"His glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice": On being the monarch's second son

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Being the second son of a monarch is a difficult career, because you cease to be of use to the family firm – assuming your older brother has healthy children – when you are still young.

Here's Jonathan Parry writing about Victoria's second son in the London Review of Books in 2020:

The monarch’s younger sons in each generation are fated to follow the same trajectory. Few now remember Prince Alfred – except tourists visiting the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront in Cape Town who assume that its name is a misprint for ‘Albert’. 

In the 1860s Alfred, Victoria’s second son, named after the founder of the English monarchy and, as a naval cadet, the first official imperial tourist, became a global superstar. Aged 14 he visited the Holy Land, a year later he conquered South Africa, and before he was 20 he was seriously proposed as king of Greece. Polkas were written for him. At 23 he toured Australia and survived an Irish assassination attempt; soon afterwards he was fêted in New Zealand, Hong Kong and India. 

But his glamour tarnished, his boorishness came to notice, he married a haughty Russian princess, and he ended in forced exile presiding over his father’s German duchy.

Discuss with relation to the careers of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Prince Harry (as indeed Parry does).

The Joy of Six 1545

"Progressive politicians must see social media as a means to an end. If they’re swallowed by social media, they’ll lose their moral core. What’s more – and much worse – making social media the training school of modern politics risks giving a megaphone to fascists and racists who are able to preach their gospel of hate to millions without interruption." Sam Bright on the curse of influencer-politicians.

Jack Dyson reports on the consequences of falling school rolls. One in three councils expect more than a fifth of primary school places will be unfilled next year. 

"We used to think AI-generated fiction would always be obvious, and we were not prepared. Over the coming years, agents, editors, and slush readers at every level are going to need to educate themselves on how AI writes." Bona Books inadvertently bought a short story written by Artificial Intelligence for an anthology of queer speculative fiction.

Jennifer Davey offers a short round up of football-related contributions to Hansard over the years.

Malcolm Pein, the English Chess Federation’s delegate to the game's governing body FIDE and a candidate for its next deputy president, is interviewed about the long fight to break Russia's political grip on chess: "Russia has basically hijacked FIDE – just go to the FIDE website and look at where the employees come from: Russian head of PR, Russian head of legal and so on."

"This is as much a novel of working class intellectualism (Hamer deploys a quotation from Macbeth without ostentation) as it is about the compromises of electoral politics. Shawcross and his children want comfort and security and health, but they also want the fruits of the knowledge and experience held by this culture that has turned them into marginal drudges of the machine age." With the accession of Andy Burnham imminent, Discontinued Notes looks again at the work of Howard Spring, 'the Dickens of Manchester'.

The Joy of Six 1541

"Former MI6, counterterror, and police officials expressed disbelief at the refusal by the British authorities to countenance a full murder investigation into Perepilichnyy's death. 'It's so obvious that it’s an assassination,' said Chris Phillips, the former head of Britain’s National Counter Terrorism Security Office. 'There’s no way it wasn’t a hit. It’s ridiculous.'" In 2017, Heidi Blake and her BuzzFeed investigations team published a seven-part investigation of suspected assassinations on British soil by the Russians government.

Richard Kemp reposts a Byline Times article that condemns SLAPPs – strategic litigation against public participation – as a shocking abuse of the legal system where the rich try to bully the weak and poor into submission.

Guy Shrubsole argues that Andy Burnham's Manchesterism is ultimately a politics of land: "Burnham’s keen interest in regaining public control of housing and key utilities leads very quickly to questions of who owns land, and how the public sector might reverse decades of asset sales begun under Margaret Thatcher’s governments."

"For much of the 18th century, even though Number 10 (actually Number 5 for much of its early existence) remained the official residence of the First Lord of the Treasury, it was by no means always occupied by the Prime Minister." Robin Eagles finds that prime ministers once preferred to live in their own houses.

Adam Scovell goes to look for the London locations used in A Hard Day's Night, the first film featuring those lovable mop-tops The Beatles.

"Her national standing was confirmed with a damehood in 2000, an honour which she prized, though it didn’t make her decorous. She was shortlisted for the Booker five times without ever winning (no one forgets this). She remains a figure who is hard to place – widely appreciated, but not a member of any acknowledged group of writers, and without much discernible influence on those who came after." Dinah Birch on the work of the novelist Beryl Bainbridge.

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"When news of the arrests of the three Ukrainians broke, a rumour soon began to spread online that the alleged perpetrators were, in fact, Ukrainian male sex workers employed by Starmer and that the arson attack was revenge for unpaid bills. Perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most influential online figures involved in spreading this 'Rent Boys' conspiracy theory was Stephen Lennon." Joe Mulhall and Nick Lowles argue that Tommy Robinson is Putin's useful idiot.

Theo Rodwell fears the Liberal Democrats are being held hostage by Conservatives who have lent them their votes.

"The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, announced that 'one thousand New Yorkers won our lottery for affordable tickets to the World Cup ... the beautiful game belongs to everyone.' Having to run an affordable lottery suggests that maybe it doesn't." Natasha Chahal on FIFA and Trump's world cup.

Emma Peplow looks back to the Christchurch by-election of 1993.

Richard Williams reads a new biography of Brian Epstein: "A man who loved the theatre and classical music, he understood their adventurous creative instincts. When they made that first film, it was directed by the innovative Dick Lester rather than a Wardour Street hack. When the sleeve art of their second album was being prepared, he guided them towards Robert Freeman, whose photos of John Coltrane he had admired and who listened to the group when they showed him Astrid Kirchherr's black and white chiaroscuro Hamburg photographs as a potential template."

"Every day, in New York alone, millions pass by her. On Columbia University’s campus, at the Frick Collection, in Central Park, near City Hall, and at the Brooklyn entrance to the Manhattan Bridge. ... Yet the woman behind the face lived a life marked by exploitation, disappointment, and profound tragedy. Her death in 1996, at the age of 104, attracted almost no attention at all, as if history forgot all that she had been and given. The statues remain, but she was buried in an unmarked grave in northern New York state." Josie Cox tells the sad story of Audrey Munson, America's first supermodel.

In which my great great grandmother's brother stuffs a ptarmigan

I've written before about my great great grandmother's brother Sandy Campbell - about how his dog Sir William Wallace and how the last Tsar of Russia gave him a pair of binoculars.

An item in a Dundee Courier (8 May 1973) column by "Craigie" about a laburnum tree in a Carnoustie front garden soon turns to him:

Back in those Victorian times Queen Victoria herself an eye for quaint and picturesque effects of this sort.

When visiting Loch Muick (near Balmoral) she often had a word on the subject with Sandy Campbell, her stalker at Glasallt Shiel. 

Sandy had the road along the loch planted with rowan trees to form dainty arches. And here and there he planted seedlings together and intertwined their pliant stems giving the same unusual appearance as the Carnoustie laburnum.

Stalker Campbell also kept an interesting "museum" in the coach house at Glasallt Shiel. He was an amateur taxidermist, and stuffed a whole collection of animals and birds like wild cats, grouse and ptarmigan, along with foxes' masks and brushes.

There was also an impressive array of antlers, and horns of sheep and wild goats.

He also collected bits of quartz and rock crystal found in the hills round about, as well as a sample of the 6-foot-long heather that grew in some of the mountain ravines.

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.

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Daniel Katz report that the Makerfield by-election has become a poisoned chalice for Reform UK because of its choice of candidate.

"Over the past couple of decades, many progressives have found themselves in an awkward and novel position. As defenders of existing political institutions, as defenders of norms of civility and moderation, as technocratic policymakers shifting policies at the margin in response to past evidence." Ben Ansell argues that the left has ceded political radicalism to the right.

Lorna Finlayson defends universities as a 'space for exceptions': "The perception is that students and academics do nothing all day but doss around and mull over the meaning of life. It’s not really true – academics work on average far more than their contracted hours, while many students have developed concerningly puritanical tendencies – but, in my view, things were better when it was truer: people not only had a better time, but probably did better and more interesting work, when they were less pressured and given more slack."

Peter Jukes on the leaked documents that show the Kremlin’s influence machine now combines paid influencers, fake citizens and "cognitive strikes" to inflame tensions and shape European politics.

"Dead of Night exerted its greatest power through the manipulation of time. By sliding temporal planes over each other and curling events round to their beginning, the film found a fiendish new way to mess with a viewer’s head." Malcolm Gaskill praises Ealing Studios' 1945 portmanteau horror film.

"It’s hard to imagine so many being spooked by a soft-spoken woman who didn’t consume alcohol, smoke, or even drink caffeine, but in an industry so used to dominating over female singer-songwriters, dealing with a forthright black woman who had no intention to follow the rules probably sent a few industry bigwigs over the edge." Stephanie Phillips salutes Joan Armatrading.

Russian submarine found in Lake Windermere

This land sits right next to the Furness railway line - a vital transport link to both BAE Submarines in Barrow and Sellafield nuclear power station. That’s why I made representations to ministers asking whether this sale would be compliant with the UK’s sanctions against Russia.

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— Tim Farron (@timfarron.bsky.social) 24 April 2026 at 15:37

A story peeks out at me from behind the Financial Times paywall:

Russian businessman and his daughter have triggered national security concerns by seeking to buy a golf course located next to the railway that serves the UK’s main shipyard for nuclear-powered attack submarines.

As Tim Farron points out, the line also serves the nuclear site at Sellafield. You may not be surprised to hear that the deal collapsed this week after government intervention and enquiries from the FT.

My first thought on reading this was of the old joke in Whoops Apocalypse about a Soviet submarine being found in Staines reservoir.

But nothing should surprise us in a country where we have a Lord Siberia sitting in the upper house of our parliament.

Oh, those Russians: Antony Beevor on Rasputin and the Romanovs

The British military historian Sir Antony Beevor is busy promoting his new book Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs. Here he in the guest on Jackson van Uden's History with Jackson podcast.

Not only did I love Sylvia by Focus when I was 12, I could name all the Romanov tsars in their correct order. I had developed a fascination with Russian history after reading Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie.

Sadly, that knowledge has been lost over the years, along with reams of chess opening theory and the ability to construct proofs in formal logic.

Ed Davey flattens Nigel Farage on human rights

On 29 October last year, Nigel Farage put forward his European Convention on Human Rights (Withdrawal) Bill. You can read his speech in Hansard.

This, in full, was Ed Davey's reply:

The speech we just heard totally misrepresents the European convention, and the failure of the hon. Member for Clacton (Nigel Farage) to mention the huge benefits and rights that the European convention has brought to millions of British people says it all. Let me give those attracted by the argument we have just heard one strong reason to think again. Russia under Vladimir Putin is the only country to have withdrawn from the European convention on human rights. Maybe that is what attracts the hon. Member—after all, he said that Putin is the world leader he most admires.

Russia: a country where those who oppose the regime are mysteriously pushed off balconies, and where, if it is not enough to murder a political opponent like Alexei Navalny, Putin has even jailed lawyers who dared to represent him—things not allowed under the European convention. As we have seen Nathan Gill, a leading political ally of the hon. Member for Clacton, imprisoned for taking Russian bribes, perhaps we should not be surprised that the Reform party is so keen to follow Russia.

Besides Russia, where else are people’s hard-fought-for rights under attack? Trump’s America. Of course, the US is not part of the European convention, yet its citizens have benefited from something similar: the US constitution, which was designed to check the power of tyrants and protect the individual from the state. Just as the hon. Member for Clacton desires to remove people’s rights here, his hero Donald Trump is doing the same in America, attacking the courts and the rule of law, and even inciting a violent mob against the US Congress to overturn an election. But of course, the hon. Member has called President Trump “an inspiration”. If we want to know the hon. Member’s intentions for British people’s basic rights and freedoms, we only need to look at Putin’s Russia or Trump’s America. That is not patriotic. It is deeply un-British, and he should be ashamed.

Unlike the hon. Member for Clacton, I am proud of our country; I love our country. I am proud that Britain helped to create the European convention on human rights, championed by Winston Churchill himself. The convention protects the very people who need it most: our elderly and most vulnerable, so that they may live and grow old with dignity; and our children, so that those facing horrific abuse have better protection. It also upholds our freedom of speech so that the press and public can criticise those in power without fear, and it protects our right to peaceful protest.

Seventy years ago, Britain became the first country to ratify the convention, as a leading voice on the global stage for human rights and the rule of law. That is our history. That is who we are. That is Britain at our best. Yet the hon. Member for Clacton wants us to forget our history, dump British values, undermine the rule of law and row back on people’s hard-won rights. I say no.

To help get across how wrong the hon. Member, the Reform party and the Conservatives are on this, let me give some examples. When people died because of poor care at Stafford hospital, their families secured change—because of these laws. When British troops died in Iraq because of poor equipment, the Supreme Court ruled that the Government were accountable—because of these laws. After 96 people were killed in the Hillsborough disaster and the victims themselves were blamed, their families finally got to the truth—because of these laws. When the Metropolitan police failed to properly investigate the horrific assaults of John Worboys, his victims were able to take the police to court—because of these laws.

Time and again, the European convention and its British twin, the Human Rights Act, have brought justice for our people, and protected them from gross misconduct and unfair treatment. These laws help individuals hold the powerful to account—to hold Governments to account. These laws can get justice when the elite and powerful cover up and abuse their power. So it is clear, is it not, that the hon. Member for Clacton is not about standing up for the individual—for the ordinary person, for the people with no voice—but that he is the friend of the elite and the powerful?

If we do not defend our human rights here at home, how can we possibly persuade other countries of the importance of human rights for their own people? If we do what Reform wants, the biggest cheers will come from the Kremlin, from Beijing, from Tehran, from Pyongyang, and from dictators and authoritarian regimes the world over. That would be a betrayal of everything our country stands for. The hon. Member’s plan would damage our country’s ability to shape our world.

Leaving the convention would be another nail in the coffin of Britain’s unique soft power. We have so often influenced world events for the better by being part of international agreements, by upholding international law and by leading. Of course, the hon. Member for Clacton has made his career by damaging our country and our influence. Remember how he led the campaign for Brexit with his Conservative friends? We know what a total mess that has turned out to be. He and his friends argued that Brexit would cut immigration, but immigration has gone up. Just look at how badly he has betrayed the people he claims to speak for. Brexit made the small boats crisis possible.

Before Brexit, we effectively had a returns agreement with every EU country: the Dublin system—a deterrent that worked. Now, undocumented migrants are trying to reach the UK because they know they cannot be returned. Thanks to the hon. Member, his Brexit ripped up Britain’s rights to return people with no right to be here and people who should have claimed asylum elsewhere in Europe. [Interruption.] Conservative Members may shout—they caused it!

Let us look at one of our closest allies, the Republic of Ireland, and a vital part of our country, Northern Ireland. The Good Friday agreement references the European convention seven times. The guarantee of basic rights and freedoms in the convention was fundamental to securing the Good Friday agreement, to ending the conflict, to stopping the bombs and to getting peace, yet the hon. Member for Clacton stands here today prepared to risk peace in our country—how utterly shameful.

As we approach Remembrance Sunday, let us never forget the sacrifices made for our freedoms today, and let us never forget the lessons that that greatest generation of British people learned and passed on to us— Interruption.] I think the veterans will notice this barracking. Our greatest generation showed us that we needed these laws to protect people from state abuse, to stop authoritarian Governments and tyrants, and to defend people’s rights. The post-war generation knew how costly far right-wing populism had been for our country and our people, so for our greatest generation, for British people today and for our democracy, I urge Members to vote against this Bill.

If the Liberal Democrats could talk about the economy with the same clarity and passion we display when talking about foreign policy and civil liberties, we would sweep the country.

Westminster Hall debate on Russian influence on British politics

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On Monday there was a Westminster Hall debate on Russian influence on UK politics and democracy, occasioned by a public petition that gained the required 100,000 signatures.

Allowing such petitions to trigger debates seems a worthwhile experiment, though the one demanding that MPs who change parties should be forced to resign and fight a by-election seems to me misconceived. Don't party whips have enough power as it is?

But it's worth reading the transcript of the debate on Russian interference. Several Liberal Democrats MPs took part – here's Cameron Thomas:

The breadth and depth of Russian influence is so vast and so dangerous to our democracy that no single political party has either the credibility or capacity to fully investigate it. Only a judge-led statutory public inquiry will suffice. The Government have the responsibility to deliver; the future of our democracy requires that they do so.

The House of Commons Library produced a briefing for the debate which is worth a look too.

Vladimir Putin’s mob of war-thirsty nuns are infiltrating churches across Europe

Metro wins our Headline of the Day Award and reminds everyone that not all nuns are as benevolent as Lord Bonkers' friends at the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes in High Leicestershire.

Thanks to a reader for the nomination.

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Peter Jukes says Boris Johnson and Alexander Lebedev must be investigated in a new public inquiry into Russian influence

"If you are young or have a young family, should you vote for millionaire Nigel Farage? For me, he is likely to directly impoverish and disenfranchise the young – Reform UK policies are already shaping up in this way. Where will it end?" Mark Cunliffe itemises Reform's attack on the young.

"This punishment represents the state’s most severe power to harm its citizens. Understanding how and why it is used tells us about our appetite for punishment and the state’s power to inflict it. And evidence suggests that its use is rising." Jake Phillips and Hannah Gilman discuss why the number of whole-life sentences is increasing in England and Wales.

Charlotte Williams investigates how archaeology helped the US colonise the Panama Canal Zone – just as the current US government threatens to retake it.

Alex Harvey revisits Lindsay Anderson’s If.... 50 years after its release: "Anderson was a classic child of the British imperial class. His father, a Scot and a soldier, was born in Northern India, his mother, a formidable memsahib, in Queenstown, South Africa, and Anderson himself in Bangalore. He was raised to replicate his father’s social class and profession."

"The family of the ITV Sport presenter Mark Pougatch were all wearing lederhosen." Thomas Weber attends the World Conker Championships at Southwick in Northamptonshire.

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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

The Joy of Six 1446

Cicero's Songs, making a welcome return, has naught for your comfort: "The decadence of the American Empire is upon us, and the consequences will be dire, unless the EU can manage to secure the defeat of Putin without American support.  Quite possibly the USA may now seek to obstruct the Europeans in their attempts to bring Putin's murderous misadventure to a close."

The allegations against British special forces operating in Afghanistan will not go away, argues Mark Urban.

John Sweeney says Reform's 19-year-old leader of Warwickshire County Council is skating on thin ice: "[George] Finch’s comments have the potential to jeopardise a fair trial and that, of course, would harm the victim and her family – and waste a huge amount of public money. ... Most people know that after someone has been charged for a serious offence, you must take care not to publish or say anything in the public square that could prejudice the criminal proceedings. ... Finch appears to have forgotten this."

"Here’s a rule I have developed for myself: never talk about a culture-war topic with anyone who only wants to talk to you about that topic. These conversations can only be helpful if they happen as part of a relationship. If you’re going in cold on a very hard topic, you will not be able to experience each other as people, only as opinions or symbols." Naomi Alderman offers 12 rules for online survival.

Dezeen chooses 10 key buildings by high-tech pioneer Nicholas Grimshaw.

"Screwball elements run through their films like runaway socialites: eccentric leads, unexpected reversals, physical comedy, chase sequences, false identities; best intentions go hilariously awry; hard-bitten cynics battle zany dreamers in matters of romance and will." Amber Sparks celebrates the Coen brothers' 1994 film The Hudsucker Proxy 

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"The mansion tax will impact less than the top 0.7 per cent of households. At a time when Britain’s public services are stretched to breaking point and taxes will inevitably have to increase, it is only right that we asked the wealthiest property owners to contribute more. Asking the wealthiest to pay more to lift children out of poverty or to invest more in the NHS and social care is the fair thing to do. In fact, it is the Liberal Democrat thing to do, or at least it was up until a few days ago." Paul Hindley says Ed Davey should support the government's new mansion tax.

Robert Reich on Trump, billionaires and the media: "Why are the ultra-rich buying up so much of the media? Vanity may play a part, but there’s a more pragmatic – some might say sinister – reason."

Save Ukraine shows how Russia teaches children to hate the West.

"Restoring ponds – old and new, rural and urban – is one of the simplest, most effective steps we can take. Every pond counts, from a farm hollow to a garden bowl. Together, they form networks that wildlife needs to survive and make our landscapes more resilient to climate change." Lucy Clarke explains why restoring Britain's ponds is vital for wildlife and climate resilience.

"Philosophy is the foundation of Stoppard’s plays. They cite Aquinas, Aristotle, Ayer, Bentham, Kant, Moore, Plato, Ramsey, Russell, Ryle and Zeno. One philosopher in Stoppard’s radio play Darkside is never sure if he is spelling Nietzsche correctly." Fergus Edwards examines the importance of philosophy to Tom Stoppard's work.

Graham McCann uncovers one of comedy's great feuds: Tommy Trinder vs Bruce Forsyth.

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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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Nathan Gill, the former leader of Nigel Farage's party in Wales, admits taking bribes to help Putin. And his Russian connection – the Ukrainian politician Oleh Voloshyn - in turn has links to a key figure wanted by US authorities over election interference, reports Carole Cadwalladr.

Luvell Anderson explains why authoritarians like Donald Trump are afraid of satire: "Although humour can seem trivial to some, we should not underestimate its power to shift cultural agendas. Contempt toward elites in the form of satirical mockery can be cathartic and a demonstration of solidarity for those of lower status. Humourists can have a deep impact on the public imagination."

Joe Wilkins on scientists' confidence in AI: "In a preview of its 2025 report on the impact of the tech on research, the academic publisher Wiley released preliminary findings on attitudes toward AI. One startling takeaway: the report found that scientists expressed less trust in AI than they did in 2024, when it was decidedly less advanced."

"Children's books are personal. 'Often', he writes, the authors 'are writing from a wound – whether a wound sustained in childhood, or the wound of having had to leave it behind in the first place.' They are psychologically complex, too, 'a document not of how children are, but how adults imagine children to be, or how they imagine they want them to be'." Jeremy Wikeley review Sam Leith's The Haunted Wood.

Sean Burns looks back at Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1966 masterpiece, The Battle of Algiers.

"In a rational world, this remarkably resilient church would be celebrated, rather like the old bombed out cathedral in Coventry. It would be a tourist attraction, perhaps decked out with a few posters setting out its history and celebrating its fortitude. But no. The dour town planners in Plymouth instead implemented a far more cunning plan. They built a roundabout around the church ensuring no one could to wander round its walls staring at the sky and possibly think about their god and his purpose." Christian Wolmar on one church's sad fate.

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"There was little to no interaction between the three groupings at conference. The main hall hosted debates that were stitched up months ago, when the delegate line-up was elected, and the fringe events largely confirmed prejudices, instead of challenging them. 'This is why we were right all along,' was the lesson learned by all three groups." Seth Thévoz argues that Labour is split into irreconcilable factions.

Leo Litra and Gabrielė Valodskaitė say the success of Maia Sandu’s pro-EU party in Moldova’s parliamentary election holds three valuable lessons for protecting votes from Russian meddling in the future – whether in Moldova or in other vulnerable democracies.

"The Librarians, directed by Kim A. Snyder and recently released in the UK, is a documentary about the crackdown on American school libraries that began in 2021 in Texas and soon spread to other states. Ordered to remove 850 books from their shelves ... several librarians resisted. Some were fired; some received death threats." Anna Aslanyan on the battle against censorship.

Kenan Malik reviews a new book that challenges accepted views of the appeal of the arts: "Today, much of that working-class culture has not just slipped away but also been lost to memory. It is partly the result of the changing relationship between the state and the arts. Thatcherite free market ideology of the 1980s combined with New Labour’s stress on 'social impact' both to commodify the arts and to instrumentalise it – the worth of any work of art lay not in the work itself but in its capacity to promote economic growth, .urban regeneration and, most importantly, 'social inclusion”."

Natasha A. Fraser looks back on the cinematic legacy of her stepfather, Harold Pinter. She remembers his understanding of actors, the yellow legal pads he wrote his scripts on, his Hollywood flirtations and disdain for the clutter of Academy correspondence.

"It would have been fascinating to see where Tey's pen and her ingenious mind would have taken her. As it stands, a headline from the Scots newspaper, The Herald, from 2022 rather seems to sum it up: 'Josephine Tey,' it declared, 'the best crime writer you’ve never heard of'. Quite possibly. And it’s high time that changed." Alec Marsh champions the forgotten queen of crime fiction.

The Joy of Six 1419

"Make no mistake: Raise the Colours and Unite the Kingdom, which drew more than 100,000 protesters to London last month, want the same thing: nativist dominance; a fortress Britain built on exclusion. It poses as spontaneous grassroots patriotism, but scratch its surface and you’ll find that veteran far-right and neo-fascist organisers are behind its coordination and financing." The global far-right is brainwashing a town near you, warns Joseph S. Furey.

Richard Ovendon says libraries are palaces for the people that must be defended: "More than a decade of austerity has ... ravaged the public library sector in many parts of our nation. There are fewer palaces for the people, many are open for fewer hours than before 2010, and some of them are in dire need of physical repair."

"The challenge for anyone trying to bring propagandists to trial has always been connecting vile words to horrific acts." Peter Pomerantsev on holding Putin's propagandists to account.

Liz Green says that support for councillors is vital to democracy: "Within months of being elected, many are already wrestling with exhaustion, frustration or a sense of being out of their depth. For those stepping into cabinet or committee chair roles, the pressure intensifies."

Zoe Williams mourns Jilly Cooper: "People got groped and worse in Cooper’s work, but that was never OK – it’s surprising how OK it is in many far more literary books of the era."

"Another picture here, 28 London Streets, is a gallery of evocative street names from their neighbourhood – Princelet Street, Henriques Street, Chudleigh Street. Instead of gurning or cavorting as in their other self portraits, the artists here are two misty, spectral entities: the ghosts of Gilbert & George, haunting their old streets for ever." Jonathan Jones enjoys the G&G exhibition at the Hayward Gallery.