Table of contents for 1565 in The Week

Forty years after it was last seen in the UK, a tiny wolf spider has been rediscovered on the Isle of Wight. Wolf spiders, of which there are about 38 species in the UK, are so known because of the way they chase and then pounce on their prey. However, the hunting methods of Aulonia albimana are not known. It has been dubbed the white-knuckled wolf spider, partly because of the thrill of its rediscovery, in a remote nature reserve accessible only by boat. A 66-year-old retired banker from Dartmoor has completed 200 marathons in 200 days, running around the entire coastline of mainland Britain. Two weeks in, Steve James’s feet were so painful, he was admitted to A&E. But having got some new trainers, and prescription drugs, he carried…

Controversy of the week Farage’s economic pitch When making a deal with Nigel Farage, it’s a good idea to “study the fine print”, said The Times. Reform UK’s manifesto for last year’s general election was grandly titled “Our Contract With You”. It contained £90bn of juicy tax cuts, among them lifting the income tax threshold to £20,000, and abolishing stamp duty on properties under £750,000. Yet in his first major speech on the economy – he has never really given one before – Farage informed us on Monday that these pledges were only ever an “aspiration”. “We want to cut taxes, of course we do,” he told an audience in the City of London. But with the national debt at 100% of GDP, such measures, he said, were no longer…

Shein, the Chinese online fast-fashion giant, which was facing growing anger about its choice of Paris as the location of its first physical store. The shop was due to open this week on the sixth floor of the upmarket department store BHV. Other fashion brands, including Agnès B, are leaving BHV in protest, and this week, public outrage grew when French investigators revealed that child-like sex dolls were being sold on the Shein platform. Britain’s farmers, after a new survey found that a third had either made a loss or broken even in the past year amid a drop in subsidies. Only 14% of those surveyed for the Farmdex report had a profit margin of 10% or more. Ryan Murphy, whose new legal drama, starring Kim Kardashian and Naomi Watts,…

Paris Louvre arrests: The audacious jewellery heist at the Louvre last month was carried out, it now appears, by small-time criminals from the northern suburbs of Paris, not professionals from the world of organised crime. Three of the men involved in the heist – in which two men used a ladder mounted on a truck to reach the museum’s first floor, smashed a window, cracked open a display case and then fled on scooters driven by two accomplices with 19th century crown jewels worth €88m – have now been arrested and charged over the robbery, and a woman, thought to be the girlfriend of one of the robbers, has been charged with complicity. That the robbers were amateurs seemed clear from the outset, as they dropped the most precious item…

1 Starman, written and performed by David Bowie 2 Mama Said by Luther Dixon and Willie Denson, performed by Dusty Springfield 3* Careful by McAlinden and Raymond McDonald, performed by Horse 4 Rock the Casbah by Topper Headon, Joe Strummer and Mick Jones, performed by The Clash 5 Truth by Gregory Kane and Patrick Kane, performed by Hue and Cry 6 Warm Leatherette by Daniel Miller, performed by Grace Jones 7 Love Is All Around by Reg Presley, performed by Wet Wet Wet 8 That’s When He Told Her by Charlie Reid and Craig Reid, performed by The Proclaimers Book: South: The Last Antarctic Expedition of Shackleton and the Endurance by Sir Ernest Shackleton Luxury: a solar-powered digital photo album * Choice if allowed only one record…

A series of high-profile accidents over the years have undermined nuclear power’s safety credentials. In 1957, a reactor caught fire at the Windscale nuclear plant, now known as Sellafield, releasing radioactive material across the UK. In 1979, a reactor at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania went into partial meltdown following a cooling malfunction. In the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, a reactor exploded at a plant in Soviet Ukraine. And in 2011, a 9.0-magnitude earthquake triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima power plant in Japan; it will take up to 40 years to decontaminate the area. Nevertheless, the weight of scientific opinion holds that nuclear is a safe form of power generation. There were no confirmed deaths from Windscale or Three Mile Island, and only one from Fukushima (though all may…

A refugee’s paean to Halloween Oanh Ngo Usadi The Washington Post When my family first arrived in Texas 40 years ago as refugees from Vietnam, the adults “loved Thanksgiving, a day of gratitude centred on food and family, but for us kids, nothing compared to Halloween”, says Oanh Ngo Usadi. In Vietnam, food was scarce and enemies were everywhere. “Yet here, strangers handed out treats, and all I had to do was say a few words, a phrase that didn’t fully make sense.” The rituals puzzled me. “Toilet paper draped across trees – what for, and why waste something so precious?” Huge pumpkins, grown only for decoration? The fake skeletons, dangling on porches, were unsettling. “In Vietnam, where ancestor worship is woven into Buddhist culture, the bones of the dead…

People buying new television sets are often advised to spend more on ultra-high-definition (HD) models, for a clearer, sharper picture. But it seems that there are only so many pixels the human eye can detect; and after that, packing in more won’t bring a discernible benefit. As part of a series of experiments, a team of researchers from the University of Cambridge and Meta Reality Labs set up a sliding display, and asked participants to look at one-pixel-wide lines on a screen as it was slowly pulled back. The point where they could only just distinguish the lines (before they formed a block) was deemed “the resolution limit”. Based on their results, they calculate that if a 44-inch TV were 2.5 metres away from the sofa, as in an average…

“What is it about Labour ministers and property?” asked Oliver Wright and Ben Clatworthy in The Times. They keep getting into scrapes over it. First the homelessness minister, Rushanara Ali, had to resign after evicting her tenants, and relisting the property at a higher rent. Then Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister and housing secretary, was effectively sacked for paying insufficient stamp duty on a flat. And now Rachel Reeves has got into trouble for having failed to obtain a licence last year to rent out her former family home in Dulwich, south London, after she moved to her new digs in Downing Street. The Chancellor initially told the Prime Minister that she and her husband had been unaware that they needed the £945 licence. But less than 24 hours…

“If the law is against you, talk about the evidence. If the evidence is against you, talk about the law. If the law and the evidence are both against you, then pound on the table and yell like hell.”Attrib. Carl Sandburg, quoted on Townhall “If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”Anne Lamott, quoted on HuffPost “Delay is the deadliest form of denial.”C. Northcote Parkinson, quoted in The Times “The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.”Aristotle, quoted in Forbes “Courage is the only virtue you can’t fake.”Nassim Nicholas Taleb, quoted in The Times “I hate when people say, ‘Hey, don’t judge.’ Don’t take away my hobbies.”Marc Maron, quoted on Vulture “God is definitely…

To The Guardian I notice that the Sandringham estate is run as a business, with holiday lets and public access to parks and gardens. Surely, rather than give Andrew a stipend to stay in a grace-and-favour house doing nothing, the King should offer him a wage to do something useful? I am sure the estate needs tour guides, cleaners, groundspersons, gardeners and rubbish collectors: good jobs on the national living wage for a commoner. Time was, disgraced aristocrats did penance through good works. It is probably just the sort of therapy this disgraced former prince needs, now that solutions such as banishment to the colonies are thoroughly out of fashion. John Robinson, Deal, Kent To The Times The words of Kenneth Grahame in The Wind in the Willows (1908): “Then the…

“If you want to experience contemporary opera at its most compelling, harrowing and intensely delivered”, said Richard Morrison in The Times, go and see English National Opera’s “stunning” new production of Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking. First staged in the US in 2000, and based on Sister Helen Prejean’s 1993 memoir about her work with prisoners on death row in Louisiana, the opera focuses on a composite character, a murderer and rapist known here as Joseph De Rocher, from his brutal crime to his execution by lethal injection. Plainly, this is not the “cheeriest way to spend three hours”. But opera proves the “perfect vehicle for a drama that deals with the very essence of morality, judgement and conscience”. This true story was turned into a powerful, Oscar-winning film in…

“You don’t have to speak algorithm to understand why Apple TV might have gone for Down Cemetery Road,” said Benji Wilson in The Daily Telegraph. It’s adapted from a novel by Mick Herron, author of the wildly successful Slow Horses series, and it follows much the same template as that franchise. Emma Thompson plays the maverick, Oxford-based private detective Zoë Boehm, a “cynical” and sarcastic character not a million miles from Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb. She’s called upon by Sarah (Ruth Wilson), a local art restorer married to a banker, who has been rattled by an explosion on her street: it was blamed on a gas leak, but Sarah has sniffed out a conspiracy. What follows is “great stuff”, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. As the pair battle to…

The Castello Cube is a modern art piece made entirely from 24-carat gold. Designed by the German conceptual artist Niclas Castello, it caused some excitement “when it was mysteriously placed in New York’s Central Park for a day in 2022”, says James Warrington in The Daily Telegraph. It has also appeared in Venice and Zürich. Its unveiling was used to promote an accompanying cryptocurrency, dubbed the Castello Coin. The cube weighs 186kg, so with the price of gold at around $4,000 (£3,000) an ounce, it is thought to be worth about $23m. On his website, the artist describes it as a “golden cube – the most elementary geometric shape – whose image is nevertheless impossible to grasp”. But now, a 32% stake in the cube is poised to go on…

Emma confronts Lilian over barring George from The Bull; to no avail. Later, she suggests George helps her on a tree surgery job. When Justin finds out, he’s furious and dismisses George. While Eddie starts selling turkeys, Joy volunteers to organise the village Christmas event. Miranda talks honestly to Lilian about her offer on the Home Farm house. Pip is disgruntled about Ruth and David spending so much time at Meadow Farm, making her life difficult; however, she softens when Esme helps her with a rogue heifer. Freddie takes George out and offers advice on post-prison life, and some hours at the abattoir. Esme realises she’s asking too much of the Archers with Meadow Farm – Pip asks if she’s considered staying on and running it herself. With Vince reluctant…

Margaret’s 18 Chesterton Road, Cambridge (01223-375071) Having a restaurant named after you might sound nice, but it could be “something of a risk”, says Charlotte Ivers in The Sunday Times. “What if it’s terrible?” Margaret’s is named after a regular customer at its long-established sibling next door, Restaurant 22 – and she must have been relieved when she first ate here, and discovered that it’s a “properly smart operation”. Whereas Restaurant 22 offers expensive tasting menus, the proposition at Margaret’s is simpler: a three-course lunch costs £37.50. And though the food isn’t fancy, it displays “sparks of cleverness that reveal the place’s pedigree”. Focaccia for the table comes with peppery East Anglian rapeseed oil and blackcurrant vinegar – even though “nobody would have blinked at a bog-standard extra-virgin and balsamic”.…

Prunella Scales 1932-2025 Prunella Scales, who has died aged 93, was a serious dramatic actress known among other things for being the first person to play a fictionalised Queen Elizabeth II on the British stage, said Michael Coveney in The Guardian. It was considered a bold move when, in 1988, Richard Eyre decided to stage, at the National Theatre, Alan Bennett’s A Question of Attribution, about Anthony Blunt, surveyor of the Queen’s pictures (and a Soviet spy): theatres had shied away from plays featuring a living monarch. But Scales was praised for perfectly capturing the Queen’s “essence” and “enigma” as well as her voice and mannerisms, and it seems her performance did not go unnoticed at the Palace. In 1992, she was appointed CBE. At the investiture, as the Queen…

Michael Burry The Big Short investor, who famously predicted the bursting of the subprime bubble two decades ago, has returned with two more big shorts – targeting stocks at the heart of the AI boom, said Asa Fitch in The Wall Street Journal. Michael Burry’s Scion Asset Management has bought options, involving more than $200m of Nvidia shares and $900m of Palantir stock, that will pay off if shares fall. “Sometimes, we see bubbles. Sometimes, there is something to do about it. Sometimes, the only winning move is not to play,” he wrote to his 1.4 million followers on X/Twitter. Palantir boss Alex Karp described Burry as “bat-crazy”. He’s certainly been wrong before. But judging by the sell-off in Palantir shares on Tuesday, “the sceptics seem to be gaining more…

Tax hikes warning What happened In an unconventional pre-Budget speech, Chancellor Rachel Reeves paved the way for manifesto-breaking tax rises on 26 November, including the first income tax hike since the 1970s. She warned that “each of us must do our bit” to fix the nation’s finances. Blaming Brexit, Liz Truss’s mini-Budget and a productivity downgrade for a multibillion-pound “black hole” in the public finances, Reeves pledged to put “the national interest” ahead of “political expediency” in her Budget, in order to reduce the national debt and protect the NHS. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch described the speech as “one long waffle bomb, a laundry list of excuses”, and insisted that if the Government were to break its explicit pledge not to raise income taxes, Reeves would have to resign. The…

Dictionary.com has declared “six-seven” its “word of the year”. Thought to have been coined by rapper Skrilla, the phrase has swept across social media, though it has no meaning. It can be used to express joy or solidarity. Some have called it an example of digital “brain rot”, but Dictionary.com disagrees. “When people say it, they’re not just repeating a meme; they’re shouting a feeling,” said one expert. Teachers have been so irritated by pupils shouting it in lessons, some have banned it. A survey of teachers has revealed that Americanisms are increasingly creeping into children’s language. Half of primary school teachers say they’ve heard “trash” or “garbage” rather than rubbish; 65% have heard “candy” for sweets.…

One in five working-age people are out of work and not seeking employment, according to a Government-commissioned review by the former John Lewis boss Sir Charlie Mayfield. Employers are losing an estimated £85bn per year in costs such as sick pay, staff turnover and lost productivity. Without intervention, 600,000 more people could leave work on grounds of ill-health by 2030. In response, the Government announced a partnership with more than 60 companies, including Tesco and Google, to “tackle the rising tide of ill-health that is pushing people out of work”.…

State College, Pennsylvania FBI director’s fury: Kash Patel, the director of the FBI, has reacted furiously to press reports that he used one of the bureau’s jets to see his country singer girlfriend Alexis Wilkins perform the national anthem at a professional wrestling event at Penn State University last month. He condemned the “baseless” and “pathetic” attacks, claiming that they were “against Alexis – a true patriot”; and he was reported to have fired the senior FBI official whose responsibilities include overseeing the agency’s jets. Steven Palmer was the third head of the FBI’s critical incident response group to have been fired since Patel was made director in February. Insiders told Bloomberg Law that it was baffling that he had been blamed for the story emerging, given that the flight…

“I saw recently that one of Alexa Chung’s biggest‘icks’ is being shown something on somebody else’s phone. I regularly show my husband memes during the quality time we spend scrolling through our phones ignoring each other; but I now see it for the ick it is. A dinner party or night out never recovers from someone playing something hilarious on YouTube. It ruins the flow of conversation and then everyone else piles in with another ‘share’ (ick). I now say, ‘Oh great, send it to me and I’ll watch it later!’ It’s one thing trying to avoid your own screen, but what chance does your poor ruined attention span stand if you’re bombarded by other people’s as well?” Harriet Walker in The Times…

Prisoners on the road to nowhere Alice Thomson The Times A huge fuss was made last month over the failed asylum seeker Hadush Kebatu, who, having mistakenly been let out of jail, went back to knock on the prison’s door, begging to be readmitted. Justice Secretary David Lammy is demanding a full inquiry into the accidental release. What he should have been demanding, says Alice Thomson, is an inquiry into a far graver problem: among the prisoners correctly released (140 a day on average), there are many who – rejected by their families or girlfriends – have no home to go to. Nearly a quarter of those released from Wormwood Scrubs, for instance, leave with no fixed abode. There’s meant to be a strategy for each inmate prior to their…

A “gender gap” for heart health Physical activity guidelines tend not to differ between the sexes – yet it seems that to reap the same benefits to the heart, men may need to do twice as much exercise as women. For a new study, researchers gathered data from activity trackers worn by 80,243 Britons, all of whom were free from coronary heart disease at the start. Analysis of health records showed that, over the next eight years, the women who did at least two-and-a-half hours of moderate to vigorous exercise a week (such as brisk walking or cycling) were 22% less likely to develop heart problems than those who were more sedentary. By contrast, the men who did that level of exercise saw their risk fall by just 17%. The…

Kemi Badenoch’s leadership woes were the subject of intense discussion at The Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year Awards, said The Guardian. Tory shadow frontbencher James Cleverly got the ball rolling by using his opening speech to rip into Robert Jenrick’s not-so-subtle moves to position himself as her successor. “Am I after her job? Am I going to stick the knife between her shoulder blades and steal the crown? No, of course I’m not,” said Cleverly to the laughing audience. “Have I had a snazzy new haircut and lost loads of puppy fat? … Am I producing viral vigilante videos? If I was,” he added, “maybe you would suspect I’m on manoeuvres.” Three years after being stabbed and nearly killed, Salman Rushdie says he is surprised he doesn’t suffer from post-traumatic…

the Doncaster to King’s Cross train last Saturday evening, some passengers assumed the commotion was Halloween related, said Neil Sears in the Daily Mail. But it soon became apparent that this was no prank: a man who’d boarded the train at Peterborough was stabbing and slashing his way through the carriages, sending terrified passengers fleeing in panic down narrow aisles. By the time the train stopped at Huntingdon, 11 people had been injured, five critically. That more were not hurt was down to the cool head of the driver, Andrew Johnson, who’d diverted the train so that it could make its unscheduled stop, and to some individual acts of great courage. LNER worker Samir Zitouni, 48, for instance, intervened to stop the knifeman, and was this week in a critical…

Cricket England’s white-ball cricketers lost their third ODI against New Zealand by two wickets. They lost the series 3-0. The Ashes begin later this month. Tennis Jannik Sinner beat Félix Auger-Aliassime 6-4, 7-6 in the final of the Paris Masters to take the world No. 1 mantle from Carlos Alcaraz. Football After losing four straight games, Liverpool returned to winning ways with a 2-0 victory over Aston Villa. West Ham’s manager, Nuno Espírito Santo, claimed his first victory since joining the club in September with a 3-1 defeat of Newcastle.…

Book of the week The Revolutionists by Jason Burke Bodley Head 768pp £30 The Week Bookshop £26.99 (incl. p&p) Today, it is easy to forget how “brutal and random” the 1970s could be, said Hugh Thomson in The Spectator. This was the first age of transnational terrorism, when radicals and revolutionaries deployed new, often deadly tactics in the hope of furthering their goals. They carried out plane hijackings, kidnappings and massacres – from the 1972 Munich Olympics atrocity to the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979 – and set off bombs around the globe, “from the Tower of London to Washington to Singapore”. In this “superb and monumental” book, Jason Burke details the main movements – including the Palestine Liberation Organisation, the Baader-Meinhof Gang and “our own IRA” – and offers…

Peak Human by Johan Norberg, 2025 (Atlantic £22). If you’re worried that Western civilisation and democracy is in decline, this is for you – in fact, it’s the best book I have read this year. Johan Norberg looks at civilisations from Athens to the Anglosphere, and traces the reasons for their rise and fall. His conclusion: all is not lost. Super Agers by Eric Topol, 2025 (Cornerstone Press £22). Eric Topol is my favourite American doctor, and has given me superb advice on many occasions. His latest book looks scientifically at all the diseases that cause ageing, from heart disease to cancer to dementia – and exactly what the latest clinical trials say works and does not work. For someone like me who is turning 60 next year, it was…

Programmes Dance Passion Bradford For a citywide performance, dancers from a range of genres take to the streets. The event includes a collaboration between Hanif Kureishi and Royal Ballet choreographer Kristen McNally. Sun 9 Nov, BBC4 20:00 (60mins). Trespasses Adaptation of Louise Kennedy’s novel about a woman embarking on a dangerous relationship in 1970s Belfast. Sun 9-Wed 12 Nov, C4 21:00 (first episode 75mins, then 60mins each). Mr Burton Marking 100 years since Richard Burton’s birth, this biopic tells the true story of his early years in Port Talbot, when schoolmaster Mr Burton (Toby Jones) took a wayward Richard Jenkins under his wing. Mon 10 Nov, BBC1 20:00 (120mins). Breaking Ranks: Inside Israel’s War IDF soldiers speak out about their experiences in Gaza. Mon 10 Nov, ITV1 22:45 (65mins). Richard Burton:…

This was a dish that, for all its simplicity, took approximately 16 attempts before we were happy with it, says Marc Summers. The recipe will leave you with more of the honey than you need, but it can be stored in a sealed jar in the fridge for up to three months, and is delicious with a cheeseboard. Halloumi with black seed honey Serves 2-3 225-250g block halloumi 1 tsp lemon juice and zest of 1 unwaxed lemon flaky sea salt For the black seed honey: 1¾ tsp coriander seeds 2½ tsp nigella seeds 4 tsp whole black peppercorns ½ tsp urfa chilli flakes 125g clear blossom honey • Preheat the oven to 180°C/160°C fan/350°F/Gas mark 4. • For the black seed honey, toast the coriander seeds in a dry frying…

● Dirt will cause wear and tear, so give your bike a hot soapy bath every fortnight – particularly in winter, with salt on roads. ● Don’t use a pressure washer, as it can blow grease out of moving parts. Hand cleaning is best; use a rag to dry as you go. ● Wipe the chain with a dry rag to remove any dirt. When it is clean and dry, apply a drop of oil lubricant on each roller to flow through the chain. Wipe off any excess; don’t use too much or it will attract grit. For a deeper clean, use a chain-cleaning tool or an old toothbrush and organic degreasers. ● Check that your tyres are inflated and look out for signs of splitting. The sidewall of each…

Peter Watkins 1935-2025 In the mid-1960s, the radical filmmaker Peter Watkins became convinced that the British public was not being told the truth about the reality of nuclear war, said The Times. His answer was to make The War Game, a docudrama for the BBC. Filmed in Kent, partly in the style of a public information broadcast and featuring non-professional actors, it opens with a newsreader describing the latest salvos in an escalating conflict between nuclear states. In England, mass evacuations are under way, and people are scrabbling to make bomb shelters. When the country comes under attack, the bomb explodes in the air, off target. Even so, eyeballs melt, shockwaves explode houses and a firestorm tears through a major town. In the grisly aftermath, armed police shoot dead horribly…

What are they? Groups of investors who pool their money and knowledge to invest in the stock market. The clubs started appearing in noticeable numbers in Britain in the late 1950s, and hit their heyday in the 1990s and 2000s with an estimated 12,000. Members, capped at 20 per club, usually pay a buy-in fee of around £1,000 to join, and then invest between £30-£70 each month. Some clubs have been notably successful. The Coriander Club, formed by a group of ex-Reuters staff, has grown its pot from about £10,000 in 2000 to £234,000. Why are they declining? Largely because of the rise of technology. Why set up a cumbersome partnership, deal with returns and so on “when you can do it all on your phone”, comparatively cheaply? The introduction…

The week’s best shares Animalcare Group Investors’ Chronicle The vet pharma group is investing in R&D to produce drugs – each with potential to generate revenues of £15m. The market has grown since Covid with non-discretionary products, such as dog painkillers, key. Buy. 249p. Begbies Traynor Group Investors’ Chronicle The UK’s stuttering economy, higher taxes and elevated interest rates are keeping the insolvency specialist busy – with revenues at the upper end of forecasts. Shares have soared, yet trade below their five-year average. Buy. 110p. Goodwin The Mail on Sunday Goodwin makes parts for a mix of end uses: from fire safety to defence and air traffic control systems. Family-run and “firing on all cylinders”. Backed by a £365m order book, profits have doubled this year. Buy. £217. The Gym…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1490 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 17 November. Send it to The Week Crossword 1490, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. By Paul McKenna This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 9 Work round bugs and do secure PC (6,9) 10 Chap with healing hands happily amuses Queen (7) 12 Strip off summer frock when sun’s out (7) 13 Spread out 500 behind church in High Street (9)  14 Poem’s ending in broken voice (5) 15 Finally this critic is to run for it (7) 18…

What happened King Charles cast his brother Andrew out of the monarchy last week by initiating moves to strip him of his titles and evict him from his 30-room mansion in Windsor. The former prince will now be known simply as Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, and will move to a smaller property on the Sandringham estate. It follows weeks of renewed controversy over Andrew’s friendship with the sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This was triggered by the emergence of emails revealing that Andrew lied when he claimed to have cut off contact with Epstein in 2010; and by the posthumous memoir of Virginia Giuffre, in which she elaborated on her claims of sexual abuse at the hands of Andrew and others. A Palace statement said the “censures” were “deemed necessary, notwithstanding the…

Alan Bates, the former sub-postmaster whose campaign for justice inspired an ITV drama, who received a seven-figure settlement over the Post Office/Horizon scandal. “About bloody time… I’m over the Moon,” said fellow victim Jo Hamilton. David Beckham, who was knighted by the King at a ceremony at Windsor Castle. The award was for services to football and charity. “To receive an honour like this,” he said afterwards, “is beyond anything that I ever thought that I would receive.” Nvidia, the AI chipmaker, which became the world’s first $5trn company (see page 42).…

Police are examining claims that a UK university halted a research project into forced labour in Chinese supply chains, because of a two-year campaign of intimidation by China’s National Security Service. Sheffield Hallam University reportedly ordered Prof Laura Murphy to halt her research into the exploitation of Uyghur Muslims earlier this year, after its staff in China were harassed and its websites blocked, impeding its ability to recruit Chinese students. Following legal action by Murphy, Sheffield Hallam apologised, and allowed her work to resume.…

My daughter, Caroline Flack The TV presenter Caroline Flack’s life unravelled at startling speed after she was charged in December 2019 with assaulting her partner, Lewis Burton. The tabloids immediately pounced, and started churning out misleading stories about the case under tasteless headlines such as “Flack attack!” and “Caroline whack!”. Flack had to move out of her home, because of the media scrum outside; and she felt obliged to step down as the host of TV’s Love Island. In February 2020, she took her own life. Five years on, her mother, Christine, wonders why she was ever charged with a crime. Of course, domestic violence “needs to be taken seriously”, she told Anna Moore in The Guardian. But she feels that Caroline, who had a history of mental health problems,…

“Sudan’s descent into hell continues inexorably,” said Le Monde (Paris). For months, UN observers have warned that if the notoriously brutal ethnic-Arab militia known as the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) were to capture the besieged city of El Fasher in Darfur, there would be a massacre. And now the horrors predicted are playing out before our very eyes. Satellite imagery last week showed pools of blood across El Fasher – appalling evidence of mass killings carried out by the RSF following its expulsion of the Sudanese army from the city. Videos circulated on TikTok show RSF soldiers hunting down non-Arab black Sudanese civilians and executing them, said Declan Walsh in The New York Times. One shows RSF fighters stepping over bodies scattered in a room at the university. “A survivor…

“Zack Polanski is doing for the Green Party what he previously claimed he could do for a woman’s breasts, when he was a Harley Street hypnotherapist,” said Dominic Lawson in The Sunday Times: creating “spectacular and rapid enlargement”. Since he was elected leader in September, membership has doubled, to over 150,000 – twice that of the Liberal Democrats. Last week, a YouGov poll found that the Greens are now neck and neck with Labour and the Tories. “The Green Party has become for the Left what Reform UK is for the Right: the anti-establishment challenger at a time when ‘the system’ is widely regarded as a failure.” Polanski, with a nod to Nigel Farage, calls himself an “eco-populist”, and he runs a slick social media operation. His policies are…

When Erling Haaland is “one-on-one with a goalkeeper”, said Paul Hirst in The Times, “it is as though he enters some sort of trance”. In such moments, the “Norwegian goal machine” seems to have no option but to score. Other than Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, few players have ever possessed such “tunnel vision”. At the Etihad on Sunday, Haaland once again showcased these unerring instincts, as he twice found the net against Bournemouth after latching onto through balls. In so doing, he propelled Manchester City to a 3-1 victory that lifted them to second in the Premier League. So far this season, Haaland’s tally in the league is an “astonishing” 13 goals from ten games, said Jason Burt in The Daily Telegraph. That is “more than twice as many…

Heart the Lover by Lily King Canongate 249pp £18.99 The Week Bookshop £16.99 “Lily King is a big name in the US, and it’s about time she reached a wider audience over here,” said Rebecca Wait in The Guardian. Perhaps she finally will with her “moving and witty” sixth novel, which is a “companion of sorts” to its “brilliant” predecessor, Writers & Lovers. The action begins in the 1980s, with the narrator meeting Sam, then his best friend Yash, in her senior year of college. The scene is set for a “classic love triangle”, but instead we get a “more focused love story”, albeit with a “rich cast of background characters”. Then midway through “comes a time jump”; the second half “presents middle age butting up against the echoes of…

Joe Ray at Luxembourg + Co The American artist Joe Ray (b.1944) came to prominence in the 1960s and 1970s, and is associated with the “light and space” movement: a loose grouping of mainly California-based artists, who attempted to conjure something akin to the romantic sublime through optical tricks borrowed from the minimalism of Donald Judd and the op-art of Bridget Riley. Their pursuit of this goal coincided with the heroic era of the Space Race, a theme to which Ray appears to have returned in recent years. A selection of paintings made over the past few years presents several abstractions with an impressive depth of field, immediately resembling distant celestial bodies as seen from a powerful telescope. They’re absorbing things, painstakingly constructed compositions that initially seem effortlessly formed, clouds…

Fewer of us are drinking sherry, says Victoria Moore in The Daily Telegraph. Although the fortified wine enjoyed a brief boom during Covid, “its overall trendline runs determinedly downwards”. With an abv ranging from 15% to 22%, it is “at a disadvantage in this era of moderation”, when the fashion is for light aperitifs “drunk away from the table”. This strikes me as a pity: a glass of chilly fino, with a bowl of briny olives, can be a source of “great contentment” in the winter, and it’s a pleasure that’s “relatively inexpensive”, even when you choose a good bottle. Of the supermarkets, Morrisons stands out for its “superb” sherry range. Its The Best Dry Oloroso Sherry (£6.75 for 37.5cl) works well with a chicken, potato and olive traybake, while…

“A treasure trove of Italian goodies”, Valvona & Crolla was opened in Edinburgh in 1934 by the Contini family, who still run it today. It has a great selection of Italian cheeses and fresh produce and now delivers across the UK (valvonacrolla.co.uk). Another family business, Crouch’s Italian Deli started importing produce from small-batch Italian producers in 2007. It has a stall at Borough Market, London, with an excellent selection of charcuterie and cheeses, but also delivers (crouchs.co.uk). Online platform Petersham Cellar has a fine selection of Tuscan wines and olive oils, including the fantastic extra-virgin Castello di Fonterutoli (£25; petershamcellar.com). An online shop for Italian staples at good prices, Delicatezza stocks De Cecco and Rummo pasta and Star’s Il Mio Dado Classico stock cubes (delicatezza.co.uk). Eataly sells very good fresh…

Yeotown Madeira Portugal Yeotown’s north Devon flagship has won “endless” awards for its reassuringly down-to-earth wellness breaks, focused on daily hikes, yoga and healthy, largely plant-based meals. Three years ago, founders Mercedes and Simon Sieff launched a second base at an agriturismo on the island of Madeira. The yoga and hiking-centred formula hasn’t changed, but there are other activities too, including cookery classes (madeira.yeotown.com). Clinique La Prairie Switzerland Marlene Dietrich and Truman Capote are among the past guests of this “sanctuary” near Montreux. Less spa and more “hi-tech holistic health farm”, it has a “medical approach”, including biometric testing, stem cell treatments and epigenetic DNA analysis, plus cryotherapy and “Zen-boosting breathwork”. Programmes can target everything from weight loss to “maximising brain potential”. Or you can have a massage (cliniquelaprairie.com). Prés…

OpenAI: boomtastic float? OpenAI’s transition from research lab to corporate powerhouse was formalised last week when it completed “a complex internal restructure” to “transition away from its non-profit roots”, said Simon Hunt on City AM. The news excited investors enough to send the valuation of Microsoft, which has a roughly 27% stake in the new for-profit entity, above the $4trn mark. Even more titillating was a Reuters report that the ChatGPT-maker is eyeing a blockbuster $1trn IPO, possibly as soon as the second half of 2026. A stock market float would give OpenAI, valued at $500bn in early October, “another route to raising cash” – supporting CEO Sam Altman’s plan to “splash trillions” on the infrastructure “needed for the rapid buildout of its chatbots”, said Alex Daniel in The Guardian.…

Reckoning with the AI hyperscalers Mehreen Khan The Times Both the Bank of England and the European Central Bank have warned of the dangers of an AI-driven stock market bubble. But the US Fed chair, Jay Powell, has remained noticeably silent, says Mehreen Khan – although AI is predominantly “an American phenomenon”. However the current boom plays out, it is the US economy and society that will be most affected. “AI hype is becoming a seriously complicating factor” for Powell, who is already under fire from the White House, and there’s not much he can do about it. Monetary policy action cannot touch the five big “hyperscalers” – Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Oracle – because they’ve been funding mass investment through their vast earnings rather than borrowing. Yet their…