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What happened What the editorials said Any lingering hopes that President Trump “might grow into Trump’s worst week his role as commander-in-chief evaporated this week”, said the A chaotic week in Donald Trump’s White FT – “a chaotic and self-destructive one even House culminated in the firing of both his by the dismal standards of this presidency”. chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and his Trump is “testing the constitutional system to controversial new communications director, destruction”. The president was elected to tear Anthony Scaramucci, a mere ten days after up the Washington rule book, said The Times, his appointment. During an exceptionally “and he is entitled to try”. But he has not turbulent few days, Trump was criticised by managed to advance his agenda, because he Republicans for repeatedly lashing out at his hasn’t convinced Republicans to back it. own attorney general, Jeff Sessions; and by Without discipline this administration will the Pentagon, for announcing a ban on all “fail on the legislative front and may also fail transgender service personnel on Twitter. the most basic test of all – that of survival”. He also saw his campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare voted down in the Senate (see It seems it was Kelly who ordered page 8), and delivered a jarringly partisan Donald and Reince in happier times Scaramucci’s dismissal, said The Wall Street speech to the Boy Scouts of America’s Journal. Assuming that’s true, the new chief Jamboree, railing against the “cesspool” of US politics. of staff has demonstrated at a stroke that he “is already in charge and has the president’s support”, and that “no one Last week the newly hired Scaramucci told The New Yorker should trash their colleagues in public… Not a bad first day.” that chief of staff Reince Priebus was a “fucking paranoid It may be that Kelly is one of the rare people “whom Mr schizophrenic” and would soon be asked to resign. Priebus Trump will heed” outside his immediate family. In the past, was sacked on Friday, and replaced by homeland secretary the president has shown “that he can listen to advice for a few John Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general. However, hours, sometimes even a few days”. But the omens are not Scaramucci himself also resigned soon afterwards. On Twitter, promising: he has always broken free eventually, “with a the president declared it “a great day at the White House!”. Twitter barrage or interview tirade”.

What happened What the editorials said Venezuela in turmoil Venezuela is not only the “most corrupt country” in Latin America, it is also “the most ineptly governed”, said The World leaders this week accused Venezuela of Economist. The pursuit of “state socialism” has staging a rigged election to consolidate the beggared a country with larger oil reserves than power of its hard-line socialist president, Saudi Arabia. An “astonishing” 93% of Nicolás Maduro. The ballot – boycotted by Venezuelans say they can’t afford the food they the opposition – was to choose members of need; inflation is expected to top 1,000% this a constituent assembly with sweeping powers year. Yet the regime now plans to cement its to rewrite the constitution, scrap elections, place in office through a constitution drafted by and draft laws. The authorities claimed a an assembly made up of hand-picked yes-men. turnout of 41.5%, but independent analysts In the resulting one-party state, Venezuelans say the true figure was far lower. Public will lose even their basic right to throw out sector workers were reportedly threatened “the bums” responsible for their fate. with losing food rations unless they voted. At least ten people were killed in clashes with What’s needed now is a united opposition, said the police when crowds of protesters defied The Guardian. Over the past few months, a ban on public gatherings. Maduro: no skill, no charisma Maduro’s enemies have staged regular street protests in which a total of at least 100 people Washington has denounced the election as a “sham” and have died. But they remain a “mixed coalition”, with no clear slapped sanctions on Maduro, following earlier sanctions figurehead or programme. Venezuela’s crisis has broad against other key members of the Venezuelan regime. Fearing implications, said The Times. Desperate Venezuelans are an escalation in the violence, both the US and Britain are fleeing across the border into Colombia in their thousands, now evacuating their diplomats’ families from Caracas. creating a refugee crisis that could destabilise the region.

A young woman who was so ill In the 1950s, the Thames was It wasn’t all bad as a teenager that she went to declared “biologically dead”. For the first time, Kew Gardens court to fight for the right to die Today, however, seals are has opened to the public a vast has celebrated her graduation thriving in the Thames Estuary, swathe of woodland that once from university. Hannah Jones, and have been seen as far west belonged to Henry VII. The from New Quay in Ceredigion, up the river as Teddington Lock. 40-acre site, which used to be was 13 when she was told she A Zoological Society of London part of a deer park connected needed a heart transplant. study estimates that the estuary to the king’s royal estate, was Having already had chemo- was home to 1,552 grey seals donated to the Royal Botanic therapy for leukaemia, followed last year, up from 655 in 2013. Gardens by Queen Victoria in by surgery to repair a hole in her Harbour seals are doing almost 1898. Since then, it has been left heart caused by that treatment, as well: there were 964 last year, largely untouched, but a new she couldn’t face such a major up nearly 50% on 2013. woodland walk offers visitors a operation. She won her case – Conservationists think numbers route through some of its trees but then changed her mind, and received a new heart a year later. are rising because more seals – among them sweet chestnuts Now, aged 22, Jones has received a degree in English and drama are travelling from Lincolnshire, planted in the 17th century and from Aberystwyth University, and is shortly to start a teaching Norfolk and Suffolk to feed species of ancient yew. course. “I am very grateful for the chance to live,” she said. and rest in the estuary.

COVER CARTOON: HOWARD MCWILLIAM THE WEEK 5 August 2017 …and how they were covered NEWS 5

What the commentators said What next? “Six months into his presidency, and the Donald Trump show remains compelling viewing,” John Kelly has apparently said Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian. “Outlandish” new characters are popping in “to been able to dictate the terms keep things fizzing”, such as Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, a former Wall Street financier of his new job as chief of who, while speaking on the record with a reporter, not only slated Reince Priebus, but also staff, says The Times. The threatened to “fucking kill all the leakers” in the White House, and declared of Trump’s chief entire White House staff, strategist: “I’m not Steve Bannon, I’m not trying to suck my own cock.” including Trump’s family, will report to him. “If Mr None of this is “remotely surprising”, said Max Boot in Foreign Policy. As Jeb Bush accurately Trump keeps to his end of the predicted, Trump has become the “chaos president”. What has changed is that his Republican deal, Mr Kelly will sit atop supporters are turning against him, thanks primarily to his public belittling of one of his earliest a hierarchical West Wing and most loyal backers, Jeff Sessions; Trump is furious that the attorney general recused himself power structure not unlike from the inquiry into the campaign’s Russian links. They have excused the rest of it – his the rigid chains of command ignorance and lying; his attacks on women, war heroes, the press, Mexicans and Muslims; “his from his military days.” pussy-grabbing and general, all-round loutishness”; his “kowtowing to Vladimir Putin, Rodrigo Duterte and other loathsome dictators”. It will be interesting to see if this is the “breaking point”. A top commander during the worst years of the Iraq War, The key to understanding the chaos of the Trump administration is the “disparate factions” Kelly is respected, but has inside it, all jostling for power, said Rob Crilly in The Daily Telegraph. There are the “blow-it- little experience in stewarding up-and-start-again revolutionaries”, headed up by the populist Steve Bannon. Against him are legislation through Congress. the New Yorkers: the Wall Street bankers, such as National Economic Council director Gary Trump conceded that his Cohn, and Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. Then there administration had “some are the generals: John Kelly, Jim Mattis at the Pentagon, and national security adviser H.R. interesting situations” to deal McMaster. “Most fragile of all” are the real Republicans. By firing Priebus, the most prominent with, including North Korea. of this group, “Trump has severed a critical connection to his own party”, said Tim Alberta on “But we’ll take care of Politico – to Congress, to donors, and to grass-roots organisations. Now, of Trump’s closest them,” he said. “We’ll take advisers, only vice-president Mike Pence has “any association” with the Republicans. care of them very well.”

What the commentators said What next? With passions running high after this week’s election, “things could get ugly very quickly” in Radical left-wingers are Venezuela, said Joshua Keating on Slate. Fringe elements in the opposition are talking about reportedly demanding that “armed resistance”, and there are millions of illegal weapons in private hands. Then there’s the one of the first moves of the danger of a military coup. Discontent is said to be widespread among army officers and will new constituent assembly only deepen if they’re called on to suppress even larger mass protests. We had all thought that should be to use its power the era of political unrest and army takeovers in Latin America had passed: no country in the to abolish the National region now suffers from serious civil conflict. But events in Venezuela could mark a return to Congress. Under opposition the bad old days. Small wonder so many Venezuelans are choosing to flee, said Mary O’Grady control since elections in in The Wall Street Journal. More than 150,000 are thought to be living in Colombia illegally, 2015, the congress has and Venezuelans now make up the single largest group of asylum seekers in the US. “On the regularly clashed with the streets of Venezuela, it is now fight or flight.” Maduro regime.

One of Venezuela’s biggest problems is Maduro himself, said Andrew Buncombe in The The regime could face a Independent. His charismatic predecessor, Hugo Chávez, at least built his “Bolivarian major economic test next Revolution” around the ballot box, and in doing so won four presidential elections. Maduro, year when it must make who has none of his late mentor’s political skills and charisma, has had no such scruples about a payment of $8.5bn on securing a mandate. These days he surrounds himself with “hard-core” loyalists: with approval its international debts. ratings at just 20%, he would never risk a fair election. For the international community, there Economists say default is a are no easy answers, said David Smilde in The New York Times. Washington has talked of real possibility, with China, imposing sanctions on Venezuela’s oil industry, the source of 95% of the country’s export the source of generous revenue. But that would just impose further suffering on ordinary Venezuelans. Besides, support in the past, now sanctions play into the hands of a regime that likes to blame the US and other “imperial reportedly reluctant to powers” for all the country’s woes. Whatever happens, the US must “stay at the margins”. extend its loans.

Editor-in-chief: Jeremy O’Grady Trade Secretary Liam Fox is “champing at the bit” to conclude trade Editor: Caroline Law Deputy editors: Harry Nicolle, Theo Tait THE WEEK deals with non-EU nations, says The Independent. Why? If he doesn’t, Consultant editor: Jemima Lewis Assistant editor: Daniel Cohen City editor: Jane Lewis he’ll be out of a job. I was quite taken with that. Chancellor Philip Contributing editors: Charity Crewe, Thomas Hodgkinson, Simon Wilson, Rob McLuhan, William Underhill, Digby Hammond’s disavowal of a policy he’d entertained before the election – that Britain might remodel Warde-Aldam, Tom Yarwood Editorial staff: Asya Likhtman, Anoushka Petit, Tigger Ridgwell, William Skidelsky Picture itself as low-tax economy (see page 6) – is not unconnected to his leadership aspirations, says John editor: Xandie Nutting Art director: Nathalie Fowler Chief Rentoul in the same paper. I was taken with that, too. The policy conflicts of our age are so routinely sub editor: Kari Wilkin Production editor: Alanna O’Connell presented as battles of ideas, it’s a shock to see them recast as battles for careers. Yet personal expe- Founder and editorial director: Jolyon Connell Production Manager: Ebony Besagni Senior Production rience should tell us that the job governs the ideology, not vice versa. When, many moons ago, I got Executive: Maaya Mistry Newstrade Director: David Barker Direct Marketing Director: Abi Spooner Inserts: Abdul Ahad a job as a film censor, I was surprised to find that, like me, my fellow censors were ardent champions Classified: Henry Haselock, Henry Pickford Account Directors: Scott Hayter, John Hipkiss, Victoria Ryan, Jocelyn Sital-Singh of the free speech principle. It didn’t count for much. We snipped away at the films just the same. UK Ad Director: Caroline Fenner Executive Director – Head of Advertising: David Weeks I can’t help feeling that once this insight is given its due, some of the ideological heat generated Chief Executive, The Week: Kerin O’Connor over Brexit drains away. European Commissioners, for example, may not have begun life as keen Group CFO/COO: Brett Reynolds Chief executive: James Tye federalists: but they will seek to punish any attempt to weaken the federalist principle, because the Dennis Publishing founder: Felix Dennis more it’s threatened, the more precarious their jobs become. The managers of German car firms, by

contrast, are insistent that Britain be cut some slack, since a hard Brexit could lose them a quarter of a THE WEEK Ltd, a subsidiary of Dennis Publishing Ltd, million car sales a year and with it, their bonuses and stock options. The primary battle is over job 31-32 Alfred Place, London WC1E 7DP. Tel: 020-3890 3890. Editorial: The Week Ltd, 2nd Floor, 32 Queensway, London security, not political ideology. It’s not the thought that counts. It’s the career. W2 3RX. Tel: 020-3890 3787. Jeremy O’Grady email: [email protected]

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Controversy of the week Grenfell prosecutions Police investigating the When the cat’s away… Grenfell Tower fire have said there are “reasonable Let’s hope Theresa May is enjoying her holiday in the Swiss Alps, grounds” to suspect that said Andrew Grice in The Independent. She needs a break “more Kensington and Chelsea than the rest of us put together”. But in her absence, “cautious Council committed corporate optimism” has returned to Tory ranks. “We’ve stuck to our manslaughter. The council’s grid in the last week,” a senior Tory told me: ministers are Tenant Management holding to the day-to-day media plan, not just reacting to events. Organisation is also under And ironically, it’s two pro-European ministers who’ve made suspicion for its role in the the running. Home Secretary Amber Rudd made it clear that a fire in June, in which at least form of free movement will continue for several years after the 80 people died. Executives from both organisations are UK quits the EU in 2019. And in a BBC radio interview, now likely to be interviewed Chancellor Philip Hammond talked of a transition lasting three under caution; however, years. It would be a Norway-style “off-the-shelf arrangement”, individuals can’t be charged he said, not a bespoke deal. He also told the French paper Le with corporate manslaughter, Monde that the UK didn’t want to embrace “unfair competition” so prosecutions would be by turning into a low-tax, low-regulation economy like Singapore. Hammond: veering off-piste? likely to result in fines for the organisations, rather Cue consternation among his absent colleagues, said Gordon Rayner in The Daily Telegraph. Foreign than imprisonment. Secretary Boris Johnson in Sydney and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox in Washington DC – both pushing for a tougher line on Brexit – “were reduced to texting each other to ask what was Prisons warning going on”. As for May, she sent out a public message saying that Hammond had gone beyond his The president of the Prison brief, that Britain wasn’t seeking an off-the-shelf deal, and that “free movement will end in 2019”. Governors Association has What was Hammond thinking, asked Robert Colvile on CapX. Competition is never “unfair”, and warned that prisons in by disowning it, he has undermined a basic pillar of the Brexit case. A key reason for breaking free England and Wales are in “complete decline”. In an of EU rules is to enhance the competitiveness of British business by reducing the tax and regulation open letter, Andrea Albutt burden. On the contrary, said the FT, Hammond sees that persisting with such a threat would said recruitment was in a “poison negotiations” with other EU nations. They’d view it as a deliberate bid to undercut EU fi rms “critical” condition, and and divert foreign investment. Already sore about tax competition from the likes of Ireland, with its criticised the Ministry of 12.5% corporation tax, they’d baulk at giving market access to a larger economy trying the same trick. Justice for failing to ease the staffing crisis in jails. In any case, the Tories simply don’t have the votes they need “to remake Britain as a low-tax, small- Her comments followed state utopia”, said George Eaton in the New Statesman. Labour’s unexpectedly strong showing in reports of violent prisoner the election was a sign that many crave a larger, not smaller, state. Hard Brexiteers shouldn’t blame unrest at HMP Erlestoke in Hammond for going “soft”; they should blame the voters. What we’re seeing, said Janan Ganesh in Wiltshire, and The Mount in the FT, is the great advantage of divided government. Now that May can no longer hold the ring, Hertfordshire. New figures “power has spread from the PM to a plurality of Cabinet members”. In particular, it has spread to show that in the year to last the Treasury: its technical expertise, its readiness to engage with business – long excluded from March, there was a 20% rise in violence in prisons in Downing Street – is eclipsing Fox’s epic visions of new trade deals. A “precarious administration can England and Wales, with a now fumble its way to more sensible outcomes” than could ever have been achieved under the record 7,159 attacks on staff – “strong and stable” leadership of a PM with a big majority. May’s frailty is a boon for the nation. equivalent to 20 per day.

Good week for: Spirit of the age Prince Philip, who carried out his final public engagement – Poll watch Steroid use among young attending a parade to mark the completion of a Royal Marines 61% of Leave voters think people has quadrupled in charity fundraising initiative. The 96-year-old had announced his significant damage to the the past year, according to impending retirement in May. UK economy would be the Home Office’s Crime KitKats, which are selling so well in Japan that Nestlé is opening a price worth paying for Survey for England and a new factory there – the first in 26 years. KitKats are Japan’s Brexit, while 20% don’t, says Wales. While consumption favourite chocolate treat, and come in some 300 different a YouGov poll in the Daily of most drugs has been Mirror. 39% think it would falling, the proportion of flavours, from green tea and wasabi to cherry blossom. be worth it even if it caused 16- to 24-year-olds taking Shetland, with reports that the northern archipelago enjoyed them, or members of their anabolic steroids rose from more sunshine hours than Cornwall in July, for only the eighth family, to lose their jobs. 0.1% to 0.4%, with an extra time since records began in 1929. For the UK as a whole, it was 34% of Remain voters would 19,000 young people taking a soggy month, with 22% more rain than the average for July. want to stay in the EU, even them. Addiction expert Ian if that caused significant Hamilton said more young damage to the economy. men are using steroids Bad week for: 61% of Leave voters because they are becoming British holidaymakers, who faced lengthy delays on arriving at backed the Tories in the increasingly “sensitive and some European airports, because of extra security checks. At the general election, the British vigilant about how they busiest times, passengers reported queuing for longer than they Election Survey has found. should look” – and also were on the plane. New checks on travellers from countries 26% voted for Labour. 54% because the drugs have outside the Schengen Area were introduced in March, following of Remain voters backed become easier to buy. the terrorist attacks in Paris and Brussels. Labour; 23% voted Tory. One in eight people aged Commuters, with new figures showing that more than 36% of 38% of GPs say that they 18 to 24 have spent so little trains arrive late. The worst of the big operators, according to The expect to quit within the time in the countryside that Sunday Times, is the TransPennine Express: its trains arrived late next five years. 28% of the they’ve never seen a cow in 52.7% of the time over seven days in July. Separately, Southern GPs who aren’t planning to real life, a survey has found. was identified as having the most overcrowded trains. The leave want to significantly A fifth have never even left 7.16am service from East Grinstead to London Bridge ran with reduce their working hours. their home city. more than twice its intended passenger capacity last autumn. RCGP/Daily Mail

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 Europe at a glance NEWS 7

Ypres, Hamburg, Germany Moscow Belgium Supermarket attack: A 26-year-old US diplomats expelled: President Putin has Passchendaele Palestinian described by German officials ordered hundreds of US diplomats to leave remembered: as a known “Islamist but not a jihadist” Russia, and has seized two US-owned Thousands of has been accused of launching a knife properties in Moscow, in retaliation for people, attack in a supermarket in Hamburg last new sanctions agreed by the US Congress including Friday, in which one man was stabbed to to punish Moscow for Russian meddling representatives death and six people were injured. Named in the US election. In a statement, Moscow of the 19 as Ahmad A., the suspect – who was said that the US had a month to slash the nations whose overwhelmed by passersby as he fl ed the number of diplomatic and support staff it citizens were scene and is now in custody – arrived in has in Russia to 455 – down from about killed in the Ypres Salient during the First Germany in 2015, where he applied, 1,100. In December, Barack Obama World War, took part in a moving unsuccessfully, for asylum. Witnesses said expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the ceremony at the Menin Gate last Sunday, that the knifeman shouted “Allahu akbar” US, and ordered the seizure of two to mark the start of the Battle of as he launched his attack, which the city’s Kremlin-owned properties. According to Passchendaele 100 years ago on 31 July. mayor condemned as a hate crime. a Kremlin spokesman, Moscow refrained More than 500,000 troops from both sides However, police have declined to from a tit-for-tat response then because it lost their lives at Passchendaele: it was the speculate on his motivation and say they hoped that relations with the US could fi rst battle in which the Germans used have so far found no evidence linking him “change for the better”. mustard gas on the Western Front. It was to terrorist groups. Previously, he had also one of the War’s muddiest battles: been on their radar as an Islamist, but heavy shellfire churned up the clay soil, was deemed to be a “destabilised and when this was followed by torrential personality”, not a jihadist, who did rain, it created a quagmire so deep that not present an immediate threat. men and horses drowned in it.

Orléans, France Migrant centres: President Emmanuel Macron has announced plans to open refugee processing centres in Libya, so that asylum seekers can be vetted before they attempt the perilous crossing to Europe. “The idea is… to avoid people taking crazy risks when they are not all eligible for asylum. We’ll go to them,” said Macron, during a visit to a refugee centre in Orléans. He had earlier helped broker a conditional ceasefire between the two sides in Libya’s civil war. Even so, his own officials immediately cast doubt on the feasibility of his refugee plan, given the security situation there. In a bid to defuse tensions over immigration at home, and prevent the establishment of new immigrant camps, the French government is buying 62 hotels from the budget chain Formule 1 for use as migrant shelters – and has pledged to clear all migrants off the streets by the end of the year.

Carro, France Warsaw Malia, Crete Arson fears: A man has admitted to EU’s legal threat: Rowdy Brits turned away: Hoteliers in accidentally starting a fi re, close to Peynier, The European Crete’s most popular tourist resort, Malia, northeast of Marseilles, by using a Commission has have reportedly turned down around metal-cutting device – one of a number of started legal 10,000 bookings from the UK this year as wildfires that devastated parts of proceedings part of a campaign to “reclaim” the resort southeastern France and Corsica last week. against Poland from boozy young British visitors, and A blaze in Carro, west of Marseille, over new laws that attract more families from countries such resulted in some 370 acres of land being it (and many as Germany, Austria and the Netherlands burnt; two teenagers were arrested on Poles) believe are instead. Local officials said 95% of the suspicion of starting one of the fi res, but designed to give town’s 137 hotels had agreed to stop were later released. Last week’s wildfires the country’s taking bookings from operators who sell were France’s worst for at least a decade: right-wing nationalist government control alcohol-fuelled “18-30 holiday” packages around 17,300 acres of land were burnt, over the judiciary. Last week, Poland’s to young Britons. “Malia isn’t about sex, and 12,000 residents and holidaymakers president, Andrzej Duda, vetoed two of drugs and ‘everything goes’,” said the had to be evacuated from homes and the three most contentious bills. However, town’s deputy mayor, Efthymios campsites. Wildfires also returned with a the prime minister, Beata Szydło (pictured), Moutrakis. “It’s the prime tourist vengeance to Portugal last week, a month vowed to push ahead with the reforms destination in Crete, bringing in millions of after 64 people died in the worst blazes regardless. The infringement process that euros to the island.” The new policy is not in living memory. More than a quarter began this week involved sending Poland without economic risk, however: at the of the country’s fi refighters were deployed a letter outlining concerns that its reforms moment, most of the more than six million to fi ght fi res threatening the central will undermine judicial independence. holiday bookings made in the Malia region Castelo Branco region. Warsaw has a month to respond. each year come through British operators.

Catch up with daily news at www.theweek.co.uk 5 August 2017 THE WEEK 8 NEWS The world at a glance

Seattle, Washington Washington DC World’s richest: The founder of Amazon, Republican rebels sink repeal of Obamacare: The Trump Jeff Bezos, briefly overtook Bill Gates to administration suffered a humiliating setback last Thursday when become the world’s richest person last the US Senate narrowly voted against its latest attempt to overturn week, with a fortune estimated at $90bn. the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). In dramatic scenes, three Shares in Amazon, which have risen 40% Republican rebels joined Democrats to vote down the legislation in a year, opened up 1.3% on Thursday, by 51 votes to 49. One of them, Senator John McCain, had propelling Bezos (pictured) to the top of returned to the Senate after recent surgery and a diagnosis of the rich list – until they fell back again brain cancer in order to cast his vote in the crucial debate. It was a few hours later. Bezos owns 80 million assumed that he had made the effort in order to vote for the shares in Amazon (nearly 17% of the repeal: President Trump tweeted his thanks, writing: “Brave – total) and is an investor in many other fi rms. In reality, though, American hero!” But McCain voted against the so-called “skinny neither he nor Gates may deserve the title: in evidence to the US repeal” bill. This would have removed the “individual mandate”, Senate last week, Bill Browder, an expert on Vladimir Putin’s a key aspect of the Affordable Care Act which requires all business dealings, put the Russian president’s fortune at $200bn. Americans to have health insurance or pay a fi ne.

Los Angeles, California Olympics deal: Los Angeles has officially offered to host the 2028 Olympic Games – leaving the way clear for Paris to be the host in 2024, the centenary of its last Games. The two cities had ended up as the only contenders vying to host the 2024 event. Normally, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) agrees one Games at a time, but decided in this case to offer up 2028, rather than rule out one of the two cities. The outcome means that Paris and LA will join London as the only cities to have hosted the Games three times. The IOC is reported to have offered LA $1.8bn to help youth participation in sports, as an incentive to wait until 2028.

Honolulu, Hawaii “Smartphone zombies” ban: The Hawaiian capital, Honolulu, is to become the fi rst major US city to ban pedestrians from looking at their mobile phones or texting while they cross the street. The Distracted Walking Law, which will come into force in October, imposes fi nes on anyone caught looking at a mobile telephone, tablet, laptop, video game device, pager or camera while walking across a “street or highway”. Fines will range between $15 for fi rst offenders to $99 for “smartphone zombies” who have been caught out before. According to a 2015 safety report, more than 11,100 Americans were injured due to “mobile phone distraction” between 2000 and 2011.

Phoenix, Arizona Ex-sheriff convicted: A former sheriff of Phoenix, notorious for his hard-line methods, has been convicted of contempt for defying a court order to stop targeting Latinos for identity checks. Joe Arpaio, 85, faces up to six months in jail, though such a sentence is unlikely due to his age. As well as his racial profiling, Arpaio became notorious for a “tough on crime” stance that included housing convicts in a tented encampment throughout the sweltering Arizona summer, and forcing them to wear old- fashioned striped prison suits and pink underwear (pictured). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Columbus, Ohio Film actor wanted for murder: Fairground tragedy: A swinging, spinning amusement park ride A would-be actor who appeared broke apart on the opening day of the Ohio State Fair in in the internationally acclaimed Columbus last week, killing an eighteen-year-old man and Brazilian fi lm City of God (2002) has been named as one of the seriously injuring several other people. In video footage of the suspects in the murder of a police officer, in a favela in Rio. Ivan incident posted on social media, the “thrill” ride, known as the da Silva Martins – who had a small part as a teenage gang Fire Ball, can be seen swinging from side to side before one of its member in the Oscar-nominated fi lm – is said to be a drugs kingpin sections breaks off, hurling passengers through the air. Early who dominates the Vidigal favela, where he is known as Ivan the reports suggested it had undergone safety checks before opening. Terrible. The fi lm’s director, Fernando Meirelles, said that over This week, fi ve UK theme parks and fairs with similar rides were the years he had lost contact with Martins, 34, along with the rest closed by the Health and Safety Executive pending fresh safety of the youngsters who appeared in his drama about life in a Rio checks. A sixth park, Lightwater Valley in North Yorkshire, had slum, but that he was “saddened by the news”. The slain already independently closed its version following the tragedy. policeman was the 91st officer to be killed in Rio state this year.

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 The world at a glance NEWS 9

Tashkent Islamabad Pyongyang Daughter in PM forced out: Pakistan’s prime minister Missile threat grows: North Korea tested custody: The has been forced from office, and is now an intercontinental ballistic missile last daughter of facing corruption charges. Nawaz Sharif Friday that could be capable of hitting Uzbekistan’s late was ousted following a year-long cities along the West Coast of the US. dictator, Islam investigation that began when his business However, the mock warhead on the missile Karimov, is being dealings were revealed by the leaking of is believed to have shattered during its held in custody on the so-called Panama Papers. Sharif, re-entry to Earth, suggesting that embezzlement and 67, and his family – including his daughter, Pyongyang may not yet be able to use the extortion charges, Maryam, who had been seen as his technology to launch a viable attack. In it emerged last political heir – were accused of using a show of strength and solidarity, US week. Gulnara offshore companies to launder public bombers fl ew with Japanese and South Karimova money and acquire a host of foreign assets, Korean aircraft across the peninsula. (pictured), 45 including luxury fl ats on Park Lane in President Trump was unwilling to outline – a former fashion designer and pop London. He had attempted to face down a strategy for resolving the crisis. “We’ll star who was once her father’s putative the scandal. But last Friday, Pakistan’s handle North Korea,” he said. “It will successor, but had latterly disappeared Supreme Court ruled unanimously that be handled. We handle everything.” from public view – is accused of running Sharif should be disqualified from public However, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson an “organised crime group”. She is also office. He has nevertheless nominated his sought to ease tensions by stressing that accused of having assets worth at least brother to succeed him as PM, causing Washington was not seeking regime $1bn across 12 countries. further outrage among his opponents. change. “We are not your enemy,” he said.

Ozamiz, Philippines Mayor shot dead: A city mayor accused by President Rodrigo Duterte of being involved in drug trafficking was killed in a police raid last Sunday, along with his wife and at least ten other people. Police said that Reynaldo Parojinog, the mayor of Ozamiz, was shot dead at his house after his bodyguards opened fi re on officers who had arrived to search for illegal guns. Reportedly, his wife and the other victims were killed in the ensuing gunfight.

Nairobi Election official murdered: The Kenyan official Canberra in charge of the Killer ant: country’s new The Australian computerised government voting system – is launching which is supposed to a £245m deliver a fair and credible result in next biosecurity week’s election – has been abducted, campaign to Sydney, Australia tortured and murdered. Chris Msando, wipe out a Plane plot “foiled”: Australian security the electoral commission’s head of IT, species of killer agencies claimed last week to have foiled went missing last Friday. His body was ant that a terrorist plot to bring down an aircraft. found the next day in a forest outside threatens to According to press reports, the alleged plot Nairobi, along with that of an unidentified devastate the nation’s agriculture and involved smuggling a bomb, hidden in woman. Msando’s expertise was crucial wildlife. The red imported fi re ant, native a meat grinder, onto a plane at Sydney to the smooth running of Tuesday’s vote, to South America, has caused the deaths Airport. Police are said to have been tipped according to the commission’s chairman. of at least 85 people in the southern US, off by a foreign intelligence agency. Four Tensions are high in Kenya ahead of the where it is estimated to cost the economy men were arrested in raids across Sydney vote; ten years ago, some 1,200 people $7bn a year. Now it is increasingly being last Saturday. One was later released were killed in post-election violence. The seen in Australia: the government has without charge. Prime Minister Malcolm opposition has accused President Uhuru warned that if not contained, it may make Turnbull said the plans were “advanced” Kenyatta’s government of planning to use “everyday activities such as barbecues, and claimed that they were fuelled by the army to swing the result in its favour. picnics and sporting events” impossible. “an Islamist extremist motivation”.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 10 NEWS People

Gale’s secret inheritance she never left him alone with The novelist Patrick Gale has any of us. I had no private always been open about his experience of my father until I sexuality. He knew he was gay was about 13, when he retired by the time he got to boarding and I started having breakfast school, and was determined to with him.” Finding out that his be “out and proud”. “That father was gay (although they wasn’t at all normal in the never discussed it) felt like a 1970s, but I had the great good blessing. “It was like inheriting fortune to be in a gang of fi ve, any kind of gift. It was nice to four of whom are still gay, who see it came from somewhere.” supported each other,” he told Julia Llewellyn Smith in The The woman of Today Daily Telegraph. “It was Sarah Sands has been editor of against the rules to have sex Radio 4’s Today programme at school, but we were doing since April – but she is still something much more suffering from mild culture challenging than that – just shock. For one thing, the living as openly gay people.” former editor of the London Even so, Gale was 22 before Evening Standard can’t believe he told his mother – and the how keen politicians are to be conversation didn’t go as on her show. “If one Cabinet planned. “Her response was: minister is coming, they all ‘Well, I think it will help your want to,” she told Alice father come to terms with Thompson in The Times. himself.’” She then revealed “This morning I looked up at that, before Gale was born, she all these big beasts crashing had discovered a stash of love through the studio and almost letters hidden in his father’s had to duck. After the election Jane Campion has always done things her own way. The New desk. “They were all from my it was a pile-up of power. I Zealand-born director had a huge (and somewhat unexpected) father’s best man, a dear friend. thought: ‘No more players, box office hit with her 1993 indie fi lm The Piano, about a mute They’d known each other all please – can we have an expert piano-player who falls in love with a retired sailor. It won her an their lives, been at school on roses?’” The office culture is Oscar and the Cannes Palme d’Or. Then ten years later, she made together, they’d fought side by alien too, she says. Today feels the erotic thriller In the Cut, which was slated by the critics. So side in the War. She realised more like the NHS – a Campion decided to stop work and become a full-time mother. that my father had shown this cherished but overstretched “I was going to take a break anyway,” she told Simon Hattenstone man, as she put it, ‘passion of a public service – than a typical in The Guardian, “but I found it really easy, because when you have kind he had never shown me’. newsroom. “One reporter a failure, nobody rings you up or wants you to do anything.” The night before her wedding, came in for his shift and at the Campion’s marriage had ended, and her nine-year-old daughter, they had been together in a end the Finsbury Park terrorist Alice, had developed a serious aversion to school. “She’s a very hotel room.” Gale’s mother attack happened, so he kept gentle girl. I said to her one day, ‘Come on, get up, let’s go, I’m had burned the letters and going for another shift. They going to drop you off at school.’ She said, ‘I’m not going and you’d never discussed them with have a sense of commitment to better get used to it. I’m not going to school ever again.’” Alice anyone. “She was terrified he’d the place.” She corrects herself. couldn’t be budged, so Campion homeschooled her, devising a go to prison if they were found. “I keep saying ‘they’, but I can curriculum to suit her interests. Campion is now back at work, The sad thing was, in common slowly see myself being sucked directing the cult TV series Top of the Lake (in which Alice, now 22, with a lot of people of that into the BBC. Although they has a starring role). But she looks back at her career hiatus as a period, she assumed he was a all seem to have those rather wonderful time. “I think having a daughter is the best thing that paedophile, so from that point weird fold-up bikes.” ever happened to me. Loving someone that much…”

Castaway of the week Viewpoint: Farewell This week’s edition of Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs featured Pushy parenting Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook Jeanne Moreau, “The problem with trying to be a pushy French actress 1 Run the World (Girls) by Beyoncé Knowles, Terius Nash, parent in the holidays is not that the best known for her Wesley Pentz, David Taylor, Adidja Palmer and Nick van de Wall, role in Jules et performed by Beyoncé children resent all the extracurricular Jim, died 31 July, 2 Landslide by Stevie Nicks, performed by the Dixie Chicks activities. They enjoy them for the most part, if only because they like doing things aged 89. 3 You’re My Best Friend by John Deacon, performed by Queen with their parents, particularly the younger Andrew Paulson, 4 You’ll Be Back (from the musical Hamilton), by Lin-Manuel American media Miranda, performed by Jonathan Groff and the original ones. No, the difficulty is retaining this Tiger Mum attitude yourself. I used to tycoon, died Broadway cast 18 July, aged 58. 5 Sweet Baby James, written and performed by James Taylor think that one of the benefits of having Sam Shepard, 6 A Long December written and performed by Counting Crows children is that you can transfer your actor and Pulitzer (David Bryson, Adam Duritz, Charlie Gillingham, Matt Malley, most cherished dreams to them. OK, you Prize-winning Ben Mize and Dan Vickrey) reason, I’m never going to be the chief playwright, died 7 I’m Still Standing by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, performed executive of a FTSE 100 company or win a 27 July, aged 73. by Elton John screenwriting Oscar, but maybe one of my 8* One, written and performed by U2 (Bono, Adam Clayton, Larry children can. Turns out, just as you lack Mark Wilkinson, Mullen Jr and The Edge) the tenacity and grit to climb the ladder furniture and kitchen yourself, you cannot summon the energy designer, died Book: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle * Choice if allowed to train your children to do it either.” only one record 5 July, aged 66. Luxury: a diary Toby Young in The Times

THE WEEK 5 August 2017

Briefing NEWS 13 Coming out: the path to gay liberation Fifty years ago last week, the Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised homosexuality in England and Wales

What was the law before 1967? What was Parliament’s reaction? Until 1967, male homosexuality was “The tone of the debate alternated illegal, with “buggery” punishable by life between vicious homophobia on one side imprisonment; until 1861, it had been a and patronising, apologetic tolerance on capital offence, under a law dating back the other,” says the rights campaigner to Henry VIII’s reign. (The last two Peter Tatchell. “Those who suffer from Englishmen executed for buggery were this disability carry a great weight of hanged in 1835.) All other sexual acts shame all their lives,” intoned Jenkins. between men had actually been legal The bishops called for compassion. No until 1885, when a catch-all offence of one talked about equality or love. On the “gross indecency with another male opposing side, Tory MPs dubbed the Bill person”, punishable with sentences of up a “buggers’ charter”. The Earl of Dudley to two years, was created by the so-called declared: “I cannot stand homosexuals. Labouchère Amendment – the law used They are the most disgusting people in to convict Oscar Wilde. However, sex the world. I loathe them. Prison is much between women was never illegal. too good a place for them.” The Bill survived a fi libuster attempt by one vote Were the laws zealously enforced? and was passed after an all-night sitting, It varied. At least 50,000 men were by 101 to 16. Lord Arran asked convicted of “gross indecency” between homosexuals “to show their thanks by 1885 and 1967, but the bulk of the prosecutions took place from comporting themselves quietly and with dignity”, warning them the 1930s on, rising sharply in the postwar period. In the early against “ostentatious behaviour” and “public fl aunting”. 1950s, Churchill’s home secretary, Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, ordered the police and the courts to conduct a “new drive against What did the Sexual Offences Act 1967 actually do? male vice” that would “rid England of this plague”. Between It decreed that a homosexual act between two men would not be 1938 and 1955, the annual number of prosecutions in England an offence, as long as certain conditions were met. The age of and Wales rose from 320 to 2,500, resulting in about 1,000 consent was set for 21 between men, compared with 16 for men custodial sentences a year. However, a number of high-profile and women. “Buggery” and “gross indecency” were still against cases created public sympathy for those prosecuted: in 1952, the the law unless they took place in strict privacy, which the courts codebreaker Alan Turing was convicted of gross indecency and interpreted to mean in a person’s home – not a hotel room – later committed suicide; in 1954, the journalist Peter Wildeblood behind locked doors, with curtains drawn and no one else present was also convicted, along with Lord Montagu of Beaulieu. The in the house. Sex between men remained an offence in the services government responded by setting up an inquiry, chaired by John and the merchant navy, and a range of offences surrounding it Wolfenden, into both homosexuality and prostitution. stayed in force: “loitering with intent”, “soliciting”, “procuring”. In the years after 1967, the police enforced these with greater What conclusions did Wolfenden reach? harshness: there were 1,711 such convictions in 1974 alone. In 1957, the Wolfenden Committee published its report (see box), recommending that “homosexual behaviour between consenting So what did the 1967 act actually achieve? adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence”, arguing For gay men who lived with their partners, the world changed that it was “not the law’s business”. The Commons rejected its overnight: they could live without fear of prosecution (though not conclusions, by 213 to 99, but the report led to the creation of the in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where similar laws were not Homosexual Law Reform Society, backed by the great and good passed until 1980 and 1982 respectively). The Sexual Offences including Clement Attlee, A.J. Ayer, Isaiah Berlin and various Act also emboldened the embryonic gay rights movement. The bishops. After a number of false fi rst UK Gay Pride rally was held in starts, proposals along Wolfenden’s Huntleys and Palmers London in 1972. It was the fi rst step lines were brought before Parliament The Wolfenden Committee consisted of 12 men and on the path to legal equality. in 1967 by two eccentric backbench three women, including a psychiatrist, a high court reformers the Conservative Lord judge, a GP, two churchmen, and the vice-president of How has the law changed since? Arran and the Labour MP Leo Abse. Glasgow’s Girl Guides. In order to spare the ladies’ In the three decades afterwards, very blushes, Wolfenden, vice-chancellor of Reading little. As late as 1989 – at the height What inspired their reforms? University and a former headmaster of Uppingham – of the Conservative “family values” Lord Arran had inherited his title whose son Jeremy, it later emerged, was gay – campaign – there were 2,022 recorded referred to homosexuals as “Huntleys” and prostitutes because his older brother, who was as “Palmers”, after the biscuits. The committee heard offences of gross indecency, almost as gay, had committed suicide. He kept evidence from police, psychiatrists, churchmen (who in many as in 1954. During the early a pet badger and declared that his those days were at the forefront of homosexual law 1990s, gay men could still be arrested life’s aims were “to stop people reform), and gay men, including Peter Wildeblood, for public displays of affection such buggering badgers, and to stop people who at his trial had declared openly and unashamedly as kissing. It was not until this century badgering buggers”. Abse, a Welsh that he was, in the language of the day, an “invert”. that equality was established in law. MP of strong Freudian convictions, The Committee concluded, against much of the medical The age of consent was equalised in was horrified by the blackmailing of evidence presented to it, that homosexuality “cannot 2000. The Sexual Offences Act 2003 gay men that he encountered as a legitimately be regarded as a disease”, because “in replaced the 1967 act, and enshrined lawyer in the 1950s. Both were many cases it is the only symptom”. It expressed the principle that sexual acts are motivated, well-connected and, distaste for homosexuality, but argued the law should viewed in law without regard to the crucially, they also had the support of respect “individual freedom of actions in matters of sex of the participants. Civil private morality” where they did not harm others. By the then Labour home secretary, Roy contrast, it deemed prostitution a “public nuisance”. partnerships came in in 2004, and Jenkins, the driving force behind the Harold Macmillan’s cabinet rejected the report on the same-sex marriage in 2013; the gay liberal reforms of the 1960s. He saw grounds it was very much “ahead of public opinion”. rights group Stonewall called it “the that the Bill got parliamentary time. fi nal piece of the legislative jigsaw”.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK

Best articles: Britain NEWS 15

I spend a lot of time inveighing against left-wing bullies, says Melanie Philips, but I’ve never witnessed such ignorance and IT MUST BE TRUE… The wicked “unthinking cruelty” as that shown by the American Right in the I read it in the tabloids case of Charlie Gard: it turned the entire case into a parable about bullying by the socialised healthcare oppressing loving parents. “Little Charlie A widower who tried to find love by throwing hundreds of appears to be under a death sentence courtesy of Great Ormond US Right messages in bottles into the Street Hospital and the British courts,” said the website American sea faced a backlash when Thinker. We see here a system where “the authority of govern- Melanie Phillips they began turning up on ment over human life” is a fi rst principle, said Liberty Unyielding. beaches, and were reported The Sunday Times No matter that, unlike the highly politicised US courts, British as litter. Craig Sullivan, 49, ones actually hold the state to account; or that this case was about cast 2,000 bottles adrift at medical ethics, not the NHS; or that the US doctor claiming he beaches around the UK – might cure Charlie had never examined him nor even read his thinking it would be more medical records; or that the experts who did examine him thought “noble” than going on a dating website – but had he was in pain and that there was no chance of a cure. That his overlooked the environmental distraught parents refused to accept the tragic reality is only impact. “Hi Craig, I love how natural. That the US Right should have reinforced this refusal by romantic your idea is… but egging them on for ideological reasons is nothing short of wicked. lots of us spend hours picking up beach litter,” read The gender pay gap “isn’t just a BBC phenomenon”, says Juliet one response. On the plus Samuel. Far from it: the average British man pockets 18% more side, the story generated so The hidden pay per hour than the average woman. That’s a big improvement much publicity, he has since on 20 years ago, when it was 28%, but even so, the UK’s pay gap received 50 offers of dates. cause of the is still “one of the highest in Europe”. Yet, remarkably, until they reach the age of 29, women in the UK earn about the same as gender pay gap men. What’s going on? The answer lies in the “astonishingly high Juliet Samuel cost of childcare” in Britain – the costliest in the developed world. It eats up a third of the average household income (against 10% The Daily Telegraph in Germany, and 5% in Sweden), forcing many mothers to stay at home. And it’s precisely when large numbers drop out of full-time work to have children that the gap emerges. Some stay out; others work part-time (half of the 18% pay gap is down to the fact far more women work part-time than men); and those who return to full-time work seldom catch up with where the men have got to in their absence. Rather than huffing about BBC pay, the politicians “ought to take a sober look at the economics of British families”.

“Lord knows, I like a bit of saucy gossip as much as the next man,” says Sam Leith. But I “baulk” at eavesdropping on the late The UK’s best mermaids The Diana Diana, Princess of Wales, “spaffing on about her love life”. This gathered in Northampton weekend, Channel 4 will broadcast a 25-year-old recording made this week to vie for the title tapes are just by Diana’s voice coach, in which she complained that Prince of Miss Mermaid UK. All Charles was a dud in the sack, said his seduction technique was entrants were required to be tittle-tattle “urgh”, and claimed that his own mother described him as aged 18-32, and competent in water – but top mermaids Sam Leith “hopeless”. Channel 4 says the broadcast is a “legitimate addition to the historical record”. “Codswallop.” This is nothing but have diving qualifications. “If you want to be a London Evening Standard “tittle-tattle” about a man who went through an “unimaginably horrible divorce”, then lost the mother of his children in a tragic professional, it is essential accident, and who has since remarried and built a happy family that you train as a free life. So what if he was “sexually gauche in his early 30s? Most of diver,” explained Grace us were.” Which of us would survive a “post-mortem, offered Page, the 2016 champion. with in-the-moment malice, on the shortcomings of our younger “I’ve always had a passion selves”? It’s unfair on Diana, too. Her testimony on these tapes is for singing, and since a “cast in amber”. She can’t moderate it. She never got the chance young age I’ve loved having to make peace and move on. She’s dead. Shame on Channel 4. long, naturally blonde hair, and the sea fascinates me.” There are really only two types of politicians, says Philip Collins: She stressed that it’s not just those calling for more of the same, and those who spin the exciting a beauty pageant: Miss Our politicians line that it’s “time for change”. And the trouble with our current Mermaid International is dreary era is that it conspicuously lacks the latter kind, even also about raising awareness have robbed us though history shows we desperately need them. Clement Attlee of marine conservancy. pushed the welfare state, Harold Wilson hymned “the white heat of the future Dull twinned with Boring of the technological revolution”, Margaret Thatcher embodied the years ago; now Bland has got Philip Collins idea of “a new nation of enterprise”. Even David Cameron, unlike in on the act. The union of his saturnine predecessor, Gordon Brown, sought to project an dreary towns began in 2012, The Times image of “modernity”. But the present clutch of politicians? They when a resident of Dull, in all want to turn back the clock. Theresa May, “forlornly accepting Perthshire, visited Boring we have rarely had it so bad”, longs for the 1950s; Jeremy Corbyn during a trip to Oregon. The wants to go back to the 1970s; John McDonnell, his deputy, to towns saw a chance to boost 1917. Nobody is coming up with ideas on how to overcome the tourism; and last month Bland, in Australia, was formally job threats posed by automation; or how we can exploit advances welcomed into “The League of in genetics or nano-technology. The prize awaits the politician or Extraordinary Communities”. party who makes the future “sound joyful rather than worrying”.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK

Best articles: Europe NEWS 17

One can see why American politicians are livid with Vladimir Putin for interfering in the US election, RUSSIA says Benjamin Bidder. Even so, they might have consulted their allies before “declaring economic war” on Russia. A new bill, passed almost unanimously in the House of Representatives, authorises The US is criminal lawsuits against any fi rms continuing to do business with Russia’s energy sector, notably those helping build the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which will transport gas to Europe. The bill makes shooting itself no bones about the advantages to the US: it will boost its own gas exports to Europe and “create American jobs” – at the expense of European energy fi rms, which will be hit hard. But trying in the foot to “force Russia to its knees” is counterproductive: it will just make Russians rally round their Der Spiegel president; what Moscow political analysts refer to as “defensive patriotism”. Nor is it in America’s (Hamburg) interests for Russia to fall into deep crisis. The new middle class that started to emerge during the economic boom in Putin’s fi rst decade is the best check on Putin’s absolutism: it hates being fobbed off with “bad schools” and with having to endure all those “lies on television”. If the US wants to hurt Putin, it should help Russia’s economy grow: that poses a far bigger risk to him than lasting poverty. No, this bill is a serious mistake: we can only hope that President Trump refuses to sign it.

Germans are rightly squeamish about politicians GERMANY parading their infants in the media, says Anna Sauerbrey: the children may then suffer unwanted Using children media attention for the rest of their lives. The sight of Left Party founder Oskar Lafontaine pictured as pawns in a in 1999 with his two-year-old son is still recalled years later, precisely because such abuses are so rare. power game But now Frauke Petry, co-chair of the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), has caused Der Tagesspiegel widespread dismay by breaking the taboo. Petry was (Berlin) forced to take a backseat when AfD’s support collapsed from 15% to 8% at the start of the year. In May, she gave birth to her fi fth child, and now she’s trying to make a comeback with a campaign poster of her and her baby, with the slogan: “And what’s your reason to fi ght for Germany?” The message is clear: good Germans should be driving up the ethnic German birth rate to stop the country being taken over by Muslim immigrants, something the childless Angela Merkel cannot do. This repugnant use of her baby as a pawn in her power games marks a new low for Petry.

Kosovo has become a hotbed of Islamist extremism, says Krsto Lazarevic. The tiny Balkan country, KOSOVO whose population is largely comprised of Muslim ethnic Albanians, is studded with mosques that preach the Salafist strain of militant Islam shared by al-Qa’eda and Isis. Hundreds of Kosovars have A country gone to Syria and Iraq to join extremist groups. Yet Kosovars also love the US. There’s a statue of Bill Clinton in the capital, Priština, a mark of gratitude for the 1999 Nato bombing campaign that radicalised by drove Serbian forces out of Kosovo, and resulted in it gaining independence from Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, of which it was formerly a province. So why are so many Kosovars being radicalised? Saudi Arabia The short answer is Saudi Arabia: it has poured money into Kosovo, spreading its radical version of Islam by building schools and mosques and importing Salafist clerics. In a few short years, previously Die Welt secular Kosovo “was transformed into a Salafist stronghold in Europe”. Muslims in Kosovo had (Berlin) been barely observant for centuries, and “their ignorance about Islam made them more vulnerable to indoctrination”. Now the imam in Priština’s largest mosque is facing prosecution for promoting jihad. Many have already done so. “The threat they pose extends beyond Kosovo’s borders.” Erdogan’s “outlandish” war on the press It is a terrible irony, said Amberin Zaman in Al Monitor power in 2002, its columnist Kadri Gürsel, now on trial, (Washington DC), that 24 July – celebrated by Turkish warned of the danger posed by Gülenist infiltration of the journalists as the day press censorship was first lifted in Turkey judiciary. Another of the accused is Ahmet Sik, a well-known – should now prove to be a landmark day in President Erdogan’s investigative journalist who wrote a book exposing the campaign to reimpose it. This 24 July marked the start of the pernicious nature of Gülenist influence. Police stumbled upon trial, on “outlandish” terror-related charges, of 17 journalists the book manuscript during a raid in 2011, said Cumhuriyet and managers of the celebrated newspaper Cumhuriyet, journalist Mine Kirikkanat in La Croix (Paris), and as Erdogan Turkey’s last remaining opposition daily. The defendants are and Gülen were at that time firm pals, Sik was sent to jail. But in accused of supporting pro-Kurdish terrorists and/or of backing 2013, when the AKP broke with the Gülenists, he was cleared the movement led by the preacher Fethullah Gülen, which the and his book published. So why on Earth is he now accused of government says was complicit in last year’s abortive coup. This being a Gülen follower? “Kafka himself couldn’t have dreamed is just the latest episode in Erdogan’s persecution of journalists. this up.” It makes Turkey look like a “banana republic”. At least 150 are behind bars, a higher number than in any other country – although, of course, he insists they aren’t journalists, By coaxing businessmen to buy up news outlets in exchange for but “murderers, fraudsters, thieves and child molesters”. juicy government contracts, Erdogan has effectively “bought” more than two-thirds of Turkey’s media, said Aydin Engin in It’s bizarre to see Cumhuriyet accused of involvement with Libération (Paris). So Turkey now has to put up with what terrorism, said Serkan Demirtas in Hürriyet (Istanbul), as it has Turks call “penguin” media, a reference to the occasion during always strongly denounced it. Indeed, the paper’s loyalty to the 2013 Gezi Park protests when a TV station ran a film about secular, democratic values has made it the target of terror penguins instead of reporting police violence. Cumhuriyet has attacks. The notion that it’s in cahoots with the Gülenist been the exception as it’s managed by the journalists themselves. movement is equally fatuous. Soon after Erdogan’s AKP won But it seems to have come to the end of the road.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK

Best articles: International NEWS 19

O.J. Simpson is still a thorn in America’s side “What to feel, now that we know memorabilia. This was the trade that O.J. Simpson soon will be a free man,” took him to the Vegas hotel room, to asked Eric Deggans on NPR.org. Last confront dealers who were trying to week a Nevada parole board ordered sell his stuff. A dispute ensued: “there his release from prison, after he had was a lot of shouting”, but not much served nine years of a 33-year sentence else. “Some guns were flashed, though for stealing his own sports memorabilia none were fired.” Local law enforce- from a Las Vegas hotel in 2007: he had ment went for Simpson, and he was been found guilty of charges including sentenced to a “wildly excessive” 33 armed robbery, kidnapping and assault years – clearly “payback” for his 1995 with a deadly weapon. The former acquittal. It was wrong technically, but American football star, now aged 70, not morally. This is a man who will walk free in October. The news “literally got away with murder”. He created another “media firestorm”. “belongs in prison”. Be sensible, said It feels as if Simpson “is the thorn Simpson: “a conflict-free life”? Dave Zirin in The Nation. Simpson America will never quite extract from was due for parole; he is very unlikely its side – living proof of our tangled, twisted struggle with to commit more crimes. Yes, it was galling to see him claim he’d celebrity, wealth, big media, criminal justice and race”. “led a conflict-free life”, as if he’d never been tried for murder or convicted of battering his wife. But the decision was “correct”. The irony is that Simpson was acquitted of a crime of which he was almost certainly guilty, and convicted of a crime of which More than 20 years on, the “trial of the century” still fascinates he was innocent, said Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker. In and infuriates, said John Diaz in the San Francisco Chronicle. 1995, against all the evidence, he was cleared of murdering his Simpson really did change the nation. His arrest and prosecution ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Two years began our country’s “24/7 absorption” in the news, and later, in a civil trial, he was found liable for the murders and revealed the breadth of America’s racial schism, with most black ordered to pay the families $33.5m. He has paid only a fraction people thinking he’d been framed and most whites believing of this; he moved to Florida, where state laws protected his him guilty. No “fleeting 1990s obsession”, the Simpson trial assets. But he became a “pariah”, and was reduced to selling his “jolted American culture in ways that reverberate today”.

UNITED STATES Of all President Trump’s blunders, the biggest may have been “choosing Mike Pence as his running mate”, says Steve Chapman. The investigation into the president’s Russian links, along with his erratic behaviour, make impeachment a “real possibility”. And the likelihood is increased because The vice Pence, who would replace him, is a credible option. During Watergate, Richard Nixon had insurance policies in the form of two highly fl awed vice-presidents: fi rst, Spiro Agnew, loathed by the majority Trump may of Democrats, and then – after Agnew resigned over a bribery charge – Gerald Ford, then widely regarded as “decent but dumb”. For any president, “the more unthinkable a vice-president is for the come to regret top job”, the better. But most Republicans fi nd the pious Pence eminently thinkable. A canny operator, Chicago Tribune he’s beloved by Christian conservatives and has good relations with Congress. Democrats see Pence as a “right-wing puritan”, but would prefer him to “an unpredictable, thin-skinned narcissist” who might nuke North Korea or Iran. In the near future, both parties may gaze on Pence and say, “What are we waiting for?” On that day, Trump may wish he’d picked “Chris Christie or Ted Cruz”.

PAKISTAN Pakistan’s Supreme Court last week disqualified Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from office, says Huma Yusuf. But as we waited for the judgment, we were given a horrifying glimpse of how justice operates in our country at a lower level. It was revealed that a panchayat – a village council – in A horrifying Muzaffarabad, a suburb of Multan, had ordered the rape of a 16-year-old girl because her brother had been accused of raping another girl, aged 12. The punishment was entrusted to the alleged way to achieve victim’s brother, and carried out in front of the council on 18 July. Fifteen years after the notorious case of Mukhtar Mai, who was gang-raped on the orders of a panchayat, to avenge the reported “justice” actions of her brother, little has changed. Laws were passed then to outlaw panchayats. Sadly, most Dawn Pakistanis still see the law as “compromised and backlogged” – hence the appeal of informal justice. (Karachi) In this case, the police apparently proposed an “exchange marriage” whereby the victims would be married to their rapists. Only now, belatedly, has a proper investigation been launched into the whole affair: 24 members of the 27-strong council have been arrested. It seems that “more women will have to suffer before justice becomes less difficult to access for those who most need it”.

CHINA “Tensions between India and China are beginning to boil,” says The Japan Times. A crisis began in the Himalayas in June, when Chinese troops entered the Doklam plateau, at the junction of Bhutan, China and India, to build a road on land claimed by Bhutan. Bhutan asked for Indian military Sabre-rattling assistance; India obliged. New Delhi argues that it ought to have been consulted before boundaries were adjusted: it is worried about Chinese control of the Siliguri Corridor, a slice of land linking that could lead India’s northeastern states to the rest of the country. China insists that Doklam is Chinese, and has demanded Indian withdrawal from Bhutan. The temperature is still rising. Chinese forces have held to war live-fire exercises in Doklam, making an “accidental conflict” more likely. The underlying issue is The Japan Times “status and influence in South Asia”: both nations believe they are the region’s rightful leader. New (Tokyo) Delhi, furthermore, is furious about China’s links to Pakistan; while China is angered by India’s support for the Dalai Lama and its security ties to Japan and the US. Let us hope that cool heads and self-interest prevail: China-India trade is now worth $72bn. But the world should be concerned at this sabre-rattling between two nuclear-armed superpowers. “Water boils faster at high altitudes.”

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What the scientists are saying… The kilogram Drug advice is a “myth” had experienced both childbirth moves with If you are prescribed antibiotics, and kidney stones which was you should always complete the more painful; 12 said the kidney the times course – or should you? For stones were worse. Three said years, patients have been told the “intensity of the pain” was Sitting under three bell jars that if they fail to fi nish the similar, and four said labour in a locked vault dug into course, the bacteria may was worse. By contrast, when a hill overlooking Paris, become resistant to the drug. men who’d had kidney stones you will fi nd “the most But now scientists have were asked to imagine which important lump of metal suggested that in many cases would be worse, most said in the world”, says The this advice is wrong, and that childbirth. “What’s interesting Times: the international instead, patients should stop is that when a woman goes into standard kilogram. Since taking the drugs when they feel labour, she will rapidly get all 1889, this small platinum better. In a comment piece in sorts of painkillers, but with and iridium cylinder has the British Medical Journal, kidney stones a lot of people defined the mass of every- ten leading experts say that “the just have to suffer,” said Saiful thing, everywhere. It’s so idea that stopping antibiotic Miah, author of the study, precious, it has only been treatment early encourages published in the Journal of Pain taken out once every 40 antibiotic resistance is not Research. Kidney stones are years, so that replica supported by evidence, while Alexander Fleming: misleading? small hard mineral masses that kilos, kept in other places, taking antibiotics for longer form in the kidney, and then can be compared against than necessary increases the risk of resistance”. pass down the ureter to the bladder – which is it. But soon, the kilogram Though some bacteria can become resistant if when they start to cause pain. If the patient isn’t will be just a kilogram, antibiotics are not taken for long enough, the operated on, to shatter or remove the stones, as instead of linking the ones that most commonly make people ill may that process can take two to four weeks. mass of everything to it, become resistant with prolonged exposure. scientists will link it to a Oxford professor Tim Peto said he was taught Dramatic fall in sperm count number familiar to about the importance of fi nishing the course as Sperm counts in the Western world have fallen theoretical physicists, if a student, but that when he looked into the by almost 60% in the past 40 years, a major not to laymen: the Planck scientific basis of this idea, he found it originated new study claims. The research, based on data constant (6.62607004 × in a speech given by Alexander Fleming in 1945, collected from almost 200 studies between 1973 10-34 m2 kg / s). in which he talked about a patient who didn’t and 2011, found that in men in Europe, North They say the current use “enough” penicillin, and passed a lethally America, Australia and New Zealand, there has system, while enjoyably drug-resistant strain of bacteria to his wife. Yet been a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration, simple to understand, has the streptococcus bacteria Fleming was referring and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count. Hagai two fl aws: the kilogram is to has never been shown to become resistant to Levine, the Israeli scientist who led the research, not easily accessible (in the penicillin. “This is slow-motion fake news,” said his fi ndings were the “canary in the coal Paris vault), and it is not Peto told The Independent. “It’s an urban mine” for male health. Although this study perfectly stable: the original myth.” However, he accepts that more research didn’t look into reasons for the fall, previous kilo now has fractionally is needed. The NHS said it would not be research has linked sperm quality to everything less mass than its copies. changing its guidance, as patients may “feel from stress, obesity and maternal smoking to The new kilogram standard better” before the infection has been eradicated. exposure to pesticides and bisphenol A – will avoid these problems compounds used to make certain plastics. It’s by drawing on universal The one thing that’s worse than labour interesting, Levine noted, that sperm counts are constants – “things like They say that nothing compares to the pain of not falling nearly as fast in the developing world. atoms and, more childbirth – but there may be an exception: “I think health authorities should be concerned,” specifically, atomic kidney stones. Urologists from the Imperial he said. “We have a huge public health problem frequencies, the speed of College Healthcare Trust asked 19 women who that was until now under the radar.” light”, said Jon Pratt of the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. Moody, selfish and volatile… dogs can also be tiresome teenagers Replacing the kilo will It’s not just teenagers who are prone to being moody, volatile, complete a modernisation overdramatic and selfish. Dogs go through a distinct process that has seen the adolescence too, new research reveals. A major study of dogs – metre (once measured to identify those that would be suitable for training as guide dogs against a length of metal – has found evidence that they go through developmental kept in a climate-controlled phases remarkably similar to that of young humans. “Many owners [reported that] their dog went through a ‘teenage’ phase, vault) redefined as the typically at around eight months,” said Naomi Harvey, a distance travelled by research fellow at Nottingham University’s veterinary school. light in a vacuum in “Previously learnt commands are forgotten, the dogs become 1/299,792,458 of a second; very impulsive and easily distracted, and their behaviour and a second (which used becomes a bit erratic. Sounds familiar? The thing to remember is to be 1/84,600th of a day) that it won’t last forever.” become “the duration of The main purpose of the study, funded by the Guide Dogs for 9,192,631,770 periods of the Blind Association, was to work out how much of a dog’s the radiation corresponding behaviour depends on its upbringing, as opposed to breed or DNA: the researchers concluded that the treatment of the dog, especially as a puppy, was the most important factor. They also noted that to the transition between people’s beliefs about the various dog breeds – that spaniels are playful, and pit bulls are inherently the two hyperfine levels of vicious, and so on – are largely wrong. Breeding may play a part, but it’s how dogs are handled that the ground state of the really determines their character, say the scientists. caesium 133 atom”.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 22 NEWS Talking points

Pick of the week’s Electric cars: the coming revolution The age of the traditional 6,535 charging stations. Gossip motor car seems to be This fi gure will need to “drawing to a close”, said rise sharply, into the Anthony Scaramucci’s brief tenure at the White House The Independent. Last hundreds of thousands. may have taken a toll on week, the Government And the widespread his private life. The former announced a plan to ban adoption of electric hedge fund manager the sale of all new petrol- vehicles will put a massive spent just ten days as the or diesel-powered cars and strain on the national grid communications director vans in the UK by 2040. at a time when fossil fuels before being sacked on The commitment – which are supposed to be being Monday. In that time, it follows a similar pledge phased out. Vehicle emerged that his wife from France, Norway and taxation will also need Deidre (below, with A small step towards cleaner air Scaramucci), had filed for India, and Volvo’s to change: lost fuel duty divorce while nine months’ announcement that it would only make will leave a hole in the budget worth billions. pregnant. She then gave electric or hybrid cars from 2019 – is part of birth to their son, James, the Government’s clean air plan. However, it The Government’s plan has a “bold, vaguely last week. Scaramucci represents a rather “distant” aspiration, since futuristic ring” to it, said The Guardian. But it missed the birth, as he was at present, electric car sales make up less than merely reflects “the current trajectory of the at a Boy Scouts Jamboree 1% of the market. On a number of fronts, motor industry” – which is already going electric with Donald Trump. He Britain does not seem to be ready for the – while “masterfully distracting us” from the reportedly sent her a text “electric car revolution”. immediate problem that needs to be tackled: saying: “Congratulations, I’ll pray for our child.” “the air pollution that chokes our cities”. Tens As the proud owner of an electric car, I can of thousands of people die prematurely each confirm that, said Isabel Hardman on her year in this country because of it; the UK has Spectator blog. Going electric makes you feel failed to meet EU air quality targets since 2010. “smug”, but you suffer from “range anxiety”: There are some good aspects to the latest plan, the nervousness felt when you wonder whether with funding provided to make buses, HGVs your battery will run out before the next and black cabs cleaner. But it shies away from charging point. “It’s basically like driving an the simplest way of tackling the problem: iPhone. You’re constantly checking your battery introducing “clean air zones”, which polluting level.” Even a rapid charge, at the new service vehicles are charged for entering. These are station charging points, takes half an hour, and unpopular with motorists, and don’t sound as on my car it only adds 70 miles. Delivering the exciting as the Government’s vision of a infrastructure and support needed will certainly “clean, green” future. They would, however, The chant of “Oh, Jeremy be hard, said Richard Brooks and Jason Begley “mean purer air and healthier residents – not Corbyn” – to the tune of The on The Conversation. At present, the UK has in 23 years’ time, but now”. White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army – has become the anthem of Corbyn-mania. But the first time the Labour Employment tribunals: a victory for justice? leader heard it, he thought he was being heckled. For years, spurious legal actions brought by principle (of charging fees), but whether the Corbyn was making a disgruntled workers were the bane of small executive (in the form of then justice secretary speech at a music festival in business owners’ lives, said The Times. Back in Chris Grayling) exceeded its powers by failing to May when he heard some 2013, the coalition government did something seek parliamentary approval for a policy that of the 20,000-strong crowd very sensible to ease this problem: it introduced restricts fundamental rights. “As Lord Reed shouting what he thought fees for bringing cases to employment tribunals, observed, the right of access to justice is not an were “hostile remarks”. ranging from £390 to £1,200. The idea was that idea recently imported from Europe, but dates to “People go to music successful litigants would be refunded, but that our own Magna Carta.” The policy has failed festivals for a reason, and it’s not to listen to the likelihood of losing this money would deter on every level, said the FT. The fees put off so speeches,” he told the vexatious or frivolous claimants – and that some many claimants, they only covered 11% of the Islington Tribune. But “as of the cost of the tribunals would be transferred cost of tribunals, rather than the third expected. I looked at the people who from the taxpayer to their users. It worked: the And the success rate of claims has gone down, were chanting, I realised number of cases, then almost 200,000 a year, not up, suggesting they haven’t deterred baseless they were all smiling. And has fallen by 70%. But now, in a case brought cases. No one is saying there shouldn’t be fees, if a guy is chanting and by the union Unison, the Supreme Court has but they can’t be set so high that they put justice wearing a Corbyn T-shirt, ruled that the fees are discriminatory and out of the reach of the people – the low-paid, the it’s probably OK.” unlawful – and there is talk of the Government newly unemployed – who need it most. A new video by Momentum having to pay £27m in fees back. It’s a blow to – the hard-left campaign the taxpayer, said the Daily Mail, but the real Restricting access to justice doesn’t just harm group – attacks the middle victims will be the business owners now facing a individuals, said The Guardian. If employment classes for getting jobs “tidal wave of litigation” – a rush of claims that rights granted by law are not upheld, and through nepotism. But this will only intensify next year, when the policy of clarified, it harms society as a whole. This battle bourgeois sin is not obliging larger fi rms to reveal their gender pay is not won, said Afua Hirsch in the same paper. unknown on the Left, says “gaps” comes into force. It’s hard not to Claimants who get to court, and win, still face the Daily Mail. Indeed, conclude that unelected judges are meddling in a hurdle: only half ever get all the compensation Jeremy Corbyn’s son Seb matters that should be left to ministers. they are awarded. But it’s a victory all the same, now works for his shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, one made all the sweeter by seeing a government while John Prescott’s son Actually, it was the ministers who overstepped that “has in the past claimed a monopoly on David works for Corbyn. their authority, said The Daily Telegraph. As patriotism receive a stern lecture on the basics of with Article 50, the issue was not just about the English law and the UK constitution”.

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 Talking points NEWS 23

Charlie Gard: the force of parental love Wit & “If Charlie Gard had been born then refused to let them take 40 years ago,” said Peter Wilby him home for his fi nal days. Wisdom in the New Statesman, “there Instead, he died in a hospice would have been no doubt last week, his parents mourning “It’s strange how I meet about what would, and should, that they had been denied their many people who fell in happen.” Doctors treating “final wish”. Judges and medical with the wrong crowd, but a brain-damaged baby with experts – people “who have never any member of the a terminal wasting disease never smelled the specific wrong crowd itself.” would have told his parents that perfume of Charlie’s neck”, Prison doctor and author “nothing more could be done”, never “held him tight or wept Theodore Dalrymple, and their son would have died and prayed over his welfare” – quoted in The Times “peacefully and unremarked”. If decided his fate, instead of “In politics, there had been a doctor on the the people who loved him before considering other side of the world willing to most: his parents. malevolence, always try an experimental treatment, assume incompetence.” Charlie’s parents would never Parental love is not always wise Republican politician have known about it; and “even or altruistic, said Janice Turner Steve Duprey, quoted in the if they had, they would have Charlie and his “battling” parents in The Times. On the contrary: New Statesman deferred to British doctors”. But it is “the most selfish love of attitudes have changed, thanks to “medical all”. It is powered by the Darwinian need to “Sometimes the biggest progress, social media, globalisation and the perpetuate our genes, and by a kind of griefs are best left to settle.” decline of deference”. These days, people believe existential fear for ourselves. In a post-religious Libby Purves in The Times in medical miracles, and search the world for world, “our children are our household gods”. “After you’ve been them using the internet. Yet at the same time, If they die, “we don’t believe we will see them first-rate at something, they distrust the judgement of doctors, and are again in some better place: they are just gone no matter what, it kind prepared to go to court to challenge them. And and we are left undone”. So we will do anything of takes the kick out of it usually ends in “heartache” for everyone. to hang onto them. The Gards dragged a being second-rate.” children’s hospital through the courts for fi ve John Updike, quoted Connie Yates and Chris Gard, Charlie’s months, diverted resources away from babies in The Observer “battling, devoted parents”, have done nothing with a better chance of life, and whipped up but “behave like human beings in an a media storm that resulted in death threats “Know the rules well, so you increasingly inhuman world”, said Giles Fraser against doctors. All the while, their son lay can break them effectively.” in The Guardian. The state – via the NHS and strapped to machinery, unable to move or Dalai Lama, quoted the courts – denied them the opportunity to take breathe unaided, dosed with morphine to in The Times their baby overseas for experimental treatment; alleviate his suffering. The “pure force of “Every decision is liberating, ordered that his life support be withdrawn; and parental love” can be terribly cruel. even if it leads to disaster.” Elias Canetti, quoted Chlorinated chickens: heading our way? on The Browser “Some of the most successful Of all the baseless scare stories of cheap US chicken still people I’ve met are some pumped out by the Remain banned, wondered Dominic of the least successful brigade, chlorinated chickens Lawson in The Sunday Times. human beings I’ve met.” is surely the daftest, said One can only conclude that this Marlon Brando, quoted Stephen Glover in the Daily is an example of “producer-led in The Times Mail. Until recently, few protectionism” masquerading “To be born is to be journalists had even heard as “concern for the well-being wrecked on an island.” of the American practice of of the consumer”. Author J.M. Barrie, washing chicken carcasses quoted on LitHub.com in chlorine, to rid them of It’s not as simple as that, said harmful bacteria. Now, the Processing birds in Hungary George Monbiot in The “The surest sign that spectre of these fowl making Guardian. The EU outlaws intelligent life exists their way into British supermarkets is being chlorine washing because it wants farmers to elsewhere in the universe presented as a major threat to life in post-Brexit invest in sanitation throughout the birds’ lives – is that it has never tried Britain – and even a reason not to do a trade not just dunk them in bleach when they’re dead. to contact us.” deal with the US. Never mind that America is Admittedly, it’s not clear that our meat factories Calvin and Hobbes, quoted our biggest single trading partner, and that the produce cleaner birds: levels of food-borne in the Montreal Gazette trade in chlorine chicken (which Americans have illness are much the same in the EU and the US. been eating with no ill effect for years) would But if we do a deal with the US, chlorine may be likely make up a fraction of a per cent of UK-US the least of our worries. Overall, standards in Statistics of the week trade. When the anti-Brexit press fi nds a way to the US are lower, because while the EU only The number of people in spread doom and gloom about our future allows processes known to be safe, the US their 90s with a valid driving outside the EU, it cannot resist running with it. permits anything not proven dangerous. In any licence has passed 100,000 deal with the US, we’ll face pressure to accept all for the first time. For the many Brits who visit the US, I have good manner of cheap foods (such as beef treated DVLA/The Daily Telegraph news, said Rob Lyons on Spiked. The European with growth hormones) that the EU has deemed English people walked an Food Safety Authority examined chlorine unsafe, said Joanna Blythman in the same paper. average of 95 miles last year; chicken in 2005, and concluded that it presents With our farmers anxious to compete, the result a decline of 19% since 2002. no risk to public health (we get more chlorine may be a race to the bottom on both animal The Times from our drinking water). So why is the import welfare and safety standards.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 24 NEWS Sport

Swimming: “the very best breaststroker who ever lived” It says something about Adam Peaty’s “super- makes you slower.” Peaty chose to be faster. Since human standards” that his second gold medal of then, he has undergone a brutal training regime, the World Aquatic Championships felt “like said Craig Lord in The Times. Six days a week, he something of an anticlimax”, said Daniel Schofield wakes up at 6am and spends four hours in the in The Daily Telegraph. The British swimmer’s pool, swimming up to 7.5 miles. He then spends time of 25.99 seconds in the 50m breaststroke last 90 minutes in the gym, where he can bench-press Wednesday may have been the second-fastest in a staggering 132kg. His exercises are famously history; just 0.04 seconds behind the world record extreme. He doesn’t do regular press-ups: he does that he’d set the previous day. But he has raised them with a man on his back, or throws his whole the bar so high that a new record is expected body into the air between repetitions. “whenever he dives in the pool”. Still, Peaty not only won that race but, two days earlier, took gold Peaty doesn’t just train hard, said Sam in the 100m breaststroke with a Championship Cunningham in the Daily Mail. He has record of 57.47 seconds. At just 22, Peaty has “revolutionised” the breaststroke. It’s typically already won five World Championship golds, considered a slow technique, yet Peaty manages to more than any other British swimmer in history. extract “pure speed, pure power”. In the words of Peaty: revolutionised the stroke his arch-rival, South African swimmer Cameron Watching Peaty swim, it’s hard to believe that as a van der Burgh, “it’s like a metamorphosis between child he was so afraid of water that he screamed “every time he butterfly and breast”. It helps, too, that Peaty has “the perfect got in the bath”, said BBC Sport online. He conquered that fear, physique”, said Andy Bull in The Guardian: “large hands, large but as a teenager he lacked ambition, partying hard at the feet, and hyper-mobile, double-jointed knees and ankles”. That, expense of his swimming career. In 2012, however, Peaty was combined with his “lunatic commitment”, has made him “the about to go out for the night – “to get drunk in a field”, as he very best breaststroker who ever lived”. In the 50m, he boasts the recalls – when he saw that his friend Craig Benson had made the six fastest times in history; in the 100m, the ten fastest. No other 100m breaststroke semi-finals in the Olympics. It was at that swimmer has completed the 100m in under 58 seconds; Peaty is moment that he decided to turn his life around. “You make two “already thinking about how to swim it in under 57”. At this choices in life,” he later said: “one that makes you faster, one that point, he doesn’t have competitors – “he has flotsam”. How social media is changing football When Romelu Lukaku joined Manchester United across social media, more than almost any English for £75m last month, it was confirmed in true 2017 side. And that’s why, when he returned to Everton fashion, said Jonathan Northcroft in The Sunday last month, the club’s tweet announcing the transfer Times: in a video posted to social media. The clip went viral in Southeast Asia and South America, shows the striker standing beside a swimming pool, regions the club “could never reach before”. with a mansion behind him, then walking over to embrace his new teammate, Paul Pogba. Pogba put Yet it’s the sponsors who may benefit most from it online, and within four hours it had been viewed players’ online followings, said Kurt Badenhausen on 1.4 million times. Welcome to the new world of Forbes. Just look at Cristiano Ronaldo. The Real football transfers, said Ian Herbert in the Daily Mail. Madrid forward has a total of 285 million followers, Clubs don’t just sign a footballer for his skills; “a big almost twice as many as any other player. Many of social media presence” is so commercially valuable his posts mention his big sponsors – the likes of Nike that it can “drive up a player’s fee and salary”. When and Tag Heuer. And according to one estimate, each United forked out £89m for Pogba last year, making Pogba’s popular Instagram of those posts is worth the equivalent of £1.2m in him the world’s most expensive player, they surely advertising. No wonder Nike recently paid him a had his online presence in mind: with 16.8 million followers, he is reported $1bn (£760m) for a lifetime sponsorship deal. That the most popular Premier League footballer on Instagram. Wayne already looks like a bargain: from Ronaldo’s social media posts Rooney’s reach is even bigger: he has 51.6 million followers alone, the firm will make back its money in just two years.

Roland-Jones’s extraordinary Test debut Sporting headlines In the third Test, England sixes. After this “extraordinary” Formula One Sebastian Vettel saw off South Africa with a start to his Test career, the won the Hungarian Grand “copybook victory”, said Vic bowler will “take some shifting Prix. Lewis Hamilton came Marks in The Guardian. The from the side”. fourth, after honouring a “irrepressible” Ben Stokes Roland-Jones is a promise to let his Mercedes scored a superb century, then “throwback”, said Simon teammate Valtteri Bottas bowled out two batsmen in Hughes in The Times. He is overtake him. two balls. Moeen Ali went “an old-fashioned, seam-up Rugby league Wigan beat one better, “polishing off” the bowler” who “ploughs a Salford 27-14 in the match with a hat-trick – the first persistent furrow on a steady Challenge Cup semi-final. time a bowler has dismissed Roland-Jones: took eight wickets line and length”. It’s a no-frills In the final, on 26 August, three batsmen with consecutive kind of bowling: at 6ft 7in tall, they will face Hull, who beat deliveries in an Oval Test. But the match really Roland-Jones makes the most of his height, Leeds 43-24. belonged to Middlesex bowler Toby Roland- and of his repetitive action, “plugging patiently Football Manchester United Jones. Making his Test debut at the age of 29, away at the batsman’s concentration” until they signed Chelsea midfielder he took eight wickets – the highest tally by an make a mistake. He was fortunate, however, Nemanja Matic for £40m. England debutant since 1962. He bowled out to make his debut at the Oval, in English six of South Africa’s top seven, and twice took conditions ideally suited to his technique. When Golf Rory McIlroy split from the wicket of their star batsman, Hashim Amla; he bowls in Australia later this year, in The his caddie of nine years, he was handy with the bat, too, hitting three Ashes, he won’t find it quite so easy. J.P. Fitzgerald. © INSTAGRAM

THE WEEK 5 August 2017

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UP TO 40% OFF HUNDREDS OF DESIGNS LETTERS 27 Pick of the week’s correspondence

Failing Africa attention to the fact that they To The Guardian Heroes of Passchendaele shared a rigorous intellectual It does not matter to a starving discipline, no doubt acquired African child, or an expectant To The Daily Telegraph while studying to become mother likely to die at Your report on the death of Major Arthur Watson at physical chemists. childbirth, whether their only Passchendaele is made more poignant by the fact that, when Trevor Phillips, BSc, ARCS relief is coming dressed as he was fatally injured, he was about to leave the trenches (chemistry), former British aid or colonialism. for the very last time, as he had just received a permanent chairman, Equality and During the colonial period, posting to Britain. Human Rights Commission all African countries were The future prime minister Anthony Eden witnessed the meeting most if not all of the incident and would later record: “We were glad he was to Real BBC talent cost of their recurrent and have the rest he had so well earned, but he insisted that he To the Scottish Times development budgets without must come up the line once more to say goodbye to us. Further to your stories and recourse to Britain. But almost This he did, leaving his horse a mile or so in the rear. Once letters regarding BBC salaries, immediately after indepen- mounted, he would never see the War again. Our farewells I am looking forward to being dence, tribalism, corruption, exchanged, he turned to go, when his eye fell on a package in London this week to hear military coups and population of letters, his company’s mail waiting to go down the line. the BBC Scottish Symphony growth triggered a vicious ‘Can I take those with me for the last time?’ he asked. ‘Of Orchestra at the BBC Proms. cycle of civil wars, famine and course,’ the Colonel replied with a smile. Our guest stooped Let’s say there are 70 players internal displacements. to pick up the small bundle and at that moment a shell burst in the orchestra, all of them The appalling increases in beside him. He was gravely wounded. We managed to get immensely and uniquely famine and deaths of migrants him down the line, but he died at La Clytte and was buried “talented”. The average annual in the Mediterranean Sea that there with some of his own riflemen.” salary for a British orchestral we are witnessing today are Crispin d’Apice, Gidleigh, Devon musician was recently not a result of British estimated at around £30,000, colonialism. They are a graphic To The Guardian making the probable combined and tragic demonstration of It is right that we should remember the carnage of salary bill of such an orchestra the failure of self-governance Passchendaele and the sacrifice of those who were killed about £2.1m. In other words, in Africa. The self-destructive there. Here in Wales, we will also be honouring the memory 70 brilliant musicians for one wars in the Central African of Ellis Humphrey Evans, better known by his bardic name Chris Evans. I’d like to think Republic, Burundi, South of Hedd Wyn (Blessed Peace). my licence fee is going into Sudan and Somalia, and the A shepherd on his parents’ farm, Yr Ysgwrn, near the meagre pockets of the perennial crisis in Zimbabwe, Trawsfynydd in North Wales, he was also a poet and won real BBC “talent”. are instructive. the bardic chair of the National Eisteddfod six weeks after he Ken Walton, Lochwinnoch, Sam Akaki, African Solutions was killed on 31 July 1917, at the battle of Pilckem Ridge, Renfrewshire to African Migration near Ypres. He won the chair anonymously for Yr Arwr (The Hero), one of his many war poems, but never knew that his Doubles or quit A gay bard life’s ambition had been realised. The chair was brought back To The Times To The Daily Telegraph to his farm draped in a black cloth, and can be seen today at I marked 250 A-level Greg Doran, the artistic Yr Ysgwrn, which has just reopened as a museum after economics scripts for the director of the Royal restoration. A film based on his life, Hedd Wyn, was Oxford and Cambridge board Shakespeare Company, claims nominated for the best foreign film Oscar in 1994. in 1980. When my paltry that Shakespeare may have Isobel Richards, Llangollen, Denbighshire cheque arrived, I spent it all been homosexual. This forms in an hour buying three foot part of a great tradition of passenger tickets for the Dover Shakespeare appropriation. the frame of a story enacted turned their back on maths at to Calais ferry, a small tent Every individual and interest in a certain place and time. the age of 16. Yet Parliament is and an inflatable bed, and a group claims Shakespeare as Plays are not encoded regularly called upon to make chicken biryani at a restaurant their own, and selects evidence autobiography: they are sets detailed decisions on topics in Clifton. I calculated my from the work accordingly. of propositions, of “what ifs”, such as nuclear power, the hourly wage came to about Shakespeare is not only a closet in which the audience is invited internet, environmental £7 in today’s money. I haven’t homosexual, but also a closet not only to confront their own pollution and drug testing. marked scripts since. It is Catholic, a closet atheist, a beliefs, but to live the inner Would any of us be happy drudgery, poorly paid and closet Marxist, a closet lives of other humans. to invite a classical scholar to clashes with Wimbledon. republican and a closet Leslie Albiston, Stratford- conduct our next heart surgery, Paul Thomas, Headington, feminist. According to Mr upon-Avon, Warwickshire armed with little more than the Oxford Doran, the plays contain many works of the medical homosexual characters and Scientific laws pioneer Galen in the relationships, and this suggests To The Times original Greek? Shakespeare was homosexual. The most striking aspect Even lapsed chemists The plays also contain many of your report into the like me might also point murderers, so according to this educational backgrounds of out that while the two logic Shakespeare must have our 650 MPs is that although most intellectually been a murderer, too. hundreds hold degrees in dominant European Shakespeare was a history, law and the classics, leaders of recent decades, dramatist, and dramatists fewer than 20 graduated in Margaret Thatcher and create plays with their natural sciences. It seems Angela Merkel, are imaginations. They observe hardly surprising that our female, a proper analysis human nature, then offer political leaders stumble over would discount gender as “I bloody loathe vegetarians.” models of behaviour that the sums implied by their own the secret of their success. audiences can consider within election promises when they They might, instead, draw © THE SPECTATOR

● Letters have been edited 5 August 2017 THE WEEK

ARTS 29 Review of reviews: Books

Book of the week Some of Kean’s best anecdotes are “genuinely eerie”, said James Marriott in The Times. One night in 1986, Caesar’s Last Breath 1,746 people living near Lake Nyos, by Sam Kean in Cameroon, were killed in their beds Doubleday 384pp £20 after a giant cloud of carbon dioxide The Week Bookshop £17 rose up from the lake, “suffocating everything in its path”, including all the area’s insects. The causes, even A history of air is a “problematic” today, are “somewhat mysterious”. prospect, said James McConnachie in Thankfully, Kean also revels in more The Sunday Times. What narrative light-hearted material – such as the framework can contain such a “vast story of the 19th century French and misty topic”? In Caesar’s Last “flatulist” Joseph Pujol, whose ability Breath, the US author Sam Kean largely to trumpet La Marseillaise out of his “succeeds”, thanks to his “funny, clever bottom made him a “star attraction and altogether effervescent” writing, and his knack for finding at the Moulin Rouge”. Other delightful titbits include the fact “human-interest stories that open up the science”. He begins with that Einstein once designed a fridge, and that 300 million years the “schoolroom” factoid that every breath we inhale contains a ago, the air was so full of oxygen that there were “dragonflies few particles exhaled by the dying Julius Caesar – which, the size of seagulls”. remarkably, “turns out to be true”. From there, he takes in the Some readers may find Kean’s “ultra-casual language” off- story of the Earth’s formation (“from gases, ultimately”), and the putting, said Clive Cookson in the Financial Times. As he has it, 18th century discovery that our exhalations contain carbon toes are “tootsies”, underpants are “tighty-whities”, and Pujol dioxide (thanks to a “sardonic” experiment in which a beaker of may have owed his prodigious farting abilities to “scarfing slaked lime was placed in the rafters of a church: as the preacher broccoli or chugging raw milk”. Still, “there is no denying the “talked and talked”, it precipitated a milky fluid, indicating the pleasure and indeed the wealth of scientific information” to be presence of CO2). Kean also charts the future, covering climate gained from reading Caesar’s Last Breath. “It will change forever change and nuclear fallout. Overall, air is perhaps “too diffuse a the way I think about breathing when I practise yoga, imagining subject” to be captured between covers – but this hardly matters, all the other lungs that those nitrogen and oxygen molecules since the stories are “excellent”. have visited before they enter mine.”

Devil’s Bargain by Joshua Green Novel of the week Penguin 288pp £16.99 Under The Sun The Week Bookshop £14.99 by Lottie Moggach Picador 352pp £12.99 Joshua Green’s Devil’s Bargain is an account of the The Week Bookshop £10.99 relationship “at the heart” of Donald Trump’s White House, said Ben Macintyre in The Times: Lottie Moggach’s second novel opens with arty that between the president and his “foul-mouthed”, couple Anna and Michael leaving London to live “flip-flop-wearing” chief strategist, Steve Bannon. on a “hilltop fi nca in southern Spain”, said Bannon was brought in to “galvanise” Trump’s Melissa Katsoulis in The Times. Predictably, “ailing” campaign three months before last their dream of the “good life” soon sours: November’s election. But long before that, Trump Michael leaves; and Anna, lumbered with a had come to rely on the former naval officer and house she can’t sell (the story starts in 2008), is Goldman Sachs banker for “inspiration and guidance”. Many of Trump’s forced to stay on by herself in Spain. What policies were inspired by the “anti-immigrant, Hillary-bashing” Breitbart News follows is the story of her attempt to “rebuild website, which Bannon ran until 2016. And Green reports that it was Bannon her life” – a quest that takes in a murder mystery who argued, against received opinion, that it would be a disaster for Trump to involving trafficked refugees, as well as some “tone down” his rhetoric. Instead, he advised, “let Trump be Trump”. In his “torrid” sex with a local. While this is a novel “balanced” and “informative” book, Green argues that an “unspoken deal” with a “social conscience”, it’s also a “pacy underpins the alliance: in exchange for getting Trump into the White House, beach read” whose pages “fly by”. Bannon imposed his “fully formed, internally coherent world view” on the For all its racy trappings, this is a “novel president. This is the “devil’s bargain” of the title. about loneliness”, said Emma Jane Unsworth in The “notoriously shambolic” Bannon wasn’t an obvious fit for Trump, said The Guardian. It is populated by “sad, solitary Toby Harnden in The Sunday Times. Bannon looks “like someone preparing to fi gures” – most of them expats. Yet what “lifts it spend a night on a park bench”, while Trump is a “well-groomed germophobe” from bleakness” are its insightful character who detests slobs. And while Trump was born into wealth, Bannon was raised studies and its nimble exploration of ideas about in a working-class Catholic home in Richmond, Virginia. Yet the two are “in “home, sanctuary and refuge”. Under The Sun sync” about many things, said Lloyd Green in The Guardian, such as the voters’ forces readers to confront the “bigger, harder, discontent with the status quo, and “white working-class antipathy towards colder picture” beyond “Western middle-class immigration, Islam and liberal identity politics”. Green’s “fact-filled” and lives”. It is a “pertinent tale for our times”. “breezy” book pulls the curtain back on this “symbiotic relationship”. To order these titles or any other book in print, visit www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop or speak to a bookseller on 020-3176 3835 Opening times: Mon to Fri 9am-6pm, Sat 9am-5.30pm and Sun 10am-2pm

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 30 ARTS Drama

This is not, rest assured, Bob Ciarán Hinds is “a force of Dylan the Musical, said Fiona nature” as the indebted owner Mountford in the London of the boarding house; Shirley Evening Standard. Rather, it is Henderson lends his wife, who is a “very special” play – set in suffering from dementia, an Theatre Dylan’s hometown of Duluth, “extraordinary depth and grace; Minnesota, in the 1930s – with dancing, sexual, furious”. 20 of Dylan’s songs “silkily The songs are “smartly chosen, inverwoven” into it. Playwright and sung with force and feeling Girl from the Conor McPherson says that the by an incredible cast”, agreed work is “a conversation between Sarah Crompton on WhatsOn North Country the songs and the story” – a Stage.com. But compelling as the loose tale of the lonely lives and music is, it “disrupts, rather than Music and lyrics: misbegotten loves of the owners progresses, the action”. And the Bob Dylan and residents of a down-at-heel sheer number of characters boarding house. And what a means that no story is ever fully Writer and director: magnificent conversation it is: developed. Maybe so, said Conor McPherson “beguiling and soulful and Henderson (right): “extraordinary Dominic Cavendish in The Daily quietly, exquisitely heart- depth and grace” Telegraph. But the flashes of breaking”. The Dylan songs brilliance – You Ain’t Goin’ The Old Vic, The Cut, have been “sculpted into plaintive but beautiful Nowhere heralds an outbreak of Thanksgiving new arrangements” by Simon Hale, and nearly jiving; Henderson’s “sublime closing rendition” London SE1 all are delivered “so hauntingly well by the of Forever Young – are well worth waiting for. (0844-871 7628) 20-strong company that they send shivers down They are sublime moments of “infectious, Until 7 October the spine as we hear the lyrics afresh”. almost evangelical rapture”. You don’t need to be a Dylan fan to fall for this “instant American classic”, said Ann Running time: The week’s other opening Treneman in The Times. But if you are, “there Mosquitoes National Theatre, London SE1 2hrs 30mins are moments when you can just close your eyes (020-7452 3000). Until 28 September (including interval) and melt into the night”. It should also be said Olivias Williams and Colman are “spellbinding” (albeit in a croaky whisper) that almost all the as fractious sisters – one a physicist; the other ★★★★ songs “are more enjoyable because the man in insurance – in Lucy Kirkwood’s “wonderfully himself is not singing them”. This genius show, ambitious” play set during the Higgs boson lit like a Hopper painting, is also beautiful to breakthrough (Guardian). look at; and the performances are tremendous.

There’s more than one way to Miller’s feels “one-note, her part skin a Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, rattled through”. said Dominic Cavendish in The I disagree, said Ben Brantley in Theatre Daily Telegraph. But I’ve never The New York Times: in my seen a production of Tennessee view, this thrilling Williams Williams’s 1955 “masterpiece revival “burns bright enough to of marital, familial and scorch, but also to illuminate”. Cat on a Hot sexual dysfunction down in The perfectly paired leads, Mississippi” that attacks the backed by the best ensemble I’ve Tin Roof piece with such “kit-off ever seen perform the play, bring abandon”. Australian director “combustible conviction to a Playwright: Benedict Andrews, famed for smouldering classic” that has Tennessee Williams stripping plays down to their seldom caught fire in productions primal forces, here seems in recent years. Maggie is a role Director: determined to “break the Miller “was born for: she owns Benedict Andrews phwoar-o-meter”. The male it unconditionally”. And lead, Jack O’Connell, parades O’Connell is “a revelation”, said around fully naked (or cools Christopher Hart in The Sunday Apollo Theatre, down in the centre-stage shower) Miller in a role she was born for Times. Unlike Miller’s, his “for an inordinate amount of accent wanders some way from Shaftesbury Avenue, gasp-inducing time”. And co-star Sienna Miller the Deep South (at times as far as Australia). But London W1 “does the (in)decent thing too, joining him in her he still charts a convincing path from “sozzled (0330-333 4809) birthday suit come the most unbuttoned climax nonentity” to the “profoundly sympathetic” Until 7 October the West End has seen for yonks”. figure he becomes by the end of the play. Oh, come off it, said Susannah Clapp in The Observer. “Most of the time the temperature CD of the week here wouldn’t boil an egg.” To work, this well- Lana Del Rey: Lust for Life Polydor £9.99 Running time: loved play – about a sexually confident woman, Four albums into her stellar career, New York’s 2hrs 45mins Maggie, whose alcoholic young husband, Brick, Lana Del Rey remains a mystery and “exists in (including interval) won’t sleep with her – “needs electricity, a shock a lonesome, luxurious league of her own”. Lust of brutal humour”, said Holly Williams on for Life sees her adding “zeitgeisty elements” WhatsOnStage.com. Here, it just drags. Things ★★★ to her sound without being overwhelmed by improve in the second half, but in the first, them; it’s another cracker (Guardian).

O’Connell’s performance is limply blank, while © MANUEL HARLAN; JOHAN PERSSON

Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (4 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother) Book your tickets now by calling 020-7492 9948 or visiting TheWeekTickets.co.uk

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 Film ARTS 31

Don’t be misled by the title, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. Although it may sound like a gross-out comedy, The Big Sick is actually a gentle The Big Sick romcom. Its tone is set by the wry, polite character of its stand-up comedian hero, Kumail, a thinly Dir: Michael Showalter disguised version of the actor who plays him, the 2hrs (15) Pakistani-American comic, Kumail Nanjiani. His relationship with a sparky trainee psychiatrist – Droll tale of inspired by Nanjiani’s real-life relationship with his wife, Emily, with whom he co-wrote the script – hits cross-cultural love the rocks when she learns he hasn’t dared tell his ★★★ orthodox Muslim parents about her. Then she’s laid low by a mysterious illness, and Kumail must win over her parents (Holly Hunter and Ray Romano), who are also pretty suspicious of him. The message of this excellent romcom is both “obvious and wise”, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out. “When you want someone, you often have to woo their parents.” It’s a nice tale, but not nearly as progressive as gushing US critics claim, said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail. Indeed, I found the suggestion that few young Pakistani women would be modern enough for Kumail bordering on the racist. The Big Sick has its faults, said Jimi Famurewa in Empire – yet thanks to its witty script, it still makes for an “edgy and hilarious” tale of cross-cultural love.

“The Wall sets itself a bravura challenge,” said Nigel Andrews in the Financial Times. How do you create The Wall a gripping thriller that is essentially focused on one character: a wounded, desperate American soldier Dir: Doug Liman (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) in war-torn Iraq who is 1hr 28mins (15) targeted by an enemy sniper, and has only a broken piece of wall behind which to shelter? Its solution is Thriller set in to ratchet up the tension by having the assailant make war-torn Iraq radio contact with our hero: a series of diabolical mind games ensue. I loved the premise of this film so much that I was willing it to work, said Kevin Maher ★★ in The Times. Sadly, it’s let down by a “shockingly poor” script from novice screenwriter Dwain Worrell. At one point, the unseen antagonist actually comes out with that hoary old line: “We are not so different, you and I.” The film’s other mistake is to try to persuade us that its plot is a metaphor for American involvement in Iraq as a whole, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. It’s a grandiose ambition that falls flat, wasting a promising set-up and an impressively committed performance from Taylor-Johnson.

Raking in $30m in its opening weekend in the US, Girls Trip has already proved something once thought impossible, said Ed Potton in The Times: that Girls Trip a film with a mainly black cast can be a commercial Dir: Malcolm D. Lee hit. It’s just a shame this raunchy comedy isn’t terribly 2hrs 2mins (15) funny. “It tries very hard to be, which is probably the root of the problem.” The premise sees a lifestyle guru (Regina Hall) gathering old friends – a celebrity Raunchy comedy with journalist (Queen Latifah), a single mother (Jada Queen Latifah Pinkett Smith) and a loose cannon (Tiffany Haddish) – for a boozy weekend in New Orleans. The comedy ★★ is broad, including an excruciating set piece involving a public act of urination, said Benjamin Lee in The Guardian. But in its favour, there’s a “refreshing focus on female friendship over romance”. It also has an “irrepressible energy” and a total “lack of embarrassment about its own crudity”, said Geoffrey Macnab in The Independent. Personally, I could have done with fewer celebrity cameos (P. Diddy pops up one moment, Mariah Carey the next). But the film’s box office success suggests that most people lap these things up.

Hounds of Love is this week’s top candidate for “one to avoid on a first date”, said Tim Robey in The Daily Telegraph. Based on a true story, this Hounds of Love “pulverising” thriller, which turns on three “riveting” Dir: Ben Young central performances, is set in 1980s Perth, where a 1hr 48mins (18) monstrous couple (Emma Booth and Stephen Curry) tour the countryside on the hunt for teenage girls to abduct, abuse and murder. They light on Vicki “Sweat-drenched” (Ashleigh Cummings), a sulky schoolgirl whose exercise in horror parents are embroiled in a testy divorce. Her only recourse, once she finds herself chained up, is to use ★★★ her knowledge of couple psychology to turn one captor against the other. Writer-director Ben Young’s debut feature is certainly a “tough sell”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. But if you have the stomach for it, this “ordeal horror” is undeniably “accomplished”. I’d put it right up there with The Silence of the Lambs for “sweat- drenched” tension combined with dark psychological insights, said Joshua Rothkopf in Time Out. “Even if it ends a touch abruptly, this one seeps into your clothes.”

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 32 ARTS Art

Exhibition of the week John Minton: A Centenary Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (01243-774557, www.pallant.org.uk). Until 1 October In the early 1950s, John artist”, said Laura Minton was “probably Cumming in The Observer. Britain’s most popular A series of drawings of artist”, said Mark Hudson Blitz-ravaged London in The Daily Telegraph. His (drawn after he was colourful and romantic invalided out of the Army paintings won over postwar on medical grounds) are British audiences with their superb, balancing “alluring vision of foreign “desolation” with climes”, and his reputation “exhilaration”. Better still eclipsed those of his are the works he produced contemporaries Francis after the War. A view across Bacon and Lucian Freud. the Thames painted in 1946 How quickly – and in makes the capital look like Minton’s case, calamitously “some magnificent – fortunes can change. blackened Venice”, while a Within a few years, he series of paintings of early- found himself out of 1950s Jamaica mark the fashion, unable to come to show’s “apogee”. They are terms with his “conflicted full of “frozen figures”, homosexuality”, and “blue-edged in the battling with drink and Caribbean streetlight”. drugs. He died of a possibly From here on, however, it self-administered overdose Bridge from Cannon Street Station (1946) was all downhill. By the in 1957, aged just 39. mid-1950s, Minton’s style Posterity has not been kind. Minton is little remembered these was deemed obsolete compared with the newly fashionable days. His work – if thought of at all – is seen as “reflecting the abstract art coming out of the US. He went into a downturn, provincialism of postwar British art”. Now, a century on from his “losing his grasp” and producing lacklustre images. birth, an “atmospheric” new retrospective at Chichester’s Pallant House Gallery aims to reaffirm his status as a “significant artist”. Far from it, said Richard Cork in the FT. The “most poignant” The show brings together a wealth of Minton’s paintings and picture here is Composition: The Death of James Dean (1957), drawings, alongside some “wonderfully evocative” archive an unfinished painting created shortly before Minton’s death. The material. This “delightful” exhibition demonstrates that although body of the film star, whom the artist adored, is surrounded by he spent much of his life in “despair”, Minton’s art abounds with “mourning figures” who themselves seem to be “fading away”, “joie de vivre”. “as if acknowledging not only Dean’s death but also the imminence of Minton’s own”. This “fascinating” exhibition only Minton was an “abundantly gifted draughtsman and graphic underlines “just how much was lost” with his tragic demise.

Where to buy… The end of the line? The Week reviews an When it was exhibition in a private gallery finished in the late 1990s, London’s Jubilee Per Kirkeby Line extension at Michael Werner “was hailed as Britain’s answer to the Per Kirkeby (b.1938) may be an magnificent unfamiliar name here in Britain, but in architecture of his native Denmark, he has something the Moscow approaching the status of a national Metro”, says The hero. Kirkeby, who rose to prominence Times. So “it came as a shock” when Transport for London in the 1960s, works across a dizzying (TfL) revealed plans to demolish one of its most range of media, and is celebrated as admired stations, at Southwark, to make way much for his prose and poetry as for for a skyscraper. The station, designed by the his art. This show shies away from late Richard MacCormac, includes a circular providing a comprehensive overview ticket hall with a 40-metre-long glass wall, made up of 660 pieces of blue glass. It was designed of his work, and instead chooses to Plate VII (1981), oil on canvas, to be built over, but the station’s foundations focus on his mid-period paintings and 116cm x 95cm sculptures, mostly dating from the will support a building of only 11 storeys. 1980s. The canvases here are powerful face, can be unforgettable. A selection TfL and its partner U+I plan to build up to 30 storeys, to capitalise on the valuable site, next things, idiosyncratic landscapes in the of monolithic but oddly folksy bronzes to Blackfriars Bridge; they aim to build 300 flats. style (if not the texture) of Frank is less impressive, but overall, this is a Catherine Croft of The Twentieth Century Society Auerbach’s contemporary work. fine introduction to Kirkeby’s work. said the plan would “unnecessarily destroy one The composition and palette are Prices on negotiation. of the best designs of its decade”. However, muddy, but the way Kirkeby captures TfL said it would seek to “protect the iconic a cascade of water thundering down 22 Upper Brook Street, London W1 elements of the station” – whatever that means.

a mountainside, or lichen on a rock (020-7495 6855). Until 16 September. © ROYAL COLLEGE OF ART

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The List 35

Best books… Philippe Sands Television The lawyer and writer Philippe Sands picks his favourite books on politics, Programmes life and love. His historical memoir, East West Street, which won the Secrets of Silicon Valley 2016 Baillie Gifford Prize, is now out in paperback (W&N £9.99) Jamie Bartlett uncovers the reality behind Silicon Valley’s The World of Yesterday by Just Kids by Patti Smith, The Return by Hisham promise to build a better world. He meets an AI pioneer who Stefan Zweig, 1942 (Pushkin 2010 (Bloomsbury £9.99). Matar, 2016 (Penguin £9.99). predicts economic meltdown, £12.99). If you’re concerned This legendary autobiography A remarkable, intimate, and an ex-Facebook exec who about the disappearance of by the singer and composer beautiful memoir, about my fears the fall of capitalism. Sun your world, start right here, takes the reader on a journey friend Hisham Matar’s journey 6 Aug, BBC2 20:00 (60mins). with the posthumously across 1970s New York, talks back to Libya in search of an published memoir of a about her intimate friendship answer to a question that has Diana In Her Own Words European confronted by a with Robert Mapplethorpe, haunted him for a quarter of Controversial documentary reality that might soon touch and shows what it means to a century: what happened to featuring private videos of us: “I belong nowhere now, I be youthful and truly alive. his father and country? Princess Diana talking candidly about her life. Made by her am a stranger or at the most voice coach, Peter Settelen, a guest everywhere.” Five Photos of My Wife Book of Longing by they have been the subject of a by Agnès Desarthe, 1998 Leonard Cohen, 2006 long legal battle. Sun 6 Aug, C4 Dark Money by Jane Mayer, (Flamingo £8.99). This may (Penguin £9.99). Over three 20:00 (110mins). 2016 (Scribe £9.99). The be my favourite novel by one decades, not a day has passed secret story of the Koch of France’s most renowned in which I have not listened My Family, Partition and brothers and the network of writers. Eighty-year-old Max, to, read or thought about Me: India 1947 First of billionaires remaking American seeking solace after the death Leonard, who died last year a two-part documentary from politics in their own image – of his wife, commissions five and remains a guiding spirit. Anita Rani investigating the lives of three families – Hindu, the road to Donald Trump, big portraits of her. A gentle Who could forget his words: Muslim and British colonial – money and the unmaking of yet searing tale of love “I’m good at love, I’m good at who were forced to flee to modern democracies. and memory. hate, it’s in between I freeze.” Britain after partition. Wed 9 Aug, BBC1 21:00 (60mins). Titles in print are available from The Week Bookshop on 020-3176 3835. For out-of-print books visit www.biblio.co.uk Citizen Jane: Battle for the City Film looking at the The Week’s guide to what’s worth seeing and reading life of the renowned author and activist Jane Jacobs, who Showing now fought to preserve urban Portraying a Nation: Germany 1919-1933 communities in the face of at Tate Liverpool (0151-702 7400). A destructive development. Wed fascinating show examining life in Weimar 9 Aug, BBC4 22:00 (80mins). Germany through the work of the painter Otto Dix and the documentary photographer Films August Sander. Ends 15 October. Once Upon A Time in Anatolia (2011) Drama about a group of policemen Matisse in the Studio at the Royal Academy, searching the steppes of London W1 (020-7300 8090). Sumptuous Anatolia for a body. Tue 8 Aug, exhibition in which objects that Matisse Film4 01:00 (180mins). collected – including Islamic textiles and Ottoman metalwork – are displayed alongside Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) Meryl Streep and Dustin the works they inspired. Ends 12 November. Portraying a Nation: Otto Dix and his wife Hoffman won Oscars for their Book now Atwood, Ali Smith, Álvaro Enrigue and Misha roles in this tear-jerker. Wed 9 Patrick Marber directs Natalie Dormer (Game of Glenny are among those speaking. 6-8 October, Aug, Film4 01:30 (135mins). Snape Maltings, Suffolk (www.flipsideuk.org). Thrones) in David Ives’ hit dark comedy Venus Silver Linings Playbook in Fur. 6 October-9 December, Theatre Royal (2012) Romantic comedy about Haymarket, London SW1 (020-7930 8800). Just out in paperback a man with bipolar disorder Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood (Vintage (Bradley Cooper) trying to FlipSide Festival, which brings a slice of Latin £8.99). Atwood’s retelling of The Tempest, the rebuild his life. Sat 12 Aug, America to the Suffolk coast, returns this fourth novel in the Hogarth Shakespeare series, Film4 01:00 (140mins). autumn. South American writers and musicians is “insanely readable and just the best fun”, with will join a host of English-language authors for ironic nods to popular culture. Can she please Coming up for auction a weekend of talks and concerts. Margaret rewrite the whole of Shakespeare? (Observer) The Vivien Leigh Collection is going under the hammer at The Archers: what happened last week Sotheby’s. Jewellery, paintings Oliver is mortified about losing his temper. Lilian feels trapped in the middle of Matt and Justin’s and furniture formerly owned feud. She asks Justin to reconsider his plan to get Matt fired, but Justin refuses. Clarrie writes a letter by the Hollywood star are up of apology to Oliver, and asks Shula to deliver it. Shula is worried Grey Gables will feel too corporate for sale, along with a signed for Caroline’s memorial. Clarrie suggests Grange Farm. Oliver, who goes to Grange Farm to make copy of Gone with the Wind peace, loves the idea. Lilian warns Matt about Justin’s plan to get him fired and advises him to say (est. £5,000) and the wig she sorry. Jill is arrested by Harrison for throwing a flapjack at Lulu Duxford at the restaurant opening. wore in the film of A Streetcar David collects Jill from the station and points out the irony of throwing flapjacks to protest against Named Desire (est. £400). An food waste. Caroline is given a moving send-off. Fallon and Harrison’s offer on a house is accepted. Ed checks on Oliver, who is feeling lost now the memorial is over: he doesn’t even have a home, and exhibition of sale highlights is couldn’t live at Grange Farm without Caroline. Ed tells Oliver that he’ll always be there for him. Matt on until 11 August. Sale: 26 apologises to Justin. He says he underestimated how influential he was. Justin advises Matt to keep September. New Bond Street, his distance. He later boasts to Lilian that he still plans to get Matt fired. She begs him to let it go. London W1 (020-7293 5000). © SAMMLUNG / SK STIFTUNG KULTUR – SANDER ARCHIV / VG BILD-KUNST, BONN AND DACS

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 36 Best properties

Grade II listed properties under £1m

▲ Leicestershire: The Old Rectory, Saxby, Melton Mowbray. A Dutch gabled, Grade II former rectory, with a separate detached cottage and just under four acres of landscaped gardens and adjoining pasture, set in an accessible rural setting only four miles from the market town of Melton Mowbray. Master suite, 3 further beds, family bath, 2 attic beds, breakfast/kitchen, 3 receps, 2-bed cottage, garage, stable outbuilding. £995,000; Savills (01780-484696).

▲ Devon: Courtyard House, Marley, South Brent. Courtyard House forms part of the Grade II listed Marley House Estate, with communal gardens, grounds, tennis court and a lake. Master suite with dressing room, 3 further suites, open- plan kitchen/dining room, 1 further recep, double garage, private courtyard, parking. £400,000; Marchand Petit (01803-847979). ▲ Gloucestershire: John Brown’s Cottage, Ablington. A detached period Cotswold stone cottage (mid to late 17th century) with a landscaped garden, in an unspoilt rural hamlet in the Coln Valley, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Master suite, attic/occasional bed 2, family bath, kitchen, recep with flagstone floor and fireplace, WC, parking, gardens, outbuilding, about 0.25 acres. £500,000; Knight Frank (01285-659771).

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 on the market 37 ▲ Devon: East Wing, Maristow House, near Roborough, Plymouth. Set in an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, with wonderful views of the River Tavy, this Georgian house forms the principal part of a Grade II former manor house in a 42-acre private estate. Master suite with wet room, guest suite, 1 further bed, family bath, breakfast/ kitchen, 2 receps, morning room, hall, laundry room, cloakroom, wine cellar, first-floor recep/bed 4, two-acre garden, garden store, swimming pool, double garage, communal woodland and river walks. £950,000; Strutt & Parker (01392-215631). ▲ ▲ Perthshire: Hampshire: The Old Manse, Myrtle Cottage, St Kinloch, by Mary Bourne. This Blairgowrie. extended detached A fine Georgian cottage sits on a former manse, quiet lane on the with far-reaching edge of this pretty views, in the heart village in the Bourne of the Lunan Valley, an Area of Valley. 5 beds, Outstanding Natural family bath, Beauty. 3 beds, shower, dressing shower room, room, 2 WCs, farmhouse kitchen/ breakfast/kitchen, breakfast room, 1 2 receps, study, recep, dining room/ utility/boot room, study, cloakroom, hall, garage, conservatory, hall, stores, garden, utility/boot room, 2 pony paddocks, garage/workshop, about 2.7 acres. parking, landscaped OIEO £595,000; gardens. £765,000; CKD Galbraith Evans & Partridge (01738-451111). (01264-810702). ▲ Cambridgeshire: 18 Middle Street, Great Gransden. This Grade II cottage dates back to the late 15th/early 16th century, and is set in about a third of an acre of gardens and grounds. Master suite with shower, 2 further beds, family bath, shower, kitchen, 2 large receps, utility, large detached timber barn with adjoining garage, cottage garden, rear garden, pond. Additional ▲ Devon: The Torridge, Bideford. A fine residential investment land is also opportunity, this substantial Victorian house was a pub until 1989 and available separately. was converted into eight residential apartments in 1993. With estuary £650,000; Cheffins views, it comprises seven 1-bed flats and one 2-bed flat, providing a (01223-214214). healthy rental income. £499,950; Stags (01237-425030).

5 August 2017 THE WEEK

LEISURE 39 Food & Drink What the experts recommend Garden Café Garden Museum, A butter lettuce salad, with “just-fried 5 Lambeth Palace Road, London SE1 garlicky” croutons and at least half a (020-7401 8865) dozen thick, lovely Ortiz anchovies is A while ago, when reviewing the Guinea “a dish of simple magnificence”. And Grill, I noted the “masculine bias” of the a great hunk of Ibérico pork is “blessed clientele, says Jay Rayner in The Observer. with lusciously succulent flesh that sings By contrast, the tables at the new café at of a life well lived”. There’s a great-value the Garden Museum, on the weekday wine list, too. Lunch for two, about £80. lunchtime I ate there, were “filled almost entirely with women”. Clearly, they were The Chequers 50 Rivers Street, Bath discerning types, for this space, in a (01225-360017) deconsecrated and sensitively converted You get to this lovely old 18th century church, is “one of the loveliest” to open in pub by strolling through some of the the capital in a long while, and it “boasts “quietest, most beautiful backstreets in food to match”. I especially loved grilled the world”, says Giles Coren in The onions with ’nduja (soft Calabrian Times. Its interior, though modernised, salami), and chargrilled quail with a retains a “neat Georgian cosiness”. And crimson dollop of beetroot borani (puréed Garden Café: one of the loveliest in the capital the food is “sensible, approachable and with yogurt, walnuts and garlic); and delicious”. Starters included “very good” another main of slow-cooked beef short restaurant that offers confident cooking salt and pepper squid, with a mound of rib, with plump clams and new potatoes, and bags of charm, says Tom Parker fresh leaves and a “really smart” aioli; and that was a “louche, umami-rich surf and Bowles in The Mail on Sunday. The decor steak tartare chopped “a little rough for turf”. The puds were all excellent, but it is “Iberia by way of Conran”: walls my taste”, but well seasoned and dressed was a scoop of lemon curd ice cream that painted a “discreetly expensive” grey, with red onion, quail yolk and cumin. made us purr. It’s just a “crying shame” with lots of blonde wood, Spanish “Lamb” was six juicy pink slices of rump, the café closes when the museum does woodcuts and the odd cast-iron bull. The two triangles of crisped, pressed belly, at 5.30pm. Meal for two, including drinks sound of flamenco “struts and strums” in charred lettuce, haricots and “some nice and service, £60 to £90. the background (not my cup of tea, but fatty pommes boulangère”. And steak it’s not irksome, thanks to the “easy, was a well-aged sirloin, grilled rare, sliced The Wife of Bath 4 Upper Bridge Street, unpretentious feel” of the place). As for and prettily presented. Not “world- Wye, Ashford, Kent (01233-812232) the food, it’s delectable. Pimientos de changing” cuisine, then, but “pub fine” Kent-born chef Mark Sargeant took over Padrón are “suitably charred and food in congenial surroundings where all this “pretty house in the pretty Kentish wrinkled”. The tortilla is “firm and is “pretty, cosy, modest and good”. Try village of Wye” a few months ago, and forthright and reminds me of childhood it. About £25 a head for two courses, has since created a first-rate Spanish picnics in the hills above Granada”. plus drinks and service.

Recipe of the week Wine choice Climate change is a subject of vital A bright delight of a salad with a combination of flavours: sweetly waxy beans, importance to the world’s viticulturists, aromatic fennel and pungent mint, all sweetened slightly by orange. Unless says Jane MacQuitty in The Times. In the beans are tiny, they really need peeling, says Rachel Roddy. The addition hot countries, very hot summers of prosciutto or feta, and some fresh focaccia, turns a salad into lunch tend to mean “less finesse and flavour” in the wines produced. Broad bean, fennel and mint salad But in the cooler Northern Hemisphere countries, such as Serves 4 Germany and England, the finest 150g small and tender shelled broad beans (about 500g of beans in their pods) wines are made in the warmest 1 large or 2 small bulbs of fennel a handful of mint 5 tbsps olive oil years, and hotter weather normally results juice of 1 orange a pinch of dried oregano (optional) in wines of higher quality. prosciutto or feta, to serve (optional) salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste In Germany, rieslings and pinot noirs are • Plunge the broad • In a small bowl, noticeably fuller-flavoured than before. One beans briefly into boiling whisk together the example is 2014 Goldtröpfchen Riesling water, and then straight olive oil, orange juice, Kabinett, Von Kesselstatt (£10.99, Co-op) into cold water. Remove salt and the oregano, – a mouthwatering, bold, zingy, sweet lime their white coats. if you are using it. pickle and apple-licked Mosel riesling. I’d also recommend the “delicious, full-throttle“ • In a serving bowl, • Trim the fennel, 2015 Essenheim Kalkstein Riesling, mix the beans, fennel removing the tougher Braunewell (£16.95, Lea & Sandeman). outer layer (use it for and mint together with the dressing. stock) and, setting aside As for England, its fine aromatic whites now any feathery fronds, • If you are adding seem riper, with fewer tart, bosky flavours, then slice it as thinly as prosciutto or feta, use and even our once “mean and green” reds possible. Tear the mint into little a flatter dish, so that you can arrange are improving with every vintage. John pieces with your fingers. the meat or cheese on top. Worontschak’s 2014 Litmus Red Pinot, Surrey (£30, M&S) “even has a little of Taken from Two Kitchens by Rachel Roddy, published by Headline Home Burgundy’s gamey pinot noir oomph”. at £25. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £22, call 020-3176 3835 or visit www.theweek.co.uk/bookshop. For our latest offers, visit theweekwines.co.uk

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 40 LEISURE Consumer

New cars: what the critics say Car magazine Autocar Auto Express The luxury saloon market On the road, the Visually, the changes to the has long been a place S-Class has always been S-Class have been limited where “new technology exceptional, and this one to tweaks. All models makes its debut”. And so is no different: its “superb now get a more imposing it is with the “midlife ride” sets it apart from its front grille, lending “an refresh” of the S-Class, the luxury rivals. It remains extra bit of glamour”, bestselling car of its type. composed, with steering while build quality remains Its self-driving features give that “weighs up nicely” superlative, with “beautiful it what is effectively “the once you get beyond levels of detail”. There’s Mercedes S-Class best cruise control system “the first few degrees off lots of space, too, both from £72,705 imaginable” – it uses centre”. There’s a choice for passengers and in the satnav data and scans the of new engines, including large, 510-litre boot. With road, slowing down for V8 and V12 options. The its blend of technology and corners and junctions, six-cylinder diesel engine refinement, the S-Class is and changes lanes at the we tried was smooth, well placed to continue its tap of an indicator. speedy and quiet. reign as the class leader.

The best… telescopes ▲ Orion SkyQuest XT4.5 DobsonDobsonian Moon Kit This device is a DobsDobsonian telescope (named after ▲ Celestron Travel Scopee 70 the astroastronomer John Dobson), This lightweight, portable which is why it has a slightly unusual telescope comes with designdesign. Aimed at inexperienced a custom backpackbackpa for astronomeastronomers, it’s designed to give a transporting it – makinging it particulaparticularly clear view of the Moon, andd ideal for stargazingstargazi on, comes with a helpful Moon map (£237;37; uk. say, a camping trip.tri Itmay telesctelescopetelescope.com).ope.com).ope not offer the same qualityqu ty or magnification as bbigger, pricier models, but it’si stillill excellent value (£70; www.rothervalley

optics.co.uk). ▲ Levenhuk Strike 90 Plus A good option for beginners, this telescope is easy to use: you don’t have to align or calibrate it, and there’s a handy

▲ CelestronCelestro NexStarexStar 6SE The NexStar 6SE hahass red dot finder, attached to the GPS and ttrackingking technology built into the scopescope,, sos tube, which you can use to it’s capacapable of locating more than 40,000 objectss in point at objects in the sky. the sky. There’s a huge, six-inch aperture (five- The aperture is impressively inch aand eight-inch models are also available),), good quality, too (£215; which produces a particularly sharp image uk.levenhuk.com). (£879; www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk). SOURCE: T3 Tips of the week… And for thoseew whoho WWherehere t too find… how to keep herbs alive have everything…ing British beach hutshu ● If you want to grow herbs in the garden, Shaldon, a village in Devon, has three it’s usually better to get them from a garden luxury huts for overnight stays. Sleeping centre. Supermarket potted herbs are two to six people, they offer “21st century” generally grown to be used, not kept. amenities, including marble-tiled showers ● They should be watered at the roots and underfloor heating (from £650 a week; every day, especially in the summer. www.shaldonbeachhuts.co.uk). ● You don’t want the plants to flower, as Blue Cabin by the Sea, in Berwickshire, their energy will then go into the blooms is just a few steps from the beach, and and creating seeds. Limit that risk by close to the harbour where fishermen harvesting leaves regularly. sell freshly caught crab and lobster. It ● Don’t remove too many of the large sleeps four (from £700 a week; www. leaves near the base of a plant, as they are bluecabinbythesea.co.uk). vital to its longevity and health. Bournemouth has just opened 15 ● Coriander plants have a short lifespan “beach lodges”. Resembling New and are unlikely to last all summer. Remarkably detailed, this life-size England clapboard houses from the ● When harvesting coriander or chives, BlackChocolateCo skull is handmade outside, they’re “chic and modern” only cut back one part of the plant at a time. inside (from £275 for four nights; www. from a mould of the real thing. It’s ● With basil or mint, cut back the leaves at bournemouthbeachlodges.co.uk). available in milk chocolate, chilli the very top, and not just from the sides. Mudeford Spit, in Dorset, is home to 344 chocolate or dark chocolate, and is finished ● Harvest basil by cutting the stem just beach huts, many of which are rented out. above a new set of buds or leaves. That with a dusting of cocoa powder. They have views of Christchurch Harbour stem will stop growing, but two new ones £68; www.etsy.com or the Isle of Wight – or both, in some cases will pop up almost immediately. (from £400 a week; www.msbha.org.uk).

SOURCE: THE TIMES SOURCE: T3 SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 Travel LEISURE 41

This week’s dream: driving around Lake Michigan The 900-mile drive around Lake is an absolute “joy” to drive, taking Michigan – the only Great Lake you through a series of 19th century entirely within US borders – is “one of towns with much to charm lovers of the greatest road trips America has to vintage Americana. offer”, says Tom Chesshyre in The Up the coast, “the landscape Times. The route passes through four changes. Thick forest emerges” and states (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and you reach Traverse City. This is true Wisconsin) and takes in “some of the Trump country: “patriotic folk country’s most picturesque scenery”, songs” blast from the radio and the yet few people think of doing it. Stars and Stripes fly everywhere. Yet Setting off on the I-94 highway the town itself is “an arty oasis”, from the “tunnel-like” streets of with galleries, craft stores and a downtown Chicago, you pass through “delightful old-fashioned movie the city’s industrial outskirts and start theatre” restored by film-maker heading towards the border into Michael Moore. From here it’s but a Indiana. Pretty soon you reach Gary, short hop to the “enormous and a “dilapidated” town with “boarded- The “spectacular” Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore quite spectacular” Sleeping Bear up shops and Norman Bates-style Dunes, a protected area with walking motels”. It’s not somewhere you’d think to stop – unless you’re a trails, empty beaches, inland lakes and sleepy villages. And do not Michael Jackson fan, for this is his birthplace. His small, forlorn miss Mackinac Island, where cars are banned, and horse-drawn former home, on Jackson Street – “naturally” – is “beautifully carriages are the preferred mode of transport. For more maintained”, even if few visit it. More appealing stops can be information, visit www.choosechicago.com and www. found further along the road: the eastern shore of Lake Michigan lakemichigancircletour.com.

Hotel of the week Getting the flavour of… Soaring above the Cyclades the close proximity to others. But such fears The Aegean Coast looks bewitching enough are soothed by the fresh bedding, monastic from the land. But from the air, “a glorious hush and “pleasing pine scent”. The appeal secret landscape appears”, says John here is not just in the kip, but also “the Gimlette in The Daily Telegraph. Dramatic prospect of disappearing from the world”, fjords and blowholes sweep into view; “coves even if only briefly. Visit www.siestaandgo. become a luminous peacock blue”, and com. Open daily 11am-7pm. Private rooms monasteries rise up from lonely knobs of 20p a minute; beds in a dorm 11p a minute. rock. Aria Hotels has launched a new service to fly guests around the region. “For the The picturesque Anglin Valley price of a scheduled flight,” their Cessna can In summer, parts of France are “standing take you wherever you want to go. The pilot room only”, says Anthony Peregrine in The Sign of the Angel, knows every landmark and may “swoop Sunday Times. Not so in the Anglin Valley: Lacock, Wiltshire down on his favourite places”: a Roman “even in high season”, you’ll enjoy “startling Located in Lacock – a National rock here, a Venetian fort there – or bucolic comeliness punctuated by moments Trust-owned village that will be perhaps “an island of goats”. As a means of grandeur” – and have it almost to familiar to fans of TV costume of getting from A to B, this is “the Uber of yourself. The village of Angles-sur-l’Anglin dramas – this 15th century inn is the gods”. Aria Hotels (+30 210 899 6056; is “outrageously picturesque”. Its castle sits wonky and creaky yet has www.ariahotels.gr/en) has a range of “crumbled to perfection” on top of a “touches of luxury”, says Jane accommodation in Greece. Its Cessna can “rocky spur”. There’s also a prehistoric Dunford in The Guardian. Clever design makes the most of the accommodate three passengers. Magdalenian frieze in the village – 65ft of space, though certain tiny features “savage animals and naked women (key make you feel “like Alice in Madrid’s siesta bar interests haven’t much changed in 15,000 Wonderland after her growth The siesta has gone out of fashion in the years)”. Visitors can only view the replica spurt”. The dining room is beamed Spanish capital, says Stephen Phelan in The though; the real thing is too delicate. For and candlelit, with a menu that’s Independent. But a new start-up is looking to original artworks, the walls and ceiling of modern and good value. Outside revive the idea of daylight dozing, with the the nearby abbey of Saint-Savin feature “the cuteness continues” with launch of a “nap bar” where you can rent 11th century frescoes that are “unequalled the prettiest of gardens. “If it’s beds and armchairs “by the minute”. anywhere”. The entry price could well romantic, historic character you’re after, this place has it in spades.” Located in the city’s financial district, Siesta be “the best £6 you spend in France”. & Go is “dark, cool and quiet”, with rows See www.abbaye-saint-savin.fr for more Doubles from £110. 01249-730230; www.signoftheangel.co.uk. of veiled bunks “like cocoons”. The CCTV information. For places to stay in the area, cameras are “vaguely disconcerting”, as is visit www.gites-de-france.com.

Last-minute offers from top travel companies Get away to Aberdeen Charming Gothenburg By the sea in Sardinia Historic Tokyo hotel Enjoy 4 nights at the Marischal Relax for four nights at the Relax at the Grande Baia A 6-night stay at the Imperial Apartments, close to the Scandic Rubinen Hotel, in the Resort and Spa, close to some Hotel, which boasts first-class Tolbooth Museum and other heart of the city, from £380pp of the island’s best beaches, hospitality and fine cuisine, attractions, from £232pp b&b b&b, incl. Southampton from £832pp half board, incl. costs from £1,465pp, incl. (two sharing). 0800-083 4000, flights. 020-8974 7200, London flights. 020-3451 Birmingham flights. 020-3684 www.lastminute.com. Arrive www.travelrepublic.co.uk. 2688, www.thomson.co.uk. 0059, www.expedia.co.uk. 18 September. Depart 20 October. Depart 9 September. Depart 25 September.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK

Obituaries 43 The showgirl who became Frank Sinatra’s fourth wife

Known as “Lady Blue Eyes”, show business to spend his time gambling, Barbara Barbara Sinatra was a former womanising and playing golf in the desert Sinatra Las Vegas showgirl who enclave of Palm Springs. He was 26 years her 1927-2017 became Frank Sinatra’s senior, and she admitted that she was never in fourth and final wife. Married to him for love with him – but she was tired of the almost 22 years, longer than any of his other “monthly scramble to pay the bills”. They wives, she was credited with taming the married in 1959 and settled in his mansion in notoriously temperamental star, and the Tamarisk Country Club. “That’s when I persuading him to moderate his drinking. first started meeting Hollywood-type people,’’ Later, with his support, she established herself she recalled. Sinatra had a house nearby, and as a major philanthropist, chiefly known for became a friend; some years later, they became her work with abused and neglected children. lovers. “When he pulled me into his arms, I was caught completely off guard. Such was the Born in 1927, Barbara Blakeley grew up first power of the Sinatra magnetism that I didn’t in Missouri, and then in Wichita during the really have a choice.” On the other hand, she Depression, said The Washington Post, giving knew what she was getting into: she described her an early taste of poverty that would inform Sinatra – who was notorious for his temper – the rest of her life. Her father was a butcher as a “55-year-old living legend who’d grown and, with many of his customers going hungry, accustomed to getting his own way”. She he often accepted IOUs in lieu of payment. In turned a blind eye when he was unfaithful, and the 1940s, they moved to California, where she Sinatra: helped 20,000 children kept out of his way when he’d been drinking found work as a model, before opening her gin, as it made him “mean”. “I don’t know own charm school. She’d been a Sinatra fan as a teenager, and her that I handled his moods,” she said, “I lived with them.” first husband, Bob Oliver, was a singer who, she said, reckoned he sounded like Sinatra. They had one son before divorcing. She then They married in 1976, when he was 60 and she was 49. A decade moved to Las Vegas with another boyfriend – also a Sinatra later, she opened the Barbara Sinatra Children’s Centre with soundalike – where she first encountered Ol’ Blue Eyes in person. money that he’d helped raise. It has since treated more than He was propping up the bar with his Rat Pack friends when she 20,000 children. But her relations with her three stepchildren walked by. “I heard someone say, ‘Hey, Blondie! Come over here. were fractious, said The Daily Telegraph. The trouble is believed Join us!’ But I just kept walking. One of the girls with me said, to have started in 1988, when she persuaded Sinatra to change his ‘Do you know who that was? That was Frank Sinatra.’ And I will, so that his two main properties would be left to her alone. said, ‘I don’t care, I don’t want to deal with drunks.’” There were further clashes over merchandising rights and royalty payments. Sinatra eventually sought to put an end to the bickering Around the same time, she also caught the eye of Zeppo, the by inserting a clause in his will which meant that if any of the youngest of the Marx Brothers – who had by then given up beneficiaries contested it, they’d immediately forfeit their share. World-class athlete banned from the 1936 Berlin Olympics

Margaret Margaret Lambert, who has In 1937, she obtained papers to emigrate to the Lambert died aged 103, was a world- US. On arrival in New York, one of her first acts 1914-2017 class high jumper best known was to Americanise her name, to Margaret. The for her non-participation in the following year, she married a fellow German 1936 Berlin Olympics, said The New York Jewish refugee, Bruno Lambert, who later became Times. A German Jew, she was ordered to take a doctor. They settled in Queens, and had two part in training for the Games, so that the Nazis sons, Glenn and Gary. She kept up her athletics could point to Jewish participation. But she was for a while (while working as a cleaner), and was not selected: Hitler never had any intention of training for the 1940 Olympics when war broke allowing a Jew to compete, least of all one who out in Europe. After that, she concentrated on had such a high chance of success. getting her parents to safety. She retired from athletics in 1942 but, even decades later, it pained Margarethe “Gretel” Bergmann was born in her to think of what she had missed. In 1996, she southern Germany in 1914, the daughter of a was watching athletes prepare for the Atlanta factory owner, and by her teens had emerged as Games on TV. “And suddenly I realised that there a talented all-round athlete. “I was ‘The Great were tears just flowing down my cheeks. I’m not a Jewish Hope’,” she said. But once the Nazis Lambert: cheated out of a medal crier. But now I just couldn’t help it. I remember came to power, clubs were closed to her, and in watching those athletes, and remembering what it 1934 she moved to England. That year, she won the high jump in was like for me in 1936, how I could very well have won an the British Championships. Then, in 1936, with calls growing in Olympic medal. And through the tears, I said, ‘Damn it!’” the US for a boycott of the Olympics, her family was ordered to get her home. Though fearful of the consequences, she was keen That year, she received an invitation to be the German team’s to compete, and at the national trials at the Adolf Hitler Stadium guest at the Olympic torch-lighting ceremony. She accepted. “I in Stuttgart in June, she equalled the German record with a jump don’t hate all Germans any more,” she said, “though I did for a that would have been good enough to win gold. But it transpired long time.” She’d vowed never to set foot in Germany again, but it was nothing but a “charade”. Soon after, she received a letter three years later she was persuaded by her sons to return to telling her that she had not been selected. “Looking at your recent Laupheim, the town of her birth, to see the stadium in which performances,” it read, “you could not possibly have expected to she’d trained – and from which she’d been banned – renamed in be chosen for the team… Heil Hitler!” She was offered a standing- her honour. “I was told that they were naming the facilities for only ticket for the track events, but was told she’d have to meet me so that when young people ask, ‘Who was Gretel Bergmann?’, her own travel costs. Her jump was expunged from the records. they will be told my story, and the story of those times.”

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AstraZeneca: drug calamity More than £10bn was wiped off the value of AstraZeneca last week, after the pharma – Britain’s sixth-largest company – revealed a major setback to its hopes of producing a “revolutionary lung cancer treatment”, said Matt Oliver in the Daily Mail. Pascal Soriot has staked his firm’s fortunes on becoming a leader in immuno-oncology (producing drugs that enhance the body’s own defence mechanisms) – and its hotly anticipated “Mystic” trial was at the centre of that strategy. News that it has fallen flat sent shares Seven days in the crashing 16%, reviving fears that Astra, which fought off a controversial takeover Square Mile approach from the US giant Pfizer three years ago, could once again attract the interest of predators. This year was supposed to be a “pivotal” one for AstraZeneca, marking The US Dow Jones Industrial Average the moment when it would “display new wonders from its laboratories”, said Nils racked up a series of new record highs, topping 22,000 for the first time ever on Pratley in The Guardian. Imfinzi, the drug being trialled, “was spoken about as a Wednesday. The latest rally has been potential replacement for chemotherapy” that would hasten Astra’s ambitious target of powered in part by a surge in US bank doubling sales to $45bn by 2023. “All is not lost yet”: the company has another lung stocks, which hit a new post-crisis high treatment in the pipeline and is forming “a potentially big partnership” with Merck to on hopes of more deregulation. Better- research other immunotherapies. “But neither development fills the Mystic-sized hole.” than-expected results from Apple, Soriot’s $45bn revenue target “now has a huge credibility deficit”. boosted by strong sales of iPhones and iPads, helped fuel optimism that the HSBC: awash with cash market rise is underpinned by the HSBC’s top brass can be forgiven a degree of smugness: a six-year overhaul at the strength of corporate earnings. Official figures showed that the eurozone is now scandal-hit bank “is starting to bear fruit”, said Lucy Burton in The Daily Telegraph. growing at its fastest rate since the euro Outgoing CEO Stuart Gulliver’s programme of streamlining operations and cutting costs debt crisis erupted six years ago, and delivered a 5% rise in pre-tax profits to $10.2bn for the first half of 2017. Shareholders is set to overtake the UK this year with are reaping the rewards: the bank is handing back $2bn through a new share buy-back. a growth rate of 2.1%. The euro hit a Britain’s biggest bank “has a problem with capital”, said Patrick Hosking in The Times: 30-month high against the dollar. “it thinks it has too much of the stuff”. That’s quite a contrast with 2009, when HSBC In an apparent U-turn from previous was “so stretched that it had to tap investors for the thick end of $19bn in a deeply comments, Chancellor Philip Hammond discounted rights issue”. Now it seems to be “awash” with money. “That’s the thing said that Britain will not cut taxes and about banks. They always claim they are inefficiently holding far too much capital, right red tape to become a Singapore-style up to the moment when they discover they don’t have enough of it.” The advantage of tax haven post-Brexit, but would remain a buy-back is that it is much less embarrassing to halt than, say, cutting the dividend. “recognisably European”. “HSBC mustn’t be afraid to switch off the buy-back tap at the first sign of trouble.” The FTSE’s busiest reporting season in 20 years was marked by strong results at Snap: excluded both BP and Rolls-Royce. Lloyds Bank admitted it requires an extra £1.1bn to Silicon Valley has “long been notorious for complex shareholding structures that give cover PPI compensation costs, taking its founders outsized rights”, said Brooke Masters in the FT. But Snap, the company behind total bill to £18.1bn. The upmarket the messaging app Snapchat, “hit a new low” when it floated in March, offering public grocery chain Booths – the “Waitrose of shares “with no voting power at all”. Investors “strongly objected” to what one called a the North” – hired accountants to carry “banana republic-style” attitude to governance, which meant that founders Evan Spiegel out a forensic review of its finances on and Bobby Murphy could continue to control Snap, even if they quit. Now a line has the instruction of lenders. Sports Direct been drawn. FTSE Russell set a “voting rights hurdle” that would exclude firms such increased its stake in French Connection. as Snap from its indices, and America’s S&P 500 followed suit, said Reuters. Is Snap The AA fired its executive chairman, listening? It soon might. The decision to issue non-voting shares in the IPO “may have Bob Mackenzie, for “gross misconduct” of a “personal” nature. already cost it billions of dollars” in investment – and shares this week hit a record low.

Big Tobacco: choked at last by regulation? The Trump administration has been stirring up bans have proved the ultimate “moat”, trouble for cigarette makers, said Alex Ralph in keeping new competitors out and enabling The Times. Shares in Big Tobacco companies them to milk a “declining, but still massive” plunged last week on news that the US Food business for all it’s worth. “The ‘big picture’ and Drug Administration plans to reduce case for investing in tobacco has for years nicotine in cigarettes “to lessen their addictive been predicated on the idea that the market is properties”, while boosting support for safer unassailable.” But now that’s no longer true. alternatives such as e-cigarettes. Shares in By throwing its weight behind “vaping”, the Altria fell 19%: the FTSE 100 stalwart, British US regulator has “knocked a hole in the American Tobacco, was also badly tarred – moat” for ambitious young challengers. and has wheezed again on news of a Serious Fraud Office inquiry into alleged bribery in Don’t count on it, said Lex in the FT. Sure, the East Africa. With trouble on so many fronts, is A declining but still massive business sector is still vulnerable to state intervention, this the beginning of the end of Big Tobacco? but “there’s a long way to go before any new curbs are implemented”. What’s more, big incumbents such as Despite “constant attacks by global governments”, and “huge Marlboro-maker Philip Morris International and BAT have already compensation payouts”, the industry’s dominant players have established successful e-cigarette brands; the former has spoken performed “spectacularly well” for investors for a decade, said of its “smoke-free future”. The market is changing, no doubt. John Stepek on MoneyWeek.com. Their “crafty secret” is that But the “smoke signals” of Big Tobacco’s decline at the hands regulation has actually helped. Measures such as advertising of industry disrupters are, for the moment, only that.

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In association with Call today 0800 542 7488 or visit worldfirst.com/theweek Talking points CITY 47

Issue of the week: how bad is Britain’s debt bubble? A decade on from the outbreak of the last financial crisis, is consumer debt now propelling us towards another? “Take a walk down the high street today of a much wider problem: “the absence and one in every five adults passing you of real wage growth”. Real GDP per is in moderate to severe financial distress head has grown by less than 2% in real because of consumer debts amassed in terms since 2008, as productivity has recent years,” said Harry Wilson in The stalled (a fact highlighted by news that Times. In the past year, consumer credit the Bank’s own workers are staging their debt in Britain has ballooned. Last week, first strike in 50 years). The only way Alex Brazier, the Bank of England’s to “break the UK’s serious credit habit is director for financial stability, noted that to develop a different growth model to the volume of credit card balances and replace one that is clearly broken.” But other personal loans had surged by 10%, that is easier said than done. at a time when household incomes are rising by just 1.5% a year. He warned When bankers warned of the that lenders risk slipping into “a spiral of consequences of tighter regulation after complacency”. The credit ratings agency the financial crisis, the typical response Moody’s is also issuing alerts: this week was, “They would say that, wouldn’t it downgraded the outlook for bonds Bank of England staff strike over wages they?”, said Iain Dey in The Sunday backed by British consumer debt. Times. But the chickens have come home to roost. “Pressure to boost margins” because of restrictions on “Only once has the household debt to income ratio been as previously lucrative areas has forced banks “out of their way to elevated as it is now, and that was ten years ago, when the chase racier business lines”, such as credit cards and car loans. economy was on the cusp of its deepest recession since WWII,” “The debt bubble that the Bank of England is now trying to prick said Larry Elliott in The Guardian. The problem is partly of the is a product of its own design, not just through low interest rates Bank’s own making: it has kept interest rates at 0.5% or lower but also regulation.” The BoE is pulling all sorts of levers to make for more than eight years, making it easier both to secure credit lenders restrain themselves, said John Stepek on MoneyWeek. and keep up the payments. Lenders would be wise to heed com. That’s all very well – “but easy money finds a way”. The Brazier’s warning: “they can either exercise a bit more caution only way to send “a genuine warning shot across the bows” is to voluntarily, or the Bank will force them to do so through credit raise interest rates. Even a quarter-point hike would show that the controls”. But ultimately, rising consumer credit is symptomatic Bank is serious. Will it move this week? Don’t count on it.

Making money: what the experts think Summer jobs ● Pandemic bonds Aberdeen is still out School’s out, and the summer job When the Ebola virus in front, with a season is in full swing, says the FT. For hit West Africa in humiliating roster of some teenagers and students, the cash 2014, it took months five funds, holding is a necessity. But what else do they to amass the money more than £2bn. stand to gain? Here, business leaders needed to combat the The “second-worst share their experiences… offender” is St James’s outbreak, says The Kristo Käärmann, TransferWise The Economist. Now the Place, which has three funds, accounting for Estonian-born boss of the fintech World Bank has come company took a fact-checking job at up with a solution: around £1.7bn. In all, a business directory – a good chance issuing $425m in Tilney identified 34 dog to see “capitalism up close”. He also “pandemic bonds” to Banking on a pandemic? funds managing a total planted trees. There’s no right or wrong support a fund that of £7.6bn on behalf of summer job, he says. When assessing will speedily channel cash to countries their hapless investors, but reckons there potential recruits, the only important facing a deadly disease. Using bonds to are “a great many more pedestrian funds thing is that “candidates have worked”. out there”, not quite egregious enough to insure against crisis is nothing new: Whitney Wolfe, Bumble The dating app “catastrophe bonds” are already a $29bn make the list. Not all are actively managed. Beware, in particular, “closet entrepreneur learned that she doesn’t market. “But this is the first time that do well in “structured positions” after pandemic risk has been transferred to trackers”, which largely follow the index, spending too many summers in financial markets.” Investor demand for “but charge excessive fees for doing so”. boutiques. At 20, an opportunity arrived the bonds, which cover six viruses to try something different. Her first (including Sars, Mers and new influenza ● Euro euphoria entrepreneurial endeavour was selling strains), has been “unexpectedly high”. There’s one clear beneficiary of the eco-friendly tote bags to raise funds for The cash is certainly needed. The World ongoing chaos in the White House, said animals affected by the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Bank believes there’s a “high” probability Jasper Jolly in City AM: the euro. The of another major pandemic in the next ten currency hit a 30-month high of $1.19 Biz Stone, Twitter “I worked to 15 years. “One as severe as the 1918 against the dollar on Wednesday as the big throughout school and did anything Spanish flu could cost 5% of global GDP.” “Trump-driven sell-off of the greenback” to make money,” says the Twitter continued. Will it go higher still? The co-founder. “Fixing an air-con unit, ● Spot the dog answer to that is probably in the hands setting up a Mac… As long as they Twice a year, the wealth manager Tilney of the US Fed, says SEB forex strategist said they’d pay, I’d do it. I knew so produces a list of so-called “dog funds” Richard Falkenhall. If officials start many people, it was a form of that have underperformed their sounding “hawkish” about another networking.” And it paid off: it was through these odd jobs that he met benchmark indices by 5% or more interest rate hike, we’re likely to see a his mentor, Steve Schneider, and over three years, say the FT. After six move lower for the euro. Continuing joined his graphics company. consecutive half-years of topping the list, silence, though, will fuel its momentum.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 48 CITY Commentators

It’s a weird case of myopia, says Matthew Lynn. The bookies now rate the chance of Donald Trump being impeached at just 4/6 – City profiles Markets have meaning “it is more likely to happen as not” – yet markets “keep sailing on upwards as if nothing is happening”. They should look Steve Easterbrook not priced in When the McDonald’s boss at the historical record. Impeachment proceedings against US was promoted in 2015, impeachment presidents have proved “a traumatic experience for investors”. shareholders wondered The most similar case to Trump’s in recent history is the whether “a soft-spoken Matthew Lynn 1974 Watergate scandal, when a committee was appointed to British accountant was the investigate Richard Nixon for “high crimes and misdemeanours”. right person to reinvent the The Daily Telegraph As the crisis deepened, Nixon bowed to the inevitable and quintessential American resigned – but not before 23% had been wiped off the S&P 500. burger company”, says Yet during the first six months of that saga, “investors became the FT. Two years after his more and more bullish”. They decided either it would never “underwhelming debut”, the former Watford Grammar happen, or that “it didn’t matter if it did”. They only turned schoolboy has won them “dramatically bearish” near the very end. It looks a similar story round. McDonald’s shares now. “The impeachment trade has only just started – and when it have risen by more than gets going, we can expect plenty of wild swings in the market.” 60% on his watch, and last week the company “As any couple knows, trust is the basis of a strong and stable filed its best set of global relationship,” says Ben Chu. The same is true of “the public’s numbers in five years. British Gas relationship with privatised utilities” – and this week’s decision by Easterbrook, who is said to British Gas to hike electricity prices by 12.5%, when inflation is eat a McDonald’s meal every is digging its day, has long crusaded just 2.6% and wholesale energy prices are falling, will test that to to recast the chain’s own grave the max. Consumers are paying more for the same service, and “frequently disparaged “many suspect profit padding”. Indeed, “the fundamental brand name”. One of his Ben Chu problem for the Big Six energy firms is one of legitimacy”. The era first acts, on taking over of nationalised utilities was by no means a “golden age”. But at the UK business in 2006, The Independent least people had some confidence that they weren’t “being ripped was to take the Oxford off for the sake of higher dividends for shareholders, or to hit English Dictionary to task for targets for executives’ bonus schemes”. In truth, private defining a “McJob” as an ownership does not “automatically deliver beneficial results”, “unstimulating, low-paid job with few prospects”. especially if competition is weak. Given the way the political wind is now blowing, those who truly believe the private utilities are Laurene Powell Jobs worth preserving face a big challenge. When trust in relationships breaks down irretrievably, radical solutions such as Labour’s renationalisation programme “really start to look attractive”.

Sir Richard Branson struck an “elegiac” note in a letter to staff last week, announcing that he’d sold the bulk of his stake in The end of Virgin Atlantic to Air France-KLM, says The Observer. He recalled the decades “when his airline was pitched as the upstart, an era at punching above its weight”. The same bravado was apparent in 2012, when Branson struck an alliance with the US carrier Delta Virgin Atlantic (now Virgin’s main stakeholder) and bet BA chief Willie Walsh that the Virgin brand would still be around in five years’ time. Editorial “Branson may yet emerge technically victorious, but Walsh’s The Observer prognosis that smaller airlines would be swallowed up looks prescient”: Virgin’s wings have been clipped since the deal, riskier routes to Africa and Asia have been cut back, and its return to Ever since Amazon’s Jeff profit is now “menaced” by Brexit and the falling pound. “To exit Bezos acquired The with £220m from Air France-KLM tucked away is an honourable Washington Post in 2013, investing in legacy American retreat for an ageing knight”, but the writing has long been on print publications has the wall. Consolidation is the name of the game in aviation and become quite the fashion Virgin, the former rebel, is now “firmly sided with the big boys”. among tech titans, says CNET.com. The latest to join A few years back, I complained that taking exercise had become the fray is Laurene Powell a ubiquitous swank among corporate big shots, replacing previous Jobs, founder of the It’s never preoccupations such as “workaholicism” and golf, says Sathnam Emerson Collective, a Sanghera. But now things have got a whole lot worse. It’s no philanthropic outfit which wise to outrun longer enough for “macho” bosses to demoralise staff by telling has agreed to buy The Atlantic, and all of its digital them how “they managed to squeeze in an eight-mile run before the boss properties, from Atlantic work”; now they’re “physically trying to crush” subordinates too. Media for an undisclosed Sathnam Sanghera When TSB boss Paul Pester signed up for last month’s London sum. Powell Jobs certainly Triathlon, he leaned heavily on staff to join him, later gloating isn’t lacking the credentials The Times that he’d been outperformed by just two colleagues – one by to shore up the 160-year-old “only” a matter of seconds. Reports from the US suggest bosses “national treasure”, whose there are even subjecting job candidates to “brutal workouts” in authors have included Mark interviews. I suppose it’s a good thing that corporate culture now Twain and Martin Luther revolves more around squat thrusts than “visiting strip clubs”, but King. She’s the widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs, it creates all sorts of etiquette nightmares. The TSB partner who who left her $20bn, and is managed to “Beat the Boss” by overtaking Pester on the finishing a long-time campaigner on straight “probably felt great at the time, but I’m not sure it will social justice issues. turn out to be the smartest career move”.

THE WEEK 5 August 2017

Shares CITY 51

Who’s tipping what

The week’s best buys Directors’ dealings ITV LoopUp Group Reckitt Benckiser Micro Focus The Times The Mail on Sunday Investors Chronicle Although revenues are down, This conference calling Reckitt has announced the sale the broadcaster is “robust” start-up, which fl oated a year of its food business to focus on 2,600 thanks to the success of hits ago, has reported strong becoming a “global leader in such as Love Island. US revenue and earnings growth, consumer health and hygiene”. revenues are up to £143m. and has a record of dependable Geographically diverse with 2,400 ITV has invested in programme delivery. Panmure has raised its strong cash fl ow, it is well set production and raised the target price from 180p to to generate sustainable growth. 2,200 Chairman buys dividend. Buy. 173.7p. 200p. Buy. 193p. Buy. £75.9. 49,000

Just Group Parity Group Relx 2,000 The Daily Telegraph The Daily Telegraph The Times Mar Apr May Jun Jul This retirement specialist offers The recruitment specialist is Relx, which provides data for insurance services and majors growing its higher-margin scientific, technical and medical If it completes its purchase of Hewlett Packard’s software on annuities and equity release, consultancy arm, which organisations, is a “byword arm, Micro Focus will become enabling older homeowners provides improved visibility. for solid reliability”. Revenues one of the world’s largest to borrow against their Debt has fallen from £7.4m to are up, and profits are 5% software fi rms. Chairman properties. Management is £2.3m. Speculative, but a share ahead, driven by an 8% Kevin Loosemore has boosted ambitious, with a “good price fall presents a buying growth in fraud prevention his stake by £1.1m, taking his reputation”. Buy. 134.9p. opportunity. Buy. 10.13p. data. Buy. £16.65. share ownership to 0.3%. SOURCE: INVESTORS CHRONICLE

…and some to hold, avoid or sell Form guide

3i Group Cobham Moneysupermarket.com Shares tipped 12 weeks ago The Times Investors Chronicle Investors Chronicle Best tip The private equity fi rm has The defence contractor is Poor performance in home Berendsen seen a “startling rise” in its struggling with the legacy of services has had a big impact The Daily Telegraph share price, which has limited the 2014 acquisition of US fi rm on the price comparison fi rm, up 62.23% to £12.93p the value of the yield. Aeroflex, and suffering despite insurance, money and Management has an impressive persistent trading weakness. travel divisions ploughing Worst tip record, but there are better- Debt remains high and margins forward. The risks are high in Lok’nStore Group paying funds, such as 3i are well below the historic a fi ercely competitive, “fragile” Investors Chronicle down 13.71% to 387p Infrastructure. Take profits. average. Sell. 136p. market. Sell. 336p. Sell. 6.85p. Foxtons Rentokil Initial Acacia Mining The Mail on Sunday The Times Market view Investors Chronicle The London-focused estate Rentokil has completed the “Complacency is one of the Despite record production, the agent has been hit by a rise in sale of its workwear and preconditions for the switch miner has been hit hard by the stamp duty and faces a hygiene arm, to focus on its from bull to bear markets. Tanzanian government’s ban “challenging” market. Peel higher-margin pest control and The current market is mature on gold concentrates and a Hunt worries there’s no cleaning business. Shares now and has many classic new levy. Costs are rising and catalyst for improvement, and sell on 24 times earnings, warning signs attached.” there’s a $190bn bill for has slashed profit forecasts by which “looks a bit rich”. Take John Plender in the FT unpaid taxes. Sell. 159.6p. 35%. Sell. 90.25p. profits. Sell. 290.75p. Market summary

KeyKey numbers for investors BestBest and and worst performing shares Following the Footsie

1 Aug 2017 Week before Change (%) WEEK’S CHANGE, FTSE 100 STOCKS 7,600 FTSE 100 7423.66 7434.82 –0.15% RISES Price % change FTSE All-share UK 4071.32 4048.25 0.08% Intertek Group 4695.00 +10.39 Dow Jones 21979.87 21634.07 1.60% Diageo 2439.50 +8.45 7,500 NASDAQ 6359.73 6416.05 –0.88% Admiral Group 2131.00 +6.55 Nikkei 225 19985.79 19955.20 0.15% Direct Line In.Group 395.00 +6.44 Hang Seng 27540.23 26852.05 2.56% Next 3973.00 +6.40 7,400 Gold 1270.95 1254.40 1.32% FALLS Brent Crude Oil 51.30 50.09 2.42% AstraZeneca 4490.00 –11.74 7,300 DIVIDEND YIELD (FTSE 100) 3.78% 3.77% British American Tobc. 4832.00 –8.54 UK 10-year gilts yield 1.26 1.32 Imperial Brands 3203.00 –6.92 US 10-year Treasuries 2.27 2.32 SSE 1381.00 –5.22 7,200 UK ECONOMIC DATA Lloyds Banking Group 65.57 –4.97 Latest CPI (yoy) 2.6% (Jun) 2.9% (May) BEST AND WORST UK STOCKS OVERALL Latest RPI (yoy) 3.5% (Jun) 3.7% (May) 7,100 Sealand Capital Gala 8.25 +65.00 Halifax house price (yoy) +2.6% (Jun) +3.3% (May) Mar Apr May Jun Jul Torotrak 0.35 –36.36 6-month movement in the FTSE 100 index £1 STERLING $1.324 E1.116 ¥146.565 Source: Datastream (not adjusted for dividends). Prices on 1 Aug (pm)

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 52 The last word The world’s most spectacular offices

From California to London, the tech giants are employing top architects to build spectacular symbols of their immense global power. But these edifices have their critics, says Rowan Moore

We know by now that the puts 12,000 people in one internet is a giant playpen, building.” The audience a landscape of toys, gasped. He’d seen “office distractions and instant parks with lots of gratification – plus, to be buildings”, but they “get sure, ugly, horrid beasties boring pretty fast”. So he lurking in all the softness proposed something “a – apparently without little like a spaceship horizon. Until we chance landed” with a “gorgeous on the bars of the playpen courtyard in the middle”. and fi nd that there are “It’s a circle and so it’s places we can’t go, and that curved all the way round”, it is in the gift of the he said, which “as you grown-ups on the other know if you build things, side to set the limits to our is not the cheapest way to freedom. We’re talking build something. There’s here of virtual space. But not a straight piece of those grown-ups, the tech glass on this building.” giants, are also in the The height would not business of building exceed four storeys – physical billion-dollar “we want the whole place enclaves for their human-scale”. There thousands of employees. would be 6,000 trees on Here too they create the 150-acre site, selected calibrated lands of fun, The Apple/Foster circle: so big, it’s said to be visible from space with the help of a “senior wherein staff offer their arborist from Stanford lives, body and soul, day and night, in return for gyms, Olympic- who’s very good with indigenous trees around this area”. sized pools, climbing walls, basketball courts, hiking trails, massage rooms and hanging gardens, performance venues, When a council member said that “the word spectacular is an amiable art and lovable graphics. They’ve been doing this for a understatement”, Jobs didn’t demur. “I think we have a shot at while – what is changing is the scale and extravagance of these building the best office building in the world,” he said. He batted places. For the tech giants are now in the same position as great away requests for a few perks for the neighbourhood – free Wi-Fi, powers in the past – the bankers of the Italian Renaissance, the opening an Apple store, mitigating the increase in traffic – and in skyscraper builders of the 20th century, Victorian railway the nicest possible way reminded everyone that “we’re the largest companies – whereby their size taxpayer in Cupertino, so we’d and wealth fi nd expression in like to continue to stay here and spectacular architecture. “The doorways all have perfectly flat pay taxes”. If the city asked for thresholds, so that engineers don’t have to too much, in other words, Apple The tech tycoons have colossal adjust their gait when they enter the building” would decamp to a rival resources. They can have new municipality. The mayor waved materials invented, or make old an iPad 2 and said how much his ones perform as never before. They can build the biggest and daughter loved it. “Your technologies really make everybody most expensive workplaces yet seen. They can change cities. proud,” said another councillor. “Well, thanks,” said Jobs, “we’re Most, though not all, of their new structures are in the gathering proud to be in Cupertino too.” “Thanks,” she gurgled back, like of towns, suburbs and small cities that goes by the name of Silicon a giddy teenager. The project was approved. Valley. There is Apple Park in Cupertino, the new Apple HQ designed by the mighty Foster and Partners: 2.8 million sq ft in Jobs was, in fact, understating the circle’s exceptionalness. size and reportedly costing $5bn, at its centre a mile in Recently Steven Levy, a journalist for Wired, was let through circumference, visible from space, a metal and glass circle that is Apple’s PR palisades to look inside the nearly fi nished building. now nearly complete. There are the planned Google headquarters He described a high-precision Xanadu, a feel-good Spectre base, in Mountain View and London by the high-ego, high-reputation on which Foster and his team were assisted by Apple’s famed pairing of Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick. Facebook has chief design officer Sir Jonathan Ive. After a drive down a pristine hired the New York office of OMA, the practice founded by Rem 755ft-long tunnel, clad in specially designed and patented tiles, he Koolhaas, to add to its Frank Gehry-designed complex in Menlo discovered a world of whiteness, greenery and silver, with a Park, completed in 2015. 100,000 sq ft fi tness centre and a café that can serve 4,000 at once, with the 1,000-seat Steve Jobs Theatre, surmounted by a The one that commands most attention, and has done since the 165ft-wide glass cylinder, for Apple’s famous product launches, designs were unveiled in 2011, is the Apple/Foster circle, built on and with a landscape designed to emulate a national park. It is a a site vacated by the waning empire of Hewlett Packard, the fi rm place where trees have been transplanted from the Mojave Desert, that gave the teenage Steve Jobs his fi rst break. According to where the extensive glass has been specially treated to achieve Wired magazine, the building preoccupied Jobs in his last months. exactly the desired level of transparency and whiteness, where a In June 2011, visibly ailing, he appeared in person in front of a new kind of pizza box that stops the contents going soggy has star-struck Cupertino City Council, to convince them of its merits. been invented and patented for the company café. The doorways He didn’t have to try too hard. “We’ve had some great architects have perfectly fl at thresholds because, according to a construction to work with,” he said, “and we’ve come up with a design that manager reported by Reuters, “if engineers had to adjust their gait

THE WEEK 5 August 2017 The last word 53 when entering the building, they Heatherwick and Bjarke Ingels’s risked distraction from their work”. practice, BIG, into a marriage. It’s a There is a yoga room, reports Levy, striking idea, like a billionaire hiring that is “covered in stone from just Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears to the right quarry in Kansas, that’s perform at his sprog’s 18th been carefully distressed, like a pair birthday. Heatherwick and Ingels of jeans, to make it look like are both unabashed showmen. Just the stone at Jobs’s favourite hotel in one of them might be considered Yosemite”. There are the sliding ample for any project. At Mountain glass doors to the café, four storeys View, where permission was or 85ft high, each weighing recently granted to proceed, a huge 440,000lbs – nearly 200 tons – that tent-like roof is proposed, with open and close with the help of upward-curving openings – “smile- near-noiseless underground Zuckerberg with Gehry, who designed Facebook’s Menlo Park shaped clerestories” – for viewing mechanisms. Apple Park uses the the sky. Beneath its shelter, on a largest, heaviest single pieces of glass ever installed on a building, raised open deck, hundreds if not thousands of Googlers will be with the added complication of being curved. It is certainly a doing their stuff. The next level down, a publicly accessible route wonder of our age, though to what end is an open question. Ive runs through, part of a programme of engaging with the local told Wired the main aims were the connection and collaboration community that also includes a “public plaza” for group tai chi it would allow between employees. For Foster, it is “a beautiful and whatever. object descended on this verdant, luxurious landscape… a true utopian vision”. One of its aims is to inspire future Apple workers If Apple Park seems aloof and extraterrestrial – despite the fact with its perfection and attention to detail, to set a standard for that quite a lot of its landscape is open to the public – Facebook them to follow in their work. Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, called it a and Google want to engage you. But there are similarities “100-year decision”. between all these projects, such as the all-embracing nature of their ambitions. Each campus is a self-contained universe where Yet ever since the design was unveiled, it has provoked scepticism. everything – the vegetation, the graphics, the food in the café, The architecture critic of the Los Angeles Times called it a the programming of events, the architecture – is determined by “retrograde cocoon”, “doggedly old-fashioned”. As a perfect and the management. They make their own weather. Under the excluding piece of modernist geometry, set within lush planting Google tent, or inside the Apple circle, there is little but and dependent on large amounts of parking, it looks oddly like a googleness, or appleness. There is nature, but it is of an abstract, corporate HQ of the 1950s or 1960s. And a circle is a frozen managed kind. There is architecture but, notwithstanding the form, hard to modify or augment. At any given point, the invention that goes into materials, it fi nds it hard to shed the relationship to the rest is much the same as at any other point, quality of computer renderings. which seems to work against Ive’s hopes for communication and spontaneity. It is the shape of infinity and eternity, of mausoleums Sometimes tech HQs fi nd themselves in the middle of big cities, and temples. As for Cook’s 100-year ambition, this seems rather than the compliant sprawl of Silicon Valley. Amazon has hubristic – as the decline of Hewlett Packard shows, there is little chosen to situate itself in downtown Seattle, where it is believed to reason to think any tech fi rm can last that long, in which case the occupy between 15% and 20% of the available office space. This Apple circle will, like the crumbling art deco skyscrapers of allows it to boast that 20% of its 25,000 employees walk to Detroit, be magnificently redundant. work. To its fairly anodyne assembly of office blocks it has just added the Spheres, an urban Eden Project of interlocking bubbles, There is another line of criticism, where its employees will wander, which is that those awed and in Costa Rican temperatures, tax-hungry members of “Each campus is a self-contained universe among tropical forests and Cupertino City Council didn’t where everything – the vegetation, the food in waterfalls. At Kings Cross in push hard enough for the help the cafés – is determined by the management” London, pressure of space has that their community needs. If obliged the stacking up of the presence of Apple is mostly Google’s campus into an an immense boon, it also brings pressure on housing and 11-storey, million-square-foot structure as long as the Shard is transport, creating traffic jams and pushing the median price of a tall. Here the fun and games of the inside – a promenade that home in Cupertino to nearly $2m. Other tech fi rms have tried ascends past cafés and sports facilities to a rooftop landscape of harder to address these issues. Shohei Shigematsu, the partner at “headland”, “fields”, “garden” and “plateau” – are compressed OMA New York in charge of Facebook’s latest expansion, into an exterior that takes its cue from the somewhat po-faced Willow Campus, says their mission is to “integrate with the regularity of office blocks around it, and from the repeating lines community”, to provide “the things that the community of the railway tracks down one side. The proposed building is one desperately wants” – a grocery store, open space, 1,500 homes of the more convincing architectural designs so far by either BIG (of which 15% will be offered at below-market rents), a hotel, or Heatherwick. It is a decisive structure, unafraid of its scale. But residential walks, shopping streets. “Facebook is the perfect it is still inward-looking, offering a conventional office entrance company,” Shigematsu says, “their mission is to connect people, plus an array of retail units to the street. One could have hoped and network is a word that is virtual but also physical.” He wants that the force of Google could have achieved more. to “undo the corporate fortress-like approach”, though he acknowledges that a vast company will always have secrets and When Microsoft was in its pomp, it was happy to occupy a bland that much of its territory will be out of bounds to the general scattering of low buildings on the edge of Seattle. It still does. It is public. The imagery published so far shows generically pleasant striking that for all its fame, Silicon Valley makes little impression parks and streets, of the kind that well-mannered urbanists have on the visual consciousness of the world – there’s not a strong been generating for decades, with none of the surprise signature sense of what it actually looks like. Until now it has lacked perversity that you usually get with OMA projects. Shigematsu landmarks. But that much power and that much money will not says he is happy to accept “a certain level of banality” in the always be happy to be unobtrusive. We are only just beginning to appearance – it is the “large-scale thinking” that matters to him. see the ways in which it can change the landscape of cities.

Google want something else again. After considering various A longer version of this article fi rst appeared in The Observer. iconic architects – for example, Zaha Hadid – they shotgunned © Guardian News & Media Ltd 2017.

5 August 2017 THE WEEK 54 Crossword

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1067 This week’sw crossword winner will receive An Ettinger Brogue Collection key case and two Connell Guides will be given to the an EttingerEtt (www.ettinger.co.uk) Brogue sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday CollectionCollec 4-hook key case, which retails 14 August. Send it to: The Week Crossword 1067, 2nd floor, 32 Queensway, London W2 3RX, or at £125,£12 and two Connell Guides (www. connellguides.com).connel email the answers to [email protected]. Tim Moorey (www.timmoorey.info) 12 3456783 4 ACROSS DOWN 9 1 Position of advantage is what 2 Some copy internally for bank Kelvin lost (1,5,2,3,3) protection? (7) 10 11 10 Doctor returns mostly around 3 United guy playing away from mid-January? Foster perhaps (7) home (9) 11 Current is hot and humid right 4 Flatter competitive trials rider away (7) short of time (6) 12 Fretful way of addressing 5 Swimming getting little thanks 12 13 hospital receptionist? (9) in a race (8) 13 Trump dropping behind gets 6 Leave work during strike (3,2) right round on golf course (5) 7 Support dupe spoken of (7) 14 Hospital department with 8 New replacement for long, tiny 14 15 16 passion? Not a bit of it (6) socks? (5,9) 15 Communist holds top honour 9 Tiredness apt to be treated with 17 dear? Rubbish! (5-3) a new type of drug (14) 18 Check shower after break (8) 16 Brexit finally near mess such as 18 19 20 21 20 Cold in lorry? Extremely cold (6) this? (5-4) 23 Indian widows please, but two 17 Wade perhaps in Surrey 22 characters in the end turned off! (5) water (8) 25 What can be composed as 19 Difficulty earlier in the Davis 23 24 25 sliding? (9) Cup? (7) 26 A group broadcasting in 21 One isn’t prepared for a desert (7) conflicting relationship (7) 27 Looking for old eastern capital 22 Pass on very quiet tablet in 26 27 mentioned (7) Channel port (6) 28 Attractive sailor scoffing is 24 James working in losing badly (6,1,7) Mediterranean city (5)

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