf Club. Main suite, 4 further beds, 2 showers, kitchen,
garden. OIEO £365,000; Cochran Dickie (01505-613807). 5 receps, garden. £2.35m; Knight Frank (01732-744460).

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

on the market 35

Surrey: Churt Road, Hindhead. An Arts and Crafts

property next to Hindhead golf course. Main suite,
5 further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen/breakfast
room, 4 receps, garden, parking. £2.5m; Hamptons
Estates (01428-260259).

Monmouthshire: Woodbank, Llanhennock. Close

to the Usk Valley and Celtic Manor golf course. Main
suite, 5 further suites, 1 further bed, kitchen/breakfast
room, 5 receps, games room, garden, parking. OIEO
£2.85m; Knight Frank (0117-317 1191).

West Sussex: School Cottage, Plaistow. This former medieval hall house dates back
to about 1500 and is close to several local golf courses. 5 beds, family bath, kitchen/
breakfast room, 3 receps, garden, garages. £1.25m; Knight Frank (01428-770563).

Fife: Brownhills Farm, St Andrews. This modern property (the second house from the right)
overlooks the fifth hole of the Castle Course and enjoys views across St Andrews Bay to the sea.
Main suite, 4 further beds (3 en suite), shower room, kitchen, living/dining room, recep,
courtyard, garden, extensive parking. OIEO £800,000; Savills (0131-247 3738).

24 June 2023 THE WEEK


The man who reinvented sauces
Compared with the likes of Thomas Keller
or René Redzepi, the French chef Yannick
Alléno lacks “public recognition”, says
Tony Turnbull in The Times. All this
proves is that “there is no justice”, because
he’s “one of the world’s ... most innovative
chefs”. The holder of 15 Michelin stars
(second only to Alain Ducasse, who has
20), Alléno is “the man credited with
taking sauce-making, still the bedrock
of French cuisine, into the 21st century”.
And next month, he opens his first London
restaurant: Pavyllon, at the Four Seasons in
Mayfair. Although less formal than some
of Alléno’s establishments, Pavyllon will
showcase many of his greatest creations,
including his painstaking “extraction
method” for sauces. He begins by cooking
an ingredient – “fish, vegetables, whatever”
– in a sous vide, or vacuum, to extract
its juices, and then the resulting liquid is
turned into a sorbet-style ice before being
spun in a centrifuge. Known as “cryo-
concentration”, the process produces
the “purest, cleanest, most flavoursome
manifestation” of the ingredient – in effect,
its essence in sauce form. “It preserves all
the minerality, vitamins and taste,” he says.
While Pavyllon isn’t cheap (main courses
start at £42), foodies will be clamouring to
eat there. “I can’t remember the last time
I was this excited about a new restaurant.”
Heatwave salads
People have different cravings in hot
weather, says Tomé Morrissy-Swan in
LEISURE
Food & Drink
Yannick Alléno: holds 15 Michelin stars
The Daily Telegraph. Some “swear by cold
soups”, others by spicy foods. But most
people will agree that salads are a good
thing: they require little cooking, and
aren’t too heavy. And a few simple twists
can stop them seeming “boring”. Marc
Williams, cookery school director at The
Grand in York, suggests trying a grilled
Caesar salad. Generously season and oil
some lettuce halves, then briefly sear them
on a hot griddle. Arrange the seared lettuce
on a platter, scatter over feta, and finish
with a dressing of garlic, chopped
anchovy, mayonnaise and white wine
vinegar (with parmesan shavings and
croutons on top for “extra flavour and
texture”). Mike Reid, culinary director
of Rare Restaurants, recommends spicing
37
up a salad with barbecued fruit, such
as peach, watermelon, mango or apple.
“Use a medium heat, and don’t add any
fat,” he advises, “because you want the
fruit to caramelise and release its natural
sugars.” He suggests adding the grilled
fruit to a dressed peppery leaf – such as
watercress or rocket – and topping “with
a little goat’s cheese or burrata”.
Why baking raspberries makes sense
Raspberries are at their best (and cheapest)
between June and October, says Rosie
Sykes in The Guardian. Of course, eating
them raw is common, but when baked,
they “take on a lovely floral note”. “One
of my most-baked recipes” is a simple
raspberry oat crumble slice. Start by
making the crumble: mix 200g oats,
150g soft brown sugar and 200g flour
in a bowl, make a well in the centre and
pour in 180g melted butter and mix until
it comes together. Line a 25cm x 30cm
baking tin with greaseproof paper, press
in two-thirds of the oat mixture – make
sure you push it down well – and bake for
about 15 minutes in a 190°C (170°C fan)
oven, until golden. Meanwhile, mix 100g
flaked almonds (or any nut or seed) into
the remaining oat mixture. Strew 250g
raspberries over the cooked base (push
them down a bit with a fork), and scatter
over the remaining oat mix. Bake for
another 20-25 minutes. Cool the tin on
a wire rack, and when cold, cut the cake
into squares – they’ll keep in a sealed
container for three to four days.

Recipe of the week: gazpacho

The best gazpachos have several characteristics in common, says Angela Clutton: they are made with seasonal tomatoes, they are
served super-cold, and they use a really good sherry vinegar. Serve with the sherry vinegar bottle on the table too, so that people
can add that all-important finishing touch of flavour and balance. I like my gazpacho quite thick, so that is how this comes – thin
it down with water, if you prefer. There is no need to skin the tomatoes as they will be blended and strained before serving.
Serves 4-6
1kg very ripe tomatoes, roughly chopped 1 cucumber, peeled and chopped 1 green pepper, deseeded and chopped
80g slightly stale white or brown bread, torn into pieces 3 cloves of garlic, chopped 3 tbsp sherry vinegar, plus extra to taste
125ml extra-virgin olive oil
For the garnish (optional): chopped hard-boiled egg chopped spring onion chopped cucumber chopped mint
croutons sherry vinegar

• Place the tomatoes in a large bowl seasoning – remember that chilling dulls
with the cucumber, green pepper, the seasoning slightly – and take a look
bread pieces, garlic, sherry vinegar at the resulting soup. If it is too thick
(I recommend using a really good for your liking, you can thin it down
one, such as Valdespino at Brindisa) at this stage with some water.
and half of the oil. Add a good pinch • Chill until needed, then serve in small
of salt, mix to combine, then cover bowls or cups with a drizzle of sherry
and chill for about 2 hours. vinegar on top and your choice of
• Transfer to a blender and combine garnishes, arranged on the table so each
all the ingredients, adding the rest of person can help themselves.
the olive oil. • Alternative: rather than sherry
• Season and strain into a bowl through vinegar, try finishing with a good balsamic,
a fine sieve, pushing with a spoon to get tomato balsamic, maple vinegar or
as much through as you can. Taste for cucumber vinegar.

Taken from boroughmarket.org.uk, a website featuring recipes inspired by produce at the London food market.
Angela Clutton is a food writer and presenter, and author of Borough Market: The Knowledge. Photography: Kim Lightbody

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

 Consumer LEISURE 39

The best... smart garden seating

Pimlico Jazz lounge chair Inspired by mid-century
design, this low-slung chair is made from solid teak
and zingy all-weather woven rope, so it can stay
outdoors all year round. There’s a matching footstool
(£460) available too (£880; indian-ocean.co.uk).

Stromness garden lounge chair

With a green aluminium
frame and natural wicker
seat and back, this chair is
ergonomically designed
for comfort, and has
Old Rocker Modelled on a 1930s swing
padded cushions
seat and handmade in England to order,
(down to £210;
this swinging 3-seater sofa is plumply
johnlewis.
upholstered for supreme comfort. It
com).
can be left out all summer, thanks to its
Edwardian deckchair marine-grade canvas and rust-resistant
A traditional deckchair steel frame (from £4,190; oddlimited.com).
with canopy and
footstool made
from A-grade Tommy chair
teak. Available This premium
in a wide Palissade low lounge chair hardwood and
range of Made of powder-coated steel, canvas chair has
coloured this chair supports the lower five reclining
canvas, and back and neck, and its high positions and
with or without a armrests make it easy to armrests, and
pompom fringe get in to and out of it folds up into
(£275; thestripes (£498; skandium.com). a backpack (£225;
company.com). daylesford.com).

SOURCES: COUNTRY LIFE/HOUSE BEAUTIFUL/GQ

Studio Job
Industry garden
chair Crafted from
Acacia wood folding lounge cast aluminium, this
chair This relaxed acacia chair is surprisingly
wood chair folds easily lightweight and
for storage and transport. durable. There are
The woven cotton matching armchairs
backrest is removable and tables available
and washable too in blue or black
(£150; hm.com). (£246; amara.com).

Tips… decorating ideas
from the WOW!house
The WOW!house at Chelsea Harbour has 18
rooms created by the best interior designers
OElevate inexpensive materials: in one
room, what looks like dark tropical flooring
is in fact plywood, scorched with a blow-
torch to darken it and bring out the grain.
OUse every last scrap of fabric. Vanessa
Macdonald uses the same floral linen on
armchairs, curtains and scatter cushions
in the same room to bring cohesion.
OPanelling creates a more decorated look
and can be created using simple wooden
mouldings or MDF cut to size. Christian
Bense uses a half-wall of glazed panelling
as an internal window to separate a small
sitting area. This could work as a room
divider in a large open-plan living space.
OAdding texture to the ceiling rather than
painting it white helps make a room cosier.
OMirrors can be used in clever ways
to reflect more light, such as on top of
corner bookcases at right angles, or in
panels in armchairs.
SOURCE: THE DAILY TELEGRAPH
And for those who
have everything…
“A cross between a Mars rover
and a robo-dog”, Eco-Flow’s Blade
is the world’s first smart robotic
lawn-sweeping mower. You can use
an app to set its boundaries; it will
then mow in neat lines. An optional
sweeper attaches to the back to pick
up leaves and twigs.
From £2,699; uk.ecoflow.com
SOURCE: FINANCIAL TIMES
Where to find… a British
folly to stay in
Finished in 2014, Grayson Perry’s A House
for Essex, in Wrabness, is a kitsch, ceramic-
tiled folly designed for a fictional Essex girl,
overlooking the River Stour (sleeps 2, from
£1,250 for 2 nights; living-architecture.co.uk).
The Dunmore Pineapple, near Airth,
Stirlingshire, was a single-storey
summerhouse in Dunmore Park until the
pineapple dome was added in 1777 (sleeps
4, 3 nights from £459; landmarktrust.org.uk).
The Grade I-listed rusticated Fonthill Arch
was the grand entrance to the Fonthill Estate
in Wiltshire, built in 1755 (sleeps 4, from
£295/night; www.beckfordarms.com).
Blickling Tower, a toy castle with a Rapunzel
turret, was built in the late 18th century as
the Earl of Buckingham’s race stand with
ogee arches and crenellations (sleeps 4,
from £779 for 3 nights; nationaltrust.org.uk).
The Gothic Temple, in the grounds of Stowe,
Buckinghamshire, has views over Capability
Brown’s landscape (sleeps 4, 4 nights from
£804; landmarktrust.org.uk).
SOURCE: THE TIMES

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

 Travel
This week’s dream: driving to South America’s northernmost tip
On the far north edge of Colombia
there is a desert peninsula the size of
Wales, where Arizona-like landscapes
meet the sparkling waters of the
Caribbean. Home to the indigenous
Wayuu people, La Guajira is a place
of great “beauty and strangeness”,
says Ruaridh Nicoll in the Financial
Times. The Wayuu resisted Spanish
colonisation, and have since suffered
persecution by the Catholic Church,
the Colombian state and the country’s
ubiquitous drug cartels. But lately,
“life has been stabilising”, and tourists
have begun to trickle to the peninsula,
“some come to surf, others
to sandboard down 60-metre-high La Guajira: combines “beauty and strangeness”
dunes, and some just to swing in
hammocks” beside the region’s wild beaches.
Driving east along the coast from Cartagena you pass
the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, one of the world’s highest
coastal ranges, “topping out at 5,775m”. La Guajira lies in the
mountains’ rain shadow, hard up against the Venezuelan border.
LEISURE 41
The region’s capital, Riohacha, is a
“sun-scoured” town founded nearly
500 years ago, when the Spanish
discovered pearls in its bay. There
are boutique hotels nearby (Territorio
Magico in Dibulla, for instance),
and driftwood resorts further on,
including Ipuana Virgin Beach, which
has “a fintech backpacker vibe”. But
from Mayapo, for 100 miles to the
peninsula’s tip, accommodation is in
hostels only, and the roads are basic.
Proceed with care, and preferably
in a 4WD with a local guide.
Caracara falcons circle over the
vast, red, cacti-strewn landscape,
and tracks branch out across it to
the widely dispersed rancherías of
Wayuu families. Inland, there’s a “fantastical mountain oasis”,
the Serranía de Macuira. And beyond it all lies the Rancheria
Punta Gallina, the northernmost farm in South America, and
then sand dunes, climbing up towards blue sky before plunging
again into the roaring Caribbean foam.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of…

Shiguchi Hokkaido, Japan
Set in a wild corner of Niseko
(a ski area on Japan’s northern
island of Hokkaido), Shiguchi
is “an escapist nirvana”, says
Danielle Demetriou in Condé Nast
Traveller – the ideal place to switch
off and reconnect with nature. Its
five spacious villas are old timber
farmhouses, relocated from
elsewhere in Japan and kitted out
with “hi-tech” kitchens, rock or
cypress bathtubs, fire stoves and
antique furniture. Local ingredients
including foraged mushrooms
and “melt-in-the-mouth” venison
are showcased in the restaurant,
and there’s an excellent gallery
featuring works of art and local
artefacts that form part of the
collection of the owner, English
artist Shouya Grigg.
From £495pppn; shiguchi.com.
Tarifa’s wild and windy beauty
Tarifa in the far south of Spain has a wild
coastline made up of sweeping, pale beaches,
sand dunes and “rock-strewn” hills. The
area has long been popular with backpackers
and kitesurfers, says Bridget Harrison in The
Times – but more recently a “well-heeled
crowd” has been attracted to its “laid-back
beachy vibe”. It’s not a good place for
sunbathing – the wind is relentless – but
there’s riding, hiking, biking and water sports
to enjoy. Tarifa itself has a beautiful old town
with Moorish city walls, excellent tapas bars
and “upmarket surfy boutiques”; there are
“impressive” Roman ruins beside the nearby
Bolonia beach, and Tangier is a ferry hop
away. Among the area’s most stylish hotels
are La Residencia and The Lances, and there’s
an “exquisite” new five-bedroom holiday let,
Villa Punta Paloma, that sits on a headland.
A potters’ town in Romania
As interest in ceramics has grown, pottery
from Horezu, in Romania, has started to
appear in “trendy design-orientated” stores
around the world – but its production has
been the lifeblood of this small town for
three centuries or more, says Chantel Tattoli
in The New York Times. Today, some
50 artisans have studios there, and all of
them work with the timeworn methods for
which Unesco recognised Horezu pottery as
an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity
in 2012. Clay is taken from a single hill
nearby; paint, in muted hues, is made with
minerals found in the area; and designs,
including rooster, serpent and fish patterns,
have traditional roots. In the UK, you can
see the work at Casa De Folklore in London,
but nothing is likely to fire your enthusiasm
for it as much as a trip to Horezu itself.
Rewilding in the Lakes
It has been 20 years since work began to
rewild Ennerdale, one of the Lake District’s
“quietest” valleys – and the results are
wonderful to behold, says Helen Pickles
in The Daily Telegraph. Founded by local
landowners, including the National Trust and
Forestry England, the Wild Ennerdale project
has taken steps including planting native
trees and introducing black Galloway cattle,
which break up the ground, creating space
for wild flora to take root. Species such
as the green woodpecker and the marsh
fritillary butterfly, once extinct in the area,
have returned; others, from the “jolly-
sounding” bilberry bumblebee to the
spectacular peregrine falcon, are flourishing;
and now there’s talk of reintroducing
beavers. Last year, the valley was designated
a “super” National Nature Reserve. If
you are planning to stay locally, there is
accommodation at the Fox and Hounds,
a traditional Lakeland inn. For further
information, go to wildennerdale.co.uk.

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24 June 2023 THE WEEK

42
Billionaire PM known for his “bunga bunga” parties
Silvio Berlusconi, who
Silvio
died last week aged 86,
Berlusconi
“dominated the public life
1936-2023
of his country” as no other
Italian had since Benito Mussolini, said The
Guardian. The Republic’s longest-serving prime
minister, he held power for eight of the ten
years between 2001 and 2011. The “Berlusconi
decade” will be remembered as a period in
which Italy’s economy remained dismayingly
stagnant. Yet the buccaneering, perma-tanned
one-time cruise-ship singer was PM four times,
and survived countless scandals, financial
and sexual – as well as numerous criminal
investigations, and a conviction for tax fraud.
Obituaries
by charging his classmates to write essays for
them. At university, where he studied law, he
supported himself by selling vacuum cleaners
and singing with a band; and on graduating,
he went into real estate. Before long, he was
running the massive Milano 2 development;
how he’d obtained the capital for it was
something he never explained. The proceeds
from this enabled him to move into TV,
providing Italian viewers with an array of
American soaps and cartoons, and glitzy TV
shows presented by scantily clad hostesses
that many found irresistible. His control over
the media made him a useful friend to senior
politicians, who scratched his back in return.

For years, Berlusconi provided “colourful copy”
for newspapers, said The Times. He tended to
be affable in private, but he was prone to
shocking gaffes: he caused outrage in Berlin by
comparing a German MEP to a concentration Berlusconi: controlled the media
camp guard. He openly used his political power
to protect his business interests; and he admitted to being a
womaniser who slept with prostitutes at his “bunga bunga”
parties. Notoriously vain (he dyed his hair, and had a facelift),
he liked to joke that pollsters had surveyed Italian women as to
whether they’d sleep with him: “30% said Yes,” he’d claim, “and
70% said, ‘What? Again?’” Outside Italy, few could understand
how he had retained public support for so long. The answer lay
a bit in his natural ebullience, and a lot in his wealth. Italy’s
richest man, he had extensive interests in property, retail, football
(he owned AC Milan until 2017) and, crucially, the media. Among 2011, he was forced to resign in favour of a government of
other assets, he owned Italy’s biggest private TV networks, and
as PM, he could also exert tight control over the state network.
Born into a middle-class family in the suburbs of Milan,
Berlusconi demonstrated his entrepreneurial flair at school,
It was the Clean Hands judicial probes into
state corruption – and the damage that did
to his political alliances – that encouraged
him to form his own centre-right party, Forza
Italia, named after a football chant (“Come
on Italy”) in December 1993. It was funded
by his corporation, while his media companies promoted it. Three
months later, with no previous experience in politics, the brash
billionaire was elected his country’s PM – setting a template
that Donald Trump would follow 20 years later. In the 2000s,
corruption inquiries piled up, while the drip-drip of revelations
about his use of escorts, his bunga bunga parties and his
relationship with a 17-year-old dancer known as Ruby the Heart-
Stealer, infuriated many Italians. But it was ultimately his inability
to solve Italy’s debt crisis that caused his political downfall. In
technocrats. He was convicted of fraud, in 2012, and given
community service, which he carried out in a residential home.
For years, he was in and out of court, but in every other case,
he was either acquitted, or cleared on appeal. He revived his
Forza Italia party, and last year he led it into coalition.

Double Oscar-winner who spent 23 years as a Labour MP

Fearless, sharply intelligent
Glenda
and sometimes caustic, Glenda
Jackson
Jackson, who has died aged 87,
1936-2023
“had a career unmatched by
any of her contemporaries”, said Michael
Billington in The Guardian. From 1957, she
enjoyed huge success on film (she won two
Oscars) and on stage; then, in 1992, she gave
it all up to become a Labour MP. She served
diligently, as a junior minister in the Blair
government and on the backbenches, for 23 years
before returning to the stage in 2016, aged 80, as
a “magnificent Lear”. When she was an MP, some
were surprised that her Commons speeches were
dry and untheatrical, but off stage, Jackson had
always been notably low-key, said The Times. For Jackson: no time for glitz
her, acting was a serious job, and she had no time
for glitz or glamour. She didn’t collect either of her Oscars
in person (she gave them to her mother, who used them as
bookends); nor did she make any effort to ingratiate herself with
audiences, “I do not like audiences,” she said. “They mostly want
what they have liked before.”
Glenda Jackson was born in Birkenhead in 1936, and brought
up in Hoylake where her father worked as a labourer. She won
a place at West Kirby Grammar School, but left at 15 to take
a job at Boots, selling cough drops and laxatives. Her ambition
then, she said, was to work on the make-up counter, but she was
interested in the cinema, and after seeing Sir Donald Wolfit on
stage, she joined an amateur dramatics group. In
1954, she won a scholarship to Rada in London.
“Don’t expect regular work until you’re 40, dear,”
was the advice she received on graduating. But
after a few years in rep, and a dispiriting period
in which she ended up working as a Bluecoat at
Butlin’s (where her new husband Roy Hodges
was employed as a Redcoat), she joined the RSC
for Peter Brook’s Theatre of Cruelty Season,
which led to her starring as an insane murderess
in Marat/Sade on Broadway. In 1965, she was so
powerful as Ophelia, to David Warner’s Hamlet,
that one critic wondered why she’d not been cast
as the prince. She won an Oscar for her role in
1969’s Women in Love (with its famous nude
love scene) and her second for the comedy A
Touch of Class (1973). She also won two Emmys,
for the BBC drama Elizabeth R. “She was Elizabeth I in every
detail,” said Paul Bailey in The Oldie: “imperious, witty, sarcastic,
vulnerable, kind, cruel, forgiving and vengeful”. Yet she was also
hilarious as Cleopatra on The Morecambe & Wise Show.
At Westminster, she made little effort to win friends (she was
often referred to as “formidable”), but was dedicated in pursuit
of the interests of her constituents. She made her last film this
year. She and Roy Hodges divorced in 1976. Although her
constituency was Hampstead, Jackson had lived, for decades,
in Blackheath, latterly in the modest granny flat of a house
occupied by her son, the columnist Dan Hodges, and his family.

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 CITY 45
Companies in the news
...and how they were assessed
AstraZeneca: Chinese inoculation
Not before time, the US and China are
“seeking to avoid a cold war in the Pacific”,
said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. But
despite this week’s visit to Beijing by the
US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, Seven days in the
“rapprochement” still “looks a distance
away”, so there’s a certain logic to
Square Mile
AstraZeneca’s move to shield itself from the Britain’s “inflation shock” intensified,
“political tug of war” in its dealings with with new figures showing that CPI
China. The pharma – the UK’s largest listed inflation remained stuck at 8.7% in May
company, with a market value of £180bn – – well above the 8.4% expected – raising
has reportedly drawn up plans to carve out pressure on the Bank of England to ramp
its Chinese business, and list it separately in up interest rates. The figure was driven
Hong Kong or Shanghai. Given AZ now earns 13% of its revenues from China, CEO by higher prices for flights and second-
hand cars and rising supermarket prices.
Pascal Soriot is anxious to ring-fence the risk. But he’d “better be careful what he wishes But services prices were also up and
for”. China, after all, is “an autocracy with a record of pilfering Western science and tech, “core inflation”, which strips out food
and has no hesitancy in using its draconian state powers to punish overseas investors”. and fuel costs, jumped to 7.1% – its
The risk of “intellectual property loss” is real, said Lex in the FT. But this still looks like a highest level since 1992. The Bank had
good hedging tactic, allowing shareholders to decide how much of any China risk-reward been expected to raise rates by a further
balance they are willing to hold. “China is known for its prowess in gymnastics” – these quarter-point to 4.75% this week, but
days, it’s multinationals like AstraZeneca “that must perform delicate balancing acts”. the inflation figures prompted traders
to factor in a 40% chance of a half-point
Vodafone/Three: mobile monster? rise to 5%. Markets now predict rates
will peak at 6% early next year.
And then there were three. That, at any rate, is the hope of Vodafone and Three, which
have hatched a merger “to create the country’s largest mobile operator”, reducing the The Government’s borrowing bill rose
by more than expected in May, helping
number of big players in the sector from four to three, said James Warrington in The
to push the country’s debt ratio to over
Daily Telegraph. The mobile monster would serve 27 million customers – eclipsing 100% of GDP for the first time in more
the 24 million on Virgin Media’s O2 network and the 20 million using BT’s EE service. than 60 years. The jump was partly
There were sweeties galore in the announcement. The pledge to invest £11bn in their 5G driven by higher debt interest payments.
network over the next decade, creating 12,000 new jobs, will please ministers. But don’t IndiGo, India’s biggest airline, placed the
hold your breath, said Thomas Seal on Bloomberg. “It took more than a year” for Voda largest aircraft order in history – for 500
and Three’s owner, CK Hutchison of Hong Kong, to hammer out this merger. “It could aircraft from Airbus worth more than
take just as long for the deal to clear the antitrust and national security hurdles.” Ofcom $60bn. Zopa, the peer-to-peer lender,
sounds “relatively amenable”, said Patrick Hosking in The Times. But the player to said its long-awaited flotation would
reckon with is the Competition and Markets Authority, which must weigh the danger likely be further delayed because the
that this deal “tightens a stranglehold” at “the very heart of digital Britain”. The CMA public markets are effectively suffering
came under intense fire recently for blocking Microsoft’s attempt to buy Call of Duty from “temporary closure”. Molten
Ventures became the latest investor
maker Activision Blizzard. “Getting the call right on Voda/Three is far more important.”
to slash the value of the UK fintech
Revolut. John Lewis’s diversification into
Odey Asset Management: notes on a scandal property suffered a new blow following
The £3bn Mayfair-based asset manager is still reeling from claims that 13 women were the resignation of property director Chris
sexually assaulted by its founder and former boss, Crispin Odey, said Jill Treanor in The Harris. Church of England vicars became
Sunday Times. In the ensuing fallout, the firm has “suspended dealings in five funds” the latest group of workers to demand
with about £950m of assets, and is in “active discussions” about “rehousing” parts of a pay rise. Clergy represented by Unite
the business with other asset managers. Odey Asset Management, in short, looks set to want a 9.5% rise in their annual stipend.
be broken up. Its sister firm, Odey Wealth Management, is reportedly considering its
options. Crispin Odey himself appears to have gone to ground, said Ben Martin in The
Times. But in another “symbolic blow” for the tycoon, once one of Britain’s best-known
hedge fund managers, he has been stripped of his status as “fit and proper” on the Drinkflation
Financial Conduct Authority’s register. There may well be “a swirl of legal action”, said First there was “shrinkflation”, when
Patrick Jenkins in the FT – both by Odey himself, if he feels he was unjustly ousted from products got smaller while the listing
his own firm, and by some of his alleged victims. It’s hard to feel too sorry for him. “Yes, price stayed the same. Now brace
he has been humiliated” and “pushed out”. But he’s still walking away with an estimated yourself for “drinkflation”, says Daniel
Woolfson in The Daily Telegraph. In a bid
£600m of his own managed money. “That does not feel like justice.” to cut costs, the brewers of some of
Britain’s most popular beers – including
Simon & Schuster: sale saga Foster’s, Spitfire, Old Speckled Hen and
Little more than six months after the US government blocked its attempted merger with Bishops Finger – have been slashing
Penguin Random House, the Simon & Schuster “sale saga” has reignited, said Jim Milliot their alcohol content, or ABV (alcohol by
in Publishers Weekly. America’s third-largest book publisher – home to star authors such volume) to save on tax. Although the
as Stephen King and Colleen Hoover – has been put back on the blocks by its owner, amount saved on each can or bottle is
Paramount Global, with a purchase hoped for by the end of the year. The latest news minimal – 2p say – it can add up to large
leak, published in The Wall Street Journal, puts HarperCollins (which, like the WSJ, is sums for the producer, making the move
an easy win. So far there’s been no
owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp) and the private equity giant KKR as the front- revolt against weaker, often more
runners. Both were among the losing bidders to Penguin’s original $2.2bn offer, which expensive beer. Brewers insist most
was decried by many agents and authors. It’s open to question if either of S&S’s new punters can’t tell the difference.
suitors will be any more appetising.

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

46 CITY Talking points
Issue of the week: Sunak’s AI gambit
The Government’s vision is refreshing, but does Britain have the wherewithal to capitalise on it?
During Rishi Sunak’s recent visit to rules. By contrast, it will be another two
Washington, he announced the UK years before the EU’s AI Act comes into
would host “the first global summit” force, and “aggressive Silicon Valley
on artificial-intelligence regulation later lobbying” makes it unlikely the US will
this year, said Astha Rajvanshi in Time. set up an independent AI regulator any
There’s a pressing need for it. In March, time soon. The Brits have other assets
a group of AI experts raised the alarm too, including a history of moving fast
about the risks to society posed by on tech governance and “a formidable
OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the like, calling commercial law sector”. London hosts
for “a six-month pause in development”. one of the world’s biggest AI companies,
Last month, an open letter signed by Google DeepMind, whose technologists
hundreds of AI executives – including regularly advise the Government. All in,
the CEOs of OpenAI and Google it offers “a temperate middle ground
DeepMind – stated that mitigating “the between the onerous approach of Europe
risk of extinction” from AI should be and the more laissez-faire US”.
a global priority, up there with fending
off “pandemics and nuclear war”. It’s a The PM: leading the way? This is a “pivotal” moment for the UK
moot point, though, whether a “midsize tech scene, said Brent Hoberman in
country” like the UK is really best placed to embrace the challenge The Times. Finally, we have a Government that is showing real
of becoming the world’s AI referee. Sunak “bristled” when the leadership. Well, up to a point, said The Economist. “Sunak’s vim
question was put to him. But the cynical view is that the gambit is and his readiness to champion AI are welcome”, but his plans to
an attempt to find some kind of global significance, post-Brexit. become a global hub could well fall short. The main issue is that
US dominance in tech “exerts a steady pull on capital, people and
“It’s hard not to cringe” at Sunak’s declaration that Britain ideas, and American firms duly dominate in AI”. Another is our
should “lead the way”, said Parmy Olson on Bloomberg. After all, lack of what techies call “compute” – the big “GPU” chip clusters
Brexit “hasn’t exactly inspired confidence in British policymaking”. that AI needs to train and run large models. At present, we’d even
Yet Brexit is partly why the UK could successfully fill the watchdog struggle to ensure “a reliable supply of clean, affordable energy”.
role. AI is moving fast and, “having thrown off the shackles of EU It’s good to think big, but there are plenty of hurdles to overcome
frameworks and obligations”, Britain could quickly draw up before “BritGPT” becomes an AI “superpower”.

UK shares: what the experts think The rise and rise

O Next, please
“The very thing that
shouts out loud and
clear that we have an
underlying inflation
problem”, said Roger
Bootle of Capital
Economics in The
Daily Telegraph, “is
the currently elevated
rate of increase of
wages and salaries”. Turkish soda ash: another listing flop – were prepared to pay.
Not every business is
complaining. Shares in the high street
bellwether Next shot up by 4.9% this
week on a profits upgrade, said Laura
Onita in the FT – partly because “annual
salary increases in April” emboldened
customers to spend more on their summer
wardrobes. Analyst Richard Chamberlain
of RBC Capital Markets points out that
Next has also been helped by “the exit
of Debenhams and Arcadia”, and the
troubles at John Lewis. Still, investors are
enjoying a sweet spot: shares have gained
18% in six months.
O The wrong kind of white powder
Miner WE Soda, which produces Turkish
soda ash, was due to list in London last
week valued at around $7.5bn – marking
the Square Mile’s first major flotation this
year. “It was the white powder expected to All-Share has suffered “only two negative
put a smile back on the face of the City,”
said Patrick Hosking in The Times. But at
the 11th hour, “it all just went phut”.
Despite the winning
pitch that soda ash
goes into solar panels
and other green energy
products, there was
“an unbridgeable gap”
between what the
company hoped to raise
and what investors –
“bruised by a terrible
crop of floats in 2021”
Not the greatest
advertisement for London’s animal spirits.
O Third-year boom?
The FTSE All-Share Index has spent the
year-to-date flatlining, but that’s no reason
to give up on UK stocks, said Ken Fisher
of Fisher Investments in The Daily
Telegraph. Shares are likely to “get a
boost this year” – from the US electoral
cycle. The “third year” of almost every
president’s term is “routinely and
overwhelmingly” the best for US stocks,
because “all big, controversial legislation
happens in years one and two”. Indeed,
you have to go back to 1939 to find “a
negative S&P 500 third year”. America
and Britain have “a multi-decade history
of wiggling mostly the same way at the
same time”. True to form, the FTSE
third years since 1947” – and the return
on average since 1927 has been a
“whopping” 20.5%.
of ETFs
Assets invested in global exchange
traded funds (ETFs) have hit a record
level of $10.3trn on the back of rallying
stock markets and “resilient inflows”,
said Steve Johnson in the FT. It’s quite a
milestone – demonstrating the ongoing
popularity of this form of investing.
ETFs are passive funds that track
stock indices, bonds, commodities
and almost any other asset in much
the same way as mutual funds. The
difference is that they can be bought
and sold like regular stocks and can
be structured to track almost anything
– including cryptocurrencies.
Bitcoin ETFs look set to become
all the rage, said Tom Mitchelhill on
CoinTelegraph.com. Hot on the heels
of news that “investment colossus”
BlackRock has filed an application to
run its own spot bitcoin ETF, two other
big investment firms – WisdomTree
and Invesco – are making similar
noises. Although US regulators have
yet to approve a single bitcoin ETF
product, Bloomberg senior analyst Eric
Balchunas reckons that BlackRock has
“breathed new life into the race”. The
moves could be a shot in the arm for
crypto prices after a US clampdown,
following the collapse of the FTX crypto
exchange. “Not everyone is enthused,”
said Darren Kleine on Blockworks.com.
“Concerns about some sort of hostile
takeover” by Wall Street institutions
“are swirling” in the crypto community.
Has the wolf entered the henhouse?

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 Commentators CITY 49
Summer’s here and, with it, the usual hosepipe bans and political
chuntering about renationalising Britain’s failing water companies, City profile
Forget about says Jim Armitage. Be careful what you wish for. Bringing them
back into public hands “would be like pouring money down the
Marina Berlusconi
Every Monday for the past
renationalising drain”, and there’s little evidence it would improve services. When
the infrastructure was state-owned, it was neglected abominably
30 years, Marina Berlusconi
and her younger brother Pier
water by governments of all colours for decades – London remained
reliant on Joseph Bazalgette’s 1860s system. “The reason is simple:
Silvio discussed business
over supper with their father
Jim Armitage sewers and pipes don’t win votes, so never get prioritised by at his 18th century estate
politicians.” We can’t even provide decent funding for education outside Milan, said Silvia
The Sunday Times and health, so the idea of creating a state-run “golden age of Sciorilli Borrelli in the FT.
storm drains” is for the birds. Private water companies have had That ritual is now at an end
– opening up the question
a bad rap, in part because of “some egregious profiteering” after of what will happen to the
privatisation in 1989. But current investment returns, anchored at multibillion-euro empire
a base yield of 3% by Ofwat, are reasonable. Well regulated and built by the former Italian
funded by long-term owners, private companies can make “years- PM. At first sight, the
long spending plans” – witness the Thames “supersewer”. It’s time succession looks
we stopped “investor-bashing” and let them get on with it. uncomplicated. Marina, 56,
has chaired the €4bn family
After two decades of anaemic growth, the Italian economy “has holding company, Fininvest,
staged a remarkable catch-up”, says Lionel Laurent, growing for more than two decades –
supervising assets including
Italy is far faster than Germany, France, Spain and the euro average since
the end of 2019, according to OECD data. Even last year’s
publisher Mondadori, lender
Banca Mediolanum, football
from Europe’s election victory for the ultra-conservative Giorgia Meloni “has
yet to rock the economic boat”, partly because she’s sticking to
club AC Monza and the
family’s Mediaset media
“basket case” her predecessor’s budget commitments. The upshot is that the
spread between Italy’s bond yield and Germany’s – “once a daily
empire, which is run by
Pier Silvio. In a statement,
Lionel Laurent indicator of Italian economic stress – has fallen to its lowest in Fininvest said there would
a year”. Italy has reaped the rewards of “a happy confluence be “absolute continuity”.
Bloomberg of government support, economic reforms and EU pandemic
spending”. But it is also benefitting from a “tapestry of small
businesses” that are putting Germany’s “Mittelstand” in the
shade. Perhaps because of past traumas, “Italian firms seem better
equipped to survive hard knocks”. The question now is whether
this revival is sustainable, amid a broad economic slowdown, in
a nation with a reputation for “basket-case banks, revolving-door
governments and a mountain of public debt”. Let’s hope so.

As Twitter continues to reel from its takeover by Elon Musk last

year, Mark Zuckerberg is “preparing to pounce”, says Matthew
Can Meta’s Field. His company, Meta, is readying the launch of a new app,
dubbed Threads, which “looks remarkably similar to Twitter”.
Twitter killer The benefit for users who have built up followings on Meta’s
other platforms – such as Facebook and Instagram – is that they’ll The late Berlusconi was
deliver? be able to keep their existing handles and notify followers to join
them. The hope is that this will make Threads an “easier sell”.
reportedly so “shocked”
by the infighting of Fiat’s
Matthew Field Zuckerberg could certainly use “a win”. Meta faces unrest from Agnelli dynasty that he was
investors about its push into the “metaverse”, which has cost determined to “avoid it at
all costs”. But that may be
The Daily Telegraph around $1bn a month and may yet turn out to be a blind alley. easier said than done when
Still, doubts about the new venture persist. As critics note, Meta’s there are five children from
record when it comes to launching new apps, rather than “copy two marriages involved in
and pasting” successful features from others, is patchy. Moreover, this particular Succession
the battle to become “the world’s town square”, at a time when saga, said Tom Kington in
advertising growth is slowing, could be costly. Musk certainly isn’t The Times. Although the two
taking the challenge lying down. Twitter’s response? “Game on.” oldest children will inherit
half of Berlusconi’s 61%
One reason why management jargon arouses so much irritation, Fininvest stake (with their
three half-siblings sharing
says Bartleby, is because it usually substitutes phrases that were the rest), there are
The upside doing the job perfectly well for gobbledegook incomprehensible
to those not in the know. No one hears the words “Let’s talk
complications. For one,
another holding company,
of business about it later” and feels baffled. Conversely, plenty of people
hear the phrase “Let’s put a pin in it” and wish that they had
Dolcedrago, contains
commercial property assets
jargon a sharp object to hand. Even so, “jargon gets an overly bad press”.
It’s useful in creating “a sense of tribe” and belonging within
of “unknowable” value.
Identifying which assets will
Bartleby workplaces, which often generate their own particular lexicon. go to which heir “may take
And there are practical as well as cultural reasons to encourage it. many months, if not years”,
said Ian King on Sky. But
The Economist A recent US academic paper found that teams naturally gravitate for the moment, Marina –
towards “tacitly agreed vocabulary” – often shortened – which described as motherly,
allows things to get done faster. Humans, it turns out, have but “a notoriously tough
an inherent facility for shorthand. True, “there is an awful lot negotiator” – is calling
of non-useful blather out there”, but the fact that “jargon emerges the shots. Welcome to the
spontaneously and repeatedly suggests it has its merits”. If you Berlusconi matriarchy.
think it’s all worthless, “it may be time to circle back”.

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

 Shares CITY 51

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best shares Directors’ dealings
B.P. Marsh & Partners GB Group Mercantile Investment Trust Computacenter
The Mail on Sunday The Times The Daily Telegraph
BP Marsh invests in early-stage GB is a world leader in identity MIT invests in cheap, unloved 2,500

insurers – covering US trucks, verification, location intel and mid- and small-cap UK stocks 2,400
building kit and sports injuries fraud prevention. Margins that “are yet to enjoy their
– selling them as they grow. have been hit by post-Covid heyday”. An excellent record 2,300

Wisely run by an industry end-market corrections, yet it’s of index outperformance, with
2,200
veteran, profits are up 42%. a “tempting add-on for a big “capital growth potential”.
Buying back shares and fintech group”. Buy. 251.4p. Yields 3.5%. Buy. 206.5p. 2,100
hiking the divi. Buy. 376p.
Inspiration Oxford Instruments 2,000 Director
sells 55,000
Games Workshop Healthcare Group The Times
The Times The Sunday Times Margins have held firm, Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun
The miniature wargaming This medtech firm sells despite higher costs, at this tech

SOURCE: INVESTORS’ CHRONICLE

company is beating forecasts.
Strongly cash-generative with
a new online store, there are
lucrative Warhammer licensing
deals and the promise of films
and TV shows with Amazon.
Buy. £102.10.
neonatal ventilators into
75 countries, with demand
growing as it increases capacity
and capability. Liberum names
a 100p target, citing a “sound”
core offering and unjustifiable
discount. Buy. 45p.
Shares in the tech services
outfit whose products include provider have recovered by
microscopic imaging tools almost a fifth, thanks to
for semiconductors and space “buoyant” demand from large
exploration cameras. Capex is corporate and public sector
falling and revenue growth is clients. CEO Mike Norris has
taken advantage of the rise,
robust. An attractive takeover selling £1.3m worth. He retains
target. Buy. £27.20. around 1.1 million shares.

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

CMC Markets
The Times
Shares in the spread-betting
specialist have fallen by almost
a third after a series of profit
warnings, as it ploughs cash
into technology to handle
instruments such as options
and listed futures. Hit by weak
trading activity. Avoid. 165.4p.
Crest Nicholson Holdings
Investors’ Chronicle
The housebuilder has been
impacted by the end of the
Government’s Help to Buy
scheme as well as rising
interest rates. The macro-
environment shows little sign
of improving in the medium
term. Sell. 234p.
Motorpoint Group
Investors’ Chronicle
The car dealer is suffering
from faltering consumer
demand due to higher interest
rates, constrained stock levels,
and the plummeting price of
EVs. Automation is boosting
cost savings and debt is
improving, but the outlook
is uncertain. Sell. 123p.
Robert Walters
The Times
The recruiter has issued a profit
warning owing to sinking hiring
volumes, blamed on China’s
slower than expected recovery
from Covid restrictions and
market nervousness. Profits
may disappoint. Avoid. 402p.
Sirius Real Estate Shares tipped 12 weeks ago
The Daily Telegraph Best tip
Sirius owns business and YouGov
industrial parks in the UK Investors’ Chronicle
and Germany. Rental income is up 18.31% to £10.83
rising, and solid finances enable
it to use market weakness to its Worst tip
Man Group
advantage. Yields 5.5%, with
The Times
an excellent record of dividend down 10.37% to 216.9p
growth. Hold. 87.9p.
Syncona
The Times Market view
This trust invests in healthcare “The market is saying that the
and life sciences firms – a BoE will have to push the UK
“hot ticket” sector “abuzz economy into recession to
get on top of this problem.”
with ideas”. Yet shares
Lyn Graham-Taylor, of
languish a fifth below the net Rabobank, on the latest
asset values of investments, dire inflation figures.
and the top team lacks business Quoted in the FT
experience. Avoid. 151.8p.

Market summary
Key numbers
Key numbers for
for investors
investors Best and worst performing
Best performing shares
shares Following the Footsie
20 June 2023 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS
8,000
FTSE 100 7569.31 7594.78 –0.34% RISES Price % change
FTSE All-share UK 4125.41 4151.46 –0.63% Ocado Group 424.00 +5.21
B&M European Val. Ret. 566.40 +5.08 7,900
Dow Jones 33987.25 34198.02 –0.62%
CRH (Lon) 4109.00 +4.82
NASDAQ 13596.04 13537.24 0.43%
Smith & Nephew 1244.00 +4.63 7,800
Nikkei 225 33388.91 33018.65 1.12%
Hang Seng 19607.08 19521.42 0.44% Associated Brit. Foods 1952.50 +4.47
7,700
Gold 1951.15 1952.90 –0.09%
Brent Crude Oil 75.23 74.14 1.47% FALLS
DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.74% 3.75% Spirax-Sarco Engr. 10300.00 –9.77 7,600
UK 10-year gilts yield 4.40 4.52 Halma 2252.00 –8.16
US 10-year Treasuries 3.72 3.78 Airtel Africa 121.70 –8.08 7,500
UK ECONOMIC DATA Hargreaves Lansdown 798.40 –7.53
Latest CPI (yoy) 8.7% (May) 8.7% (Apr) Natwest Group 245.30 –7.19 7,400
Latest RPI (yoy) 11.3% (May) 11.4% (Apr)
Halifax house price (yoy) –1.0% (May) FTSE 250 RISER & FALLER
0.1% (Apr) Games Workshop 10730.00 +11.20 Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun

£1 STERLING: $1.276 s1.169 ¥181.280 Bitcoin $27,216.10 Synthomer 73.00 –18.50 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index
Source: Refinitiv/FT (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 20 June (pm)

24 June 2023 THE WEEK

52 The last word

The strange survival of

Guinness World Records
For more than half a century, one organisation has been cataloguing the weird and wonderful feats that human beings can pull off.
How has it evolved in the world of social media and information on demand? Imogen West-Knights reports

A couple of summers ago, aura of an Orange County

I went to the Guinness surfer out of water, was there
Storehouse in Dublin. I’d to try to break the record for
spent a lot of time in the city most consecutive cars jumped
before, but I’d never visited over on a pogo stick. Behind
the brewery. The tour is good. him, five taxis were lined up
You can learn about how side by side, with a gap of
barrels are made, get your a few metres between each.
face printed in the head of A dozen GWR employees
a pint and, at the end, have stood around to witness
a drink in a bar with a this attempt. Their number
360-degree view of the city. included a man in a navy and
But what stayed with me most grey suit with a GWR logo
was something I saw there by on its breast pocket – a suit,
accident. One of the exhibit I later learnt, that is reviled
rooms was closed off, but by many at the company
only partially. Curiosity got for the high voltage of
the better of me, and behind static it produces – who
the door I found a room that was introduced to me as
was empty but for a table. Craig Glenday, the book’s
On the table, there were editor-in-chief, who watched
a handful of editions of The on with the unruffled air
Guinness Book of Records. of someone for whom seeing
a man pogostick over cars
I hadn’t thought about this is all in a day’s work.
book since I was in primary
school. Back then, The Etibar Elchiyev holds the record for the most spoons stuck to a body The atmosphere was tense.
Guinness Book of Records Cameras were set up to
meant a big, brightly coloured, hardback volume containing document the feat. Phillips did some practice runs without
500-odd pages of pictures of people doing things like growing the cars. On one occasion, he found himself sprawled on the
their hair very long or juggling knives. The book, which since pavement. I winced. Finally, it was time. Everyone fell silent.
1999 has gone by Guinness World Records, is still an Phillips steadied himself, and began. He nailed the first jump.
overwhelming blizzard of wacky Then the second, then the third.
pictures and hard data. But the All breath was held. When
company that publishes it, also “In spite of its absurdity, or maybe because Phillips jumped the final taxi
called Guinness World Records, of it, record breaking is a reflection of our and landed unscathed, he let
is not the same as when I held the pogo stick fall to the ground
my first annual, the green and deepest interests and desires” and did a celebratory backflip.
silver 2002 edition. Sales of the “Yes!” he shouted.
book have declined in recent times, and the company has had to
find new ways to make money – not all of which have met with A few weeks after witnessing Phillips’s feat, I visited Glenday at
the approval of the GWR old guard. When I spoke to Anna the Guinness World Records headquarters in an unremarkable
Nicholas, who worked as the head of PR for the book in the building near Tottenham Court Road in London. At first glance,
1980s and 1990s, she lamented how things had changed: records the office looks much like any other. Until, that is, your eyes alight
are now more sensationalist, she said, to meet the demand of an on items such as the broken toilet seat from a 2007 record-beating
audience that can see extraordinary things on social media. attempt at smashing the most toilet seats with your head in a
minute (47). Glenday was keen for me to try breaking a record
It is strange to think of Guinness World Records – a business myself, and browsed through their database of 60,000-odd
named after a beer company, which catalogues humanity’s most records to find one that was easy to do in the office and not
batshit endeavours – as the kind of entity that could sell out. impossibly difficult to beat. We settled for the longest time
At first glance, it seems like accusing Alton Towers or Pizza standing on one leg blindfolded. The record stood at 31min 14sec.
Express of selling out. But the deeper I delved into the world Like all record attempters, I was allowed three goes. My first
of record breaking, the more sense it made. In spite of its attempt clocked in at a pathetic 3.4 seconds. Then 25.06 seconds.
absurdity, or maybe because of it, record breaking is a reflection Then 31.03. I’m somewhat ashamed to say that a tiny part of me
of our deepest interests and desires. Look deeply enough at was surprised. Before I’d tried to beat the record, a voice inside
a man attempting to break the record for most spoons on me had whispered: “What if this is my secret skill? A hitherto
a human body, and you can find yourself starting to believe undiscovered genius I have: standing on one leg blindfolded?”
that you’re peering into humanity’s soul.
As a child, I thought of Guinness as something like a mystical
On a windy late autumn morning, at the Olympic Park in east higher power, or some kind of government body. It seemed like it
London, I found a young man pogoing with as much nervous must have always existed. Not so. It began with an argument in
solemnity as it is possible to pogo. Tyler Phillips, who had the 1951. The managing director of Guinness, Sir Hugh Beaver, was

THE WEEK 24 June 2023

 The last word
on a hunting trip, and his party couldn’t
agree which game bird was fastest. Later,
it occurred to Beaver that there would
surely be an appetite for argument-settling
answers in the form of a compendious
book that catalogued world records, as
well as the extremes of the natural world.
This volume could be distributed to shops,
and pubs that sold Guinness. For help,
Beaver turned to identical twins named
Ross and Norris McWhirter who ran a
fact and figure provision service for the
newspapers of Fleet Street. The first
edition, published in 1955, was shaped
by the brothers’ eclectic personal taste
and sense of propriety. No records to do
with sex were included, but readers could
discover the highest lifetime milk yield of a The McWhirters brought “intellectual integrity” at your record-breaking attempt, either in
cow (325,130lb, held by a British Friesian
called Manningford Faith Jan Graceful). The book became wildly
popular, and the annual Guinness Book of Records was born,
with the McWhirter twins remaining at the helm for two decades.
In 1975, Ross was shot dead by the IRA for offering a £50,000
reward for information on terrorist bombers in Britain. Norris
continued alone, and only stopped working for GWR in 1996.
Today, anyone arguing with their friends about the fastest game
bird (the red-breasted merganser, at 130 km/h) would, of course,
consult the internet, not the latest edition of Guinness World
Records. But when I sat down to chat with Glenday in the GWR
headquarters, in a meeting room named after Elaine Davidson,
the world’s most-pierced woman, he made the bold claim that
the age of information on demand has not killed the need for
the book. In fact, he continued
still more boldly, it may have
actually helped them. He “‘It sounds ridiculous,’ one adjudicator says, the record had not been broken
positioned GWR as a kind ‘but I have to treat every adjudication as if it’s since I first tried it. It had. It now
of fact-checker of the absurd.
The company liaises closely
Usain Bolt running the 100 metres’”
with experts in fields as diverse
as surfing, architecture, extreme weather, robotics and jigsaw
puzzles. Glenday argues that the book serves as an authority in
a way that the great wash of information on the internet can’t.
There are, I posit, four types of Guinness world records. Type
one: records broken without being record-breaking attempts – the
most words in a hit single, say (Rap God by Eminem at 1,560).
Type two: sporting achievements – the longest tennis match
(11hr 5min) and so on. Type three are the ones that stick in our
memories from childhood: records that seem to exist purely in
order to be records. The fastest time to roll an orange one mile
with your nose (22min 41sec), and perhaps the most iconic of
all, longest fingernails (42ft 10.4in). And then there is the fourth with whom she used to get her nails done, died aged 16.
kind: marketing stunts. In 2020, for instance, Bush’s Beans set
the record for largest layered dip (493kg and 70 layers) to
“celebrate the Super Bowl”. For some observers, the existence
of this last category is a sad reflection of how far the company
has fallen. “They’ve lost the intellectual integrity that the twins to sort 500g of peanut M&Ms by colour, using only one hand.
had,” Norris’s son, Alasdair McWhirter, told me. “Now
everything is done to make money.”
These days, GWR Consultancy, which was introduced in 2009,
accounts for half of the company’s revenue. For a fee starting at
£11,000, brands can call on the services of a GWR consultant,
who can help them brainstorm which record the company could
attempt for most viral PR, and an official adjudicator. There are
90 or so adjudicators, and each must wear a special jacket, at
every event, no matter the weather. They can’t fraternise after
hours with the record-setters, and must bring the certificate,
framed, to each record-breaking attempt. If you fail, they take
them away to be shredded, because sometimes people have gone
through the Guinness bins to steal them. Not everything can be
a record. The adjudicators receive as many as 100 requests for
53
new record creations a day from all over
the world. In judging their suitability,
GWR applies five criteria. Records must
be standardisable, measurable, breakable,
verifiable and, crucially, contain only a
single superlative. The fastest marathon:
fair game. The tallest man: fair game. The
fastest marathon run by the tallest man:
nope. There also has to be a sense that
anybody else might want to break said
new record. “One example application
we got was the longest drawing of an
evil train,” Glenday told me.
Today, most adjudications take place
remotely, with video evidence scrutinised.
If you want to have an adjudicator present
person or by video link, you would have
to pay £6,000 for the privilege. Training to be an adjudicator
takes about a week, and involves media training, codes of
behaviour and a course in how to use measuring equipment,
such as a sound meter to record, say, the loudest burp by a male
(112.4db, roughly as loud as it is possible to blow a trombone).
Every record has to be treated with the same gravity. “It sounds
ridiculous, things like someone skipping in swim fins,” one
longtime adjudicator told me. “But they’re practising every
day, they really believe in it. I have to treat every adjudication
as if it’s Usain Bolt running the 100 metres.”
I decided to practise standing on one leg blindfolded to see if I
could beat the record I’d failed to break at the Guinness office.
Initially, I was bad. Then, soon enough, I wasn’t. I got up to 12
minutes and eight seconds before
it occurred to me to check that
stood at 1hr 6min 57sec, held
since early 2022 by a man in
India. After reading this, I was
demoralised. The reason I didn’t break the record was not because
I was incapable of doing it. It was because I didn’t want it enough.
Or perhaps I didn’t want it for the right reasons. GWR may be
a business, but for the people pursuing the records, it is far more
than that. George Kaminski, who held the record for the largest
collection of four-leaf clovers until 2007, collected every one of
them from the grounds of prisons in Pennsylvania where he was
serving a life sentence. The woman with the longest fingernails,
Diana Armstrong, does not have the longest fingernails because
she wants her picture in a book. She has the longest fingernails
because she decided never to cut them again after her daughter,
Not long ago, I logged on to Zoom to watch André Ortolf, a
29-year-old German record breaker who specialises in eating
things very quickly, make his next attempt: the shortest time
The holder of the title, a man in Perth, had achieved this in
1min 33.03sec. Ortolf, at his house in Augsburg, a small city just
outside Munich, had seven bowls of equal height laid out in front
of him and a camera set up on a tripod. He took a few steadying
breaths. The timer started, and he began. He had developed a
technique: blue first, as he finds them easiest to spot. The only
sound was Ortolf’s measured breathing, and the rhythmic ding
of blue chocolate hitting ceramic. Then brown, green, yellow,
orange. The final colour he could do in scoops. As the last handful
hit the bowl, his witness stopped the clock. One minute, 27.45
seconds. Another record in the bag, his 104th. Ortolf laughed,
a wide smile splitting his face. “Yes,” he said, “yes.”
A longer version of this article appeared in The Guardian
© Guardian News & Media Limited 2023
24 June 2023 THE WEEK
 Crossword 55
THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1368 This week’s winner will receive an
An Ettinger pass holder and two Connell Guides will be given to the sender of the first Ettinger (ettinger.co.uk) travel pass
correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 3 July. Send holder in assorted colours, which
it to The Week Crossword 1368, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the retails at £115, and two Connell Guides
completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) (connellguides.com).

ACROSS One’s forgotten (6)

1 Most here unwinding? (4,4)
5 Beauty proves the rule? Not
entirely (6)
9 Nuts could be stuff for the
party (8)
10 Ford’s car range? (6)
12 Quick look both ways (4)
13 Not how a minister should be
welcomed in speech! (4,6)
15 Bound to get party food that’s
good for you (6,6)
20 Amazement with heartless
JFK shooting and ultimately utter
distress in Dallas (12)
25 Young ladies mean to be first
in flying incidents (4,6)
27 Joke beginning to annoy
Lady (4)
29 Despatch is leaderless –
that’s the conclusion (6)
30 Surprising lack of time for
flier (8)
31 Ministers cut about 500 by
beginning of September (6)
32 Aversion is stated differently (8)
DOWN
1 Goes back over dodgy parcels
left out (6)
2 Religious American is less stable?
Clue of the week: Plain ties and green buckle (9, first letter S)
The Times
3 Increase in price for organised
forest walk? (4)
4 Rifle something from the drinks
cabinet (7)
6 One going download fast? (5)
7 School heard end is tough (8)
8 What heaps may fail started out
initially amiss (4,4)
11 Reprimand voiced for old
politician (4)
14 Noble peers holding sword (4)
16 US organisation foremost in
never rejecting arms (3)
17 Thatcher’s material heartlessly
rendered (4)
18 Superficial type in view on
opening of Parliament (4-4)
19 Trade winds blowing out of
West Indies wrecked (8)
21 Absolutely fair (4)
22 Lady before end of bus journey
snubbed conductors (7)
23 Run so long for receivers (6)
24 Butcher giving male point of
view (6)
26 What’s good in animal hair?
Not this! (5)
28 Piece written about end of our
herring (4)
Name
Address
Tel no
Clue of the week answer:

Solution to Crossword 1366

Restore your
ACROSS: 7 Breather 9 Durban 10 Less 11 Membership 12 Period
14 Notepads 15 Take a butchers 17 True blue 19 Enesco 21 Flamboyant
22 Slag 23 Begone 24 Scurries
DOWN: 1 Greene 2 Bags 3 The media 4 Advert 5 Crosspiece 6 Matildas
8 Roman numerals 13 Ilkley Moor 15 Thriller 16 Chestnut 18 Looter
20 Claret 22 Sure
Clue of the week: Restless polar bears like protection from the Sun
news-life balance
(7 letters, first one P last one L) Solution: PARASOL (AS inside anagram
of POLAR)
The winner of 1366 is Mrs M. England from Swindon
The Week is available from RNIB Newsagent for the benefit of blind and
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