The letter on Russell Brand that the Guardian declined to publish

Yesterday's Joy of Six included a post by Lucy Siegle about the Guardian's long and close involvement with Russell Brand in . In it Siegle, a former Guardian journalist herself, referred to a letter she had written to the newspaper.

As she expected, that letter has not been published, so she has included it in a new post on her blog:

The Guardian must examine its own role in enabling Russell Brand

Your editorial on Russell Brand’s conviction (The Guardian view on Russell Brand: his conviction sends a powerful message, Friday 6th November) rightly challenges the media culture that enabled his behaviour. But why does the Guardian apply so little scrutiny to its own role in the creating and sustaining of Russell Brand’s media power?

Brand is described, almost in passing, as someone who was ‘also once a Guardian sports columnist’. Yet the Guardian’s relationship with him extended considerably further. It serialised his autobiography My Booky Wook, gave him extensive editorial exposure and, as late as 2014, staged a Guardian Live event broadcast to cinemas across the country. He is not simply a former sports columnist. He is a celebrity whose profile, cultural authority and commercial appeal the Guardian helped cultivate. It is a matter of public record how much Brand cultivated and received The Guardian’s patronage. Apparently this ran both ways. In his ‘Farewell Readers’ sign off in 2015, former editor Alan Rusbridger included Russell Brand at Guardian conference as one of the highlights of his tenure. (By the way, there is a photograph commemorating this historic moment on your website).

I founded and ran the annual Observer Ethical Awards, 2004-2014, when the Observer was owned by Guardian News and Media. On several occasions through the Guardian’s commercial department it was suggested that I should add Brand as a celebrity judge. I refused because I had heard troubling accounts of his behaviour towards women. I can’t say who knew what, but the concerns that were circulating were certainly sufficient for me to decide that he should not be anywhere near my event.

Your editorial notes that the BBC and Channel 4 conducted internal reviews and issued apologies following the revelations about Brand. What examination has the Guardian undertaken of its own decisions to commission, promote and publicly associate itself with him?

It is easy to condemn the culture of male entitlement once a celebrity has been convicted. The harder task is to examine the institutional decisions that sustained his power when he was still commercially valuable. The Guardian should be prepared to apply that scrutiny to itself. Unhappily, this is not the first time that I have had to make this point to you.

Lucy Siegle
Former Guardian News and Media staffer, and former Observer columnist.

Both blog posts are worth reading in full.

The Joy of Six 1603

"More than 74,000 people have been killed in Gaza according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, and up to ten thousand are missing under the rubble. More than a hundred thousand Palestinians have managed to leave. The survivors are corralled into a concentration area along the coast, living in dense tent encampments among ruined buildings, mountains of rubbish and rivers of sewage, under the constant hum of drones." Eyal Weizman reviews Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor's film Naza.

Gaby Hinsliff says the Russell Brand verdict is a landmark in the judicial system's understanding of consent: "For too long, cases involving young women alleging rape after going initially willingly to the bedrooms of rich or famous men have ended in sour, uneasy acquittals. Well, not any more. This verdict upholds the vital principle that consent to one thing is not consent to absolutely everything; that women still absolutely have the right to say no, even if they have in the past said yes."

Victoria Collins, Liberal Democrat MP for Harpenden and Berkhamsted, on the future of public service broadcasting: "It is crucial that trusted UK public service broadcasters and trusted news providers remain visible and easily discoverable. We must ensure that audiences can continue to have easy access to the range of original content that public service broadcasters provide."

"For some people with disabilities, going swimming or attending an exercise class comes with a worry that many others would never consider: could being seen to be physically active lead to their disability benefits being stopped?" Toni Williams uncovers the 'activity trap' that is stopping some disabled people from exercising.

"Munro constructed a glittering, savage milieu, where the drawing-room hypocrisies of the upper-middle-classes are mercilessly exposed. His agents of chaos are manifold: some are elegant young men who admire buttonholes and cufflinks, and bear romantic names like Reginald and Clovis Sangrail. More often than not, the disruptors are young children or animals, ruthlessly unsentimental, and devoted to the remorseless logic of truth." Philip Womack has read a new biography of H.H. Munro, better known as Saki.

The Silver Locket introduces us to the joys of collecting early Penguins.

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"This low-cost strategy of largely relying on conditionality and sanctions to get unemployed claimants into work has clearly failed, as numbers have gone up since 2016, and the binary nature of our welfare system pushes our ageing and increasingly impaired population to claim incapacity benefits over limited working with in-work financial top-ups." Paul Gregg introduces the new Resolution Foundation report What's Gone Wrong With Welfare?

Flynn Devine and Hannah Perry, meanwhile, introduce a Demos report on how the lack of impartial local news sources fuels asylum housing clashes and what can be done about it.

"But what a diagnostic label cannot do is tell a teacher how a child learns. Those of us who have taught in classrooms know that two autistic children may need very different support." Mark Mon-Williams and Karen Guldberg call for a shift from a "diagnosis-dependent" system of helping children with special educational needs and disabilities, to a "needs-led plus diagnosis" one, where support is not withheld while waiting for a diagnosis.

Francisco Garcia on the Student List's victory in Serbia: "From the start, the student movement was determinedly horizontal. There were no leaders and decisions were taken collectively at assemblies. Over time, the movement agreed on a few key demands, with elections chief among them."

Stephanie Seul introduces us to Avis Waterman, the woman who covered the First World War on the Italian Front for The Times.

"Pawlikowski does not make arty films in which the imagery stops the story to admire itself. But he depends on the force and the simultaneous distancing of black and white, the way it tells us we are seeing something that has been chosen." David Thomson praises Paweł Pawlikowski's Fatherland (2026).

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"More than 260 peers hold multiple, individual shareholdings – stakes in listed companies – worth more than £100,000 apiece. In fact, some Lords held more than 200 individual holdings, each valued in excess of £100,000. Even assuming each asset was only worth £100,000, that would put the combined value of those shareholdings alone at more than £22 million." Huw Macartney finds the House of Lords has gone from aristocracy to assetocracy.

Nathan Levy on the need for politicians to reject short-term thinking: "The people who aren't in the comments are those we need to hear from more often: the 24-year-old renting a room in a shared house, the parent of a toddler who hasn't slept since 2024, the teenager who'll be living with whatever we decide for the next sixty years."

The all-male outcome of this year’s scientific Nobel Prize awards has reignited questions around how the winners are chosen and what it reveals about gender inequities in academia, reports Katharine Sanderson.

"There may be nothing more detrimental to public understanding of complexity than an idiom or analogy that’s elegant, cutely worded, and wrong." When it comes to dealing with Russia, Dmitry Grozoubinski hates the expression "poking the bear".

Ian Penman asks where Anthony Burgess's reputation stands today: "It’s hard to judge Burgess's current standing. He doesn't seem a likely candidate for a revival. I've heard him dismissed as sexist and homophobic, a relic. He is a strange mix of the old-fashioned and the modernist – an old-fashioned modernist – typified by two of the figures he devoted studies to: Joyce and Lawrence."

Elizabeth Rayne considers new research on who sees ghostly apparitions and why.

Bodhana Sivanandan is youngest ever female international master

The 11-year-old English chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan has recorded her greatest achievement yet. She has become the youngest girl ever to qualify for the international master (IM) title, which is one rung below grandmaster.

In doing so she has eclipsed the record of Judit Polgár, generally regarded as the strongest woman player of all time, who was was 12 years and 2 months old when she earned her IM title. Bodhana is 11 years and seven months old.

Chessbase quotes Bodhana's fellow IM, the English Chess Federation’s director of international chess Malcolm Pein:

"I can only describe Bodhana as a generational talent. There is no limit to what she can achieve. It’s remarkable that she is more than matching Judit Polgár's achievements at a similar age and breaking her records, even if we live in different times. It's worth noting that Bodhana is the seventh-youngest player, boy or girl, to become an international master."

Bodhana gained the IM title playing on top board for the English women's team She Plays To Win Lionesses at the European Club Cup in Montenegro.

You can watch one of her victories there in the video above. The game is typical of her mature positional style – I was never sure where Black's queen belonged in such structures.

Lime Garden: Moving Target

Like most of the contemporary singles I like, this is more about melody than rhythm and a bit retro. But then I long ago passed the age when you were meant to stop liking what was in the charts – when there was a meaningful singles chart, that is.

Lime Garden are an all-female indie band from Brighton. To add to the retro feel, this single does not come from their recent second album Maybe Not Tonight.

DIY Mag says of it:

Produced by Charlie Andrew, the track explores the pull of falling for someone you know isn’t right for you. Frontwoman Chloe Howard describes it as being about "falling in love even when you know it’s not going to work out. It’s rare to find people you are magnetically drawn to, but when you do – just dive in and brace yourself for whatever happens. Heartbreak is always worth it."

The Brighton quartet have also unveiled an accompanying video for the track, which sees them take on the roles of cabin crew for Wonk Pop Airways as they search the aisles for a mystery passenger, played by British poet and spoken-word performer Antony Szmierek.

Following the acclaim of Maybe Not Tonight and a summer of festivals, Lime Garden are currently on their biggest tour yet, with UK and European dates alongside a return to the US this autumn.

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Chris Grey detects "an upsurge of discussion about whether and how the UK could join (or 'rejoin') the EU, whether that would be welcomed by the EU, and, if so, on what terms and in what timescale."

"In place of declared 'diplomats' well known to local counterintelligence officers, operations have been outsourced to disposable proxies recruited for a pittance. These people are often unaware of who their handlers are or their mission’s real goals." Russian sabotage efforts now draw upon the gig economy, explains Elena Grossfeld.

"At GCSE level, when science is compulsory for all students, Franklin is the only woman mentioned. At A level, Lehmann and Tharp appear solely in geology, a subject taken by less than 2 per cent of science students." Stephanie Buttigieg, Gregory Cooke and Skyla White find that women who changed science missing but are missing from school exam syllabuses.

Roger Protz says the planned closure of Marston’s in Burton-on-Trent is like a death in the family: " I have been to the brewery many times and delved deep into its history of pale ale brewing and its commitment to the Burton Union system of fermentation."

"What I’m talking about here is leaving some un-colonised space for a child’s imagination to grow into, rather than rushing in to fill that space with an insatiable desire to flog as much merchandise as possible to a malleable audience of trend-conscious juveniles." Alan Moore gave a discursive interview to The Daily Grail in 2017.

Simon Matthews watches The Runaway Bus, a comedy film from 1954 starring Frankie Howerd, Margaret Rutherford and Petula Clark.

An interview with Bodhana Sivanandan, the youngest woman grandmaster of all time

Because of her performance as top board for the England women's team at the Chess Olympiad in Samarkand – she played all 11 rounds, recording six wins, four draws and one loss – Bodhana Sivanandan has qualified as the youngest ever holder of the women grandmaster title.

This video lists her many other achievements, except one: she is now two-thirds of the way to the full international master title, which is open to both men and women. This is the grade below grandmaster status.

There is already talk of how soon she will play for the open England team at the Olympiad. I note she already has a good line in glares for her opponents; this will stand her in good stead when she becomes a full grandmaster.

Violet Bonham Carter and Mary Stocks remember the struggle for women's suffrage

I thought I had finished blogging for today, but this video is too good not to share with you tonight.

It's a BBC2 discussion from 1968 with Lady Asquith (better known as Violet Bonham Carter) and Lady Stocks. A young Joan Bakewell is in the chair.

They are talking about a television film about how women got the vote, and both take the view that it exaggerated the importance of the militant tactics of the Suffragettes at the expense of the role played by the wider Suffrage movement. 

And Lady Asquith remembers defending her father, the Liberal prime minister, from attack by Suffragettes.

Lady Stocks was the cousin of Tim Brinton, a Conservative MP in the Thatcher era and the father of Sal Brinton, the former president of the Liberal Democrats.

I've also discovered that Lady Stocks's husband, a little-remembered philosopher called John Leofric Stocks, was the son of John Edward Stocks, who was vicar of Market Harborough from 1871 to 1884 and then of the fascinating St Saviour's in Leicester.

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Dawn Butler lays bare the abuse that a Black female MP faces: "Followers of my social media know how bad it can be. I have a regular “block of the month” feature to raise awareness of the disgusting racist abuse sent to me every day – the N-word, “monkey” and “ape” are common insults. The deluge of abuse has a detrimental impact on my mental health, and on those around me."

"There is no reindustrialisation beyond heavily Government-directed industries such as defence and even pharmaceuticals without reversing Brexit. That will not be sufficient, but it is absolutely necessary. And yet, there is literally no mention of Brexit in the core arguments of Reindustrialising Britain." Anthony Painter reads a new collection of essays from Policy Exchange.

Milli Hill on David Walliams and his publisher: "It wasn’t until CEO Charlie Redmayne left Harper Collins in October 2025 and was replaced by a woman, Kate Elton, that decisive action was taken."

"Keynes was a liberal for our age: morally serious, hopeful for a better future, and yet reconciled to the expertly-executed compromises that must be struck to preserve a liberal order that is far more fragile than some would like to believe." Guillaume A.W. Attia says you should read John Maynard Keynes.

"It’s quite lonely and I hate this house because it’s so cold. I just wish I could speed up the process but I can’t. Some days I’m right on to it, and then other days I just can’t, because it’s very emotional – and I’m not really an emotional person." Stephanie Woods interviews four women about the ordeal of clearing a dead parent's house.

Francis Young looks at the importance of folklore to Penelope Lively’s The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy.

The Joy of Six 1578

"In the days that followed RNLI crew members found pictures of themselves strewn across social media. Online posts described the search and rescue workers as 'traitors', falsely alleging that they had housed asylum seekers and were moving them to secret locations. Some posts included volunteer’s addresses and phone numbers, putting them and their families at heightened risk." Nicola Kelly says the RNLI are heroes, not traitors.

Sian Norris brings us a shocking story: "Domestic abuse victims in England and Wales are facing arrest when calling the emergency services for help, according to new data published by Women in Prison. The charity asked more than 500 women in the criminal justice system about their experiences of domestic abuse, with nearly a third saying they were arrested when the police or emergency services were called to a domestic incident, even when they were the victim of abuse."

Louise Balint-Kurti reports on the return of beavers to the Midlands and the environmental benefits they are already bringing.

"By not accepting that the Civil War was about slavery, then not only could the romantic underdog myth of the lost cause be successfully promulgated but also the Jim Crow laws could come into practice with little or no intervention for decades, and more recently the defence and promotion of Confederate statues and street names could continue." John Bleasdale maps the way Hollywood made the South look like a noble lost cause.

"These buildings range from palaces and religious buildings to two-storeyed houses and simple dwellings. They give the beholder some idea of what the 11th-century built environment looked like on either side of the Channel, even though the representations are formulaic, general impressions." Elizabeth den Hartog on what the Bayeux tapestry tells us about medieval buildings.

David Southwell, the creator of Hookland, answers 10 questions about his work. (David once gave my name to an inhabitant of the county who tried to assassinate Dr Beeching.)

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Anna Sabine, Liberal Democrat MP for Frome and East Somerset, has discovered what happens when a politician loses her voice: "There’s a thing about: do I seem weak now? Like, does this make me seem weaker? Which is another reason to be really clear: I will do national media, and I will carry on campaigning."

"The council’s constitution, which sets out how it is run, says it must have a cabinet and a leader at the top and this is required by UK law. The local authority is also required to have an elected member overseeing children’s services. The absence of this and the length of time the council has had no one in charge is what has led officers to make the highly unusual declaration the council is breaking the law." Edward Barnes reports from Oldham, where the elected councillors have failed to agree who should run the borough council after May's elections.

Alazne Mountjoy says women suffer because of the systemic misogyny in medical research and practice: "Women undergoing surgery are significantly more likely to experience complications, and even die, when the surgeon is a man as opposed to a woman. This is in conjunction with the fact that surgeons are overwhelmingly male, with fewer than a fifth of surgeons being female."

Anna Verhamme and John Britton, in a report for the Higher Education Policy Institute, say universities are their professional and support staff and then paying consultants more to provide these services.

"From Browne’s first instalment, featuring the character Sam Weller, sales for Pickwick rose and kept rising. Browne would go on to become Dickens’s principal illustrator, and Pickwick – helped enormously by his comic illustrations – became a literary sensation that revolutionised Victorian book publishing." Michael John Goodman looks at the relationship between Charles Dickens and his illustrator Hablot Knight Browne ('Phiz') and reminds us how strange it is that we now publish Victorian novels without their illustrations.

"Chris Isaak has carved out a singular career doing one thing so hauntingly well, it’s become his signature. He’s built a cathedral from heartbreak and despair, lit by the flickering neon of 3 a.m. regrets, and its served him well for over four decades." James Kenney on Chris Isaak and the art of staying sad.

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Zöe Franklin celebrates the 98th anniversary of the Equal Franchise Act, which gave women equal voting rights with men and calls for further reforms: "Today, barriers remain for women, disabled people, people from ethnic minority backgrounds and others who are underrepresented in public life."

Abandoning the triple lock on pensions  is more likely to condemn today’s younger generations to an old age of poverty than help them, argues Mark E. Thomas.

Josiah Mortimer on a study that finds the introduction of mandatory voter ID has damaged trust in British elections, not improved it.

"It’s not hard to see the appeal of a creed in which worldly success is a sign of God’s blessing to uncontrollably rich individuals like Marshall. And for a church that has become smaller and older, it offers energy, confidence and – perhaps most importantly of all – money." James Bloodworth says the weakening of the Church of England has empowered a new evangelical elite that includes Sir Paul Marshall.

"It’s become a cliché to talk about Ballard’s prescience – the so-called 'seer of Shepperton'. But it’s also an inescapable fact that even in his 80s, he could identify currents in our culture that were yet to break. " Louis Pattison finds that J.G. Ballard’s Kingdom Come, which depicts an England’s sliding towards fascism, makes uncomfortable reading today. 

Melanie Bell examines the careers choices made by Julie Christie: "Always uncomfortable with stardom – which she later admitted she found ‘terrifying’ – her choice of films increasingly became a conscious decision on her part to exercise some control over her career, turning down high-profile roles in commercial cinema in favour of independent/auteur-driven projects with narratives that dramatised the contradictions of contemporary life, many of which were sharply gendered."

New public square in Telford honours women who worked in Shropshire's coalfields

Betty Harris Square Telford. Photo: Telford Council

A new square has been named in honour of women who worked in Shropshire coalfields, reports BBC News:

The area in Telford has become Betty Harris Square, after her experiences "as a 'pit girl' became one of the most powerful accounts of women's working lives during Britain's industrial past", the council said.

It added while she was not from Telford, her story represented thousands, many whose names were unknown, who worked in east Shropshire coalfields.

More than 1,000 people voted for the name after residents were invited to vote from a shortlist of influential women connected to the area's history.

This gives me the excuse to quote from Lucy Masterman's biography of her husband Charles Masterman:

The Coal Mines Act went through with little trouble except for a struggle to keep pit-brow lasses their right to work. Masterman had made enquiries into the question when he had been to Lancashire ... and had also received a deputation of the lasses themselves, sturdy, strapping girls obviously in far better health than the majority of factory or shop girls; and was determined they should not go. 

He laid down the principle: that women should not be forbidden any type of work unless it was proved to be (1) unhealthy, (2) in a situation dangerous to morals, (3) of a degrading and degraded character, and that a Parliament in which women were not represented should be chary of excluding them from any work they wished to do.

I knew I had used that quote on here before and, I thought, quite recently. When I searched for it, it turns out to be eight years ago. Who knows where the time goes?

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Who are the goons in balaclavas who turned up in Dover and Portsmouth? Hope Not Hate explains: "In 2016, he [Danny Tommo] pleaded guilty to attempted kidnapping and was sentenced to two years in prison after taking part in an armed attempt to abduct a man during a drugs-related dispute."

Rosemary Runswick argues that the Liberal Democrats should fight the Holborn and St Pancras by-election hard and answers her critics in the comments.

Cathy Young pays tribute to Gloria Steinem: "The vision Steinem shared in 1971 of a humanist and egalitarian future may have been simplistic in its idealism. But in 2026, it’s a far more humane vision, and better for it, than what her right-wing detractors have to offer."

"During the 1868 election his opponent suggested that McLagan was 'not a Scotchman' and a racist cartoon was circulated in the constituency depicting McLagan as a slavedriver with a blackened face, flogging a topless man in a kilt. The cartoon played on the status of McLagan’s father as an enslaver, local perceptions of McLagan's racial identity and statements McLagan made during the 1868 election in support of flogging in the military." Martin Spychal has researched the career of Peter McLagan, whom he calls "Scotland’s first Black MP".

"She was multifaceted in a way that few are: she was a popular, well-respected, beloved iconoclast, a true original, and she also radiated the self-referential camp of a celebrity impersonator. She operated both as a person and as an idea: Dolly seemed to consciously 'do' Dolly. A songwriter, musician, actress, philanthropist, advocate, mogul and more, she was always pivoting between different aspects of herself, and twirling those impressive embellished skirts and dresses all the while." Niela Orr celebrates the life and music of Dolly Parton.

The Secret Cricket Coach asks where the hell Rob Key is: "For years he was paid to tell us what was right and wrong with English cricket. Now he is responsible for much of it, but recently we haven’t heard much from him. England have had a difficult period, questions are being asked about behaviour, standards and leadership, and it is Joe Root who seems to be answering them. I find that quite strange."

After Dark podcast: Dr Louise Brangan on the Magdalene laundries

 

This edition of the After Dark podcast impressed me because it showed that what we English think we know about Ireland's Magdalene laundries is wrong. The guest expert Dr Louise Brangan of the London School of Economics emphasises that their inmates were not generally young women who'd had a baby outside marriage. Many had been admitted at a younger age than that for trivial reasons.

It also bears out much of what James Hawes said in his The Shortest History of Ireland. As I wrote in my review of this book:

Hawes shows that the Catholic dominance of Irish society was a post-independence creation and did not fully establish itself until 1937. This dominance, with its satanic trio of institutions – industrial schools, mother and baby homes, Magdalene laundries – was the work of Éamon de Valera, the politician who dominated the first 50 years of the independent Ireland, and Archbishop John McQuaid of Dublin.

Louise Brangan says that in the 1920s the newly independent Republic of Ireland had a young population and there was freedom in the air. It didn't stay there for long.

This is a painful subject but it's a good podcast and gives an important insight into Irish history. 

A final point... After Dark is one of the podcasts that appears on BBC Sounds. But if you look on its index page there, you will not find this edition. Under 27 August 2026, the day it was posted, you will find instead Danny Robbins on "History's greatest ghosts".

I wonder if that is political or religious censorship?

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"Every large fire has two causes, the spark that lights it and the conditions that let it become so severe. Naming the fire, though, can hide this, as does reporting. A fire is named in hours, blamed in days, and attributed a true cause in weeks." Doug Specht argues that we should reterg 'wildfire' in favour of 'landscape fire', stating the spark where it is known and explaining the conditions that allowed it to spread.

"Judge Paul McCloskey scanned a group of immigrant children, none of whom had lawyers present, in his windowless suburban Virginia courtroom this past Thursday. Where’s the 7-year-old?' he asked." Eric Bazail-Eimil observes immigration proceedings in Trump's America.

Anilya Krishnan on concerns about the 'wilderness therapy' programmes, which often set back families thousands of dollars and form part of the US's lucrative 'troubled teen' industry.

Christian Wolmar says cycling is a feminist issue.

"What really troubled them was that putting the story of William into the context of a chapel dedicated to the Holy Innocents was creating a parallel between William as an innocent boy who was killed allegedly by the Jews, with the story of the boys under two years old in Bethlehem being killed by a Jewish king, Herod." Pat Ashworth on Norwich Cathedral's approach to its troubling unofficial local saint.

Alison Kerr celebrates Alastair Sim: "His rich, commanding voice and heavy-lidded, dark-shadowed eyes lent him an air of menace upon which he capitalised to memorable effect in Scrooge and as various other characters of dubious morals. Sim appeared to play these parts – the lecherous lodger (with dyed black hair combed over to one side) in London Belongs to Me, the initially frightening author in Hue and Cry, and the mysterious title character in An Inspector Calls – with relish and gusto."

How Bodhana Sivanandan became British women's chess champion at the age of 11

Not only does Britain have a 17-year-old chess champion, it also has an 11-year-old women's champion.

Yesterday Bodhana Sivanandan won a play-off with 14-year-old Trisha Kanyamarala to claim this crown. The women's title goes to the highest placed woman in the British championship, which is open to all. The two had tied, so a play-off was needed to separate them.

You can see Bohdana win the tense decisive second game in the video above. The first had ended in a draw.

Bodhana is a positional player, with a wonderful instinct for where each piece belongs. Shreyas Royal, who won the British championship, played her in the tournament and won by forcing her into a sharp position that didn't suit her so well. 

But she is improving rapidly and people are are already forecasting that she will win the British championship one day and also become the strongest women player in the world.

Bodhana Sivanandan breaks another world age record in chess

Embed from Getty Images

England's chess prodigy Bodhana Sivanandan broke another world age record last week, reports Leonard Barden in the Guardian. At a tournament held in Aix-en-Provence, she achieved her first international master norm at the age of 11 years and four months. 

This made her the youngest female player to achieve this feat, beating the record of Judit Polgár, who later became the highest-rated female player in history. She didn't manage it until the age of 11 years and 9 months.

International master is the title one below grandmaster in chess. To achieve it a player must achieve three such norms, which are acquired by playing at the required strength in a tournament, and reach a high enough rating on the international list.

Bodhana is also two-thirds of the way towards becoming a woman grandmaster. If she achieves her third  norm for this in the next year, she will beat the record for the youngest holder of the title.

The separate title of woman grandmaster was introduced to give the stronger women players something to strive for. Whether it's down to nature or nurture, few of them are able to qualify for the grandmaster title the best male players hold.

But Judit Polgár became a grandmaster, and it's significant that her father (something of a chess Richard Williams) never allowed her or her sisters to play in women's tournaments but always had them competing with the men in open tournaments.

The appearance of a talent like Bodhana, and the large increase in the number of girls taking up the game, gives you hope that these separate titles will one day disappear.

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"The idea that England has always been governed from a single political centre is surprisingly recent. Westminster may now appear almost inseparable from the state, but for much of English history, government was far more mobile." Stephanie Brown says Andy Burnham’s No 10 North has a precedent in medieval York.

Nafeez Ahmed examines the links between George Cottrell’s Reform UK network in Montenegro and sanctioned Russian oligarchs.

"When social workers become involved with a family, the focus is often on parenting, safeguarding concerns or family relationships. But new research suggests that one of the strongest drivers of repeated involvement with children’s services is something more basic: whether families have enough money to live on." Rick Hood explains the findings of his research.

Jennifer Rubin Grandis confronts the systemic bias in academic publishing: "I’ve been studying sexism in academic medicine since 2019, and I’ve learned from countless interviewees that my experience as a woman in medicine is common. Women are rarely mentored well—in fact, when they ask for advice from senior faculty, they’re often discouraged from submitting their papers to high-impact journals, despite making just as many scientific discoveries as men."

Boak & Bailey recommend pub crawling as a way of practising psychogeography.

"Few science fiction relationships stick in my mind better than the love/hate between Dr. Zachary Smith and Robot in the original 1960s version of Lost in Space." J.G. Follansbee on one of television SF's great double acts.