Susannah Jowitt

Michael Gove, Max Jeffery, Paul Wood, Susannah Jowitt and Leyla Sanai

From our UK edition

38 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Michael Gove interviews Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood (1:17; Max Jeffery shadows the police as they search for the parents of three abandoned babies (14:41); Paul Wood asks if this is really the end of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (20:57); Susannah Jowitt reports that death has come to the Chelsea Flower Show (28:55); and, Leyla Sanai reviews Graham Swift’s new anthology of short stories, Twelve Post-War Tales (34:23). Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Death comes to the Chelsea Flower Show

From our UK edition

It’s a matter of life and death at the Chelsea Flower Show this year. No murders are planned as far as we know, but there will be gravestones and even a coffin. This is to be a celebration of death. The Royal Horticultural Society’s annual Flower Show will include funeral flowers in the Grand Pavilion for the first time since it moved to Chelsea in 1913. The display is being put together by the Farewell FlowersDirectory and, I’m told, there will be no tightly wired whorls of white carnations spelling out ‘LOVE YOU MUM’. Instead, passers-by will be left thinking of country churchyards, wild grasses and meadow flowers; species like campions, cornflowers and cow parsley.

Citizen’s arrest

From our UK edition

My husband foiled a theft at the Saatchi Gallery – and was rewarded with a night in the cells Back in October, in the same week that David Cameron was trying to persuade his party conference of the merits of the Big Society, my husband Anthony did what the Prime Minister urged and tried to help someone in need. As a result, he spent a night behind bars. Here’s what happened. We were guests at the glitzy preview night of a new art charity show called The Art of Giving at the Saatchi Gallery on King’s Road in London. Towards the close of the evening, amid the hubbub and the plying of prosecco, a drama started. One of the event’s curators had left her laptop and phone lying around, and somebody had stolen them. She screamed for help. Anthony was standing nearby.