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45 Articles

Eyewitness Barbados

The Guardian Weekly Founded in Manchester, England 4 July 1919 Vol211 | Issue№ 2 Guardian Weekly is an edited selection of some of the best journalism found in the Guardian and Observer newspapers in the UK and the Guardian’s digital editions in the UK, US and Australia The weekly magazine has an international focus and three editions: global, Australia and North America. The Guardian was founded in 1821, and Guardian Weekly in 1919. We exist to hold power to account in the name of the public interest, to uphold liberal and progressive values, to fight for the common good, and to build hope. Our values, as laid out by editor CP Scott in 1921, are honesty, integrity, courage, fairness, and a sense of duty to the reader and the community. The Guardian…

Eyewitness Barbados

1 UNITED STATES Biden ultimatum fails to silence campaign critics Joe Biden came out swinging on Monday against critics of his calamitous June debate performance, telling Democrats in an open letter and Americans in a live TV interview he is staying in the presidential race – rejecting growing calls to concede that at 81 he is too ineffective to beat Donald Trump and should drop out in favour of a younger candidate. Biden lashed out at “elites in the party” in a live telephone interview with the MSNBC show Morning Joe, saying they were behind calls for him to quit. He added: “If any of these guys don’t think I should run, run against me. Go ahead. Announce for president – challenge me at the convention!” However, Biden’s position among congressional Democrats eroded further after…

ECONOMY Chancellor requests urgent review of public spending Rachel Reeves is to provide an emergency assessment of the government’s spending inheritance before MPs leave for their summer break as she attempts to pin the blame for looming tough tax and spending decisions on the defeated Tories. The new chancellor used her first speech at the Treasury to insist there would be no deviation from Labour’s hardline stance on reducing the national debt despite being bequeathed the “worst set of circumstances since the second world war”. Reeves said one of her first decisions in post had been to ask officials to provide an assessment of the UK’s public spending position so that she could understand the challenge ahead. The assessment will be presented to MPs before the end of the month. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer and Angela…

SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT

ASTRONOMY ‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ chance to see explosion on dwarf star Light from an explosion on a star has been travelling towards Earth for thousands of years and will be here any day. T Coronae Borealis (T CrB) will be as bright as the north star in the northern hemisphere and as bright as Orion’s right foot in the southern hemisphere. T CrB becomes visible about every 80 years after a thermonuclear explosion on the white dwarf’s surface about 3,000 light years away. It is expected to be seen anytime from now until September and will stay visible to the naked eye for about a week. Nasa has called it a “once-in-a-lifetime event”. It was last seen in 1946. HEALTH Rise in Covid jabs rates may protect children with asthma Higher Covid vaccination rates could help protect children…

SCIENCE AND ENVIRONMENT

A vote to rebuild Britain

THE HAND OF HISTORY rested only lightly on their shoulders, but they could not shake it off completely. The 200 or so volunteers, activists and campaign aides who lined Downing Street to see in a new, Labour prime minister knew they were there, in part, as extras in a historical re-enactment. With their union flags and hoarse cheers, they were replaying a scene etched in Labour folk memory: that glad, confident morning in May 1997 when Tony Blair made his way to No 10 through a throng of supporters having won a landslide victory. The memory was inevitable, and not only because the overall majority won by Keir Starmer is uncannily close to the 179-seat number that put Blair in the record books. The echo of 1997 struck because everyone present…

A vote to rebuild Britain

Turning blue wall yellow

The Liberal Democrats plan to use their best-ever contingent of 72 MPs to push Keir Starmer to begin cross-party talks on a new plan for social care, saying the issue was raised repeatedly by voters during their election campaign. Lib Dem insiders said Ed Davey’s party, which unseated four cabinet ministers as well as dozens of other senior Conservatives, would also seek to make sure the position of unpaid carers was considered properly by the Labour government. The party’s tally is 10 seats above the previous record of 62 in 2005. The last time they won more than this was as the Liberal party in 1923. Among the Tories they removed were: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary; Alex Chalk, the justice secretary; and Lucy Frazer, the culture secretary. They also won seats against…

Turning blue wall yellow

The asteroid hit at dawn. The seats of four Tory former prime ministers – David Cameron, Theresa May, Liz Truss, Boris Johnson – fell in an hour at around 6am on Friday, capping a historically unprecedented collapse for the Conservative party. The defeat of Truss provided this election’s biggest schadenfreude moment, as the political career of the country’s shortest-serving PM ended with her defeat by the largest swing to Labour ever recorded. The loss of those four seats epitomised the message sent by voters – an emphatic rejection of the party these PMs had led over the past 14 years. The 2024 election saw the Conservatives fall to their lowest ever vote share and lose 252 seats – more than any government has ever lost before. And more than half of…

A Tory party all at sea

Conservatives have suggested that former home secretary Suella Braverman is losing support as a potential party leader, as some who lost votes across southern England privately urged colleagues to resist a lurch to the right. A number of MPs now see Robert Jenrick, Priti Patel and Kemi Badenoch, all of whom have ruled out a deal with the hard-right Reform leader Nigel Farage, as more viable candidates. The Conservative party board is expected to meet to begin to draw up plans for a leadership contest to replace Rishi Sunak after the Tories’ devastating general election defeat. No decision will be made on the timeline until a meeting of the backbench 1922 Committee of remaining Tory MPs. Three potential candidates appeared to discuss the postmortem in the Sunday papers and TV shows: Braverman, Jenrick,…

A Tory party all at sea

Building bridges

THERE WAS MUCH TALK about Ming vases during the election campaign. Instead, in these Euros-dominated days, here’s a football metaphor. Keir Starmer’s task amounted to getting to full-time without serious mishap against a team that was 5-0 down within 40 minutes, all own goals, whose captain left the field early for half-time, and whose players started butting heads well before the game’s end. But you can only beat what’s in front of you. Now the hard part starts. The domestic challenges look bad: the NHS crisis, bankrupt local governments, crumbling infrastructure, a flat economy. But the foreign policy in-tray looks worse: war in Europe, conflict in the Middle East, friction with China and Donald Trump’s possible return. It makes for the most fragile and dangerous time for a generation. Business will kick…

Building bridges

A nervous energy rippled through the crowd gathered at Lyon’s Place de la République. As the final polls closed in the most momentous election in recent memory, hundreds of people milled about, waiting to find out what would lie in store for France. Just after 8pm, Florent Martins came running through the plaza, mobile phone in hand. “We won,” the 23-year-old yelled out. Those around him exploded into cheers and hearty applause. “The left won!” In a shock win, final results left the broad leftwing alliance as the biggest force in the French parliament, with the New Popular Front taking 182 seats. Emmanuel Macron’s centrist grouping, Ensemble, was in second place, with 168 seats, a stronger showing than expected. Marine Le Pen’s farright, anti-immigration National Rally (RN) came third with 143 seats. “It’s…

For more than 50 years, whenever France held a parliamentary election, voters would know the next morning which party would be in government and with what political agenda. This time it is different. After Emmanuel Macron called a snap election, and after the shortest campaign in modern history, French people delivered a spectacular rush of tactical voting to hold back a surge of far-right support. The resulting political landscape is divided and the outcome is complicated. Macron will take time to let the dust settle, his entourage has said. An alliance of parties on the left, the New Popular Front, surprised pollsters by coming first with a strong result of 182 seats. But it fell significantly short of the absolute majority of 289 that would allow it to instantly form a government.…

Immunity ruling raises the stakes for Democrats

‘With fear for our democracy, I dissent.” So wrote the supreme court justice Sonia Sotomayor in a minority opinion last week. She was far from alone in the view that, with Donald Trump threatening an “ imperial presidency”, American democracy is at a moment of maximum peril. Millions are pinning their hopes on the Democratic party as the last wall of defence. Surely, they believed, Democrats would field their best and brightest, led by a dynamic presidential candidate and demagogue slayer. Instead the party is offering 81-year-old Joe Biden and an internal civil war. Biden’s career-worst debate performance against Trump last month has triggered acrimony, angst and panic among Democrats just four months from election day. There are growing calls for the oldest president in US history to step aside. But Biden…

Immunity ruling raises the stakes for Democrats

Chasing the elusive nonpartisan female voter

The independent voter is the elusive prize in any election. This year, Democrats are hoping that widespread support for abortion rights will draw in women who might have previously shied away from the party. But polling shows independent female voters, a critical group for any candidate, are unenthused about the prospect of choosing between the same guys who ran last time. Now, with some Democrats publicly mulling replacing Joe Biden in the wake of his catastrophic debate performance, a key question is whether a Kamala Harris-topped ticket would provide them with some much-needed excitement. Over the past two decades, the share of voters who identify as “independent” has crept up to roughly 30%, according to April data from the Pew Research Center. But that number masks a divide among independents: although they…

Chasing the elusive nonpartisan female voter

Kingdom’s balancing act on Israel and Gaza conflict

Earlier this month, under the blazing summer sun, a crowd marched through central Amman, waving placards and flags. Watched carefully by a double row of police officers, the several hundred protesters chanted slogans and repeated the words crackling through the microphones mounted on the truck leading the procession. “We will burn Israel! We want the head of Netanyahu,” they shouted. Not far away, the same sun beat down on the pavements of Rainbow Street, once the bustling tourist centre of the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Eight months into the war in Gaza, and with no end to the conflict in sight, there were no visitors. “It’s the worst I’ve known … Nothing will improve until the war stops in Gaza,” said Usra Qadr, 38, a trader. Such sentiments are widespread…

Kingdom’s balancing act on Israel and Gaza conflict

New voice Victory for reformist candidate

The reformist Masoud Pezeshkian has pulled off a stunning victory in the Iranian presidential runoff, reflecting deep dissatisfaction with the direction of the country in recent years and opening potential new avenues of cooperation with the west. Pezeshkian won 16,384,403 votes to defeat the ultra-conservative Saeed Jalili, who received 13,538,179 votes, on a turnout of 49.8% – an increase on the record low turnout of 39.9% in the first round. In the first round, Pezeshkian came top, defeating three Conservative rivals. The turnout included more than 1m invalid votes. Pezeshkian has been an advocate of letting women choose whether to wear the hijab and ending internet restrictions that require the population to use VPN connections to avoid government censorship. He said after his victory: “The difficult path ahead will not be smooth…

New voice Victory for reformist candidate

Rush for oil prompts fears for climate

On 21 April 2006, the president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva – then in his first term – stood in front of the cameras with a broad smile on his face and his hands dirty with oil during the inauguration of Platform P50, located in Campos, Rio de Janeiro. Petrobras, a state-controlled national company, had discovered immense oil and gas deposits in the Atlantic Ocean’s depths. “Today we are celebrating another independence,” said Lula. “We are witnessing a milestone that will mark a new era to Brazil’s development.” Eighteen years later, Latin America and the Caribbean are about to become major exporters of “black gold”: at least 16 of the 33 Latin American and Caribbean countries are involved in about 50 major new oil and gas onshore and offshore projects.…

Rush for oil prompts fears for climate

Life at the heart of Japan’s lonely death epidemic

‘We occasionally greet each other, but that’s all. If one of my neighbours died, I’m not sure I would notice,” said Noriko Shikama, 76. She lives alone in a flat in Tokiwadaira, in Tokyo’s commuter belt, and has come to the Iki Iki drop-in centre to catch up with residents over coffee served by volunteers. Here, amid the everyday discussions, people also share news about the latest lonely death, or kodokushi – officially defined as one in which “a person dies without being cared for by anyone, and whose body is found after a certain period”. This time it was a woman who was discovered after neighbours noticed they had not seen her on her balcony. She had been dead for five months. “The smell is overpowering … it stays with you forever,”…

Life at the heart of Japan’s lonely death epidemic

The pupils are mostly school-children, aged from seven up to teenagers. The teacher is an 82-year-old woman known to all as Sword Granny. Inside her martial arts school – with walls adorned with trophies and mementoes – in Vatakara, in the southern Indian state of Kerala, the session begins with prayers and warm-up exercises. Then Meenakshi Raghavan takes the class through the precise movements of kalaripayattu, India’s oldest martial art, their bare feet padding across a floor of red dust mixed with medicinal herbs. Every day, this formidable woman teaches kalaripayattu to youngsters and the older men and women of the town alike. Raghavan has built a team of teachers who work alongside her at the Kadathanad Kalari Sangham school, but she has become especially renowned in this region not for her…

Clear the floor! The science of dad dancing – and why it’s good for you

In his early 20s, Prince William was often seen stumbling out of nightclubs after a night of grooving. But now, as though a clock has struck 12, this youthful cavorting appears to have transformed into something more cringeworthy: dad dancing. In a viral video captured at a recent Taylor Swift concert, the heir to the throne was filmed with arms aloft, chest shimmying swiftly – and somewhat stiffly – to the beat. At Glastonbury last month, tens of thousands of men were “shaking it off” in similar energetic fashion. But while scientific studies have confirmed that older men do indeed dance differently from their younger counterparts – and this may have evolved as a way of signalling their declining biological fitness – experts argue that dad dancing should be celebrated, not slated,…

Clear the floor! The science of dad dancing – and why it’s good for you

Understated newcomer could end 25 years of Chavismo

The road from Caracas to Guatire is lined with propaganda billboards glorifying President Nicolás Maduro and likening his political rivals to gangsters from the country’s most infamous criminal group. “They won’t defeat us,” the slogan declares. But as the economically fractured South American country prepares to hold its long-awaited presidential election on 28 July, some people are not persuaded. “Yes we can! Yes we can!” opposition supporters chanted as they gathered in Guatire, a city to the east of the capital, to champion the duo hoping to end the 11-year rule of Hugo Chávez’s unpopular heir – and more than a quarter-century of Chavismo. The two politicians in question are María Corina Machado, one of Venezuela’s most prominent and outspoken opposition leaders, and Edmundo González Urrutia, a softly-spoken former diplomat who, until recently,…

Understated newcomer could end 25 years of Chavismo

Prime factor After nine years, is the Trudeau era nearing a conclusion?

“He’s a very polarising person. But polarising also means some people will show up for you A Canadian prime minister who has outstayed his welcome, persistent inflation, a government bumped and bruised by scandal and a fired-up opposition leader itching for a showdown. It was against this backdrop, four decades ago, that Pierre Trudeau took his apocryphal “walk in the snow” and decided not to contest the next federal election. After a shocking upset in a “safe” electoral district and with a looming possibility of a blowout in the next federal election, Justin Trudeau’s predicament closely mirrors that of his father. But the incumbent prime minister says he has no intention of stepping down, despite evidence the public is growing increasingly weary of both his tenure – and of his Liberal party. In…

Prime factor After nine years, is the Trudeau era nearing a conclusion?

It’s a knockout

1 Dancing around the pneumatic institute Playing rugby one day, I mistimed a tackle and dislocated one of my fingers. I felt a stab of pain and sat in the mud staring in disbelief at my hand. One of my fingers was bent at an unnatural angle. My teammates gathered round, grinning. They made it clear that they expected me to snap my finger back into place. Several of them mimed the action and excitedly made the cracking sound. This was a test of my toughness, one of many that I have failed in my life. Instead, I took myself to hospital and sat for hours in a blaze of fluorescent lights in the A&E department, feeling self-conscious with my shorts, muddy legs and odd-looking finger. Later that evening, I was shown…

It’s a knockout

IT WAS ONLY WHEN THE DOORBELL RANG AT 2AM that Dee realised how serious a problem her son had. She had been asleep, so she was especially disoriented to open the door and find two paramedics, an ambulance blinking behind them in the dark. The lead medic asked if Jake was home. She directed him to the bedroom of her son, who was 16 at the time. Five years later, the shock and distress still causes Dee’s eyes to fill with tears. “I didn’t know what was happening,” she recalls. “It’s the worst nightmare a mother could ever think of.” Owing to patient confidentiality, it was not immediately clear who had called the paramedics or why. Dee, who lives in the West Midlands, had to piece it together over the subsequent…

Opinion Rebecca Solnit

I am not usually one to offer diagnoses of people I’ve never met, but it does seem like the pundit class of the US media is suffering from severe memory loss. Because they’re doing exactly what they did in the 2016 presidential race – providing wildly asymmetrical and inflammatory coverage of the one candidate running against Donald Trump. They have become a stampeding herd producing an avalanche of stories suggesting Joe Biden is unfit, will lose and should go away, at a point in the campaign in which replacing him would probably be somewhere between extremely difficult and utterly catastrophic. They do this while ignoring something every scholar and critic of journalism knows well and every journalist should. As Nikole Hannah-Jones of the New York Times put it: “As media we…

Opinion Rebecca Solnit

Alexander Christie-Miller

When I first moved to Istanbul in 2010, knowing almost no one and grappling with an unfamiliar language, it was the local street dogs who first drew me into my new life. Chico, an elderly alsatian, and Herkül, a labrador mongrel, lived on a corner near my apartment where they watched life pass by with a vigilant serenity. Locals fed them and some even clubbed together to pay the dogs’ vet bills. Greeting them became a daily ritual, and when I went to a pet shop to buy treats, using my halting Turkish to explain I was getting them “for dogs, but not my dogs”, the shopkeeper replied: “Ah, for the street dogs,” as though nothing were more natural. This culture in which street animals are accepted and socialised into urban life…

Alexander Christie-Miller

Justine Greening

It’s impossible not to congratulate the Labour party on its historic victory. Keir Starmer has taken his party on a journey back into government. He has brought Labour back from the fringes of British politics and made it a mainstream party that has gained a huge electoral majority from all parts of our country. When I was appointed education secretary in 2016, I was the first person in the job to have been educated at a comprehensive school. It is welcome to see a cabinet where state-educated ministers are finally the norm, not the exception. When the nation’s decision-makers have shared the lived experience of the vast majority of the population, this surely makes for a stronger, better and fairer government. Everyone in the country should wish Labour well with…

Justine Greening

The GuardianView

Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust ‘We ran as a changed Labour party,” declared Sir Keir Starmer last Friday morning, shortly after Rishi Sunak publicly conceded defeat, “and we will govern as a changed Labour party.” He has yet to elucidate what this change might be. But Labour’s leader presented himself as a prime minister ready and able to alter the current alarming state of affairs. Sir Keir did not sweep his party – or the nation – off its feet. But voters handed him a resounding victory. Sir Keir now towers over the British parliament like no politician since Tony Blair. Labour governments only come once in a generation. The party’s landslide victory was built on a collapse in Conservative support. The mood is one of optimism for a better…

Opinion Letters

WRITE TO US Letters for publication weekly.letters@theguardian.com Please include a full postal address and a reference to the article. We may edit letters. Submission and publication of all letters is subject to our terms and conditions, see: THEGUARDIAN.COM/LETTERS-TERMS Editorial Editor: Graham Snowdon Guardian Weekly, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK To contact the editor directly: editorial.feedback@theguardian.com Corrections Our policy is to correct significant errors as soon as possible. Please write to guardian.readers@theguardian.com or the readers’ editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU, UK Key policies need more than Starmer’s crumbs A Keir Starmer government provides, at best, a sense of relief and the prospect of economic and political crumbs (Cover story, 28 June). There is a relief at the end of the run of ever-worse Tory governments. Relief that Starmer is not a Trump, Orbán, Meloni,…

Opinion Letters

The robots are coming!

Justine Bateman won’t name names, but a TV showrunner friend once came to her with a dilemma: their show’s team was well into filming its second season when a network executive had an idea. A character in the pilot hadn’t tested well with audiences, so they were just going to go in, use a little AI, and swap in someone else. The showrunner – and Bateman, an actor and director – were incensed. “When you change the beginning of something, you change the creative trajectory,” says Bateman. “There’s going to be whiplash for the viewer when they get to episode three or four because what was set up in the pilot got messed with and now doesn’t make sense.” Using AI might have seemed like a simple solution to the executive,…

The robots are coming!

Show asks, Gauguin: artist or monster?

What to do with a problem like Paul Gauguin? The 19th-century French master’s radical experimentations with colour, space and syncretic symbolism have made him a canonical artist. Yet it is “Gauguin the monster” – not “Gauguin the artist” – who takes up the most oxygen in discussions today. It is Gauguin – purveyor of primitivist fantasies, emblem of French colonialism in the Pacific, and paedophilic, syphilitic sex tourist who took child brides as young as 13 – who looms large in the public consciousness. The National Gallery of Australia has clearly grappled with this legacy in the lead-up to its blockbuster, Gauguin’s World: Tōna Iho, Tōna Ao. The curator of the show, Henri Loyrette – a former director of the Musée d’Orsay and Musée du Louvre in Paris – has obviously…

Show asks, Gauguin: artist or monster?

A force to be reckoned with

Ask the members of Argentinian avant garde theatre company Fuerza Bruta how they describe themselves and you will be met with furrowed brows, before receiving a confident assertion that there isn’t anything quite like them. What can be said with certainty is that Fuerza Bruta (brute force) is true to its name. The group, which premiered its first performance in Buenos Aires in 2005 before going on to become a national institution and tour the world, offers a mixture of hip-hop dance, high-wire artistry, light and noise extravaganza, and heart-pounding, feet-stomping euphoric rave. It is constantly evolving, and nobody – not even the cast themselves – is ever quite sure what will happen over the course of a performance. Camila Taranto, longtime member and current team captain, reminisces about one evening that…

A force to be reckoned with

FILM MaXXXine Dir. Ti West Ti West serves up a horribly watchable new episode in his outrageous black-comic franchise of aspirational horror porn, this time set in 80s Hollywood. Mia Goth returns triumphantly as Maxine, now known as adult movie star MaXXXine Minx, whose traumatic teen story was told in X from 2022 and its 2023 prequel Pearl. West mulches up a thick impasto of pulp, gore, filth and fear and gets away with some colossally self-aware scenes, including one in the Bates Motel set; there is also some blue chip acting talent in the supporting roles. The year is 1985 in sunny Los Angeles and MaXXXine is trying out for a horror sequel called The Puritan II, with the fatherly support of her agent Teddy (Giancarlo Esposito) and her best friend, video store…

Best of the worst

‘Operators like me oil the machines that prop up authoritarian power all over the world,” writes the Washington PR man Phil Elwood in All the Worst Humans. “I help those machines function by laundering the sins of dictators through the press.” He may be overselling himself – he’s a publicist, after all – but not by much, if we are to believe his romping memoir of a career spent manipulating the media on behalf of the bad guys. It’s no shock that the obscenely wealthy pay large amounts of money to PR companies to “change the narrative” in their favour. What’s more surprising is who these companies will work for, and what they are prepared to do. In 2018, the Washington firm Qorvis took $18.8m from the Saudis in what Elwood…

Best of the worst

Anita Desai’s riddling and haunted new novel is set in motion when Bonita, a young Indian woman, meets a tricksy figure in a park in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. A student of Spanish, Bonita is leafing through local newspapers when she is approached. “The Stranger” – elderly, overfriendly and peculiarly dressed “in the flamboyant Mexican style that few Mexican women assume at any other than festive occasions” – claims to know Bonita’s dead mother, whom she calls “Rosarita”. She says they met and became friends when the latter came to pursue art under the tutelage of Mexican maestros. Bonita has no recollections of her mother painting or travelling to Mexico. She remembers, however, “a sketch in wishy-washy pale pastels that had hung on the wall above your bed at…

Wrapper’s delight

She felt like a cellophane wrapper on a packet of cigarettes. Every Joni Mitchell fan has heard this description before; it’s how the mercurial artist summed up her naked emotional state while writing her 1971 album, Blue. “It’s virtually impossible to find an account of Blue from the last 50 years that doesn’t include that quote,” writes music critic and author Ann Powers, whose new study of Mitchell doesn’t have much interest in retreading well-beaten paths. Travelling is a sweeping study of Mitchell’s life and work that swerves familiar touchstones to create a vibrant, multifaceted portrait of a music enigma. Powers didn’t interview Mitchell. “In this way, I remain a witness, not a friend,” she writes. Yet there are more than two dozen interviews with the artist’s associates including David Crosby,…

Wrapper’s delight

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

Fierce Elegy By Peter Gizzi “Love”, “wounds”, “sky”, “moon”, “mirror”, “tears” – the most cliched words in poetry. But what of it, Gizzi asks, if the spectre of death continues to make us into cliched subjects? “If I write about the moon, /it’s because it’s there.” Lyrics of resignation are juxtaposed with ecstatic lines that reimagine silence as “conversations with the dead”. Although composed in an “old language” that reminds us of tradition in its beautiful, fiery insistence, this collection redeclares the elegy as the undying practice of the living. Adam By Gboyega Odubanjo This highly anticipated collection from the acclaimed British-Nigerian poet, who died in 2023, is a monumental polyphonic odyssey that tells the story of “Adam”, the name given to an unidentified boy whose torso was discovered in the Thames in 2001. What…

BOOKS OF THE MONTH

My partner and I can’t agree on who does which chores at home

My partner H and I have been together for almost five years, and have lived together for about a year. We have a strong and healthy relationship, and although we often light heartedly bicker, we make up quickly and rarely ever have serious arguments. I do not claim to be a tidy housemate: I am terrible at leaving clothes, keys, shopping all over the place, and often will leave the washing up for a day or two. H is a fantastic cook and stays on top of the laundry, but for other chores – namely cleaning the kitchen, washing-up and taking out the bins – he is useless. He puts off these chores to the point that it makes the house difficult to be in (no clean plates, stinking rubbish bin…

My partner and I can’t agree on who does which chores at home

A surplus of strawberries? You can use them up by going sweet or sour

‘Strawberries are the masterpiece of summer,” says Ravinder Bhogal, Feast columnist and chef/owner of Jikoni in London. At their peak, you’d be hard pushed to better eating them straight from the punnet, but, Bhogal adds, pairing strawberries with floral waters such as rose or elderflower comes a very close second. “I love a strawberry and rose sorbet, or a traditional Victoria sponge made with strawberry and rose jam, cream and fresh strawberries macerated in rosewater,” she says. Chef Lorcan Spiteri, of Caravel in north London, slices his fruit thinly, then adds icing sugar and lemon juice and leaves for 20 minutes. “We then use them as a topping,” he says, of which there are many options: “Puff pastry and frangipane with creme diplomat [creme patissiere mixed with chantilly cream] and the…

A surplus of strawberries? You can use them up by going sweet or sour

№ 275 Roast pineapple with coconut brittle

Prep 10 min Cook 50 min Serves 8 • GLUTEN FREE Ingredients 1 large pineapple40g brown sugar¼ tsp ground nutmeg½ tsp cinnamon20g salted butter, cut into small piecesCream, to serve1 lime, zested, to serve For the coconut brittle 200g caster sugar40g butter1 tbsp golden syrup70g coconut flakes¼ tsp bicarbonate of sodaA pinch of flakysea salt I always felt a bit cheated as a child when I asked what was for dessert and Mum responded by offering whatever was left in the fruit bowl. Now, I’m quite fond of a fruity pudding – as long as there’s been some sort of transformation, be it poaching, macerating or, as I’ve done here, roasting. Growing up, pineapple was one of the only fruits I was excited to eat, and it remains a favourite. This version gets nicely caramelised and sticky in…

№ 275 Roast pineapple with coconut brittle

1 The monk Edward Grim was an eyewitness to whose murder? 2 Who wrote the 1856 essay Silly Novels by Lady Novelists? 3 Which band is named after the Danish word for moonlight? 4 Elbrus is the highest peak in what mountain range? 5 Where is the 1,100-room Palace of the Parliament? 6 Which football teams contest the Derby of the Lighthouse? 7 In 2012, who played seven concerts on seven days in seven countries? 8 Who said his epitaph should be, “Here lies Joseph, who failed in everything he undertook”? What links: 9 Addis Ababa; Asmara; Djibouti; Mogadishu? 10 Laurentian Library; Medici chapel; Porta Pia; St Peter’s basilica? 11 Carlos Acosta; Ana de Armas; Gloria Estefan; Andy García? 12 Decadent; gullible; hawkish; manhunt; pretentious; world-famous? 13 City; Dover Street; Gower Street; Gillespie Road? 14 Addiewell; Barlinnie; Castle Huntly; Glenochil? 15 Jason; Jack and Jill;…

1 Divide 13344211413203420 by 5 as lazily as possible. 2 Wordpool Give the nearest definition: URSON a) bear fat b) first son of first marriage c) Canadian porcupine d) blue pigment from ground malachite 3 End of the Word Identify this six-letter word from its ending: ***IEU 4 Where on Earth Which country has the same name as its neighbour except for an extra IA at the end? 5 Enigma What bar opens but never closes? © CMM2024 Maslanka 1 All the digits are less than 5. Dividing by 5 is the same as dividing by 10 and multiplying by 2. To divide by 10, cross off the terminal zero; to multiply by 2, just double each digit – there are no carries: 2668842282640684. 2 c). 3 MILIEU. 4 NIGER, NIGERIA. 5 A CROWBAR.…

England will look for at least a top-10 finish from the national Open team when the biennial 180-country chess Olympiad starts in Budapest, Hungary, in September, while the women’s squad features a debut for Bodhana Sivanandan, aged nine. In the 2022 Olympiad at Chennai, England finished 14th and 32nd. Since then the former Russian Nikita Vitiugov has transferred his allegiance, and is likely to be a formidable top board. The Open team in rating order is: Vitiugov (2678), David Howell (2675), Michael Adams (2672), Gawain Jones (2640), Luke McShane (2617). The women’s team consists of: Jovanka Houska (2333), Lan Yao (2325), Harriet Hunt (2304), Katarzyna Toma (2241), Bodhana Sivanandan (2185). 3927 White mates in four moves (by Fritz Giegold, 1957). Just a single line of play with all Black’s replies forced, but…

COUNTRY DIARY BOX

The small trailer I’ve borrowed from Pete is perfect for this job. I’ll return the favour tomorrow, helping to move his sheep preparatory to shearing. My cargo is two eight-week-old gilts and my destination is Jamie’s Farm, a charity based just outside Bath. It’s a journey I make routinely, but usually in unfamiliarly clean clothes, as a member of the housekeeping team preparing the accommodation for school visits during the week and funds-generating guests at the weekend. Like most people who cross paths with this place, it’s impossible not to take it to your heart. As I drive into the yard, I can see small groups going about their chores. Each day starts in this practical way before everyone joins together for breakfast around a large table in the barn. This epitomises…

COUNTRY DIARY BOX

The Weekly cryptic No 29,424

✱ All solutions published next week Across 1 Ely desperately after pen to house college transport (7) 5 Scotsman broken by onset of injury and hard suffering (7) 9 Musical piece produced by new department’s head in jumper (5) 10 Burn wayward lazy daughter? Wild! (9) 11 Sanctimonious little girl in car plant (10) 12 See 24 Down 14 Winner shouts out ‘There’s no merit in it!’ (12) 18 Admonition, it seems, about breaking into song (12) 21 Mechanical routine giving balls energy (4) 22 Maybe London’s joint originator of written work (10) 25 Dash, it’s rough being an ambitious type! (9) 26 Mark 2? (5) 27 Backing positive, steadfast youth leaders to undertake major journey (7) 28 Level of society needing pluck to restrain a totalitarian leader (7) Down 1 Lawyers’ bill for drink (6) 2 Tester of prison work finally happy (6) 3 Decoration designed for X?…

The Weekly cryptic No 29,424

Quick crossword No 16,897

Across 1 Gaulle (anag.) – space in wine bottle (6) 4 Sensual – kingdom member (6) 8 Steps for two? (5) 9 Coffee maker and server (7) 10 Unwind (7) 11 Tones (anag.) (5) 12 Clever devices (9) 17 Picture riddle (5) 19 Thaw (7) 21 Man-horse? (7) 22 Rule (5) 23 Heavy and high in carbs (6) 24 Down the hatch! (6) Down 1 Slight improvement (US) (6) 2 Area at top of flight – end of flight! (7) 3 Bogeyman (5) 5 County of Cromer and King’s Lynn (7) 6 Prophet and teacher (5) 7 Shed (4-2) 9 Bridge-building beam (3,6) 13 Wild steed (7) 14 Yo, Auden! (anag.) – capital of Cameroon (7) 15 Spring bloom (6) 16 Rank (6) 18 Stringed instrument (5) 20 Bring back that bone, Fido! (5) Solution No 16,891…

Quick crossword No 16,897

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