The Guardian UK - 18 July 2022

•

The Guardian 7
Monday 18 July 2022

‘I was shy, and self-possession that, looking back, where you grow. My light was my
I had to get probably protected her as a young mother and my sister at home.”
over it’ woman in the music industry. She Small realised, she says, “You have
loved singing and performing but to find a way to empower yourself.
money’ she wasn’t desperate to be a pop And being shy wasn’t empowering When I sing
star, so she wasn’t easily coerced, so I had to get over it.” a love song, I
ask me when I was younger, what you just love what you do, but I’ve either by predatory men or simply channel the
do you want? I used to say: ‘To still never felt the pressure for it to be into singing songs she didn’t want It wasn’t immediate. In her early love for my son,
be singing.’ There’s no guarantee, a massive hit, because first and to. “I’ve never really done things 20s, she managed to put herself not romantic
as you get older, that you keep your foremost it has to be a hit with me.” for the money, so it’s quite hard forward for an audition after love. That can
voice. There’s no guarantee that for somebody, because of the seeing an advert in the music paper come and go
people want to hear your voice. From the start of her career, character that I am, to sway me,” Melody Maker, and became the
That was always my goal. The thing Small was very clear that she would she says. singer in the soul band Hot House. years she concentrated on raising
that hit records do is keep you in only record songs she wanted to. As They didn’t have much chart her son, whose father is Shaun
the game for a little bit longer. You a child, and well into her 20s, she Growing up in London, though, success, but did support Barry Edwards, the former rugby league
want something to do well because was shy, but it seemed to morph Small’s shyness meant nobody White at the Royal Albert Hall. player and now rugby union coach
into a guardedness and a steely knew she wanted to be a singer. She Small was terrified. “I didn’t move, (their son, James Small-Edwards,
would sing in the playground at and I closed my eyes for the entire is a Labour and Co-operative
school, and once her uncle passed thing.” She has battled stage fright councillor, who was elected for
her bedroom and heard her singing throughout her career. London’s Bayswater ward in May,
and told her to keep it up. “That helping Labour gain control over
was something that fed me for a The band were dropped by their Westminster city council for the
long time,” she says. When she record company three years later first time). Small and Edwards
said at school she wanted to be a and she was devastated. “I thought: broke up when James was a baby;
singer, they laughed. “A lot of the I’ve missed the boat. You don’t another long-term relationship
white teachers laughed at the Black think you’re going to get a second came to an end fairly recently. One
children quite often at school,” she chance,” she says. “That was the song on her new album, Love Me Or
says. “They belittled your ideas and lowest I got, and that’s what made Not, is in her typically empowering
tried to belittle your confidence.” me realise that I love singing, but style. “I used to shy away from
I thought I’d have to do it on the out-and-out love songs,” she says.
She once asked the music teacher side.” Instead, she was asked to “When I used to sing any love song,
if she could join the choir, and he provide vocals for M People. The I’d channel the love I have for my
dismissively asked if she could sing. idea was that the Manchester son; it would not be romantic love.
“Nobody else auditioned,” she says. dance-pop band would be an ever- Romantic love, that can come and
“I thought: ‘I’ll show you’, but you changing collective, with different go. Sometimes it’s here, sometimes
shouldn’t have to be tough and vocalists, but Small fit perfectly and it’s there, sometimes you’re looking
resilient at school.” She would push she joined the band permanently all around for it.” She smiles.
back at any sense she wasn’t being (around this time, legend has “Romantic love is not, for me, as
treated equally. Then, she says, it she provided vocals for the present and consistent as family
“you get in trouble. You’re seen as a re-recorded version of Black Box’s love. It paid off, singing the love
troublemaker.” It was the same later Ride on Time, though it has become songs to my family and son because
in the music industry, when she something of a running joke that they still love me; they’re still in
could be labelled “difficult”. “Being she refuses to confirm it). my life.” She laughs, full-bodied
a Black female, people think to and unselfconscious. “Oh dear,
themselves: ‘You’re standoffish’ or In the 1990s, it wasn’t easy to be I’m making myself laugh.”
‘You’re a diva’. No, just shy! There a working mother in the music
are some Black women who are shy, industry. Her son was born in 1998, At the parade for the Queen’s
but you don’t get attributed those and a few months later she was on platinum jubilee last month, Small
kinds of …” She pauses. “People are tour with a baby. As a solo artist, she appeared on one of the “national
quick to believe a negative.” also became aware that space for treasures” buses. Even now, at 57,
Black female artists was limited. she wondered if she should do it:
Small’s parents had come to “I’d never be on the bill with another “I grew up thinking: ‘Do I belong?’”
the UK in the early 1960s from Black female performer. To this day, She endures constant reminders
Barbados. Her father worked as you don’t see more than one on the that the racism she experienced
a bus conductor and was “very bill. Why is that? Because everyone, as a child hasn’t disappeared, but
domineering”, she says. “He wasn’t especially my contemporaries, we she is also adamant that you “don’t
a very nice man.” But her mother, all sound different, we sing different apologise for the space you take
who worked for a supermarket, types of songs, and you just think up”. When her son was born, it
was more loving. Both contributed that can’t be an accident … People was the first time that she actively
to her resilience, she says: “Him used to say to me: ‘We got you embraced her Britishness, she
because of the negative, and instead of such and such.’ They tried says. “I thought, I don’t want my
my mother because of the total to foster an air of competition, and son to grow up thinking: ‘Where
positivity. She made my sister and I’d be like: ‘We’re friends.’ That do I belong?’ like I did. My son has
I feel like we walked on clouds.” stumps everybody: ‘You mean, you got ties with Barbados. He goes
It was her mother – who lives with talk to each other?’ I’m like: ‘Not there; he sees his family there.
Small in west London now – who only do we talk to each other, we But he feels British, and he has
counteracted the racism Small like each other.’” the right to embrace these streets
experienced at school. “It’s like a and be embraced, and if he’s not
flower: you face the light and that’s Small released a second solo embraced, he wants to know why.”
album in 2006, and for the next few
So she took her place on the bus
PHOTOGRAPHS: SUKI DHANDA/THEGUARDIAN; SHUTTERSTOCK With M People, because “if you don’t, when do you
1996; (right) on accept that you’re British?” She
stage, 2012 smiles. “There are so many things
that I am, and I’ve learned over the
years to embrace it all and I think
that’s where my confidence has
come from. Because I know what
I am, and I’m proud of it.”
Colour My Life is released on 5 August

• The Guardian
Monday 18 July 2022
8 Arts

But not a drop When you do
to drink … Love Come Dine With
Islanders are Me, says ‘Nasty
limited to two Nick’ Bateman,
tipples a day you’re drunk
for five days

‘Alcohol is like a hand grenade’ there were bottles of champagne,”
he recalls. Alcohol was used to
Contestants on A Bateman, “and we got through all drinking during his 34 days in the reward contestants after they
Big Brother drank s she waited of our bottles on the first night. I Big Brother house. “Alcohol was completed tasks. Hutton says it
booze by the nervously to enter the Love Island think we got through 20 bottles.” given to us when we were feeling became like “gold dust” as a result,
crateful. But Love villa in 2018 – red lipstick applied, It was the year 2000 and this was, down or depressed or nothing with housemates bickering about
Island’s tortuous microphone on, nude swimming after all, the first ever series of a was going on,” he says, “because how all the booze was distributed.
trysts are fuelled costume tied at the front – Megan programme that birthed reality TV obviously alcohol is the molotov “It was quite high on the priority
by fruit juice and Barton-Hanson turned to her as we know it. “The hand grenade cocktail producers use to liven list for a lot of contestants. It was
nosecco. Is reality handlers and made what she of alcohol,” Bateman says, was a things up.” Bateman says drink was like, ‘We want to get drunk.’”
TV on the wagon? thought was a simple request. “useful weapon” for producers coveted by contestants because it
Could she have a glass of rosé? keen to make an entertaining show. would “quell the boredom” of being Hutton says he became “steaming
Amelia Tait It didn’t seem fair, after all, that captive in the house. drunk” two or three times. Once,
investigates she was expected to “go on TV Reality TV and alcohol used to he became so inebriated he threw
for the first time and try to strut be as inseparable as two tanned Five years later, Anthony Hutton, up and another contestant became
my stuff like I think I’m Britney influencers gunning for a £50,000 the eventual winner of Big Brother “hands on” with him to the point
Spears” without a single drink. The prize. Many of Big Brother’s most 6, entered the house to find little that some viewers felt he was being
producers said no. memorable moments were fuelled had changed. “As soon as we got in, taken advantage of. Another time,
by booze. In the show’s sixth he infamously became “raunchy in
Barton-Hanson was one of the series, contestant Kinga Karolczak ‘They’d give the jacuzzi” with fellow contestant
show’s “bombshells” – a contestant infamously mimed masturbating you no-alcohol Makosi Musambasi. Does Hutton
who enters the reality dating show with a wine bottle and later said prosecco’ … think this would have happened had
late to stir up trouble among the of the incident: “On Big Brother, Megan Barton- he been sober? “Probably not,” he
loved-up couples. But after her rosé they want you to go crazy so give Hanson on a says. After the incident, he limited
request, the producers dropped a you loads of alcohol. Drinking Love Island date his drinking for the rest of the show.
bombshell on her. “They said, ‘Just makes me behave like a completely
to warn you, when you get in there, different person.” Big Brother ran on Channel 4
you can only have two drinks.’” until 2010. TV producer Gavin
Today, things are seemingly Henderson became creative director
Almost two decades earlier, Nick more sober. One contestant in the when it relaunched on Channel 5 a
Bateman entered the Big Brother current Love Island, Luca Bish, year later. Times had changed: the
house with rather a lot more in made headlines when he said: “I breakdown of Britain’s Got Talent
his suitcase. “We were allowed to don’t drink.” And, thanks to secrets runner-up Susan Boyle in 2009 led
bring in two bottles of wine,” says spilled by former contestants, to greater scrutiny of reality TV,
viewers now know about the strict with The X Factor announcing new
two-tipples-a-night rule. So how, measures to protect contestants.
when and why did things change? Alcohol was still a big part of
Big Brother, but Henderson
Bateman – who you might know says producers were wary of
better as “Nasty Nick” thanks to his losing control: “Alcohol adds
infamous conniving on the show – complications to a situation that,
says there were no real rules around ultimately, you are responsible for.”

Still, Big Brother was hardly
booze-free. “As a producer, what
you’re trying to do is get the
best 45 minutes of television
out of a day,” Henderson says,

PHOTOGRAPHS: ITV/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK; CHANNEL 4

•

The Guardian The great women’s 9
Monday 18 July 2022 art bulletin

‘If I did another, Katy Hessel
I probably
wouldn’t drink’ Our new fortnightly series opens with a response to
… Nick Bateman the heatwave: the artist who grew wheat in New York
on Big Brother 1

Infamous …
Kinga Karolczak
grabs her bottle
in Big Brother 6

“It’s a balance between reducing encouraged to drink and take drugs Sent to 28 cities
people’s inhibitions enough to be before their appearances. These … Denes among
entertaining, but not giving them claims were denied. her crop
so much that they’ll tip over into
being unpleasant or fractious.” It’s little wonder, then, that F orty years ago, in the summer To attempt to plant, sustain and harvest two
alcohol is no longer British reality of 1982, Agnes Denes was two acres of wheat here, wasting valuable real
Love Island debuted in 2015, TV’s secret ingredient. Still, months into tending to her estate and obstructing the ‘machinery’ by
with the two-drinks rule first there’s no law that lists the exact two-acre wheatfield, which she going against the system, was an effrontery
being reported in 2017, a year amounts producers can give to had grown in one of the busiest, that made it the powerful paradox I had
after contestant Zara Holland was contestants. Even today, it varies most urban, and most expensive sought for the calling to account.”
stripped of her Miss Great Britain dramatically from show to show. corners of the world: Battery Park landfill in
title for having sex on the show. She “When you do Come Dine With Me,” By situating the wheatfield between
later said of the incident: “There says Bateman, recalling his 2012 Manhattan. Even back then, the trash-filled the pillars of capitalism and patriarchy, a
was alcohol and it was in the appearance, “you’re drunk for five stone’s throw from Wall Street, the work
moment. I made a mistake.” days.” Abroad, old habits die hard: ground that lay underneath the field was called into question some of the most striking 
the creator of the American dating social, economic and ecological concerns. It
Things have seemingly become show Love Is Blind said in 2020 that valued at $4.5bn. represented, the artist said, “food, energy,
stricter since: 2017 Love Islander producers had a “do what you want” commerce, world trade, economics” and
Jess Shears told Closer magazine attitude to contestant drinking. One An act of protest to highlight the paradoxes referred to “mismanagement, waste,
that contestants were given more contestant who came across badly world hunger”.
booze on first dates, in order to on air said she “overdrank” due to between the urban and rural worlds, her
“loosen up and be a bit more her discomfort during filming. If this represented the state of society in
flirtatious”. But Barton-Hanson work, Wheatfield – A Confrontation, was an 1982 – when it was possible for a two-acre
says that wasn’t the case by 2018. Does the disappearance, or wheatfield to be planted in Manhattan,
“They were sneaky as well,” she reduction, of booze from reality ambitious four-month project that saw the financially aided by New York’s Public Art
says. “They’d give you nosecco, TV really reflect a greater duty Fund – what do the images tell us about the
no-alcohol prosecco.” When she of care towards contestants? Not area transform from urban desolation to world 40 years on? Most glaringly obvious,
heard her date with contestant Eyal if the shows themselves drive the image of the twin towers – the archetype
Booker was in a vineyard, she was contestants to drink when they waist-high golden wheat. Something that of capitalism – is now, hauntingly, a symbol
delighted. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, emerge into the real world. Radio of the lives lost and subsequent wars after
yes! We can get tipsy this afternoon. presenter Iain Lee said in 2018 that would have seemed unimaginable back then the 9/11 attacks.
It’s going to be so much fun.’ But no, the “trauma” of I’m A Celebrity led
it was all fake alcohol.” one of his fellow contestants on the – and even so more today. The fact that it would now be impossible
show, a former alcoholic, to resume for a wheatfield on this scale to be installed in
During her time on Love Island, drinking. In 2019, personal trainer Although impermanent, the work is most cities around the world – especially New
Barton-Hanson did break the rules. Pascal Craymer said she drank York, where land is even more expensive –
Upset at the results of a lie detector four bottles of wine every day still imprinted in the memory of those shows not just the rising density of real estate,
test, she had her two allocated after appearing on The Only Way Is the cost-of-living crisis and the further divide
white wines then “downed” two Essex. “These shows chew you up who witnessed it. “Kansas had landed between the one per cent and the rest of the
cans of beer that belonged to other and spit you out,” she said. world, but the mismanagement of land and
contestants. She became “very in Manhattan!” wrote New York Times the greed of capitalism.
tipsy” and the producers “went And it would be foolish to
mental”, warning her she’d be assume that reality TV producers critic Holland Cotter. “It felt like a farm … Because the setting aside of land which
banned from drinking if she did it have suddenly become altruists. will ecologically benefit the planet has been
again. Sometimes, she and another The decline of booze on their shows like smelling the outdoors,” said curator a low priority, we are now feeling the effects.
contestant used to decide to eat “as also reflects changing cultural By the end of this week, temperatures will
little as possible” at dinnertime “to norms. A 2018 study by University Joyce Pomeroy Schwartz. rise to a sweltering 45C in France and Spain,
get maximum effects from the two College London found that almost and wildfires are intensifying in Portugal
glasses of rosé”. 30% of 16 to 24-year-olds in the UK Even back then, The photographs that as firefighters continue to battle with
are teetotal. The study also found remain are remarkable. the raging blazes, destroying vegetation
In hindsight, Barton-Hanson that while 27% of youngsters binge- and causing droughts.
is glad alcohol was limited. “I just drank in 2005, when Hutton was on the ground under In one, we see the artist
think emotions would’ve been Big Brother, only 18% did in 2015, tending to her wheat, After the four months of Denes’s
heightened,” she says. “It just when Love Island launched. dressed in a striped Wheatfield was up, the wheat was harvested
would’ve been a different show for the field was shirt with high-waisted and distributed across 28 cities around
everyone. It’s so intense in there. Neither Hutton nor Bateman have the world for an exhibition called The
Every day is equivalent to a week, regrets, exactly, but both believe valued at $4.5bn blue jeans, starkly International Art Show for the End of World
there is no escape. With alcohol in they would have been very different contrasting to the grey, Hunger. Of course, it didn’t end world
the mix as well, it would’ve been contestants sober. “If I did another stocky skyscrapers of hunger, but it was about taking action, one
absolute chaos.” reality show,” says Bateman, “I step at a time. “My work was aimed to deal
probably wouldn’t drink, or I’d drink Wall Street in the background. In another, with one little problem at a time,” Denes said,
Wider safeguarding has now very sparingly. Because you’re just “and to find benign solutions. I don’t make
become more of an issue. Since more in control of what you’re doing we see the Statue of Liberty looming in the my work for myself; I make it for humanity.”
Barton-Hanson’s time on Love and what you’re saying. It’s a very
Island, two former contestants powerful medium – everything you distance. From a different angle, we see that
have taken their lives. In 2019, The say and do is captured.”
Jeremy Kyle Show was cancelled In the UK, Samaritans can be the glittering landscape is set in the shadow
after a participant who had been contacted on 116 123 or email jo@
subjected to a lie detector test took samaritans.org. You can contact the of the twin towers.
his own life. A subsequent episode mental health charity Mind on 0300
of Channel 4’s Dispatches alleged 123 3393 or at mind.org.uk Wheatfield didn’t just challenge the two-
that participants on the show were
PHOTOGRAPH: AGNES DENES/LESLIE TONKONOW and-three-dimensional art objects in nearby

museums (historically, women have sought

alternative spaces to traditional institutions

which have largely shut them out). It also

confronted the state of economics, politics

and society. “My decision to plant a wheatfield

in Manhattan,” Denes said, “instead of

designing just another public sculpture, grew

out of the longstanding concern and need to

call attention to our misplaced priorities and

deteriorating human values.

“Manhattan is the richest, most

professional, most congested and, without a

doubt, most fascinating island in the world.

• The Guardian
Monday 18 July 2022
10 TV and radio
Super Surgeons:
A Chance at Life
10pm, Channel 4

When the past
catches up with
you … Iain
De Caestecker
as Gabe

Review The Control Room, we weave when first we practise to deceive, and the “The longer I spend in this field, the more
BBC One cropper we can come when trying to keep a promise to the unfairness of it all strikes me,” admits
a beloved friend. Especially when it involves moving Prof Vin Paleri – one of the oncologists
This meaty call- the body of the man Sam claims she accidentally killed who is followed in this remarkable three-
centre thriller is in self-defence after “two years of hell”. part documentary about pioneering
an unexpected cancer treatment. In the opening
treat for summer Gabe’s initial decision leaves him open to blackmail episode, mum Jade has a throat tumour
by Anthony (Daniel Portman), one of his co-workers, that needs to be removed through
★★★★☆ which promises to drag him deeper and deeper into the her mouth using a robot, while
Glasgow underworld. Meanwhile, his boss Anna Breck photographer Dimitrios accepts that
Lucy Mangan (Sharon Rooney) and the police become increasingly beating cancer may also mean losing
sceptical of the idea that he has no clue who might his arm. Although emotionally hefty and
T he BBC’s new three-part drama The have known him as “Gabo”. Some sketchy seeming graphic, it shows the extraordinary work
Control Room is one of those rare beasts. flatmates don’t help matters either. that so many people rely on.
It’s a thriller that takes a tremendous,
hooky premise, then builds around it The plot is a meaty, succulent thing that does not Hollie Richardson
with loving detail – instead of considering threaten to sprawl. It drops plenty of hints and clues
that its work is largely done and relying on about what has gone on via (restrained, non-irritating And 24 Hours in A&E about who is and isn’t
the audience’s basic need for resolution to keep them use of) flashbacks and present-day scenes. The another 9pm, Channel 4 human, as well as the
watching. The hook is: what if you were an emergency convolutions of the current narrative seem to arise thing In tonight’s episode of unravelling of a nefarious
call handler who takes a call from someone, hysterical organically and never strain your credulity. the emergency ward grand plan. Also, Aaron
after killing a man, who recognises your voice, revealing Ginny & documentary, filmed in Paul (as Caleb) heroically
to your boss and all your colleagues that you must The whole thing is threaded through with a genuine Georgia season the autumn of 2020, we takes on the burden of
somehow know each other? What do you do next? sense of grief caused by deaths from both natural and two (starring follow 70-year-old a gruelling amount of
unnatural causes, which is especially marked in a Brianne recovering alcoholic Jim, “almost dead from
Well, if you’re Strathclyde Ambulance Service’s Gabe wonderful scene between De Caestecker and Bowman Howey, above) who is rushed into St gunshot wound” acting.
(Iain De Caestecker), or “Gabo” to the mysterious caller, in the second episode. And it is anchored by a terrific, might be with George’s hospital with Jack Seale
using a forgotten childhood nickname, you make the tender performance by De Caestecker, who tries to us by the end breathing difficulties.
split-second decision to deny all knowledge of any resist the inevitable at every turn but must eventually of the year. It Meanwhile, Savita – an The Invisible Pilot
possible suspects. You then hotfoot it to your dad’s bow to the Fates. It is a fine portrait of an essentially only has three intensive care nurse 9pm, Sky
(Stuart Bowman) to retrieve a letter in a childish hand, good man whose innate gentleness has always seen fans, but we during the pandemic – Documentaries
addressed to Gabo, then on to a pub to ask if anyone him caught up in other people’s misfortunes. The are delighted! is brought in with her In the second episode of
still has “Sam’s number”. This leads to dark mutterings relationship between the young Gabe (Harvey five-year-old son, Rylan, this documentary, family
about the past – and Sam’s malignity – with Gabe being Calderwood) and young Sam (Farrah Thomas) – two after they were both hit man Gary Betzner – a pilot
thrown out by a man called Robbo, whose own lonely, sorrowing youngsters who find something in by a car. HR who faked his own death
background is evidently enmeshed with Gabe and Sam’s each other beyond even the normal intensity of nearly by jumping off a bridge –
and who issues strongly worded advice not to return. adolescent friendship – is also sweetly and convincingly Gambling: A Game soon gets caught up in
drawn. It also determinedly avoids the sentimentality of Life and Death dodgy dealings with drug
Sam (Joanna Vanderham) and Gabe eventually and/or creepy pseudo-sexuality that often accompanies 9pm, BBC Three baron Pablo Escobar. HR
reunite at a burned-out cabin in the woods (actually such depictions. You can see how the boy became the Harri and Jack are two
a Christmas tree farm), whose charred remains are man, and it gives further emotional heft to the teenagers with gambling Big Zuu’s Big Eats
obviously central to the hostility and secrecy that propulsive thriller. addictions. In this 10pm, Dave
surrounds their history – and pervades their present. one-off documentary, Although far too young to
The rest of the hour (and the next, for I have looked There are moments, in fact, when the latter feels friends and family join watch the Fresh Prince
ahead) is a nicely worked illustration of the tangled web almost like a bonus to the melancholic mood piece that them in sharing powerful first time round, affable
is carefully constructed underneath. It feels as much a testimonies about why foodie Big Zuu seems
story about how impossible it is to escape the past, to recovery has felt so awed to meet Geoffrey
rise above the kind of shocking events that can shape impossible – and why the Bel-Air butler – AKA
us so profoundly. Setting it in Glasgow, a city large online betting has RSC actor Joseph Marcell.
enough to offer all the possibilities a crime drama exploded in recent At an apropos London
requires but is still, crucially, a much closer-knit entity years. HR location, the pair neck
than, say, London, is a smart move. rum and cook up a
Westworld St Lucian feast while
Created and written by Nick Leather and produced 9pm, Sky Atlantic Zuu’s wingmen Hyder
by the team behind Sherlock and Dracula, The Control A pivotal episode of the and Tubsey attentively
Room feels like an unexpected treat – especially in high confusing sci-fi saga wait on them.
summer, when viewers are more traditionally fobbed brings further revelations Graeme Virtue
off with second- or third-rate stuff while we’re all too
hot or on holiday to complain. I have not watched the
final episode yet, but it seems unlikely – given how
tight and well-paced the plot is – that it will all fall apart
then. Unlike poor Gabe, I think we can all afford to
relax and enjoy.

•

The Guardian 11
Monday 18 July 2022

BBC One BBC Two ITV Channel 4 Channel 5 BBC Four

6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.15 Morning 6.15 Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 7.0 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 6.35 3rd Rock from the Sun (T) (R) 6.0 Milkshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine 7.0 Great American Railroad
Live (T) 10.0 Close Calls: On Garden Rescue (T) (R) 7.45 9.0 Lorraine (T) 10.0 This 7.25 The King of Queens (T) (T) 12.15 Nightmare Tenants, Journeys (T) (R) Michael
Camera (T) 10.30 Animal Sign Zone: Cat Watch – The Morning (T) 12.30 Loose (R) 8.15 Frasier (T) (R) 9.45 Slum Landlords (T) (R) 1.10 Portillo travels from
Park (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Horizon Experiment (T) Women (T) 1.30 News and The Big Bang Theory (T) (R) News (T) 1.15 Home and Burlington, Vermont, to
Under the Hammer (T) (R) (R) 8.45 Athletics: World Weather (T) 1.55 Local 11.05 Car S.O.S. Special: 7 Day Away (T) (R) 1.45 Neighbours Plattsburgh, New York.
12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 1.0 Championships (T) (R) 12.15 News and Weather (T) 2.0 Challenge (T) (R) 12.05 News (T) 2.15 Witness to 7.30 Coast (T) (R) A perilous
News (T) 1.30 Regional Politics Live (T) 1.0 Coast Dickinson’s Biggest and Best (T) 12.10 Ramsay’s 24 Hours Murder: A Darrow & Darrow railway ride in Co Wicklow.
News and Weather (T) 1.45 and Country Auctions (T) Deals (T) (R) 3.0 Tenable (T) to Hell and Back (T) (R) 1.05 Mystery (Michael Robison,
Impossible (T) (R) 2.30 A (R) 1.45 Live Athletics: (R) 4.0 Tipping Point (T) (R) The Great House Giveaway 2020) (T) 4.0 Bargain-Loving
Countryside Summer (T) 3.0 World Championships (T) 5.0 The Chase (T) (R) 6.0 (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown Brits in the Sun (T) (R) 5.0
Escape to the Country (T) (R) The women’s marathon Local News and Weather (T) (T) 3.0 Find It, Fix It, Flog News (T) 6.0 Neighbours (T)
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• The Guardian TODAY’S PET CORNER ANSWER 1961
Monday 18 July 2022
12 Puzzles

Friday’s Quick crossword no 16,285
solutions
12345
Wordsearch
Across Down 6

1 Police department that investigates 1 Steal – Hogwarts School

financial malpractice (5,5) caretaker (5) 7 8
7 Share out (8) 2 In the middle of (7)

8 Highly excited (4) 3 Depict (4)

9 Under the influence of drugs (4) 4 Cross-examine (8)

10 Shot (7) 5 Fill with wonder (5) 9 10
12 Money earned from exporting 6 Tapered container for loose bulk

crude oil (11) material such as grain (6)

14 Automatic record player (7) 11 Massive (8) 11

16 Feeling of resentful longing (4) 12 Removes feathers (6)

19 World’s largest furniture retailer (4) 13 Portable light in a transparent 12 13

20 Pre-decimal British coin, 40 to the case (7)

pound (8) 15 Circumvent (5)

21 Deadly nightshade (10) 17 Spiky plant with white bell-shaped

Sudoku no 5,715 flowers, native to hot dry parts of 14 15 16 17
North America (5)

18 Cancelled (4)

18

19 20

21

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Suguru

Sudoku no 5,719 Suguru Wordsearch

Easy. Fill the grid so that each row, column and 3x3 Fill the grid so that each square Can you find 14 words containing the
box contains the numbers 1-9. Printable version at in an outlined block contains a letters “go” in the grid? Words can
theguardian.com/sudoku digit. A block of 2 squares contains run forwards, backwards, vertically
the digits 1 and 2, a block of three or diagonally, but always in a
squares contains the digits 1, 2 and straight, unbroken line.
3, and so on. No same digit appears
in neighbouring squares, not even
diagonally.

Word wheel
TAILPIECE

Saturday’s Quick
crossword

Solution no 16,284

S AWN T A PWA T E R

HI DAO I

RUL E BOUF FANT

ADBNFDZ

P I CCAL I LL I

NAD S E P V

EARTHY F I GARO

LDABRRC

P I NACOLADA

GR R RND L

ROUNDERS M I D I

AHAO GS

F O R T Y TWO EM I T

Word wheel Pet corner

Find as many words as What year did Ham the Chimp,
possible using the letters the first ape to go into space,
in the wheel. Each must make his journey?
use the central letter a. 1965
and at least two others. b. 1959
Letters may be used only c. 1961
once. You may not use d. 1955
plurals, foreign words or Answer top right
proper nouns. There is at
least one nine-letter word
to be found. TARGET:
Excellent-32. Good-27.
Average-20.

• G2
Daily
Wanted: a Tory candidate with a clue about Britain’s future John Harris, page 3 pullout
The bearable lightness of being a mother Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett, page 4 life &
Colin Forbes, influential figure in mid-century UK design Obituaries, page 6 arts
section
Inside

The Guardian Monday 18 July 2022

Opinion
and ideas

It’s a hothouse, T here’s no getting around it, the UK’s below a 2C rise, and if tipping points are crossed and IMAGE: BBC
but in years once equitable climate is falling
to come 40C apart. We are now firmly on course feedbacks kick in, the figure could be much higher. So, 
will seem cool for hothouse Britain and the signs
are all around us. Just three years hothouse Britain is a reality, and the sooner we face this Bill McGuire
Bill ago, the mercury hit a record high is professor
McGuire of 38.7C (101.7F) in Cambridge. A fact, the better. And be very clear, this isn’t alarmist. It emeritus of
year later, the Met Office mocked geophysical
up a weather forecast for 2050, showing 40C-plus isn’t what deniers are fond of calling “climate porn”. and climate
temperatures across much of the UK. But the speed of hazards at UCL.
climate breakdown is such that this future is already This is simply how things are. Hothouse Earth:
upon us. Today, the Met Office’s first ever red extreme an Inhabitant’s
heat warning comes into force for much of England, In the decades ahead, summers are set to get ever Guide is
as ferocious 40C-plus temperatures threaten to published on
overwhelm ambulance services and A&E departments, hotter and last longer, overwhelming the other seasons, 4 August
and potentially bring about thousands of deaths.
and reducing winter to a couple of dreary months
And this is just the beginning. When our children are
our age, they will yearn for a summer as “cool” as 2022, punctuated by damaging storms and destructive floods.
because long before the century’s end, 40C-plus heat
will be nothing to write home about in the climate- Blistering heat will be the default weather for July and
mangled world they inherit.
August, when a combination of high temperatures and
The brutal truth is that dodging dangerous, all-
pervasive, climate breakdown is now practically humidity will make sunbathing and working in the
impossible. Even if all the promises and pledges made
at Cop26 were kept, we would still be lucky to stay open extremely unpleasant and potentially deadly. Our

poorly insulated homes will provide little respite as they

are turned into unliveable heat traps. Camping out in

gardens and parks will become commonplace as baking

nights make sleeping indoors impossible. Inevitably,

increasing numbers of people will flee the cities to

escape the heat-island effect that will transform them

into unbearable saunas. A general migration northwards

and uphill can be expected, as cooler conditions become

a big property selling point.
But hothouse Britain is about far

more than insufferable summer heat.

• The Guardian Monday 18 July 2022

2 Founded 1821 Independently owned by the Scott Trust № 54,712
‘Comment is free… but facts are sacred’ CP Scott
It’s a hothouse, but in years
to come 40C will seem cool Leadership race found it expedient to use government intervention
Bill McGuire to stymie further rises. Hiking the minimum wage
The Tories are likely to – which covers one in four employees – has resulted
Continued from front resurrect the economics in pay growth among the lowest earners running
that almost broke Britain at almost twice the level of other staff. Millions of
Progressive climate breakdown will self-employed workers, however, are not covered by
affect everyone and insinuate itself into It is no coincidence that the modern-day Conservative such legislation and earn far less than the minimum
every aspect of our lives. Transport and party was born just when Britain was its most equal, in wage. Conservatives have learned to love the policy
energy infrastructure will succumb repeatedly to the the late 70s. Thatcherism was a counter-revolution in because it allows them to claim they are on the side
onslaught of extreme weather, making otherwise economic thinking. Its aim was to roll back what had of workers while maintaining gig economy practices
straightforward journeys increasingly problematic, until then been a successful model of state intervention that undermine their bargaining power.
and power outages a normal part of daily life. in favour of business interests. During the 1970s,
energy price shocks produced inflation. Yet this was Wealth inequality is a different story. Last week,
Health and wellbeing services will buckle, as tens attributed by rightwing thinkers to slack government the Resolution Foundation pointed out in its
of thousands of the most vulnerable people struggle fiscal and monetary policy. When policy was tightened, Stagnation Nation report that labour productivity
in the growing heat and humidity, cases of poisoning the lengthening dole queues that resulted were grew by just 0.4% a year in the UK after the financial
due to heat-related food and water contamination blamed on the power that trade unions had gained crisis, half the rate of the 25 richest Organisation for
burgeon, and new diseases suited to the hotter after decades of full employment. Economic Co-operation and Development countries.
conditions – including malaria and dengue fever – gain Yet even these small gains produced no real wage
a foothold. An explosion in mental health problems is Thatcherism pinned the sense of the country being growth. Instead, the fruits of labour went to boost
also foreseen, as living conditions become ever more adrift on egalitarianism. Its supporters argued that company profit margins – and ultimately benefited
economic progress needed more, not less, inequality. wealthy owners such as shareholders, who are seeing
Adesperate for many, and the strain on individuals and Tories first identified their enemies and then record dividend payments. Rising asset prices –
opportunistically scapegoated them for the country’s especially housing – have widened the gap between
families takes its toll. plight. That ploy worked when they were insurgents, the haves and the have-nots. Since 2008, the average
but today’s Conservative party has been in power for 12 wealth held by an adult in a family in the richest tenth
confluence of desiccating drought, years. It is struggling to repeat the trick. Voters do not of the population increased by roughly £500,000
torrential rains and battering hail, recognise trade union leaders as “barons” because they over that held by an average adult in the middle of
flooding and new pests that thrive do not think of their status as being more privileged the distribution. Wealth taxes, meanwhile, have not
in the heat will take a massive toll than that of their members or the general public. risen as a share of GDP. It’s clear that they should.
on crops at a time when frequent
harvest failures and climate wars What has been created in Britain since the 1970s is Capitalism’s dilemma used to be that companies
will mean an erratic and unreliable an unstable economic structure marked by high levels had to keep real wages growing in line with
supply from overseas. We have of inequality. The financial crisis of 2008 should have productivity to ensure that the goods produced were
already seen price hikes and gaps on supermarket put paid to this. Instead, Conservative prime ministers sold. Financial market deregulation solved this by
shelves as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict. continued to support the inequality-driving practices enabling households and corporations to borrow
Climate breakdown will bring far worse. One study of big business and the uneven division of gains from from a lightly supervised moneylending sector, which
predicts that by 2050 the world will need half as much economic activity. None of the candidates to lead the sustained purchasing power in the economy. For
food again, while crop yields could be down by as Tory party show any sign that reducing poverty and Conservatives this was more congenial than paying
much as 30%. This is nothing less than a recipe for inequality will be a priority. Levelling up remains very higher real wages. Brexit allows consumer protections
widespread hunger, social unrest and civil strife, and much a slogan in search of a policy. to be further reduced to boost lenders’ profits. This
the UK is unlikely to be immune. will turbocharge a form of capitalism that caused
Heat and drought will be the signature conditions UK income inequality is high but the Tory party has the last economic crash. All of those in the race for
of hothouse Britain, but there will still be rain. In the the Tory party leadership appear committed to such
summer, downpours fed by convective storms will moves. It is depressing that Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer
be so heavy that little rain will penetrate the ground, seems committed to them too.
most of it flowing over the surface to feed lethal and
destructive flash floods. Autumn and winter will see Wildlife 30 conservation groups – set out to control their
frequent incursions of powerful, damaging, storms spread (and claims to have now made nine areas in
and so-called atmospheric “rivers”, bringing rains that Controlling grey squirrels the British Isles safe for reds); even Prince Charles,
last for days on end, overwhelming catchments and is a question of humane as patron of the Red Squirrel Survival Trust, has put
driving river flooding on a biblical scale. methods and balance his weight behind eliminating greys.
Coastal communities will fight a losing battle as
bigger and more frequent storm surges, increasingly As anyone in mainland Britain who has ever attempted The latest move, a workable system for which
powerful waves and a remorseless hike in sea to grow berries or nuts – or indeed feed the birds – will was thought to be a decade away, is sterilisation.
level supercharge cliff erosion and permanently know, doing so is tantamount to an opening move in Fertility-based wildlife control is not unusual
swamp low-lying terrain. Sea level is now rising by a game of chess with local grey squirrels, a game the – though it has been controversial. In northern Italy,
a centimetre every two years, which is more than squirrels tend to win. Grey squirrels are also partial to a sterilisation campaign for greys was considered
double the rate for the period 1993-2002. Within the occasional bird’s egg or fledgling, and enjoy stripping 20 years ago as a humane alternative to live
80 years it will certainly be more than a metre higher, and eating the bark of young broadleaf trees, which can capture and euthanasia with halothane. However,
and could have climbed by 2m or even more. This either kill the trees or leave them open to infection. This, legal challenges brought so many delays that the
would bring the North Sea far inland, threatening quite apart from affecting biodiversity and landscape, invasive grey squirrel population expanded to an
especially low-lying communities such as the harms the timber industry. The loss – in damaged unmanageable level and eradication plans were
Lincolnshire towns of Boston and Spalding. timber, lost carbon revenue and tree replacements – is abandoned. The main issue in Britain was thought
Alongside rapid emissions cuts, the inevitability not insignificant: £37m a year in England and Wales. to be more technological than legal – designing an
of climate breakdown makes adaptation desperately oral contraceptive that targets only grey squirrels.
urgent. Now should be the time for massive Greys (Sciurus carolinensis), introduced from But scientists are now testing a special feeder that
government investment in resilient infrastructure North America in 1876, have almost replaced native would distinguish them by body weight. Another
and the preservation of health and wellbeing – but red squirrels (Sciurus vulgaris) by outcompeting their possibility in the years ahead is to use DNA editing
there is little sign of this. Our housing stock remains British counterparts for food and habitat. They are to ensure grey females are born infertile.
totally unprepared for the new summer temperatures larger and more robust, and immune to squirrelpox,
and flood plains are still being concreted over for new while reds are not. About 3 million grey squirrels now There is an uncomfortable tinge of xenophobia
estates; meanwhile, transport and energy networks live in the UK; the International Union for Conservation to some of the language used about a species which
continue to be dangerously exposed to the vagaries of Nature lists the grey squirrel among the top 100 has now been here for nearly 150 years (and, in
of flood, wind and excessive heat. No plans exist, most harmful invasive species in the world. many areas, is the only type of squirrel anyone
either, for a national water grid that could ease future has seen), while it is instructive to note that reds
drought conditions. The bottom line is that every Much effort and ingenuity has been expended – which also strip bark and take eggs – were seen as
decision – from local government upwards – needs in halting grey squirrel progress, from trapping pests until the early 1930s, and extensively culled.
to be made in light of building resilience to climate (then bludgeoning) and shooting them, to releasing There is, too, a strong argument that ecosystems
breakdown as well as slashing emissions. But this pine martens into their habitats. From 2016 to 2020, change: that that is their essential nature, in fact,
just isn’t happening. Red Squirrels United – a campaign supported by over and it is quixotic to stop it. Grey squirrels do actively
If you are terrified by what you have read, then threaten another species in Britain with extinction.
I have done what I set out to do. Too many of us still The attraction of contraceptive methods is that they
think that global heating will just mean that the are less inhumane, and aim for balance rather than
world will get a bit warmer and that somehow we will eradication. A willed stalemate, if you will.
muddle through. This is plain wrong. So be scared, but
don’t let this feed inertia. Instead channel the emotion
and use it to launch your contribution to tackling the
climate emergency. Things are going to be dreadful,
but – working together – we still have the time to stop
a dangerous future becoming a cataclysmic one.

Monday 18 July 2022 The Guardian •

Opinion 3

The party
takes the
Daily Mail’s view of
the country far too
seriously, failing to
see how much more
liberal it has become

Wanted: a Tory S omeone is missing from the ILLUSTRATION: about all of Britain’s big cities, and, in the wake of
candidate who Conservative leadership contest. ELEANOR the Tories’ transformation into the party of Brexit,
has a clue about I have no idea who they are, or exactly SHAKESPEARE their old rock-solid presence elsewhere now seems
Britain’s future what their pitch to Tory MPs and party to be weakening. They no longer run the council
members would be. But as we near  centred on Tunbridge Wells; in the city of St Albans,
John the point where there will be only two the archetypal dormitory town, they have a mere
Harris candidates left, the absence of anyone Politics four seats to the Lib Dems’ 50. Whenever you see
prepared to tell their party any home Weekly UK Graham Brady, the chair of the Tories’ backbench 1922
truths becomes all the more glaring. To listen to Committee, remember that Altrincham, the central
A huge amount of energy has been expended on talk of John Harris’s town in his Greater Manchester constituency, now has
tax cuts. There is across-the-board backing – even from podcast, search three Green party councillors in an affluent suburban
Tom Tugendhat, the supposed representative of a more ‘Politics Weekly borough – Trafford – that the Tories lost to Labour
compassionate Conservatism – for sending refugees to UK’. New in 2018. What all this tells you is simple enough: the
Rwanda, surely the single most monstrous Tory policy episodes every Conservative party takes the Daily Mail’s view of
of the past 12 years. Amid baking temperatures, there Thursday the middle class far too seriously, little realising that
has been almost no serious discussion of the climate – partly thanks to the expansion of higher education
emergency. To the delight of her backers in the rightwing – it is increasingly very different.
media, Kemi Badenoch, the only serious contender
who has appeared to offer anything radical, seems to A Toryism reinvented to respond to these changes
want post-Thatcher Toryism to be taken to its logical would hardly convince many of us, but still: they
conclusion, whereby government does no more than could conceivably keep their underlying scepticism
the “essentials”; although the politicians in charge of it about the state and belief in the market, but still be
must also guard against anything in the culture deemed flexible enough to at least parry our current economic
unsound (remarkably, one of her chosen targets is crisis, and have a more convincing approach to the
Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream, as if she speaks for an imaginary politics of climate. With new thinking, the party’s
constituency of diehards who walk past the freezer leading figures could do a lot more to revive the
cabinets in Waitrose and spit feathers). dream of the property-owning democracy. They
In 1983, the Tories’ support among 18- to 24-year- could also continue to extol the worth of marriage
olds who voted came in at just over 40%; by 2019, that and the family, with the proviso that families now
had nearly halved. Some of this is down to the fact that come in various shapes and sizes; a more gentle kind
free-market economics has completely failed younger of social conservatism, indeed, might appeal to large
people, but there are other shifts at work. Last week, I swathes of the population. What would have to go,
heard a brilliant lecture by the historian David Olusoga though, is the bitter, nasty strand of politics that holds
about the legacy of the British empire, in which he sway, closing down any non-Thatcherite thinking,
talked about primary schools in Manchester, Bristol,
London and Birmingham, whose classes are now Icontinually looking for enemies and trying to finish
thoroughly diverse, often polyglot, and increasingly
full of children whose heritages are complex and the revolutions of yesteryear.
multi-faceted. Here, he said, was the new Britain that
will have fully cohered by 2040. In my experience, the n the most inchoate way, some Tory MPs
kind of political and attitudinal changes that vision and members are beginning to understand
implies have long since reached younger people even all of this. That may account for the
in outwardly Brexit-supporting places. unexpected popularity of the trade minister
To some extent, such shifts are already here. The Penny Mordaunt: a candidate with some
Conservatives have now lost any real presence in just socially liberal views, and at least a patina of
modernity. She is also an ardent Brexiteer. So
far, her blurry uncertainty is probably an asset.
But if she manages to win, it may well clear, revealing
a leader at the mercy of her party’s hard right and
a familiar sense of Tory business as usual – a short
replay of the Cameron years, perhaps, without his PR
gleam and brass neck.
Last week, I had a read of Greater, the 2020 book
that Mordaunt co-authored with Chris Lewis, the
adviser who for some reason styles himself as her
“Grand Enchilada”. It is a very odd text, which bangs
on about a “mission to modernise” without ever really
stating what that might mean. Most of its sugary
tributes to the British character – “The British prefer
a future that looks very much like the past, only a lot
better,” it says – could be used as the window-dressing
for both a shift in Tory attitudes and more of the
same. Besides, the fact that the Conservatives will
soon be on to their fourth prime minister since 2016
surely shows that, to use Mordaunt’s rather laboured
formulation, their mounting predicament is not really
about “the leader” but “the ship”. Intelligent, future-
facing Tories must surely know: they should soon
change course before they collide with the rocks. As
this bizarre, contorted contest grinds on, the question
that should haunt them is whether they even can.

• The Guardian Monday 18 July 2022

4 Opinion

The bearable joy grew and grew as they got to know their babies, but  When I wanted a baby so much that it felt as
lightness of still they felt guilty. though the longing for it would suffocate me, other
being a mother Republic of people’s joy could feel like a personal slight. It is a very
The trouble is, I am happy-clappy. Literally, I am Parenthood difficult thing, to want a baby and to not have one.
Rhiannon happy and I am clappy, and I know it, as the song This article is In Claire Lynch’s memoir, Small: On Motherhoods,
Lucy Cosslett I’ve been singing to him endlessly would have it. The she writes of the “slow agony” of being unable to
baby is a delight at the moment; having learned to part of a series conceive, “the stinging blows, the unexpected shock
I ’m supposed to be writing about joy, but I’ve laugh, he is doing these big, wide-mouthed gurgly of other people’s happiness” and then “the guilt
just been crying my eyes out. Nothing major, giggles. When he’s not a delight, he’s a challenge, but by Rhiannon of getting what you always wanted”, followed by a
just the physical aftermath of illness, sleep the delight makes the hard parts survivable. It can be failure to be discreet about her happiness despite
deprivation and a baby whose Celtic roots are hard to feel sorry for yourself for long when a baby is Lucy Cosslett, promising herself she would.
manifesting themselves in an extreme hatred giggling at your silliness.
of hot weather. The thing I am learning about published on The other problem is that care work is work. It is
parenthood is that the lows can feel very low, One of the few things I wasn’t told about babies some of the hardest work that I have ever done, and
but they are also transient because the joy, oh before embarking on this journey was that you are theguardian. I have prior experience, so it was hardly a shock.
my God, the joy! It carries you through. supposed to pump their little legs in a bicycle motion But it is also love, and with that love comes joy. The
to make the wind come out. That was news to me. I do com/opinion two are so tightly bound together that to highlight
The cult of motherhood, of course, needs no this while continuously chanting “pumpy pumpy”. one is, in the eyes of some, to detract from the other.
more cheerleaders. The fact that we are all supposed It is silly and ridiculous and admitting this probably It’s bizarre, because you wouldn’t be expected to do
to be so happy-clappy about child-rearing has been means I will never be considered a writer of Serious any other job for free, even if you loved it. Yet to do
the source of much maternal unhappiness and Intellectual Importance. But I have come to realise the work of mothering, and to find joy in it, but to
frustration. Several women have confessed to me that that any parent worth their salt can only maintain a also want recompense for it, and societal support,
they didn’t feel that powerful, golden oxytocin high very low level of gravitas in the face of a small child is often framed as an unreasonable demand – despite
you’re supposed to feel after giving birth. Instead, the who demands to be entertained. our economic reliance on all that unpaid labour. And
so the joy gets dampened down, as we make our
I also speak “motherese” now, as linguists call baby political demands.
talk. It’s a term my own mother despises, and she still
hasn’t forgiven Noam Chomsky and Steven Pinker It is only relatively recently that I learned to
for giving mothers little credit for a child’s language square the feminist in me with the carer in me. The
acquisition. But, as I said to my son, because I was latter is a role I played for much of my adolescence
changing him while his grandmother and I discussed and, though I have never seen it as unfairly foisted
this: “They are men, so they would say that, wouldn’t upon me, I never truly appreciated how fulfilling
they, Mr Poopypants?” it could be. There is beauty and grace in caring
for another person, in tending to their body and
I suppose that’s the trade-off you make when you their needs. I always saw it in others but I never
have a child. Some people will cease to take you as appreciated it in myself. Now, when my boy is crying
seriously, especially if you’re a woman, but in exchange and I reach for him and hold him in my arms and see
you also get to not take yourself so seriously. And there him settle into sleep, I take pleasure and validation
is so much happiness to be found in that. I’m still using in that. And, yes, joy.
my brain (why do I feel the need to say this?) but I have
found a new freedom in lightness, too.

Monday 18 July 2022 The Guardian •

Letters  [email protected] 5
 @guardianletters

Established 1906 This isn’t the way to solve of NHS staff in different parts of Corrections and
the NHS’s staffing crisis the country who, among other clarifications
Country diary responsibilities, provide support
Buxton, Derbyshire The Guardian is to be congratulated any recognition of the unethical to their beleaguered, overworked, • The manager of Germany’s
on its sustained reporting of way in which NHS recruitment from disillusioned and undervalued women’s football team is
I find there’s a trade to be had the NHS’s crippling staff crisis, low- and middle-income countries colleagues. They have repeatedly Martina Voss-Tecklenburg,
in picking bilberries. You can go including the feature on nurses is weakening their health systems. witnessed the government’s lack of not “Voss-Teclenburg” or
for tall bushy stands, where the with much-needed skills coming to This is aggravating their mortality care for the NHS and its lack of vision “Voss-Tecklenberg” as we also
fruits are bigger and possibly this country to bail out the health and morbidity, in flagrant breach for restoring and sustaining services. rendered it in a Euro 2022 report
sweeter, while your back is less service (G2, 13 July). Also worthy of of the WHO code on international (Paños blunder sets Germany on a
strained by the labour. But finding note was the article about the long recruitment of health workers To make matters worse, NHS path to quarter-finals, 13 July, p38).
all those glistening beads buried hours imposed on staff (Doctors to which we have subscribed. staff are now being blamed by the
deep in the tea-like foliage (which forced on to night shifts amid crisis Prof Rachel Jenkins government, and by frustrated • A feature about overseas-trained
was once, incidentally, plucked in staffing, 12 July), which reported Former director, WHO Collaborating patients, for the shortcomings nurses was illustrated with a picture
and dried to make a substitute the Department of Health and Social Centre, King’s College London of services that have been on life of Stephanie Padilla-Madriaga at
beverage in the Hebrides) is very Care’s Marie Antoinette stance: support since before the pandemic. “East Sussex hospital” in Redhill.
slow work. Another option is to go “Local providers are responsible for • With electioneering for the While Covid-19 has more clearly That should have said East Surrey
for scantier, low-standing shrubs ensuring they have the right staff in leader of the Conservative party highlighted the strains throughout hospital (‘I questioned my passion
where the fruits are more visible place. We have increased medical in full flow, we have heard few, the NHS, these problems were for the job’, 13 July, G2, p4).
and abundant, but often of lower school places by 25%…” if any, promises to commit to not created within the past two
quality. Either way, bilberry picking sustaining the NHS, and to funding years. There is a much longer Editorial complaints and corrections can be sent to
seldom entails rapid progress. The problem is that the UK is its regeneration in the aftermath history of underresourcing of [email protected] or The readers’
training less than half the doctors of the Covid-19 pandemic. NHS services and underinvesting editor, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU.
Another issue is the fruit itself. it needs. Candidates to be the in training, retention and support You can also leave a voicemail on 020 3353 4736
The tiny bell-like quality of each next prime minister need to give The poor health of the NHS of essential staff.
is strangely similar to the shape of the highest priority to urgently and its staff has remained almost Tory climate deniers
the flowers appearing in April and doubling the number of medical completely invisible, bar a few One of the unexpected are feeling the heat
May. One can seldom manipulate student training places. Since it individual accounts, as has the toll developments from this pandemic
these near-weightless, 1cm takes six years to produce a doctor, of having kept going throughout period is that, finally, some Monday 18 July sees both the
spheres into your palm and then each year that passes without the pandemic up to now. This discussion is happening in NHS next vote for the Conservative
deposit them by the handful, as remedial action is an avoidable is increasingly critical as more trusts around the country about leadership contest and the first
you can with blackberries. Nor disaster that further aggravates experienced staff express serious how health service staff need ever national emergency red alert
can you position the bag and rake the UK’s lack of health security. doubts about being able to continue dedicated support and care for heat (Thousands may die as
out with partly opened fingers to work in their underfunded themselves, if they are to continue record highs expected, 16 July).
the dangling clusters, as you can Unfortunately, neither in your and undervalued NHS. to provide good quality healthcare Let us hope that those Tory MPs
with blackcurrants. Bilberries are feature on the overseas nurses to the country. This late but crucial who flirt with climate change
a delicate harvest. helping to keep the NHS running nor As systemic psychotherapists, recognition of staff support needs denial feel the heat and have to
elsewhere in the paper was there we offer support to two groups must be factored into the future lie down during voting hours.
There are compensations. One funding of NHS services. Calum Paton
is the lovely misty sheen on each A love of Latin had taken her O-level, when she Charlotte Burck Emeritus professor of public policy,
one, which somehow makes the said to her teacher: “I enjoyed that London Keele University
softer Scottish word – blaeberry – far away from course and the exam because it Gretchen Siglar
seem more appropriate. Another treated me as an adult who could Cambridge • I can stand on one leg, eyes open
is the calls of birds as you work: grammar grind think.” I expect the new edition or closed (Letters, 14 July). I don’t
meadow pipit families piping into to continue doing just that. UK should lead aid make marmalade, because other
the breeze, or that single bagpipe- A radical new Latin course book is David Morton Guardian readers give us jars of the
like note of parent golden plovers, indeed a rara avis – even rarer for it First director of the Cambridge effort for Sri Lanka stuff, and I don’t tell people my age:
which is possibly the saddest small to survive into a fifth edition after School Classics Project I simply say I was born during the
sound in all of Eurasia’s summer. 50 years of exposure to the rigours The UK government’s response Baedeker raids on Bath, and they
of the classroom. Your accolade • Your article on the overhaul of the to the situation in Sri Lanka can look it up, if they can spell it.
A third pleasure is the purple for the Cambridge Latin Course Cambridge Latin Course reminded is shameful. People there are Katy Jennison
stain spreading on your fingers, (Et tu Lucia: popular Latin course me of my days learning Latin at starving, and dying for lack of Witney, Oxfordshire
itself a kind of cartography of updated to depict more women, school. Back then, students taking medicines; they cannot get to work
other fruit-picking memories. The 11 July) enables me to pay tribute three A-levels were encouraged to or move about for lack of petrol; • I’ve been a member of the RSPB
occasions, 50 years ago, when we to the colleagues who seized the add an additional O-level alongside electric power is scarce. for years, but after reading your
went bilberry picking with our opportunity in 1966 of a grant by them. Given that our subjects were article (Allegations of wildlife crime
mother, or when we picked Norfolk the Nuffield Foundation, soon to modern languages, a friend and I Regardless of how they got at Queen’s Sandringham private
blackberries with our girls. be supplemented by the Schools opted for Latin. We were the only to this situation (misrule by the estate, 16 July), I’ve decided I can no
Council, of addressing again the two in the sixth form to do so, and Rajapaksas, and the legacy of the longer support it. The “R” bit makes
But behind it all is that vexatious question: “What is our teacher, newly released into the country having been ripped apart a mockery of the organisation.
wonderful realisation that learning Latin for?” wild from teacher training college, by a 30-year violent insurrection), Jane Burke
you are engaged with the true was obviously at her wits’ end faced Britain should take the lead in Saltburn-by-the-Sea, North Yorkshire
heavyweights of our world. I’m Their answer was: “To learn to with two recalcitrant 17-year-olds. providing humanitarian help to a
thinking of the insects and flower- read some original Latin literature fellow Commonwealth country in • Lucy Mangan might add libraries
bearing plants that make up most of and understand some of the values Eventually, with enviable desperate need (not even counting to her list of environmentally
the biomass and genetic diversity transmitted by it to the making of resourcefulness, she bought a Latin that we ruled them for 150 years friendly ways to read (Diary,
on Earth. Both are always implied western civilisation.” translation of Winnie the Pooh with without their consent, for which 16 July). It’s vital that we keep
in the business of fruit-making. the original illustrations, entitled we owe them something back). using these wonderful resources,
Most satisfying is the reflection Today that sounds fairly Winnie Ille Pu, and we were which contribute so much to our
that for every one of the thousands obvious; back then it was hooked right from the opening line: We should lead, very quickly, an and our children’s education.
of berries picked and the millions somewhat controversial, in a “Ecce Eduardus Ursus scalis nunc international relief effort, perhaps Christine Costello
left behind, there was a contract climate still governed by grammar tump-tump-tump occipite gradus through the Commonwealth. If Wells, Somerset
between a bee and a bloom – and grind and learning to write elegant pulsante post Christophorum those Brexit promises of becoming
an indisputable exchange of life. Latin sentences. I still cherish Robinum descendens.” a world leader in almost everything, • Don’t tell Brussels, but here in
Mark Cocker the remark of a pupil in a state and making new and cementing God’s own county we have been
grammar school for girls, who had In the end only I turned up old friendships once we left the blessed with Yorkshire Fettle cheese
We do not publish letters where just completed an early edition of for the exam, but the fact that EU, are to mean anything, then for decades (EU scolds Denmark
only an email address is supplied; the newfangled Latin course and I can proudly show a C in Latin we should not be ignoring the over its counterfeit feta, 15 July).
please include a full postal I put down to Eduardus Ursus. present situation. The government Bob Cannell
address, a reference to the article Virginia Orrey merely says it is helping through our Bradford
and a daytime phone number. Cowes, Isle of Wight contributions to the International
We may edit letters. Submission Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
and publication of letters is subject That is nowhere near enough.
to our terms and conditions: see Peter Heap
theguardian.com/letters-terms Retired British diplomat

• The Guardian Monday 18 July 2022

6 Obituaries

Colin Forbes He possessed an ability, rare Forbes, below, His students included Mervyn
among graphic designers, to inspire was especially Kurlansky, another of the eventual
Graphic designer and the trust and respect of the leaders proud of his five founders of Pentagram.
of large businesses. At the time he sharp and
Pentagram co-founder did so, graphic design lacked the technically As his freelance activities
status within the business world it accomplished grew, Forbes was forced to give
who helped transform has today: he took pride in having 1960s covers for up teaching. With Fletcher, a
helped establish it as a profession. the ICI magazine rising star in the UK design scene,
In the case of his own firm, the Plastics Today and the New Yorker Bob Gill, a
equal sharing between partners purveyor of punchy, ideas-based
of income, decision-making and PENTAGRAM graphics and illustration, he
ownership assured a structure that formed Fletcher/Forbes/Gill, an
mid-century UK design could survive the departure of its early design supergroup. Although
founders. the three men dressed soberly
C olinForbes, the form of a petition with the Forbes had (Forbes had the appearance of the
who has died painterly signatures of famous an ability, Born in London, Colin was the young Michael Caine), a publicity
aged 94, was the artists – Van Gogh and Rembrandt rare son of Kathleen (nee Ames) and photograph of the trio, taken by
creator of elegant among them – rather than members among John Forbes, a public relations Robert Freeman, notable for his
and sometimes of the public. The word-within- graphic manager for ICI. While Colin’s photographs of the Beatles, gives
humorous graphic a-word idea of his George Nelson designers, first ambition had been to them something of the air of being
design, and a on Design book cover, with its to inspire design aeroplanes, after leaving the Beatles of 1960s graphic design.
co-founder in overlapping “on”, has been much the trust of Brentwood school, Essex, at the
1972 of Pentagram, one of the best imitated, and his D&AD logo, the leaders age of 17 he began a course in book After Gill’s departure, the
known and most admired design apparently compressing three of large illustration at the Central School remaining members were joined
groups in the world. He was one dimensions into two, is still in use. businesses of Arts and Craft in London. For by the architect Theo Crosby.
of the practitioners who helped ambitious design students at that When Kurlansky and the industrial
radicalise mid-century British Forbes was especially proud time, Central was the place to be. designer Kenneth Grange joined,
graphic design, transforming it of the sharp and technically Fellow students included Terence the trio became a quintet and
from a cottage industry populated accomplished covers he produced Conran and the graphic designers changed their name to Pentagram.
mostly by freelancers wielding for the ICI magazine Plastics Today. Derek Birdsall, Ken Garland and
airbrushes and crayons, and Designed in the 60s, some of the Alan Fletcher, one of his future The establishment of the
putting it on equal footing with the covers look as if they were created Pentagram partners. firm, with its distinctive
best work from Europe and the US. yesterday by a young, hip studio. multidisciplinary ethos – graphic
His work combined modernist Corporate identity was still in its His studies were interrupted by designers, architects and industrial
rigour with witty graphic tropes, infancy in postwar Britain, and he national service (1945-48), when designers all under the same roof
as in his poster for the Campaign created enduring and sophisticated for part of the time he was stationed – marked a great achievement on
Against Museum Admission visual identities for corporations in Palestine. After demob, he Forbes’s part, as did the founding
Charges. Designed in 1970, it took including Lucas Industries, British returned to Central to study of a Pentagram office in New York a
Petroleum and Pirelli. typography. On graduating he was few years later.
given a lecturing post at the school
and, following a brief stint working No foreign design company had
for an advertising agency, he was done this successfully, and at first
invited, at the age of 28, to return to the New York design community
Central as head of graphic design. regarded the new firm merely
as an outpost of a British design
studio. But, thanks to Forbes’s
charm and energy, and the shrewd
appointment as partners of leading
figures from the US design scene,
including Woody Pirtle, Michael
Bierut, Paula Scher, Michael
Gericke and the architect Jim Biber,
Pentagram became recognised as
more than a colonial outpost of the
London company. Satellite offices
in San Francisco and Austin, Texas,
helped transform the group into an
international powerhouse.

Forbes’s time at Pentagram came
to an end in 1993 and he retired to
his horse farm in North Carolina.
In an interview published after
his retirement, he said he felt he
had received insufficient credit for
the establishment of Pentagram
in London, which prompted him
to write his essay Transition, a
lucid exposition of his design of
the group’s business structure.
His secret was that he never forgot
that he was designing a design
company, one that was owned
and run by designers and not by
business people.

In 1950 Forbes married Elizabeth
Hopkins. After the couple’s divorce,
in 1961 he married Wendy Maria
Schneider. She survives him, along
with their children, Aaron and
Jessica, his daughter, Christine,
from his first marriage, and three
grandchildren, Giulia, Jamie and
Gemma.
Adrian Shaughnessy

Colin Ames Forbes, designer, born 6
March 1928; died 22 May 2022

Monday 18 July 2022 The Guardian •

 [email protected] 7
 @guardianobits

AB Yehoshua End of the Millennium (1997), he Birthdays
wrote about a Sephardi trader who
Israeli writer whose travels to Ashkenazi Europe for a Brian Auger, keyboardist, 83;
disputation on polygamy. Edward Bond, playwright, 88; Sir
work brought modern Richard Branson, founder and
In his research, Yehoshua chairman, Virgin Group, 72; James
Hebrew literature to immersed himself in talmudic law. Brolin, actor, 82; Priyanka Chopra,
He was an intellectual with no wish actor, 40; Prof Sir Peter Crane,
international readers to be cut off from the Jewish past botanist, former director, Royal
and asked: “What do the orthodox Botanic Gardens Kew, 68; Elio
T hewriterAB In 1990, Yehoshua appeared in the Yehoshua think, that we secularists want to Di Rupo, former prime minister
Yehoshua, who BBC television series Homelands, was be know-nothings?” He found a of Belgium, 71; Vin Diesel, actor,
has died aged in which prominent artists critical of way to connect the two warring 55; Jonathan Dove, composer,
85 of cancer, examined their own societies, and Jews who areas of Judaism. At New Year, he 63; Sir Nick Faldo, golfer, 65;
helped project his 1980 essay Between Right and preferred would go to the orthodox Sephardi Steve Forbes, editor-in-chief,
modern Hebrew Right confronted the pressure for a exile in the synagogue to hear the melodies of Forbes media, 75; Simon Heffer,
literature on to Palestinian state. diaspora to his childhood and at Yom Kippur historian and journalist, 62;
the international joining the he would sit with his wife, Rivka, David Hemery, hurdler, former
scene. He came to notice in the Yehoshua was deeply aware of first waves a psychologist, in Haifa’s Reform president, UK Athletics, 78; Jack
1960s with three volumes of short the way Israeli writers are seen of Zionism synagogue. Irons, rock dummer, 60; Andrew
stories and his books included The as prophets by their own people Lewer, Conservative MP, 51;
Lover (1977), A Late Divorce (1982) and sharply commented that he Yehoshua’s life was full of Dennis Lillee, cricketer, 73; M.I.A.,
and A Journey to the End of the was sure that Martin Amis was not contradictions. Too old to fight rapper and songwriter, 47; Annie
Millennium (1997). asked for his opinion during the in the 1982 Lebanon war, he was Mac, DJ and broadcaster, 44; Ian
Gulf war. One of the main doves in asked to join the educational Mayes, journalist and writer, 86;
Of his many novels, Mr Mani the Israeli literary scene, together division and support an invasion Elizabeth McGovern, actor, 61;
(1989) was the most highly with Oz, his close childhood friend, that he opposed. He could not Alan Morrison, poet, 48; John
regarded. This multigenerational he was from 1967 one of the leading stomach this. When his sons were Naughton, writer and academic,
novel explored the destiny of members of the activist group in the army during the second 76; James Norton, actor, 37; Polly
the fictional Mani family and Peace Now. He blamed Yasser intifada, he was worried about Pattullo, journalist and publisher,
was inspired by Yehoshua’s Arafat for “throwing away the “what they might do to the Arabs”. 76; Martha Reeves, singer, 81;
own lineage. Starting in 1982 chance of peace at Oslo”. Kathleen Soriano, art curator, 59;
in Jerusalem, the book flashes His legacy is a complex one. He Hugh Stephenson, journalist, 84;
back to Crete in 1944, Palestinian Abraham Gabriel Yehoshua repeatedly urged diaspora Jews Paul Verhoeven, film director, 84;
Jerusalem in 1918, Kraków in 1899 (his writing name, AB, was based to return to Israel and at the same Lynette Willoughby, electronic
and the Athens of 1848, and often on a childhood nickname) was time championed Palestinian engineer, former president,
touches on major turning points in born in Jerusalem, the son of rights. To the outside world, this Women’s Engineering Society, 73.
Jewish history. Malka (nee Rosilio) and Yaakov may have seemed a contradiction,
Yehoshua. His father, a historian, but to the Israeli left, such dreams Letter
Yehoshua was an enlightened was descended from Jews who had and ideals were necessary in the Elspeth Barker
Zionist. An admirer of Theodor lived in Jerusalem for generations; dark intifada years. Certainly
Herzl, the founder of modern his mother arrived in Palestine Yehoshua was never afraid to I met the writer Elspeth Barker
political Zionism, he endorsed from Morocco four years before his criticise his people for their (obituary, 4 May) during a London
Herzl’s opinion that there was “no birth. He studied Hebrew literature attachment to the diaspora. “Even University summer school in
cure for antisemitism and that the and philosophy at the Hebrew Abraham chose exile rather than Ancient Greek in 2010, where we
Jew must be changed by separating University, taught in Israel and then the Promised Land. And he was the were the only students in the class.
him from the pathological lived in Paris from 1963 until 1967. first Jew,” he said. Given the choice of an easier or
interaction with his non-Jewish In 1972 he began teaching literature harder syllabus, Elspeth plumped
environment”. at Haifa University and was later Later novels included A Woman for the latter; I might have been
appointed professor. in Jerusalem (2004), Friendly Fire wiser to hold out for the former.
Yehoshua thought that Herzl’s (2007) and The Extra (2014); in 2005
imaginary Jewish state (and this A secularist, who hated the fact Yehoshua was nominated for the Hers was a wonderful
was certainly Yehoshua’s fantasy) that Israelis could not marry under inaugural Man Booker international personality. Besides the wit
was an idealistic, liberal, secular civil law, Yehoshua nonetheless prize. His last novel, The Tunnel, and intelligence she showed
and democratic land where Arabs was drawn to the vicissitudes of was published in English in 2020. in translating the Greek texts,
had full rights. He was critical of religious dogma. In Journey to the she recommended that I make
Jews who preferred exile in the He married Rivka (nee the most of new opportunities
diaspora rather than joining the Yehoshua in Kirsninski) in 1960; she died and directions when faced with
first waves of Zionism. 2016. His legacy in 2016. He is survived by their losing my then job. It proved to be
is complex: he children, Sivan, Gideon and excellent advice.
Unlike his Ashkenazi literary urged diaspora Nahum. Tom Stubbs
contemporaries Amos Oz and Jews to return Julia Pascal
Joshua Sobol, Yehoshua was of to Israel but Announcements
Sephardi background: his world championed AB Yehoshua (Abraham Gabriel
was not that of the European the rights of Yehoshua), writer, born 19 December
Yiddish-speaking ghetto but was Palestinians 1936; died 14 June 2022
rooted in Arabic, Greek and Ladino.
As a Sephardi, his links with the FELIX CLAY/ JAMES, Anna Rachel, 1984 to 2007.
Arabs nourished his hope for both a THE GUARDIAN Remembered with love.
Jewish and a Palestinian state. Mum, Dad, Daniel and Esther.
WAJED, Faisal. (1973 to 1997). 25 years ago this .
Yehoshua’s belief in peace with day we lost you, Faisal. Our pain has not lessened,
Arabs was an organic development the void has not filled and never will. Mum, Dad,
of his father’s love of Arabic, brother and sister.
which he studied and later used as
translator for the British colonial For Announcements, Acknowledgments, Adoptions,
and Israeli governments. Arabs Anniversaries, Birthdays, Births, Deaths,
were frequent guests of the family, Engagements, Memorial Services and In Memoriam,
which made the novelist aware that email us at [email protected]
they were “a part of our identity”. including your name, address and telephone
number or phone 0203 353 2114.

• The Guardian Monday 18 July 2022

8 Puzzles

Saturday’s Killer sudoku Codeword
solutions
Easy Each letter of the alphabet makes at least one appearance in the grid,
Sandwich sudoku and is represented by the same number wherever it appears. The letters
The normal rules of decoded should help you to identify other letters and words in the grid.
Killer Sudoku 822 Sudoku apply: fill each
row, column and 3x3
box with all the numbers
from 1 to 9. In addition,
the digits in each inner
shape (marked by dots)
must add up to the
number in the top corner
of that box. No digit can
be repeated within an
inner shape.

Medium

Cryptic crossword

Solution No. 28,805
D I ATR I BE CANTAB
EVE I GAO
TR I PP ER CH I D I NG
AALDRL LE
C A R P I ONON E SWA Y
HY C FW IM
HA P P ENS T ANC E
C F TAPHDN
HARL EYSTREET
EA S I MQ V
CONS TRA I N I NURE
KKAGC K E S
E C L I P S E ENAME L S
RIE SDNE
SUNDRY E S POUSA L
Guardian cryptic crossword No 28,812 set by Vulcan
This week’s winners of Can
You Solve My Problems? are: 1 23 Across Down
Frank White, Doncaster; 45 6 78 4 Get ambassador to make tea? 1 Comment on Matthew’s
Julian Davies, London;
Linda De Chenu, Cambridge; Language! (6) successor (6)
E Ritchie, Nottingham;
Iain Mackintosh, St Andrews. 6 Make surgeon fall ill and have a 2 As far as I can see, story mostly is
Please allow 28 days for perfect fit (8) on the level (10)
delivery
9 Secure golden carriage (6) 3 Resistance worker put off
9 10 10 Female priest, a senior manager accepting death (8)

11 12 (8) 4 Break point in game (4-4)
13 14 5 Speaking, forbade reflective girl
11 History of disc — part of it first
15 16 17 (5,6) to wear this? (8)

18 19 15 What may catch trespassers, 7 A spin out in this? (4)
20 21 23 some returning to island (7) 8 Fat boy eating last of burger (4)
22 12 The look on the face of one on
17 Dismiss assembly and switch off
(4,3) holding up a train? (10)

18 Captivating orator to read out 13 Find pole to agitate frogs, for
letters, having file of documents example (4,4)

(11) 14 Prize rams in new enterprises
(5-3)
22 Pleasure seeker wandering into
shed (8) 16 Ringing senator, confused about
name (8)
23 Unit is reorganised without
moving (2,4) 19 Do nothing for stricken region (6)
20 Fish caught at busy centre (4)
24 Clever woman has underwear 21 Thought almost perfect (4)
stored away? (8)

25 To have a lot on their plate is
healthy for politicians (6)

24 25

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