Features

Wednesday

Kate Andrews

Letter from Taiwan: life in the shadow of ‘The Bully’

The Grand Hotel sits on the outskirts of Taipei, at the edge of Yangmingshan national park. Overlooking the city, the 14-storey building is designed like a Chinese palace. It was built in the 1950s to host dignitaries when Taiwan was under authoritarian rule. Today it operates as a five-star hotel and is open to tours from the public. Photos of foreign leaders and celebrities who have visited are displayed on the walls: Bill Clinton in 1979; Elizabeth Taylor the same year; Nelson Mandela in 1993. If this were any other hotel, you’d think it was simply boasting about its clientele. But there is something far more poignant about this display – it is proof that Taiwan has been recognised informally over the years through the act of important people showing up.

Charlotte Eagar

Why mass shootings won’t change Serbia’s gun culture

Two mass shootings in Serbia have left 17 people dead, many of them children, and there are protests on the streets of Belgrade. Demonstrators blame Serbia’s populist president, Aleksandar Vucic, and so Vucic has his own series of anti-gun rallies planned and has ordered a swift crackdown on gun ownership, a ‘practical disarmament’. But Vucic has his work cut out for him. Weapons are embedded in Serbia’s culture and it’s hard to imagine a significant number of Serbians simply handing them over. In Serbia, the gun is a way of life. ‘It’s part of our tradition; in villages they fire in the air to celebrate a wedding or a baby’ When I worked in the Balkans as a journalist, a man felt underdressed without a Kalashnikov.

J. Meirion Thomas

How far would you go to get your sick child a kidney transplant?

Here is your dilemma. Imagine you have a university-age daughter who has developed kidney failure. She needs a transplant. You know that the best results are obtained when the operation is performed at a transplant unit with access to the best immunosuppressive drugs, when the kidney is taken from a living donor, and especially when that donor is young and from a similar ethnic background to the recipient. Like most parents, you will go to almost any lengths to help your child – but would you break the law? The £7,000 reward offered for the kidney was equal to four years of earnings for the donor Ike Ekweremadu thought that the risks of breaking the law in the UK were worth taking to gain the best outcome for his daughter.

Ross Clark

Europe is turning against net zero

The contrast couldn’t be greater. In Britain a wealthy cabinet minister goes on television to boast of how he is installing a heat pump in his home – something his government is proposing to force on millions of British homeowners over the next few years in spite of them costing many thousands of pounds more than a gas or oil boiler. Meanwhile, in France, the President makes a speech calling for a ‘regulatory pause’ on green issues in order to push for the ‘re-industrialisation’ of his country. So far, Britain and the EU have moved more or less in tandem on climate change – which is not all that surprising given that until three years ago Britain was a member of the EU and therefore within its regulatory orbit.

Owen Matthews

Lithuania’s PM: ‘If Russia is not defeated it will come for somebody else’

Vilnius In July, Lithuania’s Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte will welcome Nato leaders to Vilnius for one of the most important summits in the alliance’s history. Top of the agenda will be how to help Ukraine push back Vladimir Putin’s forces. But a more thorny problem will be whether to formally offer membership to Kyiv – a move that would make Ukraine’s front lines Nato’s own. Simonyte believes that the war could have been avoided if Nato had accepted Ukraine and Georgia’s membership bids back in 2008. Before Putin invaded Ukraine last year, she says, ‘western leaders and western organisations were ready to abandon their positions every time Russia was pressing’.

Thursday

Sophia Money-Coutts

Why British women are turning to Danish sperm donors

‘Hello, my current occupation is police officer,’ says Dex in a thick Danish accent. ‘It seems very adventurous and exciting to do, and to make a difference for the people I meet out in the world.’ Dex is just over 13 stone, around six feet tall, has very fair skin and blue eyes. His favourite animal is the dog. Dex is also a Danish sperm donor, and I’m listening to the beginning of an 11-minute voice-recording on his profile. On the website of the European Sperm Bank, which bills itself as ‘Europe’s leading sperm bank’ and is based in Copenhagen, there are hundreds of profiles like Dex’s available to British women. Create a free profile and, in under a minute, you can scroll through smiling baby pictures of Danish men as if looking for a new party frock.

Wednesday

Niall Ferguson

Trump’s second act: he can still win, in spite of everything

Everyone knows F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous line from the end of his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon: ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ But Fitzgerald wasn’t talking about second chances. He meant that, unlike in a traditional play – where Act I presents a problem, Act II reveals the complications and Act III resolves it all – Americans want to skip Act II and go straight to the resolution. The more I think about it, the more I think the Joe Biden presidency is Act II – and Donald Trump is not the last tycoon. He’s Act III. He’s the next president. The campaign of lawfare against him has already begun to backfire Democratic strategists think otherwise.

Svitlana Morenets

The tragedy of Ukraine’s stolen children

One of the most appalling and perplexing atrocities committed by Vladimir Putin has been the abduction of Ukrainian children. At least 20,000 boys and girls, some just babies, have been separated from their parents and placed in Russian camps, orphanages or foster homes. They are portrayed in Russia as grateful orphans being saved from ‘Kyiv’s war’ – but this is a lie. Most of the deported children have families who are searching for them, desperate to find them and take them back home before their names are changed and they become untraceable. The abduction of another nation’s children is a form of genocide. But Russia’s population is decreasing and Putin is obsessed with expanding the Russky Mir or ‘Russian World’.

Justin Marozzi

In Kyiv, tech start-ups are thriving

What better cocktail to try in Kyiv than ‘Lesya Ukrainka’s Dream’? Born in 1871, Ukrainka was a fierce feminist, poet, titan of Ukrainian literature and the angel-faced symbol of independent nationhood. In this time of war, writers like Ukrainka and Taras Shevchenko, the great 19th-century poet persecuted by the Russians, a man who has come to define Ukrainian national identity and liberation, are all the rage. The last verse of Ukrainka’s poem ‘Contra Spem Spero’ (‘I hope against hope’) captures the national mood: Yes, I will laugh despite my tears, I’ll sing out songs amidst my misfortunes; I’ll have hope despite all odds, I will live! Away, you sorrowful thoughts!

Ece Temelkuran

The final countdown: Turkey is on a knife-edge

‘Kilicdaroglu’ is a pronunciation nightmare for the non-Turkish. Yet after this Sunday’s presidential elections, international news presenters, who have struggled for 20 years with President Erdogan’s soft ‘g’, might have to work harder to articulate the name of the social democrat leader of opposition. ‘You may call him Mr Kemal [his first name] until he wins,’ I’ve been saying to journalist friends. It’s the kind of simplification that people from complex, non-western countries are self-trained to give so our maddening realities can be better understood: ‘To feel Turkey, imagine the acute polarisation during the Brexit referendum continuing for 20 years. Add to that a far more ruthless Trump with political genius and Islamist aspirations.

Andrew Watts

The Anglican priests charged with exorcising evil spirits

Last month, a trailer for the new Exorcist film – the scariest trailer ever, apparently – was released. The Exorcist: Believer isn’t out until Friday 13 October – just in time for Halloween – but Hollywood movies about demons are legion. This one follows The Pope’s Exorcist (released on Good Friday), in which Russell Crowe is a maverick exorcist who doesn’t play by the book, but gets results – despite the pen-pushers at (Vatican) City Hall. The Reverend Canon Dr Jason Bray, the Bishop of St Asaph’s ‘deliverance minister’, will not be watching either film.

Wednesday

Robert Hardman

What will Charles III’s reign look like?

The last time a monarch acceded to the throne, her subjects had to wait ten months to hear her speak. Elizabeth II was only 25 and had her whole adult life before her. The public were more patient in those days and the media was an entirely different creature, moving at a slower pace.  It was not until Christmas Day 1952 that the British heard their Queen (by now 26) begin: ‘Each Christmas, at this time, my beloved father broadcast a message to his people in all parts of the world. Today I am doing this to you, who are now my people…’ In 2022, we had to wait all of 24 hours before hearing Charles III outline his vision for his reign. He did so in a speech which, by common consent, hit the right note (a YouGov poll days later gave it a 94 per cent approval rating).

Sean Thomas

I demand reparations for my ancestors’ fall from grace

Recent births and deaths in my family have got me thinking about the family tree. A few years ago, we pieced together a remarkably discernible lineage that goes right back to William the Conqueror, or at least his alleged Anglo-Saxon concubine, and various Norman knights who used to own much of England. And it is this lineage that has made me realise: the hideous underprivilege and mistreatment of my ancestors entitles me to reparations. For centuries the Peverels taxed and brutalised their serfs, but then chose the wrong side in the odd war The story begins with that Anglo-Saxon woman Maud Ingelric. Many historians believe she was the mistress of William the Conqueror, and bore him a favoured son, William Peverel the Elder, my great-great-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-(etc)-grandfather.

Ben Lazarus

The godfather of AI: why I left Google

Ten minutes before I meet Geoffrey Hinton, the ‘godfather of AI’, the New York Times announces he’s leaving Google. After decades working on artificial intelligence, Hinton now believes it could wipe out humanity. ‘It is like aliens have landed on our planet and we haven’t quite realised it yet because they speak very good English,’ he says. He also tells me that he has been unable to sleep for months. ‘It’s conceivable that the genie is already out of the bottle’ Hinton, 75, revolutionised AI not once but twice: first with his work on neural networks, computer architecture that closely resembles the brain’s structure, and then with so-called ‘deep learning’, which allows AI to refine and extract patterns and concepts on a vast quantity of data.

Tony Radakin

Will my coronation marching measure up?

Travelling to Ukraine on the President’s train is the most secure route into Kyiv. This is my fourth visit to the country since the invasion. Previously I accompanied Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak. This time I am with Tim Barrow, our National Security Adviser. The continuity of access reflects the extraordinary trust between Britain and Ukraine. The train is punctual and with an aura of seasoned grandeur. The enforced lack of phones combined with a steady rhythm for ten hours aids reflection. I think back to travelling to Moscow with Ben Wallace before the invasion and a meeting with my Russian opposite, General Gerasimov. At the time we still hoped war could be averted. This conflict has been a disaster for the Kremlin.

Richard Chartres

The religious roots of the coronation

It is many years since anyone seriously entertained the doctrine expounded by Shakespeare’s Richard II: ‘Not all the water in the rough rude sea can wash the balm off from an anointed king. The breath of worldly men cannot depose the deputy elected by the Lord.’ Nevertheless, on Saturday King Charles III will be solemnly anointed in Westminster Abbey in a ceremony whose roots are ancient but whose meaning is fresh. Behind the screen, in a very personal act of commitment, the King accepts his calling from God The Israelites asked for a king so that they could be ‘like all the nations’. Anointed monarchs have a long history but today the rites surrounding the British monarch are unique in Europe.

William Moore

Vials of ammonia, shaky scaffolding and sword fights: memories of Elizabeth II’s coronation

Lady Rosemary Muir was 23 when she received a letter from the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl Marshal, informing her that she had been chosen as one of the six maids of honour to assist the Mistress of the Robes in the coronation of Elizabeth II. That was in January 1953. From then until the coronation day in June, the maids of honour were the subject of many excited articles. The press dubbed them ‘the Lucky Six… envied by every other woman in the land’.  Envied they certainly were, but luck had little to do with it. Lady Rosemary tells me it was no surprise to her that she was appointed to be a maid of honour. ‘I was a duke’s daughter,’ she says as we look through her hefty album of coronation photographs and cuttings. ‘Why shouldn’t I be?

Yannic Rack

The battle to restore Britain’s hedgerows

‘I don’t know if hedgelaying is a dying art. But there’s a lot of old hedgelayers that are dying,’ says David Whitaker to chuckles from some of his fellow craftsmen. The occasion is the annual hedgelaying championship, organised by the National Hedgelaying Society, of which Whitaker is secretary. In a good year, the event draws around 100 competitors and a few curious spectators to a marquee in a muddy field in Hampshire. Britain’s oldest hedge dates back to the Bronze Age. Thousands of miles of hedgerow were laid in the late 1700s after the Enclosures Act carved up the countryside.

Thursday

Damian Thompson

Inside America’s Satanist movement

The largest gathering of Satanists in history is taking place in Boston this weekend. It’s not open to the public. Or, to be more precise, no longer open to the public. That’s because all the tickets have been sold. They’ve downgraded the supernatural in favour of aggressive secularism, with an emphasis on trans issues The second annual SatanCon is being organised by The Satanic Temple or ‘TST’, the world’s biggest Satanic sect, at the Marriott Hotel in Copley Square. That’s the same Marriott chain founded by a devout Mormon family who, back in the 1960s, only agreed to serve alcohol to guests after securing permission from the president of the Church of Latter Day Saints.

Wednesday

Katy Balls

The Starmtroopers: how Labour’s centrists took back control

On a cloudy Saturday in March, a group of unlikely characters gathered in an office near London’s Old Street for political training. A scientist, a prison officer, an army veteran and four economists were among them and they all hope to be elected as Labour MPs at the next election. A great many of them are expected to succeed. If today’s polls were to become tomorrow’s election result, there would be an influx of more than 200 new Labour MPs, doubling Keir Starmer’s parliamentary contingent to 450. The quality of those politicians will decide the nature of the next Labour government. As the moderates return, the money is close behind them They are, very much, Starmer’s people.