Society

Sea-thieves messenger, deliver back in reply,tell your people this spiteful message,that here stands undaunted an Earl with his band of menwho will defend our homeland,Aethelred’s country, the lord of mypeople and land. Fall shall youheathen in battle! To us it would be shamefulthat you with our coin to your ships should get awaywithout a fight, now you thus farinto our homeland have come.You shall not so easily carry off our treasure:with us must spear and blade first decide the terms,fierce conflict, is the tribute we will hand over. So speaks Byrhtnoth, hero of the poem ‘The Battle of Maldon’, telling of an epic clash of arms in Essex against Viking raiders

The first official portrait of King Charles III since his coronation has been unveiled. Both the artist Jonathan Yeo and the King should be delighted: the vast oil on canvas, which was seen for the first time at Buckingham Palace today, captures a remarkable likeness of the King. One particular work of his might give his admirers pause The painting is as respectful a piece of representative royal portraiture as might be imagined. Unlike some of the more experimental (if artistically interesting) pictures of his late mother, such as Lucian Freud’s 2001 effort – where Elizabeth II was compared to a prop forward or a corgi – this is a

Will any woman who has given birth on the NHS be surprised by a damning report into maternity services? I wasn’t. I was horrified to read of babies born with cerebral palsy because of mistakes and failures made before and during labour. I was deeply saddened to read about mothers who were mocked, neglected, patronised, even shouted at, by midwives during childbirth, with many suffering long-lasting effects. But surprised? No.  Aspects of this Birth Trauma Inquiry are eerily familiar. In 2022, the Ockenden report into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital concluded that ‘repeated’ failures in care may have led to the deaths of more than 200 babies, and of nine mothers.

Future historians of the Church of England might look back at this weekend as the beginning of the end. A selection of bishops and members of the General Synod are meeting at a hotel in Leicester to seek a solution to the impasse over homosexuality. They hope to make a plan to take to July’s Synod: a deal that keeps conservatives in the Church. That’s got to be a good thing, hasn’t it? It depends.  The story so far is that the Church decided in favour of same-sex blessings last year, and also in favour of new ‘pastoral guidance’ that is expected to allow gay clergy to marry, therefore officially condoning them for

The eco-activists of Just Stop Oil have often been caricatured as a group of middle-class students with too much time on their hands. Their latest stunt at the British Library today shows how wrong that is. Middle-class pensioners with too much time on their hands are also well represented in this group, it seems. The British public had their number all along Earlier today, a duo of octogenarians made their stand against fossil fuels, with comic results. Reverend Dr Sue Parfitt, an 82-year-old Anglican priest, and Judy Bruce, an 85-year-old retired biology teacher, walked into the British Library’s Magna Carta exhibit and began hammering at the glass protecting the historic document. When

Apple has a reputation for advertising that not only sells their products effectively, but sets a standard few of their competitors could ever hope to attain. Their famous advert for the Mac, which launched forty years ago, was directed by Ridley Scott, fresh from Blade Runner, and channelled Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four to thrilling and iconic effect. But this genius for marketing makes their latest, much-castigated promotional film for the new iPad, ‘Create’, both bewildering and disturbing. It is utterly inexplicable that their highly-paid teams of marketing experts and PRs would ever have believed it to be a good idea. In the clip, which (subconsciously or otherwise) pays homage to Scott’s