Rupert Wright

For the first time in almost a century, when Arthur Conan Doyle was buried in a Turkish carpet in his garden, my hometown of Crowborough is in the news.  For those fortunate never to have been, Crowborough is a small place in the Weald of about 20,000 souls. The cadet training camp, where my school pals and I endured a week of army exercises and tinned rations, has been turned into a migrant hostel for more than 500 asylum seekers, sparking a furious reaction from the local residents. I have much sympathy with them – but also for the young men who have been sent to live there.  Kim Bailey, leader of the protest group Crowborough Shield, calls the decision to house migrants in the town ‘disgusting’ and a ‘disgrace’. ‘There is nothing to do in Crowborough,’ she adds.

Another day, another warning about the perils of alcohol from a body that should know better. The World Health Organisation, which just a few years ago was prescribing solitary confinement as the cure for our ills, has recently announced the preferred level we should be drinking every day: zero, zip, nada – not a drop. Last week a Professor Nutt – nominative determinism in action if ever I saw it – was a little more generous. He suggested we would be safe with ‘one glass a year’. He was joined last weekend by a dreary columnist in the Financial Times, who said he took up drinking at 30 but wishes he hadn’t; it would be better for his health. What madness is this?