Melanie McDonagh

Poor baby Preston didn’t have much of a start in life. His mother Sarah, now 42, was jailed aged 14 for the 1998 torture and murder of a pensioner. Preston was, justifiably, taken from her after birth. Given these unpropitious circumstances, it was the job of the state – here Oldham council – to give him a fair start in life. To begin with, that’s what happened; a decent foster family looked after him. Preston’s birth grandmother suggested that worries about homophobia may have skewed the judgment of those who were meant to be supervising him It was when he was given to the care of Jamie Varley, 37, and his boyfriend, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, that he was subjected to sexual torture, fear and pain over the course of four months that ended his life.

The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford is well and truly open; there was an Open Day this weekend. It’s the product of a big donation of £185 million from Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group. It’s an ambitious development close to the old Observatory on the Radcliffe site. There’s a large and airy central atrium with cafes. As well as libraries and lecture rooms, there’s a concert hall and theatre and cinema and high tech exhibition spaces. The place is designed with the University's net zero carbon emissions policies in mind on the principles of Passivhaus; the building is ultra energy-efficient.

London is full of little ecosystems: areas that are distinctive by virtue of their purpose or history and where individual elements make up a sum greater than the whole. St James’s is like that: a patch south of Piccadilly where the pleasures of a walk down the street are all to do with being able to look at the windows of the art galleries. There’s a succession of independent dealers selling paintings – Old Masters in some cases – drawings, objects d’art and art books. You probably can’t afford to do more than look, but there’s pleasure in fantasising like a Dorothy Parker character about what you might buy if you only could.

Granted, I was not the most obvious person to appreciate the installation of Sarah Mullally in Canterbury, even though I think her a splendid Christian pastor and indeed, an exemplary Christian. Her kind, homely face radiates charity and good will; the simplicity of her speech speaks of sincerity. But as a bolshie Catholic, it’s not possible to spend long in Canterbury cathedral during this very Anglican celebration without the subversive thought surfacing that this cathedral is, by rights, Catholic, the Reformation being an unfortunate blip in the great scheme of things.

Hannah Spencer’s maiden speech in the Commons – a cheerful and upbeat performance – was pegged to International Women’s Day. We learned that some girls went to school that day actually dressed as Hannah the plumber, complete with trademark hair. She was understandably chuffed about this. It is, to be honest, hard to imagine little boys going to school dressed as Matthew Goodwin, her defeated Reform rival, which is one of the unfairnesses of gender politics. I was intending to write about what she didn’t talk about, namely anything to do with Green issues – biodiversity, sustainable farming, the energy cost of data processing centres – but I was frankly distracted by her clothes.

Oh Lordy. Here we go. The Gruffalo is back – or rather, the Gruffalo Granny – a new take on the most famous children’s character of the last 30 years other than Harry Potter. So, we’re going multi-generational with the monster; the last one, published over 20 years ago, was The Gruffalo’s Child…now it’s the oldie coming on the scene like Grendel’s mother, except not. Julia Donaldson really does churn ‘em out The publisher, Macmillan, for whom Julia Donaldson must have seemed like their very own JK Rowling – 18.2 million copies of the two titles and counting – announced that Granny Gruffalo would drop on 10 September, and crucially, it’s illustrated by Axel Scheffler, who is as critical to The Gruffalo as Quentin Blake was to Roald Dahl.