All the week’s wisdom in one place
7-13 May 2021
UK elections
The Tories’ crushing victory in the Hartlepool by-election was worse than Labour’s darkest nightmares, says Patrick Maguire in The Times. Despite fielding the “unloved and low-wattage” Jill Mortimer, the Tories won 52% of the vote, nearly 7,000 more than Labour and double the Tory share in 2019.
Social media
Donald Trump has been stuck in “Facebook jail” since the Capitol Hill riots in January, says the New York Post. He can’t talk to his 35 million Facebook friends or 24 million Instagram followers. So it’s big news that the social media giant’s “hand-picked oversight board” this week told Mark Zuckerberg to come up with a better reason for keeping him there indefinitely, because “using the riot as a pretext to silence him” won’t wash.
Fishing
“Britain has often gone to war to defend great principles,” says Marc Roche in Le Point. The Falklands, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya… and now, perhaps, Jersey. That’s right – as part of a new “tug of war” between France and Britain over fishing rights, Boris Johnson this week dispatched two gunboats to the British Crown Dependency to “thwart the threats of Paris”.
Heroes and villains
Noto, a Japanese town that’s spent Covid relief funds on a statue of a giant squid. Town officials say that the £164,000, 13-metre-long statue will boost local tourism – the squid has an opening under its beak where people can pose for photographs. Many think it would have been better to spend the money on nursing care.
Tomorrow’s world
For 10 years Ethiopia and Egypt have teetered “on the verge of the first transboundary water war”, says Rosa Lyster in the London Review of Books. Egypt’s population of 100 million, which is growing at 1.8 million a year, relies almost entirely on the Nile.
Quoted
“Something that Keir Starmer is going to have to understand if he’s going to get ahead in politics – most people have had an encounter with a lawyer who was cleverer than them and they rarely remember it with fondness.”
Inside politics
Boris Johnson could have avoided a lot of trouble if he’d followed Margaret Thatcher’s thrifty approach to interior decoration, says Andrew Pierce in the Daily Mail. She once vetoed plans for a new carpet in her study, even though the existing one had a threadbare patch in front of her favourite armchair. Instead she got it repaired with offcuts found in the cellar. The result, my source says, was “one bright square in a sea of faded green pile, but Maggie was chuffed to bits”.
Zeitgeist
The FA has updated England’s Three Lions football crest, in use since 1872, to include a lion cub, a lioness and a lion. The new lions represent “progression, greater inclusivity and accessibility in all levels of the beautiful game”, says England Football on Twitter. “No, they don’t,” tweets think-tank director Matt Kilcoyne. “The three lions passant guardant represent Richard I’s principal three positions as King of the English, Duke of Normandy, and Duke of Aquitaine.”
Noted
With nearly a third of Americans fully vaccinated against Covid, US states and companies are offering a range of incentives to win over the jab-hesitant, says Nikou Asgari in the Financial Times. Maryland says it will give $100 to fully vaccinated state employees; in New Jersey, those over 21 who receive their first dose in May can earn a free beer at a participating brewery. Krispy Kreme is offering free doughnuts for the vaccinated and Greenhouse of Walled Lake, a marijuana dispensary in Michigan, is giving out “pot for shots”.
The case for
This week marks 200 years since the death of the French emperor, and his legacy is as controversial as ever.
Whales
Whales have distinct cultures, “just as some humans eat with chopsticks while others use forks”, says Craig Welch in National Geographic. Different pods pass dialects “as different as Mandarin and Swahili”, favourite greetings and ingenious hunting traditions down the generations.
The Uighurs
The “concentration camps” in Xinjiang are part of the biggest internment programme since the Third Reich, says Sayragul Sauytbay, and those trapped in them are “a colony of slaves”. Having survived life in one of the camps, she is determined to expose China’s atrocities to the world, and tells her story in a new book, The Chief Witness.
The Gates divorce
It’s hard to believe Bill and Melinda Gates are getting divorced, says Alice Thomson in The Times. Unlike so many celebrity couples, the Microsoft founder, 65, and his wife, 56, seemed truly settled. They told me that they meditated together – “Not cross-legged or anything,” said Bill, “but on chairs next to each other.”
Rafe Spall
Rafe Spall is often blinded by the sheer “natural wattage” of his Hollywood colleagues, says Eva Wiseman in The Guardian. While shooting The Big Short, the 38-year-old actor found that eye contact with Brad Pitt was “a bit like looking at the sun”. Catching sight of Stephen Spielberg on the set of The BFG, Spall inexplicably “burst into tears”.
Michael Collins
Astronaut Michael Collins, who died last week aged 90, had no patience with the soubriquet “the loneliest man in history”. What nonsense, he would say – just “phony philosophy”. The phrase was bestowed on him after the Apollo 11 space mission in 1969: while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon, Collins stayed in the spacecraft on his own, making 30 lunar orbits. During each 48-minute orbit, his radio would cut out – so he would sit, disconnected, staring at the dark side of the moon.
Noted
Sixty years ago the American astronaut Alan Shepard became the second man to travel into space, says historian Dan Snow on Twitter. When he was later asked what he thought about as he sat atop the rocket, waiting for lift-off, he said: “The fact that every part of this ship was built by the lowest bidder.”
Staying young
Jeanne Calment, the oldest documented human, died in 1997 at the age of 122 in Arles, France. She gave up smoking at 117, but enjoyed a glass of port and some chocolate every day. Will science give us new ways to live happily to her great age and way beyond, asks Ferris Jabr in The New York Times.
Love etc
Of all the unrealistic Hollywood tropes, nothing irritates me more than women wearing men’s shirts after sex, says Iman Hariri-Kia in Bustle. You know the scene: two characters fall into bed, then the camera cuts to our heroine “post-coitus, draped in a men’s button-down shirt”.
Sport
Olympic gold medallist Caitlyn Jenner says she opposes “biological boys who are trans competing in girls’ sports at school”, telling a reporter that it’s “a question of fairness”. Good for her, says Debbie Hayton in The Spectator. “Human beings are not disembodied souls residing in perambulating devices; we are our bodies and those bodies have a sex.”
Northern Ireland
Forty years ago this month, IRA member Bobby Sands died after a 66-day hunger strike at the Maze prison, Co Down. This was a “watershed” moment for Irish republicanism, says Peter Taylor, a journalist who covered the Troubles for 30 years, in Archive on 4’s The Hunger Strikes podcast.
North Korea
In 2016 North Korea is said to have attempted the “most audacious cyber-heist in history” – a theft of $1bn from Bangladesh’s central bank. The seeds of this crime were sown 25 years earlier, when the country’s rogue communist regime went broke. To raise cash fast, then leader Kim Jong-il became the “Tony Soprano” of east Asia, say Geoff White and Jean Lee in The Lazarus Heist, a 10-part BBC podcast.
Everyone’s watching
I’d love to tell you Nomadland is overhyped, says Tom Shone in The Sunday Times. It scooped the top Oscars without anyone in the UK having clapped eyes on it, and sounds miserable: widowed sixtysomething Fern (Frances McDormand) loses her home and drifts around America in a van, looking for work. But “the open road has never looked better” than in writer and director Chloé Zhao’s “melancholy poem about loss and restlessness”.
Books
Readers expecting a lyrical evocation of the countryside may be disappointed, says Jamie Blackett in the Telegraph, but Bella Bathurst’s Field Work: What Land Does to People & What People Do to Land (Profile £16.99) “is more important than that”. It is “anthropology not hagiography”, a genuine attempt to get “under the fingernails of the people who work in land-based industries” and understand why they carry on “doing what they do, usually for little financial reward, often in great discomfort and in the face of adversity”.
The Dartmoor Line from Exeter to Okehampton is to reopen after nearly 50 years, making this scenic corner of Devon more accessible, says The Times. Bowden Farm, in North Bovey, is a Grade II listed three-bedroom house in 88 acres, with a newly converted four-bedroom barn, two lakes and equestrian facilities. Exeter is 15 miles away. £2.95m.
This villa on a 24-acre estate on the Peloponnesian Riviera has six bedrooms, two kitchens, a home cinema and staff quarters. There’s a 2,600ft stretch of private coastline, a pool with a bar, an outdoor lounge and an open-air dining table seating 30. The island of Spetses is 15 minutes away by water taxi and Athens airport is a two-hour drive. €25m.
This Grade II listed two-bedroom house is in the Weston neighbourhood of Bath, within easy reach of the city centre and the Cotswold Way. It has contemporary interiors, but retains original features such as stone fireplaces and shuttered windows. There are several specimen trees in the garden. £510,000.
Dating from Tudor times, Grade II listed Water Lane Farm is near Storrington, West Sussex. It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms and a drawing room with exposed beams, oak flooring and an inglenook fireplace. There are outbuildings in the half-acre of gardens, along with a well and a pond. Pulborough station is 10 minutes away. £650,000.
You get views of Durham’s cathedral and castle from this Grade II listed house on Georgian South Street, one of the city’s most coveted addresses. Lovingly restored by its owners, the four-bedroom property has a regal central staircase and a roof lantern that lets in loads of light. There’s a kitchen-diner with an Aga, a sun terrace and a secluded garden. £825,000.
Quoted
“On the first day, her child flooded the bathroom at 6am, trying to shower… on the second day, she left my husband on the beach with seven children to chat up the man in the surfboard shop… on the third day, she left the house with him to have sex on the beach or, if it rained, the car park, leaving us to babysit.”
Eating in
Muslims all over the world are observing Ramadan, which is “all about strengthening our relationship with God, our faith, and our community”, says Aisha Rimi in Bustle. They fast from sunrise to sunset, eating a meal called suhr in the early morning and another called iftar at the day’s end.
The great escape
The Isle of Wight is “the best that England has to offer, in less than 150 square miles”, says Oliver Spencer in Tatler. It has white cliffs, sandy beaches and rolling green fields that give way to farmland and woods, with seaside promenades, quaint villages and a social boating scene for “a dose of nostalgic charm”.
Noted
A fight has broken out between Florence’s stuffy Uffizi Gallery and young influencers, who say they’re being charged to pose in front of its treasures. New signs hanging on the walls say photos are allowed only for “personal and private use”. The gallery is unrepentant: “If you want to pose for a picture in front of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus to sell jeans, there is a price”.
The Peacock Room is the crowning glory of this palazzo in the Tuscan hamlet of Leccio, 20 miles southeast of Florence. Built in 1605, it was redecorated in exotic Moorish style by an Italian aristocrat in the 19th century.
This mausoleum in Shiraz honours Iran’s beloved 14th-century poet, considered one of the greats of Persian literature. The marble tomb, with its wonderful turquoise mosaic ceiling, was built in 1935, expanding on the original memorial built in 1773.
Designed by starchitect Zaha Hadid, the curved ceiling of this 1,000-seat auditorium was unveiled in Baku in 2012. The capital of the former Soviet state is renowned for its contemporary architecture.
It looks modest from the outside, but this church in the City has a spectacular coffered dome designed by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London. Made of timber, plaster and copper, it rests on eight Corinthian columns and lets light flood in.
The bright red ceiling of this station in Stockholm was created in the 1970s by artists Anders Aberg and Karl-Olov Bjork. The Swedish capital’s 68-mile metro system has been called “the world’s longest art exhibit”: its 100 stations are home to hundreds of artworks.
Noted
A 2000 bottle of Pétrus that spent more than a year in orbit is being sold by Christie’s for £720,000. It was part of a case that spent more than 400 days on the International Space Station, returning to terra firma in January. Wine critic Jane Anson, comparing it with an earthbound bottle of the same vintage (retail price about £4,500) told the BBC: “It was definitely different. The aromatics were more floral and more smoky.”
These are clothes to “coax you out of those sweatpants… and get you into something punchily printed with a side order of sex appeal”, says Grazia. Think 1960s-inspired colours and silhouettes that will work for your next pub outing (trousers, £49.99) as well as a wedding (dress, far right, £49.99).
This miraculous projector, weighing just 1.41kg, “can go anywhere and play anything”, says Penny Martin in The Gentlewoman. “Sling a sheet between two trees” for the ultimate outdoor cinema experience, or set it up at home for a family movie night. £549.
Mango’s first home collection is all about escapism, with a side order of sustainability. Browns, beiges and whites are set off with “touches of the blues and greens that instantly conjure soporific holiday afternoons”, says Vogue. Think gingham cushions, neutral bed linen, striped towels and textured blankets. From £6.99.
The Cream “literally takes 10 years off”, says make-up guru Bobbi Brown in the Telegraph. It’s the brainchild of French financier Charles Rosier and a world-leading burns expert, Professor Augustinus Bader. Famous fans include Brown, Alexa Chung and Carla Bruni – who likes it so much, she bought shares. £205.
In a collaboration that makes perfect sense, pink-haired fashion designer Zandra Rhodes has paired up with the equally cheery sock brand Happy Socks. The results are, well, as you’d imagine. Rhodes’s socks feature three of her classic designs – snakes, squiggles and flowers. £13.95 a pair.
Moneymakers
The guitarist, producer and singer-songwriter may be 68, but he continues to play live – he’s doing six festivals in Britain in August.
On the money
Join Soho House – or stay at home and buy the shares? According to Nimrod Kamer in Air Mail, the 50,000 or so people on the combined waiting lists of the London-based members’ club operator might be better off putting their money into its forthcoming IPO.
For the first time in 38 years, Abba are releasing new music. Here they are in 1975, in their famous cat costumes, which doubled as a tax-dodging tactic. Swedish law said the costumes could be tax-free, so long as they were so outrageous you could not wear them on the street.
Desert Island Discs
Last week Paddington 2 knocked Citizen Kane off the top spot on the movie ratings website Rotten Tomatoes, making it the world’s best-reviewed film. Its creators had an all-star cast and CGI at their disposal for the 2017 movie, but turning the Paddington books into the original cartoon series was tricky, author Michael Bond told Roy Plomley on Desert Island Discs in 1976.
Quirks of history
The newly elected Jill Mortimer is only the second Tory MP to represent the town of Hartlepool since 1945, says Philip Collins in the New Statesman. The first was Commander John Kerans, a former naval attaché who in 1949 had taken control of HMS Amethyst when the ship came under fire from Chinese communists on the Yangtze. After a 1o-week blockade, he took charge of a 104-mile “night-time flight” downriver to safety. A film about the incident, with Richard Todd as Kerans, was made in 1957. Kerans only served a single term as MP, from 1959 to 1964. In 1980 he retired to Oxted, Surrey – where Keir Starmer grew up.
