Society

In the middle of an unpredictable Indian summer, here is a recipe from sultry southern Italy which is suitable for the changing seasons. While aubergine parmigiana (or parmigiana di melanzane) was born of hot Italian summers, it is also perfect for autumn, as the days shorten and darken. There is inherent comfort in the hot, almost-melting aubergine, covered in a rich sauce and blankets of cheese. Aubergines, tomato sauce, mozzarella and parmesan, all layered until they meld and transform The name is possibly a red herring, possibly not. Aubergine parmigiana is most associated with Naples, and is also beloved in Sicily and Calabria. Many have found it hard to reconcile

Poundbury is the King’s idealised town in Dorchester, built on his land to his specifications: the town that sprung out of his head. (‘My dream,’ says Harry Enfield in The Windsors, ‘was always to build a mixed-used residential suburb on the outskirts of Dorchester.’) It is so fascinating that I dream, briefly, of moving in for the completeness of the vision – who doesn’t want to live inside art? – and the portrait of the British class system in housing. Here it is, at last, laid out like a textbook: journey’s end. We order via app and pay in advance: there is a shortage of what tabloids call flunkeys It

‘What are you still doing here?’ joked Daniil Medvedev to Novak Djokovic after their US Open tennis final – a lung-busting baseline slugfest featuring jaw-dropping athleticism and brilliant shot-making – had ended in a straight sets win for the Serb. It was his 24th Grand Slam victory. There’s no sign that Djokovic wants to slow down. After all, he’s only 36 The Russian’s good-humoured question is one that many elite tennis players will be asking. But there’s no sign that Djoko wants to slow down. After all, he’s only 36. His coach Goran Ivanisevic said that Sunday’s win was one of the greatest feats in all sport – adding: ‘If

The public mockery of Harry Maguire, the hapless Manchester United and England defender, has moved from being a bit of a joke to something a little more troubling, sinister even. The abuse, ridicule and attention he gets is way over the top, and increasingly resembles a publicly-sanctioned collective humiliation of one player. The unfortunate Maguire is seen as some kind of rubber doll, to be poked and harangued by one and all, rather than an ordinary human being with vulnerabilities. He is simply expected to suck up the abuse every time he steps on the field. What’s all this howling about? It isn’t just because he isn’t much good as

The unclued lights (six of two words and one of three words), one pair or individually, are of a kind, verifiable in Brewer. Ignore one apostrophe.         Across    1    Declare nothing will stop crime, causing disgust (8)    6    Attack, losing head in drinking bout (6) 11    Objects to intellects (5) 13    Young girl by supermarket, getting potato (7) 14    Humble faculty head embraces Doc (6) 16    Tail, small and trim (4) 17    Certainly not Greenland! (2-2,4) 21    African, say, on the wing, no good performing (3-5) 23    What about painting crosswise? (7) 25    Half a pound at Greek isle (3) 26    Sea loch oddly not in Seville

Beau Brummell, denouncing the fashion for a vegetable diet, was asked if he had never tried it himself: ‘Oh yes, I remember I once ate a pea.’ His remark sounded funnier then, because the normal way of talking about the little green spheres was as a collective, pease, as in pease pudding. Brummell was not the first to talk of one pea. Robert Boyle, the natural philosopher, wrote in 1666 of a bud the size of a pea. Alternatively a single example was called a pease. I mention peas because their harvesting was done in the 18th century with two implements: a pix (shaped like a pickaxe, I suppose) to pull