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"In 2008, I met the Ukrainian diplomat and journalist who would go on to bribe Nathan Gill: Oleh Voloshyn. At the time he was working as press attache at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow, where I was based as the bureau chief for the Guardian. Voloshyn made no secret of his pro-Kremlin views. He was clever, chatty and spoke impeccable English. He later went back to Kyiv to work for the Putin-backed administration of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych." In his new book, Luke Harding joins the dots of a continent-wide Kremlin influence network that was disrupted by the jailing of a former leader of Reform UK Wales.

Josh Gabbatiss, Molly Lempriere and Simon Evans find ten flaws in the new Conservative report on "cheap power": "The report relies on a series of questionable assumptions to claim that gas and nuclear will be cheaper than renewables – including the idea that gas prices will be low and stable."

Caroline Scott meets a few of the thousands of young people who leave the care system each year with no home and little support.

"Trees are planted because they cool streets. Wetlands are protected because they can hold floodwater. Parks are funded because they improve our health. All of those benefits are important. But they can also leave nature looking like a service provider for people. If a tree no longer provides enough shade, or a wetland becomes more valuable as development land, what happens to the argument for protecting it?" Saman Sobhani believes our cities should be designed for wildlife as well as people

Weilong Zhang reports the results of an inadvertent scientific experiment conducted in Britain between 1951 and 1956: "We found that people who experienced longer periods of sugar rationing during their first 1,000 days had a lower incidence of five types of cancer: breast, prostate, liver, rectal and lung cancer."

"Dancing Queen is the absolute summit of the purest pop. It’s almost a tasting menu of the greatest components. Its descending glissando is one of the most exciting moments in music history – you know exactly what it is and instantly beam on hearing it." Ian Wade revisits the brilliance of ABBA.

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Stefan Wolff, Elīna Šteinerte and Hervé Ascensio have investigated Russia’s military indoctrination of Ukrainian children in its occupied territories: "The headteacher of the local school, accompanied by heavily armed soldiers, went from house to house to question parents who do not send their children to school and had not yet applied for Russian passports. He threatened them with the removal of their parental rights. He also said their children would be placed in institutions if they didn't yield to the pressure to do so."

"The university’s own financial reports show that 16 members of the University Executive Board are paid an average of £241k – a 27 per cent increase over three years while the institution has been going through financial difficulties. We have also seen the recruitment of highly paid and non-academic 'professors of practice', who are often industry figures without teaching and research experience. New managerial roles with grandiose titles such as 'associate pro-vice chancellor for education and student experience' have been created across the institution." John Heathershaw takes us inside the crisis at the University of Exeter.

"Deaths, misconduct in public office, rat infestations, and a climate of fear." Emma Guy reports on Leicester's privately run HMP Fosse Way.

Gawain Towler explains Rupert Lowe's sudden interest in cooperation with Reform UK: "A  man of sixty-eight, a man elected twice on the coattails of Nigel Farage, who has spent eighteen months declaring that his purpose was the destruction of Nigel Farage, has looked at 8.7 per cent in a nationally ignored by-election and concluded that his moment is now or never. It is not unity he wants. It is relevance, and he is in a hurry for it."

"Works such as Robert McFarlane's The Old Ways, Tom Cox's 21st Century Yokel, Benjamin Myers' Under the Rock, and Edward Parnell's seminal Ghostland explore the connection between the self, the landscape, and the stories and histories that permeate and in many ways 'haunt' these landscapes." Lydia Waites considers the role of environmentalism in recent 'folkish' English writing.

Fed Kandi photographs the public art on the campuses of Lougborough University and the University of Leicester.

A journey along the Welsh Border in 1963

Wynford Vaughan Thomas and friend travel the length of the border between England and Wales in 1963.

But the tone of the commentary could come from a topographical book of 30 years before. Anything that smacks of modernity or progress is suspect and the old ways are to be supported, however silly. There's an obsession with market day, while farmers can do no wrong.

Also in line with such books, there is disapproval for visitors' buses, but the writer's own car gets a free pass.

Still it's lovely country and Montgomery is still a little-known treasure. And Knucklas Viaduct still carries trains despite what the film says about Dr Beeching.

What really interested me in the films are the remains of Victorian agricultural improvement on Long Mountain, because I once discovered them for myself.

I had stayed for the night at Colebatch, the first village south of Bishop's Castle. I set off the next morning to walk to Montgomery. At first I went cross country via Bishop's Moat and Mellington Hall to meet the Offa's Dyke Path.

In those days I sometimes carried a radio when I went walking, and I can remember sitting in the sun listening to The World at One. It was at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was an item discussing how an independent Ukraine would fare.

I remember laughing because such a notion would have been unthinkable a few days before, and perhaps because I had called at a pub for a lunchtime drink. Looking at the map, I think it must have been the now-closed Blue Bell near Pentreheyling.

Anyway, I passed the turn for Montgomery and kept going because it was only mid afternoon and I felt fine. That's why I found myself on Long Mountain, and wondering what these strange Victorian remains were, before I managed to snag a bed for the night in Welshpool.

Now you could find out online, but this was 1991. Yet, by another of those strange coincidences, there was an item about them in, I think, The Times a couple of days after I got home.

But Wynford Vaughan Thomas is getting impatient, so you'd better watch the video. But after you've done so, you might enjoy my review of All the Wide Border by Mike Parker.

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James Ball argues that Labour's social media ban for teenagers is an admission of total and utter failure to govern online spaces: "The UK government has lots of powers to govern the internet that it simply isn’t using. Hosting images of child abuse is a strict liability offence, one that Elon Musk’s X platform blatantly breached with its Grok chatbot. The government gave itself extensive powers to regulate social platforms under the Online Safety Act, which it has never even made an attempt to enforce."

"This week contained two stories, which dominated the headlines. One took place on the streets of Belfast, the other in the hallways of Whitehall. One concerned race riots and the other a defence funding plan. But they were in fact the same story. They both concerned security – one at home, the other abroad. And they were both the result of a prime minister who refuses to lead." Ian Dunt says Keir Starmer's inertia threatens national security.

Anja Krstic and Ivona Hideg find that men's careers benefit when they take parental leave but women’s do not.

"Ten years on from the referendum, the tired stereotype of the 'Northern Brexit voter' is one we should retire." J.P. Spencer has the figures that explode a widespread myth.

"Undoubtedly the most important members of the audience were a group of families from formerly occupied territories affected by the abductions: mothers with teenagers they had recovered from Crimea or elsewhere; families who were still trying to get their children back." Charlotte Higgins and Mariana Matveichuk on the Kyiv premiere of Mothers of Kherson, an opera about the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian occupiers.

Kenneth George Godwin finds innocence and corruption in the films of Alexander Mackendrick: "The clearest expression of Mackendrick’s worldview is perhaps apparent in the three films he made which centred on children: Mandy (1952), Sammy Going South (1963), and A High Wind In Jamaica (1965). Unsentimental, unafraid of the darkness kids face in a harsh world, unafraid to see the potential for darkness in the kids themselves … these are three of the most adult films about children ever made."

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David Howarth says Liberal Democrats should attack Brexit, not just "the Tories' botched Brexit deal".

"Many have had to take extensive measures to protect their staff and service users. They’ve hired security guards, put trackers on phones, removed company listings and names from websites. In some cases, they’ve even installed safe rooms." Nicola Kelly describes how far-right attacks against refugee charities are causing workers to leave the sector to protect themselves.

"Unable to defeat Ukraine quickly or force political capitulation in Kyiv, Russia has expanded the battlefield into the daily life of European societies. Moscow’s objective is clear: weaken Western unity by creating a constant sense of vulnerability, without crossing the threshold that would trigger a formal NATO response. This pressure is increasingly visible in Poland and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe." Piotr Arak on Russia's use of sabotage to wear down Europe

Louise Murphy explodes three myths about NEETs – young people who are not it education, employment or training.

Pete Paphides celebrates Madness and their song The Liberty of Norton Folgate.

"The main robbery takes place around the industrial warehouses that once sat behind King’s Cross. As vast changes and development has taken place, exactly recreating these shots is difficult. However, using old maps of the area, many shots can be roughly mapped." Adam Scovell goes in search of the locations used by the makers of The Ladykillers in 1955

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"The 'peace deal' that America is now attempting to force on Ukraine, is not like Neville Chamberlain’s betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich; it is far, far worse," says Jonty Bloom.

Sam Bright on the right-wingers who claim to love Britain, but want to destroy all its institutions: "The whole of Britain has become one big Oxford restaurant after a Bullingdon Club dinner: the tables upturned, the glass smashed, the staff left to sweep up the mess while the lads stumble out laughing, having dumped a bag of cash on the table by way of compensation."

"This feels partly like a sidelining of Wales in the national agenda, but also something more than that: a kind of disaster ennui. Floods aren’t new any more. They have become commonplace: but the way they are disregarded by some of the media and the government is deeply dangerous." Jude Rogers asks why the floods Storm Claudia caused in Monmouthshire received so little coverage.

Jack Walton remembers the lost world of Greater Manchester’s newspapers: "The Manchester Evening News is now the only local newsroom in Greater Manchester that has more than a handful of staff reporters, but go back 25 years and it would have been one of a dozen. Grand old titles like the Oldham Evening Chronicle and the Bolton Evening News used to inhabit imposing buildings which were buzzing with staff. In 2011, the Chronicle had 22 journalists and 76 total staff at its Union Street offices."

Colin Thurbron gave the eulogy for the writer Gillian Tindall at her memorial gathering last week: "'Houses and barns,' she wrote, 'gate posts, hedgerows, field slopes and the lie of paths, persist and persist, even when people that created them are earth themselves'.  In effect cities and buildings become, in her work, a palimpsest, in which the past lingers beneath the surface of things, and continues to shape them."

"Twain eventually came to believe that his idyllic childhood in Hannibal – immortalised in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer – had been only a dream, from which he had awakened to inescapable loss and misery. The boom and bust so redolent of American life haunted Twain, as it would F Scott Fitzgerald." Edward Short reviews a new biography of Mark Twain.

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"By learning from Farage, the Greens risk becoming more like him in form, even if utterly different in content. And in politics, form matters. A democracy shaped by perpetual outrage and binary framing cannot easily sustain pluralism, however noble the cause. If we pick fights and make enemies now we will build a future full of fights and enemies." Mike Chitty worries that Zack Polanski has learnt too much from the populist playbook.

Caspar Hobhouse argues that Ukraine needs support from the European Union to transition towards a long-term energy system that is resilient, flexible and secure.

Rachel Sylvester on William's plans for a downsized monarchy.

"Kate Murphy’s work has changed how we think about the history of women’s roles in radio and television production forever. Had she not had the opportunity to make the transition from maker to scholar of BBC programming, and to do the serious detective work of tracking down these women’s stories via the archive, our understanding of women’s roles in the BBC would still be partial and centred on the stories of 'great men; that Asa Briggs and others have told us." Helen Wheatley joins the campaign against the BBC's decision to effectively close its Written Archives Centre to independent researchers.

Owen Hatherley reviews two books on the postwar architecture of South-East London: "It is stark, unpretentious modernism, but James and Audrey Callaghan were very unhappy to leave it for Downing Street when he became chancellor in 1964; it had, Audrey said, become 'like a second skin' – designed wholly around their needs and wants."

"Watkins based his thesis on three decades of legwork, on his interest in archaeology, history and architecture, and on his research into etymology, folklore and legends. And it’s hard for the non-expert not to be affected by his enthusiasm and sheer piling-up of what he sees as supporting evidence from these different disciplines." Chris Lovegrove looks at Alfred Watkins' The Old Straight Track, the book that gave birth to "ley lines" on the centenary of its publication.

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Helen Charman dissects the claims of the flag-bearing demonstrators. "One slogan used to promote the hotel protests on social media, often emblazoned over a Union Jack or St George's Cross, is 'Safety of Women and Children before Foreigners'. There is a clear distinction being made here between British women and children and 'foreign' women and children. The category of the vulnerable always already excludes the marginalised group being targeted."

All good Liberals know the tale of Harry Willcock – "I am a Liberal, and I am against this sort of thing" – and his part in the abolition of national identity cards after the war, but there was another hero in his court case. It was the unexpected figure of the ferocious Lord Chief Justice, Lord Goddard. Neil Hickman explains.

"For over three years, the people of the UK have opened their homes to Ukrainian families and welcomed them into our communities. Offering them safety in the face of Russia’s indiscriminate shelling of cities and the illegal occupation of Ukrainian territory. However, at no point over these three years has our government provided Ukrainian families with certainty or stability." Rowan More looks ahead to a debate at the Liberal Democrat Conference.

Finlay McLaren finds that the chief effect of podcasting has been to give more publicity to people who were already famous.

James Wright suggests commercial interests may encourage the spreading of unverified stories and pseudo-archaeology connected to ancient buildings.

"Old Nick was so enraged he laid an everlasting curse upon them, and hence it was said that after Michaelmas Day, any blackberries on the bushes now belonged to the Devil Himself and it was most unwise to pick them." Jim Moon knows why you shouldn't pick blackberries after Michaelmas.

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Adam Barnett itemises Nigel Farage's long history of support for Vladimir Putin: "On the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion, Nigel Farage ... argued for ruling out NATO membership for Ukraine – an odd time to do that – and when the war started he called it 'a consequence of EU and NATO expansion'. Last year he called on the west to negotiate with Putin, adding that 'the relentless insistence on continued war is worrying. Whose insistence, Nigel?" 

"There are few fundamental political differences between Corbyn and Sultana. There is a clash instead of style, but this could well be used to their advantage. The conflicts are many when it comes to the wider group involved, however." Sienna Rodgers takes us the power struggles attending the birth of the proposed new left-wing party.

Francis FitzGibbon on the threat to jury trials: "Juries decide​ the outcome of about 1 per cent of criminal cases in England and Wales, and yet the jury system is permanently under threat. The latest threat comes in Sir Brian Leveson’s Independent Review of the Criminal Courts."

"The problem has always been where to place him. Unlike Monsarrat he wasn’t published in the 1930s, so can’t be ranked alongside early social realists like Graham Greene and George Orwell. Two decades later he was older than the proto-Angry Young Man writers John Wain and Kingsley Amis. Nor did he write about life outside London, like William Cooper, John Braine and others." Simon Matthews explores the life and works of novelist and TV dramatist Alexander Baron

"As luck would have it, the club had arranged Mick Channon’s testimonial match for 3 May, and so two days after the cup triumph, fans were still in a celebratory mood as they packed into the Dell to see their heroes. The FA Cup was paraded in front of an official attendance of 29,508 that night, although those who were there would probably tell you there were a few more than that. Spare a thought for the hundreds outside who could not get a ticket." Historic Southampton tells the story of The Dell.

Andrew Nette watches a favourite political thriller. "The Day of the Jackal spends a hell of a lot of time just showing things being done and the minutia involved. For Jackal this includes creating and sourcing a false identity and designing, ordering and learning how to use a bespoke lightweight sniper rifle. ... The mechanics of the police investigation into Jackal’s identity and whereabouts is also painstakingly rendered and I love every minute of it."

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"Most of the older children have been sent to so-called re-education camps scattered throughout Russia, where they are subjected to relentless propaganda aimed at erasing their Ukrainian identity. Younger children have been placed with Russian families, renamed, stripped of their language, and put on a path toward permanent adoption. These acts are not only morally reprehensible but also flagrant violations of international law." Irwin Redlener says Russia must return the children it has abducted from Ukraine.

Peter Sagar reports that universities in the North of England are missing out on government funding to designed to help attract leading researchers to the UK.

Michael Vazquez and Michael Prinzing on their research, which shows that philosophy graduates rank higher than those who studied any other subject on verbal and logical reasoning. They also tend to display more intellectual virtues, such as curiosity and open-mindedness. (At this point I shall look modest and say nothing.)

"There’s an expectation that if you’ve done well, in entertainment particularly, you know… 'which college did you go to?' – meaning which college in Oxford. I've had that a few times. I enjoy saying ;Woodham Comprehensive School'." Mark Gatiss talks to The Bee about his childhood, family and work, his advice for writers, Bookish – and the life-changing phenomenon that was Terrance Dicks; Doctor Who novels.

Rhakotis Magazine reviews the reopened Jewry Wall Museum in Leicester: "The architectural refurb has sensitively brought the 70s stylings back to life, adding much needed light and improving access. ... Although [it is] on a much smaller scale, I would place it in the same rank as London’s Southbank Centre or Barbican."

"So why am I worried about her? Because for reasons I cannot fathom, her literary reputation seems to be lagging behind those of her English contemporaries, namely Muriel Spark and Anita Brookner." Jessica Francis Kane champions the work of Penelope Fitzgerald.

Express gives Ed Davey's comments on Trump star billing

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Sky News came to a screeching halt minutes into the lunchtime show as they issued some major breaking news - and it's another huge blow for Donald Trump. 

I hang, of course, upon my leader's every word, but I'm really blogging his comments about Donald Trump and Ukraine because of the extraordinary way they were framed by the Express. 

For what was that major breaking news?

Minutes into the afternoon show, host Wilfred Frost halted the show to share Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey's thoughts on the US president's relationship with the Russian leader. 

The politician revealed: "I really feel that Donald Trump just wants to do a deal with Putin and he's not really bothered about the real interests of Ukraine or indeed, the security of Europe, including the UK."

You'd never catch the BBC treating an opposition party leader who isn't Nigel Farage like that, would you?

Anyway, Ed went on to say:

"So I think we need to work for peace, of course we should, but we should be behind Ukraine and President Zelenskyy and helping to strengthen his negotiating hand by saying we're prepared to support his military effort even more.

"I really worry that Ukraine has not been at the table so far, let's hope that it will be in the future, but we don't want any pressure to be put on Ukraine. It's vital that we get these security guarantees that the UK and our allies have been pushing for and that America is part of that.

"There's hints of the right direction, but the question is at what price is President Zelenskyy going to be asked to pay for that and I fear that these suggestions that they give up land to President Putin are just unacceptable.

"The idea that you reward an aggressor, that you appease someone as awful as President Trump is completely wrong. We've seen it in history, it doesn't work, it doesn't bring sustainable peace and that's why we've got to be so strong behind the Ukrainians."

Book Review... How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler by Peter Pomerantsev

This review appears in the new issue of Liberator. You can download it free of charge from the magazine's website.

How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler

Peter Pomerantsev

Faber, 2025; £10.99

In September 1941 German civilians began to pick up enticing new radio broadcasts. In the salty language of an army veteran from Berlin, ‘Der Chef’ complained bitterly about food rationing and excoriated leading Nazis as inefficient and sexually corrupt. “It’s a pity we can’t cut our meat from the buttocks of the SS.”

But Der Chef was not a disaffected insider: he was in reality Peter Hans Seckelmann, a German political exile broadcasting from Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire under the control of the British black propagandist Sefton Delmer.  

It is Delmer’s story that Pomerantsev tells – his boyhood in Germany during the First World War; his time as a journalist there during the Thirties when he became close to the Nazi leadership; his difficulties in proving to the British authorities that he was loyal and that his skills should be used.

Though Der Chef was a crude character, he was used in subtle ways. When he complained, for instance, that some German civilians were getting round rationing by buying clothes on the black market, his broadcast was designed to normalise this behaviour, encourage more people to take it up and speed the breakdown of the rationing system.

As the war went on, Delmer invented more characters and radio stations. Father Elmar – a real priest, though Austrian not German as claimed – broadcast religious programmes about the sins of the Nazi regime, emboldening believers with their own doubts about Hitler. And Delmer devised a whole station that combined subtle propaganda with a supply of genuine news about the home front and the welfare of troops that no German station could match. Ian Fleming, for instance, then working in Naval intelligence, fed him the results of the U-boat football league. Another writer, Muriel Spark, was on Delmer’s staff and later drew on this experience for her novel The Hothouse by the East River.

Pomerantsev shares Delmer’s experience of growing up in both liberal and authoritarian cultures. He is the son of political dissidents from Kyiv, was born in Ukraine and grew up in London. Early in this century, he lived in Moscow and worked as a TV producer. He sometimes draws parallels between Putin’s propaganda and that deployed by the Nazis or Delmer. His readers may be left wondering if some of Delmer’s tactics could be adopted by those seeking to counter the far right today.

Jonathan Calder 

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Gary Younge says the heroism of soldiers from India, Africa and the Caribbean is often airbrushed out of the history of the second world war: "About 2.5 million personnel from the Indian subcontinent, more than 1 million African-Americans, 1 million people from Africa and tens of thousands of people from the Caribbean fought for the allies during the second world war. Among them were people of almost every religion."

Tim Leunig warns that curtailing international student migration will make Britain poorer:  "In recent work with my Public First colleagues we discovered that there are over 100 constituencies where the local university is one of the top three exporters. No other sector is in the top three in more than 100 constituencies."

"As the western world closed its doors to Russia after the 2022 invasion ... Moscow somehow managed to retain control over key chess institutions, shielding Russia from sporting sanctions and allowing its players to continue competing internationally. It even hosted lucrative tournaments in the occupied Ukrainian territories of Crimea and Donbas." Daria Meshcheriakova investigates the links between world chess and Russia's war machine.

"There are so many dog whistles in those paragraphs that an audio version would sound like a rowdy day at Crufts." Mic Wright takes aim at my old classmate Allison Pearson.

Timofei Gerber reads John Stuart Mill's unfinished Chapters on Socialism.

"The ’60s left Ricky Nelson behind. He tried to branch out into other styles, he tried to shake off the Teen Idol thing. But in the era of auteurist singer-songwriters, or bands like The Beach Boys … Nelson just couldn’t compete. People wanted him for only one thing. His 'persona' was set in stone by the time he was 17 years old. He couldn’t 'grow up'. Nobody would let him." Sheila O'Malley on the fate of a teen idol,

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"As much as I wish it weren’t true, there is a fundamental difference that Starmer can’t "bridge", no matter how noble his aims. It is this: the Europeans (including the UK) see Ukrainian security as European security. They are the same. The US (under the current leadership) views Ukraine as a transaction in which they favour the Russians over the Ukrainians." Lib Dem MP Mike Martin says its time for Keir Starmer to face the new reality and lead Europe into becoming a military power.

Samantha Hancox-Li argues that "The constitutional settlement that once governed the United States has broken down. The world that we knew is gone. The second Trump Administration is working their hardest to forge a new settlement: an ugly settlement, based on personal authoritarian power and MAGA culture war."

"Hall’s film lays out the systemic failures of the police and all the other authorities supposedly in charge of protecting these girls and thousands like them, not just then, but now and all the terrible years in between. It is a tale of blind eyes turned, abundant evidence ignored, reports buried and task forces disbanded." Lucy Mangan reviews Groomed: A National Scandal.

Lisa Hagen and Karen Guzzo discuss the US pronatalist movement with Tonya Mosley from National Public Radio.

"Towards the end of 1964, she also made her biggest political statement. She was booked to tour South Africa, but insisted she would not play to segregated audiences, and was eventually deported from the country part way through the tour, with her music being banned there as a result." Andrew Hickey on Dusty Springfield and Son of a Preacher Man.

Martin Waller discusses three early utopian novels - socialist, feminist, ecological - that offered radical alternatives to conventional society before dystopias claimed the spotlight.

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"Since Putin’s illegal invasion began on 24 February 2022, at least 19,546 Ukrainian children have been forcibly taken from their families and their homeland, although the true figure is likely to be much higher because Russia frequently targets vulnerable children without anyone to speak for them." Johanna Baxter, Labour MP for Paisley and Renfrewshire South, says there can be no true peace in Ukraine without the return of the children Putin has abducted.

Ricky Treadwell is not impress by the Liberal Democrats' Buy British campaign.

Will Forster, Lib Dem MP for Woking, wants the government to recognise the work of almshouse charities: "In Britain today, almshouses provide homes for over 36,000 people - fending off homelessness and loneliness, through having a history of facilitating supported living for the elderly, but also families and younger people."

Kanzi, a bonobo, who learned language, made stone tools and played Minecraft, died recently aged 44. Daniel W. Hieber asks what his remarkable linguistic abilities can teach us about language.

"In 1988, we lived in a monoculture. By the end of that summer, it seemed like pretty much everyone who had any interest in music at all had made a pilgrimage to Woolworths or Our Price and bought her debut album, Tracy Chapman. By autumn, those 11 songs had buried themselves deep into so many people’s lives, affecting our political thinking, romantic dreams, existential beliefs, Top 10 lists. All because of that one performance." Zadie Smith remembers Tracy Chapman's performance at the Free Nelson Mandela Concert.

Lynne About Loughborough celebrates the town's Art Deco industrial buildings.

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"Part of this is down to the increasing centralisation of politics. The prime minister’s role has expanded dramatically over the decades, and cabinet government has been a fiction for a long time (Nigel Lawson claimed that cabinet meetings were the only time during the week that he got a rest). Even minor departmental decisions now have to be signed off by the centre and slotted into a communications grid." Sam Freedman on the rise and rise of political advisers.

Luke McGee suspects Putin is up against his biggest opponent yet - Trump's ego: "Trump clearly wants something that looks like a peace deal so he can show off what a great negator he is. If Trump now sees Putin as the block to a deal, that is a problem for Putin, as he has to make a choice between looking weak domestically or losing whatever goodwill he had with Trump’s White House."

"Yes, Pecksniff and Trump are bullshit artists of the highest order and neither ever experiences the least bit of remorse." Robin Bates argues that Charles Dickens, with Mr Pecksniff from Martin Chuzzlewit, anticipated Donald Trump.

Ray Newman watches Some People, which was made in Bristol in 1962 with a young cast including Ray Brooks and David Hemmings: "The church opened in 1956 and was typical of the space age houses of worship built on overspill estates all over the country in the post-war period. Unfortunately, though it looked astonishing, it was plagued with structural problems and was demolished in 1994, which only adds to the value Some People holds as a record of a time and place."

Benjamin Poore says that Shostakovich spoke truth to power - both Nazi and Communist - through his Babi Yar Symphony.

"Without any particular training, the animals - like human babies - appear to pick up basic human language skills just by listening to us talk. Indeed, cats learn to associate images with words even faster than babies do." Christa Lesté-Lasserre discusses a study that supports my view that cats are much cleverer than they choose to show us.

Lib Dems urge government to fund scheme that traces Ukrainian children abducted by Russia

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From the Guardian:

The Liberal Democrats are urging the government to provide replacement funding to an American project that locates Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russia, as the party gathers for a spring conference heavily focused on the response to Donald Trump.

British support for the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University could be part of a more robust approach towards the US president, particularly over Ukraine, according to Calum Miller, the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson.

Earlier this month, Yale said US government funding for the lab, which has attempted to track the fate of the estimated 20,000 Ukrainian children taken to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, had been ended as part of cuts imposed by Elon Musk’s so-called department of government efficiency.

The paper has spoken to the Lib Dem foreign affairs spokesperson Calum Miller. As it reminds us, he entered politics just four years ago when he became an Oxfordshire county councillor.

But with his background as a senior civil servant and then heading Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government, he was given the foreign affairs brief immediately after becoming an MP in July.

Calum will be moving a motion at the the party's spring conference expressing "profound alarm" at Trump’s presidency and urging closer European collaboration in response. 

He is calling for the government to use the £2bn-plus proceeds from Roman Abramovich’s sale of Chelsea FC to help such efforts:

"We’d like to think that some of this Abramovich money could be put to exactly those purposes, so this terrible chapter of children being forcibly removed and almost indoctrinated in Russia, can be brought to an end, but also hopefully when those children return to Ukraine they can be given all the support they need as part of a humanitarian package."

Calum also told the paper that more confiscated Russian assets should be used to aid Ukraine.

He is strongly critical of the Conservative approach to the new international situation:

"I’m genuinely baffled by the approach taken by the Conservatives in this regard, fawning over Donald Trump at his inauguration and declaring a new era in UK-US relations. It looked unwise at the time and events since have proven how ill-advised it was.

"So many people in my area opened their doors to Ukrainian families, like they did across the whole country. Voters can see that the Russians have been emboldened and empowered by the US administration, and they think that’s just the wrong thing."

It's worth reading the whole piece: Calum also talks about the Labour government's approach to US under Trump.

Finally, as a Chelsea fan I cannot help reflecting that, after paying £2bn to buy the club, its new members have invested another £1.4bn in making the team far weaker than the one they inherited.

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"We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s." Garry Kasparov on the Putinisation of America.

Noah Berlatsky and Ilana Gershon argue that undemocratic workplaces sowed the seeds of Trumpism: "Many American workplaces are hierarchical. Decision-making is opaque. Mechanisms of accountability are either nonexistent or weak and deceptive. Yet, at the same time, many workers are enthusiastically told how democratic their workplaces are, much to their frustration. Workplace culture in the US teaches employees that arbitrary rule is normal and that democracy is a deception and a lie."

John Elsom reminds us that, before Volodymr Zelenskyy became president of Ukraine, he played the president of Ukraine in a television comedy: "Vasyl is played by the comic actor, Volodymr Zelenskyy, with a gift for deadpan humour. As president, he cycles to work every morning to avoid the official car, but shyly takes off his cycle clip before entering the government building. He is instructed on how to behave by an apparatchik ... in the pay of the global oligarchs. Vasyl is taught how to take photo-calls, answer press conferences, wear suits and greet ambassadors."

"I have been a doctor for more than 30 years and a neurologist for 25 of those. I have recently grown particularly worried about the large number of young people referred to me with four or five pre-existing diagnoses of chronic conditions, only some of which can be cured." Suzanne O'Sullivan questions the trend of detecting health issues in milder and earlier forms, and the assumption that is always the right thing to do.

Peter Conrad believes Dickens is a greater writer than Shakespeare.

"Hall needs to know more about what Sharpey and the other chaps were up to. In the lecture theatre we see a student played by Edward Fox, before getting in to the original footage of the French scientist played by Roger Delgado who did pioneering experiments on isolation and sensory deprivation." Discontinued Notes watches Basil Dearden's 1963 film The Mind Benders.

Lech Wałęsa likens White House treatment of Volodymyr Zelenskyy to a Soviet-era interrogation

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The former Polish president and Nobel Peace Prize winner Lech Wałęsa has written to Donald Trump, condemning the US president’s treatment of Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine.

His letter, reports Notes from Poland, was co-signed by 38 other former political prisoners of Poland’s communist regime:

"We watched your conversation with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine with horror and distaste," wrote the group, referring to Trump’s meeting with Zelensky in the White House on Friday, at which the pair were expected to sign an agreement but which instead turned into an angry confrontation.

"We were also horrified by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of the one we remember well from interrogations by the Security Service [SB, the communist secret police] and from courtrooms in communist courts," they added.

"Prosecutors and judges, commissioned by the all-powerful communist political police, also explained to us that they held all the cards and we had none," wrote the signatories. "They demanded that we cease our activities, arguing that thousands of innocent people were suffering because of us."

Wałęsa is something of a controversial figure - he has made illiberal statements on refugees and gay parliamentarians - but, unlike Donald Trump, he knows the cost of political courage.

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"With just two days until we mark three years since the invasion, we need to talk about this man, because no one truly knows what could have happened if he hadn’t been there to lead. This is a man who could have left. A man who was expected to leave. The world was really expecting he would run." Victor Kravchuk pays tribute to Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Jennie Kermode is worried that US politicians are again talking about mass sterilisation: "The US first began sterilising people with mental illness - requiring neither their consent nor that of their next of kin – in Pennsylvania in 1905, and in 1927 this was formally ruled to be in accordance with the constitution. Although never actually banned, it decreased dramatically after 1978, when new regulations ruled that consent was ... necessary."

When did rock 'n roll die? Chris Dalla Riva and Daniel Parris offer a statistical analysis.

"In an unnamed city, Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) keeps his head down in the Department of Records, covering for ineffectual boss Mr Kurtzmann (a brilliant Ian Holm). Meanwhile in his dreams, he is a winged warrior, who soars amongst the clouds, battling a giant samurai creature and rescuing a Botticelli Venus from her aerial cage." Tim Pelan celebrates the chaotic genius of Terry Gilliam's Brazil.

Londonopia finds that the grazing of sheep in London's parks has a long and complex history: "Just when you thought sheep had permanently retired from their park-keeping duties, along came World War II. With food shortages rampant and every inch of available land needed for practical use, parks across London were repurposed for the war effort. Victory gardens sprung up in many green spaces, and in some cases, sheep were reintroduced to provide both wool and meat."

Ben Austwick takes us to Lud’s Church, a natural geological feature in the Staffordshire Peak District, with rich literary and religious connections.