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Tuesday

Jon Morrison

The surprising second life of Colonel Seifert

There was a time, not so very long ago, when the skyline of London was dominated by the work of one architect: not Sir Christopher Wren, but Colonel Richard Seifert. But while Wren is universally admired, Seifert has been reviled. Architects hated his success; the public his uncompromising brutalist aesthetic. Yet now, more than two decades after his death, that appears to be changing. Seifert – who did a spell in the Royal Engineers during the second world war and then insisted on being addressed by his military rank throughout his life – was often said to have had more of an impact on the capital than anyone bar the

Niall Gooch

The rise of the reckless divorce columnist

It is now 20 years since I left university. Two pints in an evening and I feel groggy the next morning. My oldest child is in his last year at primary school, I regularly wake up with mysterious aches and pains, and we still have a very long way to go on our mortgage. All of which is to say that I am firmly and undeniably middle-aged. As it happens, I am rather enjoying myself at the start of my fifth decade. My midlife crisis takes one of the more benign forms: crafting a 1:76 scale model of an interwar rural branch line in the attic. That almost half of

Monday

William Cash

Hollywood is quietly welcoming Trump

When I lived in LA in the 1990s, there was one golden rule of the film industry: Hollywood should follow and never lead. This mantra was, predictably, ignored in the wake of the election. Variety splashed with the headline ‘Hollywood on Edge After Trump’s Devastating Victory’. One actor was quoted bemoaning the ‘unimaginable cruelty that’s going to be unleashed on women, immigrants and the LGBTQ community’. Another said they had called LA pharmacies to ‘hoard birth control pills’. ‘I know lots of agents and producers who voted Republican’ Yet this fractious relationship is about to see a surprising plot twist. After years of virtue-signalling films – including a feminist Terminator

Beatrice Scudeler

The fundamental flaw in Britain’s maternity care

Just over a year ago, I gave birth to my daughter. Labour was surprisingly smooth, unlike my previous emergency c-section. Once I started pushing, my daughter came quickly. I heard the reassuring sound of a newborn crying, and I felt the most indescribable sense of relief. Then, I started haemorrhaging. Before I knew it, I was under general anaesthetic in the operating room. When I came to my senses a few hours later, my first thought was the hospital’s policy: no visitors after 8 p.m. I had 12 hours before being left alone overnight with my daughter in a room full of equally badly injured mothers. A sense of panic

Olivia Potts Olivia Potts

Would we even notice a farmers’ strike?

You might think that, as a country, we have had our fair share of food security wobbles over the last few years: first with pre-Brexit panic, and the hoarding that went along with it, and then the empty supermarket shelves that few of us will forget during the height of the pandemic. But this time, the call is coming from inside the house: British farmers are threatening to stop supplying supermarkets in protest against the government’s plans to apply inheritance tax to family farms. What we might be able to cook in a few weeks is as expansive as ‘almost anything’ or as limited as ‘almost nothing’ What does that

Friday

Penworthy

Two 10-1 ante-post plays for big races

There are two big handicap chases looming over the next fortnight: the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury and the BoyleSports Becher Chase at Aintree run over the Grand National course. I am hoping there are good ante-post bets to be had in both races. The Coral Gold Cup, still known as the ‘Hennessy’ by many older racegoers after its former sponsor, takes place a week tomorrow and the runner I am keen to get onside is BROADWAY BOY for the Twiston-Davies yard. Trainer Nigel has one son Willy as his assistant and another son Sam as his stable jockey and they are all convinced they have a horse to go

Arabella Byrne

Revenge of the rural Barbour

Time was, a Barbour meant one thing: the classic Beaufort model that stank of wax, wet dog, and had pockets stuffed with cartridges from a shoot. Naturally, the late Queen Elizabeth modelled it best, standing at Balmoral in hers with her trademark neckerchief. There is an apocryphal tale that, like all die-hard Barbour devotees, the Queen refused to buy a new one from the 1970s onwards, instead preferring to have hers re-waxed until it presumably fell apart in one of Prince Philip’s Land Rovers. Such was the genius of the Barbour brand, which acted as a sartorial shorthand for the make-do-and-mend postwar generation, evoking all sorts of British no-nonsense, pull-your-socks-up

John Sturgis

Glastonbury and the problems of youth

On Sunday, I was in deepest Wales, listening to birdsong, braying donkeys and a demented cockerel, but instead of getting away from it all I was staring at three different laptops all clicked to the same link: the Glastonbury ticket sale countdown clock. This was the fifth year in which my daughter has sought tickets and, determined not to fail once again, she had arranged a military-style operation, recruiting a small army of volunteers, including me, to be online on the stroke of 9 a.m. in the hope that one of us would get lucky. The other five people she was planning to go with had all done the same.

Ross Clark Ross Clark

Should we worry about Ozempic?

History has taught us to be shy of miracle drugs. But that hasn’t stopped weight-loss drugs being eagerly promoted by fans such as Boris Johnson, and even touted by Keir Starmer as a possible means of getting people back into the workforce. In the US, according to a survey by polling firm KFF earlier this year, one in eight adults has already taken a weight-loss drug. Grand claims have been made. Could RFK Jnr be right in suggesting that weight-loss drugs are causing more harm than they are worth? A trial of 17,600 overweight adults suffering from heart disease – sponsored by the manufacturer of Ozempic, Novo Nordisk – found

Wednesday

Mark Solomons

The fall of Match of the Day

Match of the Day is looking for a new presenter now that Gary Lineker is leaving after 25 years. The truth is, it really doesn’t matter who replaces him, whether they’re male or female, a former player or nepo baby like Roman Kemp. That’s because Match of the Day really doesn’t matter to a vast majority of football fans any more. There will be those who lament the fact that, as seems likely, MotD will get a female presenter. But does it really matter? The viewing figures, recently lauded by St Gary as ‘amazing’, are around the four million mark. This is out of a football-mad population of around 60

Robin Ashenden

Blackpool is cheap, tacky and wonderful

Arriving in Blackpool by train is just as I’d always dreamed. At the Pleasure Beach station, I disembarked right by the roller coasters, which rear up like Welsh hills beside you and, with the seagulls, welcome you with shrieking riders and clattering wheels. There are vast coasters in wood and metal weaving in and out of each other. Curvaceous and sprawling, they’re Gina Lollobrigida in steel. I’ve wanted to visit Blackpool for years. Spending my early childhood near Clacton-on-Sea, I got used to the delights of a tacky seaside town, and Blackpool is surely the mother of them all – even if it’s a mother with too much blusher and