Christopher Akers

Monday

Christopher Akers

In defence of the Brandy Alexander

From our UK edition

In Ian Fleming’s short story Risico, Bond scans the bar of the Excelsior in Rome for his contact Kristatos. He has been told to look for a mustachioed man drinking an Alexandra cocktail. Amused by the ingenuity of the signal, he spots the concoction of cream and vodka sitting on a corner table: ‘The creamy, feminine drink was so much cleverer than the folded newspaper, the flower in the buttonhole, the yellow gloves that were the hoary, slipshod call-signs between agents.’    While Kristatos went with vodka, the Brandy Alexander (derived from the gin-based Alexander) has long been the standard version of the cocktail. The recipe is simple. Grab 50ml of brandy, 25ml of crème de cacao and 25ml of cream.

Wednesday

Christopher Akers

Why is Glasgow trashing its architectural heritage?

From our UK edition

It’s a big summer for Glasgow. Fresh from twinning with Boston after the Tartan Army’s World Cup antics entranced the Americans, Scotland’s metropolis is now welcoming visitors for the Commonwealth Games. Those in town for the week and a half will find a city of underrated beauty – but one which seems strangely determined to let its impressive Victorian and Edwardian heritage crumble.   The latest example of Glasgow’s apparent death wish came this week when it was announced that a lack of cash means that Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s masterwork at the Glasgow School of Art, destroyed in 2018 by a second fire in four years, won’t be faithfully rebuilt after all.

Sunday

Christopher Akers

Death, schism and conspiracy: Orkney’s renegade Catholic monks

From our UK edition

A tiny island in the Orkneys. A renegade group of Catholic monks who have rejected every Pope since the 1960s. The planned illicit consecration of a bishop. The clandestine departure of three monks. And a mysterious death beneath the waves of the North Sea. They seem determined to step into a schismatic chasm from which it will be very difficult to escape While this might seem like the elements of an enigmatic murder mystery, all of the above has in fact taken place on the island of Papa Stronsay, home to the monks of the Congregation of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, also known as the Transalpine Redemptorists. A small community which is on the brink of schism with the Catholic Church.

Tuesday

Christopher Akers

The Panic of 1873 seems eerily familiar

From our UK edition

On 18 September 1873, the leading American bank Jay Cooke & Co collapsed after a disastrous bet on the railroad boom. Like the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, it was a watershed moment in an unfolding global financial crisis. Yet ‘the first Great Depression’, which lasted until 1896, is now mostly forgotten, despite some intriguing parallels to contemporary events and a fascinating dramatis personae, which includes the Rothschilds, Ottoman sultans and Otto von Bismarck. The Panic of 1873 and its aftermath took place in a period of financial globalisation and technological growth, with bond markets funding the epochal projects of America’s first transcontinental railroad and the Suez Canal. US railroads were the artificial intelligence investment of the day.

Thursday

Christopher Akers

The Wall Street Crash never ceases to fascinate

From our UK edition

When Winston Churchill dined with the crème de la crème of American finance in New York on 28 October 1929, a facetious toast was made to ‘friends and former millionaires’. Despite a 13 per cent drop in the Dow after another day of market turmoil, the assembled banking titans felt they wouldn’t just survive the maelstrom, they would make more money from it. Churchill, whose finances were perennially chaotic, had caught stock market fever and lost today’s equivalent of almost $1.5 million. On returning to England, he declared the Wall Street crash ‘only a passing episode in the march of a valiant and serviceable people’. In the end, US stocks fell almost 90 per cent between their 1929 peak and 1932.

Saturday

Christopher Akers

Pope Leo’s papal economics

From our UK edition

The Catholic Church now has its first American pope, but Robert Francis Prevost’s papal name of Leo XIV is perhaps far more significant than his national origins. The name gives a heavy hint about how the new pontiff might address our contemporary economic and social ills. The use of Leo points back to the reforming 19th-century Pope Leo XIII who, like Prevost, was faced with steering the Church through a world in ideological flux. That the new pope has chosen to emphasise the legacy of Leo XII suggests he is aware of the revolutionary nature of the current economic age Leo XIII was pontiff from 1878 to 1903.

Thursday

Christopher Akers

Scotland has failed Andy Murray

From our UK edition

So much for building upon the legacy of the nation’s greatest ever sportsman. There will be no tennis balls hit at a proposed £20 million sports centre close to Andy Murray’s hometown of Dunblane, after the cancellation of the tennis star’s project this week. More than a decade of wrangling, planning system headaches and complaints about development on green belt land conspired to end the ‘legacy’ project, led by Judy Murray. It’s game, set, and match for the naysayers.  The Park of Keir site was meant to have 12 tennis courts, a six-hole golf course and four-star hotel, along with a museum and restaurant. The idea was to celebrate the significant achievements of Murray and clan at a flagship venue for tennis training and competition.

Tuesday

Christopher Akers

The roots of anti-Semitism in Europe

From our UK edition

The medieval trope that Jews are inherently bloodthirsty has echoed down the ages. Forms of the blood libel have been disseminated ever since the myth emerged in England in the 12th century with claims that Christian children were being ritually murdered by Jews in re-enactments of the crucifixion of Jesus. In the aftermath of 7 October, Labour’s Rochdale by-election candidate Azhar Ali accused Israel of lowering its defences so that it could justify the shedding of innocent Palestinian blood. Gigi Hadid, the American model, shared a video which alleged that Israel is harvesting the organs of Palestinians.