Features

Wednesday

Sam Leith

How to win four Nobel Prizes in literature

‘Hi Jacques,’ I say as the publisher of Fitzcarraldo Editions appears on my Zoom screen with his Franz Hals facial hair. ‘Thanks for making the time.’ I explain, apologetically but cheerily, that I’m going to be asking him to give his basic ‘how I keep winning Nobel Prizes’ spiel – at which, I say, he’s probably by now well practised. ‘Hm,’ he says, ‘I’m not sure about that. I’ll do my best.’ Though he’s grateful for what it’s done for his tiny publishing company, you sense that Jacques Testard probably finds it a bit irksome that it takes the ephemeral showbiz razzle of the Swedish academy to bring the experimental writing he publishes anything much in the way of public attention. But there again, the Nobel thing is hard to ignore.

Paul Wood

Can Israel’s hostages be saved?

The last message that Shaked Haran saw from her father was just after 7.30 a.m. on the Saturday of the Hamas attacks in Israel. Her parents were in the safe room of their house in Kibbutz Be’eri, just outside the Gaza Strip. The message said that ‘masked terrorists’ were ‘swarming’ everywhere. ‘We don’t think we’ll make it out alive.’ Then nothing. When Israeli soldiers finally arrived, the house was a smoking ruin. But there was no sign of her parents, nor of her sister, her sister’s husband, their daughter aged three and son aged eight, nor of an aunt and her 12-year-old daughter, nor of another aunt and an uncle. Ten members of the family were gone. Hours later, one of her father’s friends got through to his mobile.

Wednesday

Paul Wood

What Iran gains from the conflict in Israel

A little more than a week before Hamas carried out its Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, the US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said: ‘The Middle East region is quieter today than it has been in two decades.’ Sullivan was expressing a consensus view, one apparently shared by the Israeli government. Then came the attacks of last weekend and, as the Israeli President, Isaac Herzog, said, ‘Not since the Holocaust have so many Jews been killed in one day.’ The surprise attacks have been called Israel’s 9/11, its Pearl Harbor, and so the question Israelis are asking is: how could this happen? And of more consequence, perhaps: who was really behind it? The sheer scale of the attack may not have been planned.

Siôn Simon

What going blind taught me about humanity

Twenty-one years ago, when I was a young Labour MP, I wrote a piece in these pages about going blind. I described a rare degenerative eye condition called choroideremia, which shrinks and darkens one’s vision until eventually there’s nothing left. I started to see less in my late teens; by the time I wrote the piece in 2002 I was 33 and perhaps half-blind, but could still manage to do most things pretty well.  The daily differences were such, though, that people could tell there was something not quite right. I would do things – such as failing to see, and therefore to shake, an outstretched hand – which just seemed odd. I worried that my bumping into and tripping over things all the time would make people think I was drunk.

Douglas Murray

Britain must stand up against those who support Hamas

It was 7 a.m. when the ‘peace rave’ outside of Re’im was reaching its peak. Outside the kibbutz, five miles from the Gaza border, the participants of the dance festival were ‘coming up’ at just the moment that the terrorists of Hamas started to come down. They arrived on motorised paragliders, with machine-guns in position, like something from Mad Max. They came by motorbike and in trucks bearing the marks of Hamas. Rockets had already started firing across Israel from Gaza, but here the twenty- and thirty-something rave attendees were soon running in every direction across the Negev desert – hunted down. At the time of writing, 260 bodies have been recovered from the site. This is just one of the many simultaneous massacres across Israel in the areas nearest to Gaza.

Anshel Pfeffer

War at close quarters: a report from the Kfar Aza kibbutz

When faced with a tragedy on the scale of Saturday morning’s attack by Hamas terrorists on Israeli communities near Gaza, it’s natural to look to history for comparisons. Many did that over this week. The event that was mentioned most often was Israel’s previous intelligence failure at the start of the Yom -Kippur War, exactly 50 years ago. Other military debacles that came up were Pearl Harbor, 9/11 and the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam. Israel has tried for so many years to pretend that the Gazans don’t actually live right alongside it All had many points in common that are worth considering, but there is one major difference between those historic episodes and what happened on the Israel/Gaza border.

Matthew Engel

The refreshing libertarianism of New Hampshire

Crossing a state line on one of the American interstate roads, drivers are normally greeted by a variety of signs. They may advertise the delights awaiting the visitor – ‘10,000 LAKES’ or ‘FAMOUS POTATOES’ plus instructions about local speed limits. And normally, as the coup de grâce, ‘BUCKLE UP’. Travelling north in New England on the I-95 and passing from Massachusetts into New Hampshire the message is more discreet. A small sign announces ‘Buckle up under 18. Common sense for all’. In other words, in New Hampshire, adults of voting age do not have to wear seat belts. It is the only state in the US where this is not compulsory, perhaps the only place in any mature democracy. Even Russia and China have enshrined buckling up in law.

Katy Balls

‘Weaponising Jewish people is wrong’: Sadiq Khan on anti-Semitism, Ulez and the upcoming electoral battle

For most of this year it was widely accepted that the Tories had given up on London. Sadiq Khan seemed unbeatable and the party’s hunt for a mayoral candidate to run against him became a farce as various ‘big names’ refused to run. Then Daniel Korski, the frontrunner for the candidacy, had to drop out over a #MeToo row and it fell to Susan Hall to lead the charge. And yet, despite the political drama, the Tories are within touching distance of victory at City Hall – just a couple of points behind Labour in the polls. London looks winnable. ‘Nobody likes to be unpopular, but you’ve got to have your moral compass’ When I meet Khan for an interview in front of an audience at Labour party conference, he tells me he’s taking nothing for granted.

Gus Carter

Scattering my father’s ashes in Santiago de Compostela

We are in the holy city of Santiago de Compostela to scatter our father’s ashes. He and my youngest sister had planned to walk the Camino, which finishes here at the resting place of Saint James, to mark the start of her adulthood and the beginning of his retirement. Instead, my two sisters have been walking the ancient pilgrims’ route for the past few weeks. I’ve flown into the city to meet them at the end. Most of Dad’s ashes went into a smart Regency tea caddy. The funeral directors had offered us a standard-issue urn but we decided he’d prefer something jolly and Georgian. The lacquered box didn’t quite hold all of his remains so the youngest put the rest in a Tupperware tub and brought him here to Spain.

Robin Ashenden

The full English: how to fall in love with this country

My nine-year-old half-Russian daughter has arrived in England for the first time since she was a baby. As she knows almost nothing about British culture apart from Peppa Pig and Willy Wonka, my job is to put together a week-long programme before she goes back to Italy, where she currently lives with her mother, my ex-partner. They were living in Russia but left following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Ideally, my daughter will go home enthused about all things English and wanting a lifetime more. But where do I start? Peppermint Aeros and Crunchie bars are the things I want to pass on, far more than the music of Elgar First, there’s the question of food.

Thursday

Harry Mount

Women are obsessed with the Romans, too

Infamy! Infamy! That was my response to the TikTok trend about ancient Rome. Women asked their partners how often they thought about the Roman Empire. Many men admitted they thought about it every day; three times a day, said one. One confessed he was obsessed with ‘aqueducts and the fact that they had concrete that could harden’. The scoundrels who came up with the idea should have asked women. Because they, too, are obsessed with ancient Rome. ‘I’ll be at a picnic when I look at my sandwich and suddenly ask: “Did you know the Romans had sandwiches?”’ Professor Mary Beard told me: ‘I must confess that I probably think about the Roman Empire about 50 times a day… but then it is what I do. But I don’t think about macho men in military kit or orating in togas.

Jenny McCartney

An ode to the BlackBerry

The demise of tech plays out first as disorientation, then entertainment. We’ve reached the latter stage with the BlackBerry, the now-defunct Canadian harbinger of global smartphone addiction. A new film out this month charts its spectacular rise and fall: young folk, look up from your iPhones, and learn how in its Noughties heyday, the BlackBerry was beloved by Obama, Beyoncé and Madonna. With its seductively clicky Qwerty keyboard, it came to control 45 per cent of the mobile phone market. Then it plummeted to today’s share, zero. BlackBerry the movie had a particular poignancy for me, because I hung on to my final BlackBerry phone, the KeyOne, until well past its cultural sell-by date. Last May, in fact.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

Hell is a heat pump

‘So, as Rishi Sunak has announced that we’re now allowed to keep installing new gas boilers till 2035, and they last about 15 years, that means I’ll be able to keep a gas boiler till 2050, so I might even be allowed to die with a gas boiler still going in my house, and may never have to switch to an ugly, expensive air-source heat pump which makes an annoying fridge-like hum in the garden, vibrates through the bedroom wall and keeps the house at a weird, lukewarm temperature all day and night.’ I think many of us were making that kind of calculation last month. Were we tempted by Sunak’s raised offer of a government grant of £7,500 for switching to a heat pump, up from £5,000, to reward us for doing our bit towards net zero? I don’t think so.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

Battle begins: inside Rishi Sunak’s plan to take on Labour

When David Laws moved in as chief secretary to the Treasury in 2010, he found a note from his predecessor Liam Byrne saying: ‘I’m afraid there is no money.’ It was the most famous parting gift in British political history. What was meant as a joke (Byrne had thought his friend Philip Hammond would get the job) quickly became the coalition government’s most effective weapon against the opposition: proof that Labour could not be trusted with the public finances. Today, Labour wants to level the same accusation against the Conservatives. ‘On the first day [in power], we need to land the message very quickly that the finances are in a very bad state and it is all because of the Tories,’ says one Keir Starmer aide. ‘We would need to make them wear it.

Melissa Kite

Train wreck: HS2 destroyed the countryside I love

When I drive to see my parents in the once-peaceful farming country where I grew up, it is a strange, bittersweet experience. The car journey takes me through places I ought to recognise but I don’t any more, because the green fields of Warwickshire, the villages and the farms, are scarred by the tortuous works of HS2. The distinctive red earth is laid bare for mile upon mile as the bulldozers do their worst. Rows of cottages and entire villages lie deserted, testimony to the billions already spent. As I drive along the main Banbury to Coventry road, I see mountains of earth piled high as flyovers take shape. I stare at this curiously outdated project – old hat both in terms of the controversy and the purpose it was meant to have.

Matt Ridley

The new age of gullibility

Is the Loch Ness Monster real? Many thousands of people think so. ‘Existence “plausible” after plesiosaur discovery,’ the BBC reported. ‘Hundreds join huge search for Loch Ness Monster.’ Not only that. The Beeb had live coverage of congressional hearings about possible UFO sightings in July. It ran a series on the yeti the previous month asking: ‘Is something out there in the Himalayas?’ Last year, an Autumnwatch presenter took seriously the possibility that large cats are roaming the countryside. What’s coming back next? Poltergeists, Ouija boards, the Bermuda Triangle, crop circles? Have we been time-ported back to the 1970s?

Nigel Biggar

What really motivates the ‘new progressives’

Kemi Badenoch is right to say that Britain is not a racist country. The data simply does not support the claim that black and ethnic minority (BME) people in the UK are generally disadvantaged because of the racial prejudice of white Britons – that ‘systemic racism’ is the cause of the problem. It also suggests that some ethnic minorities tend to perform better than others because of internal cultural factors – not least, strong families and high educational aspirations. By the same token, the cause of relative disadvantage often lies in culture, not racism.

Andrew Roberts

Why are House of Lords clerics so anti-Tory?

The bishops can smell blood in the water. Sensing how badly the Conservatives are doing in the polls, the two archbishops and 24 bishops of the Church of England in the House of Lords appear to have thrown aside any pretence of political objectivity and impartiality and have pitched themselves all-out against the government. This has been building up since the advent of the Tory-Lib Dem coalition in 2010, but the way that the bishops have taken their gloves off in the present session of parliament is shocking. Anglican bishops occasionally argue that they opposed the last Labour and coalition governments just as much as they do the present Conservative one, but consider these statistics. In 1999-2000 they opposed Tony Blair in 27.

Wednesday

Jonathan Sumption

Judgment call: the case for leaving the ECHR

The debate about the European Convention on Human Rights is in danger of being diverted into irrelevant byways. Hostility to the convention has become a trademark of the right wing of the Conservative party, which invites unnecessary partisanship. This is unfortunate, because the United Kingdom’s adherence to the convention raises a major constitutional issue which ought to concern people all across the political spectrum. It is far more important than Suella Braverman’s battles with boat people and ‘lefty lawyers’. Yet so far, the debate has rarely risen above the level of empty slogans, meaningless mantras and misleading claims.

Katy Balls

‘The zealots are turning people off’: Claire Coutinho on net zero and her bond with Rishi Sunak

When Claire Coutinho picked her A-levels in 2002, she received a phone call from her grandmother in India. ‘She could see that I’d not picked medical subjects,’ Coutinho says: she’d gone for maths, history of art and English – a glitch in the matrix for a family that tends to choose medical school. ‘She told me that she may not last very long and it was her final wish that I reconsider.’ Coutinho stuck to plan A; her grandmother lived for another ten years. Last month, at 38, she became one of the youngest secretaries of state in British history. We meet in her soon-to-be-vacated office with a rooftop view of Westminster Abbey and a whole floor of advisers and aides. Not so long ago, Coutinho was one of those advisers.