Portrait of the week | 11 August 2012

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The Olympic Games dominated national life. Eight of Great Britain and Northern Ireland’s first 22 gold medals (outdoing its 19 golds in Beijing in 2008) were in cycling. Sir Chris Hoy brought the total of gold medals in his Olympic career to six, outdoing Sir Steve Redgrave’s record. Bradley Wiggins added an Olympic gold in the road time trial to his victory in this year’s Tour de France. There were four golds in rowing, four in athletics (Jessica Ennis winning the heptathlon, Alistair Brownlee the triathlon, Mo Farah the 10,000 metres and Greg Rutherford the long jump), and one in sailing (Ben Ainslie), tennis (Andy Murray beating Roger Federer, who had beaten him in the Wimbledon championship final), team showjumping, team dressage, shooting and canoeing. British athletes will have a victory parade through London on 10 September. Twenty million people in Britain watched Usain Bolt of Jamaica on television winning the 100 metres in an Olympic record time of 9.63 seconds. Michael Phelps, the American swimmer, brought the number of Olympic gold medals he has won in his career to 18. Seven Cameroonian athletes absconded to seek their fortunes.

In the face of opposition from Tory MPs, the coalition government dropped its Bill to turn the House of Lords into an elected body. Nick Clegg, the deputy Prime Minister and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, spoke bitterly of the Conservatives ‘not honouring’ the commitment. He declared that when ‘parliament votes on boundary changes for the 2015 election I will be instructing my party to oppose them’. Louise Mensch said she was to relinquish her seat in parliament and move to New York, causing a by-election in her marginal seat of Corby.