Features

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

The edge of reason

My husband, usually a cool customer, watched Free Solo from behind his fingers, sometimes jumping up from the sofa and backing away from the TV. Audiences at Imax showings have behaved the same way, rising to their feet, clenching their sweaty fists as they watch  Alex Honnold, a 33-year-old rock climber from Sacramento, make his way up El Capitan, 2,700 vertical feet of granite in Yosemite National Park. Free Solo is a documentary, the story of Honnold’s record-breaking climb, and the reason for the excitement is that he does it ‘free solo’, without ropes or aid of any kind. It’s just Alex, his shorts, his shoes, a bag of chalk, and the cliff.

Thursday

James McMahon

Life after death | 31 January 2019

I’ve talked to Denise Horvath-Allan more than my own mother this year. Denise’s son Charles went missing while backpacking in Canada. I see his face — never ageing, entombed within his early twenties — every day on Facebook. Denise’s posts are more desperate each time I see them. Charles disappeared in 1989, on the eve of his 21st birthday. Denise and I believe he was murdered not long afterwards. But the case, like so many others, remains unsolved. As a journalist, I’ve been writing about true crime for years. True crime is a non-fiction genre that examines a crime and the people involved. It has never been more popular: just look at the success of Serial and Making a Murderer.

Robert Plomin

Up the spiral staircase

‘Gene test for sale on NHS,’ blared the headlines last weekend, sparking some anxiety and confusion. The story is that Genomics England, a company owned by the Department of Health, has announced that it’s seeking people who are willing to pay to have their DNA sequenced. The fee has not yet been specified but it will probably be around £500, depending on how much the analysis is subsidised. Each volunteer will receive a personalised health report and will agree to share their anonymised genetic data with researchers in the hope of improving genetic prediction of diseases and creating the sort of healthcare that’s fit for the future. The story has caused quite a fuss. What if Genomics England gives people inaccurate information?

James Forsyth

May’s final mission

Theresa May will soon arrive in Brussels with a series of unlikely demands. She must tell the European Union that she wants to re-open a deal that she was hailing as not just the best, but the ‘only deal possible’ a few weeks ago. Parliament has now made her eat her words. It is a testament to her predicament that this counts as a triumph for her. She has narrowly avoided a far worse fate. Had parliament voted another way — rejecting Graham Brady’s amendment and passing Yvette Cooper’s — she would have been sent into the negotiating chamber with nothing to say. She wouldn’t have been able to tell the EU what the Commons wanted.

Christopher Caldwell

Europe’s blind spot

In Paris in December, I sat with a journalist friend in a café on the Boulevard Auguste-Blanqui and listened to him explain to me why a no-deal Brexit would be a catastrophe for Britain. It had to do with an article his newspaper had published about the Mini. You might think they were typically British cars, he said, but the plant where they were made in Cowley belonged to BMW! The steering wheels were assembled in Romania! The tail lights came from Poland! So? I asked. Brexit was about leaving the EU, not making globalisation un-happen. Who do you think wants to close the Mini plant? Britain does not want to damage its export sector any more than Romania or Poland wants to shut down a factory that provides the livelihoods of thousands.

Elisa Segrave

Drunken confessions

I have always found the parable of the Prodigal Son sickeningly unfair, and I felt this again while driving a close relative down a motorway in a frightful gale at night to a residential rehab. -That morning I’d had an emergency consultation in London on behalf of the said relative, with the head of the rehab place, who I’ll call Dr X. Throughout, I’d had the uneasy feeling that Dr X was subtly trying to make me feel at fault for not being sympathetic enough to my relative’s situation. Actually, I have suffered for years from his wild and selfish behaviour while on cocaine and alcohol, and have often tried to help him. Dr X is an expert on addiction, and a self-confessed addict (though not to drugs or drink).

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Old flame

It was a close-run thing for my friend who’s having a new kitchen installed in her house in Chiswick. After a persuasive campaign by her eloquent architect, who has an induction hob in his own house and loves it for its clean lines and hyper-efficiency, she had got as far as ordering one for herself. Having placed the order, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned, worrying about the imminent change to her cooking life that the induction hob would (literally) induce, let alone the need to buy a whole new set of ‘induction-ready’ pans. No more knobs to turn a fraction to the left while frying an omelette, ever again? Just a plus and minus touch-screen sign to jab with the ball of the index finger, 9-8-7-6-5-4 and down to 3?

Thursday

Michael Beloff Qc

Judge not

When I was called to the Bar in 1967, the aim was to be appointed as a judge to the High Court. It was the destination to which all ambitious barristers not only should but would aspire. The job offered security, the conventional knighthood, an avenue to public service and a modicum of public power. But there is now an unprecedented and growing shortfall in candidates of adequate quality. Where did it all go wrong? This development hasn’t appeared from nowhere. When I was a member of the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB), which independently reviews judges’ pay, we noted in 2002 that: ‘Top legal practitioners who in the past would naturally have progressed to the bench are increasingly questioning whether they wish to do so.

Julie Burchill

The end of la dolce vita

On reading recently that Italian is the fastest disappearing language in America, my thoughts were mixed. I felt fleeting sorrow that such a beautiful lingo would be heard less. Between 2001 and 2017, there has been a reduction of 38 per cent — and this during a period when the proportion of Americans who speak a second language at home actually rose from 11 per cent to 22 per cent. But on the bright side, it demonstrates the assimilation of Italian-Americans, always an excellent thing for immigrants. Groups who cling to the Old Ways and then complain of not making progress in their chosen home are as ridiculous as a man who ties his feet together and then complains that outside forces are making him hop.

Ross Clark

Tofu truths

Last week’s Lancet report and its ‘planetary health diet’ of next to no red meat will have bolstered the egos of vegans who claim that they are doing the Earth a favour. But just how environmentally friendly are many of the alternatives favoured by vegans? Fancy a bowl of quinoa, a grain stacked with amino acids, magnesium, phosphorous and iron, which in 2013 enjoyed the endorsement of the UN as a ‘superfood’? Not so fast. Quinoa is traditionally grown in the Andes, spanning parts of Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador, where thin soils are replenished with llama dung. Or at least they were. In the first decade of this century, quinoa production increased forty-fold as western consumers took it up with relish.

Jenny McCartney

The great carniwars

As January — the month of penitence and tax returns — grinds towards its close, it would be foolish to imagine we can go back to a life of thoughtlessly eating, drinking and making merry. Dry January might give way to Wet February, as grateful drinkers furtively crack open the rioja, but the intense passions aroused by Veganuary now seem set to continue all year round. Veganism — the shunning of meat, fish and all dairy products — was once regarded as a harmless but inconvenient hobby. Vegans got used to the mild panic they triggered at other people’s houses if the host hadn’t been pre-warned: the alarmed mouthing of ‘They’re vegan’ and the desperate rooting in the fridge for something, anything.

Peter Godwin

Mugabe mark II

Ten days ago, Zimbabwe’s President, Emmerson Mnangagwa, hiked the price of petrol by 250 per cent, making it the most expensive in the world. There had been an acute fuel shortage for months and this move was supposed to ease the situation — presumably by making petrol beyond the reach of most in this impoverished country. Mnangagwa then jetted off to Russia and Kazakhstan, a warm-up tour for his gig at Davos. He left his deputy, Constantino Chiwenga (until recently head of the army), to cope with the fallout. And fallout there was. Trade unions led stay-aways in protest. This developed into the blocking of roads, looting of shops and some arson, mostly by unemployed youths — which most youths there are.

Fraser Nelson

Justin Welby’s reformation

Justin Welby is working in Thomas Cranmer’s old study in Lambeth Palace, a room that looks as if it hasn’t changed at all since the Book of Common Prayer was written here almost six centuries ago. It feels like a mini-monastic retreat: there is a desk, a crucifix, several Bibles and not much else. The 105th Archbishop of Canterbury studies and prays here, deciding how best to lead a national church whose Sunday services are now attended (according to its own figures) by barely 1 per cent of England’s population. These are new times — and require new tactics. When he was enthroned six years ago, he was seen as just the man to provide the new tactics. He’s a convert, who was ordained in his thirties after a career as an oil company executive.

Thursday

Nikki Da Costa

Boles’s crazy plan

At first, it seems fanciful. A backbench MP, Nick Boles, proposes to take power away from the government and place it in the hands of MPs, to prevent a no-deal Brexit. Can one backbencher usurp power in this way? It’s ambitious. But under the British system, government reports to parliament, not the other way around. Usually the distinction is moot, because government can control the Commons. But when that control collapses, every kind of mischief becomes possible. Until a couple of months ago I was director of legislative affairs under Theresa May in No. 10, where it was my job to look at parliamentary procedures. It’s quite a minefield.

Jonathan Mitchell

The danger of ‘neurodiversity’

I’m an American man affected by the disability autism. As a child, I went to special education schools for eight years and I do a self-stimulatory behaviour during the day which prevents me from getting much done. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I have bad motor coordination problems which greatly impair my ability to handwrite and do other tasks. I also have social skills problems, and I sometimes say and do inappropriate things that cause offence. I was fired from more than 20 jobs for making excessive mistakes and for behavioural problems before I retired at the age of 51. Others with autism spectrum disorder have it worse than I do. People on the more severe end sometimes can’t speak. They soil themselves, wreak havoc and break things.

Freddy Gray

The frozen swamp

 Washington, DC As a prison worker in Florida put it, 'Trump's not hurting the right people' Washington is supposed to be recession-proof: when times are bad, the government just hires more. But the city isn’t shutdown-proof. There are more than 360,000 federal employees in the DC area, and many are among the 800,000 across America who last week received a salary bank transfer that said zero dollars and zero cents. A number of foodbanks have opened here, offering free meals to anyone with federal identification. Whole Foods, the upmarket supermarket, has gone a step further. It is serving spaghetti dinners to anyone who is hungry.

James Forsyth

The rebel alliance

Straight after the government’s epic defeat in the House of Commons on Tuesday night, the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, the Business Secretary, Greg Clark, and the Brexit Secretary, Steve Barclay, held a conference call with business leaders to try to reassure them. The principal worry was about ‘no deal’. The Chancellor’s message of comfort was revealing of where power has shifted to. He emphasised how backbenchers are manoeuvring to stop no deal. In other words, they needn’t take his word that it wasn’t going to happen; they should take parliament’s. It was an admission that the government is no longer in control of Brexit.

Mark Piggott

Renter’s paradise

On turning 50, I realised I’d never own my own home. What bank would agree to give a mortgage to someone with no regular source of income? Even if I did somehow hold down a job, I would have just 15 years until retirement age. For a while, I was depressed. Owning your own home is the British dream. Why else would all those property shows I drool over be so popular? I won’t have anything to hand down to my kids. What sort of loser am I? Then I remembered: I live in a five-bedroom Victorian terrace in Islington, which is owned by the council. At £650 per month, our rent is far less than what private tenants might pay for a flea-infested bedsit in the same area.

Colin Freeman

Pirates of the Caribbean

Brian Austin, a fisherman from the small village of Cedros in Trinidad, is struggling to describe the men who robbed him out at sea last year. ‘They had guns, they wore T-shirts and hoods.’ Then he brightens: ‘Have you ever seen Somali pirates? They looked just like that.’ I have indeed seen Somali pirates, as it happens, and rather closer up than I’d have liked. Ten years ago, a bunch of them kidnapped me for six weeks while I was out reporting. That was in Somalia, though, a failed state where anything goes. I never expected to be writing about a plague of pirates here in the Caribbean. The last lot of Caribbean Blackbeards were hunted down by the Royal Navy about 300 years ago, bringing to a close the so-called ‘golden era’ of piracy.

Laura Freeman

Pale imitations

You can tell something about national character from the way a country clears its cupboards. In the States they have the yard sale. The American dream remains a detached house with a front and a back yard, all enclosed by a white picket fence. Daughter selling lemonade, son playing catch, consumer goods spread on the lawn. The French have the vide grenier — the emptying of the attic. The Frenchman in his romantic soul still imagines he is a poet or a painter starving for love and art in a bare, unfurnished room. The English have the car-boot sale. We take a picnic, waterproofs, stop at a stone circle on the way, and when we are ready to pack up and leave, we leave. Back in Blighty after a year in France, I have been finding homes for my attic trufflings.