Новости за 27.06.2015

Perhaps it is more comforting than it should be to hear that Winston Churchill was a good husband. Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, Sonia Purnell, author of First Lady: the Life and Wars of Clementine Churchill, said that the wartime PM should be considered a “rarity among alpha males in history” because he was (as far as we can tell) faithful and devoted to his wife during 56 years of marriage. For many powerful men, public greatness seems to go hand in hand with private indiscretions... Читать дальше...

Over the past few years, the effects of shock have become all too familiar. There’s the initial jolt on hearing the news of another terrorist attack, followed by a sensation of dread: how many people have lost their lives this time? The speed with which pictures appear on television and social media means that we barely have time to prepare ourselves; as details begin to emerge, it’s impossible not to feel a mixture of powerful emotions, including anger, fear and a kind of helpless sympathy for the victims. Читать дальше...

"When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” said Samuel Johnson in 1777, in a famous early bid for the job of head of PR at the London tourist board. On the other hand, he also said that “A woman’s preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs,” so either things have changed over 250 years or, just occasionally, Dr Johnson talked out of his backside.

We were all taken by surprise by the child poverty figures published last week. The Independent on Sunday carried a fine report two weeks ago that food charities were “braced” for a “summer of hunger”. We wrote: “Official figures are expected to show that child poverty is increasing for the first time since Tony Blair’s 1999 commitment to end it in a generation.” Even the Daily Mail wrote on Thursday: “Today official figures are expected to show thousands more youngsters falling into ‘poverty’.”

Ask the people – that is a novel idea, isn’t it? And so the Greek people will decide whether to accept the harsh terms imposed on them by Europe, or whether to accept the advice of their government and reject them. If they reject, what then?

The journals of the late-Victorian savant Samuel Butler contain an instructive episode in which the diarist travels by train across the English countryside. At one point, looking out of the window, he spots a calf which, temporarily detached from its mother, is making a light breakfast of a pile of dung. At first the spectacle worries Butler. Why should an animal nurtured on bright green grass want to eat something so patently unwholesome as a stack of manure? Then the answer strikes him. No one... Читать дальше...

Gunmen from Isis disguised as members of the security forces entered the town at dawn on Thursday. They immediately killed at least 18 civilians, including women and children shot at close range whose bodies were later found in the street. “The body of one child bore the impact of five bullets,” says the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. At least 120 people were murdered in their homes or killed by Isis rockets. “[Isis] doesn’t want to take over the town,” a local journalist was quoted as saying. Читать дальше...

Of all the mad questions I was asked after I had my daughter, the one about whether I would return to work always seemed the maddest. Midwives, health visitors, family and colleagues all asked as if it were a sensible inquiry. Because, for new mothers, going back to work is still seen as “if” rather than “when”.

We all possess two natures. One is egotistical. It focuses on external success: security, comfort, wealth and status. The other is altruistic. It strives for inner fulfilment and values love and virtues such as compassion, kindness, honesty and loyalty. We thrive when we keep these two sides of our nature in balance. But, argues the American intellectual David Brooks in his new book The Road to Character, we live in a culture that encourages us to think about the external side of our natures rather than our inner selves. Читать дальше...

Is this the moment when the mantle of myth wrapped around the old American South is finally stripped away – when magnolia trees, mint juleps and Gone with the Wind give way to the truth of an economy built on slavery, the brutality that kept slavery functioning, and the resistance to integration that persisted for a century after the Confederacy lost the civil war?

Summer is coming – freedom, laughter and carefree sunny days spent lounging by foreign pools while sipping mojitos and escaping reality…. But first, we must get through the ordeal of school speech day. I have never, ever enjoyed speech days. I don’t think kids enjoy speech days. In fact I’m not sure anybody enjoys speech days.

There have been so many dramatic and turbulent events in the past week that you would be forgiven for missing a story that is unsurprising, even mundane, by comparison. Unsurprising because it sounds so familiar, and indeed there is a grim predictability and inevitability in its nature.

Twenty years ago, same-sex marriage was a long way from the mainstream. Traditionalists regarded it as outlandish; liberals saw it as a distant dream. Andrew Sullivan, the British blogger who had moved to the United States and was arguing for it, found that even most gay rights activists disdained him. Why, they argued, would lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people want to adopt a “conservative” institution such as marriage?

Think of the actor David Suchet, and for many, the quizzical face of Hercule Poirot pops up: the long-running series of Agatha Christie adaptations may have come to an end in 2013, but love for the Belgian detective remains undimmed. However, Poirot fans will be doing a double-take at Suchet’s latest role: Lady Bracknell. Yes, the 69-year-old actor is playing the fearsome matriarch of Oscar Wilde’s sparkling 1895 society comedy The Importance of Being Earnest. And not a waxed moustache in sight.

Last Saturday we reported on the election of Simon Armitage as Professor of Poetry at Oxford University. The story informed readers: “Armitage was convinced to run after a lecture at Oxford earlier this year.”

From bucket hats to snapbacks, keep sun-safe in style with our menswear edit

For years the Liberal Democrats banged the drum for electoral reform. As the third party in British politics, its calls for proportional representation made obvious sense. It regularly secured a portion of the vote which failed to be reflected in the distribution of House of Commons’ seats.

Horror piled upon horror. First, the murder near Lyon, an act of savagery on European soil which evoked ghastly memories of the terrible death of Fusilier Lee Rigby. Then the suicide bombing in Kuwait, where people who had gathered for Friday prayers were deliberately and randomly murdered. And less than an hour later, a youth with a Kalashnikov began slaughtering European tourists as they sunbathed on a beach in a Tunisian tourist resort.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, Heathrow-bound from Detroit, an air stewardess is unfurling a goose-down duvet, flattening my seat fully horizontal into a private nest, and passing me a soft towelling "sleepy-suit" (her words). "Would Madam like to be woken for breakast?" she asks, but we both agree that dinner – salmon, short rib, port, and cheeseboard – was rather rich. There is nothing more infantilising, mollifying or utterly ruining for the human being than first-class air travel.

Wiling away my time seeing what I'll be missing at Glastonbury this year, I came across a flurry of stories about something called My Single Tent. I am a year late to the story, I discovered, and in hindsight I'm grateful for those 365 days of innocence.

* It was 48 years ago today when crowds gathered in Market Place, Enfield, north London. Television cameras began to roll. Actor Reg Varney, best known for his role in the ITV sitcom On The Buses, stood alongside Sir Thomas Bland, then deputy chairman of Barclays Bank. A number of attempts were made by Sir Thomas to withdraw money from the new "Barclaycash" machine, but without success. So an employee of the bank, Ron Everett, nipped inside and pushed a £10 note into the dispenser. The press got... Читать дальше...

Have you ever been to Knott End-on-Sea, a small village in Lancashire not far from Fleetwood? It's got a decent-looking café that serves up a generous all-day breakfast for £6.90, and its own pub, the Bourne Arms. There's a golf club and a library and a range of shops. And, crucially, it has a bank.

It looks like BT is up to its old trick of sneaking through a charge that could end up costing you a packet if you're not careful. The media giant has written to broadband customers who've received BT Sport for free since it was set up.

I am wondering whether I should dump two long-standing members of the No Pain, No Gain portfolio. Like many small investors I am a reluctant seller, preferring to hang on in the hope that the shares will eventually improve.

As I have mentioned before, I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with those who wish to place a price tag on those things which possess no intrinsic value. Case in point: the toweringly clever Harry Hill once suggested that, were a wasp to fly past a laser checkout reader in Tesco, its striped abdomen would fool the equipment into thinking it was a bar code. Emitting a regulation beep, the LED readout would then confirm: "Wasp: 11p."