Jonathan Sumption The reputation of Sir Edward Grey, Britain’s foreign secretary from 1905 to 1916, has never recovered from the pasting he received in Lloyd George’s war memoirs. Lloyd George thought that his deliberate ambiguity about Britain’s intentions led us into the first world war. If you read just one book of history this Christmas,
Shell out Royal Dutch Shell announced that it is to move its HQ to London and become a fully British company. What’s its history? — The company has its origins with a London antiques dealer, Marcus Samuel, who in 1833 diversified to import oriental shells as fashionable decorations. After his death in 1870, his sons
Balance of power Sir: Ross Clark sums up the problem with wind power (‘Storing up trouble’, 13 November). It is often inadequate or alternatively excessive, leading in the latter case to the ludicrous position of making payments to operators for producing nothing. A solution to the question of storing electricity to even out the peaks
Home The UK terror threat level was raised to severe after a taxi exploded and burst into flames just before 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital, killing the passenger. He was Emad Al Swealmeen, 32, a failed asylum-seeker from the Middle East, who had converted from Islam, and was confirmed in 2017
The quotation is ‘LAUGH, AND THE WORLD LAUGHS WITH YOU; WEEP, AND YOU WEEP ALONE’ from Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Her two unclued novels are SWEET DANGER (34/24) and A DOUBLE LIFE (3/29). ELLA (on the perimeter), WHEELER (12) and WILCOX (diagonally from 12) were to be shaded. First prize Roy Sharp, Kelburn, Wellington,
There are government projects gone haywire – and then there’s HS2. The High Speed rail project should never have been given the nod in the first place. Costs spiralled out of control from the very beginning: it was estimated to cost £32.7 billion in 2012, now this is set to surpass £100 billion. The technology
On the advice of doctors, Queen Elizabeth II will not attend this year’s Festival of Remembrance at the Albert Hall. Her absence will be poignant. The Queen was 19 on VE Day in 1945. She served in uniform in the war, in the Auxiliary Territorial Service. She represents the very youngest generation who fought in
Anna Aslanyan A decade after Londoners, we have another wonderful work of oral history from Craig Taylor. New Yorkers: A City and its People in Our Time (John Murray, £16.99) is a collection of monologues that makes you feel as if you are there, listening to these people. A nurse, an activist, a nanny, a
Horror shows Eight people were killed when fans of rapper Travis Scott rushed the stage at a concert in Houston, Texas. Some previous deadly concerts: — 11 were killed at a Who gig in Cincinnati on 3 December 1979, after a crush sparked off by concert-goers outside the entry doors mistakenly thinking the band had
Heat Sir: May I place some of Nigel Lawson’s comments in a sensible historical context (‘Stupid fuels’, 6 November)? First, he notes that the difference between the average annual temperature in Finland and in Singapore is at present 22°C. However, he is wrong to suggest that we should therefore not be concerned about a predicted
Home NHS staff in England will have to be fully vaccinated against Covid by the spring. Britain had ordered 250,000 courses of a Pfizer antiviral pill available from early 2022 shown to cut the risk of hospitalisation or death from Covid by 89 per cent. Britain approved another antiviral pill, developed by Merck, and ordered
Each of the unclued lights can be preceded by OLD. First prize Heather McLaren, Seaford, East Sussex Runners-up Rupert Cousens, Oxford; Alan McLachlan, Aberdeen
Carbon deceit Sir: At this week’s climate change conference, countries will be urged to follow the UK’s ‘lead’ in setting the goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 (‘Cop out’, 30 October). This goal is impossible for any advanced economy based on mass consumption. The majority of British manufacturing has shifted abroad, where labour is
From ‘The rule of taste’, Anthony Thwaite, 6 March 1959: The society of aristocrats, connoisseurs, wise men and heroes which was the Japan of Yeats’s imagination did exist. It was capable of moments which combine, in the true spirit of Zen, extraordinary aesthetic perception with what looks like plain flippancy. This is revealed, for example,
Another minute Addressing COP26 in Glasgow, the Prime Minister claimed it was ‘one minute to midnight’ in the fight against climate change. How many warnings have we had? — ‘We have a small window of time in which we can plant the seeds of change, and that is the next five years’ James Leape, WWF
Home Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, told delegates to the 26th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26) in Glasgow: ‘It’s one minute to midnight on that doomsday clock and we need to act now.’ He left the conference the next day. British companies would have to publish
The COP26 summit is unlikely to be an outright flop. There has been no shortage of drama, with speakers seeming to compete with each other to see who could use the most histrionic language. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to compare the attending leaders to Nazi appeasers. He later apologised.
The unclued lights are all phrases in Chambers meaning ‘HURRY UP — or No T(ime) to Lose’. First prize Andy Wallace, Ash Green, Coventry Runners-up Val Urquhart, Butcombe, Somerset; Chris Edwards, Pudsey, Leeds
The COP26 summit is unlikely to be an outright flop. There has been no shortage of drama, with speakers seeming to compete with each other to see who could use the most histrionic language. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, went so far as to compare the attending leaders to Nazi appeasers. He later apologised.
Hard to reconcile Sir: Although not an Anglican, I appreciate Michael Nazir-Ali’s dilemma (‘A change of mind and heart’, 23 October) and know many Anglicans whose loyalty to the C of E is being severely tested. But insofar as his theology is classically Protestant and evangelical, it is difficult to see how the former bishop
