Rats

Wednesday

The Spectator

Which animals are older than David Attenborough?

Travel sickness Three people were reported to have died in an outbreak of hantavirus on a cruise ship returning to Europe from Antarctica. How likely are you to fall ill with an infectious disease on a cruise? A European study that analysed US data on 760 cruises between 2010 and 2013 found an overall illness rate of 2.81 cases per 10,000 traveller-days, while 97% of cases involved norovirus. The rate of outbreaks was highest on ships which had a home port in Cuba or Egypt and lowest on ships with a home port in France, Greece, Italy or the UK. Local difficulties Does a governing party ever do well in local elections?

Tuesday

Camilla Cassidy

Will we ever know the real George Orwell?

While George Orwell was staying with his family in Southwold during the 1930s, figuring out how to become a writer, the town pharmacist was busy shooting ciné footage. On the edge of a crowd watching a circus parade, he captured a tall man smoking at a street corner. It’s impossible to identify this brief glimpse as Orwell, but D.J. Taylor sees the self-conscious figure holding himself apart as a possible sighting. It doesn’t seem all that revealing, so why does it matter? It feels somehow symbolic of a wider effort to grasp something tangible and candid of a writer who can too readily be obscured by his own myth. This might be a chance to get a look at the man himself rather than a stage-managed persona.