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[email protected] BENJAMIN FRANKLIN Publishers: #wherenow? 10 Opinion & Comment Kensington & Chelsea Today Limited 12 European & International News 13 Business & Finance 17 Business & Education Editor-in-Chief: Kate Hawthorne Art Director & Director: Tim Epps 18 Education Editors : Kate Hawthorne, Emma Trehane 23 Feature Head of Business Development: Emma Trehane Business Development: Caroline Daggett, 24 Literature Antoinette Kovatchka, Architecture: Squinch 25 Poetry Art & Culture Editors: Don Grant, Marian Maitland 26 Astronomy Astronomy: Scott Beadle FRAS Ballet/Dance: Andrew Ward 39 Dining Out Bridge: Andrew Robson Business & Finance James Billot 40 Travel & Lifestyle Chess: Barry Martin 43 Arts & Culture Contributing Editors: Marius Brill, Peter Burden, Derek Wyatt 54 Health Music: Geoff Cowart, Crossword: Wolfe 59 Sport Dining Out: Piers Gorman, Max Feldman, Upstream David Hughes, 61 Editorial: James Billot, Max Feldman, 62 Crossword Owen Fulda, Kate Hawthorne, Fahad Redha, Emma Trehane 63 Chess & Bridge Education: James Billot, Max Feldman, Kate Hawthorne, Events: Fahad Redha Travel & Lifestyle: Lynne McGowan, Cynthia Pickard Including: Health: Editorial team Feldman Reviews: Max Feldman Events Supplement p27 I wish I had written that: Dudley Sutton & Motoring Supplement p31 Motoring: David Hughes, Fahad Redha News, Online Editor, Max Feldman Arts Correspondent & Picture Editor: Cover Picture Poetry & Literary Editor: Emma Trehane MA PhD Political Editor: Derek Wyatt 1956 was the last year April Fools' day fell on an Easter Sunday. Sport: Owen Fulda, Fahad Redha Because of the peculiar dating of Easter against the Gregorian Sub-Editor: Leila Kooros calendar it is a rare event. The next time will be 2029 and then Upstream: Don Grant 2040. It will not occur again this century. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 3 News online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

We have plundered our North Sea Parliament Square oil revenues. Norway decided to only use the interest from her oil sales. Now her sovereign fund is bigger than her economy.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, a child of politics, Hills © Jonathan Illustration has risen without trace. He remains the current favourite after Mrs May to be the next Prime Minister of this country. Goodness, how the pound will suffer. He 2 is minuscule in political terms, much like P those others who week in week out the BBC has given a platform to, whether on the Today programme or Question Time. Nigel Farage, an unelected UK politician, has been on Question Time over thirty Derek Wyatt on times. What is the BBC thinking? It is supposed to be neutral. It is time the the current state licence fee gave the chance for a rival to BBC News which currently costs the of politics licence fee payer upwards of £700m a year; Sky’s budget is under £100m. I think an ITN-Sky News merger could est it be forgotten, London easily give the BBC a run for its money world is marching to the tune of elected which did not receive 50% of the nation’s voted 60% to Remain; only five especially on radio. mayors with huge powers. We are not. vote. For the Mother of all Parliaments boroughs all at the periphery of In the middle of the greatest crisis We are giving mayors at the most free this looks like we have not advanced this great global capital voted against. the nation has experienced since Suez, ice creams with cherry toppings. Our much since the first reform bill of 1832. L democratic deficit is worrying. The PM We can bury our heads in the Brexit The turnout was almost 70% the highest which marked the beginning of end since the 1950 general election. London, of Britain as a global power, we have cannot reduce the size of the unelected sands but most of us, however we voted, especially its financial and creative no published plans on how we aim to House of Lords. How do you think this just want this Government to grow up centres, is the reason why the rest of the remain important in world affairs. India looks to someone in China or Russia? In and to give us a vision, properly costed, country depends so heavily on us. These rightly is asking for our veto at the the 2017 General Election turnout was of a caring society; a newer version of facts were lost, as indeed were hundreds 69% that is 31% did not vote. Of those Beveridge which includes Housing and United Nations. We will be shunned byKensington, Chelsea and Westminster Today and hundreds of others, as the UK went Europe. China thinks we are a basket 126w x 154hthat did 37% voted Conservative and a resolution about how we look after our to the polls on 23rd June 2016. case and unusually because she is worriedDeadline 24thjust June under 2106 30.5% voted Labour, yet this older generation. If not, Corbyn will be Twenty one months on from this about the mental state of the President of gave the Tories 330 seats whilst Labour elected on a landslide greater than Blair extraordinary day, still no-one has a clue the USA, and Russia wants President Xi onlyKCW Todayhad 262. Quarter So wePage have a Government in 1997. what the Conservative Party wants to Jinping to have a third term. do. We have statements galore, we have Since 1945, only London and the endless visits and posturing, we have had South East of England have been a plus some of the worst falsification of facts I on the Treasury’s balance sheet. Actually have ever seen in my life by the Leavers. that is not entirely true. Thanks to the Given the final national vote was 52%- Cambridge Science Park with its one 48% you would think that the Leavers thousand plus companies of the highest might take into consideration how close order, the East of England has also been the vote was. a plus over the past twenty years or so. ORDER, ORDER Our people did not trust the political No other region or country which makes establishment in 2016 otherwise there up the UK has been in regular year-in- would have been a deciding majority year-out surplus despite £bn and £bn Book your tour today one way or the other. Our newspapers of direct state funding or sponsoring especially the Daily Mail, the Daily of overseas companies like Sony or Telegraph, the Daily Express and the Nissan. There is something wrong at the Sunday Times have pushed the Leaving core of what makes the UK tick. The argument week after week after week. quality of its Education needs a major The Government that we fund even overhaul. Remind me which political tried to stop the official statistics being party published their vision for the whole released. of Education in the general elections of The official figures state that we are 2010, or 2015 or 2017? in for a very hard time. Lest anyone has In the forthcoming London elections not noticed we have been having a hard in May I think it is possible that the time since 2012. Homeless numbers are Conservatives will lose Westminster, up dramatically; something by which we Wandsworth and Barnet. This would ought to judge ourselves as to the kind of be unprecedented and a political time society we are. The NHS simply cannot bomb for the Prime Minister. Just when cope with the demands of an ageing we want a period of quiet introspection population. Our trains are a national so we can finesse Brexit for the best deal disgrace but funded as ever by us. there will be clamours for her to stand There is no social housing being built down. You really could not make this up. to a standard any of us who own their And just remember, Boris Johnson is the homes would live in. That is how much only MP from a London borough in the we care: We want to build a baseline Cabinet, though some say, but I could home for families (see Grenfell Tower) not possibly comment, that he is in the 020 7219 4114 which frankly we ourselves would Cabinet but not of it. not accept either for ourselves or our The point is our electoral map is children. woefully out of date. The rest of the 4 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk News

contribute in Westminster’s share of Park, and Paddington NHS areas saw the Council Tax (which is the lowest in six practices closed. This means that Voluntary tax to the country). For 2018/19 this is £833 NHS increased there are 5,652 patients per surgery, up for Band H properties. However, any from 5,388 in January 2017. The Brent help homeless voluntary amount would be up to the demand closes NHS area saw two GP practices close or contributor should they choose to take merge, bringing the area to an average of says Westminster part. GPs 5,917 patients per surgery, up from 5,660 The City Council intends to help in January last year. And in the Ealing, protect families whose finances are under Harrow, Hillingdon, and Hounslow n innovative scheme will pressure by freezing the amount people A dozen GPs in west London have NHS areas saw four in total closing. encourage Westminster’s have to pay in Council Tax for 2018/19, either closed or merged between July “Unfortunately, these situations are wealthiest residents to make a with the exception of the rise in the adult 2016 and December 2017, according to often the by-product of the overall state voluntaryA contribution to help pay for social care element. NHS Digital figures. Royal College GPs of general practice and the pressures local projects. More than 400 people Councillor Nickie Aiken, Leader of have warned that this comes as demand currently facing our profession,” Chair responded positively to the survey saying Westminster City Council, said: “We on health services are increasing. This of the Royal College of GPs Professor they would support the scheme. remain determined to help those on fall in surgeries puts more stress on GPs Helen Stokes-Lampard said. “In a Residents of the most expensive lowest incomes by freezing their Council with data showing that the number of snapshot, chronic underfunding, a properties will be asked if they will Tax. We are proud of having the lowest patients registered with a GP in west depleted workforce and severe lack of consider voluntarily paying double Council Tax in the country whilst London grew by over 72,000, to a total resources. GP surgeries are at the heart the amount that they would normally maintaining high quality services. of 301,806. This has brought the average of any community so the decision to “The outcome of our consultation number of patients per surgery up to completely close a practice will only be reflects the kind and generous spirit of 6,499, compared to 6,181 in January made as a last resort and once all other Westminster residents. It also confirmed 2017. avenues to find a solution have been what I had heard from people I had met The Kensington and Chelsea, Queens explored.” on the doorstep that those in the more

Photograph © Pxhanger Photograph expensive homes are willing to contribute more to community projects. The scheme is most popular among residents of the most expensive homes.” Providing the final decision is

taken to proceed, letters will be sent © Ruth Sharville Photograph to Band H householders with details about the introduction of the voluntary Westminster Community Contribution. The council will stress that there is absolutely no pressure to contribute if people do not wish to do so.

to the loss of more than £40 million no admission of anything he would have of public money. In this key directive, done differently on the Garden Bridge Questions remain it is understood that Johnson allowed himself ”. Local Elections: for certain funding conditions to be The media response to the committee unanswered over watered down, allowing public liabilities hearing has been widespread in its Factfile to extend beyond its initial cap of £16 castigation of Johnson. Leading the missing £40 million. charge against the Foreign Secretary was million from the failed Tom Copey, a Labour assembly LBC host James O’Brien, who described The next Local Government Elections Garden Bridge Project member, asked during the session: “If the Johnson as the “most despicable will take place on Thursday the 3rd conditions had been met, why did you politician [he] can ever remember of May. These include all London need to water it down?” to which Boris encountering”. Boroughs. All eligible voters are Earlier this month, Boris Johnson responded that he could not remember. The Guardian also published a reminded to register to vote. If you have became the first mayor ever to be As the hearing grew tense, Johnson scathing piece on Johnson, denouncing never registered before, changed name, summoned by the Assembly Committee proceeded to lay blame on his successor, his cavalier attitude towards his use of or moved house, you will need to register. to answer questions about the failed Sadiq Khan, for cancelling the project public money. The paper notes that a The last day to do so will be Tuesday the Garden Bridge Scheme. and Will Hurst, a journalist for total of £60 million of public money 17th of April. If you intend to vote by The plan to build a tree-lined Architect’s Journal, whom Johnson was committed to the project and proxy, you have to apply by Wednesday pedestrian bridge from Temple to South believed was motivated by a personal £37.4 million was used by The Garden the 25th of April and if you intend to Bank was scrapped in August 2017 dislike of the architect. Bridge Trust without the completion of cast a postal vote, the last day to apply is due to a lack of funds raised by The Hurst, who won a British Journalism any construction work, even though a Wednesday the 18th of April. Garden Bridge Trust and a failure to win Award in December for uncovering construction contract had been signed. All UK, Commonwealth, and EU planning consent in spite of three years a series of problems with the plan, A report by Labour MP Margaret citizens aged over 18 on election day and of talks. returned fire on LBC: "[ Johnson] was Hodge, commissioned by Khan, said live in the area will be eligible to vote in It remains unclear as to why Johnson, completely unwilling over 45 minutes to that the expected final total of public its local elections. Unlike parliamentary whose tenure as Mayor ended in May answer any of the factual questions that spending, including cancellation costs, elections, you can be registered at more 2016, signed a key directive that led the Assembly Members had. There was was likely to reach £46.4 million. than one address. A university student Right-leaning papers including the who has both a home and term-time Daily Mail struck a softer note, but still address, for example, would be able to admonished Johnson for his opaque and vote in the local elections at each of the rambling answers during the hearing. addresses, provided they register to vote Photograph Photograph © Arup Towards the end of the committee in both. hearing, Johnson said that his only regret To register to vote, please visit gov.uk/ was that he had not built it sooner before register-to-vote. leaving office: “I think what I might have To see if you are eligible to vote, please done in retrospect, the obvious thing is visit yourvotematters.co.uk. I would have tried to get it going faster, To find your local polling station, please earlier.” visit wheredoivote.co.uk. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 5 News online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

RBKC are thus offering the unique Recycling the service to the highest proportion of Nespresso Club member in the country, daily grind allowing residents to recycle their capsules alongside their household recycling bags. The pilot is part of a broader effort to reduce waste in households. Food RBKC councillors confirmed an waste accounts for more than a third extension to its borough-wide pilot of all rubbish collected and it costs the of a recycling collection scheme for council taxpayers a hefty amount each the aluminium coffee capsules from year. Recycling is 80% cheaper than Nespresso. disposing waste in other ways including New figures show that the amount incineration and landfill. of recycling bags of Nespresso coffee Cllr Will Pascall, Deputy Leader and capsules in the borough exceeds 1,200. Lead Member for the Environmental said: “As the only local targets as to how many homes they authority in the UK should build each year, accounting offering the scheme, ‘Nimby’ councils for local house prices, wages, and the we’re taking on recycling number of key workers in the area. from coffee cup to under fire In an interview with the Sunday recycle truck. Times, Javid said: “We have a housing “We’re thinking and ousing Secretary Sajid Javid crisis in this country. We need a housing acting sustainably as we warned ‘Nimby’ councils that revolution. The new rules will no longer know that we cannot they will lose their planning allow ‘nimby’ councils that don’t really continue to dispose of powers if they fail to build enough want to build the homes that their local food waste the way we H are. We all need to do homes. community needs to fudge the numbers. According to new plans drawn up by “We are going to be breathing down our bit to reduce the Javid, ‘Nimby’ councils, including RBKC, your neck day and night to make sure amount of food wasted. will be stripped of the right to decide you are actually delivering on those “This is why the food where new houses are placed in their area numbers. waste pilot is a fantastic should they fail to meet home-building “At the moment there is nothing in development, helping targets. the system that checks to see they are pave the way for an even As part of Theresa May’s overhaul actually delivering. There’s no comeback greener Kensington & of planning laws, councils will be given or sanction and that is going to change.” Chelsea”.

the almost 4.3 million appeals made to London councils over the last five Parking fines years have been successful, according to stats obtained through the Freedom of surprisingly Information Act by the BBC. Motoring appealing: group the RAC said the data was 4 in 10 challenges successful "frightening" and showed drivers were "right to appeal." The data also shows that 84 councils have accepted over 50 per cent of appeals with the RAC saying councils should rectify the problems which lead to motorists being punished by mistake. Councils argue that the fines are not

Photograph © John Caird © John Photograph about making money and that income from on-street parking charges and fines goes back into running parking services, with any surplus spent on transport projects. Martin Tett, a transport spokesman for the Greater London Authority responded to the new figures by claiming that instead of pointing towards systemic problems, the huge rate of successful appeals is a sign that the system is working. He said: "As these figures confirm, people who want to challenge a parking fine have access to a clear and effective appeals process. “Councils have to strike a difficult balance when setting parking policy, to Hundreds of thousands of parking and make sure that there are spaces available bus lane fines are being issued incorrectly, for residents, high streets are kept vibrant particularly in parking ticket hot spots and traffic is kept moving. such as Kensington & Chelsea and “They also need to ensure that Westminster, figures suggest. emergency vehicles can get access to Forty per cent, or 1.8 million, of incidents quickly.” 6 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk News

ages and background to cycle safely. Queen Mary, operated by housing New railway to Homeless cyclists association Riverside, has actively electrify North & are in fifth gear supported vulnerable women since 1926, after a £13,000 cash injection giving accommodation and support to homeless females aged 25 and over who Munroe © Ewan Photograph West London may have complex needs. Through this cycle scheme, customers will be able to build their confidence and lans to implement a West London Cycling has been directly linked to reduce a sense of social isolation with it. Orbital Railway (WLO) are being improving mental as well as physical Kelvin O’Mard, Riverside’s Area discussed which could see a new health and this windfall will allow Manager for Westminster, said: “We railway with electric trains connecting residents at the Queen Mary homeless are delighted that our cycling club can P continue for another three years thanks North and West London. Electric trains hostel to cycle around London safely. were on the agenda TfL and West Cycling Grants London is a programme to Cycling Grants London. The initiative London Alliance officers met to discuss Over 34 million people use this funded by Transport for London and is very popular with residents and we’ve a battery-powered train manufacturer in station every year. Consultations will managed by Groundwork London, the seen real benefits from participants such December 2017. begin later in the year and, depending on environmental regeneration charity. as improving their health and wellbeing, The WLO would see two lines, one planning permission, the development Over the course of three years, Cycling mental health, and helping them to from West Hampstead to Hounslow hopes to finish in 2022. Grants offers up to £13,000 of funding become more independent. We also have and another from Hendon to Isleworth South Kensington upgrades will to community groups including residents’ qualified instructors from Westminster via Brent Cross. This would help West include rebuilding a new District associations, charities and youth groups Council that give lessons on cycling and Londoners get from the North to the and Circle Line platform, as well as for projects that encourage people of all road safety.” West without going through the busy expanding the ticket hall and gate, centre. beginning in the spring of 2018. This will have to work alongside other This development will bring “vital rail projects such as HS2 and Crossrail if revenue to reinvest in transport and WLO is to be a success. provide step-free access for millions of

Meanwhile, South Kensington journeys,” Graeme Craig, director of ©Cycleloop Photograph station, one of the capital’s busiest, will commercial development director at TfL, receive major upgrades. This will see said. step-free access to the District and Circle “Together, we can create a Line platforms via an all-new entrance development that reflects its historic on Thurloe Street. As well as that, access legacy and unique setting as a gateway to leading attractions including the V&A to some of the most important and and Natural History Museums will be treasured cultural institutions in the improved. world.”

decided to freeze its share of council tax bills for 2018/19, freeze parking charges for a fourth year in a row, and continue

to provide free home care for © Edwardx Photograph older and disabled people. It also pledged to maintain an extra £3.4 million into adult social care services last year. The government has put massive financial pressure including 54 per cent in cuts to government grants since 2010. This was under the assumption that councils would increase their council tax. The government has removed council tax freeze grants specifically to allow councils to subsidise council tax cuts or freezes. “We’re reforming every aspect at Rightmove, said: “New build stock of the way our council operates, Battersea fever on the rental market has definitely to modernise and improve contributed to the strong rise in rents services and put money back in Battersea…as new builds always into our residents’ pockets,” said command a premium”. Cllr Stephen Cowan, Leader of H&F Battersea rental growth is strongest in “However, rents in older properties H&F Council Council. “That’s how we’ve been able to London, according to Rightmove rental are also going up, perhaps benefitting freeze council tax bills while also funding trends. from the new builds surrounding them, announce council more local police officers than ever In Q3 of 2017, rents in Battersea which has lifted the overall market rate.” before; abolishing charges for adult social rose by 10.1%, to £2,204 largely due to National asking rents across the UK tax freeze care in 2014; and reducing the majority significant levels of new home building have also declined in Q3 last year by of council charges in real terms. and regeneration in the area. While rent 0.2%, which is the first recorded drop Hammersmith & Fulham Council will “Government funding cuts put asking prices in London have actually at this time of year. The key driver announce another council tax freeze, the unprecedented pressure on local services, fallen during this period by 3.3% to behind this drop is believed to be the only council in London to have cut and particularly on care for elderly and £1,985 for a two-bedroom house, fall in prices in the South East due to then frozen council tax in the last four disabled residents,” said Cllr Cowan. Battersea has proven resilient. changes in the stamp duty on buy-to-let years. At a full council meeting on the “But it is exactly those people who are Sam Mitchell, Head of Lettings properties introduced in April. 21st of February the council formally hit hardest by council tax rises.” 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 7 News online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

incentives” in which “the bonuses paid to the heads of some of our biggest London Home Football PM goes after developers are based not on the number of homes they build but on their profits Traffic Watch developers or share price.” Mrs May has also announced a nationwide standard for how many Arsenal, Chelsea, Fulham, QPR homes councils will need to plan for in their areas. Rules will be made clearer he Prime Minister has announced to show councils that they can prioritise March 15 April 7 reforms to planning rules to affordable homes for “key workers.” encourage developers to build These would include nurses, teachers, and Arsenal v AC Milan Arsenal v Southampton more homes and address the shortage of firefighters. 20:05 15:00 T affordable homes. Unaffordable housing is creating a crisis of “almost literal March 17 April 7 social immobility” she said at a speech Fulham v QPR Chelsea v West Ham in London. “In much of the country, 12:30 15:00 housing is so unaffordable that millions of people who would reasonably expect April 1 April 7

Photograph © Number 10 Photograph to buy their own home are unable to do Arsenal v Stoke City Fulham v Sheffield Wednesday so.” This crisis, she added, has caused a 13:30 15:00 “vicious circle from which most people can only escape with help from the Bank April 1 April 10 of Mum and Dad.” She also warned developers hoping Chelsea v Tottenham Hotspur Fulham v Reading to bid for new planning permission 16:00 19:45 with councils that their previous record could count against them. “I want to see April 2 April 10 planning permissions going to people QPR v Norwich City QPR v Sheffield Wednesday who are actually going to build houses, 15:00 19:45 not just sit on land and watch its value rise,” Mrs May said. April 3 She also attacked housebuilders Fulham v Leeds United Compiled and edited by constructing “row after row of identikit 19:45 Fahad Redha red-tiled boxes” in The Daily Telegraph ahead of the speech. The PM has also pledged to tackle the “perverse Photograph © Flickr Photograph

St Cuthberts also takes care of the health and wellbeing of its clients St Cuthbert’s first and offers a variety of clubs including knitting and advice on housing, as well off the blocks to as support for those with health issues. It provides “welcoming space to take refuge recycle food waste and be treated with care for those that A minimum of 227 charging lampposts are homeless and getting through each will be installed and offered to residents day is a challenge.” It has large sofas, Council to charge who have or intend to buy an electric A food waste recycling project, books to read, and computers for those car. An additional 120 Source London spearheaded by the council has kicked looking to catch up on emails or apply up Wandsworth Car Charging parts will be provided as off in south-west Chelsea. The pilot will for jobs or social housing. There is also part of the scheme, in addition to the 99 include St Cuthberts Drop-in Centre a clothing area for rough sleepers who already in the borough. in Earl’s Court. The centre cooks meals need an extra layer or access to clean Wandsworth Council has formally Wandsworth currently has 408 every day for as many as 60-80 homeless clothes. backed plans to invest £3 million in registered electric vehicles, a massive and other vulnerable people using food “We pride ourselves on providing incentives for electric cars as it hopes to increase from 125 at the end of 2015. that supermarkets cannot use. This meals based solely on surplus food,” increase air quality in the borough. The “It’s now undeniable that the future includes food that may be past it sell-by centre coordinator Zoe McIntyre said, money will go towards, among other of motoring is electric,” Wandsworth date, but within its use-by date. “that would otherwise be wasted and things, a new e-car club in Wandsworth. Council's deputy leader Jonathan Cook All the ingredients are donated from as well as serving members of the local This will provide electric cars for hire. It said. “All the major car manufactures food retailers and is “perfectly fresh and community our aim is to raise awareness will also pay for the addition of charging have signalled they’ll soon be phasing edible.” It is collected by the Felix Project about the problem of food waste, so plugs on 380 lampposts, including out diesel and petrol engines. This is and delivered every day where “trained it is really important to us that we are 149 in Putney and 231 in Battersea. If an ambitious programme of change chefs turn it into something nutritious, able to recycle our food waste as an successful, this could extend to other which has the potential to achieve a real tasty and welcoming.” organisation.” parts of the borough. improvement in air quality.” 8 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Statue & Blue Plaque

Minister of Australia. This forceful character was not too pleased! The Blue Plaque: Bulletin was a radical paper with anti British leanings.

Photograph © Don Grant © Don Grant Photograph Henry Cadbury, part owner of The A Blue Plaque was erected by English Star, noticed David Low’s gifts and Heritage at 33 Melbury Court, offered him a job on The Star in 1919 and Kensington honouring Sir David he remained there until 1937. The Star Alexander Cecil Low. He was a was moderately left wing. caricaturist known for his insightful Henry Aitken then offered him a job and satirical representation of political with The Evening Standard which was a figures. Colonel Blimp was one of his Conservative paper. He produced several famous creations. David Low regarded cartoons on the Austrian Civil War, the himself “as a nuisance dedicated to Italian Invasion of Ethiopia, Summer sanity”. His merciless satirising of the Olympics of 1936 and other events. His Dictators, Adolf Hitler and Benito cartoon, Rendezvous was published in the Mussolini was brilliant. Standard in September 1939. It depicts David Low was born in Dunedin, Hitler and Stalin bowing to each other New Zealand. His father David politely with the respective greetings, Brown Low, of Scottish descent, was a “Scum of the Earth!” and “Bloody businessman in the drugs industry. His Assassin of the Workers!” mother, Jane Caroline, née Flanagan was David Low collaborated with Horace Irish. They had four children. The young Thorogood in producing whimsical,

STATUES ’ Low briefly attended Christchurch Boys illustrated articles on the London High School, but was moved after his scene using the byline Low and Terry. is somewhat smudged, because he took brother became ill, which his parents He also used Hit and Muss. The Nazi Cardinal the vow of celibacy at the age of 15, attributed to too much study. David Propaganda Minister told Lord Halifax, which was, at the time, synonymous Low was self-educated. British Forces Secretary, that British with unmanliness, tending towards However, he chanced upon a pile political cartoons, especially Low’s , effeminacy. Newman of old Punch magazines and noticed Brompton Oratory The marble statue of Newman were damaging German and Anglo stands on a shallow plinth made of the work of Charles Keene, Linley relations. The British people called Low Designed by George Portland stone in a shell-headed niche, Sambourne and Phil May which a war monger. He was in the Nazi Black Frederick Bodley and under a canopy, technically called a impressed him. In his autobiography he Book which listed people to be arrested ciborium in architect-speak, supported commented, after the planned German Invasion of Thomas Garner by four Ionic columns, one at each “The more I pored over the intricate England. David Low’s output during Sculptor: Leon-Joseph corner. The Portland stone entablature technical quality of these artists the World War II was prolific. has a palm frieze and is topped by more difficult did drawing appear. How He left The Standard in 1950 and Chavalliaud. 1896 a statue of the Virgin and Child. impossible that one could ever become moved to the Daily Herald and later to The whole edifice looks as though it an artist”. the Manchester Guardian. were erected at the same time as the In 1937 John Gunther referred to Lord Rothermere and Lord church, but it was at least another David Low as “the greatest caricaturist ohn Henry Newman (1801-1890) decade before it was unveiled in 1896, Beaverbrook did not escape his criticism. in the world”. He certainly mastered He portrayed them as ‘wicked uncles was an Anglican priest, poet , writer Newman having died in 1890.The ’ ‘ ’ and theologian, one of the foremost elaborate Italinate Memorial perfectly ridicule as a weapon, but not aiming in Babe in the Wood . Fat Rother and ‘ ’ churchmen of the nineteenth complements the Italian Renaissance for the arousal of hatred or horror. He Little Beaver were very popular. Jcentury. From there, he was architecture of the London Oratory believed there was more “stupidity than Sir David Alexander Cecil Low drawn to High Church Anglicanism, of St Philip Neri and the Church wickedness in the world”. married Madeline Grieve Kenning in St ’ embracing many Catholic beliefs and of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, David Low s career started with the Paul's Church, Covent Garden in 1920. liturgical rituals, and it was a short step better known simply as the Brompton Canterbury Times in 1910 followed by They had two daughters. to leaving the Church of England and Oratory. working for The Bulletin in Australia. He was knighted in 1963 and died his teaching post at Oxford University The Memorial was designed by Here he perfected his satirical skills later that year. and he was received into the Catholic George Frederick Bodley and Thomas with depictions of Billy Hughes, Prime Marian Maitland Church. In 1879, Pope Leo XIII Garner and made by Farmer and created him a cardinal in recognition of Brindley. Newman’s statue was modelled his services to the cause of the Catholic by the French artist Leon-Joseph Church in England, and he was Chavalliaud (1858-1951), who worked instrumental in forming the Catholic in both stone carving and bronze. University College Dublin. While he Whilst in England, he sculpted eight was studying for the priesthood in statues in bronze and marble of famous Rome, he joined the Institute of the naturalists and explorers on the exterior Oratory, founded by Saint Philip Neri of the Palm House in Sefton Park, in the sixteenth century, and, on his Liverpool, including the cartographer return to England, brought with him Gerardus Mercator, the botanist and the doctrine of the Oratory. Although taxonomist Carl Linnaeus, Henry the the Brompton Road site was acquired Navigator, Christopher Columbus, in 1853, construction of the present Charles Darwin and Captain Cook. chuch did not begin until nearly thirty The builders of the memorial were years later. He spent twenty years William Farmer and William Brindley, writing his Grammar of Assent, an a firm specializing in architectural essay on the philosophy of faith, but sculpture and church furnishings based his most famous work is probably his in London and providing stonecarving poem The Dream of Gerontius, which for the Albert Memorial and Greek was set to music by Sir Edward Elgar. Verde Antico and Cipollino Columns He also wrote the popular hymns Lead, in the north transept of Westminster Kindly Light and Praise to the Holiest Cathedral, from quarries discovered by in the Height. Newman was beatified William Brindley. by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 during his visit to the UK. His sexual identity Don Grant 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 9 News online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

Kensington and Chelsea with its public parks and gardens and their It’s Show Time! breathtaking range of trees, comes alive By Sylvia Smith with individual efforts. Thousands of pots of flowering bulbs are placed on window ledges, accompanied by the unmistakable Photograph © Richard Duebel © Richard Photograph A verse taken from The Garden scent of herb beds outside front doors. The spring transformation can be as by Andrew Marvell may serve much about yourself as green fingers. as inspiration: Our attention moves outdoors as we reawaken dormant New Year resolutions to step up fitness regimes and ditch old How well the skillful gard’ner drew bad habits by switching off mobiles and Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new, getting our actual digits involved in nature’s earth-moving extravaganza. Where from above the milder sun Considering adopting a vegan diet? Does through a fragrant zodiac run; Plan a vegetable plot. More of a bloom-babe relishing And as it works, th’ industrious bee buying packets of seeds for dazzling Computes its time as well as we. summer-long colour? Your heart will go out to birds and their cheery song. For How could such sweet and wholesome a garden free of pests, birds are the best ’ hours. security guards, but don t forget to give them access to clean water. enthusiasts, meets six times a year in grounds of stately homes in southern Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs! As tips and buds unfurl into fully the Lecture Theatre at Kensington England. Amaze your friends by formed leaves and flowers, butterflies Central Library on Saturday afternoons dropping a few Latin names; Solanum f a more prosaic frame of mind and bees dance around sipping nectar to hear from award winning designers, Albicans, Cryptanthus Zonatus along and looking for a way to increase and enjoy stretching their wings in dedicated plant experts and even front- with Impatiens Psittacina into your one- the value of your property, save the sunshine, be sure to avoid using line guerrilla gardeners on how to select upmanship property patter. money on vegetables, get fit as well as commercial herbicides and pesticides and grow plants, propagate seeds and O ’ help birds, bees, butterflies and bats as this will harm productive insects and combine travel with furthering plant The grass on the other side won t flourish? The answer is to establish, damage the soil long-term. knowledge. always be greener if you join the ’ improve or revamp an outside space. If all of this seems a bit of a mystery, For garden romantics who view Kensington Gardeners Club. Lighter evenings, rising sap and a you might want to join a gardening gardens as a joy rather than focusing Fee £15 per year. desire to be part of the environmental club and experience plants and flowers on practical aspects, four carefully- Intrigued to find out more? community bring on a green frame of in a wider context. The Kensington chosen outings a year whisk members www.kensingtongardeners.co.uk mind. The leafiest borough in London, Gardeners’ Club, a group of garden off to tour outstanding gardens and the or telephone 07949 441 662.

also includes match-funding from the Licensing Act 2003 European Social Fund via the Greater London London Authority (GLA) to run the New Chelsea Licensing Act 2003: programme over five years. Variation of a employment Devolution of the Work and Health Arts Club Premises Licence support Programme will allow London boroughs Notice is hereby given that: to work more flexibly with employment exhibition (1) 39 QGG MANAGEMENT LIMITED support providers and coordinate a wider at Chelsea and Westminster has applied to Royal Borough of programme kicks range of services around the person. This Hospital Kensington and Chelsea work has been enabled by the smaller (2) 9 MARCH 2018 off this month to vary the premises licence for contract package areas in London (3) 39B QUEEN’S GATE GARDENS, The Work and Health Programme compared to the national programme. LONDON SW7 5RR. (WHP) in London launched across the This builds on the work already taking The proposed variation is to: whole of the capital today. The WHP place in the boroughs to bring services CW+, the charity for Chelsea and (4) VARY THE PREMISES LICENCE to include is an employment support programme together and support disabled people to Westminster Hospital, has partnered the sale by retail of alcohol for consumption delivered by four sub-regional groups with Chelsea Arts Club to hang its both on off the premises, for consumption in enter and sustain work. the ground floor common rooms of the Hotel of Boroughs to help Londoners secure Cllr Claire Kober OBE, Chair of second exhibition at the hospital of 13 and the provision of late night refreshment sustained employment from the social London Councils, said: artworks created by the Club’s Members. between the hours of 11:00 and 00:00 to mem- and economic benefits of work. “The devolution of the Work and CW+ combines digital, visual and bers of the public, and to provide residents The primary aim for London WHPs Health Programme to London will performing arts with innovative design and bona fide guests of residents 24 hours is to provide bespoke employment to transform the hospital experience and seven days per week. Off sales to residents realise the potential of Londoners only for consumption in their room. No off support to disabled people, people with who are excluded from the social and environment for patients, their families sales to external guests for consumption off long term health conditions, and people economic benefits of work. and the staff who care for them. The the premises. Conditions will apply who have been out of work for over two “In London there are currently charity is now working on significantly years. 570,000 people who want to work, but redeveloping and expanding the adult Anyone wishing to make a representation to this The launch of the WHP programmes application may do so by 4 April 2018. A record are not in employment. The disability and neonatal intensive care units at of the application made to the Licensing Author- is the latest step in London’s devolution employment gap has barely moved in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital to ity will be kept on a register at the address given agenda, reinforcing the case for more over a decade, and now stands at 26.3% provide a first-class environment in below and the register may be inspected during opening hours. All representations regarding powers, freedoms and budgets to be in London. which to treat patients. CW+ will install this application must be in writing and sent to: handed down to local leaders to meet the “It is exciting news that London bespoke lighting, acoustics and design Licensing Team, Council Offices, Royal Borough needs of the Capital’s residents. Boroughs working together in sub- will be used to reduce anxiety, delirium, of Kensington and Chelsea, 37 Pembroke Road, London W8 6PW or www.rbkc.gov.uk It is an The Department of Work and regional partnerships have their contracts pain and stress for patients and their offence knowingly or recklessly to make a false Pensions (DWP) has devolved grant in place and are now launching their loved ones. statement in connection with an application and funding for the Work and Health programmes. We hope that delivering Trystan Hawkins, Director of Patient is subject to punishable by a fine of any amount on summary conviction for the offence. Programme to groups of London tailored employment support that meets Environment, CW+ says: “It is fantastic Boroughs working in four sub-regional local needs will start to have a real to have this second exhibition by our WARD HADAWAY www.wardhadaway.com/licensing areas. Worth up to £135m. This figure impact on people’s lives”. friends at Chelsea Arts Club”. 10 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Opinion & Comment

if you prefer, “Metropolitans”. Living in a city seems to inspire a political paranoia: MARIUS BRILL’S all those people living near each other Whither Boris? must be colluding against the interests By Peter Burden of the rest. Creating a collective enemy MEMEING OF LIFE from an economic perception is an old political con. Bolsheviks inspired a poor, Meme: An element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another... mainly rural, Red Army to march on Russian cities. Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge forced all city dwellers on long marches to start farming; declaring anybody with glasses “intellectual” and put to death. In here is a curious dichotomy 1918 in Russia, in 1970’s Cambodia, it among supporters of the British didn’t end well. Labour Party, very visible in Despite these examples it’s not the current rift, fast becoming a trench, an exclusively Left Wing strategy. T within the party. There are the idealists “Metropolitan Elite” is a term bandied from middle-class, sometimes wealthy Illustration Illustration © AliceStallard.com by Left and Right because, if you hold backgrounds who are there for the an extreme view, you need to create an ideology, fighting for a fairer society in enemy of the middle, a way to define Britain, not seeking to enhance their own them as a collective who mean you harm. material circumstances or those of former It’s no good just going after your polar friends from their private schools. opposite, that’s just sectarianism. So for And there are the down-to-earth, Nazis it was the Jewish conspiracy, for nitty-gritty working class pragmatists, ISIL or Al Qaeda it’s the “Kafir,” literally who, like many traditional Tories, look anyone who does not believe the same for what the party can do for them thing. materially, in protecting their rights, their The neatest part of political paranoia incomes, their jobs and the price of beer. is that once you start attacking your While the development of the trades made up enemy, you force those you’ve unions was essential in bringing about declared as working together to, well, the more equal sharing of the nation’s to meet someone better looking. work together; you create the conspiracy available wealth (compared with the “Metropolitan Elite” is just a handy term you made up in the first place. massive injustices of a century ago) there Would smell as reserved for hate speech, one that smacks Name calling is as old as the meth was no ideology involved in the naked of exclusivity and money in a time of user Methuselah, and in the modern abuses being practised in the 1970s by sweet austerity because (a) you can afford era of Twitter and Snapchat, limited by some unions, like the print workers’ and somehow to live or work in a city and either number of characters or, simply, dockers’, which in any case hastened the (b) that in itself makes you elite. There’s juvenile vocabulary, it is the easiest technological changes which ultimately no name for the other side - The Rural shorthand to express complex ideas. neutered their stranglehold over their erry Arse. Mari-Arty. Fat Slob. Rabble? – because this collection is an There is no room for subtlety or debate industries. Dick. Bastard. Cockroach, illusion. Over half the country lives or on social media. Just statements or So now, over Brexit, the chewiest Arsehole. Shit. Muvverfucca. works in a metropolitan area. But then reactions, anger or mockery, puffs or put nut of modern British politics, the rift MWeirdo. Lefty Loon, Twat. Complete “One Percenters” probably seemed a little downs. widens between these two factions, these (Emmanual) Kant. Weirdo. Disingenu. too small, and actually elite, to explain America’s Right have forged “young uneasy mates in Labour’s tousled bed. Freak. And according to one of my 48% of the UK voting to Remain or the liberals” into “special snowflakes”, Mr Corbyn, ex-public schoolboy from teachers who struggled to get beyond the same percentage of Americans voting for leading what might have been disperate a posh Shropshire manor house, comes 18th century: Dionysian Strumpet. But Hillary. “snowflakes” to adopt the insult and rebut from the middle-class idealist’s wing, that’s enough about me, what do they Hate terms can, of course, be adopted it with a “beware of avalanches” rhetoric. although he hasn’t in the past shared call you? and repurposed by the hatees. Rappers The Alt-Right have created their enemy, the Europhile sentiments of most of It’s marvellous how one person use the N-word as an empowered and now they can start recruiting. that faction. Perhaps he felt, like the can mean so many different things to exclusive term of brotherhood. And for But even the sound of names can late illiberal Tory sage, Nicholas Ridley, different people but I earned each and the rest of us, to hear it and never wish have an effect. Time and again, names that the European adventure was “all a every one of those names. I’m not exactly to say it, lets us never forget where it that dominate the political narrative German racket to take over the whole of proud of them but at least the things came from; but then its perpetuation lead the day. Both Trumps and Clintons Europe”; or perhaps he considered it was I’ve done have inspired people to reach also makes it all the more attractive for are types of cards, but Trumps win. driven by a conspiracy of multinational into their personal lexicons to find an white supremacists to use it as a badge of “Brexit” with its novelty portmanteau, its business to thwart the laws and tax- appropriate way to define me, as much as bravery, doubling down and challenging plosive and fricative phonemes, defined raising powers of sovereign nations. my birth inspired my parents to call me the taboo. Do I like being called “Elite”? the entire referendum, while “Remain” Whichever, he was consistently hostile to something which even I am not sure how You can bet your Top Gun I do; the sounding weak and ineffectual was the idea of Europe. to pronounce. OED says an “elite” is “superior in terms always the opposition rather than the Thus, perchance, although not But nowadays I, and I dare say you of ability or qualities to the rest of a lead. Even now the people pushing the possessing any particular enmity towards too (unless you are using this newspaper group or society.” I didn’t ask to be one leave campaign are “Brexiteers” sounding immigrants himself, he found himself as insulation on a frosty park bench in but if you insist… romantic and swashbuckling whilst aligned with the other element of which case I recommend the collected We have been branded like very “Remoaners” fail to set the agenda. Why the Party ; the Man in the Street, the works of Don Grant sufficient to keep posh cattle, so would any of us adopt haven’t we got Brexshits and e-Uniters at xenophobe who doesn’t like eastern a gentleperson toasty for life), find “Metropolitan Elite” as a badge of the very least? Europeans coming over here and ourselves with a name which we did honour? Unless we own it and try to When the political middle is given a taking the jobs that he isn’t prepared nothing to earn. A name that just collects change its meaning it will always sound name, forced to become a side, extremism to do himself, or doing those that he us together as one side, a contemptible like we fret over avocado shortages at is on the rise. And, in this climate, we might consider with more vim and enemy. For you and I, almost certainly, Waitrose and the dreadful accent the need to ask whether we should adopt commitment. are the “Metropolitan Elite.” We have nanny is teaching Imogen and Hugo. the names we’re called, refute them or And of course, your down-to-earth, been united in a name, despite the fact For 20th Century Marxists the try to ignore them? Metropolitan that’s blue-collar Labour voter has never been that we have probably never met, and “Bourgeoisie” was the collective bête me, Elite if you say so. But if you call us enthusiastic about the communities even if we did we might find the only noire. But the word literally means “those that to dismiss us, we need to stand… for of Asian peoples that have taken root thing we had in common was our desire who live in a borough,” city dwellers or, something. in some of our great industrial cities. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 11 Opinion & Comment online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

(The irony that leaving Europe will die-hard remainers would have to accept. make no difference to numbers of But then, if less than half the whole Asian immigrants evidently escapes this electorate voted to leave, she would DUDLEY SUTTON’S Labour voter, along with the even greater have a clear mandate for the status quo paradox that the Brexiteers’ promise and for Britain to stay in Europe with, I WISH I HAD WRITTEN THAT that the UK will do extensive new trade perversely, probably more influence over deals with India will inevitably require a the institution than it had before. relaxation of existing visa restrictions.) This would also have the beneficial This has created a fascinating alliance side-effect of side-lining the increasingly I saw a Peacock with a fiery tail of bigotry between disgruntled Labour ridiculous Al Johnson, always a remainer voters, those who have thrown in their by instinct and intellect but unable to I saw a blazing Comet drop down hail lot with the alarmingly under-educated resist the lure of potential power by UKIP, and the over-educated young changing his stance and claiming to have I saw a Cloud with Ivy circled round fogies on the government benches, led brought on board just enough ‘leave’ by Al Johnson and Jacob Deep-Fog, voters to swing the result of the flawed I saw a sturdy Oak creep on the ground supported by leading working class process. Tories, David Davis and Liam Fox. After the grotesqueness of the Red I saw a Pismire swallow up a Whale Now that Mr Corbyn has seen the Bus mendacity, he showed his true mettle damaging fiasco into which Britain’s in his keynote speech of February 14th, I saw a raging Sea brim full of Ale leaving the EU will descend and has a ramble through all the weary Brexit committed his party to retaining the cliches, for which he offered only peevish I saw a Venice Glass sixteen foot deep strongest links possible with Europe, he and unconvincing justification, crassly will lose more of the blue-collar bigot spiced with a few witless smutty jokes I saw a Well full of men’s tears that weep I saw their Eyes all in a flame of fire I saw a House as big as the Moon and higher I saw the Sun even in the midst of night I saw the Man that saw this wondrous sight.

ANON (17th Century)

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support, but he could well draw succour about sex in Thailand and Doggerland. from those Lib-Dems baffled by Vince He is a busted flush and probably knows Cable’s ‘keep shtum’ policy, and even a it, even if Mrs May doesn’t, or daren’t with us significant number of former Tory voters, abandon him because she has no-one who find the Brexiteers more anathema else to put in the job, unless she could than Mr C, at least for as long as it will persuade another performer from Have To put an advertisement in KCWToday take to reverse the process. I got News for You, Paul Merton or Ian Meanwhile, Mrs May doesn’t have Hislop, perhaps, to take the job. the courage to admit that the 29 million email: [email protected] British people who did not vote for Brexit have a right to be considered and or telephone 020 7738 2348 the fact that some of these didn’t vote in the Referendum doesn’t allow her government simply to ignore them. They might, after all, have considered that they had already cast their vote for an MP, presumably better informed, to make the right choice for them. Nor does she have the courage to make the only politically balanced move she could by announcing that there will be a second Referendum, and if over 50% (23 million) of the whole peterburden.net electorate vote to leave, she will have a

genuine mandate, which even the most www. 12 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk European & International NEWS

regional centres across France in order Journalist’s to accommodate 4,500 young people Macron outlines per month, would cost as much as €3.6 murder plunges million.

Photograph © Pixabay Photograph plans to bring The move has caused confusion in Slovakia into France, particularly after the French back national armed forces minister suggested that political crisis the scheme would “probably not be service obligatory”. Thereafter, government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux appeared to correct the armed forces minister, ollowing the death of 27-year- responded by suggesting that the old journalist Jan Kuciak and his French President stating that “it will be universal…and it opposition parties and media were trying will be obligatory”. Ffiancé, Martina Kusnirova, Slovakia to “dance on the graves” of the murdered Emanuel Macron has has plunged deeper into a political crisis couple. Fico then accused the Slovakian amid deteriorating relations between President, Andrej Kiska, of colluding reiterated a controversial its Prime Minister Robert Fico and with philanthropist George Soros. campaign promise to President Andrej Kiska. Fico said: “Should we have any Both Kuciak and Kusnirova were problems, we will solve them on our own, bring back compulsory © Flickr Photograph found shot dead in Kuciak’s house and by no means do we need a President military service for young on February 24th. The journalist had who suddenly talks about a substantial been examining the alleged ‘mafia reconstruction of the government ...or French people. structure’ connections between Slovakian [speaks] about early elections”. Earlier this month, Macron politicians and the Italian mafia group. “I want to ask the President a simple In a televised address to the country, announced that his new question today at this press conference. “universal national service” would Prime Minister Fico displayed €1 million On September 20th, 2017, New York, Euros on a table, offering the money to include a compulsory period of Fifth Avenue, I wonder why the head three to six months for all young anyone with a lead in the murder case. of state of the Slovak Republic went to The offer has done little to dampen people, who would either join the a private meeting with a man who has a military or civic service. widespread public rancour at the very dubious reputation, and that man is handling of the case. Earlier this month, Warning that there would be a called Mr Soros”. financial cost to the plan, Macron around 20,000 citizens protested in In spite of the political furore towns and cities across Slovakia for an told journalists that “…it would surrounding the case, police have been be prohibitive – this is not about end to corruption in the state. Many unable to locate the couple’s killer(s). protesters have even demanded that Fico recreating massive barracks”. Seven Italians in eastern Slovakia were According to The Economist, call a snap election. detained for questioning but have since The populist Prime Minister however, estimates suggest been released. that the cost of building 18

Canada has unveiled its new $10 note Winnie-the-Pooh banned under Civil rights which features a woman for the first Chinese censorship law fighter to feature time in the country’s history. The bill features Viola Desmond, a Nova on Canadian Scotia resident known both for her successes as a businesswoman as well $10 bill as standing up for civil rights. In 1946 Banned phrases include: she refused to leave a ‘whites-only’ area of a movie theatre and was jailed and I don’t agree fined as a result. Her court case was the Calling yourself an emperor first known legal challenge brought by a black woman in Canada against racial Re-election segregation. Shameless The new bank note, also a first for Canada was revealed on the 8th of Incapable ruler March at the Halifax Central Library. In attendance were Wanda Robson, Illustration © Disney Illustration Emigration Desmond’s sister, as well as the nation’s Winnie-the-Pooh is one of Britain’s Constitutional law Finance Minister Bill Morneau, and most beloved exports, but the cuddly Constitutional amendment the Governor of the Bank of Canada, teddy bear is now banned under new Stephen Poloz. Chinese censorship laws. Election term “Two years ago today, on Following the Communist Party 1984 by George Orwell International Women’s Day, Prime of China’s proposal to remove a clause Minister Trudeau and I announced in the constitution which limits Winnie-the-Pooh that the time had come for a Canadian presidencies to two five-year terms, The letter ‘N’ (now unblocked) woman to be represented on Canada’s government censors are enacting a series banknotes,” said Minister Morneau, in of bans on several phrases, including The removal of the two-term limit is a statement. “Since then, thanks in large Winnie-the-Pooh, on Chinese social widely expected to path the way for part through her sister Wanda, more media. President Xi Jinping to extend beyond and more Canadians have come to know Memes of Xi Jinping depicted as the ending of him term in 2022. As Viola Desmond’s remarkable personal Winnie-the-pooh first began circulating criticism of the decision surfaced on the story of courage and dignity.” on Chinese social media after a visit from Chinese web, dissenters were swiftly It is also the first vertical bank note then-president Barack Obama in 2013 censored to create the illusion of mass in Canadian history which allows for a and have since grown in traction. support in the country. more prominent picture of Desmond. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 13 Business & Finance NEWS online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

SMEs likely to be worst affected by Brexit By James Billot

n the crowded atrium of the East Wintergarden, Canary Wharf, the annual Business Funding Show is Iunderway. Scores of business owners and start-up CEOs have set up their will dissipate; Theresa May and her this year reflects the sobering results of our future relationship. The EU has said respective stands before bee lining government have been hampered by this finding, with a record one in seven they will offer their most ambitious free towards their intended targets. As they discussions over whether the UK should (14%) planning to downsize, close or trade approach and we are confident of introduce themselves to one another, remain in the customs union after 2019 sell their business over the next three negotiating a deep and special economic hands are shaken and business cards and after voicing her support for leaving months. 73% of SMEs have also reported partnership." are exchanged in a mesmeric display the union, the threat of bipartisan a rise in their operating costs, which is It is unlikely that opaque political of corporate symbiosis. Known as rebellion in Parliament may force a rejig at a five-year high and this rise has had a statements such as these will settle ‘networking’, these exchanges continue in government policy. marked effect on their profitability: over the nerves of SME owners, but as the for another hour until guests are ushered Most affected by this political one-third (41%) saw a fall in profits, the customs union question approaches a towards their seats for the first panel of uncertainty are small and medium-sized highest figure since 2013. critical juncture in Parliament over the speakers. enterprises (SMEs), who represent 60% In response to these alarming figures, coming weeks, there should be a much As talks begin, the initially buoyant of all private sector employment in the a spokesperson for the UK Government clearer indication as to what type of tone is quickly dampened: “There is UK (16.1 million). According to a study Department for Exiting the EU said: Brexit the UK will adopt. SMEs are the no question that Brexit has changed by researchers at St Andrews this year, “We recognise the importance of backbone of economic growth in the UK everything,” says Keith Morgan, CEO Brexit will likely result in lower levels providing certainty for businesses, which and serve as a vital source of innovation of British Business Bank. “We have no of capital investment, reduced access to is why we want to reach agreement with for the country. It is imperative that the idea what is going to happen next and external finance, lower levels of growth, the EU on an implementation period as UK government protects SME interests that is the biggest killer: uncertainty.” reduced product development and lower soon as possible. during Brexit negotiations so that the Unfortunately for UK businesses, there levels of business internationalisation. We have already made good progress, nation can continue to attract the finest is no indication that this uncertainty The fall in small business confidence agreeing in December to move talks onto minds from all over the world.

bailout of Virgin and Stagecoach as Whereby, America’s three biggest credit further examples of the corporate greed ratings agencies, Moody’s, Standard & that was rife among large companies. Poor’s and Fitch, gave ‘triple-A’ ratings to pools of debt that amounted to over It is unlikely however, that the Carillion three trillion dollars’ worth of loans crisis will be the watershed moment that to homebuyers with bad credit. These Corbyn yearns for. With a Conservative ratings agencies turned a blind eye government in place for the foreseeable to the egregious actions of America’s future, there will not be a nationalisation largest banks much in the same way that of the UK’s rail service and PFI projects KPMG did with Carillion. will remain intact. Moreover, Prime While corporate scandal is nothing Minister May will expend what little new, there has been a significant spike political capital she has on Brexit over the past twelve months: Apple negotiations. slowing down older iPhone models; But by the same token, the Carillion Uber’s use of Greyball software to Crisis should not be treated as an circumvent local government regulations; isolated incident of corporate negligence. Kobe Steel falsifying the data about its The crisis represents something far metals (its CEO resigned this month); more systemic in the carousel culture Samsung’s bribery charges and Wells of buck-shifting between governments, Fargo charging 570,000 customers corporations, regulators and third parties: for auto-insurance that they did not mould in striking fashion. For days on the government ignored Carillion profit need. These are all examples of firms end, the crisis stuck to the front pages warnings, awarding the firm with new abusing their clout and it is a problem Carillion: a of broadsheets and tabloids alike; it contracts; Carillion accepted these symptomatic in all industries. filled the radio waves on stations from contracts and knowingly abused the Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s ex-Chief of Retrospect the BBC to LBC and featured as the Supply Chain Finance Scheme and Staff, said in the aftermath of the Great The Carillion crisis has shone top story on news channels across the KPMG continued to approve its audits Recession to “never let a good crisis go a line on a much broader country. Inevitably, it found its way to even as Carillion’s debt piled up. Without to waste”. While Carillion no longer fills Parliament. a clear framework of accountability, it the newspaper columns in the way that problem in corporate culture The ensuing debates in Parliament will take investigators months, if not it did a month ago, the UK government By James Billot were far-reaching. As voices grew louder years, to determine what and why this cannot let this crisis go to waste. As the and fingers started pointing, the crisis happened. ongoing #MeToo movement highlights, of Carillion soon became a crisis of KPMG’s role in the crisis is damaging and archaic corporate attitudes capitalism. Describing the liquidation particularly alarming because it bears a towards women are no longer tolerated. In a media climate that dogmatically as a “watershed moment” for the troubling resemblance to the role played Nor should they be for greed. Greed, abides by the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ privatisation agenda in the UK, Labour by another type of third party in the contrary to Mr Gekko’s earlier wisdom, mantra, the Carillion crisis broke the leader Jeremy Corbyn cited the £2 billion 2007 US Subprime mortgage crisis. is no longer good. 14 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Business & Finance

The Tesla Bubble Investor confidence in Tesla remains strong, but the clock is © SpaceX Photograph ticking for the EV company to start delivering By James Billot

uring a raucous fourth day at the Republican National Convention in 2016, PayPal co-founder Peter DThiel declared that US innovation was in “staggering decline”. Singling out the transport industry, where fighter jets “cannot fly in the rain”, Thiel argued that today’s scientific achievements paled in comparison to what was achieved in the 1960s. While no man went to the moon this year, 2018 did mark the first time in which an electric vehicle was successfully launched into space, transported by the most powerful rocket ever made. Clearly, are investing $1 billion in an Alabama can relieve itself of its supply chain what Thiel possesses in intelligence, he plant to produce all-electric SUVs and woes, investor patience is going to wear lacks in clairvoyance. $10 billion in electric car development thin. And now that there are cheaper, The launching of Elon Musk’s old overall. VM, the world’s largest car more efficient models on the market, Tesla Roadster into space was dismissed manufacturer, announced late last year Musk will need to formulate a coherent and deified in equal measure; what some that they would invest around $84 billion strategy to protect his consumer base saw as a transparent publicity stunt, into EV technology. from competitors. Unfortunately there others treated as a tentative first step For all its inter-planetary allure, 2018 are only so many Roadsters that can be towards human colonization of Mars. It is going to be a critical year for Musk launched into space before the Rocket was probably both. In the past, the Tesla and Tesla. Until the electric car company Man’s fuse burns out. and SpaceX CEO has expressed fears to a Barclays’ estimate, Tesla will spend of an AI-induced apocalypse on Earth, around $4.2 billion in 2018 and given and Mars, Musk believes, is the most that the company only had $3.4 billion viable solution for protecting the human available at the end of 2017, it is likely species. On the other hand, a Tesla that Musk will require another cash FOR SALE: £495,000 Roadster orbiting around the planet is a injection. fantastic advertisement for the brand. Investor confidence in Tesla can • Special Price for a Quick Sale • Beyond corporate peacocking, Musk largely be attributed to the CEO himself. finds himself in a precarious position If Tesla was a religion, Musk would back down on Earth. Tesla, the dominant be its Pope. A bona fide genius, Musk market leader in electric cars, reported oozes charm, confidence, and above losses in excess of $2 billion in 2017 and all else, a likeability, a rare trait among in Q4 alone, the company haemorrhaged tech moguls. Musk has a loyal army of as much as $675 million. So far, investors followers, 500,000 of whom have placed have not been spooked. At the time of orders for the Tesla Model 3, its most writing, Tesla’s share price is up by 20% affordable car yet. Most however, have over the past year to $332 per share. It not been able to take their new cars for has a market cap of $55 billion, which a spin because they have not left the Musk confesses to being “higher than factory. Marred by a series of bottlenecks [Tesla has] any right to deserve”. Musk’s and supply chain difficulties, Tesla comment should not be mistaken for produced a mere 260 Model 3s out of modesty; in spite of only delivering the 1,500 promised for the entire Q3 last 101,000 vehicles in 2017, Tesla has the year. fourth largest market cap out of any Tesla is also struggling to preserve its automaker. first-mover advantage in an increasingly Musk is not new to life in the red. crowded market. This month, Jaguar Chelsea Cloisters, Sloane Avenue, Chelsea, In 2008, a year that Musk described as unveiled their new i-Pace, a small electric the “worst” of his life, Tesla was on the SUV, which surpasses Tesla’s Model X London SW3 3DW range by seven miles (310 miles) and is verge of bankruptcy. In the wake of the Luxury, one bedroom, first floor flat, fully furnished, fully equipped, financial crisis, the company was one £20,000 cheaper. The i-Pace will join a facing the street, 24-hours porterage, security, service charges include of the many American automakers that burgeoning market of electric vehicles central heating and hot water, long lease 93 years, ideal for rental required a bailout from the government, including the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet receiving a $465 million loan. Tesla Bolt, Hyundai Ioniq and Renault Zoe. investment or pied-a-terre, near South Kensington, Sloane Square remains the only car manufacturer to Furthermore, if they have not done so and the Kings Road, Harrods, shops and restaurants. already, virtually all car manufacturers have repaid the government in full, but Please contact Mrs Flora Baker on 020 7383 5606 its mushrooming capital expenditure have revealed plans to ‘electrify’. Daimler, this year is only going to burn a bigger the parent company of Mercedes and or 07774 265 264 / 07429 814 381 hole in investors’ pockets. According one of the world’s largest car companies, 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 15 Business & Finance online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

restaurants and menus on their phones delivered to the customer within 30 attractive alternative to investing in or laptops before placing an online order. mins. The question of the location of the bricks and mortar and the higher capital ‘Dark Kitchens’ The competition between these services ‘dark kitchens’ in relation to the home costs involved. is noticeable as demonstrated by Just address of the customer is of course an According to a source in The Financial and the Eat’s recent takeover of Hungry House important one if the model is to succeed Times, last year the demand for home for £200 million. in terms of food quality. In order for the deliveries over dining out grew by Restaurant In September 2017, Deliveroo food to arrive at the correct temperature 10%. With over 35 sites across the took this model to new levels, raising the pop-up will need to be within close UK and others in France, Hong Kong, Revolution investment of £284 million to grow proximity. Careful research into local Dubai, Singapore, Australia and the By Emma Trehane its pop-up delivery-kitchen concept, demand is fundamental to whether or Netherlands, Deliveroo have clearly Editions. In London and other cities not a ‘dark kitchen’ will succeed. Yet, seen a gap in the market to be filled. No across the globe, off-site pop-up kitchens overall it appears a slick and financially doubt, we will see an increase in ‘dark known as ‘dark kitchens’, are on the shrewd operation whilst there remains kitchens’ throughout the UK and into increase. Their sole purpose is to serve a demand for sampling the finest towns and perhaps even surrounding n recent years there has been an the food delivery market. On unused restaurant cuisines from the sofa. villages. increase in customer demand for food car parks and industrial lots throughout Restaurant chains, street food New technologies have undoubtedly and takeaway deliveries. At one time, London, shipping containers are being vendors, and first-time entrepreneurs are altered the way we shop around for our Igoing to a restaurant and exploring what turned into kitchens where takeaway recognizing the advantages to opening favorite products. There has been little was on the menu was normal practice food is made to help established these low investment/low risk pop-ups. evidence of the restaurant industry for those looking to satisfy their culinary restaurants meet local demands for their Rising rents, fewer chefs and increasing having been affected by our changing desires. Times have changed, and instead favorite dish. In the case of Deliveroo, food prices make the model a more consumer habits; until now. we want our favorite restaurant dishes The Financial Times reports that five delivered to the doorstep, in record ‘dark kitchens’ operate from a single setting time, ready to be savoured whilst car-park in Camberwell and another in bingeing on the latest box set. Whether Battersea. Deliveroo equip the kitchens, this is a healthy social alternative is and the chefs and staff are provided by

questionable but it is evident that new the individual restaurants. This business © Deliveroo Photograph technologies are providing us with model enables several restaurants to opportunities to eat our way around the work from the same site but serving top restaurants of the world from the up dishes from different parts of the comfort of the sofa. world. The Michelin starred restaurant A demand in the market has been Gymkhana and Motu Indian Kitchen in met by the rise of several online takeaway South London are just two restaurants ordering services. Just Eat, Hungry to have opted for the Deliveroo project. House, Deliveroo and Uber Eats are The orders are received by their chefs, just a number of takeaway services that prepared and cooked up, collected by allow customers to browse their favourite Deliveroo couriers on mopeds and

which are looking for funds to grow their operations. Both equity and debt product Crowd for Angels are provided, with the company having raised several million for its clients over the past few years. While being offered While Shoreditch might be famous for the opportunity to invest in companies playing host to a new breed of financial in which they believe, investors can also Angels for © Crowd Photograph technology businesses, the traditional invest in a tax efficient manner through financial centre of London is home to schemes such as EIS and SEIS, with them too. Based in the heart of the City Crowd for Angels also offering the new is Crowd for Angels, a crowdfunding Innovative Finance ISA. business which has been running for four In order to carry on growing Crowd years and is seeking to expand in what for Angels has launched a fundraising is a fast growing sector of alternative of its own. The company is looking to finance. raise up to £50 million via the issue of Regulated by the Financial Conduct a unique “Liquid Crypto Bond”. The Authority (FCA), Crowd for Angels runs bond itself has a five year maturity, after investors will be issued with up to 99 a crowdfunding platform which connects which investors will receive a return of ANGEL tokens. Since the ANGEL investors with ambitious small companies their capital. It will pay annual interest tokens are being issued for free there is of 4%, a rate well ahead of the current no potential for downside to their value, UK inflation rate of 3%. The Liquid only upside. To facilitate value in the Crypto Bond is eligible to be held within tokens Crowd for Angels expects to have the Innovate Finance ISA (IF-ISA) the tokens traded on external exchanges tax wrapper meaning that all interest following their issue. Supporting their income can be earned tax free, subject value, the company is also committing to to individual circumstances. The annual buy back the tokens on a regular basis, individual ISA allowance for the current thus reducing their supply. tax year (to 5th April 2018) is £20,000. For more information on Crowd for The minimum investment in the bond is Angles and its Liquid Crypto Bond, visit £100. crowdforangels.com/ICO The “Crypto” part of the bond comes from Crowd for Angels issuing a new form of “digital token” along with the bond offering. The so called ANGEL tokens are being issued for free to investors in the bond, at no additional cost to themselves. For every £1 invested 16 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Business & Finance

turn a profit; Chrysler, for example, loses to 12 hours a day in unsafe, unregulated The quest for cobalt: an estimated $20,0000 on every Fiat mines to excavate the metal and in 2012, The electric vehicle revolution has led to a surge in demand for 500e sold in the US. UNICEF estimated that as many as And yet, the surge in demand for 40,000 children worked in the cobalt cobalt, but the world’s supply lies in one of the most dangerous EVs since 2013 leaves car manufacturers supply chain. Undeterred, Chinese countries in the world with little other choice. In the UK alone, companies have taken over a number of new registrations for plug-in cars have DRC cobalt mines and now control 62% By James Billot increased from 3,500 in 2013 to 135,000 of the world’s supply. by the end of January 2018. In order to China’s relative disinterest in human meet this growing demand, it will be rights leaves US car manufacturers with left to car manufacturers to curtail their an uneasy decision to make. Tesla have costs by finding less cobalt-intensive been the first to respond to these ethical chemistries in their models. concerns by stating that they will source cobalt exclusively from North America, Supply worries which represents 4% of the global supply. John Petersen, one of cobalt’s most Given that Tesla are aiming to increase ardent critics, believes that the metal EV production to 500,000 cars per year, provides an ‘existential threat to Tesla this proposal may seem far-fetched and the EV revolution’. According to when only 123,000 tonnes of cobalt were Petersen, cobalt demand will outstrip mined in North America last year. supply by 42% in 2025 and 170% in 2030 because it would take 30 years to The Chinese threat develop cobalt mines. Last year, the American Defense Petersen’s Malthusian outlook is one Logistics Agency labelled cobalt as a that is not shared by most of the energy ‘strategic material’ largely due to China’s community, and history, so to speak, is on growing control over the metal. Given their side. During the height of the solar that China controls 62% of the world’s boom in the mid-2000s, the price of cobalt supply, this puts the country in solar-grade silicon jumped from $40 in what the ADLA calls the ‘driver’s seat’ of 2004 to $460 in 2006. Cobalt, writers of EV manufacturing. “CleanTechnica” argue, will see a similar There is also a looming possibility price jump, but like solar-grade silicon, that cobalt will become a ‘conflict

t does not qualify as precious, but the soaring demand for cobalt has made it one of the most valuable Icommodities in the world. Found in the Earth’s crust and typically mined as a by-product of more common metals like copper and nickel, cobalt has several uses in the modern world. Specifically, it forms a vital component in lithium- ion batteries, which power smartphones, laptops and importantly, electric vehicles (EVs). The burgeoning demand for EVs has led to a surge in the price of cobalt from $9 in June 2016 to $36 today, which is expected to increase further as car manufacturers begin their transition towards electrification. But the road towards electrification is by no means straightforward. A great its high price will depress as investment mineral’ under the Dodd-Frank Act. deal hinges on car manufacturers’ ability into the likes of production increases. Should cobalt be deemed a conflict to find a reliable source for cobalt, 90% In 2009, the price of solar-grade silicon mineral, it would disadvantage US of which is found in the Democratic returned to $70 in 2009 and dropped companies even further, because they Republic of Congo (DRC). Cobalt again to $40 by 2012. The increase in the would be forced to prove that their mining in the DRC has been marred price of cobalt should, EV proponents products did not contain minerals from by a series of ethical concerns about the argue, be viewed as much a signal of conflict regions, invariably including the nature of its operations and its use of investor confidence than a shortage of DRC. ‘artisanal miners’, the most primitive supply. The cobalt crunch will therefore form of mining. Market sceptics argue be as much an inevitability as it is a that these concerns, compounded by Ethical concerns necessity. As the demand and price for predictions that cobalt demand will The Democratic Republic of Congo the metal increases over the coming outstrip supply in the long run, suggests have developed, or are in the process (DRC) is a nation that has been years, this price shift will encourage that vehicle electrification is not only of developing, their own EV models. synonymous with civil war, abject poverty heightened investment into improving morally irresponsible but implausible. Between now and 2022, there will be and political instability for decades. It cobalt production in North America. close to 50 new electric car models and is ranked 177 out of 188 in the 2016 It will ultimately depend on the level The EV Revolution some companies, including GM and Human Development Index and the of investment and efficiency of cobalt The shift towards electric vehicles more recently Fiat-Chrysler, have made current President, Joseph Kabila, has producers, but it remains highly unlikely has, for virtually all car manufacturers, further commitments, promising to sell remained in power despite his term that the crunch, as Petersen purports, been unavoidable if not undesirable. 20 pure electric vehicles by 2023. ending nearly two years ago. will be an existential threat to the EV According to Bloomberg’s “New Energy Electrification is not cheap. Car Beyond this dire political climate, revolution. As one French writer put Finance Report”, EVs will account for manufacturers will incur huge losses from the DRC is also the source of 90% of it, a revolution was never made with 54% of car sales by 2040 and faced with supply chain rejigs to the re-training of the world’s cobalt supply. Child miners rosewater, and another “you can’t make heavy political pressure, manufacturers its employees and most EVs are yet to as young as four years old work for up an omelette without breaking eggs…” 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 17 Business & Education online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

enterprising as our English forbears and organisations, I have never been ‘Because of all this, China will be ‘I want the next as gregarious as the Italians’ and to enjoy commercial, in that the objective of the driver of world economic growth for ‘modern novels, TV sitcoms and amazing everything I have done has been to serve the foreseeable future and few of us will generation of menus’. the community or promote a vision’ not be touched by China, economically, A professor who has written a book he says. ‘But of course Kensington Wade politically and culturally. Chinese is the Brits to mix with on the future of our universities with has to be a successful business as well as a world’s second language and people will the Labour spokesperson on Higher movement.’ need it if they are to engage with this Chinese easily’ Education, plus a bevy of grand and even ‘Movement?’ I ask. remarkable country.’ Nobel Prize-winning academics, Hugo ‘As soon as Kensington Wade is well The author of quite a few books, the de Burgh might be a very establishment established I want it to be the model for Professor’s day job is as Director of the figure. But appearances can be deceptive: other bilingual schools, whether state China Media Centre, which he founded, His first job was as a night shift worker or independent. There are over 450 in at the University of Westminster. It was at Harris’s food factory in Ipswich the USA and others in many countries. there that I first met him, in 2012, when That’s why Hugo de Burgh ‘which I did to know what it was like I look forward to seeing dozens of I came from China to take part in a set up Europe’s first English to be a shiftworker’, before becoming a bilingual Chinese-English schools Creative Industries Summer School he Community Worker in downtrodden opening in Europe in my lifetime. organised for students from abroad. Chinese school in Kensington. parts of Scotland, trying to galvanise Why? ‘China is huge, not just We students took away two Wang Donglei talks to him. unemployed people in council estates because it comprises 20% of the world’s abiding impressions. One is that he into starting community enterprises. population, but because of its people’s is tremendously curious about China Shocked by the scale dynamism, the competence of its and wants to learn from our country Wang Donglei Chinese Times of despair, he raised government and the enthusiasm for and the other is that he wants to do money ‘from Sean education and innovation that permeates this to benefit his own country. He Connery and Chris de Chinese society. China is vital to the wants Britain to continue to lead the Burgh among others’ to economies of 124 countries, whether way in many spheres in the future and set up model ‘training as market, customer or investor. And is convinced that an understanding of into employment’ now it has this extraordinary plan; One China and a good relationship with programmes for Belt One Road (OBOR) which is China is fundamental to Britain’s youngsters who had rather like the Marshall Plan that the continued success. left school without USA introduced after WW2. Then the I was tasked to write a major skills or options. His USA poured investment into Germany feature on him, because the ethnic campaigning journalism and Japan to build their infrastructures Chinese community sees him and his won him fame and, and, coincidentally, create markets work as an important bridge between after 5 years in the poor for American products and allies for themselves and the society they have communities, he was American geopolitics. China is doing the joined. Certainly it is not usual to find offered a job (at the same, but on a much larger scale, from such a person in the UK, but, thanks to same time as future PM South-East Asia through Central Asia Kensington Wade, he is here in the heart Gordon Brown with and Eastern Europe.’ of Kensington. whom he would share an office for three years) at Scottish TV. Later he would work for the BBC and Channel 4, always making programmes with a point and usually around education and employment. After 15 years as a broadcaster he was headhunted to set up the Centre for Broadcasting & Journalism in hat strikes you first about the Nottingham, and later to create the founder of Kensington Wade China Media Centre at Westminster. is his tremendous enthusiasm The Centre’s work brought him for Britain to have good relations with into contact with the leading media W organisations in China and he found China. Hugo de Burgh wishes he had learnt ‘this complicated language’ from that speaking some Chinese is absolutely aged three; the age that you can start at essential, but that very few Brits are any Europe’s first Dual Language School, good at it. Determined that the next which opened last year on Kensington generation would do better, he and a High Street. ‘Though I came to Chinese Headteacher friend went about trying late, through work, my life has been to set up Kensington Wade as a Free enriched by it, but the next generation School, encouraged by ministers Andrew will do better’. Adonis and John Nash. Unfortunately, He has no need to tell prospective the ambitious plans for a model dual parents, fifty percent of whom are language school could not be squeezed Europeans without any China into the Free School system and they connection, how important knowing had to seek out philanthropists to set Chinese will be for their offspring. As it up as an independent. He, however, professionals in London financial, law, is determined KW will contribute to media or fashion concerns, they are very the local community, from providing well aware. So he prefers to emphasise bursaries for families which cannot pay the immense pleasure he has got from the fees to ‘having lots of activities for being able to communicate with Chinese the community’. people, ‘as diverse as Europeans, as ‘While I have set up quite a few 18 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Education

Tomorrow's voices By Kate Hawthorne AST MONTH WE PUBLISHED A PIECE ON THE USE OF WORDS and included a selection put forward by interns and our team. My thanks to Gerard Hughes from Romford who commented that many of the words used today have travelled so far from their original meanings that attempts to revert to the original (and sometimes archaic) meanings Lwould cause further confusion. This month we have ‘tomorrow's voices’ which leads with an article on Berlin written by Tanya Kovatchka (18 years old). Tanya has been encouraged to write pieces since she was young and it is a pleasure to witness her progress. Following this is a selection of views, a letter written by younger visitors to our paper, aged 14, 15, 16 and 17 years old. They provide insight into the issues that need to be addressed to support younger people with communication skills, careers, gaps in the education system and providing platforms for their voices to be heard. Aaliyah Jacquesson was asked how she thinks that KCWToday can play a part in bringing the written word to the attention of our younger members of society.

Tanya Kovatchka visits Berlin Tanya Kovatchka, aged 18, year 13

erlin during the winter period is mostly known for its vibrant Christmas markets where you can Bfind delicious hot chocolate to warm you as you brace yourself against the German weather, but beneath the fairy lights, it is still a city that bears the wounds of its fairly recent past. The only advantage of such fresh painful memories is that Berlin is able to embrace its history like no other city; not shying away from it as Britain may do from its colonial clearly. Even without seeing a soul the prisoners. Why? Simply because it literally torn in two following World guilt. Instead there are many simple barrenness of the land made an impact, meant you were in the warmth and were War II. Being brought up in the 21st memorials, simple yet incredibly moving. just like the lack of growth and fertility provided with a little alcohol to ease the century meant that my mind has always None more so than The Jewish Memorial in the land there had been a total lack duty. found it hard to grapple with the fact consisting of 2,711 slabs of concrete in humanity in this place. Efficiency had Before I came to Berlin, I felt I knew that my parents and my teachers were which you can walk between. They replaced morality. The camp had been quite a lot about Germany under the all alive during the wall’s existence and appear so ordinary yet as soon as you designed in a triangular plan so that Nazi era, having studied it for GCSE, remember what they were doing at the start walking through them you realise guards could easily see prisoners. Some but the course had omitted detailed study time of its collapse in 1989. Naively I the slow dip in the ground and the rising captives attempted suicide via the electric about the concentration camps, perhaps simply thought it was one wall, I had no of the slabs so much so that they soon wire that surrounded the camp, but often because they were too sensitive a topic. It idea about the death strip. With stories tower above you, enveloping you in the they were denied dying with dignity meant I was shocked by my own lack of of miraculous escapes such as a man process, just like the slow growth of Nazi and instead shot by the guards watching knowledge when visiting Sachsenhausen carrying his girlfriend in his suitcase power and control. Immediately you start them in the towers. or Wannsee. The house of the Wannsee across, it can be easy to forget the extent to feel your vulnerability as you stare, Auschwitz is by far the most well conference is a beautiful villa nestled of the danger. My tour guide was keen to head up towards the concrete blocks, known concentration camp, but I between charming trees, yet it was at emphasise that most escapes took place all the while keeping the stories of the felt ashamed not to have realised the this idyllic scene that high ranking Nazis just after the erection of the wall before innocent Jewish victims in your mind. thousands that died in Sachsenhausen met and decided upon the final solution. the Stasi had a chance to tighten control. Being a cold winter evening, it was dark and the other similar workers’ camps. Now an education and memorial site, I always found it ironic that it was when I walked through the memorial For though Sachsenhausen is just one its detailed exhibition took me through Khrushchev, regarded as one of Russia’s and when I reached the end I was glad camp, many factories were built around the escalation of Nazi violence through more reformist leaders, that built such a it wasn’t day. The darkness had amplified it ensuring the free labour was put to use. to the various concentration camps and symbol of divide. all my feelings, providing the slabs with ‘Racial researchers’ also visited it at which how different Nazi allies dealt with their The other stark reminder of the Cold an aptly sinister sense and the whole point the Nazis sometimes displayed Jewish populations. Simple documents War is the TV Tower that still dominates memorial a quieter more profound prisoners who were experimented on shocked me such as a table showing the Berlin’s skyline to this day. Now no deference. in their so-called hospital. Ideas that numbers of Jews present in each country. longer a centre for spying, but instead a I am, however, glad to have been we take for granted were turned upside For example, under Estonia it simply said classy restaurant with a jazzy soundtrack able to see the Sachsenhausen memorial down at Sachsenhausen for I was told free of Jews. that accompanies the spectacular view. in daylight which was set up in 1993 the place you least wanted to be was What makes Berlin unique though Though Berlin has undoubtedly moved as part of the Brandenburg Memorials indeed the hospital and you were lucky is that it is a city that not only had to go on from its past, the markers of its Foundation; it meant I could imagine the if you worked in the incinerator room, through the horrors of the Nazi regime history remain, lest they should ever thousands of men standing there more burning the bodies of your fellow and Allied bombing, but it was also forget it. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 19 Education online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

physical elements of reproduction, which fact that one of the most amazing can often be unapproachable for young Education system minds of the world says himself that the Letter to the people. It is therefore imperative that education system is flawed supports my Editor it explores topics such as consent and is failing us; point. Even though he was one of the healthy relationships, which will enable By Kevin Lopes 17 years greatest minds in human history he says young people to make more informed, ‘what I hated most was the competitive and hence empowered, choices. No one should be forced to go to school system there, and especially sports. As a member of Plan International unless they want to. People base their It’s better to have a short life doing Dear Sir/Madam, UK’s Youth For Change project, I feel judgement on you’re A* in mathematics what you would like to be doing than a Did you know that a consultation about strongly that young people need to be or your degree in psychology and that’s long life spent in a miserable way. the new Relationships and Sex Education learning about gender-based violence. just wrong because you know deep down Nowadays college students don’t (RSE) curriculum is now open? It’s been If more people were aware of Female that the A* that you got does not define have the faintest idea of what to do once 18 years since the guidelines first came Genital Mutilation and Child, Early and who you truly are. The fact that people they leave. If you ask them what they out and this is our opportunity to make Forced Marriage, then the risk of them know about this and still accept this is want to do if money were no object you sure they reflect the world young people, happening would be reduced. worrying. get answers like we want to be poets like me, now live in. This is a public consultation on the Even Einstein agreed with the or writers or painters but as everybody As a 17-year-old, I feel let down by government website and I urge all of education system failing he said ‘School knows you can’t make money from any the syllabus and question how it can still you to have your say, because this is our failed me and I failed the school.’ The of that. be relevant, when it was created in the chance to get it right. year I was born. What RSE should be doing is helping Caitlin, 17, a member of Plan us feel empowered and know our rights; International UK’s Youth For Change not just focusing on the biological or Project How can we attract the younger people of today to read newspapers? By Aaliyah Jacquesson, 14 yrs, Year 10 himself even more and wants to be in an Everything Sucks environment that will allow him to do so. By Aaliyah Jacquesson, 14 yrs As a teenager myself I have undergone many problems and struggles for different things and sometimes I feel alone and that nobody understands. Each character on Everything Sucks What I think is good about the show is has their own individual problems and that all the teenagers in Everything Sucks struggles that are going on in their have struggles and so when I watch it I lives in this program. Throughout the feel that there are others who may find it series you see the characters evolving difficult to express themselves in the way and discovering themselves, and there they want to or have the same feelings is a lot of extra drama which reveals that nobody understands them. I think more and more about them. With the that it's good that they have given the characters you might be able to relate characters these real difficulties because it with them, understand them or just shows that not everybody is perfect and think their problems are ridiculous. I people have their insecurities and issues. mostly understand the problems and This program is really trying to show relate to certain characters such as Oliver, a message to teenagers and is trying to who clearly feels that nobody properly make teenagers relate and understand n many movies and television series a mini newspaper for young people understands him. He wants to express problems that other teenagers have. newspapers are stereotyped as being which is filled with a number of topics boring and only for elderly people. and articles which attract young people. IThroughout my life I have never been Some things that you could put in the attracted to newspapers although I was to booklet are British and Global politics magazines. I would see my grandparents and news, puzzles, quizzes and games, reading newspapers and just completely entertainment, subject news such as think it was nonsense as those papers science news and some creative things Photograph © Netflix Photograph didn’t have anything that appealed to me. too. I was interested in bright colours, bold KCW should try and distribute their statements, pictures and art. newspaper in places where young people Social media has basically taken over go; book stores, libraries, centres such my life. Some social media sites, such as as the Lyric Theatre, schools, colleges, Snapchat, actually show you global news doctors’ surgeries, drugstores (Boots), and politics, celebrity gossip and many WH Smith and more places. By doing different topics. this it will advertise the newspaper more Newspapers have a hard job and young people will be able to find it. competing with social media! KCW could include in their contents What I think KCW can do is make how young people have achieved their it more physically appealing by adding goals. What local politicians have done bright colours to attract the eye. What and are doing to help young people. you can also do is add small snippets of Young people are interested in things articles and topics that are going to be like Brexit but don’t want to read long, inside. By doing this it will make the depressing articles and want clear facts. reader want to open the paper and read KCW should include a mini newspaper the rest of the article or look at a specific (section) so young people can separate topic. it from the main paper. By including What you could do is put on the content in your paper for young people front cover that you have a young viewer as they get older they will hopefully section. I think the KCW should make become readers of the main KCW Today.

20 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Education

UK universities

stronger in arts © Pixabay Photograph than sciences

universities have experienced systemic decline over the past 18 UKmonths, as exemplified by their tumble down the tables in the QS 2018 world rankings. It is perhaps a relief, then, that the subject rankings released on 28 February show the nation’s universities to decreased year-on-year with ‘ivy league’ cut their fees for social science and anthropology, after failing to land a top be remaining resilient. universities like Cornell and Stamford humanities courses based on their lower spot for any subjects last year. The Royal Ten of the 48 subject tables are led showing notable falls from previous costs of delivery, leaving science and College of Art is the world leader for by UK institutions. No UK institution rankings. technology courses more expensive. art and design, with UCL Institute of that held a world-leading status in 2017 More broadly, UK universities take Seven UK universities lead the world Education ranked first for education. has been overtaken by an international 34% of all top three positions across rankings in 10 areas, with the University The University of Sussex is ranked competitor. The University of Oxford has the tables, while at least one British of Oxford top of the list for four subjects: first in the world for development retained its Number One status for four institution can be found in the top three anatomy and physiology, archaeology, studies, again beating Harvard University, subjects and the University of Cambridge of 32 of the 48 rankings. However this English language and literature and while Loughborough University is the has taken the top spot for anthropology dominance is almost exclusively focused geography. This makes it one of just three world leader in sports-related subjects from Harvard. Meanwhile improvements in the humanities. UK universities only universities to perform best in more and the University of Sheffield leads in at Asian universities have decelerated topped the world’s lists for engineering than one subject, alongside Harvard library and information management. for the first time in a number of years and technology subjects twice, while University, which comes first in 14 The University of Cambridge, with whilst US universities face many of the they made the top three lists for arts subjects, and Massachusetts Institute of 37 subjects in the world’s top 10, and the same problems as UK higher education, and humanities subjects 10 times. The Technology (MIT), which comes first in University of Oxford, with 35 subjects from state funding cuts to enrolment rankings come as the prime minister, 12 subjects. in the world’s top 10, have more top 10 issues. The share of top three and top ten Theresa May, pushes ahead with funding The University of Cambridge departments than any other institution in places taken by US institutions has also reforms that may see universities is ranked as best in the world for the world.

residents; whether it is e-blogging for underpins every course and programme out of all the councils. beginners, ceramics for budding artists at WAES is the employability aspect Last year, WAES was also granted Education in or floristry for the next Preston Bailey, of the learning. Herein, students are 150k to fund community organisations the sheer breadth of courses at WAES provided with the necessary working in Westminster with a focus on the likes Westminster: means that even the most niche subjects skills so that they are equipped to join of digital, family, health and wellbeing. WAES are covered. the workforce when they complete their Through Community Learning, a By James Billot As a government-funded enterprise, respective courses. Through WAES last WAES scheme that seeks to maximise WAES works with the central year, 154 learners transitioned from access to community learning for adults, government towards its shared agenda concessions to employment, which was learners can take five ‘stepping stone’ of getting people into work. What the largest contribution to the workforce courses, both creative and vocational. The City of Westminster is one of By dropping these bread crumbs into London’s most diverse and enthralling learning, learners soon get the appetite boroughs. From all around the world, to take on more, which is proven by the people are attracted to its tourist long waiting lists on some of its courses. attractions, its vibrant arts scene and It was clear from the presentation even for its business connections. of the 2018/19 curriculum on March Photograph © WAES Unbeknownst to many, however, is 6th that WAES has a team of people another major attraction: education. who genuinely care. As every head of In a community of a quarter of a department stood up to deliver their million people, there are many adults presentation, their attention to detail and in Westminster that lack the necessary succinct descriptions of their individual skills to become employed, often through courses made it a thoroughly enjoyable no fault of their own. Through the experience for those visiting. Their Westminster Adult Education Service willingness to listen and discuss new (WAES), an adult college that offers pilot schemes highlighted that WAES hundreds of full-time and part-time were continually looking to innovate courses in London, adult learners can to give their learners the best possible gain such employment qualifications, as education. well as develop their own interests for For readers that may be looking to pleasure. brush up on their maths skills or want to WAES aims to support adults of all pick up a new hobby like glass-making ages, abilities and backgrounds. Ranging or cookery, WAES is absolutely the place from personal skills to functional tests, to visit. WAES offers daytime, evening WAES gives adults the opportunity to and weekend classes. For full course pursue their interests through learning information and to learn more about and training. Over the years, WAES WAES, please visit: www.waes.ac.uk/ has become hugely popular among local courses. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 21 Education online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, in class] Discover a World of Possibilities Persian, Swahili, Turkish, and many For those with more time for intensive at the Language Centre, SOAS University of London more. SOAS Language Centre is unique language study, we have day-time in offering a wide range of short courses accredited programmes leading to UK in languages such as Swahili, Hindi, Higher Education Certificates and © SOAS Photographs Sanskrit, Tamil, Tibetan, Indonesian, Diplomas in Arabic, Chinese, and Thai, Urdu, Vietnamese, many of which Japanese. Taking a language diploma at cannot be taken anywhere else in the UK the Language Centre is an alternative as a regular evening class. Our expertise route onto a SOAS language degree. extends to European languages as well and we run classes in French, Italian, The Language Centre also offers Spanish and Russian. recognised postgraduate qualifications in Teaching Arabic or Chinese as a Foreign Classes are taught by experienced native Language. speaker teachers, in a relaxed, interactive learning environment at our central What better way to put a spring in your London, Russell Square campus. All step than to discover how learning a classes are conveniently scheduled on language can open doors to a whole new weekday evenings and on Saturday so world of experiences? you can fit your language study around your other commitments. [Image of girls https://www.soas.ac.uk/languagecentre

This year, how far will a your career prospects, research shows that learning a new language significantly language take you? boosts mental agility in many areas, whatever your age. If you would like the challenge and Learning a language opens up a whole enjoyment of taking up language study new world of thrilling possibilities for this spring, you will be spoilt for choice cultural enrichment. Furthermore, the at SOAS which offers an unparalleled ability to communicate in one of the range of European and non-European key world languages will increasingly languages which may be studied at levels become a major asset as Britain develops from complete beginners to proficiency. closer ties with new trading partners in SOAS is renowned for top quality the wake of Brexit. Apart from enriching language teaching in all the major your travel experiences and improving international languages, including

performing schools. Just 66% of pupils in the greater One-third of London region received an offer from their first preference school, compared families in with 68% last year, as the effects of the early-2000s baby boom fed into London are secondary school applications. This Spring Do Something Different Figures released by the pan-London denied their first admissions authority (a consortium of 32 local authorities) showed that 6,400 Learn a New Language choice of children in London, or 6% of the total, at SOAS University of London secondary school were allocated a school that their family By Max Feldman had not listed as a preference. Hardest hit were families in Hammersmith and New Spring Courses Enrolling Now! Fulham, where just 51% received their first preference, while 53% of those in the Easter Intensive Courses 3-14 April, 1 or 2 Weeks City of London and 54% in Kensington Spring Term Courses from 16 April, Evenings or Saturdays One in three families in London will not and Chelsea received their first choice. be able to send their children to their At the other end of the scale, preferred secondary school next year, as Waltham Forest was the only local • Over 30 Asian, African and Middle Eastern languages rising numbers of school-age pupils put authority in London where more than • European languages: French, Italian, Spanish pressure on classroom places across the 80% of families were offered their first • Expert, experienced, native speaker teachers south of England. The figures released preference. Outside London, the national • Fun, interactive, communicative lessons on national secondary school offer day, picture showed local authorities seeing • Easily accessible Central London location for pupils moving from primary school increases in applications, with most able • All levels: Complete Beginner to Advanced into year seven in England, show the first to keep pace. (free assessments arranged) signs of the strain placed on secondary Arguing that the figures were school admissions. misleading, the school standards minister, Other local authorities in the Nick Gibb, said: “We’re investing £5.8bn Check out our website: soas.ac.uk/languagecentre south-east of England also saw rising to create even more good school places. Phone: (0)20 7898 4771/4959/4828 a proportion of families not getting This builds on the 735,000 places we’ve or visit our office 11.00-18.00: their first preference, including Essex, created since 2010 meaning nine out SOAS Language Centre, 22 Russell Square, London, WC1H 0XG. where first preferences dipped from 88% of 10 pupils get one of their top three Also find us on Facebook as SOAS Language Centre to 86%, and Kent. The national data choices of schools.” or on Twitter @soaslangcentre was published as research showed that families who made more school choices were likely to gain places at higher- 22 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Education

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promise. Over the past two years, Lashko ’ has, with minimal disruption, developed Pensioners and adapted RHC services to provide more domiciliary care so that pensioners Patriarch can stay in their accommodation for Gary Lashko, CEO of the longer rather than move to the infirmary. Royal Hospital Chelsea Throughout its history, the ever-

tenuous relationship between the Design © Deep Creative Photographss By James Billot preservation of tradition and the necessity of modernisation has been managed well by the Royal Hospital. Little better exemplifies this sentiment than the refurbished Pensioner accommodation that once slept 36 men arely do the words ‘royalty’ and on each floor, who shared four toilets ‘modesty’ go hand in hand. and two showers. With a ratio of nine Standing atop a marble plinth men to one toilet, all former soldiers, it in the main courtyard of the Royal would not be unreasonable to suggest R that this would lead to more problems Hospital, Chelsea is a gilded statue of King Charles II, garbed in Roman than one. Since its refurbishment, military gear. Presented to the King by however, Chelsea Pensioners, both Tobias Rustat in 1682, the looming 7ft6 male and female, now have en suite statue draws the gaze and awe, of any accommodation, a study area, a bedroom visitor walking by. and importantly, a window. Pensioners After Charles’ death in 1685, the also live communally, reinforcing the statue was moved to the Royal Hospital, strong sense of kinship among veterans. a home for retired veterans who were The concept of the ‘military family’ “broken by the age of war”. Inspired by is one that is cherished dearly by the Les Invalides in Paris, Charles II sought Chelsea Pensioners, particularly when to provide a similar refuge for British they may no longer have a family of soldiers returning from war. their own. At the Royal Hospital, the To source financing for the Hospital, community is predicated on the shared Charles enlisted the services of Sir military history and experiences of its Stephen Fox, the first ever Paymaster of Pensioners. They are bound by a sense the Forces. Fox proved himself adept in of pride because, as Lashko emphasises, the role, devising a scheme that would they are not only representing the fund the construction of the Hospital by Hospital but soldiers of the past. History taking one penny per week from military drips from its walls, piecing together wages. Ten years later, the Royal Hospital stories of the veterans that once lived opened its gates to its first veterans. here; on display near the CEO’s office are Over the course of the next 325 years, two French Imperial Eagles rumoured to Royal Hospital Chelsea (RHC) became have been kissed by the Little Corporal home for tens of thousands of veterans. himself, and in the main courtyard Known as the Chelsea Pensioners, their are four French howitzers, captured distinctive scarlet uniform is ubiquitous during the Battle of Waterloo. Ceilings in the streets of the Royal Borough. The are adorned by large mural paintings Hospital itself is neither a charity nor a in the Great Hall and Chapel, further business per se; it is owned in trust by a enveloping visitors and Pensioners group of commissioners who advise the into its rich history. It is this grandeur, executive board of the RHC to ensure undergirded by the compassion of those the well-being of the Pensioners and to who work here, that makes the Hospital safeguard its historic buildings. such a special place. The titular head of the organisation To ensure that it can run as smoothly is the Paymaster-General, surrounded by for the Pensioners of today as it can six other Ex-Officio Commissioners and for the Pensioners of tomorrow, the ten Specially Appointed Commissioners, Royal Hospital Chelsea depends on who are chosen for their particular skill for were like the Royal Hospital,” says might on the campaign trail, Lashko’s the continued support of the wider (law, property, finance etc.). There is a Lashko. “They were basically small long, purposeful strides are regularly community and the nation at large. Governor-General, also a commissioner businesses, but also not-for-profit and interrupted by warm greetings from the Recently, it has been building inter- and appointed by the Queen, who very regulated. I had four regulators Pensioners. As CEO, Lashko is more generational ties through outreach remains on-site and typically serves a at my last place!” Business-like, heavy than aware of the tough decisions that he programmes and school visits from the six-year term. regulation and non-profit; it would will have to make: “a lot of work needs Pensioners who “automatically attract And then there is the CEO, whose almost be worth drawing a Venn to be done,” says Lashko, “and that’s not the attention of the kids!” Through these full list of duties would exceed far beyond diagram but the similarities between only to ensure that we can keep going schemes and the hosting of its more the inches of this feature. Until Gary the two roles were salient. Evidently, the on for the next ten or twenty years but iconic events like the Chelsea Flower Lashko’s appointment in early 2016, commissioners thought so too and in for the next 325 years.” There is a fear Shower, Lashko believes that Royal every CEO of the Royal Hospital came February 2016, Lashko became the first among the pensioner community that Hospital Chelsea will remain a stalwart from a military background. Having CEO of Royal Hospital Chelsea without this work may tarnish the character of military care for another 325 years. spent most of his professional career in a military background. of the RHC but Lashko, before the Following on from what has been a very housing and care, Lashko was far from Lashko confesses that his question is even asked, is quick to address promising start to his tenure as CEO, the bookie’s favourite. Recalling his appointment as the first non-military the concern: “our primary aim,” says Lashko is extremely well-placed to appointment, Lashko smiles and gives CEO drew a guarded reaction from the Lashko, “is to modernise but to protect achieve this ambition. an answer that was probably similar to Chelsea Pensioners, but his interactions the traditionalism of the Hospital. We To donate and find out more about the one he gave in the interview: “the with them around the site suggest wouldn’t have it any other way.” Thus the Royal Hospital, please visit www. housing associations that I worked otherwise. Walking as a president far, the effusive CEO has kept to his chelsea-pensioners.org.uk 24 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk

Literature “Stuff your eyes with wonder, he said, live as if you'd drop dead in ten seconds...” Ray Bradbury

the vigorous novel hidden behind the complicity of the average citizen to warnings. allow such overreach to happen due to Since its publication in 1953, obsessions with various dulling pleasures Fahrenheit 451 has handily retained (in Fahrenheit 451 it’s a psychedelic all- its place in the canon of dystopian encompassing version of Eastenders that also seemed be alarmingly prescient of

fiction: more approachable than 1984, © Banatine Books Photograph not nearly as baroque as A Clockwork the clammy grip of reality TV) a concept Orange. (All three made for equally that is closer to Huxley’s Brave New flamboyant motion pictures.) Its World than Orwell’s bleak dystopia. In longstanding presence on adolescent Bradbury’s own words the novel is “less reading lists makes it no less worthy about Big Brother and more about Little of adult attention, and in an era when Sister.” accessibility to books is still regularly Bradbury is a very visual author denied, whether by jittery school boards and fittingly the strongest parts of the or petulant online retailers, its relevance novel are not where characters outline can hardly be disputed. the philosophies of the novel (which But like the somnambulant can come across occasionally blunt suburbanites who wander the pages and didactic) but where he unleashes of Fahrenheit 451, misremembering images like the half-organic mechanical their own lives and established history hound of the fire department loping like the hazy contents of dreams, we across buildings, sniffing out dissidents to answer for) Ray Bradbury’s immortal seem to have forgotten what gives the with its syringe nose dripping smoking Fahrenheit 451 circles over the cultural novel its enduring, prophetic power. It poison that seem to have leapt out of Anniversary landscape like a wily buzzard. A tale of is indeed a story about a world where Something Wicked This Way Comes into censorship which has hilariously found books are outlawed and burned, but it the more ‘realistic’ novel that Fahrenheit itself banned on more than one occasion is also a tale about the value of intellect, 451 is often held up as. In the chaotic (in America this was due to a mention the importance of information and world order of the 21st century where that the Bible is one of the texts that the singular, irreplaceable experience democracy and liberalism seems to be on Fahrenheit 451 finds itself on the pyre, the amount of of reading books as books; as physical, the retreat Bradbury's central message mental gymnastics that this ban must palpable and precious objects. that the loss of freedom is as much the have taken should have won an Olympic Bradbury himself was somewhat fault of the private individual as the t a time when anti- gold) its misleading (and arguably bemused at constantly being asked about interfering government rings just as intellectualism has moved misplaced) status as a byword for the the book as a parable for the dangers loud now as it must have in the days of from anti-student gripes in importance of remaining vigilant against of malign government overreach and McCarthyism. Fahrenheit 451 still burns old man pubs to a legitimate political the soporific dangers of well-meaning the legislation of morality, as he argued unnervingly bright. A Max Feldman talking point (Michael Gove has a lot authoritarianism often serves to obscure that the book was actually about the

since 2010, from 78.4 million in 2010/11 to 63.3 million in 2016/17, a reduction This World Book of 15.1 million, or 19% and the total lending stock has fallen by 7.7 million. Day revealed a These cuts are emblematic of how libraries across England have been culture in crisis struggling against ever encroaching By Max Feldman cuts. In what seemed like a particularly cruel irony Northamptonshire council announced the drastic move of shuttering 21 libraries (whilst a further World Book Day took place on March 22 would only be open one day a week 1st and whilst there were a whole for eight hours) on World Book Day mélange of events, lectures and readings itself. The move was made following a to celebrate the written word across consultation with locals, and follows London, the way that most people protests and petitions from thousands experience it is the last minute panic of residents, along with world famous annual National Literacy Trust survey is particularly important for preparing of helping your child haphazardly authors including the Northampton (also released on World Book Day, a children to become critically literate. It throw together a costume that mildly dwelling novelist/genius/oddball Alan March 1st that will clearly live in infamy) helps children accurately understand resembles a famous literary character for Moore and His Dark Materials author found that over half of children at Key and interpret information by making school (pro tips: Harry Potter just needs Philip Pullman. Public libraries seem Stage Two are not being read to at connections between what they read glasses and a drawn on scar and graphic to be undergoing a protracted rear- home. This is particularly disheartening and what they already know, working novels don’t count so sadly Batman’s guard action in the face of a rather stark information, as not only does it hold out what is important, and spotting out). Whilst this often unremembered economic reality; problems compounded implications on how increasingly the difference between fact and fiction. scholastic equivalent of Halloween by the fact that Carillion, that glowing screens are expanding to take Other curriculum areas help to build might seem a little forced, any tactic to vanquished corporate behemoth, was on the role of unofficial babysitter for the foundation skills needed to develop help kids get into reading from a young (for a reason that presumably made sense more and more children, but also because strong critical literacy skills, such as age can only be a good thing as there to someone somewhere) responsible for studies have shown that children are reading a wide range of texts for different are some ominous black clouds on the the management of library services in encountering more and more fake news purposes, learning about inference, and horizon for literature in 2018 (along several London boroughs through a non- online and a staggering 20% of children identifying how language structures and with quite a few other issues but let’s profit arm called Cultural Community aged between eight and 15 believe presentation contribute to meaning. If stay focused). In all of the pageantry of Solutions, which has caused chaos due to everything they read online is true, and libraries continue their steady wane and this year’s World Book Day, a study was Carillion’s collapse. 35% of UK teachers say pupils have cited children are left to fend for themselves quietly released that revealed that Public This is not the end of the bad news fake news or false information found on an internet engorged with lies, damn Libraries across the nation have suffered for books to bubble up around what online as fact in their work. lies and Donald Trump’s tweets, then ’ a drastic reduction in stock, with stock should be the time of year where they Reading comprehension, a big part humanity s future won’t bright, it’ll be having been reduced by nearly a full fifth are most celebrated. The results of the of the Key Stage 1 and 2 curriculums, spray tan orange. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 25 Poetry online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

HIS MARCH’S POETRY PAGE SEEKST A LITTLE CHIVALRIC ROMANCE to help guide us out of the cold and dark and into Spring and brighter days.

This month’s offering is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a late 14th Century Middle English Chivalric romance. A genre highly popular with aristocrats of the French Courts. These Chivalric romances tell stories of brave Knights taking up heroic quests to demonstrate qualities of heroism, courage, bravery, He was got up in green from head to heel: loyalty and courtesy, fitting for their Sir Gawain and the Green a tunic worn tight, tucked to his ribs; position. and a rich cloak cast over it, covered inside Knight with a fine fur lining, fitted and sewn Here we have an extract from part 1, with ermine trim that stood out in contrast which opens with a mysterious ‘green Translation by Paul Deane; © Paul Deane, 1999 from his hair where his hood lay folded flat; knight’ entering the court of King and handsome hose of the same green hue Arthur. The ‘green knight’ challenges all which clung to his calves, with clustered spurs the King’s men to pick up his axe and So he stood there stock-still, a king standing tall, of bright gold; beneath them striped embroidered silk behead him, but only if he who accepts talking of courtly trifles before the high table. above his bare shanks, for he rode shoeless. the test, agrees to a return blow in a By Guinevere sat Gawain the Good, His clothes were all kindled with a clear light like emeralds: year and a day. At first, Arthur looks and Agravaine of the Heavy Hand on the other side: His belt buckles sparkled, and bright stones were set set to take up the challenge, but instead knights of great worth, and nephews to the king. in rich rows arranged up and down through an act of courage and loyalty to Baldwin, the bishop, was above, by the head, himself and his saddle. Worked in the silk his King, Gawain accepts instead and with Ywain, Urien’s son, sitting across. were too many trifles to tell the half of: severs the head from the ‘green knight’s’ These sat at the dais and were served with due honor; embroidered birds, butterflies, and other things body. Moments after the beheading, the and many mighty men were seated on either side. in a gaudy glory of green and inlaid gold. green knight picks up his head from Then the first course came with a clamour of trumpets And the bit and bridle, the breastplate on the horse, the floor and reminds Gawain that he whose banners billowed bright to the eye, and all its tackle were trimmed with green enamel, is to seek him out in a year and a day to while kettledrums rolled and the cry of the pipes even the saddlestraps, the stirrups on which he stood, receive the same treatment, leaving the wakened a wild, warbling music and the bows of his saddle with its billowing skirts courtly onlookers mystified. whose touch made the heart tremble and skip. which glimmered and glinted with green jewels. Delicious dishes were rushed in, fine delicacies The stallion that bore him was the best of its breed The author of Sir Gawain and the Green fresh and plentiful, piled so high on so many platters it was plain, Knight is unknown. He is often referred they had problems finding places to set down a green horse great and strong, to as the Pearl Poet, on account of their silver bowls of steaming soup: no spot that sidled, danced and strained, the fact the poem survives on a single was clear. but the bridle-braid led it along, manuscript, alongside three other Each lord dug in with pleasure, turning as it was trained. religious narrative poems; Pearl, Purity and grabbed at what lay near: and Patience. He was a fine fellow fitted in green -- twelve platters piled past measure, ’ bright wine, and foaming beer. And the hair on his head and his horse s matched. What is interesting about this era in It fanned out freely enfolding his shoulders, literary history is that we often see the I need say no more how they served the food, and his beard hung below as big as a bush, merging mythologies of ancient folk for what fool would fancy their feast was a famine? all mixed with the marvelous mane on his head, traditions as in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon But a new noise announced itself quickly enough which was cut off in curls cascading to his elbows, culture, with more modern influences of wrapping round the rest of him to grant the high lord leave to have dinner. ’ Christianity. Hence the ‘green knight’ The music had finished but a moment before, like a king s cape clasped to his neck. has been described by some scholars as the first course just served, and set before the court, And the mane of his mount was much the same, a representation of the ‘green man’ of when a horrible horseman hurtled through the doors, but curled up and combed in crisp knots, folklore and at other times an allegory his body as brawny as any can be, in braids of bright gold thread and brilliant green of Christ. Translations of Sir Gawain so bull-necked, big-thighed, bulky and square, criss-crossed hair by hair. and the Green Knight from the North- so long-legged, large-limbed, looming so tall And the tossing tail was twin to the mane, West Midland dialect of Middle English I can hardly tell if he were half troll, for both were bound with bright green ribbons, (Chaucer had written Canterbury Tales in or merely as large as living man can be -- strung to the end with long strands of precious stones, an emerging London dialect in contrast) a handsome one too; as hearty a hulk as ever rode horse. and turned back tight in a twisted knot include J.R.R Tolkien and more recently, His back and chest were broad as a barrel, bright with tinkling bells of burnished gold. Simon Armitage. The stories of King but he slimmed at the waist, with a slender stomach, No such horse on hoof had been seen in that hall, Arthur and his Knights offer fascinating and his face was well formed, with features sharp nor horseman half so strange as their eyes now held insights into an old world which was and clean-- in sight. becoming modernised, yet are deeply Men sat there gaping, gasping He looked a lightning flash, ingrained in our own cultural identities at his strange, unearthly sheen, they say: he seemed so bright; centuries later through their recurrent as if a ghost were passing, and who would dare to clash adaptations in art and literature. for every inch was green. in melee with such mightz Compiled & Edited by Emma Trehane MA PhD 26 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Astronomy

Above: Planet forming disk in the glare of a distant sun. Insets: Actual telescopic images of proto-planetary disks around AU Microscopii TL (edge-on) and HD107146 (Face-on). Credit T. Pyle SSC/NASA/ HST images Right: Artists concept; Proto planetary nebula UX Tau A. Observations by Spitzer Space Telescope reveal a gap swept clear by one or more planetary bodies and as large as the distance between Mercury and Pluto. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech Below right: Artists concept: IRS 46, a nascent solar system similar to our own. Observed by the Spitzer ST. Credit NASA/JPL-Caltech

from observations of deep space, Kant proposed the solar nebula was part of Origins of the a much larger cloud of gas and dust Solar System that collapsed by the power of its By Scott Beadle FRAS own gravity and began to rotate. This gravitational contraction led to the formation of planets, both gaseous and rocky. Of course, now we have much more knowledge of how this happened, the basic idea remains the same, and has been born out by repeated bits of evidence. stronomers and geologists have Astronomers now know that when several techniques for dating the molecular cloud began to collapse, it Earth, and therefore, the age of measured 100 astronomical units across theA solar system. From the radiometric (1AU is the average distance between dating of rocks, which measures the the Sun and Earth) and had about 2 or known decay rates of radioactive 3 times the mass of the Sun. The cloud’s elements, we know Earth and the solar initial gravitational collapse could have system are approximately 4.6 billion been triggered by the flash of a nearby years old. This knowledge does not come supernova and its resulting pressure wave. from Earth rocks, however, the oldest As the cloud fell in, several processes of which are about 3.9 billion years old. accelerated the collapse. The cloud’s (Earth rocks are constantly involved temperature rose, it began to rotate, in vigorous erosion by plate tectonics and the rotation settled material into and volcanism, making the oldest rocks a relatively flat disc. The gravitational extremely difficult to find. potential energy increasingly transformed fusion and it ‘turned on’ as a star. by its gravity and flung many other Instead, meteorites, chunks of into heat, and the density rose Out in the disk, meanwhile, planetesimals out into the far distant asteroids, the Moon, and Mars, make quickly. matter continued to clump together Oort cloud of comets. Then, a period of dating the solar system much more Due to the conservation of angular haphazardly, making planets, thousands heavy bombardment of numerous objects accurate. These bodies were left in a momentum, the flattening disc rotated of minor planets, and smaller, rocky balls. impacting the inner planets began. A much more pristine condition. The oldest more quickly as it decreased in size. After the Sun’s ignition it produced a large body (Mars sized) struck the Earth radiometrically dated thus far are some As more and more pockets of gas and powerful, blazing solar wind that blew and created the Moon, and other smaller 4.6 billion years old, and so the solar dust collided and stuck together, a minor debris, gas and dust out of the bodies became satellites, as with the system must have formed around this protoplanetary disk formed, resembling a disk. At this point the gas giant planets moons of Mars, or as in the case of the time. spinning pancake. ( Jupiter and Saturn) and the ice-giant asteroid belt, fail to become a planet due In 1755 the German philosopher The greatest action took place at planets (Uranus and Neptune) stopped to the powerful gravitational influence of Immanuel Kant proposed the nebular the disk’s centre. There, the infant accreting into larger bodies. Extensive Jupiter. hypothesis, in which a great cloud of protostar yet to become the Sun, rapidly sets of moons around the gas giants grew It’s rare for an original hypotheses material, the solar nebula, preceded accumulated matter. After some 50 as an analog to the solar system’s planets to be proved dead right, but as yet all the Sun and planets. Although he was million years, the proto-sun gathered themselves. Each gas giant helped sweep the pieces still fit perfectly, so hats off to unable to draw on supporting evidence enough mass to commence nuclear its orbital path through the disk clean Immanuel Kant’s original idea.

020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 27 EVENTS online:online: www.KCWwww.KCWTodayToday.co.uk.co.uk

tracing the incredible story of energy in our lives. EVENTS 020 7863 8222 The Peacock, Portugal Street, Holborn, WC2A 2HT, London MARCH 2018 peacocktheatre.com

March 23-24 DANCE Rich Mix Curfew Dance Performance by El Ends 15 March Funoun & Hawiyya A Midsummer Night’s Dream With a fusion of traditional and London Coliseum contemporary dance moves, the Based on Shakespeare’s popular comedy, production, currently at its development Britten’s work follows the consequences stage, is aimed at challenging ordinary of a falling-out between the fairy-king forms of expression and creating a Oberon and his queen, Titania. Mistaken new form of communication to open identities, confused lovers and alarming engagement with a new audience. The transformations are the result. production does not give an answer; 020 7304 4000 rather it questions the audience and Bow Street Covent Garden London encourages them to find their own WC2E 9DD answers by exploring and reflecting roh.org.uk on their position towards forms of oppression, injustice, and complexity. Ends March 17 020 7613 7498 Tango after dark 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, London The Peacock E1 6LA When night falls, tango is revealed in richmix.org.uk its most authentic and pure form. Tango after Dark is an intimate and sensual March 29 – April 7 performance with exquisitely danced My First Ballet: Swan Lake choreography to the wonderful rhythms The Peacock of the great Astor Piazzolla; see it at The The ever popular My First Ballet series Peacock for a strictly limited three-week returns with a new beautifully adapted winter run. version of Swan Lake, in a unique 020 7863 8222 collaboration between English National The Peacock, Portugal Street, Holborn, Ballet and English National Ballet WC2A 2HT, London School. This charming show features peacocktheatre.com a shortened version of Tchaikovsky’s music, and a narrator to guide the March 16 young audience through the story of the Artists 4 Artists - Juxta beautiful princess Odette, who was turned Rich Mix into a swan by the evil magician Rothbart. An intimate night curated by a group 020 7863 8222 of hip hop theatre artists working The Peacock, Portugal Street, Holborn, collaboratively to present an evening of WC2A 2HT truth. peacocktheatre.com 020 7613 7498 35-47 Bethnal Green Rd, London April 4-8 E1 6LA Disney On Ice presents Worlds of richmix.org.uk Enchantment SSE Arena Ends March 17 Worlds of Enchantment, takes audiences Macbeth on a captivating adventure to four Wilton’s Music Hall magical locations, including Radiator Multi-award-winning Mark Bruce Springs from Cars, Andy’s bedroom for Company present a striking dance theatre some fun with the Toy Story 3 gang, the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, a underwater kingdom of Ariel from The tragic descent into the darkest sides of Little Mermaid, and the wintery landscape human nature. Goaded by the whispers of Arendelle from Frozen. As told by of demons, the Macbeths ( Jonathan Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Goddard and Eleanor Duval) unleash Duck and Goofy, these tales and the Jewellery, Watches & Coins: 21 March murder for their own gains and set wondrous destinations where they take Silver, Antiques & Fine Art: 22 March in motion their path to madness and place will leave the arena spellbound. self-destruction, unravelling events in a 020 8782 5566 Clocks & Antique Furniture: 23 March nightmare they cannot control. Arena Square, Engineers Way, London Art On a Postcard at The Other Art Fair: 25 March 020 7702 2789 HA9 0AA Graces Alley, London E1 8JB ssearena.co.uk wiltons.org.uk Spring Fine Sale Viewing: April 12-21 Saturday 17 March: 10am-2pm March 21-24 Voices of America Charge, Motionhouse Sadler's Wells Monday 19 March: 9am-5pm The Peacock Jerome Robbins. William Forsythe. Tuesday 20 March: 9am-7pm Following on from the success of Broken Aszure Barton. Three generations of and Scattered, Motionhouse unearths choreographers in New York. Each with Mornings of sale the science behind the beating of our a distinct style, but with work infused hearts and the memories we make. Six with the raw, in-your-face attitude of performers use dance and acrobatics to American-style neoclassical ballet. expose the charge that sparks human life 020 7863 8000 in this electrifying new multi-media show Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell, London 28 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk EVENTS

EC1R 4TN 2008-2018 sadlerswells.com Design Museum Graphic design in the form of internet EXHIBITIONS memes, posters and protest placards is being used by the marginalised and Ongoing powerful alike to shape political messages The Decorative Bond in Motion as never before. From the global financial London Film Museum crash and the Arab Spring, to ISIS, Brexit Antiques & Textiles Over 100 individual items are on display and Trump, this exhibition explores the including the Aston Martin DB5 from numerous ways graphic messages have GoldenEye, the ‘Wet Nellie’ Lotus Esprit challenged, altered and influenced key S1 from The Spy Who Loved Me, the Rolls- political moments. Royce Phantom III from Goldfinger, and 020 3862 5900 the ‘Little Nellie’ Wallis WA-116 Agile 224-238 Kensington High St, Autogyro from You Only Live Twice. Kensington, London W8 6AG 020 7836 4913 designmuseum.org FAIR 45 Wellington St, London WC2E 7BN londonfilmmuseum.com Ends April 7 John Keane: Twelve Selves Ongoing Flowers Gallery Brilliant minds in Hut 8 John Keane’s reputation as a political SPRING Bletchley Park artist has been established through a Formerly the Codebreaking Hut leading sustained artistic inquiry into military and 17-22 April 2018 the breaking of German Naval Enigma social conflicts around the world, from Battersea Park, London messages, today Hut 8 houses exciting Northern Ireland to Central America interactive exhibitions helping adults and and the Middle East, where he was children alike to understand the different commissioned as the Official British War methods the Codebreakers used to help Artist of the Gulf War. A new exhibition them with their work. The Mansion, at Flowers Gallery, Cork Street, will focus Bletchley Park, Sherwood Drive, on Keane’s most recent series of paintings, Bletchley, Milton Keynes MK3 6EB which centre on a single self-portrait 01908 640404 image. bletchleypark.org.uk 020 7439 7766 21 Cork St, Mayfair, London W1S 3LZ Ends March 16 flowersgallery.com Andrzej Urbanski: AB02 833/387/18 Everard Read London Ends April 8 Urbanski's work appears to be the result Ayurvedic Man: Encounters with Indian of an automated process; the precision of medicine its execution gives the impression that it is Wellcome Collection generated by a detached, robotic or digital Taking its name from the 18th-century tool. His interest in creating this illusion Nepali painting, the ‘Ayurvedic Man’, this ANTIQUES AND 20TH CENTURY DESIGN is rooted in his fascination with digitally- exhibition showcases an exquisite range produced art, the digital tools he uses in of material from Wellcome’s historical FOR INTERIOR DECORATION plotting his intricate compositions, the collections, including Sanskrit, Persian relationship between lived experience and and Tibetan manuscripts, vibrant gouache virtual reality and the status assigned to paintings, erotic manuals and animal- handmade products in the post-industrial shaped surgical tools. era. 020 7611 2222 020 7590 9991 183 Euston Rd, Kings Cross, London 80 Fulham Rd, Kensington, London NW1 2BE SW3 6HR wellcomecollection.org everardlondon.com Ends April 8 Living with Gods, Peoples, Places and Ends March 27 Worlds Beyond The Centre for Russian Music: Inside the British Museum Collections Beliefs in spiritual beings and worlds Barbican beyond nature are characteristic of all The Centre for Russian Music at human societies. By looking at how Goldsmiths, University of London, opens people believe through everyday objects up its collections for display at Barbican of faith, this exhibition provides a Music Library. perspective on what makes believing a 020 7638 4141 vital part of human behaviour. Silk St, London EC2Y 8DS 020 7323 8299 barbican.org.uk Great Russell St, Bloomsbury, London WC1B 3DG March 23 – April 28 britishmuseum.org Fred Wilson, Afro Kismet Pace Gallery Ends April 15 An exhibition featuring the artist’s most Gideon Rubin: Black Book recent body of work originally conceived Freud Museum for the 15th edition of the Istanbul The artist’s specially created project for Biennial on view in fall 2017. Freud’s final home relates to the era of For a complimentary invitation email 020 3206 7600 the late 1930s, when Freud left Vienna [email protected] and reference KCW Today 6 Burlington Gardens, London for London. A series of paintings on W1S 3ET canvas, linen and paper take inspiration decorativefair.com 020 7616 9327 pacegallery.com drawn from original pre-WW2 German magazines that Rubin has collected. The March 28 – August 12 idealised images of heath and efficiency in Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics the magazines were designed to promote DF_KC&W 126 x 316 SPR18.indd 1 22/02/2018 15:09 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 29 EVENTS online:online: www.KCWwww.KCWTodayToday.co.uk.co.uk the myth of Aryan supremacy in Nazi The Moroccan Medina propaganda. Rubin has subverted these Queen of Hoxton images in his characteristic style by Climb into a secret snug hidden inside a masking out the faces, Nazi references giant Moroccan lamp and enjoy a Spiced and swastika motifs. Hot Buttered Rum or Shimmering 020 7435 2002 Gold Pomegranate Bellini amongst the 20 Maresfield Gardens, London luxurious cushions and dancing lights. NW3 5SX Sample delights from the kitchen such freud.org.uk as Halloumi Fries, Lamb and Apricot Tagine or a Rainbow Vegan Mezze Ends April 15 Board. Ferrari: Under the Skin 020 7422 0958 Design Museum 1 Curtain Rd, London EC2A 3JX The exhibition, created in collaboration queenofhoxton.com with Ferrari, offers an insight into the life of Enzo Ferrari, unique cars and rarely March 12 – April 23 seen documents. Celebrating 70 years Rooftop Astronomy of precision design, from the launch of The Culpeper the first Ferrari car in 1947 to the latest In honour of its namesake, the car production. This ambitious display controversial astrologist and herbalist will bring together early design models, Nicholas Culpeper, The Culpeper is rare personal memorabilia and archival hosting an evening tour of the night sky material relating to Enzo Ferrari’s life. from our rooftop, stopping by a couple 020 3862 5900 of planets and constellations on the 224-238 Kensington High St, way, all guided by astronomy expert Seb Kensington, London W8 6AG Jay. Using professional high strength designmuseum.org telescopic equipment, and drinking hot drinks made at the rooftop bar, this will Ends April 18 be a night you won’t forget. ABBA: Super Troupers - Access Tours, 020 7247 5371 Part of Nordic Matters 40 Commercial St, London E1 6LP Royal Festival Hall theculpeper.com Come on a musical journey with Swedish pop sensation ABBA as they take over March 16-18 1970s Britain in this one-of-a-kind St Patrick's Day Parade and Festival exhibition. Throughout the exhibition's Trafalgar Square run, specially adapted tours are being The London St Patrick's Day Festival; offered, including British Sign Language now in its sixteenth year, attracts more Interpreted, Autism and Tourette’s than 125,000 people to events across Friendly and Dementia Friendly tours. London and to the Parade and festival in 0844 875 0073 central London and Trafalgar Square. It's Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, become a destination event showcasing Lambeth, London SE1 8XX the best of Irish food, music, song, dance, southbankcentre.co.uk culture and arts. Trafalgar Square, Westminster, FAIRS & FESTIVALS WC2N 5DN london.gov.uk Ongoing Crafty Fox Market March 17 Mercato Metropolitano Father Ted-a-Thon: St Patricks Day Stock up on prints, cards, ceramics, Special textiles and homeware at these markets The Grand showcasing the work of independent Are you brave enough to kick Bishop makers and artists from across the UK. Brennan up the a***? Can you appreciate New traders are always being featured and a lovely horse? What would you say to a markets are often accompanied by craft nice cup of tea? These questions and more workshops, street food and DJs. will be answered this St Patrick’s day as 020 7403 0930 you celebrate Craggy Island’s finest with 42 Newington Causeway, London the annual Father Ted-a-Thon! SE1 6DR 020 7223 6523 craftyfoxmarket.co.uk 21-25 St John's Hill, London SW11 1TT Ends March 19 claphamgrand.com Neon Naked Life Drawing Duke of Wellington March 17 – April 2 Neon Naked is a new and unique Life Ideal Home Show Drawing experience that specialises in Olympia creating unusual and creative designs by Whether you have a big project or want using vibrant and bold living sculptures. to add those finishing touches, find fresh By combining an industrial UV light and ideas and more at the Ideal Home Show. reactive body paints with hand crafted Catering to every need and taste, the flamboyant accessories it’s easy to get show includes eight enhanced sections. the creative juices flowing. Art supplies Discover Interiors, Style, Gardens, Home are provided, however, please feel free to Accessories and treats to savour at the Eat bring your own. & Drink Festival. 020 7275 7640 020 7385 1200 119 Balls Pond Rd, London N1 4BL Hammersmith Rd, Hammersmith, thedukeofwellington.london London W14 8UX olympia.london Ends March 31 30 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk EVENTS

March 25-27 Ride across the jaw-dropping Cretaceous London Bridal Week plains, where you come face to face with Excel the most awesome creatures ever to live. The first bridal ‘super-show’ in the UK, Then visit an incredible research station bringing collections from the world’s where scientists are studying dinosaurs in RHS London Orchid leading designers and manufacturers the past. See prehistoric animals in cages, under one roof. Timed to be the first watch babies hatching, and witness an Show and Plant Fair major event on the international calendar, autopsy on a giant dinosaur.

it is a fusion of large-scale trade fair, 0844 854 1355 Charity No: 222879/SC038262 RHS Registered fashion show, and educational seminar See website for how to get there Late Thu 5 April • Fri 6–Sat 7 April programme. dinosaursinthewild.com 020 7069 5000 Free gin Royal Victoria Dock, 1 Western Gateway, Ends March 22 and tonic for the London E16 1XL Polka Youth Theatre first 200 ticket excel.london Polka Theatre bookers to A unique opportunity to get expert drama the Late* April 21-22 training and develop new performance Fes-Tea-Val skills, for everyone aged 9 – 14 who Chiswick House & Gardens enjoys theatre and performance. Are you ready for the most British, most 020 8543 4888 fun and let’s face it the tastiest day of the 240 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London year? Fes-Tea-Val 2018 will celebrate SW19 1SB National Tea Day. Filled with tea tastings, polkatheatre.com snacks galore, mixology classes, afternoon tea etiquette lessons, celebrity baking Ends March 31 masterclasses and other family-friendly Space Safari Planetarium Show activi-teas this is a must attend. So, what Royal Observatory are you waiting for, get the kettle on and Join Ted the Teddy Bear on a journey book your tickets! throughout the Solar System, looking 020 8742 3905 for the Great Big Bear in the sky. With SEASONAL PLANTS • TALKS • WORKSHOPS The Estate Office, Chiswick House, interactivity, music and rhyme, the show Conservatory Yard, Chiswick, London is a must for preschool children. In Royal Horticultural Halls W4 2QN collaboration with local schools, music chiswickhouseandgardens.org.uk and songs have been developed by Trinity St James’s Park / Pimlico London Victoria Laban Conservatoire of Music and RHS Members £5, public £8 in advance/£9 on day, Late £5 for all FAMILY & CHILDREN Dance. rhs.org.uk/londonshows 020 8312 6608 Ongoing Peter Harrison Planetarium, Blackheath *Complimentary drink for first 200 ticket bookers to the Late only Dinosaurs in the Wild Avenue, Greenwich, London SE10 8XJ Greenwich Peninsula rmg.co.uk/royal-observatory english-heritage.org.uk March 16-18 The Steadfast Soldier Ends April 2 Polka Theatre Investigate for families The tale of a resilient one-legged toy Natural History Museum soldier and his extraordinary adventures Get a feel for how scientists work by out in the world. This playful retelling having a go yourself. Come and explore Directed by Teresa and Andrzej Welminski of Hans Christian Andersen’s story uses hundreds of real nature specimens that puppetry, projected animations, music form the evidence Museum scientists and shadow play for a unique theatrical use in their work. Science Educators are experience. on hand to help you look closely at real THE COMET 020 8543 4888 objects using the many tools provided. 240 The Broadway, Wimbledon, London 020 7942 5511 Inspired by the life and work of Bruno Schulz SW19 1SB Cromwell Rd, Kensington, London polkatheatre.com SW7 5BD nhm.ac.uk March 24 Wondrous Libraries! April 12 British Library Library Legends A creative workshop at the Harry M British Library Weinrebe Learning Centre to explore Join Kevin Graal at the Harry M different materials to design your own Weinrebe Learning Centre for a fun extraordinary library map. Be inspired by storytelling session. Experience a the architecture of the British Library, its mesmerising mix of fact and fiction with wonderful collection of maps, and tales of a close-up look at some of the Library's unusual libraries. collection, from treasures of the sound 01937 546546 archive to books, stamps, maps and 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB manuscripts, all with extraordinary stories bl.uk to tell. 01937 546546 March 30 – April 2 96 Euston Road, London, NW1 2DB Easter Adventure Quest bl.uk 20 - 24 MARCH Eltham Palace PRINT ROOM AT THE CORONET Calling all valiant adventurers this May 19 103 NOTTING HILL GATE, W11 3LB Easter weekend! Join us on the hunt for Kids for Kids Ambassadors' Ball 2018

020 3642 6606 | THE-PRINT-ROOM.ORG | NOTTING HILL legendary dragon eggs. Set off with an Hyatt Regency London intrepid character from the past to crack The theme will be A Royal Evening, as the the clues and claim your chocolate reward. event falls on the same day as the Royal 0370 333 1181 Wedding. Ambassadors and Guests will Court Yard, London SE9 5QE enjoy a Champagne Reception sponsored 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 31 MOTORING online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

The London Classic Car Show, Excel London By David Hughes Hughes © David Photographs

aunching in 2015 this event is proof, if any were needed, that the classic car scene is in a very Lbuoyant state. Visitor and exhibitor numbers have climbed, and more halls were taken this year to accommodate the number of clubs and high end specialists that wanted to be a part of the action. This show isn’t one for the hobby mechanic looking for some obscure spanner to complete his toolkit, so no piles of sorry looking parts, but there was plenty of shiny stuff to aspire to. At the top end of this estimated £4.5 billion pound (GB) industry you have the big ticket investors, those who have cars that mean as much to their portfolio as any stocks and shares, and who fortunately don’t feel the need to lock them away permanently. It’s quite true of course that none of the most desirable Early 50s racers from Ferrari and Lancia and expensive toys were driven along the salty byways to get here. Nobody parks a mint 250LM Ferrari outside anymore, let alone piles on unnecessary miles, but the famous Ferrari marque is far from the only name to occupy this cossetted upper echelon. Entry level prices for good Lamborghini Countach’s are nudging the price of a small flat, quite a few Mercs could be swapped for a bolt hole in Brighton, and early E Types have now taken on a mystique that requires a big cheque to experience. For those of us not able to play at quite this level, there’s still plenty to aspire to, and time has a way of casting a rather benevolent spell upon the automotive survivors from our collective past. Cars were more analogue then, and Very, very expensive silver machinery Very, very expensive red machinery fond memories from the era of “are we nearly there yet, Dad?” run deep. Family (we did, after all, build quite a lot of example is Alex Warner Director of saloons often smelled of hot plastic and them) and it’s a great way to get the next faculty: Technology, Reading College (to oil on a blistering summer’s day, when generation involved. give him his full title) who has persuaded Traditional coach building and repair Jaguar Land Rover to loan a significant Camping Gas burners knocked up a ’ fresh brew of tea in a layby, and Mum’s skills don t figure that highly in modern and wonderful Swallow Sidecar, sandwiches were eagerly devoured. We’d production, but they are vital to preserve handsomely attached to a Brough love an Aston Martin, but the worn our motoring heritage, and it was great Superior motorbike for this year’s intake to see some demonstrations taking place to learn from & refurbish. For those that leather in the old Rover might be just as ’ evocative. on the English Wheel, which can do don t know, Jaguar started off as Swallow To keep this rolling cycle of good anything from a complete panel with a Sidecars, and the pre-war SS range of times going, you need to get off the number of complex curves, to fettling cars they went on to produce are highly computer, and out on the road, make a pre-formed part that requires a bit of sought after today. Post war, the initials a weekend of it. All old cars need work to get the perfect fit. Likewise, SS had all the wrong connotations, so maintenance, not least to keep the lead loading, the historic way of making Sir Willian Lyons rebranded as Jaguar. dreaded tin worm at bay. They are not of sound and smooth joints between body Today’s JLR group are undoubtedly panels, and the precursor to 2 pack filler. forward thinking and techno-savvy, but the “service light” generation, so you have ’ to be in touch with their needs, which is Stop me if I m talking a foreign language like all successful firms that appreciate where the whole concept of an industry here, but read on those who would like to their history, they are not afraid to share learn a little more. to help preserve it for the future. A round comes in. As a country, we are very ’ good at looking after the international There s a burgeoning network of of applause is due to all those keeping community of classic car enthusiasts places to learn and train, but a fine the flame alive. 32 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk MOTORING

Show was forced to relocate to the Goodwood House salonpriveconcours.com Motoring iconic ExCeL. As such, the “automotive The Goodwood Hillclimb is now a key event of the year” promises to be bigger and much-loved part of the international September 7-9 Fixtures and better than ever, with 2.5 times the motoring and motorsport world, but who Goodwood Revival amount of internal space allowing for could have guessed that this stretch of Goodwood Motor Circuit: Revival more cars, more exhibitors and more driveway on the March family’s estate The only historic race meeting to be activities than ever before. would make such an impact? staged in period theme, recreating the 020 7069 5000 Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0PX romance and glamour of motor racing From the Congestion Charge Royal Victoria Dock, 1 Western goodwood.com as it used to be, the Goodwood Motor Gateway, London E16 1XL Circuit comes alive for Revival with to speed cameras, it can be thelondonmotorshow.co.uk August 30-September 1 iconic race cars, both on and off the easy to assume that there is Salon Privé historic track. June 8-7 Blenheim Palace 01243 755055 no place for car enthusiasts London Concourse A Concours d'elegance in the truest Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0PH around London. But, as these The Honourable Artillery Company sense, Salon Privé is the most luxurious goodwood.com events show, nothing could be 80 Exceptional Historic and Modern of garden parties set against the backdrop Cars from turn of the century pioneers to of ‘Britain’s Greatest Palace’, Blenheim October 28-30 further from the truth. late model thoroughbreds. Palace. Presenting the finest collection Classic & Sports Car Show 020 3142 8542 of supercars, hypercars and classic cars, Alexandra Palace Ongoing Daily Events Armoury House, City Road, EC1Y 2BQ along with a luxury retail village and This unique event is brought to you Ace Café londonconcours.co.uk exquisite cuisine, it is a truly unique by Classic & Sports Car; the world’s ’ ’ Motorbikes, Cars & Rock n Roll. At experience. biggest and best classic car magazine, Ace Cafe London all are welcome who July 12-15 01993 810530 and Haymarket Exhibitions, organiser share the passion, based upon the rich Goodwood Festival of Speed Woodstock OX20 1PP of the globally renowned Autosport traditions of the legendary petrol haunt. International. With more than 300 020 8961 1000 delectable machines on show, enthusiasts Ace Corner, N Circular Rd, London of glorious classics and super cars NW10 7UD will be able to admire special exhibits london.acecafe.com showcasing the rarest and most important racers and road cars. May 17-20 020 8365 2121 London Motor Show Alexandra Palace Way, London Excel N22 7AY After outgrowing Battersea Evolution, alexandrapalace.com where a record-breaking 25,000 spectators passed through the gates in 2017, the Confused.com London Motor Compiled and edited by Fahad Redha

Electric ‘Chelsea Tractors’ take centre stage at Geneva By Fahad Redha

Whether enthusiasts like it or not, SUVs are very popular today. So much so that many traditional family saloons and MPVs have been replaced by one. But for those wanting a car with a green pedigree, this segment has been severely lacking, with only one affordable offering in the Mitsubishi Outlander PHEV hybrid, and one not so affordable one, the Tesla Model X. All that’s about to change as a Jaguar I-Pace number of manufacturers have taken the wraps off hybrid and all-electric 4x4s at the Geneva Motor Show in March. The help to launch a range of plug-ins from lower emissions, just 75 g/km allowing This is thanks in part to aerodynamics first is the Hyundai Kona EV, a battery the two German firms. it to just slip under the radar for the influenced by the CX-75 concept powered version of the car that has But if we’re going to talk about Congestion Charge. Prices haven’t been supercar which help to make the I-Pace already been on our streets for a year. This luxury SUVs, it’s two British brands that confirmed but it will not be much less one of the slipperiest cars in its class. little runabout promises big things. 300 have stolen the show. The controversial than the regular car’s £162,700. Of course, the Geneva Motor Show miles of range with a price tag expected Bentley Bentayga has seen the addition But even the Bentley isn’t the most has many more cars on offer including to be under £30,000. By comparison, an of a plug-in hybrid to its range. With a talked about in the show. That honour Rimac’s following to the Concept One, entry level Tesla Model X costs nearly turbo-charged 3.0 litre V6 engine and an goes to the recently unveiled Jaguar and the Ferrari 488 Pista. But it is £63,500. electric motor, this is the winged B’s first I-Pace. With 298 miles of range this may interesting to see just how important the Both Audi and Mercedes are finally foray into alternative fuels. The company just be the best-looking SUV ever made. SUV segment has become. There was a unveiling their long awaited EVs: the promises the same “flexibility associated At just £63,495 it isn’t cheap but it packs time when they were symbols of excess e-Tron and EQ respectively. These two with the W12, V8 Diesel and V8” models quite a punch. With twin electric motors and pollution but as these new models all have been promised and previewed in including their off-road abilities and Jaguar says that this will accelerate show, that’s no longer true. You really can concept form some time ago and will performance. But this comes with much from 0-60mph in just 4.5 seconds. have your cake and eat it too. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 33 MOTORING online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

name, is the first flying car that you can actually buy, though the term ‘car’ is Flying car finally used somewhat loosely. The £425,000 three-wheeler has a rear propeller like takes off a ‘pusher’ aircraft, and a rotor above it By Fahad Redha like a helicopter. Either a Recreational © PX Library Photographs Pilot License or a Private Pilot License is needed to fly it, while a regular driving license is all you need to drive it. The company says that it takes 5-10 minutes to convert it from driving to flying. The “Mark my words: a rotor mast erects automatically while the combination airplane and rear tail section, propeller, and two rotor blades, need to be removed manually. motorcar is coming,” Henry Power comes from two Rotax engines Ford once said. “You may with the 99bhp road motor good for a 0-62mph sprint in under nine seconds smile, but it will come.” For and a top speed of 31mph. Not exactly as long as cars and planes blisteringly fast, but the company says it has a range of 817 miles on the road. Up have existed, there have been in the air it can reach 3,500m (11,483ft), will be needed to fly it. aircraft’ since they lean heavily towards attempts to combine the two. about the same as some small planes. But the Pal-V won’t have the market the plane side and less on the car side. This is thanks to a 197bhp providing all to itself; Aeromobil is a Slovakian The Pal-V seems to be a bridge between Many different ideas have moth lift and thrust. This will allow it company that is developing a flying the two. been proposed and many to achieve an airspeed of 112mph and car of its own. The prototype has been This brings us back to what Henry a range of 310 miles. To take off, the in development since 1990, but a near Ford said all those years ago. At the prototypes built, but the idea company says it needs 90-200 by 20 production version has been unveiled for time it was believed that the plane will never really got off the ground. metres of runway but once in the air a launch in 2020, albeit with a price tag go the way of the car with everyone “manoeuvring and swiftly getting around close to £1 million. Power for this four- owning their own personal aircraft and In some cases, a crashed obstacles like a hummingbird will make wheeler comes from a hybrid system commuting by air. There was even a plan prototype frightened off any you smile.” combining a 300hp Subaru boxer engine to build an airport on the roof of King’s Only 90 of the initial Pal-V Liberty with a 110hp electric motor. And what Cross Station for this reason! This didn’t potential investors. will be built, costing £425,000 each and about Terrafugia? Its Transition model is happen. But maybe, just maybe, it soon with deliveries scheduled for next year. nearing production with a price closer to will. ow a new startup hopes to After that, the Liberty Sport model will that of the Pal-V. For more information on the Pal-V change that. The Pal-V, made be launched, costing a more affordable Well these two would be more and to reserve your own one, visit pal-v. Nby the company of the same £254,000 before taxes. A pilot’s license appropriately described as ‘roadable com. GSF ADDRESSES MOTORISTS’ NEEDS

SF MOTORWORKS, the trusted independent car Gservicing workshop for German and luxury vehicles which is based in Battersea, takes the initiative to organise informative sessions with motorists to familiarise them with the preventive maintenance of their cars, how to deal with everyday common problems, even to show them how to carry out basic inspection checks that will facilitate worry free journeys. During the sessions there will be an opportunity to discuss various hot topics including the ownership of a diesel car in view of the recent restrictions enforced by the government.

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Nell Gwynn House Draycott Avenue Chelsea London SW3 3AU T. +44 (0)20 7584 8363 [email protected] www.chelseaworkshop.com 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 35 EVENTS online: www.KCWToday.co.uk by Moët and Chandon, followed by a Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets Gourmet Three Course Dinner. All the in Concert proceeds from the evening will go to Kids Royal Albert Hall for Kids, virtually the only organisation Harry Potter will return to the Royal helping the forgotten children in the Albert Hall next year with a sensational poorest villages of Darfur, Sudan. live orchestral screening of Harry Potter 079 5720 6440 and the Chamber of Secrets. Projected in 30 Portman Square, London, W1H 7BH high-definition on a 40-foot screen, watch kidsforkids.org.uk the film accompanied by a live orchestra performing John Williams’ iconic score. FILM & PHOTOGRAPHY Experience the wonder of talking spiders, scolding letters, and giant snakes all over Ongoing again! Meet the Neighbours Planetarium Show 020 7589 8212 Royal Observatory Kensington Gore, Kensington, London Tour the Solar System and beyond, and SW7 2AP meet our next-door neighbours in space! royalalberthall.com Vote with the audience on which planets to explore in depth, before moving beyond to explore neighbouring stars April 7 and galaxies far away in the depths of Babette Mangolte: What Maisie Knew space. Packed full of spectacular sights Tate Modern and fun facts, this interactive show will be Babette Mangolte emerged as a key figure presented live by an astronomer from the in New York’s 1970s avantgarde art, film Royal Observatory. and performance scenes, and is celebrated 020 8858 4422 equally for her work as a filmmaker, Blackheath Ave, London SE10 8XJ photographer and cinematographer. rmg.co.uk For over four decades, her practice has addressed complex questions about the March 21 act of looking. Kennington Noir Presents: “The Blue 020 7887 8888 Dahlia” (1946) Bankside; London, SE1 9TG Cinema Museum tate.org.uk At the end of WWII, a war veteran (Alan Ladd) and his buddies (William MUSIC Bendix and Hugh Beaumont) return to Los Angeles, and one of them becomes Ends March 24 a murder suspect when his adulterous From the House of the Dead party-loving wife is found dead. Helped Royal Opera House by a beautiful blonde (Veronica Lake), he From the House of the Dead is Janáček’s tries to avoid the police while looking for final work and arguably his most his wife’s killer. powerful. Completed just before his death 020 7840 2200 and first performed posthumously in 2 Dugard Way, Lambeth, London 1930, the opera is based on Dostoyevsky’s SE11 4TH semi-autobiographical novel describing cinemamuseum.org.uk life in a Siberian gulag. Janáček does not soften that harsh reality at the heart March 29 of his tale, but imbues the work with Hercules compassion in its honest depiction of The Grand humanity’s difficult truths. The result is Follow the story of mortal Hercules, as he one of his most humane and inspiring tries to become a true hero and join his creations. family back on Mount Olympus. Who 020 7240 1200 says Disney is just for kids? Feel free to Bow St, London WC2E 9DD heckle the bad guys and cheer for your roh.org.uk heroes. Play drinking games, sing along, and a costume is never un-appreciated! March 19 020 7223 6523 Ollie Howell 21-25 St John's Hill, London 606 Club SW11 1TT Ollie is a multi-award winning claphamgrand.com drummer, composer and bandleader. Since graduating from the Royal Welsh Ends April 14 College of Music and Drama in 2011 Miho Kajioka: Unfinished Spaces he has rapidly established himself as an Photographers Gallery impressive musician, not only performing Miho Kajioka (b.1973, Okayama, Japan) with various UK and international players is a fine art photographer based in Kyoto. but also working regularly with his Her ethereal, minimalist work draws on impressive quintet for which he composes the Japanese tradition of wabi-sabi; the as well as leads. appreciation of beauty in imperfection 020 7352 5953 and transience, and the Zen/Taoist belief 90 Lots Rd, Chelsea, London that the essence (true nature) of an object SW10 0QD exists rather in the empty space inside and 606club.co.uk around it. 020 7087 9300 March 22 16-18 Ramillies St, Soho, London The Czigány Quartet W1F 7LW Eaton Square Concerts thephotographersgallery.org.uk The Czigány Quartet was formed by postgraduate students at the Royal Ends April 29 Academy of Music. Part of the Academy’s 36 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk EVENTS

prestigious Davey Posnanski Quartet TALKS & TOURS Scheme, they are the 2018 winners of the St Peter’s Prize. Its programme Ongoing includes Debussy’s String Quartet, in War Paint: Brushes with conflict acknowledgement of the centenary of his National Army Museum death. Explore why artists and soldiers have 020 7553 4039 painted scenes of conflict, in the museum’s St Peters Church Eaton Square, 119, first temporary exhibition at the new London SW1W 9AL museum, to create records, report news or eatonsquareconcerts.org.uk commemorate events. But above all, war paintings are personal perspectives on war March 23 and its vast impact on people and places. Ladies of The Blues War Paint features over 130 paintings and Under the Bridge objects exploring the complex relationship Ladies of The Blues returns to Under between war and the men and women the Bridge with an exclusive, once only who map, record, celebrate and document UK tour for the three blue stars; twice it. European blues vocalist of the year 020 7730 0717 Connie Lush, Finnish Blues Awards’ Royal Hospital Road, Chelsea, London Artist of the Year Erja Lyytinen and SW3 4HT the most authentic blues singer of her nam.ac.uk generation Kyla Brox. 020 7386 3327 March 14 Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, London, Morris in Oxford: Politics and Design SW6 1HS Walking Tour underthebridge.co.uk William Morris Society This day long walking tour of Oxford March 25 will include some of the places most Liane Carroll & Friends associated with Morris as a designer and 606 Club creator, and his later political engagement The first artist ever to win two BBC Jazz with the city. Lunch and any admission Awards in the same year, for Best Vocalist charges are extra. Full joining details will and Best of Jazz, Liane is a dynamic be confirmed a few days before the event. vocalist and pianist whose amazing talent 020 8741 3735 has been captivating audiences around 26 Upper Mall, London W6 9TA the world. She is recognised as one of williammorrissociety.org the finest singer/pianists on the scene, working with the likes of Gerry Rafferty, March 19 Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Paul How to Understand Our Times: The McCartney, and has been a featured Future of Humanity performer at Glastonbury Festival. How to: Academy 020 7352 5953 Two of the greatest thought leaders of the 90 Lots Rd, Chelsea, London 21st Century come together to discuss SW10 0QD the Future of Humanity. Join us for an 606club.co.uk unmissable conversation between the intellectual titans: Yuval Noah Harari and April 6 Thomas L. Friedman. Culture 11 Aldridge Rd Villas, Bloomsbury, Under the Bridge London W11 1BL AGMP presents CULTURE Two howtoacademy.com Sevens Clash 40th Anniversary Concert Legendary Jamaican Roots Reggae Group March 21 announce an exclusive London Concert The future of foodbanks at the award winning Under the Bridge. British Academy Culture started out as a Rasta vocal trio As demand for foodbanks in the UK from the Jamaican countryside, who continues to rise; difficulties and gaps released their debut album Two Sevens in state provision continue to be at the Clash in 1977. forefront of the conversation. This panel 020 7386 3327 will discuss the institutionalisation of Stamford Bridge, Fulham Road, London, foodbanks, what can be done to support SW6 1HS those who rely on them to survive, underthebridge.co.uk and how they can be prevented from becoming a normalised part of society. April 25 020 7969 5200 Eliades Ochoa 10-11 Carlton House Terrace, London, APRIL - MAY Royal Albert Hall SW1Y 5AH AT BFI SOUTHBANK One of the most important Cuban britac.ac.uk musicians of all time, the former Buena ON BLU-RAY & DVD Vista Social Club frontman makes his April 9 solo debut at the Royal Albert Hall, Yanis Varoufakis: Globalisation Vs ON fronting his own band. A winner of Internationalism FEATURING: several Latin Grammy nominations and Foyles Royal Festival Hall Saturday Night awards, Ochoa is known as ‘Mr Chan Join economist and Democracy in Europe Chan’ in his hometown of Santiago de and Sunday Morning, Movement 2025 (DiEM25) co-founder Cuba. Yanis Varoufakis for a keynote talk on A Taste Of Honey and 020 7589 8212 the economic force that has shaped Kensington Gore, Kensington, London our world: globalisation. This talk is The Entertainer SW7 2AP punctuated by images from acclaimed royalalberthall.com German photographer, Andreas

Gursky, whose iconic photographs have

KCW Woodfall Ad 126 x 316 mm.indd 1 08/03/2018 18:06 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 37 EVENTS online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

ROYAL ALBERT HALL PRESENTS FESTIVAL OF SCIENCE

05.05.18 – 10.07.18

MY GREAT STAR TREK AND CLOSE ENCOUNTERS ROBIN INCE AND SPACE ORCHESTRAL STAR TREK BEYOND OF THE THIRD KIND CHRIS HADFIELD’S SPECTACULAR ADVENTURE IN CONCERT IN CONCERT SPACE SHAMBLES 11 – 12 May 26 May 2 – 3 June 14 June 15 June

DISCOVER A GALAXY OF CONCERTS, TALKS, SCREENINGS, FAMILY EVENTS AND MORE

Call: 020 7589 8212 royalalberthall.com 38 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk EVENTS

documented global capital and its effects Ongoing March 14-31 Edward, is prepared to sound the alarm... for three decades, and whose first major Hamilton Beowulf 020 3642 6606 UK retrospective will open the Hayward Victoria Palace Theatre Battersea Arts Centre 103 Notting Hill Gate, W11 3LB Gallery. The critically-acclaimed and multi-award- Seth Kreibal's Beowulf is an interactive the-print-room.org 020 7440 3212 winning Broadway musical, will open performance-game inviting the audience Southbank Centre, Belvedere Rd, at the end of 2017 at London's Victoria to explore the world of a legendary story March 27 – April 21 Lambeth, London SE1 8XX Palace Theatre. from our ancient past... without leaving White Guy on a bus foyles.co.uk/events 0844 482 5138 their seats. Accompanied by an evocative Finborough Theatre Victoria St, Westminster, London SW1E soundscape, the audience is immersed in Ray and Roz are a white, liberal couple THEATRE 5EA the world of the poem, exploring strange living in the safe, staid suburbs of landscapes 1,000 years after the hero's Philadelphia. He is a financial consultant Ongoing Ends March 24 adventures were first written down. who makes "rich people richer". She is Frozen Returning to Haifa 020 7223 2223 a passionate teacher who commutes every Theatre Royal Haymarket Finborough Theatre Lavender Hill, London SW11 5TN day to educate the mainly black students One sunny evening a young girl walks The world premiere of the first English- bac.org.uk of an inner-city school. On the face of to visit her Grandma, she never arrives. language adaptation of the classic novella it, life runs smoothly. But Ray seems A play about retribution, remorse by Ghassan Kanafani, Returning to Haifa, March 15 – April 7 to hanker after change. He leaves his and redemption, Frozen explores the adapted for the stage by Naomi Wallace The Plough and the Stars Mercedes in the drive, and takes to riding interwoven lives of three strangers as they and Ismail Khalidi. A compelling story of Lyric Hammersmith the public bus through the African- try to make sense of the unimaginable. two families; one Palestinian, one Israeli Following a sell-out season at the Abbey American neighbourhoods of the city; the 020 7930 8800 forced by history into an intimacy they Theatre as part of the 100th anniversary only white guy on the bus. 18 Suffolk St, London SW1Y 4HT didn't choose. celebrations of the 1916 Easter Rising, as 0844 847 1652 trh.co.uk 0844 847 1652 well as a successful Irish and US tour, The 118 Finborough Rd, Kensington, London 118 Finborough Rd, Kensington, London Plough and the Star, comes to the Lyric as SW10 9ED Ongoing SW10 9ED a co-production with the Abbey Theatre. finboroughtheatre.co.uk Dreamgirls finboroughtheatre.co.uks 020 8741 6850 Savoy The Lyric Centre, King St, London Smash-hit, Olivier Award-winning Ends March 24 W6 0QL Broadway musical Dreamgirls plays at Girl from the North Country lyric.co.uk the West End's Savoy Theatre London to Old Vic Theatre packed out audiences. Directed by Casey Brought to life by an exceptional company March 20-24 Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon, Aladdin), of actors and musicians, award-winning The Comet inspired by the life and work Dreamgirls is the musical inspired by hits playwright Conor McPherson beautifully of Bruno Schulz Compiled and edited by Fahad Redha from The Supremes, The Shirelles and weaves the iconic Songbook of Bob Dylan Print Room at the Coronet, James Brown. into this show full of hope, heartbreak As news spreads across town that a fatal If you have an event you’d like listed 0844 871 7687 and soul. comet is hurtling towards the earth, the in the next edition, please send any Savoy Court, Strand, London 0844 871 7628 townspeople enter into a festive mood, information to: [email protected] WC2R 0ET The Cut, Lambeth, London SE1 8NB excited about the coming catastrophe. savoytheatre.org oldvictheatre.com Only a newcomer to the town, Uncle 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 39 Dining Out online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

Osh 14-15 Beauchamp Place, Photographs © Osh Photographs SW3 1NQ Opening hours: Mon-Sat 12.00-1.30am; Sunday 12.00-12.30am T: 020 3935 9555

sh, a newly opened Uzbekistan/ chefs), a miniature farmers’ market full of with tiger prawns served in chilli sauce just being somewhat unmemorable, Central Asian eatery, is one baskets overflowing with fresh delicacies amd crispy sweet potato (£10.80) and especially having immediately following of those establishments that to be taken home (fruit and veg is the crab purse gathered around a dish our starters. Much more idiosyncratic Orefuses to be easily pigeonholed; The Fly imported twice a week from Uzbekistan of Osh mayonnaise (£8.60), both starters was our final dish, caramelised halibut, style fusion of high class restaurant and itself ), and an intimidating wall made blew my guest and me away, the prawns afloat in a clouded sea of celeriac and swanky private bar. This mélange is spread up of curated wine bottles from across were heartbreakingly tender but the crab apple sauce (£16.70) which really gave a across the various floors of a cavernous the world makes it clear that we’re not in purse in particular was probably the jewel demonstration of some of the potential Knightsbridge townhouse within spitting Raffles any more, Toto. in the crown of the whole meal. Both available in Osh’s stable of ingredients, distance of Harrods. Osh takes a vaguely tapas like in terms of presentation and in taste, I with the fusion of the caramel and apple From the bouncer at the door to approach to its menu, which effectively could not recommend them higher. causing the dish to be wolfed down at an the sultry lighting throbbing out from encourages diners to exploit the tension This was followed up with a brace almost impolite speed. the dark accented furnishings, the between the less well known traditional of shashliks: lamb with coriander and Osh’s menu might be pricey, but it is atmosphere when you enter seems to Uzbek dishes and the more familiar chilli (£14.30) and chicken with ginger full of surprises, much like the restaurant scream ‘gougingly expensive hole in the international fare after ordering, my and tomato (£7.80). Ironically these itself as its miniature market (and a wall nightclub’. However press on into companion and I were recommended a were probably the weakest part of private upstairs bar available for hire) the dining area at the back, and you delicious 2015 Bordeaux which paired the meal considering that these were demonstrates. step into a dining area which contains a wonderfully with each of the courses that probably the most well-known item Osh’s name might not roll off the boxed off open plan kitchen (a godsend were unveiled one by one with a certain that we selected. There was nothing tongue, but its food will leave you for those with a pathological distrust of understated showmanship. We began particularly wrong with them, beyond perfectly satisfied. Max Feldman

customer will ask me what I would do. It is something I always find difficult as To Sell Or To I very often have an emotional response to wine and I cannot help thinking that Drink? That Is you should only worry about what you paid for it and get on and enjoy some The Question… wonderful wine that you have not just By Piers German invested money in, but also time, effort and anticipation. Luckily my views are balanced by the Burns of Burns & German Vintners. Historically Ed Burns is a trader and so he can look at the wine One of the great joys of life is laying as a commodity and he will be the one down wine in your cellar to enjoy when who turns around and says “Why not sell it has matured and is ready to drink. It your one case and buy a few of cases of can prove immensely satisfying and at some other great wine to drink with the times even emotional, when you have proceeds?” some wine delivered to your house Of course, the best solution is to lay that you bought a decade ago and have down more than one case of the wines anticipated enjoying ever since. you want to drink and then you can Very often the wine is connected drink one case of each and sell the rest. to a story: you bought it with an That way your cellar starts to pay for unexpected inheritance or a bonus from itself and you can enjoy the fine wines of Join us on 22 March for an entertaining evening of food and wine. work, perhaps you visited the Chateau the world without your conscience giving and bought a case to remember the Let our expert guide you through the night, revealing why each wine you a hard time about your hedonistic pairs perfectly with its accompanying dish from the four course menu. experience? drinking habits. Somehow such connections make the Personally, I think you have to To make a booking, please contact wine even more special however there is remember you cannot take it with you, [email protected] or call 020 7361 1999. one factor that can often put a spanner so make sure you live life to the full and For more information visit: in the works, what do you do if the wine enjoy all the pleasures life offers you WWW.ROYALGARDENHOTEL.CO.UK/WINEDINNER has gone up in value and it no longer sits when you can, especially on the vinous comfortably with you to drink a wine front! 2-24 KENSINGTON HIGH STREET LONDON W8 4PT that is worth over £100 a bottle when TEL +44 (0)20 7937 8000 FAX +44 (0)20 7361 1991 you paid under £40? WWW.ROYALGARDENHOTEL.CO.UK With the way wine prices have Burns & German Vintners Ltd. risen over the last few years this is not Chelsea, SW3 an uncommon occurrence and often a www.bgvintners.co.uk KCW W A 40 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Travel & Lifestyle

no-one ever need go hungry on Phuket. If diving is your thing, under the watchful eye of Big Buddha atop a nearby hill, Chalong is the hub with a road of shops selling the kit and boats loaded up with tanks leave daily to nearby coral islands. Coming back salty and sun battered, you can freshen up with a cold Singha beer from the many bars. If retreating is the preferred way, the Phuket Meditation Centre is nearby or the Atmanjai is one of many yoga

wellness resorts in Rawai a beach area with a chilled vibe and handy for catching a McGowan © Lynne Photographs longtail boat to venture out to other islands like Koh Bon. Phuket provides a good spring board to visit its smaller sister islands like Koh Racha boasting icing sugar beaches and aquamarine bays; staggering rock formations and a vast cave define Koh Mook and though it’s unlikely you will be alone Koh Phi Phi is still worth a visit to swim in the pristine Pileh Lagoon and see macaques on Monkey Island. Koh Yao Noi and Koh Yao Yai are two unspoilt islands offering a more traditional culture and Yao Noi’s high end Six Senses Resort with a seascape back-drop of astonishing limestone outcrops sets a gold standard.

www.roughguides.com/ shop/rough-guide- thailands-beaches- islands www.touropia.com/best- islands-in-thailand

forested hills offering a heady mix of experiences. Coconuts and One of the island’s secrets and corals frequently missed off the tourist map Exploring islands off Thailand is Phuket Town, a bustling hive of eateries, bars and small businesses. Sino- By Lynne McGowan Portuguese shop houses once bulldozed but now highly prized line streets in ice hy are we so entranced cream hues lending charm and character. by tropical islands. Is it North of the town, Heroines Monument something to do with the commemorates a proud moment in qualityW of light, those waving palms the island’s history in the 1785 Battle fringing a beach or is it the glittering of Thalang when two sisters Chan and panorama of sea. Thus, we are lured Mok lopped off their hair, dressed as by the million to dig out the flip flops, soldiers armed with long Dha swords jump on jets and fly to promised lands. and led an army of local warrior women Thailand has more than its fair share to march the streets and warn off the of islands or kohs, scattered across the invading Burmese. Now that’s what I call Andaman Sea and beyond, some bursting #MeToo! with flora, others balloon with weird rock Aside from the sea and sun it’s all formations as if from another planet. about the food, the oh so fragrant food. Phuket is dominant, an island roughly You can eat like a rice paddy peasant on the size of Singapore and is more like an spicy noodles for 50 baht or a prince in independent kingdom – multi-ethnic, one of the pricy restaurants or swanky multi-gender and multi-commerce to resort hotels. Armed with a wok and include tin mining, fishing and planting gas ring, Thai cooks conjure miracles in plantations for coconut and cashew. a kitchen the size of a broom cupboard. Tourism is the big earner with coastal Mad for markets, they put us all to hot spots from the infamous liveliness of shame with the sheer scale and variety Patong to calmer Kata, Kamala and the of fresh foodstuffs on offer, naturally smarter areas of Surin, Natai Beach and seafood is abundant but the tropical Cape Panwa. Over development with fruits are sublime varying from perfumed malls and crass giant hoardings down yellow mangos, passion fruit by the the central strip have spoilt it for some ton and papayas the size of rugby balls. but the island is capacious so pockets of Pineapples are grown openly under peace remain everywhere with arcing, rubber trees in the north and bananas empty beaches, national parks and lush, grow like weeds in everyone’s garden, so 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 41 Travel & Lifestyle online: www.KCWToday.co.uk Photographs © Cynthia Pickard © Cynthia Photographs

performance sports centre has been built and named The Campus. This provides Relaxing in the a training ground for elite athletes, well-known football teams and tennis Algarve players. For example, GB’s Paralympic By Cynthia Pickard Triathlon Team has been training here, staying in the hotel’s cottages. You don’t have to be a high flier to enjoy the sports however. We enjoyed learning to play Padel, a cross between tennis and squash performed in a glass walled court with o many names begin with Al, chunky rackets. Algarve, Albufeira, Almancil, A short drive from the Resort is the because this part of the world was small unspoilt town of Loulé where the Sonce Moorish although few remains can Saturday so-called Gypsy Market is the be seen. This all year round unclouded attraction. There you will find counters and agreeable area in the south of full of gleaming fresh fish, fruit and Portugal is a magnet for golfers. vegetables, decorated ceramic jars of For players, the three award winning honey, fig and nut desserts and hundreds courses of Quinta do Lago will be of different designs on tins of sardines. known as some of the best venues of the The town itself is full of characterful back many on offer in the Algarve. Situated streets to explore, beautiful decorated within easy distance of Faro airport and churches, such as Nossa Sra Da Conceição, bordering on the sea and the lagoons of with blue tiled walls and an extravagantly the Ria Formosa Nature Reserve where gilded Baroque altarpiece. I spotted not only wading birds but also There are plenty of cafés where you flamingos artistically arching their necks. can sit and people watch while tasting The exclusive Quinta do Lago Resort my favourite, one of those famous pastel is dotted with luxury homes built on nata custard tarts or another great generous plots amongst the woodlands Portuguese pastry. of umbrella pines, available to buy or to On the subject of eating, there are rent. Advanced security systems keep so many choices of restaurant within the property of the rich and famous easy reach of our hotel. Bovino is a great safe. So for the golf-loving punter who steak house, Pure as its name suggests isn’t in the market for a 10 million euro for healthy salads and juices. At Casa house purchase, the recently transformed do Lago, set between two lakes I tasted Magnolia Hotel provides the perfect a great selection of fish and seafood, answer. For example there are various including the best octopus salad and deals on offer including, 5 Nights B&B, superb turbot. There’s also Koko where plus 4 rounds of Golf, from €678 per you can indulge in pizza or Casa Velha person. for fine dining. If you return late from a This ‘Palm Springs’ motel style heavy night out the very kind Magnolia boutique hotel has been pitched Hotel staff will even be happy to provide with affordability in mind without you with a Midnight cheese toastie; compromising on standards. There is an I’m not sure how that would affect your emphasis on health and wellbeing, cool athletic performance! and informal facilities for families and children, even providing outdoor cinema The Magnolia Hotel offers a Standard screenings. The atmosphere feels very Room from €78/£69 on a B&B basis. peaceful and relaxed. themagnoliahotelqdl.com As well as all the water sports, the T: (+351) 289 005 300 spa facilities, heated outdoor swimming www.quintadolago.com/en/restaurants pool, gym and bike trails, now a high www.quintadolago.com/en/the-campus 42 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Travel & Lifestyle

intriguing, but proves to be mildly misleading as we actually get served Sopwell House a dash of Oscietra caviar for the full indulgence. The dish comes with a short Hotel & Spa, explanation from the head waiter; in Japan Onsen eggs are slow cooked in hot St Albans House © Sopwell Photographs By David Hughes springs, so to replicate the effect these are cooked for precisely 42 mins at 62C. What lurks under the refreshing layer of sesame cream has the appearance of a part cooked egg which is a little squidgy. here are times when you just want Overall it is fresh and rather subtle, but to get out of town, to breathe much more to M’s taste than mine. some air that’s rich with the smell The fish course is Paupiette of Lemon ofT the country, and walk on footpaths Sole with Scottish scallops, Kwan Tung crunching with the sound of twigs under spices, edamame, pea shoots, cherry your feet. This hankering for a quick tomato and beurre blanc. The Asian get-away-from-it-all often flounders on influence is quite delicate, but the end the thought of two hours of Friday night result looks and tastes perfect. The pianist grind on a motorway where the first on the baby grand nearby is tinkling couple of drinks barely assuage the hell away some anonymous tune, and the of the journey, but there is another way. NZ Sauvignon Blanc is slipping down If you go East or West the urban sprawl a treat. We are back on track, and ready of London takes a long time to fade, for the next course and the reappearance but go North and a short 20 mile drive of Piotr, the ebullient sommelier. He can get you to one of the leafier parts of has only been at Sopwell a couple of historic St Albans, a town that’s been days, but 20 plus years at some top West around in one form or another since the End venues have shaped a man who can Iron Age. Home to a huge cathedral that deliver wine with pizazz. celebrates our first British saint, it is a Hoisin Duck, and a 2016 Côte du former Roman city, the site of the first Rhone which is fruity and smooth, and draft of Magna Carta and it contains surprisingly good for a mere youth by the only school in the English-speaking French standards. The duck is garnished world to have educated a Pope. But with crunchy strands of orange zest and I’m not here for the history, and ascetic coriander micro cress, and is of course thoughts need to be cast aside when just the right shade of pink. We are checking in at Sopwell House and Spa. momentarily distracted by the return of This is a place of indulgence and fun, the pianist “reinterpreting” a Take That somewhere to pamper the body and soul. track (so M reliably informs me) I’d like We are in the Orchid Suite, set in a small to think he had been drinking heavily, if private gated mews opposite the main not, I may need to; I’m not big on piano entrance, looking out over an outdoor bars or show tunes. It doesn’t look as if Top: ’ Foxglove Bedroom hot tub and Mediterranean style gardens. he does requests, but I d be up for John Above and Bottom: A couple of brave souls are enjoying Cage’s 4'33” (of silence) which he could Gourmet Encounter with André Jaeger. Above: Amuse Bouche the hot tub with a glass of champagne, stick on repeat. Left: but we are booked in for a Five Course A delicate palate cleanser arrives, The Mews at Sopwell House. Hydrotherapy Pool Tasting Experience in half an hour, so go Blueberry sorbet with a Benedictine for the cocktail lounge instead. There’s an sauce, which is an unusual mix, but impressive 8ft wide fireplace and about delightful. The pianist has obviously 28 degrees C difference, plus a couple concluded he is too good for this place, of G&Ts to be despatched before we go gently pulls down the lid and slinks off. through to the restaurant. Now I’m feeling a tiny bit guilty, and For 3 days only, there is a rather posh wondering about bad karma. Fortunately pop-up with Andre Jaeger, a famous no bad vibes seem to have reached the name in Swiss cuisine who claims to be kitchen who serve up a tantalising mix the first chef to introduce Asian inspired of Opera cake, mini meringues and fresh touches to European fine dining in the raspberries. There’s no plans for Grand 70s. Having had a sneak preview of the Chef Jaeger to return at present, but I`m menu, he has obviously kept the faith, sure a little of the magic will have rubbed though the first thing bought to the table off on the regular team. is a whole boule of sourdough bread and I can’t tell you much about the Spa. whipped butter. Warm crusty bread & The following morning I could barely fine butter is pure comfort food, but hot summon the enthusiasm to leave the on its heels comes a lavish amuse bouche lush cotton embrace of the huge bed for for two; succulent tea-smoked quail the buffet breakfast, let alone take action breast with Japanese asparagus, Atlantic against the calories gained the night shrimp wrapped in a paper-thin sheaf before. That old quote “Whenever I feel of Gloucester Old Spot ham with fresh the urge to exercise, I lie down until it coriander, and some Tuna with Thai goes away” seemed appropriate, but M vinaigrette. That’s a confident opening fancied a conscience salving walk. 10 shot which has two happy bunnies mins in, and the rain began to fall. I can looking forward to dish number two, and take a hint, so made for the bar. the start of the wine pairings. Onsen egg in dashi jelly and prune Sopwell House: Hotel, Spa, Restaurant, caviar on the advance menu was Brasserie & Country Club 01727 864477 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 43 Arts & Culture online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

Left: Girl Before A Mirror Right: Bust of a Woman Bottom right: Pablo Picasso, 1932 by Cecil Beaton

French president Paul Doumer in Paris in May by a deranged Russian emigrê, or the following week, of the Japanese prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai, as though that will lure the punters in. also assassinated The ‘Tragedy’ referred to, is the near fatal by naval officers. Picasso 1932- illness spirochetosis Walter contracted In Portugal, while swimming in the Marne. From a António Salazar Love, Fame, strikingly beautiful and athletic young becomes the Tragedy woman, she lost most of her blonde fascist prime Tate Modern hair while in hospital and convalescing minister, while for several months afterwards. Picasso’s the Nazis won Until 9 September 2018 reaction to this was to paint her as a 37% of the vote Admission £22 naked and drowning figure, over and in the Reichstag over again, being rescued, or as a bather Elections, tate.org.uk playing with a beach ball. becoming the His nude figures became more largest party pneumatic, contorted and erotically- in Germany. charged, with breasts and vulvas Picasso famously n 1932, Picasso was arguably the dominating his sleeping female forms, said ‘I shall not most famous painter in the world, although the erect male member was make art with the pre-conceived idea of on loan from collections around the and by the time of his death forty never far away, even as half of Walter’s serving the interests of political, religious world, including the Musée national Iyears later, the most influential and face in The Dream, or an extension of or military art of any country’. Five Picasso-Paris, with one of the very best celebrated artist of the twentieth century. one of her breasts becoming a huge years later, he painted his most powerful being Girl Before a Mirror from MOMA, He was fifty years old, wore Savile Row erect penis, thrusting from between political statement, as an immediate a masterpiece rarely seen outside New suits, and was chauffeur-driven in his her folded legs in Sleeping Woman by reaction to the Nazi’s devastating York. Towards the end of the exhibition, Hispano-Suiza from his house off the a Mirror, painted on 14 January. The bombing of the civilians of the Basque and the year, he started on a series of Champs Élysée to his tumble-down exhibition is laid out in a roughly town of Guernica during the Spanish black and white pen and ink drawings, château in Boisgeloup in Normandy. It chronological way, with the odd Civil War. inspired by Matthias Grünewald’s is not known whether he had a driving diversion, and the catalogue contains a In a barn at Boisgeloup, he Crucifixion from the Isenheim Altarpiece, licence, but he loved cars, and owned an sort of diary of events that relate to his concentrated on sculpture, moulding which are both raw and shocking, while, Oldsmobile, a Hotchkiss, a Mercedes work, friends, correspondence, galleries enormous, bulbous plaster busts with in complete contrast, a series of drawings and an Alfa Romeo. He was married and publications. Although he kept a prominent, penile probosces, most of Flute Player and Reclining Nude are to the neurotic Olga Khokhloval, but diary himself, he put it another way: ‘The of them bearing more than a passing totally charming. The playful mood maintained a passionate affair with his work that one does is a way of keeping ressemblance to Mlle Walter. In his continues with his depiction of bathers muse and model Marie-Thérèse Walter, a diary’. He also said, ‘I paint the way lifetime, Picasso produced an astonishing and women on the beach with a ball, and who was just 17 when he met her five some write an autobiography.’ He and 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and the exhibition closes with Sleeping Nude years earlier in a Paris street. The Tate his family seemed cocooned against the engravings, and 34,000 other works on with Blonde Hair. Now who could that felt is necessary to add a dramatic outside world in Boisgeloup. No mention paper. This ground-breaking exhibition be? descriptor, namely Love, Fame, Tragedy, is made of the assassination of the comprises more than 100 works, many Don Grant 44 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Arts & Culture

1941.There are some intricate models, including a highly detailed 1:48 scale one Ocean Liners: of Cunard’s flagship Queen Elizabeth at the entrance to the exhibition, behind Speed and Style which are numerous familiar posters, Photographs © V&A V&A including Cassandre’s iconic Normandie Until 17 June 2018 and J R Tooby’s Empress of Britain. Other British artists are represented by Admission £18 Abram Games and there is a charming vam.ac.uk/OceanLiners mural by Edward Ardizzone for the children’s playroom of the Canberra. Also on display is Paquebot Paris by the was sitting outside Harry’s American artist Charles Demuth, famed for painting I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold, Dolci on the Guidecca hanging in the Met in New York. sipping a Bellini, as one On loan from the Imperial War Museum is The Riveters, part of does, with one of the best Stanley Spencer’s extraordinary and I epic series Shipbuilding on the Clyde, views of Venice across the which was commissioned by the British canal, when the whole terrace government. In the same gallery is a was cast into shadow. beautiful wooden model, showing where every single panel and every single rivet A vast block of flats, over 70 metres high is placed on the hull. A film playing and 360 metres long slid past, carrying alongside showed one of the three anything up to 6,000 passengers, with enormous manganese-bronze propellers thousands of cabins, swimming pools, being hoisted into position onto Titanic’s casinos, clubs, bars, cinemas and theatres, sister ship Olympic. It took three men to gyms, shops and restaurants. The cruise put in each red-hot iron and steel rivet, ship has grown faster than any other and there were more than three million holiday sector in the last 20 years, of them. A scale model of a quadruple carrying around 20 million passengers expansion tandem engine is a beautifully a year. However, these marine cities are engineered piece of machinery on display, major polluters, generating nitrogen as well as cutaway designs and models of oxides, sulphur oxides, carbon dioxide the biggest ocean-going ships, from the and diesel particulate matter into the air, Titanic and the Normandie to SS United with each ship pumping 200,000 gallons States and the QE2. of untreated sewage into the oceans every Fashion and lifestyle are also week. The idea of spending any time at examined, and, this being the V&A, all on one of these floating shopping there are examples of evening dresses, malls with 5,999 willing captives, sounds including their famous silk and glass- like hell on earth, or rather, water. The beaded Salambo dress, a Lucien Lelong sister vessel to the Costa Concordia, the silk crêpe model and a Dior day suit ship that died of shame when it ran into worn by Marlene Dietrich on Queen a small-ish Italian island called Giglio, is Elizabeth in 1950. There are also wall named the Costa Fortuna, without a hint panels, one from the Titanic, and a of irony. It certainly cost a lot of lives. deckchair, carefully re-arranged, of The exhibition at the V&A takes us course, cabin furniture, textiles, carpets, back to a more glamorous and stylish crockery and film excerpts. These clips time, the golden age of ocean travel, are fun, if a little predictable, from in the 1920s and 1930s when it was Titanic, The Poseidon Adventure, Diamonds the only way to cross the Atlantic. In are Forever, Marilyn Monroe trying to a section called ‘Politics of Power’, squeeze through a porthole in Gentlemen Great Britain vied with France and Prefer Blondes, Brideshead Revisited and Germany, as well as Italy and America, Giuseppe Tornatore’s eccentric fable The to build bigger and better ‘flagships of Legend of 1900. There is a five metre- imperialism’ before and after the First high lacquered gold leaf panel, depicting World War, as they jostled to display half a dozen young male athletes and a national and maritime power, by using topless girl, all in shorts, as part of the the best designers and artists to project art deco interior on the French ship their expressions of statehood through Normandie which has been loaned from Art Nouveau, Art Deco and Modernism. the Paris Museum of Modern Art. One The fairy painter Edmund Dulac was gets the feeling that, if they had a larger employed by Canadian Pacific to design budget, the V&A could have designed certain interior areas of RMS Empress an exhibition that was grander, more of Britain, the 56,000-ton luxury liner, romantic and certainly more stylish built by John Brown at Clydebank than the one we have, and possibly the in 1930. Sadly, there is no mention new Sainsbury Wing, where the Opera of William Heath Robinson, who exhibition was on until recently, would designed the Knickerbocker Cocktail have been an ideal location for a grand Bar and a children’s nursery on board entrance, just as First Class passengers the same ship. During WW2 she was in their most glamorous clothes, came commandeered by the Admiralty as a sweeping down the staircase before troop ship, only to be holed and sunk dinner, known as la grande descente. by a U-boat off the coast of Ireland in Don Grant 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 45 Arts & Culture online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

The displays bring light and environment. He translated together their work, the scenery into cubist style painting. for the first time, in There was a fire in his Hydra home so England. They actively he and his wife Barbara, thinking it was supported Greek and an omen to move, went to Corfu where British co-operation. he painted landscape scenes, several After World War II being on display. He is recognised as ’ Athens was home Greece s greatest modern painter. He Museum British The Ghika © by Images to many British and studied Byzantine art and folk art and Greek intellectuals was well aware of the avant-garde trends and the British prevailing in Europe. He studied in Paris Council helped to and exhibited at the Galerie des Cahiers Greece to promote her d'Art and at the Musee d'Art Moderne. culture. He also had Exhibitions in Athens, This Exhibition Geneva, Tate Gallery London and the is, thankfully, Metropolitan Museum in New York. chronologically He designed for the Ballet and Theatre structured, also and was a gifted sculptor as well. He divided into sections, met Picasso who influenced his work. each one dealing with Notice in his work geometric shapes and the location where interlocking planes of cubist style and each artist lived, the intense love of Greece so loved by namely Kardamyli artists. in the Peloponnese, Ghika was married to Barbara, née Chania in Crete and Hutchinson who had previously been the islands of Corfu married to Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron and Hydra. and before that she was married to Rex Sir Patrick Leigh Warner, the Classicist. Fermor (1915 - 2011) John Craxton RA. (1922-2009) lived in Kardamyli studied in Paris and the Westminster with his wife, Joan School of Art, the Central School Elizabeth Rayner, of Arts and Crafts. He also attended Charmed Lives daughter of Bolton- Goldsmiths. The writer Richard Olney Eyres Monsell, 1st said of him, in Greece: Ghika, Viscount Monsell. “He moved in a bucolic dream world They entertained often peopled with beautiful Greek goat Craxton, Leigh and generously in herders...” their beautiful home Craxton held exhibitions in London, Fermor with its courtyard and Leicester and Whitechapel. He never 8th March - 15th July. 2018 glorious views. Sir deserted his pastoral themes but his later Patrick was a colourful work became more structured. He was British Museum. Room 5. character, said to be interested in portraying people, which the inspiration for can be seen in Still Life with Three Sailors. Ian Fleming's ‘James Observe their relaxed attitude and Bond’; the two men camaraderie between them as they raise striking poster by Ghika were friends. Sir their glasses. His Galatas is captivating welcomes all to this Exhibition Patrick's house was a with a girl dancing in a pink dress in with its towering Ionic column haven for artists and muted colouring and geometric scenery. beneathA a bold, blue sky warmed by an writers, among them Craxton worked with Freud in Poro orange sun. Stephen Spender, and then made Chania in Crete his The Exhibition was first presented Louis Macneice, home. He loved the frescoes in the old at the A.G. Leventis Gallery, Nicosia Lawrence Durrell, and Cretan Churches and painting the local in 2017 and is organised with them. John Betjeman. All people. He has been described as a new It is supported by the A. G. Leventis were drawn to the wild Romantic as he was greatly influenced Foundation which has its focus on arid scenery which by the whole Arcadian idyll of Ancient Society, Education and Culture, whilst Joan photographed Greece. keenly disseminating Greek and Cypriot professionally. Her John Craxton was a well known and Culture. The Benaki Museum in Athens camera and his popular figure in Chania. collaborated with the British Museum in typewriter are on this presentation. display together with The curators of this intriguing Exhibition The British Museum has long been some extracts from his are Evita Arapoglou, Ian Collins, associated with the culture of Ancient renowned travel books. Michael Llewellyn-Smith and Iona Greece which gave us art, perhaps Sir Patrick was a war Moraiti, who is curator of the Ghika equalled since, but, not surpassed and through the eyes of three leading lights hero who carried out dangerous missions Gallery. All have contributed to the vocabulary for every thought and of art and literature.” with Special Operations Executive in excellent book which accompanies the domain of knowledge. Today Greece still These leading lights were Sir Patrick Crete. His books are graphic and rich in Exhibition. It is available at the British exercises an unfailing fascination on our Leigh Fermor DSO., John Craxton RA detail, some are accounts of geographical Museum shop. minds. I think this fascination runs very and Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika RA. and and scholarly expeditions. Well known The Curators have given us a clear deeply in artists and writers. This theme member of the Tiberiana Academy in works include A Time of Gifts, Between picture of the lives of the three artists in is explored in the Exhibition. Rome. the Woods and the Water and A Time to the exhibition. They were true travellers Hartwig Fischer, Director of the Their friendship is revealed and their Keep Silence. knowing how to be resourceful, having British Museum, said, homes in Greece through photographs, Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor was the an interest and concern for the local “...It is wonderful to have an opportunity letters, manuscripts, writing, painting and greatest travel writer of his time. people and feeling at home wherever to celebrate the rich culture of a more personal possessions. Their love of the Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghika lived they lived. They chose Hellas. recent chapter in Greece’s history Hellenic world permeates the Exhibition. in Hydra being drawn to its amazing Marian Maitland 46 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Arts & Culture

old chestnuts warmed up, arranged greens for the figures. Another ‘fleshy’ have been done as a bet. It comprises a chronologically from Greco-Roman painter, Jenny Saville, is represented photograph of a fully-clothed man facing Art of the Erotic at one end and Anish Kapoor’s highly by a bored, unengaged couple on a a white wall with a set of instructions Published by Phaidon polished vulva at the other. What’s new, bed entitled Odalisque, with echoes of on pink paper pinned alongside. You’re 272 pp. 170 colour Pussy? We have all seen the Athenian previous lovemaking on the bed behind ‘aving a larf., Brucey. Happily, there red figures and Pompeiian mosaics them. Clare Hempton is known for are some erotic gems amongst the illustrations. £59.95 before; in fact we have seen many of the explicit and highly-colourful close-ups of dross, like François Boucher’s Mlle. ISBN 978 071487 4241 artists, if not their images, before. One cocks and cunts, but the impressionistic O’Murphy, called in this case, Reclining also wonders how the editors at Phaidon strokes of Boy with Tats, Turkey, 26 Girl, a deeply sexy life study of the Reviewed by Don Grant made their choice. William Kentridge June 2013 render the image a blur of underage mistress of Louis XV, lying is not known for his erotic work, and masturbatory fantasy; she gets her on her front with her bottom splayed indeed, the piece included is a barely subjects, we are told, from chat webcam out. Titian’s alluring Venus of Urbino is perceptible image of a copulating couple sites and paints them in a hurry while included, but not Giorgioni’s Sleeping on watermarked cotton. Opposite is they are tossing off. There have to be Venus, which is an oversight. However, Tracey Emin’s embroidered picture of a dozens of paintings by John Currin that both Artemesia Gentileschi’s Venus and girl fingering herself called Dark Hole. are more sexy than The Conservatory, not Cupid and Nicholas Poussin’s Jupiter The somewhat fatuous caption reads, ‘a because of their explicitness, but because and Antiope display a seductive sense of black void suggesting that the entry to of their erotic content, still featuring his abandonment, while Bronzino’s classic he most erotic part her soul lies elsewhere . . . it is about a hyper-real, bulbous models that could Allegory with Venus and Cupid, is at the woman trying to love herself, as well as have stepped out of a Lucas Cranach very epicentre of lust; the allegorical of this sumptuous others’. In it, Emin asks what it means painting from the sixteenth century. conundrums of this handsome painting new volume devoted to be a woman and a lone sexual entity.’ So this gets down to the question of the compilers of the captions have tried Certainly, when she was made Professor what, or in this case, who, defines what and failed to unravel. Rowan Pelling has to erotic art is probably of Drawing at the Royal Academy is erotic. Eric Fischl is a consummate written a scholarly introduction, which T Schools in 2011, the words of Tom erotic artist, from his early promiscuous attempts to distinguish between what is sliding one’s finger down the Lehrer came to mind. ‘I gave up writing and voyeuristic Bad Boy(1981), which is erotic and what is just plain lustful. At gossamer-thin plastic outer satirical verse when Henry Kissinger won featured, and Birthday Boy two years later, sixty quid, one wonders what the reader and into the Lucio Fontana the Nobel Peace Prize.’ to his stunning beach paintings from will get from this book, other than a The feminist painter Joan Semmel the early 2000s. That is eroticism on a few glimpses of genuine beauty, like slit that gashes the hardback has certainly painted more highly- stick, with brass knobs on. In complete George Grosz and Fragonard, mixed in front cover in two. charged erotic images than the one contrast, what on earth is Jackson with some dull and puzzling Mughal art depicted,Touch, but it is a large-scale Pollock’s Woman from 1933 doing in this from Persia and elsewhere, and delicate So, what’s new in this recently-published voluptuous couple using natural skin book? It is not in the slightest way erotic chunhua depictions of love-making from book and what differentiates it from tones on the bodies, while most of her and is badly-painted. China and shunga from Japan. the myriad other titles? Well, sadly, others employ bright oranges, pale The inclusion of Bruce Nauman’s Definitely not a book to be read with very little. It’s the same formulaic stuff; yellows and greens, and bright blue- Body Pressure from 1974 must surely one hand.

of the Year prize. Rise Arts Global British sculptor, Tom Waugh won Strenuous efforts are made by KCW Today newspaper the People's Choice Award, which Competition was presented by Ambassador, Oliver to ensure that the content and information is correct. Proudlock and voted for entirely by the public. He also won the Category Prize Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today newspaper Judges, competitors, musicians and for Sculpture. guests, they all came together at the Rise Art, founded by Scott Phillips, is reserves the right to report unsolicited material being sent House of Vans, Waterloo for the a curated online gallery providing a range announcement of the prizewinners of of services designed to help people to through to the publication. the Rise Arts Global Competition in own, to discover, to love and to judge art. which the public votes. The atmosphere of anticipation was electric with stirring Calling all artists and judges for next music and cocktails. year! Gina Soden is the winner of the Marian Maitland Personal views expressed in this newspaper are solely those UK Artist of the Year prize. Lebohang Kganye from Johannesburg is the winner www.riseart.com of the respective contributors and do not reflect those of of the Global Art Prize. The Judges [email protected] were David Bailey, Gavin Turk, Harland the publishers or its agents. All materials sent to KCWToday Miller, Ben Eine and Fiona Banner. Gina Soden, who is from Reading are at the suppliers’ risk. Reproduction in whole or in part of won for her creative evidence, original ideas and technical skill. Her Award

this publication is strictly prohibited without prior consent. was presented by Gavin Turk. Her Art Fair © Rise Photograph prize winning photograph depicted an abandoned asylum entitled Klinik. Gina has a guerilla style photography and she The appearance of advertising in this newspaper, including specialises in abandoned locations in Europe. The Judges described her as 'an inserts or supplements, does not constitute endorsement by exquisite observer of decay'. Lebohang submitted a complex KCW Today of the products or services advertised. exploration of family history through silhouette style photography. The Judges described it as 'poetic manipulation'. Congratulations to Eleanor Denton, aged 16, who won the UK Young Artist 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 47 Arts & Culture online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

Above: Michael Andrews. Melanie and Me Swimming. Tate. Top right: Lucian Freud. Man’s Head (Self-Portrait) 1963. © The Whitworth, University of Manchester. Below: R J Kitaj. The Wedding. Tate.

same voracious woman who befriended Colony Room and Deer Park, and the human figure are not done from life at Spencer, married him, then refused to American’s Cecil Court and The Wedding. all, nor are the works of the Ghanaian All Too Human: have sex with him, before throwing Paula Rego’s work always has an edge, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, who reckons to him out of his house. Maybe the title sometimes bordering on the menacing, bulk out a canvas in a single day. There Bacon, Freud of the exhibition is a little ambivalent, and The Family needed an interpretation, was no real thread to this exhibition, as in the next gallery, Bacon dominates, otherwise one could have mis-read it or, if there was, it was a phantom one. and a Century of and he was an artist who never drew or completley. There is more to a successful show than Painting Life painted from life. In the middle of the The final room is devoted to four just hanging some terrific paintings by Tate Britain room is Giacometti’s Woman of Venice, young-ish women artists, Celia Paul, famous artists next to each other, even for no apparent reason. A whole room Cecily Brown, whose Teenage Wildlife ones that the visitors have not seen Admission £19.50 is devoted to the neglected Indain artist is wonderfully evocative, Jenny Saville, before, or at least for half a century. www.tate.org.uk F N Souza, a proponent of Outsider whose larger than life paintings of the Don Grant Art and Expressionism, three of whose paintings are on loan from the collection of Jane and Kilo de Boer in the list of works (surely Kito de Boer, the former emerged from Tate’s ‘landmark senior McKinsey director and diplomat?). exhibition’, thinking ‘what was that Negro in Mourning is redolent of the all about?’ They informed us that it French painter Bernard Buffet, and even ‘celebrates how artists have captured the has a similar signature. I After a sortie into the world of intense experience of life in paint.’ Is that not what artists tend to do anyway, other William Coldstream, Euan Uglow, his than abstract expressionists? There are pupil at the Slade, and the first of the certainly some fine examples of British Freuds, we are led into the works of art on display, and of the ninety-odd David Bomberg and his students, namely paintings on display, a third are from Dennis Creffield, Leon Kossoff, Dorothy Tate’s own collection. Perhaps this was Mead and Frank Auerbach, all strong a legitimate way of getting some dusty painters with an appreciation of the old canvases out of storage and onto the dynamism of life in the city.Lucian Freud walls. is wall-to-wall in the next room, some The show opens with a room of featuring wall-to-wall models with legs paintings by David Bomberg, Walter splayed, while there is a sensitive portrait Sickert, Chaim Soutine and Stanley of Girl in a Striped Nightshirt, and Spencer entitled The Raw Facts of Life. another of The Painter’s Mother. Francis How a couple of Spanish landscapes by Bacon’s room is next, one he shares Bomberg and a French one by Soutine with the photographer John Deakin, got in here is puzzling The Sickerts and includes Study for Portrait of Lucian are always a treat to see, as are the two Freud 1964, a painting that has not been portraits by Stanley Spencer of Patricia seen by the public for fifty years. Both Preece, one from Hull Museums, with Michael Andrews and Ron Kitaj share her pendulous, heavily-veined breasts an interest in the dynamics of social and small, pursed lips. She was the relationships, as shown in the former’s 48 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Arts & Culture

the story is simple! Manon’s brother imagination takes them. Lescaut is offering her to the highest Rambert’s latest tour around the bidder when she meets Des Grieux and UK includes: Christopher Bruce’s 1981 falls in love. They elope to Paris, but work Ghost Dances, one of the most when Monsieur G.M. offers Manon a celebrated contemporary dance pieces of Photograph © Bill Cooper Photograph life of luxury as his mistress she can’t its generation. This piece is an evocative resist. With the Lescauts’ encouragement tribute to the victims of political Des Grieux cheats at cards in an attempt oppression in South America. It tells to win Monsieur G.M.’s fortune. They stories of love and compassion, as death, are caught. Manon is arrested as a in the form of the iconic “ghost dancers”, prostitute and deported to New Orleans, interrupts the daily lives of a series of followed by Des Grieux. On the run, ordinary people. Visually referencing Manon dies from exhaustion. celebrations of the Day of the Dead, and Nicholas Georgiadis designs depict driven by the bewitching rhythms of a world of lavish splendour, made fetid traditional Latin American songs, it’s a by miserable destitution. MacMillan’s moving, intensely human work. spectacular ensemble scenes for the whole Company create vivid, complex The days run away like wild horses portraits of the distinct societies of Paris is a new creation by Aletta Collins, set and New Orleans. The evening ends to Arturo Márquez’s pulsating, Cuban- with an impassioned pas de deux that inspired Danzones 1-3. The piece takes its epitomises this most tragic of love stories title from a poem by Charles Bukowski: and provides a talking point as a starter “The days run away like wild horses for two over a candle lit dinner. over the hills”. The dance begins with a homage to Zbigniew Rybczyński’s Romantic passion with all the allure Oscar-winning short animated film narration by actor Ben Crompton, ballet and ballerinas have to offer. Tango, expanding on the themes of Rumpelstiltskin is the perfect Easter A great night out! interaction and repetition to create BALLET treat for families. A night at the ballet for the a witty, vivid study of how different BY ANDREW WARD balletLORENT is a leading UK adventurous! moments combine to form a life. Aletta contemporary dance company based in is one of the UK’s most in demand Newcastle upon Tyne, regularly touring choreographers, working widely in the UK with wide-ranging and visually theatre, musicals and opera. stunning productions that appeal to Rambert Dance people of all ages and backgrounds. A Linha Curva, choreographed by Itzik Ballet for All Founded in 1993, by Artistic Director Company: Galili, is Rambert’s party piece: a riotous Liv Lorent (MBE), the company creates Triple Bill, 27 to 29 March, explosion of sexy, colourful, samba- fantastical, heartfelt and beautiful dance New Victoria Theatre Woking fuelled dance. The work features 28 Have you ever wondered what that is inclusive and inviting. performers, a massed bank of percussion Rambert Dance Company is a world and dramatic lighting; the cumulative ballet would be good to see A must for the family… visually beater and a trail blazer for contemporary effect has audiences on their feet and with the family… a Romantic stunning! dance. A small dance company that cheering (once they’ve got their breath packs a punch. back). A Linha Curva was nominated for night out or an Adventurous the 2010 Laurence Olivier Award for night out on the town? Here The romantic Rambert is Britain’s oldest dance Best New Dance Production, and helped company. In 1914, Polish emigree and Rambert win the Olivier Award for are some ideas! evening out and a former Ballet Russes dancer Marie Outstanding Achievement in Dance that Rambert arrived in London fleeing year for its programme of new works. classic too! the outbreak of the First World War. The Family A decade later she set up the company Rambert next perform at the Sadler’s The Royal Ballet: Manon, 29 March to and Rambert had its first performance Wells in May but the 24 minute train Easter Outing 16 May, Royal Opera House Covent in 1926. The company to this day ride from London’s Waterloo station will Garden constantly refreshes itself by the be well worth the adventure at the end of balletLORENT — Kenneth MacMillan’s masterpiece, creation of new dance works. From its March. Manon, is revived as part of The Royal inception Rambert’s success has been Rumpelstiltskin, 30 & 31 Ballet’s continuing celebrations of to commission exciting choreographers, Dare to be different and take the March, Sadler’s Wells MacMillan’s profound impact on British composers and designers giving them train to Woking to see Rambert in ballet, to mark the 25th anniversary of the freedom to lead the dancers and full flight… Britain at it’s best on his death. As part of Family Weekend, the ever- audiences alike wherever their vision and the world stage! Manon has all the ingredients for popular balletLORENT returns to a romantic night out… albeit with Top: Sadler’s Wells with another of their balletLORENT twists and turns too! Created in 1974, Rumpelstiltskin fantastical dance-theatre fairy-tale MacMillan’s masterpiece, Manon, quickly © Photograph Bill Cooper adaptations. Directed by Liv Lorent, Right: became a staple part of The Royal Ballet’s A Linha Curva by Itzik Galili and retold by Poet Laureate Carol Ann repertory and is now a touchstone © Photograph Chris-Nash Duffy, Rumpelstiltskin is the story of the of adult dramatic dance performed Nash © Chris Photograph outsider, shunned for being different. around the globe by all the major ballet Set in a world of spinning wheels, companies. kings and queens, this is a tale of love, This tragic love story has everything loss and magic powers, where the to keep you on the edge of your seat with alchemist Rumpelstiltskin is outcast until the guileful and at times capricious sexual he is revealed to be “the true prince that allure of the lead character, Manon, very he was”. much in evidence as she tries to escape a With a score by Doctor Who composer life of poverty but in the end dies for her Murray Gold, costumes designed by true love Des Grieux. The drama behind Michele Clapton Game of Thrones, and 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 49 Arts & Culture online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

BRICKS AND

BRICKBATS Davis © Paul Photograph BY SQUINCH

Planning or Politics?

n 27th March last year Westminster City Council began an eight week consultation on O‘Tall Buildings’. Its findings have not yet been published. The questionnaire was slated by ‘The Skyline Campaign’ saying that WCC already had sufficient protective policies against the proliferation of towers. Apparently 80% of residents are against “tall buildings”. One has to ask if that includes residents of existing tall buildings or just those living closer to ground level? Skyline Campaign claims that over 450 new towers are in the pipeline for central London. Over 75% of Westminster has the benefit of Conservation Area protection and there are over 11,000 listed buildings where the setting is a So one fire in June last year. The higher up a major consideration for planning. key issue private residential tower, the higher Apparently, the new city plan will is simply, the value, and the penthouse is always not be published until after the May top dollar for the rich. Height provides 4th local election. The planning of cities where enhanced views, privacy and security requires a long-term strategy, it should are tall in well managed towers. A high not be subject to short term electoral buildings service charge should pay for good gain. maintenance and management. For Is the issue just about height? Surely necessary, the less advantaged, the higher floors there are some locations where intense essential are the most vulnerable. Basic design, density of building to substantial and good, quality or paucity of construction, safety height is an economic, employment amenity, maintenance and management and housing necessity in order to meet or where all figure and contribute to this divide the employment and housing needs of should between social and private tall building our city and society. Equally there are they be development. Too many social housing plenty of locations where tall buildings towers are not well enough maintained, are completely inappropriate. So one key restricted? managed or well-equipped in the first issue is simply, where are tall buildings place. They become less than desirable, necessary, essential and good, or where grim, and post-Grenfell, fear filled should they be restricted? entrapment. This symbol of the divide The other key issue is whether between rich and poor in our society they are good, interesting, appropriate became wider still that tragic night last pieces of architecture that relate to their June in North Kensington. Planning, context. Even more importantly, is the construction quality and housing public and private space around them management must reach out beyond creating positive enjoyable amenity space short term politics for the benefit of all that is enhancing life in our city? the people that live in our cities. Our Mention of tall buildings is bound to cities and our society will be the better raise hackles and argument, but equally, for long term thinking. so will encroachment on ‘green belt’ Westminster has just published invoke wrath from those choosing to an Article 4 direction to counter the live on the outer edges of London. The Government’s short term strategy for ‘ ’ real issue is that land is a finite resource re-entered the planning dialogue and great Iceberg Basement farrago, pushing allowing office buildings to change to and we need to use it intelligently in a surely there are many instances where an people to extending their homes to go residential without consent. Well done carefully planned, socially beneficial way. extra storey or two will help to provide down rather than up. Westminster for some longer term Sometimes, in some places, that does better land usage. Again there are On another level, tall buildings have thinking. Unfortunately, we will have mean taller; in other locations clearly other instances where extra storeys are become a symbol of the social divide to wait until after the local elections to not. inappropriate. It was this argument about between rich and poor in our society, hear the outcome of the tall buildings The notion of higher buildings has mansard extensions that created the tragically exemplified by the Grenfell consultation and revised City Plan. 50 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Arts & Culture

cut-throat, so stay focused on what you performing chamber music. Founded Grieg, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, Piazzolla, want to achieve. by Kensington resident and pianist Smetana and more. Also performing will MUSIC “Listen to as much music as you can, William Howard, the much-loved piano be the Flanders Symphony Orchestra work out what you like, what you don’t and strings ensemble will bow out with (May 17) and the Wurth Philharmonic like, and try to find where your musical a farewell concert at Wigmore Hall on ( June 6). ROUND UP voice sits best. Then hone it, develop it, March 21. The repertoire will be recognisable BY GEOFF COWART nurture it.” “It will be one of mixed emotions,” short pieces and extracts from popular Kate is the fifth and final composer to says William. “We will visit wonderful classics, and Cadogan Hall says it be awarded a residency under a scheme venues for the last time, say goodbye to wants the audience to ‘engage with the launched by the Mackintosh Foundation. many promoters who have become good orchestra and react to the feelings and The foundation aims to promote friends to the ensemble, and perform emotions provoked by the music; feel dramatic arts through funding from its many of our favourite pieces for the final free to clap, shout or whistle at any time’! namesake Cameron Mackintosh, the time together. But it was very much From 2.30pm. All ages invited. No ticket theatre producer behind Les Misérables, our intention that we should finish in needed. Free entry. #NoShushing West London The Phantom of the Opera and Cats. celebratory style.” www.cadoganhall.com “West London is a beautiful, diverse and Three of the members (including composer Kate vibrant area, and there’s a lot of musical William) have performed in the chamber history here, too,” adds Kate. “I'm really music group since its inception in 1983, Marlais looking forward to creating music that with the line-up unchanged for the last Short film festival has been appointed to the directly involves local young people, 23 years. Lyric Hammersmith for a finding out what music excites them, and In its final season, it is on course to at the ICA writing music for them that will reflect perform more than 50 concerts around Soundtrack fans take note. The ICA is year-long residency beginning that.” www.lyric.co.uk the world. Ardent supporters of new hosting its free Playback Festival from in March. music, the ensemble leaves behind a March 21-25 with 95 new short films collection of 80 commissioned works alongside live spoken word performances, he composer, who grew up for piano and strings from some of discussions and practical workshops. in Kew and trained at King’s Deadly debuts today’s top composers, including John You can watch rolling projections or College London and the Royal Tavener, Judith Weir, Sally Beamish, select what you want to see on one of 10 Academy of Music, had already spent at Royal Opera Jonathan Dove, Cheryl Frances-Hoad, interactive screens. T Piers Hellawell, David Knotts, David All films in the Playback exhibition some time working at the theatre where she assisted on Frantic Assembly’s House Matthews, Pavel Novak, Anthony will be made by artists aged 16 to 24. production Fatherland, before the Janáček’s final opera From the House of Powers and Howard Skempton. The The Festival partners with music website production featured at the Manchester the Dead makes its first ever appearance ensemble also has more than 30 studio Resident Advisor as it selects a young International Festival. at the Royal Opera House this month. recordings to its name. filmmaker to make an experimental Fatherland is now set to appear at It also marks the Covent Garden debut Career highlights include receiving music documentary. www.ica.art the Lyric from 25 May and is just one of of acclaimed Polish director Krzysztof the Royal Philharmonic Society’s Best the productions to which Kate will add Warlikowski, with Mark Wigglesworth Chamber Ensemble Award in 1998, and her creative spark during her residency. conducting an excellent cast including ‘memorable’ tours to the USA, South “Working in the Lyric building, it’s clear Johan Reuter and Willard W. White. America and the Far East. All hail that there’s a buzz running through it,” The opera is Czech composer Leos she says. “Every corner vibrates with Janáček’s final work and arguably Swervedriver excited conversations of young people, his most powerful. Completed just And finally, a blast from the past. Indie parents and children, theatre lovers, before his death and first performed No shushing at stalwarts Swervedriver return to London who are all here to create something or posthumously in 1930, the opera is based to play their first two albums, Raise involve themselves in the arts.” on Dostoevsky’s semi-autobiographical Cadogan Hall and Mezcal Head in their entirety. It all Kate also hopes that her work with novel describing life in a Siberian gulag. Think that Hawaiian shorts would never happens at the O2 Academy Islington young people will help inspire others Until March 24. Tickets from £22. be allowed at a classical concert? Or that on May 18 following the release of their to follow their passions. “When I was www.roh.org.uk you can’t applaud after a great violin sixth studio album this month. Despite younger, there were very few female solo? Think again. Because Cadogan Hall signing to the legendary Creation role models in the world of theatre has launched a free informal matinee of Records in the Nineties, the Oxford composition,” explains Kate. classics, with no shushing allowed. quartet of Adam Franklin, Jimmy “There’s still not enough getting a Schubert As part of the venue’s excellent Hartridge, Mikey Jones and Mick Quinn platform nowadays in my opinion, but Zurich International Concert Series, the always had a much bigger fanbase in I hope that one day I might be a role Ensemble says one-hour gigs start at 2.30pm and show America than they ever did in the UK. model for someone who might want to off world-class orchestras such as the Perhaps it’s finally time to surrender to pursue this career. Composing, or any Thefarewell Schubert Ensemble bids farewell Czech National Symphony Orchestra their mighty psychedelic rock. Tickets role within the music industry, is pretty to the concert stage after 35 years of (April 16 & 18) performing music by £20.75 www.02academyislington.co.uk 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 51 Arts & Culture online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

Tosca By Giacomo Puccini Carmen By Georges Bizet Photographs © Royal Opera House Opera © Royal Photographs Live Broadcast from The Royal Opera House www.roh.org.uk/cinemas

ransmitted to around 450 cinemas in Britain alone, this ROH programme of broadcastingT operas and ballets live is a massive and complicated operation, but one that is proving immensely successful. The Curzon in Chelsea was packed on a chilly night at the beginning of February, mainly with a middle-aged to elderly audience, some old hands with tupperware suppers and flasks of coffee. curtain went up, and in the two intervals, few members of the audience found too José (Francesco Meli) was broody and This demographic is probably why there the cinema audience was entertained protracted, and went back home at the oozing with jealousy, but was even less are no concessions for seniors, or even for by interviews, trailers and behind-the- break to their Horlicks. The director, convincing, although Kostas Smoriginas students. This is as close as many will get scenes views of the opera, meeting all Aussie Barrie Kosky, had brought this as the bullfighter Escamillo, had just to Glynbourne or Garsington, let alone the key players, mostly conducted by the production from Opera Frankfurt, with the right amount of macho swagger to Covent Garden, where the top tickets go well-informed Clemency Burton-Hill, the promise that it would be ‘different’. carry it off. Just. Kosky used everything for £245. Less than a tenth of that will who has a wonderful grasp of who’s That certainly was the case, right from from his tool-kit for the high-kicking, secure you a seat at the Curzon, although who and what’s what. The orchestration when the curtain went up, revealing an chorus-line choreography, which at best an extra £2 will buy you a Pullman seat was, as one would expect from ROH enormous staircase, filling the entire was gimmicky, and at its worst, cheesy. with more legroom than a stretch limo Orchestra, faultless, with the young-ish, stage, which brought to mind Busby Carmen, at one point, appeared over and a blanket thrown in to keep those Israeli-born conductor Dan Ettinger Berkeley’s Gold Diggers of 1935, or the the top of the steps, dressed in a gorilla seniors’ knees warm. savouring the more sweeping chords never-ending stairway to heaven from A outfit, and one has to ask the question, Tosca has some of the most engaging in Vissi d’arte, up to the moment when Matter of Life and Death. There was no why? Replacing the spoken dialogue arias in opera and the most vile of Scarpia feels ‘the kiss of Tosca.’ other scene change, and there was very with a pre-recorded voice-over got in villains, the sadistic and manipulative The next operatic presentation was little, other than the the odd castinet the way of the unfolding drama, and the Chief of Police Baron Scarpia, played Bizet’s Carmen on 6 March, which had in the score and the black dresses, to whole production became a series of self- with more than a touch of evil by Gerard been criticised for going off piste, and suggest Spain. The Russian mezzo Anna conscious cabaret numbers, rather than a Finley. Tosca herself is played by a robust even taking it. The whole production was Goryachova was certainly foxy, but she fluid tale of love and jealousy, rising to a Canadian singer, Adrianne Pieczonka, three and a half hours long, including lacked that fiery gypsy passion that tragic and bloody climax. who was suitably flirtatious with the one interval after two hours, which a one associates with Carmencita. Don Don Grant painter Cavaradossi, a sympathetic performance by the likeable Joseph Calleja. I recall seeing the great Pavarotti in his last performance at ROH in 2002 in the same role, but, as he was a little over-upholstered by then, we saw him, not up a scaffold painting his fresco, but standing in the chancel of the church of Sant’Andrea della Valle daubing at a painting on a easel. The doddery Sacristan was played for laughs by Jeremy White, a Royal Opera regular since 1991. The sets were as lush as the Napoleonic costumes, with Tosca moving nimbly about the stage, unencumbered by her flowing Empire-line gown, being chased around the table by the predatory Scarpia. Weinsteinian sexual harrassment would seem to be nothing new, two centuries before Hollywood. There were a number of mild glitches during the performance, where the signal was interrupted for a fraction of a second, but, otherwise the transmission was seamless. One wonders how much the ‘live’ audience saw of the final act on the battlements of Castel Sant’Angelo, as the lighting in the auditorium was very, very gloomy, and cameras are able to ‘see’ much better than the human eye in such low levels of light. Before the 52 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Arts & Culture

MAX ‘silent majority’s’ relationship with lady for a secret military facility with Donald Trump, sometimes a sexy fish remarkably lax security drawn to the new Feldman man is just a sexy fish man. “asset”: the similarly voiceless fishman REVIEWS With 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth, that her employers have fished out of Mexican-born director Guillermo del the Amazon and thrown into captivity. Toro achieved the impossible, or at The two hit it off immediately, Elisa least the very very difficult, by stitching earning the creature’s trust and affection

the sublime, defiantly un-Disneyfied by feeding him eggs and dancing with Pictures Searchlight © Fox Photograph The Shape of darkness of a Brothers Grimm fairy tale a mop to old Benny Goodman records. with a gritty 20th Century setting (the Hawkins, though, is truly radiant in her Water final days of the Spanish Civil War) role, conveying wellsprings of feeling Director: Guillermo del Toro into a Möbius strip where reality and without a line of dialogue, making sign Running time: 125mins magic soak into each other like blood unconventionally formulaic approach. language seem like second nature, and through silk. It was one of the best films This is not to say he’s some hired gun mostly rescuing her character from of the early 2000s and justifiably put del journeyman, but that if del Toro is quirky woman-child naif territory, Toro on the artistic map. The only issue making a gothic romance (like 2015’s looking like a pantomiming Amélie, in 018 is already shaping up to be is that del Toro, the platonic ideal of Crimson Peak), he’s going to throw every other words. The love story is almost less an odd year, so it’s fitting that this avuncular nerdom, has never been able single gothic trope in the book at you important than the lush visual world year’s biggest romance to come to match it, let alone surpass it. Blessed without even the slightest hint of irony. that del Toro creates, brought to life by 2out of our cultural headspace concerns with some serious visual nous which As a result his films, despite being both a fantastic supporting cast (including a a love-affair between a mute cleaning blazes out even in undignified genre guff beautiful and personal, can come across heartbreaking turn by Richard Jenkins lady and the Creature from The Black (take a bow Hellboy and Pacific Rim!), as oddly stilted. as Elisa’s homosexual neighbour, which Lagoon. Sadly for the sociologists, del Toro has such ‘gee whiz’ enthusiasm The Shape Of Water, an immaculately should have garnered him an Oscar nod). as tempting as it is to make parallels for his chosen medium that his talent crafted Beauty And The Beast riff sees Shape of Water is almost gossamer thin, between that conceit and the American is often overwhelmed by his rigid, Elisa (Sally Hawkins), a mute cleaning but is delightful regardless.

from someone else’s blueprint. But Annihilation often works on a more Annihilation primal level. The film wages war on the Director: Alex Garland nerves across multiple fronts, creating a Running Time: 115 Minutes state of regular disorientation through its scrambled visual grammar (like the © DNA Films Photograph Available on Netflix mismatched eyelines during Lena’s bewildered first scene at the compound) and the distant remove of most of the Years from now, someone’s going to stroll performances, Portman’s included. As a down the science-fiction aisle of the pure creature feature, it has individual last remaining video store on the planet, images and moments straight out of where they’ll find the last remaining a wake-in-fright nightmare. There is, physical copy of Alex Garland’s new for one hideous example, a particular movie, Annihilation, shelved neatly mistake of fast-forward evolution that between Aliens and Arrival. It will be absorbs the death knells of its screaming exactly where the film belongs, and not a stretch of Florida coast whole, and return... different somehow. He was in victims, as though its toothy maw were a just alphabetically. Garland, the novelist- which seems to be expanding by the day. The Shimmer, of course, and it’s here pit straight to hell. H.R. Giger would be turned-filmmaker who wrote and The government has set up a research that sci-fi fans may start to recognize proud/petrified. directed Ex Machina and also penned facility, The Southern Reach, on the outer the phantom impression of Andrei Making their way across the the screenplays for Danny Boyle’s 28 edge of the phenomenon, sending in Tarkovsky’s deep-think genre classics, transformed landscape, inexorably drawn Days Later and Sunshine, tends to split exploratory units to investigate, but what films like Solaris or Stalker, the latter to a pale symbolic lighthouse at the the difference between cerebral and goes in doesn’t tend to come out. Having similarly concerned with the traversing epicenter of the occurrence, the besieged visceral, between a “hard” sci-fi of ideas mainly thrown soldiers at The Shimmer, of a mysterious realm. Technically, scientists come to understand The and a slam-bang sci-fi of quickening Dr. Ventress (a spookily aloof Jennifer Annihilation has been pulled from the Shimmer as an oversized, ever-expanding pulses. Usually, that demarcation line Jason Leigh) spearheads a new approach, pages of a Nebula-winning novel by Jeff prism. That makes it an ideal metaphor is drawn somewhere around the third leading an all-female team of scientists VanderMeer, the first of a trilogy. But for science fiction itself, a genre that act, when the lizard part of Garland’s into the mystery zone. What they find the adaptation is loose and streamlined, refracts big notions through impossible, brain suddenly takes over, transforming on the other side is a treacherously Garland chiselling the source material out-there conceits. If Ex Machina was an intriguing space odyssey, let’s say, changed wilderness, where all plant and into a pastiche of second hand sci-fi a mess of provocative, half-formed into an intergalactic slasher movie. But animal life has entered a state of constant tropes, some lifted from his own work. thoughts on gender, creation, and desire, in the ominous, derivative, sporadically mutation. But are the monsters the real Given that the twisty slow-burn plot Annihilation locates something closer to frightening Annihilation, the brainy threat? Or will the paranoia get to them hinges on “something making splashes in a clear, cogent thesis: that there’s nothing and brawny halves of his regular genre first? the gene pool,” perhaps it’s appropriate scarier than looking at those closest to equation have been woven so tightly The expedition crew is the usual mix that the film feels like a hybrid itself, you, or even yourself, and not recognizing together that there’s no clean way to of personalities: the hardened-by-grief roping together DNA strands of multiple the person staring back. That idea might separate them. He’s made a 50s-shlock, survivor (Tuva Novotny), the detached genre specimens. Walking a tightrope possess real emotional kick if Garland forbidden-planet monster movie in the professional (Tessa Thompson), the between horror and science fiction, actually invested in Lena’s relationship key of Solaris. token hothead (Jane The Virgin’s Gina Annihilation refuses to be pigeonholed (some brief flashbacks can’t shoulder that If nothing else, Garland possesses Rodriguez). But our main eyes and ears into either. weight alone), or resisted drowning every a gift for baiting the imagination; his on the ground belong to Lena (Natalie There’s a tractor-beam fascination to scene in Tarkovsky torpor. But at least narratives ooze with possibility, pulling Portman), a biologist from Johns the storytelling. It gets you hooked on he finally devises an ending, different you in with their clammy tendrils of Hopkins University, harbouring a secret the promise of some big-bang revelation, from the book’s, that doesn’t abandon intrigue. In Annihilation, the filmmaker personal stake in the mission. She’s there on the trust that its enigmatic parts will the ideas in favor of carnage; love or hate manifests that glowing nucleus of to find out what happened to her active- blow minds when they finally cohere. the down-the-wormhole final minutes, mystery that powers so many of his films duty husband, Kane (Oscar Isaac, in a With Garland, that can be a sucker there’s no denying that Annihilation into an actual physical space. They call much more subdued performance than bet: He’s much better at setting up follows through. It’ll also sit fine down it The Shimmer: a translucent, purple- the one he delivered in Ex Machina), intriguing premises than paying them the shelf from 2001 in the sci-fi section tinted bubble of energy that’s swallowed who went MIA for months, only to off, even, it would seem, when operating of tomorrow. 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 53 Arts & Culture online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

a deeply damaged role that he didn’t like, the skronks and blats of free jazz plays Joe, a traumatised Ex-US Marine reimagined as shattering femur and who since his discharge has applied his wrenched gasps. Radiohead’s Jonny (to be fair not massively transferrable) Greenwood (who recently scored Paul skill at killing people into the contract Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread murder business, specifically tracking with ephemeral Debussy-esque piano) down young girls who’ve been pulled knocks off another home run, with a Studios Amazon © Photograph into sex slavery and liberating them from seething angular score, which envelops their captors with what Apocalypse Now the film like a flagellatory hair shirt, referred to as “extreme prejudice”. Whilst seemingly ready to lash out blindly at any it’s been fairly de rigeur for action movie moment. Contrastingly Phoenix plays stars to bulk up their muscles, Phoenix Joe with a kind of skinned vulnerability, ignores this (faintly homoerotic) rule his eyes channelling the rolling panic of the genre and instead has piled on of a horse rather than the dead frenzy weight until he looks like a hulking slab of a shark. Events force him into the carved out of blubber and wood into an role of protector for Nina (Ekaterina impressionistically human shape. This is Samsonova, a suitably Dostoyevskian more intimidating than it sounds; with name for the role) the daughter of are even worse than he is (love interest his face hidden behind a scraggly beard a Senator who seems to be another optional) isn’t a Cannes darling, it’s and hair combo that ensnarls his head resident of Joe’s pitch-black world. The You Were Never the plot of most films starring Keanu like creeping vines across a forgotten conspiracy from which he must save her Reeves. Despite the plot’s similarities to statue and (let’s not forget) armed with (which involves the kind of all-knowing Really Here the kind of films generally found on sale a blunt hammer, Joe vaguely resembles evil political machinations that seem Director: Lynne Ramsay in motorway petrol stations, Ramsay’s Michael Myers (of Halloween rather than almost charmingly naïve in the age of Running Time: 90 Minutes fourth feature is no lowest common Austin Powers fame) or Jason Voorhees the Trump presidency) is as elliptical and denominator genre piece. The film is less and when he unleashes his immense smoky as the rest of this extraordinarily hard-boiled than boiled alive: You Were capacity for violence it’s a terrifying contained tale (at 90 minutes, the ddly, when you lay out the plot Never Really Here wears its miserabilism experience rather than an exhilarating film is a masterclass in minimalism). of You Were Never Really Here, like a badge of (dis)honour and Ramsay one. He’s taciturn to the point of sub- You Were Never Really Here contains a feverish nightmare from the has stripped the extraneous fat off its lingual and seemingly only cares about shades of other directors’ voyages into frequently hiatus-prone Scottish writer- celluloid bones with a ferocity that his frail mother, with whom he shares inner darkness, a stroke of the blood O splattered neon of Nicholas Winding director Lynne Ramsay (Morvern Callar, would give starving piranha pause. The the scars of some great past trauma, the We Need To Talk About Kevin) it seems finished product, skeletal, glitchy and shape of which the film hints at like a Refn’s gruelling Only God Forgives here, disarmingly straight-forward, generic borderline hallucinogenic has as much flickering torch momentarily skittering a warped reflection of Travis Bickle’s even. A film about a hitman screwing up in common with horror as action; The across the vast form of some Stygian furious gaze there, but it is very much a simple job and getting unintentionally Expendables this ain’t. leviathan. its own beast. Witness it and stagger tangled up in a conspiracy of people who Joaquin Phoenix, who has never seen The film is an atonal, chaotic frenzy; outside, grateful for the light.

efforts to untangle events are frequently distracted by his prodigious indulgence The Big in marijuana, White Russian cocktails Lebowski and bowling. (20th Anniversary) Whereas Marlowe and Spade would have been drawn into their time and Title Photograph © Working Director: The Coen Brothers place by the murder of a partner or the Running Time: 117 minutes need to settle a debt to a long-lost friend, The Dude has smaller concerns. He’s just out to replace a rug that “tied the whole room together,” urinated on by some thugs who mistake him for the other Twenty years ago the Coen Brothers (more wealthy) Lebowski of the title, followed up the breakthrough success whose young bride, Bunny, owes some of the pitch-dark comedy of Fargo money to her old porn producer. with The Big Lebowski, a cracked take like Fargo succeeds, then clearly nothing very strange happened. Slowly, bit by bit, The whole kidnapping plot is a bit on a Philip Marlowe detective story makes much sense. You might as well a cult formed around The Big Lebowski complicated, but The Big Lebowski isn’t by way of Cheech and Chong. Whilst make whatever kind of movie you want that has proven itself to be every bit as about solving the mystery, really. It’s following up the film that finally let and hope for the best.” dedicated as The Rocky Horror Picture more about spending time with The you make the jump from cult darlings Critics at the time were less than Show with live festivals, look-alike Dude and the characters he surrounds to mainstream acceptance with a film enthused by the kind of movie that the competitions and a thriving subculture himself with. Most of the film takes that seems its opposite in every way like Coens had decided that they wanted to that seems to be still gathering steam as place at a bowling alley, where The Dude a typically contrarian move; the ‘two make (critics! Can’t trust any of them. the decades roll on. engages in his only regular activity with headed director’ (a common nickname of Except for yours truly obviously.) and Unlike their masterful Miller’s his teammates, Walter (John Goodman) the brothers) was actually still smarting gave it what for the Coen brothers Crossing which used the novels of and Donny (Steve Buscemi). Walter is an from the failure of The Hudsucker Proxy, probably counts as a critical drubbing. Dashiell Hammett to faithfully create a unhinged, violence-prone vet who never a 1994 screwball comedy set in the 50s Audience numbers were fairly muted and wonderful noir-crime, The Big Lebowski quite got over Vietnam, while Donny that flopped at the box-office like a the tale of The Dude and his quixotic gleefully turns the genre conventions is an ex-surfer who gets yelled at a lot. beluga whale. Far from being intended quest to replace the rug that “really inside out. Instead of a cynical, savvy and The Big Lebowski is one of the all-time for greatness, Fargo had been an attempt tied the room together” looked like it hardened detective like Philip Marlowe, great hang-out films, with a rich tapestry at circling the wagons by returning to the would soon fade from the cinematic you get Jeff Bridges’s Jeffrey Lebowski of character bits that only get more cruel-humoured noir like Blood Simple subconscious like so much weed smoke. ‘The Dude’ (“or Duder or El Duderino if funny on further viewings. Perhaps the that they first made their name with. The Not as much of an unmitigated failure as you’re not into the whole brevity thing”) Coens were on to something with their rampant critical and commercial success The Hudsucker Proxy (the film broke even) an aging hippy whose good intentions realisation that nothing really makes of Fargo had left them questioning the but perhaps a sign that the brothers’ zen are stymied by his own laziness who sense when it comes to what makes a odd forces that dictate box office success, approach to commercial viability was cluelessly gets dragged into a totally movie sing. Even now, twenty years on, Ethan Coen later commented “If a movie ill-founded. Then however, something incomprehensible mystery and whose The Dude abides. 54 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Health

Private Walk-in Urgent Care comes to the Lister Hospital

private Urgent Care Centre has opened its doors at The Lister Hospital, part of HCA HealthcareA UK, giving people who live and work in Chelsea and the surrounding areas fast access to high quality healthcare. The Centre, which offers walk- in appointments for £100, provides treatment to patients with anything from flu symptoms, to broken bones and sprains, abdominal pain, respiratory complaints and infections. With minimal or no waiting time, the latest addition to Chelsea’s healthcare landscape, has been set up to make investigation that they need, whether be busy and the Urgent Care Centre London Bridge Hospital and another at access to care and treatment much easier that be consultant advice and review, provides fast and convenient access to The Portland Hospital. The Centre at The for locals that lead fast-paced lives and inpatient care, MRI scanning and much high quality care to the local residents Portland Hospital will be the country’s want to see a doctor without waiting. more. and workforce. only private urgent care centre dedicated By having the Urgent Care Centre On the new opening, Suzy Canham Suzy added that “The feedback from to treating children. attached to The Lister Hospital UK, CEO at The Lister Hospital said; “I am patients so far has been fantastic.” equipped with intensive care to support so pleased that we have been able to Demand for private Urgent Care in For more information about The Urgent the delivery of the most complex and expand the care we are able to offer at London is on the up and in response to Care Centre at The Lister Hospital and acute care, patients also benefit from The Lister by opening a walk-in Urgent this HCA Healthcare UK Urgent Care other HCA UK Urgent Care Centres fast access to any further treatment or Care Centre. Life in the Capital can Centres are set to open; with one at visit www.urgentcarecentre.co.uk

research is published in the journal Social Science & Medicine. 2008 recession As the second largest economy in the EU and one of the largest financial spiked obesity, hubs in the world, the UK was one of the countries hit the hardest by the Great diabetes and Recession in 2008. The UK shrunk by 4.3% in 2009 alone and the government mental health had to bail out and nationalise large issues domestic banks, leading to increased By Max Feldman government debt and deficit. To explore this issue and its impact on health, the researchers looked at data from the Health Survey for England (HSE), a cross-sectional survey taken The ‘Great Recession’ of 2008 resulted in yearly from a representative sample of changes to individuals’ health behaviour, about 9,000 English households. They with a significant increase in the specifically used data on respondents likelihood of obesity, diabetes and mental above 16 years of age for the period health problems, according to a new 2001–2013. In addition to socio- study from City, University of London economic characteristics, the HSE and King’s College London. includes information on a wide range of In particular, the researchers health lifestyles and health conditions. discovered that the probability of being expectations generated by the recession waiting times that can further worsen “With the NHS and health-related obese and severely obese increased by 4.1 rather than unemployment might explain any negative effects. An increase in services under increasing pressure, and 2.4 percentage points respectively. the changes seen. welfare benefits is another factor that and with another recession becoming Similarly, the probability of having The findings are also relevant for may have protected people during the increasingly likely, our findings diabetes was 1.5 percentage points policymakers and clinicians, as universal recession. have a number of important policy higher after 2008, with the prevalence of health coverage and free provision of The reductions in smoking and considerations. In particular, the fact that mental health problems increasing by 4 healthcare (and prescriptions in some drinking are also relevant given that those less educated were more vulnerable percentage points. cases) via the NHS might have worked lifestyle-related health problems cost to the health effects of the recession It was also found that there was a as a protective factor during economic the NHS £11 billion a year, but the highlights the need for an urgent policy decrease in smoking and drinking, as well hardship. authors emphasise that the right level of response as it is clear that this population as fruit intake. These changes were also However, the authors point out that support from health specialists needs to need to receive information on health seen to impact particularly on women as some health outcomes deteriorate be delivered if these positive behavioural behaviours and risk factors to avoid and those less educated, with the authors during recessions, demand for health changes are to be preserved beyond the the negative consequences and also the suggesting that uncertainty and negative services might increase, leading to longer duration of economic downturns. The potential future impacts.” 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 55 Health online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

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holidays at £61, school-related costs at earlier, to seek flexibility about paying Macmillan themselves provide £39, toys at £33 and activities at £45. mortgages, credit cards and loans, benefits advice and grants to cancer A cancer Cancer and its treatments can also rather than spiralling into debt. The patients, giving out £14 million in diagnosis leave patients feeling the cold more and charity’s research reveals that just one 2017 to help cover the extra costs of “more expensive than one in five (21 per cent) see their yearly in nine people with cancer actually tell their diagnosis. More than half of the energy bill increase by almost £200 on their bank about their diagnosis. This is population can expect to be diagnosed having a child” average. With many cancer patients at typically because they didn’t think their with cancer at some point in their By Max Feldman risk of spiralling into debt, Macmillan bank would be able to help them, or they lifetime. has called on the Government to use were worried about the consequences of the Financial Guidance and Claims telling their bank. Of those who did alert Bill, which is currently going through their bank, one quarter felt dissatisfied parliament, to change the law so that with the help they received. new study has found that banks and building societies have a legal developing and treating cancer obligation to act in the best interests of is more expensive than raising their customers, particularly if they are aA child. Cancer survivors say insurance vulnerable. This could include flexibility hikes and the price of repeated trips to on mortgage payments, interest freezes hospital are among the factors that make on credit cards and loans, or ensuring a diagnosis of the disease more costly customers are signposted to financial than starting a family. help as early as possible. Macmillan Cancer Support said The charity provides benefits advice the average cancer patient finds they and grants to cancer patients. But Lynda are £570 worse off each month due Thomas, Macmillan’s chief executive, said to a combination of being too ill to it could not plug the gaps alone: “Cancer work and additional outgoings such as does not wait until you get a promotion paying to travel to and from hospital for at work or until you have enough savings appointments. in the bank. It arrives unexpectedly, Macmillan reached the conclusion shaking up everything from your health by comparing its findings with a local to your finances,” she said. “Without government survey which discovered the right support, the sudden financial that parents spend a monthly average impact of the disease can be crippling. of £448.41 per child under the age The Financial Guidance and Claims Bill of 11, making cancer £121.59 more presents a unique opportunity to make a expensive than parenthood every month, positive difference to the lives of people and £1,459.08 more costly a year. The living with cancer.” calculations on the cost of childhood It said this would encourage cancer include monthly food costs of £87, patients to seek help from their bank 58 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Health

Spice and mephedrone, which became illegal in 2016 after an outcry over the Hospital harm they were causing, is also likely to explain the rise. admissions for In addition, a separate study © Pixabay Photograph demonstrated that almost all cannabis drug-induced seized by police now comprises high- strength varieties which is far more likely mental health to cause psychosis, with outdoor-grown issues herbal strains and hashish barely found, have spiked dramatically according to a new analysis. When the last time comparable research was By Max Feldman carried out in 2005, high-potency strains accounted for 51% of seizures. A wider study carried out by the Home Office in 2008 found they accounted for 85%. Researchers from GW oaring numbers of children, young Pharmaceuticals, which makes medicines people and pensioners in England derived from cannabis, and King’s are being taken to hospital after College London found 94% of samples Ssuffering serious mental disorders as amnesia caused by taking them. The 232 in 2006-07 to 1,397 in 2016-17. seized by police were varieties with a a result of taking drugs, NHS figures numbers also include people who are Numbers were also up among those aged high psychoactive content, suggesting reveal. Hospitals are treating more than delirious or exhibiting other signs of 75 and over, from 183 to 559 a rise of they dominate the illicit market. The double the number of people for what harmful effects of drug taking. 205%. researchers warned of “concerning the NHS calls “drug-related mental and The number of under-16s has almost implications for public health”. behavioural disorders” than they did 10 The latest data on people treated because doubled, from 402 to 799, over the past The research team defined high- years ago. of drug misuse, issued by NHS Digital, decade. And there has also been a sharp potency strains as those with an average The statistics record damaging the health service’s statistical arm, shows rise among those aged 16 to 24. Numbers THC content of 14%, and practically no changes to people’s mental states as that in 2016-17 hospitals in England in that age group have increased from detectable traces of CBD (cannabidiol). a result of taking illicit drugs, such as admitted 82,135 people of all ages for 6,983 to 12,369, a rise of 77%. Of the compounds in cannabis, THC cannabis and cocaine, and also from the these types of problems. That was 115% Young people’s growing use of (tetrahydrocannabinol) gives users a high, use of painkillers, alcohol and solvents. more than the 38,170 they treated as MDMA (ecstasy) is a key factor behind but can impair attention, concentration Victims have needed urgent medical inpatients for such episodes in 2006-07. the growing number of people being and memory, and produce symptoms attention for acute intoxication due The biggest rise has been among treated in hospital, especially given of psychosis. CBD has been shown to drugs, and symptoms of both people in the decade after retirement. that the tablets are often stronger than to reduce symptoms of psychosis and dependence and withdrawal from The number of 65- to 74-year-olds has before. The criminalisation of substances ameliorate impairments caused by THC, them, as well as psychotic disorders and soared by 502% over that time, from formerly known as “legal highs”, such as but has no psychoactive effect.

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match performance against Wales earlier in the tournament and Jones admits Ireland on course his decision to drop the 32-year-old was anything but straightforward. “It for Slam is a tough call on Browny, he’s been a By Owen Fulda really good solid player for us but we've decided to go for a back three with a bit more pace this week,” said Jones. “I feel the game will lead itself to that and it will be advantageous for us if Browny comes and does his job from the bench.” reland remain on course for a Six On Farrell’s appointment as skipper, Nations Grand Slam after victories Jones added: “Owen will be very proud over France, Italy and Wales in their to be captain but at the same time he opening three matches. After a stunning is disappointed for Dylan to miss out I through injury and he knows the position victory over England in the last round, Scotland coach Gregor Townsend says of captain carries a lot of responsibility. his side will need to play “even better” We need to make sure we have one when they face Ireland in Dublin. strong voice among the forward leaders Townsend has made one change to the and Mako [Vunipola] has been doing side with Blair Kinghorn set to make some great work behind the scenes and his first start in place of injured winger will step up and take that on officially Tommy Seymour. Glasgow winger Lee against France.” Jones is named on the bench. Wales coach Warren Gatland has Townsend said: “Our players had made ten changes for the clash against prepared very well for the challenge of Italy in Cardiff. From the team that lost taking on England and there has been a 37-27 to Ireland only Liam Williams, similar focus and commitment this week Steff Evans, Hadleigh Parkes, Gareth at training. There are a few areas of our Davies and Cory Hill remain. Taulupe Faletau returns at No.8 game that we are working to improve of a tight calf. After the defeat against the opportunity for the team to move and will skipper a side that sees James and we are aware that we will have to Scotland at Murrayfield last time out, forward and we want a response from Davies making his international debut be better if we are to beat a very good England coach Eddie Jones has made the players this week. Against France we at openside flanker. Gareth Anscombe Ireland side in Dublin.” three changes for “Le Crunch”. Elliot want to be brutal and aggressive on the replaces Dan Biggar at fly-half, Owen Owen Farrell will captain England Daly comes in at left wing with Anthony gain line and to play with a great tactical Watkin will make his first Six Nations in the clash against France in Paris on Watson moving to full-back and Jonny discipline.” start at outside centre and George North Saturday after Dylan Hartley was forced May switching wings. Winger Mike Brown drops to the starts on the right wing. to withdraw from the squad because Jones said: “This game is about bench. Brown produced a man-of-the-

hopes of another World Cup success good team, we have got lots of structure “They have got great skill-sets, they’re ended by defeat against New Zealand in and lots of processes, we’re very good really accomplished players,” Middleton Red Roses the final in Belfast last summer. at executing them and following a plan, continued. “If you look across them they Regroup Despite the disappointment of and that has been instrumental in our can all catch, pass, understand good By Owen Fulda losing their title against the Black Ferns, development and our success last year,” running lines, they can kick the ball Middleton’s confidence in his latest Middleton said. really well and that is unbelievably rare group is unwavering. Having won each Last time out, England scored for a group of young players coming into seven tries to overwhelm their Scottish a set-up at this stage in their career, it The England Women’s coach, Simon of their first three games, England are on opponents on yet another difficult gives them a great platform. Middleton, has witnessed how much his course for their 14th Six Nations Grand Glasgow night for the hosts. A much- “They’ve also got pace, blistering pace, squad has learned from their “darkest Slam. Their biggest test of the 2018 changed side without their captain, Sarah and we’ll want to get them on the ball moments”. The Red Roses saw their tournament comes next. They travel to the continent to face Hunter, defeated Scotland for the 20th and let them demonstrate that, as that is an unbeaten French side knowing that successive time. one of those things you can’t coach.” victory will all but seal the Slam. The two sides will meet at Grenoble's Stade des Alpes, with England hopeful of building upon their recent 43-8 rout against SIX NATIONS SCHEDULE Scotland. Expect a large crowd and big TV audience; especially in France to ROUND FOUR tune in. France have conceded a miserly total 10/11 March 2018 of just three points in their opening Ireland v Scotland, Saturday 2.15pm three games, but with England scoring at nigh on 50 points per game, something France v England, Saturday 4.45pm must give. France enter the fixture Wales v Italy, Sunday 3.00pm having eased past Italy 57-0 at the Stade Furiani. After the heartache of the World ROUND FIVE Cup, the RFU announced last November that England’s women are to be paid 17 March 2018 squad and match fees for the first time. Italy v Scotland, Saturday 12.30pm The amount is understood to be worth a total in the region of £5,000 for a player England v Ireland, Saturday 2.45pm who features in every Six Nations game. Wales v France, Saturday 5.00pm “One of the things we picked up from the World Cup is we’re an extremely 60 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Sport

Third round matches Formula 1 East Dean, Sussex Men’s and Ladies’ Doubles April 8 March 18 Sports fixtures First round matches Sakhir, Bahrain Moyleman Marathon Mixed Doubles April 15 Lewes, East Sussex Six Nations Rugby Shanghai, China March 18 Round Four July 10 April 29 Reading Half Marathon Ireland v Scotland. Aviva Stadium Quarter Finals Baku, Azerbaijan April 8 Saturday, March 10, 14:15 Ladies’ Singles May 13 Bungay Black Dog Marathon France v England. Stade de France Quarter Finals Barcelona, Spain Bungay, Suffolk Saturday, March 10, 16:45 Ladies’ Doubles May 27 April 15 Wales v Italy. Principality Stadium Quarter Finals Monaco Brighton Marathon Sunday, March 11, 15:00 Men’s Doubles June 10 Brighton, East Sussex Round Five Montreal, Canada April 22 Italy v Scotland, Stadio Olimpico July 11 June 24 Virgin London Marathon Saturday March 17, 12.30 Quarter Finals Le Castellet, France April 23 England v Ireland, Twickenham Men’s Singles formula1.com St George's Day Marathon Saturday March 17, 14:45 Semi Finals Walmer, Kent Wales v France, Principality Stadium Ladies’ Doubles Formula E May 6 Saturday March 17, 17:00 March 17 Ranelagh Harriers Richmond Half July 12 Punta Del Este, Uruguay Marathon World Cup Russia 2018 Semi Finals April 14 Richmond, Surrey June 14-28 Ladies' Singles Circuto Cittadino Dell’EUR, Rome May 6 Group Stages Semi Finals April 28 Three Forts Marathon June 30 – July 3 Men’s Doubles Circuit Des Invalides, Paris Worthing, West Sussex Last 16 May 19 May 7 July 6-7 July 13 Flughafen Tempelhof, Berlin Belfast Marathon Quarter-Finals Semi Finals June 10 May 7 July 10-11 Men’s Singles Zurich Milton Keynes Marathon Semi-Finals Semi Finals fiaformulae.com May 13 July 14 Men’s Doubles Halstead & Essex Marathon Third-place play-off Quarter Finals World Rally Championship Halstead, Essex July 15 Mixed Doubles April 5-8 May 13 Final Corsica Linea - Tour de Corse Shakespeare Marathon July 14 April 26-29 Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire Wimbledon Tennis Final YPF Rally Argentina TBC July 2 Ladies’ Singles May 17-20 Starfish Marathon First round matches Final Vodafone Rally de Portugal Bexhill, Kent Reigning Men’s Champion Ladies’ Doubles June 7-10 TBC Men’s Singles Semi Finals Rally Italia Sardegna Kent Roadrunner Marathon Ladies’ Singles Mixed Doubles wrc.com Gravesend, Kent June 16 July 3 July 15 British Touring Car Championship South Downs Marathon First round matches Final April 7-8 Chichester, West Sussex Reigning Ladies’ Champion Men’s Singles Brands Hatch (Indy) July 7 Men’s Singles Final April 28-29 Shere 42K Ladies’ Singles Mixed Doubles Donington Park Shere Surrey May 19-20 July 8 July 4 Red Bull Air Race Thruxton Hever Castle Marathon Second round matches April 20-22 June 10-9 Penhurst, Kent Men’s Singles For the first time in the history of the Red Oulton Park marathonrunnersdiary.com Ladies’ Singles Bull Air Race, the pilots will be going head- June 23-24 First round matches to-head in France, in the beautiful city of Croft Cycling Men’s and Ladies’ Doubles Cannes. btcc.net March 17 Wye Tour July 5 May 26-27 British Drift Championship March 24 Second round matches Chiba, Japan March 31 – April 1 No Excuses Cumbria Sportive Men’s Singles June 23-24 Concrete Jungle March 25 Ladies’ Singles Budapest's famous Chain Bridge features Rockingham Motor Speedway Wiggle Spring Saddle Sportive First round matches once again in the Red Bull Air Race World June 2-3 April 7 Men’s and Ladies’ Doubles Championship Return to the Autodrome Sigma Sports South Downs Spring airrace.redbull.com Teesside Autodrome Sportive July 6 July 14-15 April 7 Third round matches Driftland Takeover Wiggle Vale Vélo Sportive Men’s Singles September 15-16 April 7-8 Ladies' Singles Backlash MBR Demo Day - Forest of Dean Second round matches Three Sisters Racing Circuit April 14-15 Men’s and Ladies’ Doubles thebritishdriftchampionship.co.uk Wiggle New Forest Spring Sportive ukcyclingevents.co.uk July 7 March 24 Third round matches The Cancer Research UK Boat Race May 28 Men’s and Ladies’ singles Watched by thousands along the banks of Cooper’s Hill Cheese Rolling 2018 Second round matches the Thames, between Putney and Mortlake Coopers Hill, Gloucester Mens’ and Ladies’ Doubles in south west London, and by millions First round matches more on TV around the world, The Cancer June 27 – July 2 Mixed Doubles Research UK Boat Race is a unique International Quidditch Association Boys' and Girls’ Championships begin sporting event. World Cup Men’s and Ladies’ over 35s and over 45s theboatrace.org Florence, Italy Championships begin iqaquidditch.org Marathons July 9 in the South East of England Fourth round matches March 17 Men's and Ladies’ Singles Sussex Coastal Marathon Compiled and edited by Fahad Redha 020 7738 2348 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today 61 Upstream online: www.KCWToday.co.uk

in Northern Ireland as an intelligence officer, before he was betrayed, caught, tortured and executed in a field by the IRA. The book opens with a fearless Jennings casting for pike in the Regent’s Canal just below St Pancras Lock at night, and he manages to hook an by Norman Clifford Jaques Norman Clifford by Flyfishing 8-pounder with a frozen smelt with his first cast, which he lands and returns. He reckons that there are 20- or 30-pounders lurking in the canal, and he has it on unimpeachable authority there certainly are in the Serpentine. Smelt is a curious fish, not least because they smell of cucumber. Countless thousands of them swim up the River from the Thames estuary in February and March to breed on the Wandsworth gravel banks, where up to eighty cormorants are waiting to greet them. Londoners, as well, have been catching and eating smelt since Roman times, although their number declined in the mid nineteenth century due to pollution, culminating in the Great Stink in 1858. In 1810, 50,000 smelt per day were being sold at Billingsgate Market. The presence of smelt in the river today is an indication of how healthy the Thames has become. Behind computer games, the internet and shopping, angling still comes high about that’. Heaney, too, wrote about and blue marlin, some weighing more on the list of popular hobbies and From the animals, but not in the same way as than 1,000lbs. Two of his novels about pastimes in Britain, including fly-fishing. Hughes did, focussing on the predatory fishing are Islands in the Streams and To There is no way of really knowing how Riverbank ferocity of his hawks, crows and jaguars. Have and Have Not, although his most many books there are on the subject of Part 2 They both saw fish with total respect in famous is still The Old Man and the Sea. fishing, but one aquaintance has over a terms of how quick, sleek and powerful The opening line of another novella, thousand, right from the seventeenth By Don Grant they were, but Heaney concentrated the semi-autobiographical A River century to the present day. Izaak Walton’s more on their physical beauty and Runs Through It by Norman Maclean The Compleat Angler, is the English majesty. In Trout, the fish ‘darts like a reads ‘In our family, there was no clear language’s most reprinted book after tracer-bullet back between stones and is line between religion and fly-fishing’, The Bible, first publshed in 1653. Its never burnt out,’ continuing the fish-as- and the reader is swept away from that alternative title is The Contemplative missile simile with, ‘a volley of cold blood moment on a tale of loss, love and the Man’s Recreation. An early edition will t is not just fishermen who go down ramrodding the current.’ spare power of prose. It ends with the cost quite a few thousand pounds, to the riverbank. Poets, writers, and Ernest Hemingway had, of course, line, ‘I am haunted by waters’. Blood while a first edition would be as rare as artists are lured there by an invisible used trout and trout streams to symbolise Knots: On Fathers, Friendship and Fishing hens’ teeth. Mr Crabtree Goes Fishing is thread. Ted Hughes, Poet Laureate I hope of a new and better life after is a wonderfully evocative memoir by arguably the best-selling sports book and consummate cocksmith, was also World War I, and he fished in the Luke Jennings, the dance correspondent of all time. Published by the Daily a passionate fisherman, and when his States, Germany and Spain, as well of The Observer. After his father, who Mirror in 1952 and appearing in strip libido was on the wane, he devoted more as his more publicised catches of tuna was in command of a tank troop in cartoon form, with drawings by Bernard and more of his time to fly-fishing. He Northern France Venables and words by Jack Hargreaves, said, ‘Fishing provides that connection in WW2 and was broadcaster and presenter of the TV with the whole living world. It gives awarded the Military programme Out of Town, it is about a you the opportunity of being totally Cross, his role model father teaching his son to fish. Frederic immersed, turning back into yourself Patrick Dengate Patrick Trout was Robert Nairac, a Halford’s Dry-fly Fishing in Theory and in a good way. A form of meditation, former Ampleforth Practice (1889) and The Way of a Trout some form of communion with levels of head boy, who returned with the Fly (1921) by George Edward yourself that are deeper than the ordinary to the school as a MacKenzie Skues are two classics that self.’ His poem Pike is both awesome, in teacher, and taught should be on any fisherman’s bookshelf, the true sense of the word, and menacing, him to fish and fly a as is The Trout and the Fly, by John this prehistoric predator lurking in the goshawk: ‘Put simply, Goddard and Brian Clarke (1972). depths of England’s freshwater rivers the swooping hawk, Another charming book is Where the and ponds. ‘Stilled legendary depth: It the belling stag and the Bright Waters Meet by Harry Plunkett was as deep as England. It held pike too rising trout connect Greene, a Victorian opera singer and immense to stir, so immense and old that you with nature, whose producer, who caught three wild brown past nightfall I dared not cast.’ Hughes rhythms and laws trout on the Bourne Rivulet, a tributary was genuinley scared of hooking such a are unchanging.’ It of its fatter and more famous cousin, the fish, and readily admitted to it. is teeming with fluid Test. That was in 1904, and 20 years later At Hughes’s funeral in 1998, Seamus descriptions about he wrote his very English memoir about Heaney paid tribute to him as a mythic chasing trout: ‘in deep the river, sparkling with delicious prose. J hero guiding his own poetic journey the shadow, beneath the R Hartley springs to mind immediately, way Virgil had guided Dante’s journey in foliage only occasionally but Plunkett Greene got there first with the Divine Comedy. Fellow poet Robert pierced with light’. this essential read for any fly fisherman. Nye said of him that catching a fish was Nairac joined the army My name? Oh, yes, it’s Harry Plunkett like writing a poem. ‘Pike is very much and served several tours Greene. 62 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Crossword & Bridge

Across 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 This is the sixty 1 Grown up on Eastern Railway often leads to divorce, (8) 9 fourth Wolfe Cryptic 5 One of the stilts representing the RSPB. (6) 10 11 Crossword 10 Parchment losing direction becomes veil John Culkin of SW6 was last month’s like membrane. (5) ! Please let me have winner, congratulations 11 Rustic oaf becomes quarrelsome. (9) any comments or suggestions you may 12 13 12 Paper seller hesitate after railway stop. have and remember, if you haven’t totally (9) finished the whole crossword still send it in 13 One of two composers commonly as the first correct or substantially correct drunk. (5) answer picked at random will win a prize 14 15 16 14 Kneads mixture made serpentine. (6) of a bottle of Champagne kindly donated 15 Pulp other bowls containing leaf by Lea and Sandeman. Send your grids 17 vegetables. (7) either by post to Wolfe, at KCW Today 80- 18 Sword in a lodestone contains a certain 100 Gwynne Road London SW11 3UW 18 19 20 position in a sequence. (7) or scan it in and send by email to wolfe @ 20 Cure time trial reset for sailing boat. (6) kcwtoday.co.uk. 21 22 Dutch painter started burning on scenes creating hell. (5) www.leaandsandeman.co.uk/Fine-Wine. 22 23 24 24 Metal that is in the matter of her double 106 Kensington Church St, London, support. (9) W8 4BH. T: 020 7221 1982. 25 Make no mistake it’s perfect. (9) Contact Sandor. 26 Stien that could be placed within. (5) 25 26

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 27 Father you said commonly fruit. (6) W A R M E R P I E R C I N G 28 Cul de sac put with little space between. L U E I N O O 9 10 D O G G Y B A G V A N I S H (5-3) 27 28 H U E G I T E 11 12 C A P P U C C I N O R U B Y C S U A L Down 13 14 15 16 A P P R O A C H S U L L E N 1 Reportedly join and competes to offer A A T E counsel. (6) 7 Cuts into pieces slices of meat around laughter. (6,2) 17 18 19 20 A N G I N A T H Y R O I D S 2 The ill educated may lean under. (9) bone. (5) 19 Broken mandible losing an assembly E N P A U 21 22 23 24 3 Three of the hoi polloi of no real note 8 Try the underground found in the run by cable. (3-3) S L O W R U R A L I S I N G used by tunnellers. (3,4,3,5) laboratory. (4,4) 20 Distinct section of a contract made by L A I N E U A 25 26 4 Ground drug friend made clear of any 9 Set a sprat to become a local ruler. (6) gangster after Santa. (7) B I S T R O I L L U S I V E impurities. (7) 16 Teams of cricketers get together for 21 Could be a naughty musical group ! (6) S E R S O H E 27 28 6 Essential data obtained from a large early snack. (9) 23 Take off starting slowly to rise in plane. S T A R F I S H G R I S L Y sample of womens shapes. (5,10) 17 Increase by 100% or curl up with (5) Custom Made Footwear

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Qb4,.... 1-0. Qb4,....

The Bunratty Castle Hotel Bxh3,Bxe4.37.Bg2,Bxg2.38.Rxg2,h4.39.

is one of the event’s sponsors Qe1,Rf3.34.Be2,Rh3.35.Bf1,Bxf5.36. CHESS Bc4,Rd7.31.Qb4,b5.32.Nf5,h5.33.

and has been since 2010, with

By Barry Martin Blackthorne International Ka1,Rf8.28.Rg1,Rf7.29.e3,Qg5.30.

Transport since 2011 . Qc3,Qe7.25.e4,Qg5+.26.Kb1,Qf4.27.

The world chess governing 22.Bf1,Qf8.23.Ng3,Qxc5+.24. White.

body FIDE has had its Swiss for win the sealed 39.Qb4... On down!

bank accounts with UBS Rook a piece, a and foot back the on ’ much very was Black onwards point this

frozen after its President FIDE s checkered From g1! on Rook White's from g5 on

Kirsan IIyumzhinov was

accused of having links to Queen Black the on pin the with back cheques checked. take to unable Black with 36.Bxh3, Bxf5.

ISIL oil deals in Syria and

for alleged dealings with the 35.... with Rook his sacrifice to decided

Syrian Government. He has Black h3. attacking Bf1!... 35. with away

been on the U.S.A’s sanctions chased be to threatened was f3 on Rook list since November 2015. Black's when turn successful another

he Bunratty International Chess Mr. IIyumzhinov’s London before not but , board the up expansion

Festival in Ireland from 23rd- solicitor has stated that, ‘Mr. and march onward aggressive White's

25th February has just finished. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov denies the matching Short with followed exchanges

This year's contest was the 25th and it outrageous and false allegations Rd. 7, 29th. January, between Levon of series a Rh3. Be2, 34. moves After T made against him and is not aware that Aronian v Nigel Short. Aronian as white mood. feisty in was who Aronian against would appear that it is getting stronger

by the year with 362 players entered and FIDE’s bank accounts have been frozen has just played pawn to h5 on move 20. much too just was game the of stages

across the 4 tournaments this year, and a by UBS’. ‘The Swiss bank UBS who h5,..... producing a dilemma for Black. later the in that from Recovering down.

strong Masters top section won by GM froze FIDE’s accounts are complying What did Black play? See diagram. piece a being of instead game end an in

Sergei Tiviakov. Gawain Jones tied for with Switzerland’s efforts to clean up its Answer upside down below: power fire more Black given have would

first place with Tiviakov with both on reputation as a haven for ‘dirty’ money. e8 or f7 to 20.... move on Bishop the

and not for a better position. Retreating Retreating position. better a for not and

5/6 pts but lost a two game blitz tiebreak. FIDE treasurer, Adrian Siegel has said on Bishop Black the threatens time

now means that Black is a piece down down piece a is Black that means now

This was frustrating for Jones as he lost that,“IIyumzhinov has informed FIDE same the at and ominous, is h8 on King

previous move. 22.Bf1 protecting e2 e2 protecting 22.Bf1 move. previous

the chance to become the first player to on various occasions that he will be Black the towards h-file the up advance

having opened up the f-file with Knight's Knight's with f-file the up opened having

have won the Bunratty Masters three removed from the sanctions list in the this since instead, played have Black

g6? 21.Nxh5,Rf2, threatening e2 and and e2 threatening 21.Nxh5,Rf2, g6? times. near future”. This was passed to the could What 20...... Nxh5? Answer, However, they split the first prize of Bank and they allowed FIDE to keep 1,000 euros and Tiviakov took home its accounts , “but after 2 years they have the crystal trophy. The Bunratty is the now announced they will immediately largest Irish open chess tournament there close our accounts”.“Switzerland’s 2016 is, and is succeeding partly because, ‘... law on the Freezing and Restitution of it has a friendly countenance, and its Illicit Assets held by Foreign Politically Monthly Bridge Tip for Intermediates atmosphere and tradition are two of the Exposed Persons(FIAA) is considered to with Andrew Robson key factors that contribute to attracting be one of the most progressive in this players year after year’. One of the domain”. Mr. Siegel continued, stating, ‘ attractions is the, late night down the “Kirsan IIyumzhinov's problems severely Whilst it is tempting for a defender to trump with a seemingly useless trump ’ ’ ’ road at Durty Nelly s pub , that precedes damaged FIDE s business activities whenever possible, he should generally refuse to trump a low card. Witness this Saturday's games which number three in and we have to look for a new bank month’s hand: all! Getting to that morning’s first round, connection”, describing the situation as ‘ ’ is more challenging than usual , in such a “serious problem”, he continues, “In Dealer South Both Vulnerable international tournaments! the process of this change we anticipate ♠ The Master's Tournament had some problems”. “However, we will &$" "&' $%'# !&' $('# ♥ numerous GMs in contention including do our best that payments will not be (& ♠ ♦ &$#! Nigel Short who was joint third on delayed”. This later comment alludes to #$%% " #$%% ♥ ♣ &%# 4.5pts. along with Mark Hebden, the regular payments FIDE pays to the ♠ ♠ ! ♠ '%# #$%% ! #$%% #$%% Alexander Baburin and WGM Alina employees in Federations distributed N ’ ♥ '#"! ♥ ) #$%% L Ami 8th, Jon Speelman 4pts along across the world and the rent paid on WE with Simon Williams, and Luke buildings and international tournaments, ♦ (*+ ♦ '% S McShane, 13th, WGM Dina Balenkaya including World Chess Championships ♣ *) ♣ + '"! 1. Old-fashioned Strong variety. 3.5 pts, and 17th Malcolm Pein 3.5pts and Candidates matches and so on. ♠ (*+)  2. Negative. The imminent Candidates ♥ *+%$ 3. Note the jump. A 3♠ bid would be Tournament to be held in Berlin is one ♦ )" consistent with the same hand with one CLASSIFIED such occasion. One statement suggested ♣ ($ fewer spade, and a low heart for the ace. ADVERTISEMENT that whatever happened, players’ With an ace in partner’s second suit and appearance fees and money prizes would spade support as opposed to preference, be met through Agon, the commercial North’s mediocre collection has markedly business arm of FIDE. The latest news improved PART-TIME PA AND TYPIST is that FIDE has successfully negotiated NEEDED new accounts with another international West led ♦A, followed with ♦K, then switched to ♥4. Declarer won dummy’s ♥A ♥ ♠ ♥ JUST ONE DAY A WEEK for property and bank! The elections for a new President and correctly led 8. East pounced on it with 5, declarer following with 7, and personal matters into family flat near will be undertaken later this year with switched to ♣10. Declarer rose with ♣A, cashed ♠AK drawing the four remaining Cromwell Road. £100 for that day. the Chess Olympics, and IIyumzhinov trumps, then cashed ♥KQ discarding dummy’s two remaining clubs. He was able has said that he is thinking of standing to trump ♣6 with dummy’s last trump, and so make the remaining tricks and his We’re looking for someone organized, again, and this cannot be ruled out since contract. conscientious and kind, ideally with a ♥ driving license and their own car. he may well have a hidden move that It would have been entirely different if East had refrained from trumping 8 at none of us have spotted so far! Trick Four. Say he discards a club. Declarer wins ♥Q, and can do no better than draw Please send CV’s to vikkiwat@outlook. two rounds of trumps then attempt to trump ♥7 with ♠8. East overtrumps with ♠9, com and contact Stuart on 07831 888 Chess Puzzle. and the defence wait for their club trick. Down one. 865 regarding interviews . This is taken from the recently concluded ANDREW’S TIP: As a defender, don’t trump a low card, even with a seemingly Tradewise Chess Tournament, Gibralter, worthless trump. 64 March 2018 Kensington, Chelsea & Westminster Today www.KCWToday.co.uk Advertisement Need some direction?

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