I’m sailing to Tarshish as usual. The air is thick, Its walls are greyish white, This desk light flickers intermittently. Let me be plain: Being good in your sort of way Does not appeal to me. Why would I go to Nineveh? The parking’s diabolical And the people there Are not my type. Some send
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, said of pro-Palestinian demonstrations: ‘To plan protests on Armistice Day is provocative and disrespectful, and there is a clear and present risk that the Cenotaph and other war memorials could be desecrated.’ The Metropolitan Police urged organisers of a pro-Palestinian march on 11 November to postpone it, but they
Human trafficking is a multi-billion-pound global industry. It is fuelled by the desperation of migrants seeking a better life and the cynicism of those who are now adept at identifying and exploiting loopholes in western border controls. One of Germany’s proposals is to explore copying the British model and process asylum applicants elsewhere As ever
I want to be alone An animal described as ‘Britain’s loneliest sheep’ was ‘rescued’ from the bottom of a cliff in Easter Ross where it had been living for the past two years, presumably after clambering down the steep coastal slope and finding it impossible to climb back up. Some other lonely life forms: –
Ill-judged Sir: Professor Carl Henegan’s authoritative demolition of the Covid Inquiry (‘The Covid whitewash’, 4 November) prompts the question of why judges are normally appointed to chair public inquiries. Lady Hallett has clearly had a distinguished law career, but has no apparent expertise in government, public health, epidemiology, medicine or science. Her first move on
Ruth Scurr In Ways of Life (Jonathan Cape, £30), Laura Freeman channels the spirit of the art critic and collector Jim Ede. She traces the origins of Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge – not a museum, nor art gallery, more a cabinet of curiosities – through Ede’s own life, his work for the Tate, the other
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For once, Nick Clegg had a point. At the start of this week’s Artificial Intelligence summit at Bletchley Park, our former deputy prime minister spoke about the need to get priorities right. ‘My slight note of caution,’ he said, is that we ‘don’t allow the need to focus on proximate challenges to be crowded out
Sporting danger An ice hockey player died in Sheffield after his throat was cut by an opponent’s skate blade. How dangerous is ice hockey? – There were 7,668 visits to US emergency rooms as a result of ice hockey-related head injuries in 2018. This compares with 51,892 for American football, 24,516 for baseball, 38,898 for
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, chaired a Cobra emergency committee meeting on the effects in Britain of Israel’s war against Hamas: his spokesman described videos and pictures on social media at the weekend as ‘extremely concerning’. A large pro-Palestine demonstration had again been held in London. Andy McDonald MP had the Labour whip suspended
RICHMAL (13) CROMPTON (22) wrote about the always-11-years-old WILLIAM (27) BROWN (33). His group, THE OUTLAWS (38) consisted of HENRY (1A), GINGER (11), DOUGLAS (12) and JUMBLE the dog (21) First prize Janis Bain, Bunessan, Isle of Mull Runners-up Norman Melvin, Twickenham; Richard Stone, Barton under Needwood, Staffs
Call for common justice Sir: Rod Liddle’s piece on the true desires of Palestinians was rare in its acceptance of the complexity of aspiration (‘What Hamas promised its electorate’, 28 October). People cleave to those who stand for their best hopes. They voted for Hamas. Rod ends saying only Israeli Arabs in his experience did
Andrew Motion Something old made new: The Iliad in Emily Wilson’s muscular and moving new translation, the first by a woman, is truly what it claims to be – a version for our time (Norton, £30). And something new made immediate: Hannah Sullivan’s second collection of poems, Was It For This (Faber, £12.99), ambitiously extends
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Side hustles David Solomon, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said he would stop DJing in clubs, following criticism from the bank’s board. For years he had performed under the alias D-Sol, playing electronic dance music. Some other unlikely side hustles: – In 2017 King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands revealed that for the past 21 years
Home Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister, on his return from Israel (where he spoke with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister) and to Saudi Arabia (where he spoke with Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince), told the House of Commons: ‘Hamas is not only a threat to Israel, but to many others across the region. All