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21-22 January

Life

Shunned by my own party

“I should have been the perfect Labour MP,” says Rosie Duffield in UnHerd. I was a single mum on benefits, earning under £10,000 as a teaching assistant; on my first day in parliament, I had to borrow money for the train fare. And I won my seat by turning “true blue” Canterbury red for the first time in history. At first, Labour’s “leading men” were excited: they plastered my face on all the big screens at the party conference; they bragged about my victory in their speeches. “Then I liked a tweet.”

Noted

Spanish architect David Romero has released a series of mock-ups visualising unbuilt projects by the renowned designer Frank Lloyd Wright, says Dezeen. They include The Illinois, a mile-high skyscraper proposed for Chicago; floating cabins on Lake Tahoe; and the Gordon Strong Automobile Objective, a planetarium and restaurant commissioned in 1925 by the eponymous American businessman.

Quoted

quoted 21.1.23 Wendell Holmes

“The young man knows the rules. The old man knows the exceptions.”

American jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes

The great escape

An abandoned Boeing 737 on a clifftop in Indonesia is being converted into a private holiday villa, says Robb Report. The refitted jet will have two bedrooms, two bathrooms (one in the cockpit), an infinity pool, a side terrace and a helipad. Perched on an outcrop 500ft above Bali’s Nyang Nyang beach, the retired aircraft will be available to rent for around £6,000 a night.

Books

American artist and writer Dinah Fried recreates made-up meals from famous books, says The Marginalian. In her book, Fictitious Dishes, each photograph is accompanied by the passage in which the recipe appeared, along with a few curious “factlets” about the author, novel or food in question. Some of the most memorable plates include an avocado and crab salad from Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar; a buffet table “with glistening hors-d’oeuvre” from F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby; and a measly portion of gruel from Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. “Please, sir, I want some more.” Order the book here.

Property

The country house

This award-winning house in Nottinghamshire has an L-shaped layout with double-height ceilings on one side. On the other, glass doors open out on to a wide terrace and landscaped gardens. Inside, the home has a modern kitchen with beech flooring, an intimate living space set around an open fire, and six bedrooms. Newark is a 20-minute drive, with direct trains to London King’s Cross in less than 90 minutes. £1.6m.

The apartment

This two-bedroom maisonette sits across the top two floors of an Edwardian building near west London’s trendy Golborne Road. It has a modern kitchen-diner bathed in light from the wooden sash windows, a mezzanine-level living space, and a private balcony which catches the afternoon sun. White City and Ladbroke Grove Tube stations are both a 15-minute walk. £950,000.

Weather

Quoted

quoted 21.1.23

“Millions long for immortality, who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

Novelist Susan Ertz