The Joy of Six 1591

"Conservatives have called Burnham’s intervention 'dangerous and divisive', which could be interpreted as a denial that interference happened or just as a preference that it not be mentioned to protect delicate pro-Brexit sensibilities. Farage’s feelings were certainly hurt. He called the prime minister a liar and described the whole thing as a 'Russia hoax' – the formula Donald Trump applied to well-substantiated allegations that his 2016 presidential campaign got a helping hand from Moscow." Rafael Behr says Brexiters can't cope with the fact that Putin cheered them on.

Jack Dyson reveals how academy trusts try to justify the enormous salaries paid to some chief executives: "In July, the Department for Education named and shamed 56 trusts for high executive pay, ordering them to explain how the salaries were 'defensible' and represented 'good value for money'."

Rebekah Gear introduces her research on messy, risky outdoor play for children – and how adults stop them enjoying it. "Children expressed things such as 'I might fall', 'I don't want to get wet', and 'My teacher doesn’t let me'. These were not spontaneous fears; they were reflections of the messages the children had repeatedly heard from adults."

Wheat, apples and carrots are half as nutritious as they were in the 1960s, reports Rebecca Whittaker.

Malin Hay reviews a book on century of Hollywood flops: "The 1990s were the era of the swashbuckling action movie, but as well as The Mask of Zorro and The Mummy there were Cutthroat Island and The 13th Warrior (at a loss of around $133 million, possibly the biggest flop in movie history).

"Unlike many such cases which happen behind closed doors, Jeffrey Archer’s exclusion from the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's Cricket Ground was well documented." Seth Thévoz on Lord Archer and the MCC.

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"This is a staggering death rate of 130 per 100,000 care leavers, a figure at least three times higher than the general population. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of the failure that has led to this point. There are a range of causes of death, but the single largest cause is suicide." Michael Sanders looks at a new government report that lays bare the tragedy of care-leaver deaths.

Keenan Malik says the Grenfell Tower fire has "exposed a social and legal landscape shaped by an exaggerated contempt for ordinary people. It is the story of a corporate world displaying, in the words of journalist Peter Apps, 'a callous indifference to anything – morality, honesty, life safety – that was not related to the bottom line."

Ed Conway explains why the cod on your plate has probably been round the world: "Follow this cod on its way and you begin to see why so many regions in Europe and America feel like they have been 'left behind'; you begin to see why it is so difficult to take on Vladimir Putin and the Russian economy... all from a simple pack of fish fingers."

"If you’ve had a sugary treat and you’re feeling good, you’re probably feeling good because you’re having fun with family and friends, rather than from the sugar." Talitha Best on the myth of the sugar rush.

"Suddenly, he was 43 years old with a solo career that plenty of pundits thought had reached the end of the road. According to his detractors, Simon’s signature sound had nowhere else to go and, based on where he went next, maybe they were right." Matt Fish considers Paul Simon and Graceland.

JacquiWine reads The Bell by Iris Murdoch, "a sophisticated, richly textured novel that explores complicated feelings between complex individuals, encompassing faith, guilt, resentment, anger, fear, and perhaps most importantly, love. Love can take many forms, from a pure, spiritual type of love to a platonic or romantic love to a more carnal, possessive love – and Murdoch touches on all of them here to a greater or lesser extent. It’s also a radical novel for its time, particularly as Murdoch centres her storyline on a provocative moral dilemma: what happens when a person’s sexual orientation (in this instance, their homosexuality) is at odds with their religious beliefs?"

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Alice McCool investigates the web of culture-war connections – from the US Christian right to Viktor Orbán's influence network – that lay behind the first British CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) conference.

It's all well and good saying we should regulate social media. But social media is already regulated. So why is it failing? And what could we do in response? Chaminda Jayanetti has some ideas.

Keyana Sapp explains why American cookware is getting worse: "Once you understand the brand licensing structure, you see it everywhere, and the pattern is always the same: one company owns the name, a different company makes the product, and the factory that earned the name is liquidated."

"Around the time those tower blocks were going up, as John Pendlebury recounts, local preservationists and councillors in York teamed up to imaginatively restore and repopulate the historic precinct inside the city walls – an early example of a heritage-driven strategy that Newcastle and Liverpool would seize on a few decades later." Susan Pedersen reviews The Modern British City 1945-2000, edited by Simon Gunn, Peter Mandler and Otto Saumarez Smith.

"The gulf between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' in county cricket is wider than ever before, and is set to grow further still in the wake of last year's Hundred equity sale, according to a new report into the domestic game's finances." Cricinfo has some worrying but not unexpected news.

Peter Bradshaw watches Andrei Tarkovsky's film Nostalghia (1983).

Michelin-starred restaurateur faces jail for using ants as dessert garnish

BBC News wins our Headline of the Day Award for this story from Korea.

The judges decided to have the trifle.

Violent drunk banned from booze after throwing flapjack at police officer's genitals having missed with Pot Noodle

It wasn't a long judges' meeting: the Manchester Evening News has won our Headline of the Day Award.

Incidentally, when I worked at Golden Wonder many years ago I was a member of the Pot Noodle tasting panel. I'd rather have been on a flapjack tasting panel.

The Joy of Six 1531

A network of Russian far-right extremists steeped in neo-Nazi antisemitism – created under the umbrella of a sanctioned oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, and now openly promoted by Tommy Robinson – has been driving White Lives Matter propaganda over the murder of 18-year-old student Henry Nowak, reports Nafeez Ahmed.

"In a decisive summer for government, you can view the 'doubling' agenda as microcosm of the wider story. Some big decisions have been made and some vital groundwork put in place. Ministers now need to build on this with bolder, faster action if the impact is to be visible by the next election." James Wright on the government's commitment to doubling the size of the co-operative and mutual sector.

Alex Marshall is keeping an eye on the new Green administration in Waltham Forest.

Eli Davies questions a culinary shibboleth: "The idea that we should sit down for three meals at roughly the same time every day has become such an essential part of how we organise our lives – even when we’re failing to do it – that we forget it isn’t the natural order of things. Instead, it is a regime that was created not to serve the needs of our bodies or to give us pleasure, however much we may have managed to adapt it for these purposes – but to fit in with a day of labour."

"The police are on the trail throughout. Led by a grimly invigilating inspector they seem an odd bunch, varying from the para-military – pistols and rifles firmly clasped – to the quaintly Victorian, with constables wrapped in immense belted gaberdines and sporting cloche style helmets. A reminder, if any were needed, that Northern Ireland was a decidedly different part of the UK." Simon Matthews celebrates Carol Reed's 1947 film Odd Man Out.

Chris Dyson explores the streets and alleyways of Hull's historic Old Town.

The Joy of Six 1494

"After months of rhetoric from Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves blaming newts and bats for supposedly blocking growth, it’s good to see the Land Use Framework recognises nature restoration is a priority, underpinning all our other uses of land. Senior civil servants in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs now view their ministry as a 'department of land', and regard implementing the Land Use Framework as their overriding mission." Guy Shrubsole welcomes the news that revealing who owns England has just become government policy.

Josiah Mortimer finds that Reform UK councils are dismantling the fight against climate change.

Sarah Fitz-Claridge on the relationship between Karl Popper's account of human knowledge and her view of raising children.

"The new Peaky Blinders film, The Immortal Man, offers us a character, John Beckett, who is a British Nazi. One of the two founders of Britain’s first Nazi party in 1937, alongside William Joyce, was indeed a man named John Beckett, who was formerly a Labour MP. He had been director of publications for Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists, but that year he fell out with Mosley. I'm Beckett’s biographer. I'm also his son." Francis Beckett decries the trend for popular films to create populist myths about the second world war – myths that will do us real harm as we confront the new face of fascism in 2026.

"What if Auden had died on the cusp of exile? If, say, his first airplane flight, to Denmark in 1935, had crashed into the sea? Auden would still be remembered. He was, after all, an astonishingly prolific poet, already well known in Europe and America. But he would not be known as a poet of anxious urbanity, and certainly not as a Christian, or even as a leftist. Instead, he would be defined, as many young people are, by the land of his parents and ancestors. The young Auden was, first and foremost, an Englishman, haunted by England's tortured landscape and its war-battered population." James Chappel considers the early poems of W.H. Auden.

Jo Hutchings has some behind-the-scenes photographs of Jon Pertwee filming filming the Doctor Who story The Dæmons in Aldbourne.

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Searchlight has the measure of Reform UK's leader: "It’s a script Nigel Farage knows well. Candidates or causes closely linked to him, perhaps even bearing his name and his photograph, make large, attention-grabbing promises. Votes are won on the strength of them. Then, once the votes are counted the promises are declared – with an air of wounded innocence – to have never been made, and certainly not by him."

AI fakes spread disinformation but, asks Anna Merlan, is the distrust they create even worse?

"Julie Critchlow, one of the mums involved, told The Times in 2006 that much of the food they were delivering was healthy, and that the accusation that the kids were given chips every day was ‘such a lie’. 'We were taking all sorts – baked potatoes, salads, tuna sandwiches. You try getting teenage girls to eat a hamburger every day. Most of them won’t touch the things.'" Heather Parry looks back twenty years to the media panic in Rotherham which followed the Channel 4 documentary series Jamie’s School Dinners.

Patrick Wadden argues that Medieval Irish people saw themselves as Europeans, not Celts: "The Irish language and people were only labelled as Celtic for the first time in the 18th century. In the rich and varied textual sources that have survived from early Ireland, including annals, saints' lives, laws, and sagas about great heroes such as Cú Chulainn and Fionn Mac Cumhail, the words 'Celt' and 'Celtic' do not appear even once."

"In the case of Peter Grimes, Forster suggests, something is lost. Rather than Grimes as a lugubrious murderer, in Britten’s opera the blame is rather sanctimoniously placed on the townsfolk for misunderstanding him, turning the whole thing into social criticism, which was far from Crabbe’s original. It takes away from the strangeness and mystery of the character of Grimes, from his psychological complexity, but also from the ‘horizontality and mud’ that shape the feeling of the poem and the world it describes." John-Paul Stonnard finds that E.M. Forster did not appreciate the version of George Crabbe's character Peter Grimes presented by Montague Slater, who wrote the libretto for Britten's opera.

Helen Pickles rightly suggests Ripon, Yorkshire's smallest city, as a tourist destination.

Dame Mary Berry "frightened" after being arrested at US border

The judges were heard grumbling about "clickbait; nevertheless, yahoo news! wins our Headline of the Day Award.

Derbyshire bakery recruiting volunteer taste tester after pork pie furore

This just in... At a meeting this evening, the judges have awarded Headline of the Day to the Derbyshire Times.

Lord Bonkers suggests the bakery send a press gang to Melton Mowbray.

The Joy of Six 1461

"The government continues to frame the cost-of-living crisis as a problem that can be solved largely through domestic policy choices. Announcements focus on price caps, fare freezes and measures like free school meals and breakfast clubs to ease pressure on family budgets. But these treat the symptoms, not causes." We need to recognise that geopolitics is driving the cost-of-living crisis, argues Anna McShane.

Harriet Walter on the effect of the government's misbegotten treatment of Palestine Action: "By accusing them of being part of a terrorist organisation rather than a protest movement, the government ensures that these people who broke machinery in factories or sprayed paint on aeroplanes or helped to plan these actions can be seen not as ordinary people who are innocent until found guilty of ordinary crimes such as criminal damage or violent disorder, but as outside forces that are deeply threatening to social order and our ways of life."

Chaminda Jayanetti says falling school rolls are not just a problem for London.

"His fabulously wry first wife, Eileen, described his landmark 1941 essay ‘The Lion and the Unicorn’ as ‘a little book explaining how to be a Socialist, though Tory’. Even in his most revolutionary moods, Orwell was very specific about what should stay and what should go. Small wonder that he found fault with every version of socialism except his own." Dorian Lynskey reviews two recent books on George Orwell.

"She became a byword for the brutal and controlling ways of the ‘Hollywood factory’ and its tendency to swallow up child stars. You’ve probably heard that MGM encouraged Garland’s use of drugs – ‘pep pills’ to get her to work and suppress her appetite, downers to help her sleep – only to criticise her for being unreliable when she became an addict who sometimes couldn’t show up for work. Eventually, the studio dropped her. She wasn’t yet thirty." Bee Wilson on Judy Garland.

Peter Adams has good news. The Devon Heritage Orchard at RHS Garden Rosemoor is preserving traditional apple varieties, some of which were on the point of disappearing.

Asparagus used to predict 2026 political "carnage"

I'm afraid the judges have some bad news for you. This story from BBC News has won our Headline of the Day Award.

They also have a new word for you – "asparamancer" – and a nice second mention: "the sought after vegetable":

Jemima Packington, a practising asparamancer, said she is able to make her predictions by grabbing "a handful of asparagus" which she then casts onto a flat surface.

Ms Packington grew up in Evesham, Worcestershire, known as a growing hotspot for the sought after vegetable.

The Grassy Shires: Farming in Leicestershire during WWII

Thrill to footage of Nevill Holt Hall (now widely accepted to be the chief model for Bonkers Hall) from 1:13 and of Market Harborough cattle market from 9:57.

This film brings home just how powerful the British state became during the Second World War. Thanks to Mark Howson for posting it on Bluesky – he says the Clarkes are still farming near Medbourne.

The Joy of Six 1453

Martin Barrow reports that, following the intervention of Dame Rachel de Souza, the Children’s Commissioner for England, it is hard to find anyone prepared to defend the current arrangements, outside the actual 'business' of children’s homes and foster care.

"Despite the numerous inquiries that have been carried out, the lessons identified often fail to translate into meaningful, lasting change. As a result, organisations find themselves repeating the same mistakes, leading to avoidable disasters. Those impacted wait years for answers, and political impetus for reform can wane." Rebecca McKee and Jack Pannell make the case for reform of public inquiries.

The 'one chatbot per child' model for AI in classrooms conflicts with research that shows learning is a social process, argues Niral Shah.

Jo Lonsdale and Jane Downs tell the story of Mary Ann Macham, who fled slavery in Virginia and found safety in the North East of England: "Mary Ann was born in Middlesex County, Virginia, in 1802, her father 'a gentleman's son', her enslaved mother raped by him. Aged 12, Mary Ann was sold at a public auction at Richmond, a 'poor puny little thing', as she later said, fetching $450."

Emma Slattery Williams on Christmas in the Victorian era: "Roast turkey remains the customary fare for Christmas lunch and we can thank the Victorians for this, too. In the early 19th century, turkeys would have been too expensive for the majority of households to afford. But the development of the railway made them more accessible and affordable, and soon they had become the star attraction at Christmas dinner tables."

"Despite their initial rejection by the Ministry of Transport, the signs were actually rather well designed. Seen side-by-side against the regulation sign that was supposed to be used ... they compare very favourably." Oxfordshire Signs looks back to the days when the county had its own unique designs for road signs.

The Joy of Six 1450

"Millions of teenagers would lose the freedom to enjoy games and social interaction in the name of 'safety'. Even complaining on family WhatsApp would be impossible, as they would be banned from that too. Such a restriction would severely impact not just young people’s ability to play games or socialise, but also access support services, or engage in or discuss political content or ideas." James Baker argues that Liberal Democrats should not support Baroness Benjamin's amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill.

Sophia Alexandra Hall explains why care leavers need better access to childhood records: "Among the papers was a photocopy of a photograph of Jackie and her sister. The council initially refused to give her the original, saying it belonged to them. She persisted. When she finally received it, she discovered a date and time written on the back. Those details had never appeared in the copy."

Anglican Ink has an anonymous post by an anonymous retired Church of England that paints an unflattering portrait of the young Justin Welby.

We hear a lot about making cities child friendly, but Max Western and Afroditi Stathi remind us that the modern urban landscape isn't kind to old people either.

"The public story of Google Maps is that it passively reflects 'what people like'. More stars, more reviews, better food. But that framing obscures how the platform actually operates. Google Maps is not just indexing demand – it is actively organising it through a ranking system built on a small number of core signals that Google itself has publicly acknowledged: relevance, distance, and prominence." Lauren Leek on how Google Maps quietly allocates survival across London’s restaurants and how she built a dashboard to see through it.

Scott Shea chooses six songs that tell the story of Sam Cooke.

The Joy of Six 1443

"Companies that have collaborated with immigration enforcement agencies in various ways to aid Trump’s mass deportation initiative – whether through allowing ICE to raid their parking lots, taking on contracts with DHS, or a variety of other actions – are starting to feel the rumblings of a consumer revolt." Adrian Carrasquillo says a backlash Is brewing against companies that help Trumps's ICE.

Rowena Mason maps the depressing journey of Motability cuts from right-wing social media to Rachel Reeves' budget.

Matt Simon finds that urban farms and gardens ease food insecurity, boost mental health and create communities.

"Getting Franklin’s story right is crucial, because she has become a role model for women going into science. She was up against not just the routine sexism of the day, but also more subtle forms embedded in science – some of which are still present today." Matthew Cobb and Nathaniel Comfort argue that the role of Rosalind Franklin in the discovery of DNA is still misunderstood.

"By the early 1940s, Watson had also become increasingly uncomfortable about the methods used in dairy and egg production, and so began to exclude all animal-based foodstuffs from his diet." Margaret Brecknell introduces us to Leicester's Donald Watson, the founder of the modern vegan movement.

Frank Collins reviews the 1947 film It Always Rains on Sunday. He says its director, Robert Hamer "seems to have regularly fought a corner for women working in film at Ealing, a studio often criticised for its very male view point of the world, and [Googie] Withers is a strong presence in many of his films.

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"His central idea, as he has written before, is that people should own their data. Personal data is any data that can be linked to us, such as our purchasing habits, health information and political opinions." Alex Zarifis on Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the future of the internet.

Sarah Lyons on the ubiquity of violence towards women: "The one man present was in total shock, he had never heard women talk so candidly like this before, the way we talk amongst ourselves, and he genuinely could not comprehend how much violence we had all collectively endured He left that night visibly shaken, changed."

Niamh Gallagher reviews a history of the Great Famine: "There is no doubt that food was available in Ireland throughout the crisis – just not to those who needed it most. The year 1845 was a vintage one for oats; in 1846, 3.3 million acres were planted with grain, and Irish farms raised more than 2.5 million cattle, 2.2 million sheep and 600,000 pigs, most of which were exported to Britain." 

"For a man who said he hated politics, it is exactly his uncompromising sense of right and his engagement with the world that will make his legacy everlasting." Kenny Monrose pays tribute to Jimmy Cliff.

Jude Rogers says the Eighties television series Edge of Darkness speaks to the Britain of 2025: "As well as trusting its viewers with the complexity of its plot, much of the making of Edge Of Darkness was also audacious. It pioneered the use of Steadicam in its first episode, following Peck from his hotel room in the lift, through the foyer, down the stairs to a basement garage to meet shadowy government attaché Pendleton."

"Early 1645 Parliamentary forces seized Shrewsbury. In June 800 Parliamentarian men pushed south towards Ludlow, attacking Stokesay en route. The garrison were heavily outnumbered and defending what was now essentially an ornamental castle. A bit of back and forth parlay and the garrison surrendered." Keep Your Powder Dry has a survey of Civil War sites in Shropshire that confirms Stokesay Castle was built chiefly for show.

The long history of Chinese food in Britain

The view that the British subsisted on overcooked vegetables until the Eighties is a tenet of faith for many, but the reality is more nuanced and interesting.

Here's an extract from an article on the Newham Chinese Association website:

The history of Chinese food in Britain is best understood in relation to the history of Chinese immigrants. Historically, the first Chinese eating houses in Britain catered not for local customers, but for Chinese sailors who had settled around the docks in London’s Limehouse and wanted a taste of home. Until the 1940s, the majority of customers in the restaurants were not English but Chinese immigrants.

In the aftermath of World War II Chinese food began to grow in popularity. British servicemen returned from various parts of the Empire and the Far East with a willingness to try different foods and cuisine and a new enthusiasm for Chinese food and restaurants. This in turn saw the rise of the restaurant trade in Soho. Chinese people entered the catering trade because of the downturn in shipping and the closing of laundries, traditional areas of employment.  

In the 1950s and early 1960s there was an influx of Chinese from Hong Kong who provided the necessary workforce. The restaurants served Cantonese food because of Britain’s old colonial links to Hong Kong where most of the chefs came from. The lack of certain authentic ingredients meant having to improvise and also adjust a few dishes to suit the liking of British customers, for example Chop Suey, an old style Chinese cuisine consisting of meat and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables such as bean-sprouts and a starch-thickened sauce.

With the establishment of the Peoples Republic of China, staff at the Chinese Embassy in London were recalled but the majority chose to stay in the UK and many of them then went on to open Chinese restaurants. Kenneth Lo, a former Chinese diplomat, became a popular and well known author of several Chinese cookery books explaining the intricacies of Chinese cooking to the British public throughout the 1960s, 70s and 80s. He went on to become a legendary figure on the capital’s restaurant scene and also the foremost expert in Britain on Chinese food, and played a huge part in popularizing and improving its consumption.

What I find particularly interesting here is the insight that servicemen returned from war in the Pacific with a taste for Asian food. That's a useful corrective to the consensus view that the Fifties took place entirely in black and white.

But being an imperial power had affected our tastes well before then. Tea became the quintessential British drink, and we take it with milk because we learnt to drink it in India.

My only question about the article is whether it takes too London-centric a view. Chinese restaurants soon spread far beyond Soho – the advertisement above dates from 1962, and the headline below relates to an incident at The Painted Fan in Market Harborough in 1966.

Railway station cheese and butter thief jailed

BBC News wins Headline of the Day.

Since you ask, the station was Manchester Piccadilly.

The Joy of Six 1426

"Left to her own devices, Reeves would not be contemplating potentially highly damaging tax increases when the economy is weak. Likewise, she would be cutting interest rates more quickly than the Bank of England has been doing. But those decisions are not in her hands." Larry Elliott argues that the UK’s economic policy isn’t decided by politicians, but by the OBR and the Bank of England.

Adam Bienkov suggests the Caerphilly by-election result shows that Reform UK is much weaker than it looks.

Peter Apps wonders if Zurich’s housing cooperatives be the solution to the rest of Europe’s housing crisis,

"Wilson refused to infantilise her readers. She spoke to us as the mature, curious consumers of culture that we were. Wilson tackled the hard stuff – the intensity of first loves, body shame, grooming and survival – with humour and empathy from the point of view of complicated girls and the women who raised them." Liv Little says Jacqueline Wilson transformed British girlhood.

"Take Ron Cowan, a key player for his home side of Selkirk and the Scotland squad of the early 1960s. By 18 he became the youngest Scot to ever tour with the British and Irish lions. Any border rugby town would celebrate a career like this for generations to come. But instead, switching to play rugby league for Leeds was seen as betrayal, and meant his accolades were understated. In fact, they were overwritten. Discarded altogether." Lucy Anderson asks if rugby union owe rugby league an apology.

Mike Gibson tells the story of Fever-Tree and how the gin-and-tonic boom made it the UK's most valuable soft-drinks company.