The Observer - 16.08.2026

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2026-08-16 Boosty PDF 中文极简摘要

The Observer - 16.08.2026.pdf

  • Boosty 帖子:Newspapers - 16.08.2026
  • News / 英国特种部队士兵家庭暴力案判决:高等法院法官禁止一名涉嫌家庭暴力的特种部队士兵在三年内与其女儿见面,推翻了此前允许无需监督接触的决定。
  • News / 零售商推广未成年人非法骑行电动滑板车:亚马逊和德本汉姆等商店被指违反广告法规,向未成年人推广在公共道路上非法使用电动滑板车。
  • Science/Profile / 理论物理学家吉姆·阿尔-哈利利探讨时间本质:萨里大学教授吉姆·阿尔-哈利利通过新书探讨时间作为物理实体的可塑性,并结合自身衰老经历反思时间。
  • International / 塔利班在阿富汗扩大监控系统:塔利班在喀布尔等城市安装约6万至9万个中国制造的摄像头,旨在通过严密监视强制执行伊斯兰统治。
  • International / 索马里渔业面临外国拖网渔船威胁:中国等国拖网渔船无视禁令进入索马里海域,导致当地渔民生计受损,气候变化引发的干旱进一步加剧了社会动荡。
  • Opinion / 媒体对杰森·阿尔代抄袭指控的过度报道:剑桥教授杰森·阿尔代因涉嫌抄袭遭到媒体狂热攻击,作者批评媒体在追求点击量时忽视了人性并陷入文化战争。
  • Education/Society / 英国职业教育与大学录取趋势:尽管大学录取人数创纪录(26.28万人),但砌砖工克里斯蒂安·托马斯的成功案例凸显了实用技能培训的重要性。
  • Economy/Finance / 全球石油库存下降与市场压力:国际能源署警告石油库存降至79亿桶以下,海湾地区冲突风险导致原油价格趋向每桶90美元。
  • Opinion/Politics / 对安迪·伯纳姆生活成本政策的分析:威廉·基根认为生活成本是宏观全球问题,而非市长伯纳姆能通过微观手段解决,并建议重新考虑欧盟关系。
  • News/International / 德国小镇老虎逃脱事件:一只300公斤的杂交虎在德国德尔齐希工业区逃脱并袭击饲养员,最终被警方射杀。
  • Culture/TV / 剧集《慢马》反映的现代间谍文化:通过对《慢马》的分析,探讨英国间谍形象从邦德式的帝国幻象转向现实主义的颓废与琐碎。
  • Lifestyle/Art / 埃尔巴岛的慢生活与纺织艺术:艺术家法奇在埃尔巴岛利用回收面料和天然染料创作,将岛屿的地貌色彩融入手工纺织作品中。
  • Lifestyle/Wine / 舍南白葡萄酒在英国的认知与趋势:分析舍南白葡萄酒的多功能性及其在英国的小众地位,对比其与长相思在种植面积上的差距。
  • Sport/Football / 英超俱乐部终止博彩赞助带来的财务缺口:英超决定2026年起终止球衣正面博彩赞助,导致近半数俱乐部面临约8000万英镑的资金缺口。
  • Sport/Football / 英超赛季末的告别氛围与瓜迪奥拉:回顾上赛季末多位球星的谢幕,以及瓜迪奥拉对彻底改变联赛的成就感与告别。
  • Sport/Cricket / 英格兰板球委员会(ECB)的改革争议:ECB试图通过改变赛事形式吸引年轻人,但引发了传统球迷对数据驱动改革和文化变迁的不满。
  • Sport/Rugby / 前英格兰橄榄球冠军讨论脑损伤风险:迈克·卡特通过与队友的联系,探讨前球员面临的慢性创伤性脑病(CTE)风险及其带来的痛苦。
  • Lifestyle/Agriculture / 气候变化推动爱尔兰葡萄酒产业发展:随着全球变暖,葡萄种植区北移,都柏林北部的卢卡葡萄园等项目尝试在爱尔兰酿造葡萄酒。
  • Culture/Profile / 安东尼·霍普金斯个人专辑与人生回顾:88岁的演员霍普金斯在发行个人专辑之际,分享其音乐童年、酗酒经历及对孤独的看法。
  • Technology/Law / AI生成文件导致英国雇佣法庭案件激增:由于AI降低了提交法律文件的门槛,英国雇佣法庭案件量在一年内增长39%,导致官僚机构不堪重负。
  • Culture/Art / 爱丁堡艺术节女性艺术家作品展:报道爱丁堡艺术节中多位女性艺术家的绘画、雕塑和摄影作品,展现多样化的媒介表达。
  • Culture/Film / 传记电影《托尼》捕捉安东尼·波登早年生活:电影《托尼》聚焦名厨波登19岁时的关键一年,通过精简的叙事展现其复杂性格的养成。

🏛️ 哲学与批判理论深度研判 ➔ 立即阅读

透视本期报纸背后的结构性权力机制、普遍概念与具体事件之间的非同一性辩证摩擦。

⚖️ 理性与情感辩证深度研判 ➔ 立即阅读

解构冰冷制度治理(Logos)与民众真实痛感/集体情绪(Pathos)之间的断裂与隐性诉求。

The Observer - 16.08.2026.pdf

订阅者 £2.40 起 2026年8月16日,星期日 / www.observer.co.uk / 第 12,245 期 / £4.50 (国际 €5.00)

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杰森·阿尔代遭到的围剿

“白人的委屈感会对黑人的成就产生怀疑,认为这是以牺牲白人为代价而获得的” Seun Matiluko

大卫·凯利和杰森·阿尔代都是并非由他们挑起的“战争”中的平民 Ceri Thomas

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观察者报

创刊于 1791 年

威尔士,波伊斯 2026年8月12日,星期三 气温达到 35℃

气候已改变

灼热的问题

英国在燃烧: 1,205 起山火 在 2026. 43 起在 过去 24 小时内

房屋被夷为平地:38 栋房屋在斯图尔布里奇被烧, 19 栋被毁

火车在萨塞克斯和 埃塞克斯脱轨:20 人 受伤

宣布干旱: 自 7 月 1 日以来 降雨量 10. 毫米


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用我们的火辣劈开鸡点燃你的夏天, 淋上芳香的加冕酱, 最后撒上孟买香料脆洋葱。

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No.1 威特罗斯合伙公司加冕酱咖喱劈开鸡。部分门店供应。视供应情况而定。适用最低在线消费额及配送费。 海峡群岛、Little Waitrose & Partners 及特许经营店的价格可能有所不同。图中为建议食用方式。


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“胡说八道的敌人” 乔治·奥威尔,《观察者报》

观察者报观点

围猎

新闻业必须正视自身 才能理解杰森·阿尔代的死亡

新闻业不仅仅是历史的第一手草稿,它也是对真相的追求,而真相往往难以寻觅。消息源有时会撒谎、掩盖痕迹或凭空捏造。有一支由受薪专业人士组成的军队专门负责误导、恐吓和操纵舆论。排除这些障碍是该行业的职业要求。这可能很困难,而且如果社会希望独立媒体履行其职责,就必须接受一些代价。

但这其中没有任何一项理由可以为围猎杰森·阿尔代正名。阿尔代于周五被发现死亡,就在他辞去剑桥大学历史上最年轻的黑人教授职务几天之后。

阿尔代似乎与真相之间有一种不寻常的关系。他可能是一个幻想家。如果真是这样,他并不是第一个被剑桥大学推崇的人,也不会是最后一个。然而,无论他的简历中哪些是真实的,哪些不是,他都有权期待那个自认为有责任在三年时间里像调查职业罪犯一样细致地调查其生平与资历的行业,能给予他更多的尊重。他有权期待负责此案的记者和编辑能被基本的正义感和责任感所引导。

背景至关重要。剑桥大学与大多数古老大学——以及报纸——一样,正在努力应对数世纪以来种族主义的遗产,包括其从奴隶制中获利,以及在接受“非白人候选人若要在学生和教职员工中获得公平代表,可能需要被积极鼓励”这一观点上进展极其缓慢。虽然已经有了进步。在牛津和剑桥,目前近 30% 的教学人员是非白人——这恰恰说明剑桥没有必要代表阿尔代做出夸大其词的声明,以牺牲他的心理健康(现在看来如此)为代价来宣传自身的多元化主张。结果就是,他成为了一个荒诞的媒体围攻焦点,而这并非正义。

对于阿尔代所变成的这个故事,一种负责任的处理方式应该是承认他并非像剑桥大学副校长所声称的那样是一个“异常现象”。剽窃和涉嫌剽窃在学术界屡见不鲜。博士学位经常由对该学科知之甚少的导师监督并授予。阿尔代是这个系统的一个特征,却被当作一个漏洞对待,而这种对待有时来自那些几乎不掩饰其政治意图的媒体机构。

在阿尔代辞职前后的时间里,为什么会有数百篇关于他的报道被发表?这是在进行“反觉醒”战争吗?还是因为商业利益,由于这些故事吸引了巨大的数字流量,从而将编辑判断挤到了一边?无论如何,这都是一种责任的缺失,因为所有这些报道都基于另一位前剑桥学者的研究,而此人自称是“种族现实主义者”。内森·科夫纳斯(Nathan Cofnas)在声称在一个真正的精英管理体制中,黑人将“从除体育和娱乐之外的所有高知名度职位中消失”后被解雇。需要明确的是:“种族现实主义者”是种族主义者的代称。那些放大科夫纳斯这种私刑式“反觉醒战争”的报纸和电视台,实际上是在放大种族主义。

他们的目标可能虚构了关于自己生活的故事,但毫无疑问他是自闭症患者。周五早上,他与他的朋友、剑桥大学发展心理学教授西蒙·巴伦-科恩(Simon Baron-Cohen)交谈。巴伦-科恩随后告诉 BBC:“他真的无法应对。”此前,巴伦-科恩在社交媒体上写道,四分之一的自闭症患者曾计划或尝试自杀。“这就是为什么我非常担心媒体报道的影响……当一名自闭症男子倒在地上而踢打仍在继续时,我不能袖手旁观。”周五下午,阿尔代在伦敦南部的一套公寓中被发现失去意识。

与医学不同,新闻业无法以“不造成伤害”为目标。但它对报道对象负有责任——一种责任

包括《观察者报》在内的每一个媒体,不可避免地都会不时出现疏忽。但我们不能仅仅因为害怕被指责为伪善,就在涉及自身行业的问题上进行自我审查。那是导致残酷和蓄意盲目的根源。

“谁会将蝴蝶置于轮盘之上碾碎?”亚历山大·波普的这个问题已成为一个关于权力过度使用的警告。如果那些在阿尔代的故事中大肆敛财的媒体能问自己两个问题,那将是件好事:他们的报道是否适度?他们是否审慎地考虑过对待一名现已故的自闭症男性的方式?这些答案也是真相的一部分。

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

3

期号 12,245

谁在说

法里巴·纳瓦 (Fariba Nawa)

当我询问我联系的那些女孩们,我们能为她们在远方做些什么时,她们给出了不同的答案。一名 14 岁的女孩要求配备一支卡拉什尼科夫步枪。一名 17 岁的女孩告诉我,帮她在网上找一份工作,这样她就能养活家人。大多数人请求出国留学奖学金——或者任何离开阿富汗的途径。 世界版,第 22 页

本·扎兰科 (Ben Zaranko)

在英格兰、威尔士和北爱尔兰的 A-level 成绩公布日,各大学通过清理系统(clearing system)提供各种诱饵,争相吸引尚未决定去向的学生。有些大学提供免费笔记本电脑;有些提供免费健身房会员资格;还有一家提供了 6,000 英镑 生活津贴。唯一没有提供的是降低每年 9,790 英镑 学费。这与另一个买方占据主导地位但价格却出奇坚挺的市场有着强烈的相似之处——即新建的房屋和公寓。 商业版,第 39 页

斯蒂芬妮·梅里特 (Stephanie Merritt)

10 多年前在一次苏格兰之旅中,我爱上了河狸。当时我带着 12 岁的儿子去参观一个野生动物项目,那里重新引入了这些动物,我们从岸边的掩体观察它们在湖中忙碌。它们当时看起来极其异域;而现在,它们的巢穴很快就有很大机会成为英格兰乡村随处可见的景象。 新评论版,第 5 页

安德鲁·汉金森 (Andrew Hankinson)

萨姆·尼尔 (Sam Neale) 出生在盖茨黑德的一栋市政住宅里。她在学校学习大提琴。在 Live 剧团参加青年剧团。16 岁离开学校,在纽卡斯尔学院学习戏剧课程。在纽卡斯尔的 Cluny 酒吧找了一份工作,找了经纪人并登上了电视。这一切似乎很容易。“我当时,怎么说呢,年轻漂亮,可以演女主角,”她说,“抱歉,我的意思是女受害者。” 新评论版,第 11-13 页

伊莫金·韦斯特-奈茨 (Imogen West-Knights)

在德尔齐格 (Dölzig) 的南侧有一个工业区,周围环绕着一道 2 米高、有 40 年历史的链条围栏。在这个工业区内,在家具折扣店、重型货物仓库和加油站旁边,有一个较小的围栏区域,里面住着一只 9 岁、重 300 公斤的西伯利亚-孟加拉杂交虎,名叫桑多坎 (Sandokan)。 杂志版,第 12-17 页

大卫·鲍威尔 (David Powell)

多年来,博彩公司支撑了英超联赛中下游球队的商业现实,提供了其他行业根本无法、或不愿匹配的高额赞助费。随着自愿禁令现已生效,这种显赫地位已大幅下降。 体育版,第 4-5 页


4

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

7 天

窃听

“绝对不是麦当娜”

格拉斯顿伯里音乐节组织者艾米莉·埃维斯 (Emily Eavis) 在第四电台尝试平息关于明年音乐节的传闻

本周简讯

伦敦警察厅披露法耶德受害者名单

伦敦警察厅在意外披露了约 140 名女性的电子邮件地址后表示道歉,这些女性称其受到了已故哈罗德百货所有者穆罕默德·阿尔-法耶德 (Mohamed Al Fayed) 的性虐待。该警队在发现其分享了所有注册接收调查月度更新的受害者详情后,已将此事移交给信息专员办公室。一名发言人将其归咎于“人为错误”,对此警队表示“诚挚”道歉。

5,000%

上周三日食后,英国搜索“眼睛受伤”的人数增长幅度

以色列定居者围困西岸房屋

数十名以色列定居者在西岸的库斯拉 (Qusra) 围困了三户巴勒斯坦人家。他们于上周日包围了这些房屋,并在其食物和水供应枯竭时阻止家庭成员离开。以色列军队于周四将定居者驱逐,但他们几小时后又返回。美国大使迈克·哈卡比 (Mike Huckabee) 称这些定居者为“恐怖分子”——这是来自白宫政府的一次罕见的谴责。根据国际法,所有以色列定居点均为非法。

研究称 HIV 药物可每周服用一次

一项临床试验表明,每周服用一次 HIV 药物在治疗该病症方面与每日服用同样有效。参与该研究的克洛伊·奥金(Chloe Orkin)教授表示,每周仅服用一次药物将使患者“从余生每天都要服药的负担中获得令人欣慰的解脱”。HIV 药物可阻止病毒复制。治疗通常能将病毒载量降低至检测不到的水平,从而保护免疫系统并防止病毒进一步传播。

患者数据泄露后 NHS 表示“深表歉意”

NHS 承认,移植患者的私人医疗数据一直通过一个未加密的传呼机网络共享。在

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皇家南部(Royal Southern)与岛屿(The Island)帆船俱乐部在汉普郡索伦特海峡(The Solent)一个仅在最低潮时出现 30-60 分钟的沙洲上进行年度板球赛。比赛一直持续到潮水回归。彼得·麦克多米德(Peter Macdormid)

2019 年,时任卫生大臣马特·汉考克(Matt Hancock)表示,NHS 将在 2021, 年前停止使用传呼机,但部分服务部门继续使用。血液与移植部门表示“深表歉意”,并已将此次数据泄露事件报告给信息专员办公室。传呼机最初被用于整个 NHS 内部以快速共享信息。一项 BBC 的调查还发现,救护车信托机构和医院在 10 天的时间里发送了数百条信息。

路易吉·曼吉奥内承认杀害医疗保健高管

周五,路易吉·曼吉奥内(Luigi Mangione)在纽约的一家法院对联邦指控认罪,并承认杀害了医疗保健首席执行官布莱恩·汤普森(Brian Thompson)。他说:“我在曼哈顿开枪射击了汤普森先生,他死掉了。我知道我的行为是违法的。”他在 12 月 18 日被判刑时可能面临终身监禁。他还面临纽约州的指控,但他的律师认为,纽约州的

《观察者报》新闻矩阵

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“双重危险”法律意味着他不能因同样的指控被起诉两次。

印度尼西亚地震导致近 50 人死亡

周五晚上,一次 7.7 级强震袭击了印度尼西亚沿海,导致数十人死亡,数百栋建筑受损或倒塌。地震震中位于弗洛雷斯岛(Flores island)以北的海域。印度尼西亚国家灾难管理局表示,已有 47 人死亡,另有 50 人被送往医院。救援机构警告称,由于部分受灾严重地区仍因山体滑坡无法进入,这两个数字还将上升。150 栋以上的房屋严重受损,受影响的公共建筑中包括 87 处教育设施和 18 处医疗设施。

黑客攻击台湾核安全机构

疑似来自中国的黑客利用公开的 AI 工具入侵了台湾的政府网站。攻击者使用开源代理构建了一个类似于网络团队的黑客工具,用于绘制台湾政府系统的图谱并研究漏洞。至少 85 个政府账户被攻破,台湾核安全机构遭到攻击。

英国氢能车创陆地速度纪录

一辆英国制造的氢能车——或称陆地火箭——在邦纳维尔盐滩(Bonneville Salt)创下了新的陆地速度纪录

消防局长称,我们没有足够的资源来应对如火药桶般的英国

国家委员会主席警告称,面对“前所未有”的事件,消防车和人员不足

詹姆斯·塔珀 (James Tapper) 与 乔恩·昂古德-托马斯 (Jon Ungood-Thomas)

英国最高级别的消防员发出警告,上周英国境内发生多起山火,消防部门没有足够的资源立即做出全面响应。

国家消防局长委员会 (National Fire Chiefs Council) 主席菲尔·加里根 (Phil Garrigan) 表示,同时处理 11 起重大事故意味着,在周四和周五,各消防部门没有足够的消防车和人员可以与邻近地区共享。

相反,消防局长们必须优先处理最危急的事故。加里根昨天告诉《观察者报》:“这种情况是前所未有的,但尽管如此,它已成为一种‘新常态’。”

他说:“在过去的 24 小时内,仍有 43 起山火发生。现在我们回到了稳定状态,情况变得稍微容易掌控一些,我们能够满足那四个仍在处理重大事故的消防部门的需求。”

英格兰大部分地区自 6 月中旬以来仅有极少量的降雨。在英国于周四记录下年度最热的一天(伦敦西部的 Kew 温度达到 38.1℃)之后,首相警告称:“英国就像一个火药桶。”

高温对国家基础设施的影响也引发了质疑。

上周四,西米德兰兹郡的斯图尔布里奇 (Stourbridge) 高尔夫球场发生火灾,导致近 40 栋房屋受损或被毁。昨天,居民开始返回未受影响的房屋。

其他人则在等待,因为西米德兰兹消防局正试图通过洒水润湿地面,以防止火势再次复燃。其中一人是达德利 (Dudley) 的主教马丁·戈里克 (Martin Gorick) 右主教,他与妻子一同逃离,并帮助年迈的邻居逃生。

他告诉 BBC,这是一个“恐怖的局面”。“你只能听到噼啪声、爆炸声,房屋就在你眼前化为浓烟。”

“我们在应对热浪方面仍然准备不足。我们需要政府对此承担更多责任”

克洛伊·布里米科姆 (Chloe Brimicombe),研究员

西米德兰兹郡有 50 多人需要住院治疗,大多数是因为吸入烟雾;全国范围内另有 9 名消防员受伤。在卡马森郡 (Carmarthenshire) 兰多弗里 (Llandovery) 附近的兰迪尔姆温 (Rhandirmwyn) 地区,消防队昨天得到了直升机洒水的支持。卢顿 (Luton)、新森林 (New Forest) 和彼得伯勒 (Peterborough) 也发生了其他事故。

加里根表示,面对同时发生的 11 起事故,消防部门必须“对生命、关键国家基础设施和财产风险最严重的领域进行分诊”。这意味着,当一个部门请求增加 10 辆消防车时,他们首先收到 8 辆,另外 2 辆随后才到达。

他说:“我没有水晶球可以预知未来,但我们认为冬季会更潮湿,夏季会更极端,因此我们需要确保拥有正确的能力,这包括人员、套件、设备和专业能力。”

在过去的 20 年里,更安全的房屋和更好的消防安全措施意味着火灾减少,英格兰全职等效 (FTE) 消防员总数已从 2009 年的 51,700 人下降到近年来的约 40,000 人。在这一劳动力群体中,2025 年有 30,601 名全职等效消防员。

加里根说:“如果在事故数量减少时我们削减了消防员人数,那么在事故数量增加时,我们当然应该看到消防员人数的增加。”

首相安迪·伯纳姆 (Andy Burnham) 宣布暂时在全国范围内禁止销售一次性烧烤炉,并授权在南威尔士部署 200 名军队人员。他还承诺提供额外资金并建立一个国家航空消防单位,以支持当地的消防和救援服务。

周五,一条紧急电话警报被发送给英格兰和威尔士的数百万人,警告不要

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左图:什罗普郡黑山的山火;下图:肯特郡的火车脱轨以及斯塔福德郡某水库的低水位 Clun Fire Station / LNP / Getty

任何可能引发山火的活动,包括使用烟花或火坑。

今年的第五次热浪还造成了全国范围内的基础设施损坏。周四,一列从伦敦开往东本恩的火车在东萨塞克斯郡的刘易斯附近脱轨,导致两人重伤。次日,第二列火车在埃塞克斯郡的威克福德附近脱轨。铁路事故调查局正在调查这两起事故的原因。由于高温天气,国家铁路公司(Network Rail)已对多段轨道实施了限速措施。

金属轨道温度可能比气温高出 20℃,从而导致轨道变形。前交通部(DfT)首席科学顾问、纽卡斯尔大学国家脱碳、适应性及韧性交通基础设施中心主任 Phil Blythe 教授表示,无论原因如何,铁路轨道的材料、设计和监测都需要升级或修改,以应对更高的温度。

“这将耗费大量资金,但我们需要让我们的交通基础设施更具韧性和适应性,”他说。“我们正在学习,国家铁路公司也在调整以应对这些更极端的高温,但速度不够快。”

他表示,交通部很快将公布一项韧性战略。

高温还可能导致土壤收缩和开裂,从而可能破坏轨道的稳定性。这也意味着在需求激增之时,水管爆裂的情况会增多。泰晤士水务(Thames Water)上周表示,7 月份其网络中出现了 2,871 处可见的泄漏点,与 2025 年 7 月较为潮湿的夏天相比增加了 60% 以上。

上周末,东伦敦南伍德福德的两根水管爆裂,影响了约 10,000 户家庭。部分居民在四天内没有用水。

英国气候变化委员会 5 月向政府提交的一份报告警告称,公众担心英国“尚未为气候变化做好准备”。报告指出,需要对耐热基础设施、更好的冷却系统以及更安全的水供应增加投资。报告还称,之前的气候适应计划并不适用。

“面对热浪,我们的准备工作仍然严重不足。我们需要政府将此问题视为一项需要承担责任的任务,”牛津大学气候科学家、博士后研究员 Chloe Brimicombe 表示。

环境、食品和农村事务部的一位发言人表示:“气候适应工作贯穿于整个部门——从自然恢复到洪水应对,再到可持续农业,此外还设有直接且专门的团队。这是本届政府的一项关键优先事项。”


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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

新闻

左图:上周五斯图尔布里奇被毁的 19 栋房屋中的一栋,大火正在肆虐。 Sky News

干旱与毁灭:英国计算热浪代价

烟雾弥漫在斯图尔布里奇(Stourbridge)高尔夫球场上空(左图)。 Ioannis Alexopoulos / LNP

在伦敦西南部普特尼希斯(Putney Heath)的金斯米尔池塘(Kings Mere pond),一块现已失效的“禁止钓鱼”标志从土中伸出(右图)。 Brook Mitchell / Getty

上周,一家人(左图)在伦敦西南部温布尔登公地(Wimbledon Common)顶着37℃的热浪。 Alex Lenkati / LNP

在斯托克-昂-特伦特(Stoke on Trent)的一场大火后,被毁的房屋仍在冒烟(上图)。 Christopher Furlong / Getty

伯纳姆称石油和天然气可助力向清洁能源转型

Catherine Neilan 白厅编辑

安迪·伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)表示,加速北海石油和天然气的开采可能有助于在向清洁能源转型的过程中起到“桥梁”作用,而英国上周再次经历了气温峰值和山火。

周五,首相在斯图尔布里奇发表讲话,当地有19栋房屋被大火摧毁。他还宣布拨款6500 万英镑m支持正与干旱作斗争的农民,并部署军事人员以增强国家消防员的力量,他承认消防救援服务“尚未做好应对此类事件的充分准备”。

根据Opinium为《观察者报》进行的独家民调,近三分之二(59%)的成年人持有相同观点。仅有12%的人认为该国已做好应对气候变化影响的充分准备。民调显示,人们最担心的是英国的水利基础设施、粮食安全和公共卫生。

但同一项调查发现,许多英国人在北海石油和天然气生产问题上与伯纳姆的实用主义观点一致。虽然约五分之一的人反对任何新钻探,但61%的人支持批准新油气田,只要附带相关限制条件,包括尽快逐步停止石油和天然气生产。近四分之一(24%)的人认为英国应该鼓励开发新的油气田。

伯纳姆并未排除批准设在设得兰群岛附近的罗斯班克(Rosebank)油田以及亚伯丁东部的杰克道(Jackdaw)气田的可能性,预计决定将很快公布。他告诉BBC Radio 5 Live,批准这两项计划可能有助于“加速能源转型”。尽管他没有点名具体地点,但伯纳姆表示:

“一段时间内我们无法停止使用石油和天然气,这是一个事实。问题在于我们是否可以加速其利用,从而为转型支付费用,让两者相辅相成……这种开采是否能成为通往我们所需的清洁能源未来的桥梁,并将其提前实现。”

气候行动组织“地球之友”(Friends of the Earth)对伯纳姆就热浪问题“打破沉默”表示欢迎,但称他必须“通过拒绝希思罗机场的第三条跑道并排除新的油气开发,来证明他理解气候紧急情况的原因和影响”。

绿党领袖扎克·波兰斯基(Zack Polanski)表示,“安迪·伯纳姆对气候危机导致死亡的反应竟然是承诺尝试停止销售一次性烧烤炉,这简直令人震惊”。英国卫生安全局(UKHSA)的一份报告显示,2026年5月和6月共有2,877例与高温相关的死亡病例,几乎是2025年同期数据的两倍。

保守党——其领导人凯米·巴德诺克(Kemi Badenoch)已禁止候选人在不放弃该党此前净零政策的情况下代表该党——表示,伯纳姆在支持农民方面应采取更进一步的措施。该党对净零政策的摒弃遭到了政治光谱各方的批评,但巴德诺克没有表现出退让的迹象。

保守党未回应置评请求。


新闻

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

7

师生关系在学校里“是公开的秘密”

前学生在庭审中讲述,一名被指控在青少年时期对其进行性虐待的女性将其带到酒吧参加员工聚饮

克洛伊·哈吉马特欧 (Chloe Hadjimatheou)

法庭获悉,一名因在任教学校性虐待两名少年而受审的女性,曾向警方举报其中一名所谓的受害者威胁要强奸她。法庭被告知,这起强奸指控是在该男子 2025 年接受《观察者报》采访之后提出的。

莎莉-安·鲍文 (Sally-Anne Bowen) 在 1986 年至 1988 年间任教于伦敦北部的芬奇利基督学院 (Christ's College Finchley),她面临八项与两名前学生相关的猥亵罪指控。两名男子现年均在 50 多岁且不能透露姓名,据称在他们与当时 25 岁的教师开始所谓的关系时,他们年仅 14 岁。

法庭获悉,其中一名男孩与她的关系在几个月内升级。教师和学生一起乘坐巴士,并在午餐时间在学校附近的一家咖啡馆见面。就在那里,他们一起翻阅了一本露骨的《花边世界》(Penthouse) 杂志,鲍文指向一张金发裸女的照片,告诉这名少年:“我的私处就长那样。”该男子将其描述为对一个小男孩来说是一次“强烈的体验”。

在一段 2014 年警方采访的录音证词中,鲍文的前学生表示,在杂志事件发生后不久,他陪鲍文走回家,两人坐在她的床上,开始接吻并脱衣服。“我清楚地记得第一次真正地与她发生性关系。我当时不知道。她得告诉我,”他告诉警方。“然后我们讨论了我是否还是处男,因为我没有射精。”

他说,在 1988 学年的剩余时间里,两人每周在鲍文的公寓见面“三四次”,并发生了“20 或 30 次”性行为。

在 2020 年进行的第二次警方采访中,该男子描述了一种他当时认为正常的行为。“她教我排尿在她的体内,”他说。“我对性世界的认知完全由莎莉-安·鲍文主导。我怎么能区分什么是正常的,什么是不正常的?”

辩方律师马克·金西 (Mark Kimsey) 向该所谓受害者提出,他是一个痴迷于鲍文的幻想家,并引用了《观察者报》“幸运男孩” (Lucky Boy) 播客中的一段话。在播客中,当被问及如果有机会会对鲍文说什么时,他回答道:“我可能想拥抱她,我可能想亲吻她,我可能想操她。”

“问题在于 [鲍文] 是否逾越了旨在保护他们的界限”

检察官 玛德琳·沃尔夫 (Madeleine Wolfe)

该所谓受害者表示,鲍文的律师省略了引文的其余部分,在其中他继续说道:“我可能想在她脸上打一拳,我也可能只想哭。这样如何?这得有多糟糕?”他告诉法庭:“我回答中唯一奇怪的地方是在她脸上打一拳。这是我之前唯一没做过的事。其他所有事情我都做过。”他说,鲍文就这段话向警方举报了他。

针对其因怨恨而伪造证据的暗示,该所谓受害者表示,他最初告诉警方,如果鲍文同意与他交谈,他愿意撤销指控。“我提出不进行刑事诉讼。这被称为修复性司法。警方表示指控过于严重,不会同意这样做,”他告诉法庭。

该男子表示,他曾觉得自己受到了老师的特别关注,并将其视为一段浪漫关系。“我爱上了她。我是自愿参与的,”他说。

检察官玛德琳·沃尔夫辩称,这种定调忽略了重点。在关系演变为性关系时,鲍文 27 岁;而她的学生仍然是孩子。沃尔夫说:“本案的问题不在于这些男孩是否显得受宠若惊、自愿或痴迷,而在于莎莉-安·鲍文在深知自己的地位及其脆弱性的情况下,是否逾越了旨在保护他们的界限。”

法庭获悉,这段关系在学校里是一个公开的秘密。主要指控受害者表示,教师们似乎对此心知肚明,他回忆起鲍文曾带他参加在酒吧举行的年终教职工聚饮,当时他的班主任告诉鲍文,希望她的学生“能安全回家”。

法庭还获悉,该男孩的母亲在得知儿子与一名教师有染后,通过电话与鲍文对质,并短暂地将他送到曼彻斯特的亲戚家居住以切断联系。但这没有奏效;鲍文继续打电话,她的学生很快回到了伦敦,两人恢复了关系,直到夏天结束时鲍文中断了联系。

该指控受害者描述了一种被抛弃且失去控制的感觉:“我觉得我可以做任何事情。我对任何人都没有尊重,”他说。他最终被迫离开学校,并告诉警方,这段关系让他很难与同龄女孩交往:“也许是我见得太多了。”

根据沃尔夫的说法,鲍文的第二名指控受害者所呈现的接触模式规模较小。他说,在咖啡馆与其他男孩一起见这位老师时,群体鼓励他亲吻她并抚摸她的乳房,且他偶尔会将手放在她的私处附近。沃尔夫说,鲍文“没有做出负面反应”。

沃尔夫表示,第二名指控受害者也觉得被一名他及其同学认为很有吸引力的老师所吸引。两名男孩都告诉警方,他们见过鲍文表现出轻佻的行为,穿着他们认为对于一所男校教师来说不恰当的衣服。

两名原告直到30多年后才举报所谓的虐待行为。第一名受害者在2014年,在其继子女年满14岁后向警方报案。他在录音采访中说:“那是第一次我意识到我[当时]还是个孩子。”

十年后,他将指控提交给教学监管局(TRA),鲍文在那里面临了一场专业失职听证会。第二名原告在听证会后,于2025年向警方报案。

鲍文否认所有指控。在警方采访中,她将主要原告描述为一个在学校里跟踪她的“麻烦人物”。她否认两人描述的咖啡馆对话,称任何关于性关系的描述都是幻想。

她的辩护还将依赖于医疗证据,涉及一种她称在相关期间导致性交疼痛的病症。

她的律师向其前学生提出,鲍文患有阴道中隔——一种将阴道分为两个比正常阴道更小通道的结构,这意味着在1988年,插入行为将会极其痛苦。

该指控受害者表示,鲍文在性行为过程中从未抱怨过任何疼痛。他还暗示,他的年龄可能意味着与他发生性行为对她来说疼痛较轻:“你有没有想过这就是为什么她与孩子发生性关系,因为他们比成年男人小?”

在被告席上,鲍文在听到前学生作证时摇了摇头,眉头紧锁。在某一时刻,该指控受害者突然喊道:“她记得。她正盯着我看。”

审判仍在继续。

法官撤销虐待儿童的特种部队士兵的探视权

路易丝·蒂克尔 (Louise Tickle)

在《观察者报》针对国防部试图掩盖一名英国特种部队士兵家庭暴力行为的调查之后,一名高等法院法官已禁止该士兵与其女儿见面。

“我觉得我的女儿和我刚刚找回了生活。现在我们有机会在稳定的状态下向前迈进,因为知道我们得到了保护,”珍妮(化名)在周五公布的高等法院判决后表示。

该判决推翻了下级法院此前的一项决定,此前法院授予其丈夫(一名已被证实为虐待者的男性)与年幼孩子的广泛且无需监督的接触权。相反,加里多法官 (Mr Justice Garrido) 禁止这位因法律原因无法透露姓名的父亲在至少三年内与其女儿见面或交谈。加里多法官还禁止他进入其女儿及其母亲居住的区域,并限制他在同一期间内申请变更“禁止接触”命令的能力。

《观察者报》是在 2024 年 12 月申请公布原审法官允许无需监督接触的裁决细节后,才能够报道此案的,我们曾在 5 月报道过该裁决。

在原审程序中,一名法官曾裁定,该父亲“精心策划且持续的控制与胁迫行为”使他的女儿暴露在家庭暴力之中,并且他对“孩子构成了身体和情感上的风险”。尽管一名家庭法院顾问建议接触应每两周一次且在监督下进行,但法官下令执行的一套接触计划最终演变为每周一次的无需监督接触。该顾问对这一决定感到如此担忧,以至于他们

向当地政府的儿童服务部门提交了保护申请,并向法官写信抗议。

当《观察者报》试图报道此案细节时,国防部以会构成国家安全风险为由,力图禁止提及“特种部队”一词。支持这一主张的证据是在《观察者报》被排除在外的秘密听证会上提供的,该报的利益由一名“特别倡导者”代表。今年 1 月,国防部撤回了关于报道限制的申请。

珍妮表示,直到公布案件细节的申请被提交后,她才觉得能够申请停止该父亲每周一次的无需监督接触,因为媒体诉讼导致法院为代表孩子利益任命了一名新的、级别更高的监护人,而该监护人再次对父亲与其女儿的接触提出了严重关切。

在周五的判决中,加里多法官表示,在考虑到心理学家的专家证据、珍妮的陈述以及监护人的建议后,他的决定“并非处于微妙的平衡之中”。

“立即停止接触虽然在短期内是痛苦的,但这是确保[孩子]中长期福利的唯一途径,”法官说道。

该父亲通过其律师被询问是否愿意接受《观察者报》的采访。截至发稿时,尚未收到回复。


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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

新闻

“无论杰森做了什么,没有人应该被这样对待”

在杰森·阿尔代去世后,同事们谈到了数周的媒体审查给这位“温柔的灵魂”带来的悲剧性影响

乔恩·昂古德-托马斯 (Jon Ungood-Thomas), 莉莉·艾萨克斯 (Lily Isaacs) 与 凯瑟琳·尼兰 (Catherine Neilan)

在去世前的几天里,与前剑桥大学教授杰森·阿尔代交谈过的人表示,他对生活中不间断的审查感到极度痛苦,并且“看不到出路”。据称,由于媒体对他童年、个人成就和学术记录的剖析,他认为剑桥大学本应提供更多支持。

阿尔代是该大学任命的最年轻的黑人教授,但在剽窃指控出现后,他于 5 August 辞职。密集的媒体报道质疑他是否能在发丝骨折的情况下完成马拉松,是否曾出现在纪录片系列《Seven Up》中,以及在一次种族主义攻击中是否真的有猪头被寄到他的家中。

随着一个接一个的揭露,阿尔代在社交媒体上被贴上了“幻想家”的标签。也有其他人警告过他的脆弱。周五下午,他在伦敦南部的一个地址被宣布死亡。他年仅 41 岁,留下了两个孩子。

“这是一个绝对的悲剧,因为他是一个温柔的灵魂,”伯明翰女王基金会(Queen’s Foundation)的教授研究员罗伯特·贝克福德(Robert Beckford)说道,他此前一直与阿尔代保持联系以提供支持。“他是一个富有同情心的人,深爱着自己的研究课题。”

米莉·克尔(Millie Kerr)在一家地方议会担任反种族主义负责人,她在阿尔代被任命为剑桥大学教授后不久的一次会议上与他相识,她表示:“无论杰森做了什么,没有人应该被这样对待。”

阿尔代于 2023 年 2 月在 37. 岁时被任命为剑桥大学教育社会学教授。一份大学新闻稿讲述了一个看似非凡的故事:一个在三岁时被诊断出患有某种形式自闭症的男孩,直到 18 岁才学会读写,随后晋升至该国最高学术职位之一。这次任命在各界引起了轰动

杰森·阿尔代于 2025 年 3 月抵达 BBC 参加电视节目。 Elliott Franks / Eyevine

过去一年英国刊物中提及杰森·阿尔代的印刷文章数量

列于 NLA Clipshare

img-15.jpeg

来源:NLA。注:重复文章已从计数中删除

处于剽窃争议中心的内森·科夫纳斯

莉莉·艾萨克斯 (Lily Isaacs)

在内森·科夫纳斯(Nathan Cofnas)发布一篇 Substack 文章指称杰森·阿尔代的博士论文部分内容涉嫌剽窃后,针对阿尔代的指控引起了广泛关注。科夫纳斯是一名学者,于 2024 年被剑桥大学埃马纽埃尔学院解雇。他将阿尔代的任命称为“DEI(多样性、公平与包容)意识形态”,并告诉《时代广播》(Times Radio),阿尔代并不像剑桥大学教授那样“聪明”。

科夫纳斯自称是一名“种族现实主义者”,其研究重点是生物哲学和伦理学。2024 年 2 月,他在 Substack 上发表了一篇文章,声称“在色盲制度下”,黑人“将从除体育和娱乐之外几乎所有高知名度的职位中消失”。他呼吁针对“DEI 魔鬼”发起一场“革命”,并要求人们“接受天赋并非均匀分布”的事实。

次月,由剑桥大学学生和学者发起的要求将其解雇的请愿书获得了 1,200 多个签名。针对他的抗议活动接踵而至,58 名学生就其歧视黑人学生的行为发起了正式投诉。

在投诉中,学生们指称科夫纳斯在支持“优生学者的逻辑”,且大学通过资助其研究在鼓励“歧视性和偏执的言论”。投诉人之一、哲学系学生雅各布·鲍登(Jacob Bowden)表示,他很惊讶地看到科夫纳斯在最近几周在媒体上获得了“积极的关注”。

内森·科夫纳斯因其种族观点被剑桥大学埃马纽埃尔学院解雇。

在言论自由联盟(Free Speech Union)的支持下,科夫纳斯于 2024 年 8 月起诉埃马纽埃尔学院,指控其存在信仰歧视。他在该组织网站上的筹款页面筹集了超过 8.5 万英镑。学院赢得了这场诉讼,理由是该博客的影响是“立即且显著的”,且已经造成了伤害和名誉损失。

剑桥大学在 2025 年底驳回了 58 名学生针对科夫纳斯的投诉。在前一年,该大学的言论自由规则已修改,允许“法律范围内的争议性或不受欢迎的观点”。科夫纳斯的观点受到该政策的保护。大学表示,社区的所有成员“都被鼓励行使他们的言论自由权利”。科夫纳斯目前在比利时的根特大学工作,并定期在 X 和 Substack 上发布关于其种族观点的文章。

黑人研究学者基欣德·安德鲁斯(Kehinde Andrews)表示,他认为科夫纳斯受到了克里斯托弗·鲁福(Christopher Rufo)的“剧本”启发。鲁福是一名美国右翼评论员,曾指责哈佛大学校长克劳丁·盖(Claudine Gay)剽窃,并为他人效仿制定了一套框架。

“许多学者都被指控剽窃。为什么这件事会变成如此大的新闻?因为像科夫纳斯这样的人根本不相信黑人有资格担任教授。他们认为黑人没有这个能力,”安德鲁斯说道。


新闻

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

9

世界。随后在 7 月 21 日,因其极端的种族观点而深陷争议的学者内森·科夫纳斯在 Substack 上发布了一篇文章,声称阿尔代是一名剽窃者。科夫纳斯将阿尔代 2015 年关于实习教师之间同行指导的博士论文放入剽窃检测软件中运行,并称发现该论文与其他已发表的作品存在“实质性重叠”。

科夫纳斯的文章为广泛的媒体报道鸣枪起跑。7 月下旬和 8 月是英国新闻淡季最冷清的几周,而阿尔代则面临了三周的高强度报道。授予阿尔代博士学位的利物浦约翰摩尔大学此前曾对这些指控进行过调查。调查结果显示,他犯下的是“诚实且合理”的错误,从而驳回了剽窃指控。

此外,还有一些最初于 2023 年向剑桥大学提出的指控,涉及阿尔代于 2018 年在《社会科学》(Social Sciences)期刊上发表的一项研究,据称该研究与两年前在《BMJ Open》期刊上发表的一篇论文存在相似之处。该文章被

“指控、猜测和公众评论对我造成了深远的伤害”

阿尔代的辞职信

经过修正。2025年9月,《高等教育时报》(Times Higher Education)记者杰克·格罗夫(Jack Grove)就剽窃指控联系了阿尔代。他收到了一封由 Carter-Ruck 律师事务所代表阿尔代发送的信函,否认了这些指控。他还曾成为警方调查的对象,伦敦警察局局长马克·罗利(Mark Rowley)上周承认这是一次错误。

尽管阿尔代的辩护者表示最严重的剽窃指控已被驳回,但记者们现在开始挖掘他生活的方方面面。《电讯报》质疑他是否真的在六天内跑了 600 英里并为慈善机构筹集了 550 万英镑,正如他所声称的那样。《每日邮报》在线版发布了一段视频,其中阿尔代声称他参加了纪录片系列剧《Seven Up》,而该剧在他在出生前数十年就已经播出了。《卫报》则调查了是否有包括猪头在内的残缺动物被寄到了他的家中。据称,阿尔代对报道的强度感到心碎。

8月5日,剑桥大学宣布对其任命展开调查,随后他辞去了职务。“持续不断的指控、猜测和公众评论对我以及我所爱的人造成了深远的伤害,”他在一封公开的辞职信中写道。

人们本以为一项调查和一次辞职可以为这场风波画上句号,但几家报纸和广播媒体继续报道该故事。报道内容包括审查他开始说话的确切年龄,以及一份关于一些成绩低于预期的前学生得到了“不足”指导的报告。(《观察者报》发表了一篇新闻报道和一篇评论文章,均在阿尔代辞职之后。)

关注点转向了阿尔代即将出版的回忆录《伟大而不幸之事》(Great and Unfortunate Things),该书计划于本月晚些时候由 Simon & Schuster 出版。在书中,他描述了封锁期间的“自闭症倦怠”,并将其描述为一种“极度的身心疲惫状态”。他曾计划自杀,但表示一名家人介入并阻止了他结束生命。

支持阿尔代的非营利活动团体良好法律计划(Good Law Project)执行董事乔利昂·莫汉(Jolyon Maugham)表示,他上周三与这位学者取得了联系,并希望说服他去椭圆球场(the Oval)看板球赛。

“他非常痛苦,”莫汉说。“他认为他的生命即将走到尽头。他看不到回归之路。他变得越来越心碎。向他证明这一切很快就会结束变得越来越困难。”

阿尔代的家人在一份声明中表示,自从他接受教授职位以来,他就一直遭受着一场“持续的虐待活动”。

剑桥大学的一位发言人昨晚表示:“我们的心意和最深切的哀悼与杰森的家人和挚爱同在。”

“在剑桥大学期间,杰森在心理和身体健康方面得到了各种支持。这包括提供咨询、建议和安全措施。在面对激烈的公众和媒体审查以及他辞职之后,我们的支持仍在继续。”

自闭症专家称“霸凌”行为持续不断

詹姆斯·塔珀(James Tapper)

两周前,在与杰森·阿尔代(Jason Arday)交谈后,西蒙·巴伦-科恩(Simon Baron-Cohen)教授在 X 上发布了一条消息。

这位心理学家表示,他“非常担心”媒体报道对他这位患有自闭症的朋友产生的影响,并将其与他在剑桥大学自闭症研究中心所做的一项研究联系起来,

img-18.jpeg

杰森·阿尔代工作的剑桥大学耶稣学院。 Brock Mitchell / 该研究表明,自闭症患者的自杀风险更高。

“这是对一名脆弱的自闭症男性的持续霸凌,并引发了安全保障问题,”他写道。“是时候停止了。”X 的所有者埃隆·马斯克(Elon Musk)用一个词回应道:“骗子。”

昨天,巴伦-科恩表示,阿尔代在去世当天的早晨给他发了一段语音消息。“他觉得他无法再坚持下去了,”巴伦-科恩在 Radio 4 的 Today 节目中说道。

国家自闭症与 ADHD 中心(National Autism and ADHD Centre)的创始人吉尔·艾洛特(Jill Aylott)表示,“问责绝不应要求我们抛弃人性。”

“当一个人成为持续的国家性批评的焦点时……机构应该询问:谁在检查这个人的安全状况?”

“阿尔代和凯利是两种不同战争的牺牲品

评论

Ceri Thomas

任何在 2003 年 7 月在 BBC 新闻部工作的人都会记得,在戴维·凯利博士(Dr David Kelly)遗体被发现的那一天,新闻编辑室里弥漫着一种寒意——那几乎是一种物理上的触感。周五晚上,当我听到杰森·阿尔代(Jason Arday)被发现死亡时,我再次感受到了这种寒意。

凯利是一位政府科学家,他是 BBC 记者安德鲁·吉利根(Andrew Gilligan)一篇报道的消息源。该报道指称,托尼·布莱尔(Tony Blair)政府为了为其发动战争提供依据,在关于伊拉克大规模杀伤性武器的卷宗中“夸大”了内容。

凯利的生活以毁灭性的速度崩塌。政府确保了他的姓名进入公众视野。他名誉扫地,接受了议会特别委员会的审讯,意识到自己失去了职业生涯并可能失去养老金,最终在 17 July,告诉妻子他要去散步,随后在牛津郡的乡村自杀身亡。

凯利与阿尔代之间表面上的相似之处显而易见。他们都被羞辱,在媒体上受到毫不留情且持续不断的审视,并失去了对他们的自尊心至关重要的工作。两人似乎都犯了错:凯利没有意识到他告诉记者的信息的重大意义;而阿尔代则承认他在早期一些研究论文的严谨性上存在错误。但两者之间还存在更深层的相似之处。凯利和阿尔代最终都成为了并非由他们挑起的“战争”中的平民。可以说,两人都成为了战争期间不可避免的视角缺失的受害者。

在 2003 年,这些问题至少看起来具有战争级别的规模:政府是否误导了公众,并基于一份虚假的前景报告将英国军队送入战场?而今天,这是一场不同的战斗,围绕着多样性、公平与包容,文化优势以及另一家大型机构中所谓的违规行为,但它被赋予了同样的生存危机般的严肃性。

冲突带来的隧道视野意味着,在关于夸大卷宗的故事出现之前,BBC 内部对吉利根的一些明显担忧被忽视了。当政府与 BBC 开战时——当时那里最高层的人员认为确实如此——这些疑虑被搁置一边,他变得比以往任何时候都更像“我们的人”。在面对公众对阿尔代的攻击之初,剑桥大学同样将他紧紧保护在身边,但这未必对他有利。

二十三年前,点击诱饵和社交媒体围攻的飞轮是我们尚未经历的噩梦,但 2003, 的真实情况在今天再次上演:一方集结支持的本能变成了对另一方的挑衅,因此战斗的升级几乎是必然的。

最糟糕的情况——也就是我们刚刚再次见证的情况——是处于中心的人被简化为一块被争夺的碎片,即便关于其生命风险的警告已经大声且公开地响起。

如果说降临在凯利身上的灾难有一个前提条件,那就是沟通的匮乏。在他去世前的漫长过程中,BBC 和政府几乎停止了对话。即使在最高层,最常用的渠道是传真机而非智能手机。当时的悲剧部分在于问题看起来是多么容易解决;而阿尔代的悲剧部分在于今天看来情况要困难得多,因为这不再是两个机构之间的问题,而是在一场极其模糊的文化战争中,两个定义不清的阵营之间的问题。

当凯利的遗体被发现时,布莱尔正乘飞机前往东京。在飞机落地之前,他就宣布启动针对这位科学家之死的哈顿调查(Hutton inquiry)。尽管哈顿报告存在诸多不足——一位 BBC 高层表示,该调查的最终文件对媒体没有任何启示,但对政治家却有许多启示——但它反映了一个更简单的时代。

雇佣过阿尔代的大学肯定会受到审查,其中剑桥大学首当其冲。但谁会就媒体(包括社交媒体和传统媒体)在这一起可能早已预见的死亡事件中所扮演的角色,提出深刻的质疑?

政府科学家大卫·凯利于 2003 年 7 月自杀。

在英国和爱尔兰,可通过免费电话 116 123 联系撒玛利亚会(Samaritans)。


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上周在克拉克顿(Clacton)显现出的对改革英国党(Reform UK)的支持。 Ben Montgomery/ Getty Images

法拉奇可能是淹没一切的涨潮

改革英国党领导人赢得了他的补选,但在原本被视为突破之年的一年里,他的政党却陷入了停滞,塞里·托马斯(Ceri Thomas)报道

对于改革英国党(Reform UK)来说,艰难的几天为该党糟糕的三个月画上了句号。如果其领导人奈杰尔·法拉奇(Nigel Farage)今天在吧台前诚实地审视他的那杯啤酒,他不得不承认,在 2026 年这个他有充分理由预期杯中酒应过半的时点,改革英国党的杯子却是半空的。这本应是

一个“突破之年”;然而,在 5 月英格兰地方选举的高点之后,该党接连遭受挫折。

与此同时,尽管法拉奇自身屡次失足,但他的势头虽然放缓,并未停滞。相对而言,在他领导的政党走向失败时,他个人却在取得成功,这种命运的反差甚至让一些支持者感到不安。

对他们来说,克拉克顿海滨(Clacton-on-Sea)的补选就是一个证明点。这次补选是由法拉奇单方面发起的,并将改革英国党的部分资源从更重要的目标——大曼彻斯特市长接替安迪·伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)的选举中转移走了。但该党从克拉克顿的胜利中几乎没有获得任何好处,而法拉奇本人则获益匪浅。

党内高层认为,那里的结果实际上意味着,他可以不再担心关于加密货币亿万富翁克里斯托弗·哈本(Christopher Harborne)赠予 500 万英镑 未申报款项的议会调查。该调查可能产生的最严重制裁将是另一次补选。而在上周,法拉奇说服投票给他的人数超过了上次大选,他的亲信认为,他在该选区的任何竞争中都显得不可撼动。

因此,一个熟悉的问题依然存在:法拉奇是否就是那股淹没周围一切的涨潮?而改革英国党作为一台筹款机器的成功,使这个问题变得更加尖锐。去年年底,该党在吸引的 3200 万英镑 捐款中仅花费了 2200 万英镑,并且再次筹集到了比任何其他政党更多的资金。

这个男人嘲弄了那些为投票权而艰苦奋斗的人

评论

彼得·海恩(Peter Hain)

当奈杰尔·法拉奇的追随者在上周五凌晨摆姿势、跳舞,将他预料之中的克拉克顿补选胜利宣称为人民对抗体制的胜利时,人们很容易忘记投票权是多么珍贵,民主是多么至关重要。

通过辞职并触发补选,他嘲弄了这项珍贵的权利。

俄罗斯政治领导人阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼(Alexei Navalny)为此在 2024 年牺牲。纳尔逊·曼德拉(Nelson Mandela)为此在监狱中度过了 27 年。

只需询问法拉奇最欣赏的人物之一——弗拉基米尔·普京,他的俄罗斯公民是否真的拥有真正的民主——当总统的反对者被杀害,自由媒体被压制,以至于投票变成了仅能重新选举他的权利。或者询问乌克兰人,面对唐纳德·特朗普(Donald Trump)和法拉奇在普京野蛮入侵问题上的含糊其辞,他们是否拥有民主权利。

“是我们挑起了这场战争,”法拉奇在 2025 年告诉彭博社。他在 2014 年 3 月告诉《GQ》杂志,普京是他最钦佩的世界领导人。

作为 1994 年 4 月的一名英国议会观察员,我目睹了数以千计的人从南非索韦托的黎明薄雾中涌出。我的官方司机将选票投入票箱,一半是胜利感,一半是惊讶,兴奋地挥拳庆祝。

一个中年黑人,他人生中第一次投票,告诉我他之前一直担心选票可能会在最后一刻被抢走。

一位 90 多岁的老妇人投票了,永恒的微笑在她饱经风霜的脸上绽放,而年轻人们穿着运动鞋跳了出来,与朋友们击掌。

法拉奇及其对手宾面伯爵(Count Binface),右图。 丹·基特伍德(Dan Kitwood) / 盖蒂图片社


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奈杰尔·法拉奇 与该党内政 发言人 齐亚·尤苏夫(Zia Yusuf)。 卡洛斯·伊莫托(Carlos Imoto) / MP 盖蒂图片社

2026年第一季度(目前可获得的最 recent 数据)的政党情况。如果现在不是改革英国党(Reform UK)成为一支有组织、专业化力量的时机,那么什么时候才是?

工作人员表示,这种情况已经在发生了。他们举例称,改革英国党的政策部门比任何其他政党的都更大、更好。但评论员兼活动人士蒂姆·蒙特戈默里(Tim Montgomerie)——在2024年12月加入改革英国党之前曾担任33年的保守党员——认为旧文化仍在吞噬这个新组织。他说:“在维多利亚区一边喝酒吃午餐一边制定政策,已经不再足够了。”

其他加入改革英国党的高级保守党员则陷入了困境。

一名男子在克拉克顿(Clacton)投票站开放时挥舞圣乔治旗。

Aldo Ciarrocchi / LNP

其中知名度最高的是罗伯特·詹里克(Robert Jenrick),他名义上仍是该党的财政发言人,但并未被其核心圈子视为资产,也未被利用起来。苏埃拉·布拉弗曼(Suella Braverman)则几乎销声匿迹。

对于蒙特戈默里来说,令人沮丧的是基本面其实很好:“改革英国党在重大判断上是正确的——富裕阶层向左转,蓝领阶层向右转。在战略上,改革英国党比保守党处于更好的位置,他们只是还没有足够的人才。”

在某种程度上,这与法拉奇的观点不谋而合。法拉奇在一次新闻发布会上表示:“今年年初,我们被称作一个人的乐队……到了今年的第八个月,我们在能够出面代表我们发言的人员广度上,改变了政党的面貌。是否还有更多缺口需要我来填补?这在很大程度上仍是一个进行中的过程。”

政治上的进步通常是根据预期而非硬性里程碑来衡量的。在今年5月8日,即英格兰地方选举以及苏格兰和威尔士全国投票后的第二天,法拉奇设定了很高的预期。他说:“这不仅是我们政党的大日子,更是英国政治在各方面全面重塑的大日子。”法拉奇认为,改革英国党的结果很强劲,但这仅仅是开始:一块“垫脚石”。

5月的结果确实在重塑英国政治方面发挥了作用——基尔·斯塔默(Keir Starmer)在短短两个多月后就离职了。但对于改革英国党来说,随后出现了一系列失误:在梅克菲尔德(Makerfield)补选中表现糟糕,这让安迪·伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)走上了前往唐宁街10号的道路;随后在接替他担任大曼彻斯特市长的选举中表现更糟,在一次该党认为自己可能获胜的竞争中,改革英国党在首轮投票中仅获得21%的选票。

在同一场选举中,由前改革英国党议员鲁珀特·洛(Rupert Lowe)在与法拉奇闹翻后成立的“恢复英国党”(Restore Britain)获得了9%。改革英国党无法确定如何在该党新出现的、更右翼的邻居面前进行定位,这造成了其最严重的战略头痛,并将注意力集中在一段已成为该党试金石的关系上,即法拉奇与其内政发言人齐亚·尤苏夫(Zia Yusuf)之间的关系。

法拉奇在一定程度上将“恢复英国党”视为一个旧问题——就像那些他一直声称自己作为堡垒去抵御的、超越底线的政党(如英国国民党BNP)一样。但在上周的评论中,显然存在回旋余地。法拉奇说:“所以我们可以与鲁珀特·洛交谈,这没问题。但当你遇到……公开支持的人要求将所有犹太人驱逐出境,仅举此为例——我会开出的条件是,这些人必须被排除在核心圈之外。”

法拉奇与尤苏夫的关系成为关注焦点,是因为一些亲改革英国党的评论员担心,尤苏夫在监管改革英国党右翼边界时的尽职程度远不如法拉奇,有些人甚至认为他正积极尝试将该党拉向那条边界。

上周发生了一次冲突,尤苏夫在社交媒体的一篇帖子中,称前保守党国防大臣、获得勋章的士兵本·华莱士(Ben Wallace)是个白痴,且是对国家的叛徒。这引发了人们的疑问:像改革英国党(Reform UK)这样一个政治造反组织如何成熟为一个潜在的执政党——尤苏夫这种向对手吐口水的决心,是否在加深人们对其过多的负面认知?但战略层面的问题更为深远。

蒙哥马利(Montgomerie)认为尤苏夫拥有某些罕见的政治天赋,但表示:“他是我在政界遇到过最古怪的人,而在这个领域,竞争者非常多。奈杰尔·法拉格(Nigel Farage)一直未能将他控制住。他能做到吗?”

对于蒙哥马利来说,这个问题的答案至关重要,因为它触及了改革英国党在面对来自右翼挑战时,将变成什么样的政党这一核心问题。他认为尤苏夫的威权本能与改革英国党格格不入,而且可以说更适合“恢复党”(Restore):“如果齐亚(Zia)在内政大臣这样的职位上拥有权力,我会非常担心。”

一如既往,在一个像改革英国党这样被法拉格一个单个人物主导的政党中,人格特质与政治是不可分割的。尽管现在有了大量的新资金、新面孔和既定结构,法拉格那些友好的批评者仍担心,他现在对严肃的政策制定并不比以往更有兴趣,他本质上是不可改造的。如果他如此,这个政党可能也是如此。

一名法拉格的支持者在克拉克顿(Clacton)为改革英国党拉票。 Tim Imoto / MP

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img-27.jpeg

在经历了那么多年痛苦、国家谋杀和酷刑,以及在监狱中虚度的人生之后,宪法种族隔离制度在民主的伟大胜利中被驱除。

为伟大民主事业而战的人们,从反种族隔离活动家到废奴主义者,在他们最需要支持的时候,总是不受欢迎或遭受迫害——只有在他们获胜之后才被神化。

人们忘记了在英国争取全民投票权的漫长而艰辛的斗争。如今,女性参政论者(suffragettes)拥有偶像地位,被视为女英雄。然而,在长达数十年的要求女性投票权的抗议活动中,她们曾被诋毁——而这一权利在不到一百年前才被勉强承认。

如今工人阶级的男性可以投票,就像上周四在克拉克顿投票的数千人一样,但宪章派(Chartists)曾为了确保这项权利而进行了长期艰苦的斗争。这项权利同样是被勉强承认的。

在一场由古怪的补选个人主义者组成的马戏团中,击败一个垃圾桶般的对手真的就是民主吗?或者法拉格像特朗普一样,是一个“特氟龙”政治家?可疑的捐款、丑闻、鲁莽的言论、仇恨、披着替罪羊外衣的偏见、恐吓记者——所有这些似乎都无法在他身上留下痕迹。

他的支持者并不用他们要求对手执行的标准来要求他,而是将针对其个人财务的官方调查视为一场政治迫害。然而,他们却要求其对手必须洁白无瑕。他们有一套规则,而其他人则适用另一套。

想象一下,如果安迪·伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)像特朗普那样被起诉涉嫌强奸会怎样?或者凯米·巴德诺克(Kemi Badenoch)像法拉格那样收到加密货币大亨给的 500 万英镑 会怎样?他们会被彻底搞垮。

民主?上周四我们确实进行了一次人民投票。但这真的是为了人民吗?法拉格滥用了一个应当被珍惜而非被践踏的、艰苦赢得的原则。

工党贵族彼得·海恩(Peter Hain)曾任国会议员、内阁部长及反种族隔离活动家。


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骑电动滑板车上学:零售商试图诱导儿童进行非法出行

商店号召未成年骑行者“滑到朋友家”——尽管在公共道路上这样做是违法的

Ed Wiseman

《观察者报》发现,亚马逊(Amazon)和德本汉姆(Debenhams)等多家在线商店正在推广未成年骑行者非法使用电动滑板车的行为。

除非是作为 Lime 或 Voi 等官方租赁计划的一部分,否则在道路或公共空间骑行电动滑板车均属非法,且 16 岁以下儿童的使用范围仅限于私人土地。但几家零售商正通过向家长和青少年推广电动滑板车(包括用于上下学通勤)而违反广告法规。

在德本汉姆网站上,一款售价 £81.60 的 Homcom 品牌电动滑板车被广告宣传为送给孩子的“理想”礼物,且适合“7 到 14 岁的人用作日常通勤滑板车”。亚马逊上的一个商品列表配有一张两名穿着学校制服的年轻人的图片,将一款通用的“成人及青少年”电动滑板车描述为“非常适合在繁忙的城市街道中超车或疾驰”。

这两个列表所设定的场景在道路使用和未成年无证驾驶方面均属违法。虽然这两个网站都包含免责声明,告知买家不要在公共道路上使用电动滑板车,但都没有明确指出这样做是违法的。

广告标准局(ASA)的规则规定,这些警告是不充分的,且不能抵消广告中其他部分所传达的认可非法使用的印象。

规模较小的专业零售商正通过“返校促销”瞄准家长。零售商 iSinwheel 提供一系列专门面向 11 岁儿童销售的电动滑板车,并称其可用于上学,或“带着灿烂的笑容滑到朋友家”。中国制造商 iScooter 在其英国网站上明确提到其“返校”系列产品适用于道路使用。

“对于在文字或图像中陈述或暗示电动滑板车可用于人行道、道路、自行车道或公园等公共空间的广告,我们采取强硬立场,”广告标准局的一位发言人表示。“我们此前已对那些通过不负责任地暗示电动滑板车可在公共道路上骑行而违规的广告采取了行动。”ASA 的法定权力有限,无法开出罚单,但它已维持了针对包括 Currys 在内的公司电动滑板车广告的投诉,认为这些广告暗示其可在公共道路上骑行,具有“误导性”且“缺乏社会责任感”。

私有电动滑板车被禁止在所有道路、人行道、自行车道以及公众可进入的土地上使用。唯一合法骑行的地方是在获得所有者许可的私人土地上——这是一个极其狭窄的许可使用场景,无法解释交通部认为在英格兰流通的约 120 万辆电动滑板车。18 岁以下人群的电动滑板车受伤人数正在急剧增加。英格兰北部的三大儿童创伤中心(曼彻斯特、利物浦和谢菲尔德)自 2019 年以来已治疗了 477 名儿童。16 岁以下人群的受伤人数从 2019 年的 10 人增加到 2024 年的 150 人,受伤者的平均年龄为 12 岁。据估计,已有 59 人在电动滑板车事故中死亡,其中包括 14 岁的 Jacob Calland,他在 2025 年 3 月乘坐朋友驾驶的车辆后座时与一辆汽车相撞。

最近发表在《BMJ 急诊医学杂志》上的一项关于儿童电动滑板车受伤情况的审查显示,骑行者或其他相关方的受伤案例中,仅有 2.5% 发生在私人土地上。

亚马逊确认正在调查《观察者报》指出的该商品列表。该公司在声明中表示:“我们

要求在我们商店提供的所有产品都必须遵守适用的法律、法规和亚马逊政策。在我们商店销售的电动滑板车带有显著的横幅和资源,旨在为我们的客户提供关于安全和合法使用的指导。'

Debenhams、iSinwheel 和 iScooter 已被联系以寻求评论。

让一切变得更简单

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在线超市

视供应情况而定。适用地理限制。适用最低速度及相关费用。完整条款请参阅 ocado.com


新闻

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

13

“我觉得,一个人怎么才能赚钱?一个选择就是脱衣舞”

现在拥有自己的爱丁堡艺术节(Edinburgh Fringe)演出的前半裸模特基莉·哈泽尔(Keeley Hazell)向之前的“反对 Page 3”运动活动人士杰西卡·海登(Jessica Hayden)讲述了是什么驱动了她的决定。

基莉·哈泽尔在爱丁堡艺术节上的演出是一场一小时的独白,讲述了那些她认为剥削她并利用她的形象赚钱的男人。作为 2000 年代最著名的 Page 3 模特之一,哈泽尔习惯于在报纸上看到自己的半裸照片,以及那些她几乎认不出来的自身版本。

如今 39 岁的她穿着豹纹热裤走上舞台,拉起白色上衣露出内衣。这场演出大致基于她同名的回忆录——《大家都见过我的胸》(Everyone's Seen My Tits)——其设定是她正在“试镜”扮演基莉。毕竟,她是 Apple TV 剧集《泰德·拉索》(Ted Lasso)中角色基莉·琼斯(Keeley Jones)的现实原型。在艺术节演出中,就像在现实生活中一样,她没有得到这个角色。随后,她讲述了令人心碎的被剥削故事。

当哈泽尔 20 岁时,《星期日体育报》(Sunday Sport)刊登了一段私人性爱录像的照片,该录像由她的前男友卖给该报。她在演出中说:“我的整个阴部以黑白形式出现在了一家全国性报纸上。”她记得看到前男友开着一辆用录像利润购买的豪车四处行驶,而她则觉得自己的生活崩溃了。

当时,复仇色情(在未经他人同意的情况下分享性图像或视频的行为)并不违法。该报由大卫·沙利文(David Sullivan)所有,他被指控性虐待女性,其中许多女性是为了有机会在报纸上露面而与他接触。沙利文否认这些指控。

哈泽尔在伦敦东南部的一个市政住宅区长大,16 岁离开学校在一家美发店工作。一名同事建议她成为一名 3 女孩,于是她向报社寄去了照片。“这是一个非常奇怪的系统,而我当时真的很想赚钱,”她说。“我觉得,一个人怎么才能赚钱?一个选择就是脱衣舞。感觉赚钱的选择真的非常有限。”

阶级处于哈泽尔与 3 之间复杂关系的核心。“我的旅程是一段阶级流动之旅,”她说。“我说我是个女权主义者,但我认为出现在 3 并不是一种女权主义行为。但在反对[结束 3]的运动方面,情况也很复杂。那些参与反对运动的女性,她们拥有可能某些出现在 3 的女性所不具备的生活机会和受教育机会。”

这就是我们路径交汇的地方。当我 16 岁时,我是“不再有 3”(No More 3)运动的代表人物之一;第四频道(Channel 4)拍摄了一部关于我参与运动的纪录片。在哈泽尔受到影响多年后,我也参与了推动复仇色情入罪的运动。我穿着一件“不再有 3”的 T 恤坐在上议院,见证了该立法的通过。

16 岁时,我认为 3 是一个非黑即白的问题。我认为答案

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“活动人士拥有可能某些 3 女性所不具备的生活机会和受教育机会”

基莉·哈泽尔,前模特

是显而易见的: 3 是错误的,女性不应参与其中。我当时没有考虑到,对于像哈泽尔这样认为自己选择有限且渴望赚钱的人来说,被提供一笔巨额资金来脱掉衣服意味着什么。

在《太阳报》取消半裸专栏 11 年后,我告诉她我参与该运动的经历。她询问我为什么这么做,我可以理解为什么她认为该运动遗漏了一些东西——即像哈泽尔这样的女性认为自己所拥有的自主权——尽管她并不后悔该运动取得了成功。

“我觉得时机到了,”她说。“对我来说, 3 是一个疯狂的概念,我认为它消失了是好事。 3 在社会中传递了什么样的信息?而这就是

基利·哈泽尔(Keeley Hazell,左)与杰西卡·海登(Jessica Hayden,下)在拍摄纪录片期间进行活动。车内是前《太阳报》记者安迪·库尔森(Andy Coulson)。摄影:Guy Lowndes, Justin Talley / 对我而言,从事“第三页”工作存在冲突。这份工作在伦理和道德上与我不一致,但给我的报酬远高于我在美发店能赚到的钱。”

我告诉哈泽尔在第四频道纪录片播出后我遭遇了什么。17岁时,我遭受了密集的骚扰。一名男子通过一段显示我父母家前门的片段推断出了我的家庭住址。人们分享将我17岁的脸合成到“第三页”女孩身体上的照片。一段我穿着校服在学校走动的视频(为纪录片拍摄)被上传到了一个分享儿童色情图片的论坛。我向警方举报了此事,但被告知他们无能为力。那段视频至今仍在那里。

聊了一个小时后,我问哈泽尔,她认为如果我们都在16岁时能否合得来。“你看过剧作《1536》吗?”她反问道。我没看过。

“故事发生在亨利八世砍掉安妮·博林头颅的那一年,”她说,“讲述的是埃塞克斯的三个女孩,她们在应对国王即将处决其妻子的消息。这很有意思,因为她们性格各异。一个是圣母,一个是娼妓,一个则是某种独立女性。但当你看到结尾时,你会突然意识到,她们每一个人都被男人和父权制给玩弄了。所以我们的经历也是类似的事情。无论你从哪个角度看待这个问题,你都被男人和父权制给玩弄了。”

哈泽尔从来不是敌人。她是一个在选择有限的体制内做出选择的女性,以及面对一个她认为自己无法拒绝的机会。我现在明白了。

《盐径》调查可能导致该片失去美国发行商

Stephen Armstrong

据主演吉莉安·安德森(Gillian Anderson)透露,《观察者报》对《盐径》(The Salt Path)作者雷诺·温(Raynor Winn)的调查可能导致该电影失去了其在美国的主要发行商。

“(这部电影)在英国的表现非常好——超出了我的预期,”她上周告诉《广播时报》(Radio Times)。“我想在文章发表的那一周,我们正准备与索尼经典(Sony Classics)签署美国市场的合同,所以这太糟糕了,而且现在依然很糟糕。”这是她首次公开谈论这起丑闻。

该片于2025年5月在英国上映,由安德森饰演温,杰森·艾萨克斯(Jason Isaacs)饰演她的丈夫莫斯(Moth)。电影改编自雷诺的回忆录,她在书中声称,在莫斯与一种神经退行性疾病作斗争且两人沦为无家可归者后,他们徒步走完了西南海岸路径(South West Coast Path)全长630英里的路程。

在经历延迟后,该片将于本月通过规模较小的独立发行商里亚尔托发行公司(Rialto Distribution)在美国上映。

安德森将《观察者报》披露的消息——即温关于夫妇俩如何变得无家可归的描述并非真实,且神经学家对其丈夫皮质基底节变性(corticobasal degeneration)的诊断持怀疑态度——描述为“非常不幸”。她表示:“我希望人们能够将(这部电影)作为一个独立的实体来体验,将其与事实真相与否或任何争议分开。”

该片在全球范围内获得了1600 万英镑m的票房,其中约一半来自英国。与索尼影业经典(Sony Pictures Classics)合作的美国发行通常会带来全国范围的院线公映。

上周,安德森的搭档艾萨克斯透露,他们预计仍需为电影进行宣传,他将这项任务描述为“在重新受到审视后的一个有趣体验”。艾萨克斯在播客节目《Kermode On Film》中表示,他曾质疑负责该片美国发行的团队是否真的希望他进行宣传,而对方告诉他,是的,绝对需要。

“显然,有些事情受到了质疑,”他说,并补充道《盐径》是一部“美丽的电影”,且“其中很大一部分内容仍然完全有效”。他并未说明故事中的哪些部分仍然有效。

吉莉安·安德森与杰森·艾萨克斯在电影《盐径》中

2025年7月,《观察者报》的克洛伊·哈吉马特欧(Chloe Hadjimatheou)披露,温被指控从雇主那里窃取数万英镑,导致其被逮捕。为了偿还这笔钱,这对夫妇从莫斯的一位亲戚那里借款,利率为18%。

哈吉马特欧引用了皮质基底节变性(CBD)专家的观点,指出虽然患有该病的人的预期寿命通常为六到八年,但莫斯已带病生存了15年。

温称这些指控“具有高度误导性”。去年提供的一份声明称:“《盐径》揭示了莫斯和我共同经历的身体与精神之旅,这次经历彻底改变了我们,并改变了我们的人生轨迹。这就是我们旅程的真实故事。”


14 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

调查

曼德尔森档案:白厅核心地带的失策与掩盖记录

蒂姆·亚当斯(Tim Adams) 记录了电子邮件所揭露的这位名声扫地的前大使与杰弗里·爱泼斯坦(Jeffrey Epstein)之间的关系,以及英国政府的内部运作情况。

彼得·曼德尔森(Peter Mandelson)在公开场合坚称自己处于杰弗里·爱泼斯坦社交圈的“边缘”,而证据却表明他是这位性贩卖者的亲密心腹,这两者之间的矛盾可以用几种方式来戏剧化地呈现。

一种方式是美国司法部去年 9 月公布的爱泼斯坦档案中,对曼德尔森的 6,000 次提及。但或许最能简洁概括他们特殊关系的,是同一批档案中的一张照片:曼德尔森在爱泼斯坦的巴黎公寓里,显然正穿着内衣主持一场会议。

尽管这位恋童癖金融家向他的客人承诺会保守秘密,但他和吉斯莱恩·麦克斯韦尔(Ghislaine Maxwell)似乎从未错过收集筹码的机会:拍摄他们圈子中那些权势显赫的猥琐者的派对快照。曼德尔森的那张照片并不完全属于此类。但正如爱泼斯坦无疑深知的那样,这张照片具有破坏性,仅仅是因为曼德尔森在他这位“好哥们”的客厅里看起来如此自在。(针对这张照片,曼德尔森声称不记得那套公寓或那个场合——就好像他穿着紧身内裤向被遮蔽姓名的年轻女性进行简报的样子没什么可看的。)

曼德尔森的运气很好,这张照片是从同一批缓存中释放出来的,而该缓存还揭露了安德鲁·蒙巴顿-温莎(Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor)在同一套价值 1000万美元 公寓的“按摩室”里,四肢着地趴在一名年轻女性身上。这至少让他免于登上头版。同样,当曼德尔森和爱泼斯坦往来的电子邮件中那些令人蒙羞的全部揭秘于去年 9 月公布时,评论很快就转向了基尔·斯塔默(Keir Starmer)在任命曼德尔森为驻美大使时的审查失败和判断失误,而非曼德尔森与爱泼斯坦关系的具体历史。

聆听《观察者报》引人入胜的新四集播客《曼德尔森档案》可以纠正这种失衡。该系列由艾达·巴鲁梅(Ada Barumé)和制作人阿马莉·索特兰(Amalie Sortland)精心编纂,不仅源于对爱泼斯坦档案的细读,还源于英国政府就审查丑闻公开的 1,500 份文件。这些文件不可避免地记录了各级公务员的失策与掩盖。尽管其中一些疏忽令人震惊,但对曼德尔森与爱泼斯坦之间电子邮件往来的全面梳理依然令人屏息。

例如,在爱泼斯坦因贩卖未成年人进行性交易而被定罪的那一天(在他可能面临的 80 多起案件之一),曼德尔森写信给这位入狱的好友,坚持认为:“整件事对[你]来说是多年的折磨,现在你必须向世界展示你是一个多么伟大的人。以及多么坚强。我对你评价极高,我对发生的事情感到绝望和愤怒……你的朋友们会陪伴你并爱你。”当时曼德尔森究竟在想什么?

或者,关于爱泼斯坦服刑 13 个月获释时的对话又是如何?“我们该如何庆祝?”曼德尔森问。“和格蕾丝(Grace)以及莫德斯蒂(Modesty)一起[两名脱衣舞女的名字],”爱泼斯坦回答。“自由的感觉如何?”曼德尔森询问。“……新鲜、紧致且奶油般顺滑,”爱泼斯坦回答。“淘气男孩!”曼德尔森惊呼。

这类对话并非两人之间唯一的往来。还有一些对话揭示了在全球金融危机期间,身为政府部长的曼德尔森正秘密地与爱泼斯坦合作,以保护那些导致危机的银行家的生活方式。“杰米(摩根大通首席执行官戴蒙)是否应该再次给达林打电话?”爱泼斯坦在询问曼德尔森关于其内阁同事、时任财政大臣的阿里斯泰尔·达林的情况,后者当时正在制定一项针对银行家奖金征收一次性 50% 税款的法律。“是的,并且要轻微地威胁,”曼德尔森回答道。随后,当欧盟部长们准备一项 5000亿美元 救助计划以挽救欧元时,曼德尔森向这名性贩子提供了该市场敏感信息的预警。

警方仍在继续调查曼德尔森是否在公职失职方面需要承担指控。他多次表示,他认为自己的行为不构成犯罪,也没有为了个人利益而行事,并且正在配合


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

15

去年五月,曼德尔森在白宫与唐纳德·特朗普在一起(左);下方,两侧分别是大使候选人贝尔·格里尔斯(左)和乔治·奥斯本。 Jim Watson / MP / Getty

杰弗里·爱泼斯坦与吉斯莱恩·麦克斯韦。 美国司法部(DOJ)

我之前就警告过你这件事。表现好点,否则你会被像个坏男孩一样惩罚。”

第二次奇怪的对话发生在爱泼斯坦获释几年后。“我必须告诉你,在陪伴你多年之后,”爱泼斯坦写信给曼德尔森,“在你男朋友需要的时候支持他,在我的指导中坚定不移……我对目前看来像是一条单行道的情况感到失望……你还没有提供真正的帮助、感激的迹象或赏识。”

曼德尔森在回信中坚称这种描述是不公平的,并补充道:“在你历经磨难期间,我从未离开过你的身边。”

这次对话发生在一个时间点,看来当时爱泼斯坦想要提醒他的朋友们,他掌握关于他们的什么信息。你记得,出于类似的精神,他曾带着安德鲁王子在中央公园散步。这封电子邮件是否是一个信号,表明爱泼斯坦也在要求曼德尔森服从?

今年一月,记者劳拉·昆斯伯格就爱泼斯坦出狱后曼德尔森对他表现出的忠诚度对他进行了质询。他给出了这个奇怪的回答:“我相信他的说法,也相信他的律师的说法,他的律师花了很多时间试图说服我——因为我确实深入了解过——他与这些年轻女性的接触是被诬陷定罪的。”

什么样的政治家会花“很多时间”听一个熟人的律师陈述,以说服自己他的熟人并不是法院已经证明的那种恋童癖?

如果动机不是害怕曝光,那会是什么?一个诱人的答案是,曼德尔森沉醉于这种违规的阴谋之中;他陶醉于扮演马基雅维利的角色。听着这些对话,我想起在 2008, 年曼德尔森出人意料地以商业大臣的身份重返政治前线后,我曾为本报对他进行过采访,而戈登·布朗通过将其提升至上议院促成了这次回归。

他当时的状态不能更精神了,但他向我坦承,他对随之而来的审查持有某些保留意见:“我不确定是否想让人们再次窥视我生活的所有方面。”正是在这段时期,他与在佛罗里达监狱中的爱泼斯坦通信。当时我写道:“他让你想起那些都铎王朝的阴谋家,像沃尔西或怀亚特,时而成为所有权力的源头,时而遭到放逐或流放。即使坐在那里捧着一杯午餐浓汤,给人的感觉也不像一名内阁成员,而像一名朝臣;引人注目,精于算计且虚荣。”

回顾那次采访的笔记,我发现我写道,曼德尔森“诡异地”在我们的前10分钟时间里盘问我在报社的地位,仿佛在试图确认我的薪资级别是否足以对他进行质询。我记录了他“在即便如此简单的互动中,也表现出一种不寻常的建立权力关系的欲望”。在给爱泼斯坦的信中,他经常引用孙子的古老智慧。“提醒你,”他写道,“你正在反击,所以你需要策略,策略,策略。记住《孙子兵法》。”

他对政治权力的渴望,是否能解释他尽管面对一切,依然对他的“旅行之友”爱泼斯坦保持忠诚?或许吧。第三任工党首相正是看中了这种特质

他对政治权力的渴望,是否能为其在经历这一切之后依然忠于他的“旅伴”爱泼斯坦而开脱?

首相基尔·斯塔默将他从政治荒原中召回。当时的逻辑是,特朗普办公室那种痴迷于关税的疯狂状态就像一个蛇坑,所以让我们把最有效的一条毒蛇投进去。

在听完《曼德尔森档案》后,人们很难不对政府机器在试图寻找理由来证明一项决定时的那种绝望的荒诞感感到绝望。

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而这项决定显然早已由部长们做出了。报告显示,斯塔默在选择华盛顿职位的候选人时得到了三个人选,而这三个人都足以获得“简直无法想象”奖。除了曼德尔森,入围名单中还有紧缩政策的架构师乔治·奥斯本,以及伊顿公学出身的冒险家贝尔·格里尔斯——后者最近刚在泰晤士河中为罗素·布兰德主持了洗礼。

对曼德尔森的初步审查引发了关于“普遍声誉风险”的质疑,但他还是通过了。随后,邮件显示,各部门之间就所需的额外审查程度展开了没完没了且荒诞的争论。最终双方同意进行“深度审查”,这要求曼德尔森填写一份表格,详细列出他打过交道的每一个外国人。就在他还在拖延此事时,他被任命前往华盛顿的消息已由首相宣布并由国王批准。

起初,这次任命奏效了。这位顶级的奉承者在特朗普耳边低语,并以承诺第二次对英国进行国事访问这一“金票”诱饵,帮助斯塔默在白宫的会面变得更加顺畅。邮件揭示了曼德尔森在筹备这一前所未有事件中的参与,其核心想法是向特朗普赠送一个部长级红色公文箱作为礼物。十几名公务员正字面意义上地在处理这件事。对于这段轶事,曼德尔森评价道:“这简直就像是《政府职能》(The Thick of It)里的情节。”

在接下来的几天里,他再次成为了那出政治剧中的邪恶反派。2025年9月,有消息披露曼德尔森在麦克斯韦为该性贩运者50岁生日组织的纪念册中,写了一封长达10页的情书给爱泼斯坦。外交部的资深公务员奥利·罗宾斯打电话给曼德尔森,要求召开危机会议。在会议之前,曼德尔森接受了《太阳报》哈里·科尔的播客采访,全程处于忏悔模式。他说:“(爱泼斯坦)就像粘在我鞋底的一块污垢,我发现很难将其踢掉。但我会做到的。”

他为何未能做到,以及在此过程中如何导致一名首相下台,在接下来的几个月里逐渐揭晓。2月,曼德尔森辞去了上议院议员职务。他的游说公司陷入破产。报纸刊登了他的照片,显示他在参加完派对后在乔治·奥斯本家外的墙边小便。这已经不是他第一次被相机拍到裤子掉下来,但这一次他彻底走投无路了。他被罚款£300。

曼德尔森对昆斯伯格说的另一句话是:“你真的认为,如果我知道发生了什么,知道他对待那些脆弱年轻女性的行为,我还会坐视不管……你认为如果我对他的所作所为有哪怕一丁点认知或怀疑,我还会写那样的邮件吗?”

《曼德尔森档案》让你有机会更接近这些问题的答案。而正如所有涉及曼德尔森的事情一样,这些答案给人的感觉远没有他希望表现得那么简单直接。

怀特霍尔曼德尔森电子邮件

“如果不采取行动,英国部长将无法提供任何制造业岗位。”埃德,以上内容来自一位曾在唐宁街 10. 号工作的朋友。人不错!曼德尔森发给能源大臣埃德·米利班德,关于他希望米利班德会见的一位外交部长的邮件。

“这简直就像是《政坛风云》(The Thick of It)里的情节……多么无能……怀特霍尔早在二月份就知道了这件事。”曼德尔森发给斯塔默的幕僚长摩根·麦克斯威尼,关于一份给唐纳德·特朗普的礼物的邮件。

“我会和丹 [斯塔默的高级助手] 谈谈,确保我们将新可披露证据的产生控制在合理范围内。”外交部负责人奥利·罗宾斯,关于聘用曼德尔森的决定。

调查。无论法律上如何,前首相戈登·布朗表示,这些披露令他感到厌恶。他说:“在金融危机期间……内阁成员竟然更多地在考虑他自己及其富有的朋友,这是对我们国家所代表的一切的背叛。”

《曼德尔森档案》提出的问题是,究竟是什么让曼德尔森如此行事?没有记录证明爱泼斯坦曾向那些享受其可疑款待的人发出敲诈威胁。然而,这里有几段对话暗示,在大部分幼稚的玩笑背后,存在着某种程度的胁迫威胁。第一段发生在 2002, 年,当时曼德尔森被迫第二次辞去布莱尔政府的职务。

一段与麦克斯韦的对话始于她回复一条未知消息给曼德尔森的电子邮件。“不要太恶心,”她写道。曼德尔森回复道:“我热爱恶心。这就是为什么我是狂野且危险的,并且两次跌落……”他继续写道:“昨天和JE聊天很愉快……不过恐怕我破坏了他的午餐。”对此,麦克斯韦的语气略有转变:“你破坏了杰弗里的午餐,皮特?”


16 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

新闻

这位理论物理学家兼BBC Radio 4 的 The Life Scientific 节目主持人带领 Xavier Greenwood 开启了一场穿越时空的旅程,沿途探讨了自由意志、他在伊拉克的童年,以及他对 Match of the Day 的热爱。

观察者报漫步 吉姆·阿尔-哈利利

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“时间是一个物理实体。你可以挤压它,也可以拉伸它。它并非绝对的”

我听过关于爱最美的一句话,同时也是关于时间的。一天晚上,当被问到为什么爱她的伴侣时,我的朋友回答道:“他让生命感觉如此漫长。”

我们所有人,都嵌入在时间之中。我们看到日子在延伸,岁月在飞逝,尽管我们明白时间感觉难以捉摸,但我们大多数人都相信其律动中存在某种客观的东西。我们想象时间有一种流动,这种流动不受我们试图衡量或歪曲它的尝试而干扰。但正如任何专家所知,宇宙并非如此简单。

“时间是一个物理实体,”吉姆·阿尔-哈利利(Jim Al-Khalili)说道,此时我们正从南海(Southsea)向朴次茅斯(Portsmouth)行进,耳畔是风的合唱,海浪轻抚着栈道的表面。“你可以挤压时间,也可以拉伸时间。它不仅仅是一个冷酷无情地滴答作响的绝对时钟。”

63岁的阿尔-哈利利对此深有体会。他是一位理论物理学家,萨里大学(University of Surrey)的教授,以及英国广播公司(BBC)Radio 4频道《科学生活》(The Life Scientific)节目的主持人。在撰写了涵盖量子生物学、外星人和阿拉伯科学等主题的书籍后,他现在开始探讨时间这个主题。他在进入第七个十年时这样做并非巧合。“变老是其中很大一部分原因,”他说。“你意识到时间似乎在加速。你意识到你不会永远活下去。你意识到时间是有限的。你对时间的流逝更加敏感。你开始想要更深入地探究它。”

在将于下个月出版的《时间》(Time)一书中,他试图回答一系列困扰了科学家和哲学家数千年的令人头疼的问题。时间有起点吗?它是否只能指向未来?它甚至是真实的吗?人们可能会想象像《心灵捕手》(Good Will Hunting)那样布满粉笔字和疯狂方程式的黑板,但阿尔-哈利利最好的工作成果往往是在床上完成的。

“我很多最深刻的想法都出现在我入睡之前。接下来的挑战是,当我早晨醒来时,是否还能记得这条论证思路或解决某个特定方程式的方法,”他说。“因为我绝不会为了记录而起床乱写一通。我没那么痴迷。”

阿尔-哈利利对待其职业的那种轻盈感使他显得亲切。当我们走在克拉伦斯码头(Clarence Pier)的游乐场时,公众认出了他;一个人告诉他的朋友:“我爱吉姆。”当我问他付给对方多少钱时,阿尔-哈利利笑了,但随着我们聊得越多,我越能理解为什么他拥有如此忠实的受众。

阿尔-哈利利在青少年时期就知道自己想成为一名物理学家(“这感觉就像在解谜”),但如果能为利兹联(Leeds United)踢球,他也会非常开心。他为大多数朋友都不是科学家而感到自豪。他无疑是个大才,但同时也拥有将自己的想法传达给非专家的罕见能力。他的作品核心受众是好奇的外行,其作品包括书籍、广播节目、YouTube频道以及大量电视纪录片。“你可能不想把这个写进文章里,但BBC的一位委约编辑曾称我的作品为‘正念电视’(mindful TV),”他说。“它是为了让人觉得自己很聪明。除了告知、教育和娱乐,它还要给人一种惊叹感。”

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他在巴格达出生,但他的家族故事也贯穿于朴次茅斯。他的伊拉克父亲在当地理工学院留学期间,结识了在中央图书馆工作的英国母亲。“我父亲毕业后,他们回到了伊拉克,我母亲随他一同前往,”阿尔-哈利利说。“对她来说,那是一次伟大的冒险。”尽管阿尔-哈利利在伊拉克长大,但他每隔几年就会去朴次茅斯探亲,并通过广播和电视与英国的生活保持联系;在远离英国泥泞球场的数千英里之外,他会观看《每日比赛》(Match of the Day)。他回忆道,伊拉克有个孩子从未去过巴格达,更不用说英国了,“但他是普雷斯顿北端队的铁杆粉丝。”

当阿尔-哈利利16岁时,就在萨达姆·侯赛因在伊拉克掌权两周后,他随父母搬到了朴次茅斯。在那个年纪搬到地球的另一端是很困难的,但他对此处之泰然。“那是一次巨大的冒险,”他说,重复了他在描述上一代母亲反向搬迁时使用的措辞。“我就读的学校是我母亲以前就读的女子文法学校,当时已变成了一所综合学校。在超过100名女生的六年级班级里,我仅有的三个男生之一。我成了学生会主席,因为另外两个小伙子不想干。”

阿尔-哈利利在学校结识了他的妻子朱莉。此后,他们在朴次茅斯市的南海区组建了家庭。阿尔-哈利利的家离我们只有几分钟路程。他的陪伴者有两个孩子、孙辈以及大海。“大约18年前,在我妻子接受癌症治疗期间,我和她开始真正意识到这里的价值,”他说。“她当时在接受化疗和放疗,需要新鲜空气、运动以及一些能让她清醒头脑的东西。我们就来到这里,沿着海滨散步。”自近50年前离开后,阿尔-哈利利再未踏足伊拉克。在1979年至2003年间统治的侯赛因独裁政权彻底改变了这个国家。“我成长时的那个伊拉克已经不存在了,”阿尔-哈利利说。对于许多人来说,朴次茅斯是启航之地,而对他而言,这里成了他的平衡点。

那么,时间。这就是我来见阿尔-哈利利的原因,但当然,其意义远不止于此。

摄影:Christian Sinibaldi

“对世界的理解和对物理学的欣赏让我充满惊叹”

这就是我们构建生命中每一个时刻的方式。它是一种能给我们带来慰藉或恐怖的力量,且无与伦比。到目前为止,它尚未被击败。从哪里开始?或许从结尾开始。阿尔-哈利利(Al-Khalili)书中的结论是,时间确实具有向未来的方向性,因此必须是真实的。他认为,一种被称为量子退相干(quantum decoherence)的现象证明了这一点。阿尔-哈利利主张,退相干被植入宇宙之中,是自然界中唯一真正不可逆的过程。

阿尔-哈利利得出这一结论的旅程令人心潮澎湃,因为这要求他与时间的诸多怪癖作斗争。其中一个怪癖是,时间并非像艾萨克·牛顿(Isaac Newton)所认为的那样是一个不可阻挡的时钟。它可以被速度和重力弯曲。我将省去那些细节,这些内容由书中解释比由我解释得更好,但这里有几分钟与阿尔-哈利利在海边交谈的片段。

“这是某种我们几乎可以切实控制的东西,”他在风声的咆哮中说道,“你可以通过接近光速的旅行来减慢时间。”他继续说道,在适当的条件下,一个人可能会看到事件 A 在事件 B 之前发生,而另一个人则看到事件 B 在事件 A 之前发生。在我还没来得及理解这一点之前,他停下来指向一家俯瞰港口的心仪酒吧。他说那里食物很好。然后他提到了克里斯托弗·诺兰(Christopher Nolan)的电影《星际穿越》(Interstellar)。我们聊了一会儿他对电影中时间描绘的看法。“我本人不会对科幻电影嗤之以鼻,不像很多同事那样,”他说,“对我来说,关键在于‘虚构’(fiction)这个词。”接着,话题直接转向了阿尔伯特·爱因斯坦(Albert Einstein)的块状宇宙(block universe)和自由意志。

阿尔-哈利利在深入思考如此烧脑的话题时,仍能保持在现实世界中的能力,这令人深感钦佩,尽管几乎难以理解。他似乎并不觉得这特别困难,但有时他是否难以让自己从中抽离出来?

“出来比进去容易得多,”他说,“这有点像你在读一本书。你在书里标记了读到的地方,但你不能直接从那里重新开始。你必须阅读之前的页面才能让自己重新进入状态。”

阿尔-哈利利不让自己过于纠结于存在主义问题。在他的工作领域,这很容易发生。爱因斯坦块状宇宙的一个后果——该理论假设过去、现在和未来同时存在,就像模拟胶片上的帧一样——就是未来是固定且真实的。

“我是一个所谓的兼容论者(compatibilist),”他愉快地说道,指的是一种认为决定论和自由意志可以调和的哲学观点。“这是一种‘既想要蛋糕又想把它吃掉’的态度。我认为宇宙是决定论的,也就是说,将要发生的必然会发生。在块状宇宙的图景中,将要发生的事情将会发生。但即便在原则上,由于多种原因,我们永远无法预测未来。因此,在实际操作中,那个未来对我们来说是不可知的。所以,即使自由意志仅仅是一种幻觉,它也是一种非常真实且强大的幻觉。”

当我问他所有这些关于时间的思考是否影响了他的生活方式时,他以一种并非物理学家的谦卑回应道

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

17

吉姆·阿尔-哈利利(Jim Al-Khalili)从朴次茅斯港口向外眺望,这里是他 1979 年离开伊拉克后的家。

解释关于你如何在技术上弯曲时间的特定科学,而是一个在世上平凡、反思的人的谦卑。“这让我意识到我无法控制时间,”他说。“我不能让时间慢下来。人们说:‘活在当下。活在现在。’根据定义,这就是我们唯一能做的事。我并没有因为研究过时间的本质而对如何生活拥有某种特权视角。我认为这只是让我更清晰地认识到我的时间是有限的。”

当我们返回南海气垫船港(Southsea Hoverport)时,我觉得有必要向阿尔-哈利利询问最后一个话题。时间旅行是他新书中的一个番外章节。这是否可能?“如果我们认同量子力学中类似于‘多世界’的解释,并且存在替代现实,那么这确实给了我们一个出口,”他说。“它意味着你可以回到过去,前提是你不是回到自己的时间线。因为你无法改变你的记忆:如果你改变了某些事情,那就变成了一条新的时间线。”

这听起来像是一个委婉的肯定,但阿尔-哈利利认为,科学家们终有一天会堵住那些在理论上允许向过去进行时间旅行的漏洞。至于前往未来,他认为答案同样是否定的——除非你稍微作弊。“如果你所指的仅仅是脱离所有人的时间线,因为你以接近光速的速度旅行,从而在所有人之前到达未来,[那么是的],但这并不是真正的时间旅行。”

这不应该给那些梦想着《回到未来》中的通量电容器以及会见克利奥帕特拉的人泼冷水。阿尔-哈利利这本书的成功之处在于,它证明了你可以在审视宇宙最复杂部分的同时,而不剥夺人类生活的色彩、兴奋感和可能性。“对世界的理解以及对正在发生的物理现象的欣赏让我充满惊叹,”他说。“这与许多人的想法相反——他们认为如果你只是试图求解数学方程,就无法欣赏美。其实你可以。”我想,我们又回到了关于爱的想法。

我们的身体被风吹打,被海浪溅湿,我们在码头告别。海水正在退潮,沙滩开始显露。多亏了阿尔-哈利利,我觉得自己拥有了一种全新的观察方式。我现在能更清晰地观察每一粒沙子。但我也得去赶气垫船了。时间与潮汐不等人。

《论时间:让宇宙运转的物理学》(On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick),作者吉姆·阿尔-哈利利(Jim Al-Khalili),普林斯顿大学出版社 9月1日出版,售价 £28


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圣赫勒拿及更远之地

圣诞与新年期间,乘坐“希布里迪安天空号”(MS Hebridean Sky)从阿克拉前往开普敦的航程,特邀演讲嘉宾为约翰·利皮特(John Lippiett)海军少将与理查德·科尔斯(Richard Coles)牧师 2027年12月21日至2028年1月10日

对于热爱大海与长途航行、享受避开常规路线旅行,并希望在节日期间远离家乡的人来说,这是一次史诗般的航程和绝妙的冒险。我们将乘坐可容纳100名乘客的“希布里迪安天空号”,从西非海岸出发,跨越赤道,沿着历史上的海上航线前往偏远的圣赫勒拿前哨站,随后继续前往纳米比亚,最后抵达开普敦结束旅程。

在南大西洋熟悉的航道之外,坐落着圣赫勒拿岛。它是世界上最偏远且最引人入胜的岛屿之一,长期以来一直吸引着旅行者、历史学家和自然主义者的想象。17世纪,东印度公司将其殖民并作为船只的重要中转站,而它最为人熟知的身份或许是拿破仑最后的居所。我们的航程提供了一个深入体验该岛的罕见机会,将其卓越的历史、壮丽的景观、独特的文化和野生动物,与对西非和南部非洲更广泛的探索相结合。

在全套房的“希布里迪安天空号”上,您将与大约100名同行的旅伴一起旅行,享受小型邮轮的体验和节日庆典。随行的还将有我们的特邀演讲嘉宾和专家团队,他们同样渴望能进行这样一次独特的旅程,并通过一些迷人的讲座分享他们的知识与热情。

“希布里迪安天空号”是世界上最优秀的小型邮轮之一,提供极其宽敞且设计精良的套房、布置精美的公共区域以及高标准的餐饮服务。该船仅可容纳118名乘客,套房设有休息区,部分套房还配有私人阳台。宽敞且装饰精美的公共房间包括休息室、优雅的酒吧、设有互联网接入的图书馆以及单一座次餐厅。室外设有后甲板日光浴区(天气温暖时可在遮阳处用餐)、酒吧、观察区和舒适的甲板家具。船上的氛围类似于私人游艇或乡村酒店,您可以放心,在岸上探索一整天后,您将回到一艘管理良好且配备豪华的舒适小型邮轮的宁静与惬意之中。

欲了解此次假期的详细信息,请立即致电 020 7752 0000 获取我们的宣传册。

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客座演讲嘉宾

约翰·利皮特(John Lippiett)海军少将曾在英国皇家海军服役 36 年,曾在从航空母舰到扫雷舰的大量舰船上任职,并被部署到全球所有的作战剧场。在晋升为海军少将后,他在担任海上训练旗舰官期间在海上率领旗舰,随后在拿波里担任北约地中海海上部队参谋长。他的最后一个岗位是联合服务指挥与参谋学院的院长。约翰退休后,在近 13 年间担任玛丽·罗斯信托基金(Mary Rose Trust)的首席执行官。约翰现在花费大量时间回到海上,担任海事历史演讲者。他热衷于讲述探索故事(经常使用旧地图)以及在过去两千年中发生在世界海洋上的海军冒险故事。

理查德·科尔斯(Richard Coles)牧师是一位作家、广播员和圣公会神职人员。他共同主持 BBC Radio 4 的《周六直播》(Saturday Live),并不时出现在《Q1》、《你有新闻给我吗》(Have I Got News For You)、《我会骗你吗》(Would I Lie To You)以及关于宗教、艺术和遥远地区的纪录片中。他曾赢得《圣诞名厨》(Christmas Masterchef)、两次赢得《名人智力竞赛》(Celebrity Mastermind),并在 2019 年率领利兹大学在《圣诞大学挑战赛》(Christmas University Challenge)中获得胜利。他经常出现在报纸和杂志上,为《星期日泰晤士报》杂志撰写重要人物特写,在《星期日泰晤士报》开设常驻专栏,并著有六本书,包括畅销的《克莱门特教区长谜案》(Canon Clement Mysteries)。理查德还与卡特·贾曼(Cat Jarman)和查尔斯·斯宾塞(Charles Spencer)共同主持历史播客《兔子洞侦探》(The Rabbithole Detectives)。

行程概览

第 1 天 伦敦至加纳,阿克拉。搭乘定期航班。抵达后,我们转乘 MS Hebridean Sky 号。

第 2 天 阿克拉与沙伊山野生动物保护区。今天将提供多种远足选择。您可以选择访问首都阿克拉,包括国家考古与民族志博物馆,馆内展出的文物展示了加纳历史上的文化遗产。随后我们将前往夸梅·恩克鲁玛陵墓和纪念公园,然后在一家海滨度假村享用可俯瞰大海的午餐。经由艺术家联盟画廊返回 MS Hebridean Sky 号,该画廊展出了大量加纳知名艺术家的作品。或者,驱车前往沙伊山野生动物保护区,在保护区的萨瓦纳草原上徒步,观察羚羊、丛林小羚羊、科布羚、狒狒、猴子以及包括塞内加尔鹦鹉在内的多种鸟类。午餐后,我们将前往阿布里植物园。该花园建立于 1890 年,最初是当时统治黄金海岸的英国殖民官员的疗养地,多年来培育了多种热带植物,吸引了许多鸟类和蝴蝶。

第 3 天 埃尔米纳。在历史名城埃尔米纳附近的锚地,我们将于今天乘坐 Zodiac 橡皮艇访问最大且最早的奴隶贸易堡垒之一——埃尔米纳城堡,该城堡现为联合国教科文组织世界遗产。它由葡萄牙人在 1482 年建造,并在 1637 年被荷兰人占领;当奴隶取代黄金成为主要出口产品时,城堡进行了扩建,仓库被改造成牢房。在导游的带领下,我们将参观城堡并了解其历史。

第 4 至 7 天 在海上。离开加纳后,我们开始向南航行,在驶向圣赫勒拿岛的过程中跨越赤道。在海上航行期间,您可以参加休息室里的部分讲座,或与船上的自然主义者一起在甲板上寻找野生动物。我们也希望夜晚天气晴朗,以便享受观星之乐。在前往圣赫勒拿岛的航程中,我们将在船上庆祝圣诞节。

第 8 至 10 天 圣赫勒拿岛,詹姆斯敦。圣赫勒拿岛由葡萄牙人在 1502 年发现,曾先后由荷兰和英国占有。17 世纪末,该岛成为大英帝国具有战略意义的重要停靠港,并由东印度公司控制了 200 多年。然而,这座岛屿最著名的身份或许是拿破仑最后的流放地。在经历了六年的流放后,他于 1821 年在这里去世,我们将访问拿破仑的住所——朗伍德故居。此外,在岛上的时间里还有许多活动可供参与。我们将探索微小的首都詹姆斯敦,参观法院、政府大楼和图书馆。体力充沛的游客可以尝试攀登 Jacob's Ladder 的 699 级台阶,俯瞰詹姆斯敦的景色。在适合各种体能水平的一系列徒步活动中,我们将有时间探索周围的乡村,体验惊人的美景,并见证丰富的鸟类生活,包括当地特有的圣赫勒拿丝尾鸟。访问世界上最偏远的蒸馏厂将有机会品尝当地的金酒、朗姆酒以及由当地仙人掌果制成的“Tungi”。

第 11 至 14 天 在海上。在驶回非洲大陆的途中,我们将度过四个轻松的海上航行日。我们将在途中迎接新年。

第 15 和 16 天 纳米比亚,沃尔维斯湾。今天抵达纳米比亚的主要沿海城镇沃尔维斯湾,这里将是我们停留一天半的基地。在此期间,我们可以选择访问斯瓦科普蒙德,它是纳米比亚西海岸的海滨度假胜地,具有独特的魅力。它像一个坐落在沙漠与海洋之间的巴伐利亚小村庄,氛围宁静惬意。斯瓦科普蒙德欧陆风情的来源是那些优雅的新艺术风格建筑,其中许多被列为国家古迹。我们还将有机会驱车穿过壮观的沙丘,前往纳米布-诺克卢夫特国家公园的威奇屋平原,希望在穿过这片如月球般的地貌时,能看到该地区特有的史前植物——神奇威奇屋(Welwitschia mirabilis)。想要活动身体的游客可以选择乘坐 4x4 越野车前往三明治港,这是一个位于纳米布-诺克卢夫特国家公园内、被巨大沙丘环绕的潮汐泻湖。

第 17 天 吕德里茨。吕德里茨夹在纳米布沙漠和南大西洋之间,是一个孤立的定居点,也是纳米比亚海岸线少数几个城镇和避风港之一。这里最早由葡萄牙航海家在 15 世纪登陆,直到 1883 年这片土地被富商阿道夫·吕德里茨买下后,该镇才作为德国殖民该地区的一部分而发展起来。下午的步行游览包括吕德里茨博物馆以及 Goerke Haus 和 Felsenkirche 等殖民时期建筑。随后访问附近的科尔曼斯科普鬼城,这里是 1908 年纳米比亚发现第一批钻石的地方。随着“钻石热”的兴起,该镇在随后的几年中迅速发展,并在 20 世纪 20 年代达到顶峰,直到在更南边发现了更丰富的矿床。到 20 世纪 60 年代,居民已全部离开,这座城镇现在任由天气摆布,并被不断侵蚀的沙丘所覆盖。

第 18 天 在海上。航向开普敦。

第 19 天 南非,开普敦。上午晚些时候,我们驶入美丽的城市开普敦,今天下午有多种远足选择。如果天气允许,我们将乘坐缆车登上标志性的桌山之巅,它是该市最著名的地标之一。在山顶,我们可以俯瞰下方的城市景色,或者沿着小径在当地特有的动植物群中散步。或者,您可能更倾向于利用这次机会访问该地区优秀的葡萄园之一,在了解生产技术后进行品鉴。

第 20 天 开普敦至伦敦。早餐后,我们访问基斯坦博沙国家植物园。在美丽的自然环境中悠闲散步,然后返回船上享用午餐。今天下午,我们将前往机场,搭乘预定航班飞往伦敦。

第 21 天 伦敦。今天抵达。

价格与包含项目

基于双人入住的每人特惠价格,标准套房起价为 £13495。

包含项目:

经济舱定期航班 • 在 MS Hebridean Sky 号邮轮上全餐入住 19 晚 • 午餐和晚餐期间提供 house wine(店酒)、啤酒和软饮 • 包括客座演讲者在内的 Noble Caledonia 船上团队 • 岸上观光 • 小费 • 接送服务 • 机场税 • 港口税。

注:港口和行程可能会有变动。旅行保险、加纳和纳米比亚的签证以及圣赫勒拿岛的入境许可不包含在价格内。前往圣赫勒拿岛将使用 Zodiac 橡皮艇。我们的现行预订条件适用于所有预订。

或者在 www.noble-caledonia.co.uk 在线查看或申请

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小型邮轮 - 宏大体验


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新闻

A-level 成绩提升为陷入困境的大学提供短暂喘息之机

Patrick Kidd

上周,获得大学录取名额的 A-level 学生人数创下纪录——尽管他们将成为首批每年支付超过 1 万英镑 学费的学生。然而,对于资金短缺的大学来说,这可能仅仅是暂时的喘息。在接下来的十年里,18 岁人群的数量将下降 17%,收入的减少,加上就业成本的上升以及减少海外学生签证数量的压力,可能会动摇一些象牙塔的根基。

下议院教育遴选委员会最近警告称,有 24 所英国大学在未来 12 个月内面临破产风险,预计有 50 多家高等教育机构处于脆弱状态。

教育委员会在 5 月发布了一份关于高等教育破产风险的报告。在 24 所罗素大学集团(Russell Group)大学中,16 所在 2024-25, 年度报告了盈余,其中以伦敦帝国理工学院(1419亿英镑)和牛津(1181亿英镑)领先,但诺丁汉大学有 8530 万英镑 的赤字,卡迪夫大学有 3340 万英镑 的赤字。贝尔法斯特女王大学、谢菲尔德大学、杜伦大学、利兹大学、剑桥大学和纽卡斯尔大学也处于赤字状态。

更令人担忧的是那些依赖海外学生学费的小型大学。监管机构学生办公室(OIS)告诉委员会,包括 7 家学生人数超过 3,000 人的机构在内的 24 家提供者面临破产风险。

“我们的报告发现该行业存在巨大的财务不稳定,”委员会的工党主席海伦·海耶斯(Helen Hayes)表示。“而且通过该系统进入的学生人数减少将增加压力。”她表示,一所大学的关闭“对当地经济将是灾难性的”。

政府坚称该行业“基本强劲且保持世界领先”,且经济前景比去年更好,尽管它委婉地承认“可能会出现一些提供者退出”的情况。

海耶斯坚持认为,政府需要给秋季开始攻读学位的学生提供保证。“不应该出现这种情况:任何人开始学习课程后,却因为机构关闭而无法完成学业,”她说。

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尽管王室介入,无家可归人数仍呈上升趋势

理查德·帕尔默 (Richard Palmer)

安迪·伯纳姆 (Andy Burnham) 并非唯一一个在承诺结束露宿街头并解决英国住房危机方面面临艰巨任务的人。在威尔士亲王过去三年试图展示如何解决该问题的六个英国地点中,有四个地点的无家可归人数正在上升。

王位继承人目前正处于其为期五年之久的“Homewards”项目的第四年之初,他希望该项目能成为在全国范围内消除无家可归现象的典范,而他所面临的挑战在最新的政府数据中被揭露无遗。

数据显示,与一年前相比,在六个试点项目区域中,有四个区域被评估为无家可归的家庭数量有所增加,分别是:阿伯丁 (Aberdeen);伯恩茅斯、克赖斯特彻奇和普尔 (Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole);北爱尔兰;以及谢菲尔德 (Sheffield)。只有在南威尔士的新波特 (Newport) 和伦敦的兰贝斯区 (Lambeth) 出现了具体的改善迹象,即便如此,那里的数字依然很高。

伯纳姆在担任市长期间曾誓言要结束大曼彻斯特地区的露宿街头现象,但未能实现;在他进入唐宁街的第一天,他也做出了类似的全国性承诺。他与威廉通过助手定期交换关于解决更广泛无家可归问题的经验,这些问题包括“沙发客”以及其他居住在临时住所的人员。

据一名王室消息人士透露,伯纳姆自 2017 年以来在大曼彻斯特地区的努力为威廉提供了灵感。但上周四公布的英格兰最新数据显示,新任首相在取得成功方面的情况不一。

总体而言,在大曼彻斯特的 10 个区中,法律上有义务提供预防或缓解无家可归援助的人数同比下降了 3.38% ——尽管其中五个区的总数有所增加,五个区有所下降。在整个英格兰,同一指标上升了 0.48%。在整个英国,目前约有 440,000 个家庭被评估为无家可归。

威廉的目标是在 2028. 6 月之前,让他的六个地点每个都走上消除无家可归的道路 —— 或者至少使其变得罕见、短暂且不再重复。通过与地方当局、慈善机构和企业合作,他采取的定制化方法包括早期干预和就业支持,以试图从源头上防止人们失去家园。但在全国性危机的背景下,该项目面临着严峻挑战,导致危机的因素包括社会住房短缺、租金飙升、房价失控、人口增长、家庭破裂以及对难民住所的需求。

在北爱尔兰,被官方评估为无家可归的人数自 2014, 年以来增长了 156%,从 24,729 人增加到年底创纪录的 63,426 人

其他页面

为什么房屋建筑商如此不愿降低价格? 商业版,第 39 页

今年 3 月。阿伯丁市议会 4 月发布的一份报告也指出,无家可归人数达到了创纪录的水平。

无家可归慈善机构认为,关键的解决方案是建设更多的社会住房。政府已承诺投入 390亿英镑 用于一项为期 10 年的社会及经济适用房计划,旨在创建 300,000 套住房,但一些专家质疑这是否足够。

与 Homewards 合作的 300 家机构之一 Shelter 的首席执行官 Sarah Elliott 表示:“如果没有足够真正负担得起的社会住房,许多家庭在被私人租赁市场的高价挤出后将无处可去,他们与无家可归之间几乎没有任何屏障。”

皇家基金会 Homewards 的当地交付负责人 Michael Corbishley 表示,威廉的计划正在帮助人们避免陷入危机点,尽管某些地方的无家可归人数仍在继续上升:“经济适用房至关重要,这就是为什么 Homewards 正在交付住房项目。但持久的改变取决于将更多住房与预防和支持相结合。”

morrisons.com 大多数门店。不包括 Morrisons Daily。在线情况有所不同。慈善机构。注册号 207994(英格兰和威尔士)。SC038731(苏格兰)。条款与条件:my.morrisons.com / marie-curie-eggb-iss


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“我们一直在等待她被暗杀的消息。她自掘坟墓” → 阿萨德一名助手神秘死亡,第 24 页

“就像生活在监狱里”:女性讲述在塔利班“老大哥”政权下的生活

自从美国和英国在五年前撤出该国以来,阿富汗安装了数以千计的闭路电视(CCTV)摄像头。这种恐惧与控制的氛围包括对头巾系得不整齐或随口说错一句话的惩罚。 Ruchi Kumar 报道

对于住在喀布尔的前教师、25 岁的塔赫米娜(Tahmina)来说,去当地商店办一件简单的差事已变成一项艰巨的任务。即使是一个小小的失误——头巾戴得不整齐、随口说错一句话或没有男性监护人陪同——都可能成为塔利班道德警察拦截并质询她的理由;而这种质询很容易导致她被拘留。

“塔利班到处都装了摄像头——你会觉得一直被监视着。他们等着你违反法律,这样他们就可以把你抓走,”塔赫米娜说。

2023 年,在凯旋重返喀布尔两年后,塔利班宣布了一项计划,将在首都及其他城市周围安装约 60,000 个闭路电视摄像头,这是为了强制阿富汗回归伊斯兰统治而不断扩大的监视系统的一部分。

在一年之内,喀布尔全市出现了 90,000 多个中国制造的安防摄像头。仅在市北部的海尔哈纳(Khair Khana)社区,就有约 8,000 个摄像头在进行监视。

塔利班官员向平民保证,该监视项目旨在根除犯罪。但喀布尔警方发言人哈立德·扎德兰(Khalid Zadran)当时发出了不祥的警告:“我们可以看到城市不同地区发生的一切,并监控公共活动。”

像阿基拉(Aqeela)这样的人将此类言论视为警告。她是一名来自喀布尔的 30 岁公民社会活动人士。在武装分子夺回这座城市几天后,她参加了反塔利班抗议活动,要求女性享有平等权利。“在那之后,我开始收到威胁,然后在 2022 年 8 月,他们搜查了我的家,”她告诉

img-54.jpeg

昨日,在塔利班重掌权力五周年之际,坎大哈的阿富汗妇女和儿童。 这些摄像头营造出一种恐惧感。觉得你的行为被监视着……觉得你即使在家里也不安全 阿基拉,喀布尔居民

《观察者报》。

塔利班战士出现时,阿基拉不在家,且再也没有回去过。“在那之后,我不得不多次更换住所,我的生活变成了逃犯的生活,”她说。现在她每次离开家(这种情况很少见)时,都担心摄像头可能会认出她。

“对于一个因公民活动和抗议活动而受到威胁的人来说,摄像头营造出这种恐惧感。这种感觉就是你的每一个动作都被记录,你的行为被监视……即使在自己的家里也不安全,”她说。

塔利班于 2021 年 8 月重新进入喀布尔,在那个夏天横扫全国的闪电进攻中击败了阿富汗军队。由唐纳德·特朗普在 2020 年达成并由乔·拜登在次年确认的一项里程碑式协议,开始了撤军进程,并为美国历史上最长的战争画上了句号。

随着一座又一座城市落入伊斯兰主义者之手,阿富汗人知道将发生什么。在短短几周内,普通生活,尤其是女性的生活,发生了彻底的改变,且变得更加糟糕。

阿富汗的新领导层迅速重新实施了前政权臭名昭著的压制性法律和政策,该前政权在 2001 年美国领导的入侵之前,于 20 世纪 90 年代后期统治该国。女性、少数群体和其他边缘群体的权利和自由受到了限制。

在此后的几年里,数十项法令稳步地将阿富汗女性推向社会的边缘,限制了她们说话、工作、学习、着装、找工作或独立行动的权利。

为了加强控制,塔利班扩大了对该国安全机构的掌控。任何

任何形式的异议或抗议都被镇压,媒体自由被严重削减。而监视这一切的,是一个不断扩张的监视国家。

联合国阿富汗问题特别报告员理查德·本内特(Richard Bennett)在其2025年的报告中指出,如今的阿富汗人“由于执法严苛且不一致,生活在缺乏法律确定性以及监视与恐惧的氛围中”。

今年6月,当西方城市赫拉特爆发近三年来首次大规模反政权抗议时,塔利班利用其安全网络进行了干预。

当地人走上街头,抗议塔利班拘留数十名被指控违反严格着装规范的女性。在随后的冲突中,有两人在抗议被镇压时被杀,而


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»

抗议活动被镇压。随后,真正的打击开始了。

“在抗议被平息后,塔利班开始收集街道和商店闭路电视(CCTV)摄像头的视频,并开始逮捕数十名参与者。我不清楚具体有多少人,”一名此后逃离该城市的抗议者奥马里(Omari)说道。“这些摄像头不是为了保护我们——它们是为了保护塔利班对我们的统治,”他补充道。

联合国阿富汗特派团还记录了多起塔利班情报部门随机检查手机,搜寻与抗议相关的消息和视频的案例。

塔利班官员声称,安全摄像头配备了面部识别技术。但专家质疑该组织是否拥有实现其理想监视国家的资源或能力。

“由于财务限制……塔利班远未开发出能与中国、俄罗斯或伊朗等严肃的监视国家相媲美的东西,”人权观察组织(Human Rights Watch)研究员费雷希亚·阿巴西(Fereshia Abbasi)表示。“但我们可以假设,他们使用这些片段不仅是为了监控社会行为。”

塔利班统治下的阿富汗面临严厉的经济制裁。在2021年接管政权后,由于西方大国在向新政府发送资金方面难以权衡,大多数由外国资金支持的人道主义和发展项目被砍掉。崩溃的银行系统也意味着任何资金必须以联合国协助的现金运输形式发送。

西方政府一直在苦恼于如何在向阿富汗人民提供援助的同时,避免与该政权进行交易。目前仍在持续流入的援助(主要用于人道主义项目)很大程度上来自美国,尽管自特朗普重掌权力以来,美国大幅削减了对外援助预算,但它仍是该国最大的捐助国。

英国和欧盟也继续支持阿富汗的项目,但规模仅为这个已经严重依赖援助的国家所需水平的一小部分。

国际制裁、地区不安全、塔利班治理能力的缺失以及女性被排除在劳动力市场之外,共同导致了该国持续的人道主义危机。一份联合国报告发现,近2800 万阿富汗人生活在贫困中——几乎占总人口的三分之二。

img-55.jpeg

“这种规模的不公正将导致塔利班政治生存期的缩短” 前国会议员 佛齐亚·库菲(Fawzia Koofi)

据联合国人道主义事务协调厅报告,阿富汗去年收到了$1.1bn的人道主义援助。目前的资金需求超过20亿美元。有多少援助能真正到达预定的民众或项目,正变得越来越不确定且存在争议。

一家美国监督机构在2024年报告称,塔利班正以税收、费用和其他规费的形式挪用外国援助。该报告认为,这有风险“在阿富汗人民眼中,有助于使塔利班控制的政府合法化”。

联合国坚持认为,必须维持“强有力的保障措施”,以“确保针对阿富汗人民的关键国际援助能够触达最需要的人”。

但其人民的困境和经济状况并未阻止塔利班建立监控国家的努力。当时的报告表明,该监控摄像头网络是与中国电信巨头华为合作启动的。这家受到美国制裁的公司否认参与其中。

喀布尔的几个家庭告诉《观察者报》,塔利班官员向当地人施压,要求他们为街道上的摄像头以及为其供电的太阳能电池板买单,这令许多阿富汗人感到惊愕。

“他们太害怕拒绝了,”在首都担任司机的拉希姆(Rahim)说,“人们没有足够的食物喂养家人,但他们仍然必须为此付费。”

塔赫米娜(Tahmina)说,在喀布尔市中心她所在的街道上,每户人家都私下安装了摄像头。“我们的房东支付了摄像头的安装费用,我们总觉得处于其控制之下。塔利班随时会进入社区检查摄像头,或搜查房屋,有时还会拘留人员,”她说,“阿富汗公民对这种情况感到疲惫和失望,但没有人敢拒绝他们,否则会陷入麻烦。”

在喀布尔之外,塔利班在支持力度最弱的地区加强了监控。在马扎里沙里夫(Mazar-i-Sharif)和巴格兰(Baghlan)等北方城市,以及伊斯兰主义者传统上缺乏意识形态支持的潘杰希尔(Panjshir)北方地区,近年来也出现了数千个新摄像头。

“对于我的笔友来说,自杀成了唯一的逃脱方式”

第一人称

法里巴·纳瓦(Fariba Nawa)

我出生在阿富汗西部的赫拉特,童年时作为难民逃离苏联入侵前往美国,随后在2000年返回阿富汗担任记者。当美国炸弹落在村庄,塔利班的自杀式袭击在城市中恐吓阿富汗人的时候,女性在城市中心蓬勃发展,成为了议员、教师、医生和警察。这是一场由外国势力支撑的不可持续的文艺复兴,但它展示了如果给予机会,阿富汗女性能达到多么的高度。

五年前塔利班重新夺回阿富汗后,我觉得自己像是在重写塔利班在20世纪90年代首次夺取国家权力时的故事——关于秘密学校、童养媳和投石刑的故事。再次经历这一切感觉完全是反乌托邦的。

阿富汗女性现在告诉我,在她们规避塔利班那些禁止女性上学或工作的严酷法律时,日常生活是多么痛苦。其中一种方式是创业和创作者经济。数十个YouTube频道展示了女性推销其烹饪技巧,并在直播中展示她们在家里所做的一切,且全程穿着塔利班着装规范要求的全覆盖服装。

女性成为了冰淇淋摊贩和田间的藏红花工人;一些人留在私人诊所担任医生。但她们担心即使是这些空间也会被夺走。

三年前,一名来自阿富汗东北部巴达赫尚(Badakhshan)的青少年在WhatsApp上成为了我几个月的笔友。她给我写波斯语诗歌,其中夹杂着她对未来的梦想和凄惨的现状。右侧的这首诗是她写给塔利班的。

我期待着我们的通信,但她突然沉默了。当我继续写信时,她的哥哥告诉我,他15岁的妹妹从悬崖跳入了科克恰河(Kokcha river)。

自杀是一种抗议方式,且在塔利班回归后,女性中的自杀率有所增加。但女性依然化着妆,参加婚礼


喀布尔的孩子们在庆祝美国和英国撤出阿富汗五周年的活动中挥舞旗帜。 美联社(AP)

上方为塔利班代表昨日在喀布尔的大吉尔加(Loya Jirga)大厅集结。左侧为阿富汗女孩在市内的家中参加由父亲授课的课程。 美联社(AP),法新社 / 盖蒂图片社()

“在北部大部分地区,塔利班从未拥有过具有实质意义且真实的民意基础,”来自阿富汗东北部巴达赫尚省的前议员、现流亡海外的法乌齐亚·库菲(Fawzia Koofi)表示。“塔利班深感不安,害怕失去对这些地区的控制,因此通过加强监视、频繁镇压和搜查平民来针对他们。”

塔利班还利用前政府收集的生物识别数据,来识别并针对那些曾为外国支持的军队、机构及其他国际组织工作过的阿富汗人。人权观察组织在 2022 年的一份报告中指出了塔利班用于针对阿富汗人的数字化系统。这些系统包括从政府身份证件和工资单数据库中获取的虹膜扫描、指纹、照片、职业和地址,以及五年前美国撤离期间留下的美国国防部数据库。

塔利班的反对者依然抱有希望。最近几周,巴达赫尚省的抵抗活动激增。7 月中旬,塔利班短暂失去了该地区一个区的控制权,这是五年来首次发生这种情况。此后,当地团体与政府之间的冲突仍在继续,有报道称塔利班内部出现了倒戈现象。

“他们掌控得越紧,人们的反弹就越强烈,”库菲说。“他们变得越来越残酷,为了实施控制不择手段。这种规模的不公正将缩短他们的政治生存期。”

但在喀布尔,这看起来依然是一个渺茫的希望。“现在很难想象,仅仅五年前,我还能在这个城市自由地走动,去工作,在没有任何恐惧的情况下会见我的朋友和家人,”塔赫米娜(Tahmina)说道。

“女性失去了职业。她们没有工作、就读高中或学习的权利,我们在喀布尔街道上的每一步都处于塔利班的监视之下。这就像我们生活在监狱里一样。”

她回顾塔利班回归之前的岁月,记得即使在战争动荡、城市频繁遭受恐怖袭击的时期,那也是一段更快乐的时光。“是的,当时总是担心被卷入袭击,”她说。“但我们是自由的。”

姓名已更改以保护身份

以及像往常一样照顾家庭。女孩们的结婚年龄越来越小,早婚不再被视为犯罪。

当我询问我联系的那些女孩,我们可以在远方为她们做些什么时,她们给出了不同的答案。一名 14 岁的女孩要求配备一支卡拉什尼科夫步枪,并认为女性必须用武器为自由而战。一名 17 岁的女孩告诉我,帮她在网上找一份工作,这样她就能养活家人。大多数人则请求出国留学奖学金——或者任何离开阿富汗的途径。

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“我们被迫隐藏自己的学业”

阿富汗的年轻女孩因恐惧塔利班而不得不秘密学习,但许多人依然坚守着对美好未来的梦想

哈伦·詹朱亚(Haroon Janjua) 伊斯兰堡

对于阿富汗女孩萨哈尔·古尔(Sahar Gul*)来说,教育已变成一种秘密追求。她在朋友家中学习,远离公众视线,时刻意识到一旦被发现可能会带来可怕的后果。

古尔告诉《观察者报》:“对我来说,秘密学习的典型一天是从担忧和谨慎开始的。我们在一个安全的地方上课,远离公众视线。我们必须时刻小心,以免被人发现。”

然而,每当她翻开书本,那种恐惧就会被另一种情绪所取代:决心。“尽管充满恐惧,但每当我拿起书本和笔,我就觉得我仍在为我的未来而战,”她说。

自从五年前塔利班重新掌权以来,古尔就成了那一代努力维持学业和抱负的阿富汗女孩中的一员。在2021年8月占领喀布尔后的几天内,这个伊斯兰组织禁止女孩就读中学,禁止女性进入大学,恢复了其20世纪90年代的残酷政权。

就像当年一样,塔利班至今仍声称禁令是“临时”的。但五年过去了,禁令没有被解除的迹象。阿富汗仍然是世界上唯一一个正式实施基于性别的教育禁令的国家。

联合国教科文组织上周表示,有240万名阿富汗女孩被排除在中学教育之外——仅一年时间就增加了20万。如果限制继续下去,到2030年,这个数字可能会接近400万。

女孩们和她们的老师在参加课程时承担着巨大的风险。塔利班到处都有间谍和线人,对疑似学校的检查已成常规。

“我们被迫隐藏自己的学业,即使是对最亲近的人说话也要小心翼翼,”古尔说。“这种恐惧一直伴随着我们,但被剥夺教育权则更加痛苦。”

如今在整个阿富汗,一场掩盖真相的猫鼠游戏在私人住宅、安静的街道和小巷中上演。

“秘密课程是这样的:我们正坐在教室里,突然一名塔利班成员敲门进来,”喀布尔的一名青少年法蒂玛·扎赫拉(Fatima Zahra)说。

“他问我们的老师:‘你在教他们什么?’我们的老师说我们在学习神圣的《古兰经》或一些伊斯兰课程。”

一些武装分子信以为真,而另一些则不信。在喀布尔以西的巴米扬市,去年有40多所秘密学校被关闭,数十名教师和学生被捕。

但在喀布尔,扎赫拉说塔利班知道许多学校的位置。有些人对此睁一只眼闭一只眼,甚至提供帮助——只要给钱。

“他们知道女孩们在这里学习。为了让课程继续,一些学校为他们筹集资金作为贿赂,”扎赫拉说。

“他们检查女孩们的希贾布(在她们到达时)。有时他们会在课后接走女孩并陪她们回家,这样她们的父母就不会担心。”

古尔说,学生们依赖手机和他们能找到的任何有限资源。停电、网络连接不稳定以及缺乏适当设备,使得即使是在线课程也难以参加。

“有时,我们必须等待好几个小时直到电力或网络恢复,这样我们才能参加课程,”她说。

结果就是一种碎片化的教育:在有电时、在网络连接时,以及在安全地翻开书本时进行。

许多人甚至向最亲近的家人隐瞒继续学习的尝试。在大多数地区,塔利班五年的统治使最保守的伊斯兰价值观根深蒂固。

“观念已经改变了。我们的兄弟和父亲有时像塔利班成员一样跟我们说话,”扎赫拉说。

但古尔说,她和她的同学们拒绝让自己的未来消失。她仍然希望成为司法部门的一员,并且不会放弃她在塔利班不在权力之上的那些年里所想象的未来。

“我梦想能继续学业并成为一名法官,这样有一天我能为我的同胞和国家做出贡献,”她说。

“禁止女孩受教育推迟了我们许多人的梦想,但它无法摧毁这些梦想。我仍然相信,每个女孩都有学习的权利,有做出自己选择的权利,以及构建自己未来的权利。”

在古尔看来,现在的学习不仅仅是为了获得资格证书。在每一个秘密教室里,都弥漫着一种心照不宣的反抗气息。

“对我来说,教育不仅是为了拿到学位,”她说,“它也是一种对抗绝望的方式。”

但许多人痛苦地看着他们对未来的希望被夺走。随着塔利班对该国女性和女孩一项接一项地实施法令,在阿富汗的生活空间变得越来越狭窄。

“我想获得自由,独自旅行 [无需男性监护人],并在喀布尔大学学习,”扎赫拉沮丧地说道。

“在塔利班之前,我有宏大的梦想,但在过去的五年里,我的生活没有足够的改善来支撑我实现这些梦想。现在我们正尝试学习一些技能,比如缝纫和编织。”

*为保护女孩们的身份,姓名已做化名处理

致塔利班

你夺走了我的笔和纸 但你留给了我愤怒,好让我能 将其化作智慧之词 写给我的女儿,她将不会出生 在你们称之为和平的监狱之中 把那场战争还给我吧 那场被你们称为帝国主义的战争 但它曾给我呼吸的空间 让我死在那些炸弹之下 而非死在你们上帝的愤怒之下


24 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

世界

“她自掘坟墓”:导致阿萨德助手露娜·希布尔死亡的车祸是意外吗?

有传闻称,她是因为与叙利亚前独裁者私通——或是监视其政权而付出了代价。作者:Chloe HadjimatheouSarah Dadouch

2024年7月5日,叙利亚新闻频道播报了一则令人震惊的消息。总统巴沙尔·阿萨德最亲近的顾问之一露娜·希布尔(Luna al-Shibl)在首都大马士革附近的一场车祸中丧生。

几乎所有认识她——以及了解她如何迅速攀升至阿萨德政权高层的人——都不相信她的死亡是一场意外。

“我们一直在等待她被暗杀的消息,”一名接近政权核心圈的人士告诉《观察者报》,指的是她去世前的几个月。“她是在自掘坟墓。”

几天之内,各种相互矛盾的理论开始流传:她因被怀疑是以色列间谍而成为伊朗的目标;她是阿萨德的情人,而他已经厌倦了她;总统府内部的嫉妒,主要是来自第一夫人阿斯玛·阿萨德(Asma al-Assad),导致了希布尔的突然离世。

《观察者报》的一项调查在审查了医疗证据,并采访了现场证人以及治疗她的医院相关人员后,进一步支持了她的死亡是蓄意而为的理论。

希布尔最初是通过在半岛电视台主持时政节目《仅限女性》(Lilnisaa Faqat)而成名的。她沉稳自信,报道了影响整个阿拉伯世界女性生活的政治和社会问题。

2010年,在名声达到顶峰时,她宣布辞去这家卡塔尔新闻频道的职务,表面原因是管理层对其着装和外貌的评价。而实际上,她得到了一个更好的机会。多年来,希布尔一直秘密会见叙利亚总统阿萨德,两人建立了友谊。2011年,她重新出现在大马士革,在国家安全局工作,该局负责协调并指导叙利亚强大的情报机构。

阿米拉(Amira)在第一夫人的办公室与希布尔共事多年。她表示,情报局局长阿里·马姆卢克(Ali Mamlouk)最初将阿萨德介绍给希布尔,推荐她为一名才华横溢的媒体表演者,能够传递强有力的民族主义信息。“她是媒体艺术的大师,”阿米拉说。

2010年底和2011年席卷中东的“阿拉伯之春”期间,亲民主的抗议者涌上叙利亚街头,这要求媒体做出快速反应。希布尔在她的新岗位上,帮助使政府大规模逮捕、酷刑并经常谋杀抗议者的政策合法化。她证明了自己在将政权反对者描绘成恐怖分子,以及将冲突描绘成一场针对叙利亚的战争方面极具技巧。

2012年2月,在到任仅几个月后,她被任命为总统媒体办公室负责人。四年后,她通过嫁给政权忠诚者阿马尔·萨德(Ammar Saad)进一步巩固了自己的地位。但就在婚姻公布之时,传闻已经开始流传。“[她和阿萨德] 存在这种亲密的性关系,”著名的叙利亚记者易卜拉欣·哈米迪(Ibrahim Hamidi)声称。阿萨德以好色著称,据报道其胃口甚至延伸到了忠诚者的妻子身上。哈米迪说,希布尔似乎对总统的性欲感到适应。“她负责为他物色女孩,”哈米迪说。

阿米拉也听到传闻,称希布尔被要求为总统寻找来自“更底层背景的女性,包括清洁工之类的人”。但随着希布尔与总统的关系变得更加亲密,她与第一夫人之间产生了深深的不信任和反感。

阿斯玛的表兄阿卜多·达巴格(Abdo al-Dabbagh)表示,希布尔给第一夫人带来了严重的麻烦。“试想一下:你和丈夫以及他的情妇坐在一起,而你对她却无可奈何,”他说。希布尔与阿斯玛之间的关系在《观察者报》的播客节目《我们叫她艾玛》(We call her Emma)中得到了探讨,该节目记录了第一夫人的生活及其涉嫌参与阿萨德罪行的行为。阿斯玛的父亲法瓦兹·阿赫拉斯(Fawaz Akhras)表示,任何关于前叙利亚总统不忠的说法都“基于伪造的文章,毫无根据”。

左图为露娜·希布尔(Luna al-Shibl),下图为她与巴沙尔·阿萨德(Bashar al-Assad)合影,她于2024年在可疑的情况下死亡。Bikin Pien

img-60.jpeg

立即收听所有剧集 observer.co.uk / we-call-her-emma

到2023年初,尽管希布尔对政权忠心耿耿,但她开始被边缘化。随后,她被移出了复兴党中央委员会。希布尔难以接受权力日益萎缩的事实。一名政权内部人士表示:“你必须安静地离开,接受自己不再拥有同样的权力……我认为露娜的野心无法承受这一点。”

“露娜崩溃了,”阿米拉说。“她威胁他们,说她知道一切,说她会公开揭露。她自称‘我才是真正的第一夫人’,并且在到处散布[巴沙尔]与其他女性关系的秘密。”

希布尔及其在阿萨德核心圈中的角色一直受到怀疑。一份由伊朗精锐圣城旅前指挥官卡塞姆·苏莱曼尼(Qassem Suleimani)撰写的泄露备忘录警告叙利亚情报部门负责人,希布尔是一名间谍。

“这是一个来自苏莱曼尼这样的人的非常严重的指控,”哈米迪说。“她对所有事情都了解得太多了。”

“露娜崩溃了。她威胁他们,说她知道一切,说她会公开揭露” ——阿萨德政权内部人士

2024年初,以色列在叙利亚的暗杀行动激增:十多名伊斯兰革命卫队(IRGC)成员被杀。几周后,希布尔的哥哥及其妻子在大马士革机场被捕。叙利亚情报部门指控他泄露了伊朗驻地一次敏感会议的细节——据称这些情报在以色列袭击领事馆之前就被发送到了以色列。她哥哥被捕进一步加强了希布尔是外国特工的怀疑。

希布尔的美甲师在这一期间经常见到她,描述了一个精神崩溃的女人。2024年7月2日,叙利亚萨纳通讯社(Sana)援引总统办公室的话称,希布尔卷入了一起车祸。

《观察者报》采访了一名在事故发生后不久到达现场的目击者。他声称,希布尔车上的痕迹显示她的车辆是被撞出路外的。该目击者表示,希布尔的安保人员被堵在交通中,且她的头部伤势看起来像是后脑受击,而非车祸所致。由《观察者报》看到的、在事故当天于沙米医院(al-Shami hospital)拍摄的希布尔大脑扫描图,似乎与钝器伤一致。

该目击者表示,希布尔的个人手机随后被发现丢在垃圾桶里,但第二部工作设备失踪了。《观察者报》看到一段视频,视频中希布尔的司机及其安保人员被叙利亚情报官员戴上手铐带出医院。

叙利亚媒体提到了葬礼,但没有显示任何视频片段,对于如此重要的政权人物来说,这种缺失十分显著。一名参加她葬礼的人表示,希布尔的遗体没有覆盖政权国旗——而这通常是高级官员的惯例。

2年过去了,没有任何官方解释能取代政府关于车祸的说法。显而易见的是,希布尔在2024年去世时已经跌落到了什么地步。这个曾经处于阿萨德政权物理中心、在十年的战争中帮助塑造政权生存的女人,被弃之如敝履。

几个月后,一支来自北方的反政府军将席卷而下并接管该国,总统和第一夫人将在深夜毫无预警地逃离,将数十名政权高级官员抛弃,任其自生自灭。

希布尔认为接近权力意味着保护,但正如其他人所发现的那样,对独裁政权的忠诚仅是单向的。

为保护消息来源,姓名和身份已进行更改或删除


世界

observer.co.uk^{}[] 16.08.26

25

索马里海盗回归:受贫困困扰,被赎金与掠夺诱惑

在赤贫和非法捕鱼的驱动下,新一波海盗活动正加剧由伊朗冲突引发的航运危机

索马里,班达贝拉(Bandarbeyla)

4月下旬,货轮“斯沃德号”(Sward)装载着水泥离开苏伊士港,前往蒙巴萨。

几天后,当该船绕过非洲之角时,一群从索马里海岸发起的武装海盗登上了船。该船的应答器被关闭,船只从追踪网站上消失。其15名船员被俘,消失在大陆境内。

几天之内,两艘油轮也被劫持,这引发了人们对非洲之角海盗活动复苏的担忧,而此时全球航运业正处于危机之中。目前,关于释放数十名被扣为人质的船员的谈判正在进行。

此后,“斯沃德号”在索马里渔业小镇班达贝拉的近海重新出现,被用作“母船”——一个允许海盗加油并向更远海域发起袭击的离岸基地。

班达贝拉距离加罗韦(Garowe)向东北方向约10小时车程,一侧被庞特兰(Puntland)的岩石沙漠地形包围,另一侧则是波光粼粼的印度洋。这里感觉像是世界的尽头,一个什么都不会发生的地方。但这座古老的城镇是一个臭名昭著的海盗枢纽,现在成为了新一波海盗活动的中心,而这波活动加剧了由伊朗战争引发的全球航运危机。

自15年前的巅峰期以来,索马里海岸航道的海盗袭击在很大程度上得到了遏制。从2005年到2011年,印度洋的袭击给该行业造成了数百万加元的赎金损失和数十亿加元的国际贸易损失。一些人质在极其恶劣的条件下被囚禁多年。

随着美国与伊朗的冲突导致霍尔木兹海峡关闭,以及伊朗支持的胡塞武装加强对红海航运的袭击,该地区的船只陷入了脆弱的境地。此前成功终结上一波海盗浪潮的国际海军巡逻队,现在被稀释在整个地区,导致船只处于暴露状态。

这场危机恰逢庞特兰地区无休止的干旱以及海上当地鱼类资源的枯竭,而这又是由于破坏当地经济的外国非法拖网渔船所致。经济上的绝望促使这里的许多人放弃渔网拿起枪,重操海盗旧业。

“人们因为贫困而在海上拿起武器……有些家庭已经三天没吃饭了,因为他们的男人捕不到鱼,”来自班达贝拉的渔民法拉·阿卜杜勒卡迪尔·拉赫曼(Farah Abdulkadir Rahman)说道。这里的许多人由于担心成为目标,不愿讨论社区内的海盗,但他们的存在是一个公开的秘密。

“海上的问题影响到了陆地……现在已经没有像以前那样可以捕获的鱼了,所以这影响了当地社区,生计被摧毁了。”

img-62.jpeg

穆罕默德·科伦博(Mohamed Kolumbo),在班达贝拉从事渔业20年。

海盗以“斯沃德号”为基地,在7月16日的协同袭击中劫持了两艘伊朗渔船。据部落长辈称,在每艘船支付了$20,000赎金后,这两艘船及其船员在几天后被释放。这是自今年海盗袭击激增以来首次确认的赎金支付。

大多数海盗是曾经的渔民,他们对与大型外国拖网渔船竞争的艰辛感到失望,并称这些渔船抢走了他们的生计。庞特兰的当地人表示,正是非法捕鱼的激增摧毁了当地产业,并驱使一些人走向犯罪。

“三十年前,当我开始当渔民时,海里有很多鱼。今天情况不再是那样了,”班达贝拉的另一位渔民穆罕默德·阿里·法拉(Mohamad Ali Farah)说道,他观察到了几代人以来该行业的衰落及其影响

对他社区的影响。“这在很大程度上与非法过度捕捞有关。这在经济上影响了每一个人,”他说。

在唐纳德·特朗普发起与伊朗的战争并导致该地区航运陷入混乱的几个月前,由索马里渔民转行的海盗就一直在与侵入当地海域的外国拖网渔船进行领土之争。

庞特兰的官员认为,在除夕夜对中国渔船“辽东万 578”号的一次早期劫持,为最近的袭击铺平了道路。

“在(对中国船只的)袭击中,一名索马里安保人员被杀,”警察指挥官阿卜杜勒卡迪尔·赛义德在庞特兰卡尔卡尔省刑事调查部门(位于加罗韦监狱后方)接受《观察者报》采访时表示。

在部落长辈、庞特兰政府和中国大使的调解下,该船及其船员最终获释。当时的报道称,一笔 200万美元 的赎金已

Said Fadhaye 拍摄的照片

庞特兰海警部队在博萨索附近警戒海盗。

由中国支付,尽管北京方面尚未证实此事。

来自中国、伊朗、巴基斯坦和泰国的拖网渔船令当地渔民感到恐惧和厌恶。索马里政府已禁止这些船只进入距离海岸 24 海里以内的海域。但船只经常无视这一禁令。

非洲之角渔业公司(CaFco)是班达贝拉的经济中心。在这里,渔民将捕获的鱼类储存在冷冻库中。透过刷白混凝土墙上的开放式拱门,远处的大海波光粼粼。祈祷垫散落在地板上,几名渔民在周围闲逛,交流与拖网渔船遭遇的故事。

“外国渔船给我们带来了很多麻烦。它们进入我们的海域,拖网渔船毁坏我们的渔网。我们空手而归,”从事该行业 20 年的粗犷渔民穆罕默德·科伦博愤怒地说道。

拉赫曼描述了他某天凌晨 2 点左右独自在海上的经历。他说,他被一艘拖网渔船发现,对方船只碾过了他的渔网,然后向他冲来。

“它毁了我的船,船翻了。那是深夜,我在海上,周围没有人,我抓着失事船只和发动机撑了一天半才获得救援。”

气候变化和看似无止境的干旱所带来的灾难性影响,加剧了渔业社区的困境。

“这里已经两年没下雨了,”班达贝拉副市长阿布希尔·法拉说。“大海被掏空了,陆地上又在干旱。所以有些人会去攻击并劫持船只。”

庞特兰当局在打击日益猖獗的海盗活动方面做了一些象征性的努力,但官员们承认,海盗得到了当地部落的支持。今年夏天,当“索德号”劫持案的一名嫌疑人被捕时,当地民兵冲进警察局将其救出。一名警员在交火中丧生。

自 20 世纪 90 年代的内战以来,庞特兰比索马里的其他地区享有相对的稳定。但由于在索马里北部的戈利斯山脉中出现了日益增长的恐怖主义威胁,本就匮乏的安全资源被进一步摊薄。对反恐的重新关注使得海盗活动在无人监管的情况下肆虐。

“庞特兰从去年起就一直在与恐怖分子作战,而(海盗)正在利用这一点,”庞特兰海警部队队长纳吉布·哈桑在港口城市博萨索接受《观察者报》采访时表示。

他指向城市之外的山脉。“我们首先在陆地上打击海盗,”他说。“如果他们能够出海,那么我们就通过切断其供应路线在陆地上将其孤立。”


付费广告

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右:作家 / 广播员及播客主持人 Afua Hirsch。左:历史学家及播客主持人 Peter Frankopan。

Legacy 播客:为什么理解历史比以往任何时候都更重要(或者,为什么 AI 就像一颗土豆……)

从土豆的遗产、圣乔治旗到面部提升手术,理解我们的思想源自何处从未如此有用。

Afua Hirsch 是一位记者和电影制作人,以其在身份和文化方面的工作而闻名,也是畅销书《Brit(ish)》的作者。Peter Frankopan 是牛津大学全球历史教授,全球畅销书《丝绸之路》和《地球变革》的作者。他们自 2023 年起共同主持 Legacy 播客,涵盖的主题从克利奥帕特拉到毕加索,从鲍勃·马利到艾伦·图灵,以及包括面部提升手术的历史与遗产、健康以及美好时代在内的主题。

为什么理解历史比以往任何时候都更重要?

Afua: 我们从不同的角度看待历史。Peter 是世界领先的历史学家之一,他的研究领域涵盖地中海、俄罗斯、中东、波斯和亚洲,以及地区与民族之间的交流与联系。而我则着迷于历史如何影响我们的现在,如何塑造我们的身份、文化、政治和价值观。这些话题始终具有相关性,但在现在这个时点,当我们意识到自己正处于如此剧烈的变革之中时,这些话题显得尤为紧迫。过去帝国的陨落、激进的新技术以及大规模的人口迁徙,突然之间似乎不再仅仅是“了解一下就不错”的知识,而是应对日常生活的关键。

Peter: 从未有过人类对自己的历史不感兴趣的时代,这感觉像是一种非常原始的本能。但有时人们很容易将历史简单化,或者低估了历史能教会我们的东西。因为我们拥有如此不同的背景和研究历史的方法,我们在彼此身上学到了很多,尽管并非在所有事情上都达成一致!而且我们总是将对历史的着迷带回到它能为我们现在所生活的时代提供什么样的洞察。

播客中的哪个剧集或系列最能体现这一观点?为什么?

Afua: 一个答案可能是戈尔巴乔夫。我们做了一个关于他以及冷战结束的系列,在这个话题上,Peter 拥有丰富的学术研究和生活经验。或者是夸梅·恩克鲁玛,他领导加纳独立并引发了一波去殖民化浪潮,由于我的加纳血统,这对我也非常具有个人意义。或者是玛丽莲·梦露,以及名人崇拜及其与政治权力的接近,这在当下感觉非常及时。

Peter: 但事实上,我们会说,也许是土豆!土豆彻底改变了世界,使其变得认不出来,它推动了城市化,并且可以说通过改变饥荒周期并促进欧洲人口激增,使得帝国征服成为可能。它的发现与现在的新技术(如 AI)有相似之处,以及它们如何改变我们生活、工作的方式以及我们的能力。在某些方面这是好事,但在其他方面,这似乎阴森且可怕。

在任何您获取播客的平台收听 Legacy。仅通过 Acast 在 Legacy 上投放广告。

扫描以收听播客

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观点、人物与思想

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

27

所有那些关于土壤、石头和荒野之地的情感表达。自然写作纯属胡扯 → Melanie Reid,第 28 页

这场荒诞且毫无意义的补选,将法拉奇仅存的一点尊严扔进了垃圾桶 / 菲利普·柯林斯 (Philip Collins)

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在将三分之一的选票输给喜剧候选人后,这位改革英国党(Reform UK)的领导人也失去了让他得以生存的政治魔力。

克拉克顿海滨(Clacton-on-Sea)的沙滩上正值黎明,舞者们在沙滩上热身,此时 Pet Shop Boys 乐队的尼尔·坦南特(Neil Tennant)骑着自行车出现,从一个亭子里买了一张明信片。店主向他抱怨现代政治的现状。坦南特拜访了一位穿着花哨的算命先生,而一群修女则表演了一首大胆改编的《It's a Sin》。这是 1987 年超现实电影《It Couldn't Happen Here》的开场戏,该片由这支合成器流行乐队主演。直到最近几周,这仍是克拉克顿发生过最古怪的事情。

对此,奈杰尔·法拉奇(Nigel Farage)表示:“看着吧(Hold my beer)。”改革英国党(Reform UK)领导人法拉奇在过去几周里一直在参加一场补选。为了徒劳地阻止一项针对他从某加密货币亿万富翁处收受礼物的调查,他发起了这次补选。他的对手是一个头上顶着钢制垃圾桶的人,以及一系列其他杂七杂八的竞争者。这些对手中没有一个来自主要政党,但包括 20 名独立候选人,其中有来自官方怪物咆哮疯子党(Official Monster Raving Loony party)的“不可思议的飞行砖块”尼克(Nick the Incredible Flying Brick)、嚎叫的劳德·霍普(Howling Laud Hope)和雷霆男爵(Baron Von Thunderclap),以及代表“每个人都是神”党(Everyone Is God)的马库斯·怀特(Marcus White)。法拉奇理所当然地赢得了这场毫无必要的非事件,但由于他拒绝出席计票,进一步证实了其彻底的荒诞性。结果在沉默中宣布。克拉克顿是一场法拉奇将难以从中恢复的胜利。

在 44.3% 的投票率下,法拉奇将三分之一的选票让给了玩笑候选人。克拉克顿符合条件的选民中,不足 10 分之 3 愿意支持他——这让他此前声称再次“向整个政治体制竖起中指”的说法变成了笑话。当你将自己与一个由“头上顶着垃圾桶的喜剧演员”组成的政治体制相对抗时,你已经失去了灵气,更不用说尊严了。法拉奇拼命试图维持自己的受害者身份,声称由于其安全受到可靠威胁,无法出席计票。埃塞克斯警方并未确认

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直到最近几周,一部超现实的 Pet Shop Boys 电影还是克拉克顿发生过最古怪的事情。IGR Collection / Nanny

这一说法,而法拉奇在表示他无意出席去被一群无名小卒嘲笑和贬低时,暴露了真相。

事实上,法拉奇是自食其果。改革英国党的民调数据已经下降了一段时间,而克拉克顿补选地印证了这种衰落。法拉奇身上有些东西改变了。他失去了魔力。政治关乎计算、战略和政策。但它也关乎魔力,而拥有魔力药水的政治家可以获得豁免,不受约束凡人的规则。人们通常将“魔幻思维”视为对理性的不受欢迎的背离,事实也的确如此。但魔力也是那些最有天赋的政治家用来发出号召,从而消融看似固定不变的政治边界的手段。

很多年前,当有传闻说我(托尼·布莱尔的首席演讲撰稿人)可能会留下来以同样的身份加入戈登·布朗时,我轻率地对现在就职于本报的瑞秋·西尔维斯特(Rachel Sylvester)说,布朗需要的不是一名演讲撰稿人,而是一名魔术师,从而平息了传闻。在我的一生中,在英国,有四位政治家拥有能够暂停常规交战规则的政治魔力:玛格丽特·撒切尔、布莱尔、鲍里斯·约翰逊和法拉奇。他们最终都失去了魔力——每个人终究会落地——但具有魔力的政治家可以飞行一段时间。

相比之下,大卫·卡梅伦没有任何魔力。他只是政治操盘学校里最刻苦、最出色的学生。我们目前正处于评估安迪·伯纳姆是否拥有某种基于 TikTok 的现代魔力的早期阶段。我的直觉是他没有,而且他很快就必须依赖于那种“做出一些实事”的传统政治策略。

这意味着,一段时间以来,法拉奇一直被按照适用于其他所有人的政治规则来评判。他的魔力——大喊世界在针对他——已经不像以前那样奏效了。他的好感度已降至 24%;65% 的人表示不喜欢他。对于一个有志于成为首相的人来说,这些数字非常糟糕,对法拉奇而言更是如此。人们会投票给他们并不太喜欢的候选人——撒切尔(随处可见)以及伊拉克战争后的布莱尔就是很好的例子——但前提是这些人能通过其办事能力赢得尊重。

没有人认为法拉奇是政策创新或行政效率的典范。他无法通过展现严肃性来弥补失去的好感度。这个人在议会中提及克拉克顿(Clacton)这个话题仅有六次。他是一个需求巨大且多样化的城镇的国会议员。克拉克顿没有明显的经济目标,预期寿命在下降,无家可归者过多,且没有急诊科(A&E)。克拉克顿需要一位在意的议员。为了证实规则现在同样适用于他,法拉奇将回到威斯敏斯特会见议会标准专员丹尼尔·格林伯格(Daniel Greenberg),后者自五月以来一直在评估法拉奇是否因未申报克里斯托弗·哈博恩(Christopher Harborne)赠予的 500 万英镑 礼品而违反了行为准则。

基于原则问题强制举行补选是可能的。大卫·戴维斯在 2008. 辞去议席以触发一场在哈特姆普赖斯和豪登(Haltemprice and Howden)的古怪补选后,至少尝试讨论过公民自由。最好的例子是乔治·兰斯伯里(George Lansbury)在 1912 于鲍和布罗姆利(Bow and Bromley)发起的争取女性投票权的竞选,对手是保守党的雷金纳德·布莱尔(Reginald Blair),后者的竞选口号是“投票给布莱尔,让每个人都开心”。布莱尔赢得了该席位。兰斯伯里输了,但那是一次体面的失败。法拉奇在克拉克顿没有任何目的,除了干扰一项关于其资金来源的正当调查。

这是一场毫无意义且代价高昂的补选,输家成了赢家。宾脸伯爵(Count Binface)获得了英国政治史上噱头候选人的最高得票率,超过了 1994. 尖叫勋爵萨奇(Screaming Lord Sutch)在罗瑟勒姆(Rotherham)获得的 4%。此次补选中失去押金的候选人数比以往任何一次补选都要多。

现在被降格为一名单纯的政治家,法拉奇将回到议会面对现实(face the music),而这绝不会伴随着宠物店男孩(Pet Shop Boys)的音乐。法拉奇曾认为,这种事不会在这里发生。但它发生了。

安德鲁·劳恩西(Andrew Raunsey)休假中


28 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

论坛

从闭路电视到数字数据,国家正在用警务手段解决需要政治方案的问题 肯南·马利克(Kenan Malik)

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两道平行且高达20英尺的钢制围栏将这座城镇包围。中间的一条道路供武装巡逻队使用。视频和热成像摄像头装饰在屏障上。噪音探测器潜伏在地下。无人机在空中飞翔。所有这些都与 Foldout 等 AI 系统相连,该系统可实现“穿叶探测”,以及 Roborder(所谓的“用于边境监视的异构机器人自主集群”)。数十艘船只在海岸巡逻。欢迎来到休达(Ceuta),这是西班牙在摩洛哥的两个飞地之一,其边境被紧紧锁住,以阻挡渴望进入欧洲的移民。人类学家鲁本·安德森(Ruben Andersson)表示:“每一英寸都被封锁,每一种可以想象的技术都被部署了。”

然而,在上个月底,超过 60,000 名移民突破了边境,尽管大多数人在一天之内返回。至少 100 人死亡。如此坚不可摧的边境是如何被突破的?因为无论技术多么先进,它只能在特定的社会和政治语境中发挥作用。

休达移民研究员洛伦佐·加布里埃利(Lorenzo Gabrielli)观察到,如果没有摩洛哥的参与,这次大规模跨境将是“不可能的”。摩洛哥可能是出于对西班牙与阿尔及利亚关系密切的愤怒而允许了这次突破,摩洛哥与阿尔及利亚的关系一直很紧张。这不会是拉巴特第一次将移民作为政治筹码。2021, 在一场关于马德里决定允许波利萨里奥阵线(Polisario Front,该阵线致力于争取西撒哈拉脱离摩洛哥独立)领导人布拉希姆·加利(Brahim Ghali)在西班牙接受医院治疗的外交争端中,拉巴特放宽了边境管制,导致约 8,000 名移民在几天内进入休达。马德里最终扭转了长期政策,支持摩洛哥对该非洲领土的控制。

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上个月休达的场景。Jorge Guerrero / AFP via Getty Images

在名为《安全时代:全球痴迷的兴起》(Age of Security: The Rise of a Global Obsession)的新书中,安德森观察到,休达是一个更广泛问题的缩影:政治问题被重新定义为安全问题,从而创造出“一个平民成为主要威胁的世界,且军事和监视技术被部署用来‘打击’他们”的世界。关于移民的辩论在很大程度上被简化为边境管制问题。但没有任何一堵墙足够高,能够排除导致人口迁移的人文和政治因素。

安德森认为,政治的退化以及对更美好未来的可能性之消减,导致了人们对更多安全感和保护的渴望。政府政策破坏了社会纽带,留下了一个

边缘群体被用作监控技术的特洛伊木马

曾经存在的共享社会如今留下了一个巨大的空洞”。随着信任的侵蚀,安全感变成了一种社会粘合剂。从禁毒战争到商业街的衰落,社会问题越来越多地被置于安全的视角下审视。

然而,安全化必然会失败,因为社会和政治问题无法通过加强警力来解决。但安全手段本身的失败反而导致了更严重的偏执,

这进而“刺激了对进一步安全化的需求”:正如安德森(Andersson)所言,这是一个“毁灭循环”。

对保护的渴望被转化为对更具侵入性监控的呼吁,从闭路电视(CCTV)到数字数据。随着科技公司与国家建立起日益亲密的关系,不仅政策变得更加安全化,安全本身也变得更加军事化。将移民描述为“入侵”并使用军事技术来应对,就是一个例子。像 Palantir 这样公司的运作则是另一个例子。

Palantir 以《指环王》中能洞察世界任何角落的不可摧毁的魔法球命名,该公司为军队、移民执法部门、警察局、企业和公共服务机构(包括英国国家医疗服务体系 NHS)生产软件。它解析并连接海量数据,以协助发起空袭、决定谁应被驱逐出境以及组织疫苗分发。Palantir 的创始人之一亚历克斯·卡普(Alex Karp)将其工作描述为“寻找隐藏之物”,包括“可疑或异常行为的模式”。难怪许多人对其最新项目——为美国政府建立一个美国公民巨型数据库——感到担忧。

安德森担心,技术“正在脱离民主控制”。但他也观察到,“我们都在协作”让监控变得“平庸”。我们心甘情愿地提供自己的数据,无论是为了获得额外的保护感,还是为了让购物更加便捷。我们在共谋自己的被监控。

与此同时,当局

将边缘群体作为监控技术的特洛伊木马,随后将这些技术(从面部识别到无人机技术)更广泛地部署在公民身上。当基尔·斯塔默(Keir Starmer)首次提出后来被放弃的国家身份证提案时,他将其辩护为“遏制非法移民就业前景”的一种手段。安德森观察到,“对他者的安全化,证明了对所有人的监控是正当的。”

在“硬安全”之侧,发展出了由左翼而非右翼推动的“软安全”。安德森认为,“在激进分子于 20 世纪 90 年代失去意识形态方向后,他们在对抗伤害中找到了新目标”,将注意力从“经济正义转向有害言论”以及对“安全空间”的需求。大学变成了“软安全的实验室”。然而,“伤害”是一个具有弹性的概念,且日益涵盖了批评或分歧。它也成了右翼打击其反对的异见(如对巴勒斯坦的支持)的武器。

安德森承认,右翼和左翼可能都反对将移民政策与反对仇恨言论捆绑在一起。然而,“硬安全和软安全有许多共同点”,尤其是用保护取代政治。我们生活在一个与其说寻求解决问题,不如说寻求遏制问题的时代,这产生了一种“偏执与傲慢”并存的感觉——正如安德森所言,这是一种“致命的混合物”。打破这种遏制的容器,将政治恢复到人类生活中应有的位置,或许是我们最紧迫的任务。

抒情自然的胡言乱语?我才不屑于此

梅兰妮·里德(Melanie Reid)撰文,责之于华兹华斯:关于自然写作,过于倾向于华丽辞藻而非残酷现实

毫无例外,“重写本”(palimpsest)和“阈限”(liminal)这两个词总能触动我的神经。在对乡村的描述中遇到第一个词,我脑中就会响起警报;读到第二个词,全面的“胡扯”警报便会拉响。我的投入感随即停滞,评判随之形成。

接下来的章节中只要出现“半影”(penumbral)一词,我就彻底出局了。于是,一本书就变得滑稽可笑,这其实很残酷,因为那些写自然的人极其认真。所有那些关于土壤与岩石、人类与荒野、历史与深时(deep time)的情感投入,都是极其严肃的工作。

公平地说,在玛吉·奥法雷尔(Maggie O'Farrell)的作品中,我不记得见过“半影”这个词。但在第二次出现“重写本”时,她的新小说《土地》(Land)让我失去了兴趣。尽管其工艺精湛,但一旦我的怀疑感不再被压制,一旦愤世嫉俗的蠕虫从那些沼泽和神秘的异教泉水中探出头来,这些文字就沦为了审美上的陈词滥调。

这很遗憾。写书很难,批评很容易。无论我说什么,奥法雷尔的粉丝大军依然会忠诚。但自然文学这一体裁被那些即便不算完全“紫色”(极度华丽)但也相当“淡紫色”的散文所累。为什么作家们觉得必须这么写?为什么我们又纵容这种写法?

罗伯特·麦克法兰(Robert Macfarlane)写过一些抒情的东西。我的办公室墙上贴着一段来自《荒野之地》(The Wild Places)的忧郁引语,讲述山脉如何注视着我们的到来,而有一天它们将注视着我们的离去。但他现在陷入了自己制造的陷阱;对他以及那些才华稍逊的追随者来说,唯一的出路就是走得更深、更神秘。

这被称作泛心论(Pansychism),或者心理地理学(psychogeography)——这种关于土壤之魂、祖先印记和精神源泉的浪漫主义宣泄。因此,在麦克法兰笔下,古老的路径成了诡异的时间旅行裂缝,而河流则是一个有意识的生命体。

一些精彩的评论文章——比如《栅栏》(Fence)杂志上的理查德·史密斯(Richard Smyth),以及《卫报》上的史蒂文·普尔(Steven Poole)——将这一体裁揭露为

我们的农民祖先为了城市的屋顶和工资,心甘情情愿地逃离饥荒

过度写作的中产阶级逃避主义。奥法雷尔围绕她的故事编织了一部家族传奇,但主题是一样的:对田园诗般理想生活的感伤向往,而这类作品注定被坐在豪华厨房中岛台前的人阅读。

自从威廉·华兹华斯(William Wordsworth)最初的使命宣言——“这些美丽的形式,在长久的缺席中,对我而言 / 并不像风景之于盲人之眼 / 但在孤独的房间里,在城镇的喧嚣中 / 我常在疲惫之时,从中获得甜蜜的感受”——以来,我们就一直在喋喋不休地谈论我们与土地之间那场悲剧性的离婚。

但真的如此吗?19世纪的农民祖先为了城市的管道、屋顶和工资,心甘情愿地逃离饥荒。直到文明即将自我吞噬的时刻,我们才真正开始对他们抖掉靴子上的泥土这件事变得如此“玄学”。

再野化、野泳、自然旅游。甚至观察树木都被组织化了:国民信托基金会(National Trust)将“退隐森林”的隐喻商业化,设立了团体“森林浴”场所,人们躺在树枝下的倾斜长椅上减轻压力。我的当地议会刚刚发送了一份关于“树木公平”的调查——探讨如何让社区获得树木带来的益处。

与此同时,就在我的前门,原始的自然正伴随着腐烂的燕雏味在嗡鸣——那是第二窝在两天的雨中死在巢里的雏鸟。生存并非浪漫。我认为,对土地更准确的文学刻画依然是马格努斯·米尔斯(Magnus Mills)那部简洁的寓言小说《野兽的克制》(The Restraint of Beasts)。那里没有出现任何“重写本”。

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警惕上市公司的消亡 威尔·哈顿 (Will Hutton)

们正经历着一场与人工智能的出现或国际秩序的瓦解同样深刻的革命。这就是资本主义的私有化。读者可能会摇头:资本主义难道不本来就是私有领域的典型代表吗?

抱歉——但并非如此。马克思的阴暗预言从未实现的其中一个重要原因,是“上市公司”概念的出现,其股票在公开股票市场交易。为了避免欺诈和渎职,上市公司因此必须屈从于对商业体面和问责制的通用标准要求。1862年的第一部《公司法》创建了新的基本问责机制。资本主义比五年后出版《资本论》的那位伟大革命家领先了一步。该法案随后的多次修订创建了问责制和透明度,将资本主义的破坏性动力引导向更好的方向。

如今我们熟悉的景象——一个上市股票市场汇集了英国的领先公司,所有公司都符合高标准的监管、审计、环境和行为标准,你、我以及我们的储蓄机构可以安全地投资其中——这是一项伟大的进步成就。上市公司披露了令人惊讶的广泛信息,从它们对待环境标准的方式到性别薪酬差异。它们提供职业生涯和机会,并将经济活动锚定在我们的城镇和城市中。它们是商业公民。

我钦佩费尔加尔·沙基(Feargal Sharkey)及其针对水资源灾难开展的有效运动。但问题的根源并非私有化,而是由极端私人财富的激增所驱动的“私有化资本主义”的行为;这是一个由股权、信贷、银行、家族办公室和基金会组成的世界,一些人预测,在十年内,这可能会构成全球国内生产总值的近一半。

在水务行业,这种情况在由澳大利亚麦格理投资银行领导的财团持有泰晤士水务(Thames Water)期间达到了顶峰,随后出现的是一场出于私利的、关于投资不足、避税和无视环境的狂欢。相反,是对股东、利益相关者和监管机构负责的公开上市公司,在关键的财务、客户满意度和环境指标上表现最好。国有化是一个更简单的战斗口号,但它并不是解决方案。

然而,如果英国继续顺从地接受私有化资本主义——由美国及其政治右翼带头——那么这可能就是剩下的全部了。英国上市公司日益成为由美国利益主导的掠夺狂潮中的受害者。仅在今年,五家 FTSE 100 公司已经被收购或正处于被收购过程中。

自 2023, 以来,英国投资银行 Peel Hunt 的研究总监查尔斯·霍尔(Charles Hall)计算出,156 家价值 1690亿英镑 的中型上市公司已被吞并——另有价值 1260亿英镑 的公司搬迁并寻求在纽约上市。忘掉驱动我们资本主义的公共领域与私有领域之间肥沃的相互依赖关系吧;现在主导局面的是贪婪的短期股东,其中大多数是外国人,他们很高兴能获得一个有利的退出机会。

而任何心系英国利益的人则没那么乐观。Peel Hunt 多年来一直在敲响警钟,而皇家伦敦资产管理公司(Royal London Asset management)的英国股票主管理查德·马伍德(Richard Marwood)警告说,这种盲目接受收购要约的冲动“简直就像我们在锯掉我们 [资产管理公司] 坐着的树枝”。

[...OMITTED...]

确实如此。二十年前,英国拥有 1,700 家上市公众公司;而根据 Hall 的估计,现在仅剩 909, 家,且下降趋势正在加速。除非在 2040, 年之前有所改变,否则公众公司将会灭绝。问题的一部分在于,太少的新公众公司进入储备池:自 2023. 年以来,英国市值超过 1 亿英镑 的企业首次公开募股(IPO)仅有 11 起。这一点至关重要。

增长的一个前提条件是拥有足够规模且具有影响力的

英国上市公司在被美国私有企业的疯狂收购中处于不利地位

英国公司,且这些公司能在一个高度认可其价值的充满活力的股票市场中不断获得补充——而我们目前的现状与此相去甚远。

问题的核心在于,英国的机构储蓄者,尤其是我们的养老基金,在回避投资英国公众公司和私有公司的程度上在全球范围内是无与伦比的。今年上半年,英国的增长速度在 G7 中最快,而外国买家可能认为我们的公司价格如此低廉,以至于他们争先恐后地将其私有化——这两点都无法吸引我们的养老基金。事实上,正是因为它们不投资,这些公司才如此便宜。然而,在上一财年,养老基金缴款的税收减免总额接近 600亿英镑。我们实际上是在付费让这些基金抛弃我们。

毫无疑问,正如一个包括前英格兰银行首席经济学家 Andy Haldane 以及保守党贵族兼养老金专家 Ros Altmann 在内的联盟所主张的那样,养老基金的税收减免应当以承诺增加对英国股票的投资为条件——例如,至少占其总股票投资组合的 15%。英国公司需要且理应获得英国投资者的更高估值。此外,必须降低印花税以鼓励更多交易,并为公司创始人及创新者建立资本利得税的“防疫线”(cordon sanitaire)。否则,等待我们的将是一片荒原。

矛盾之处在于,现在轮到工党首相和财政大臣来为活跃的股票市场和公众有限公司辩护了。但这不仅仅关乎增长;这关乎挑战资本主义的私有化及其相关的野蛮行径,而后者最终将证明马克思是正确的。这已成为目前最重要的进步事业。


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白人委屈政治将永远质疑黑人的成就 Seun Matiluko

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围绕上周去世的杰森·阿尔代(Jason Arday)而引发的媒体狂热,揭露了对点击量、浏览量以及文化战争的一种阴暗痴迷。

周五深夜,一位学者对此做了最好的总结:“两周前,杰森·阿尔代还是一位剑桥大学教授,而现在他不在了。”在人们蜂拥而上之前,提醒他们保持善良,并记住在他们的推文、博客文章或标题背后是一个真实的人,有时似乎显得过于简单。但在本案中,我认为说媒体辜负了杰森·阿尔代并不夸张。

一个自称“种族现实主义者”的人认为,在精英管理体制下,黑人将“从除体育和娱乐之外的所有高知名度职位中消失”——许多人会直接称其为“种族主义者”——此人挖掘出阿尔代博士论文中涉嫌抄袭的部分,并在 Substack 上撰文讨论。

报纸调查了这些指控并认为其可信。事情本可以到此为止。如果确实如此,相关报道的程度可能与剑桥大学教授威廉·奥赖利(William O'Reilly)相当,后者抄袭了学生论文中的 4,000 个单词,将其作为自己的作品发表在学术期刊上,并在被揭穿时称自己是“恐同欺凌”的受害者。但对阿尔代的报道并未止步于他的学术工作——尽管这些工作足以

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杰森·阿尔代在 2024 年的一次《泰晤士高等教育》会议上。David J. Colbran / Alamy

通过利物浦约翰摩尔大学的博士评审,但批评者称其令剑桥大学名誉受损。

记者们挖掘阿尔代生活的方方面面,试图获取点击量和浏览量(以及金钱)。在 22 天内,关于他的文章共发表了 249 篇。

在他去世的消息公布后的数小时内,《泰晤士报》仍在 X 上投放赞助广告,推广一篇由一名对其教学不满的前学生撰写的文章。

在周五悲剧发生之前的这段时间里,大量持续的媒体报道不可避免地变成了文化战争的一部分。阿尔代被拿来与梅根·马克尔(Meghan Markle)比较(当然如此),而那些非常渴望让别人知道自己就读于剑桥大学的记者们则表示,

阿尔代的存在证明了黑人在学术界更容易获得机会(英国教授中只有 1% 是黑人)。

社交媒体上充斥着荒诞的说法,称牛津剑桥大学允许

针对他的持续攻击与其失误不成比例

录取成绩较低的黑人学生,纯粹是因为他们是黑人。

实际上,就英国大学录取而言,唯一形式的平权行动或 DEI(多样性、平等、包容),无论你怎么称呼它,都是基于阶级而非种族:那些就读于困难学校或居住在贫困地区的人,有时

会获得所谓的“背景录取(contextual offer)”,以认可他们在艰苦环境下所付出的努力。许多从背景录取中受益的人是白人工人阶级学生,而这些人恰恰是文化战争中“反 DEI”阵营平时假装关心的人。

对权力持有者进行审查是正确的。撒谎的人应该被揭露。而且阿尔代生活故事中的许多部分确实显得可疑。他显然是一个会犯错的人。关于他的问题,他永远无法回答了。

但针对他的持续媒体攻击与其失误不成比例。阿尔代不是杀人犯,不是强奸犯,也不是爱泼斯坦文件中提到的那些剑桥学者之一。那么,为什么会有如此铺天盖地的报道?为什么这么多媒体在过去几周里几乎一直将他作为网站首页的封面人物——最明显的例外是他去世后的第二天?

部分原因可能是因为现在正值“愚蠢季节”(silly season);部分原因则是我们国家对牛剑(Oxbridge)的痴迷。如果阿尔代是利兹大学、达勒姆大学或伦敦国王学院的教授,我怀疑这个故事不会引起如此大的反响。

然而,我认为这场媒体风暴在很大程度上与阿尔代的种族有关。

我知道有些人会对这一点嗤之以鼻,并说最初强调其黑人身份的是剑桥大学。我同意在 2023 年阿尔代迅速晋升为教授后的媒体报道中,他的种族被多次提及。

然而,像我们过去几周看到的那些标题——例如《黑人的命也是命(Black Lives Matter)如何造就了杰森·阿尔代》,或者《在聘用杰森·阿尔代之前,学生要求剑桥大学“去殖民化”》,以及《剽窃风波中的剑桥大学多样性海报男孩》——已经超出了仅仅承认阿尔代种族背景的范畴。它们透露出一种白人委屈的政治心态,即本能地怀疑黑人的成就某种程度上是以牺牲白人为代价的。

如果过去几周对阿尔代采取的审查程度被应用于他那些最激烈的批评者身上,很少有人能毫发无损。阿尔代不是第一个,也不会是最后一个被指控剽窃作品或分享包含可疑事实的人生故事的人。他也不是第一个被指责为糟糕的学者的人(我认识的大多数大学毕业生都有一段关于他们认为不称职的学者的故事)。

然而,阿尔代现在去世了,他的孩子们将在没有父亲的情况下长大。一年后,他的一些批评者可能甚至不记得他的名字。

期望所有记者都恪守职业道德或许过于天真。但我记得许多人在卡罗琳·弗拉克(Caroline Flack)自杀后声称已经吸取了教训。遗憾的是,六年过去了,人们似乎学到的教训是:无情地围猎一个公众人物,然后在他们死后说“愿你安息”、“深表哀悼”,并将责任推给其他人。

笔记本

时空之旅——得益于一个纸板箱和一个沥水篮

埃里卡·瓦格纳 (Erica Wagner)

上周三,我在 Radio 4 的《Sideways》节目中听马修·赛义德 (Matthew Syed) 讲述敏·金 (Min Kym) 的故事,她在 2010 年在尤斯顿车站丢失了一把有 300 年历史的斯特拉迪瓦里小提琴。金在一部优美的回忆录《消失:一个女孩,一把小提琴,一段失控的人生》(Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unsprung) 中讲述了这个故事——但赛义德探讨了一个更宏大的问题:我们如何赋予物体价值。我一边仔细聆听,一边拆开六个落满灰尘的纸板箱,这些箱子是我在母亲去世后打包的,在最后一次见到它们 15 年多之后,我才将它们从储藏室取回。(我说“我取回”:这是一个背信弃义的谎言。是我儿子开车横跨全国往返将它们取回的。不,我再也不能因为任何事情对他生气了,永远,永远不能。)收集到的东西大部分是旧媒体,因为找不到更好的词:35 毫米幻灯片转盘、一百卷 Super 8 电影胶片、数十盘录音带——如果我想解码这段关于我过去的档案,所有这些都必须数字化。我像一名考古学家,投资于一次挖掘,以看看我的发现是否值得。至于我母亲那些破旧的詹姆斯·利斯-米尔恩 (James Lees-Milne) 日记本——她对这些书的热爱,为像我这样一个纽约土著最终来到英国提供了一种解释。无价之宝。

Tally 推荐:《卡门·卡勒斯》(Carmen Carlers),我刚刚在第四频道的《沃尔特呈现》(Walter Presents) 中发现这部剧。“一部受真实事件启发、风格时尚的丹麦时代剧。1963 年,商人阿克塞尔·比万 (Axel Byvang) 投资了一项默默无闻的发明。它会焕发生机,还是会化为乌有?”爱上这部剧的原因有很多:随处可见的中世纪现代主义风格,迷人且真挚的表演,以及在一种——如果你不住在哥本哈根——你不太可能见过或想过的环境下,对女性主义和性意识的独特探索。但它最出色的一点在于其不紧不慢的节奏。在前 4 集中,你真的会一直好奇中心人物将如何走到一起:观众需要思考,权衡城市与乡村、男人与女人、野心与停滞之间的界限。罗伯特·彭·沃伦 (Robert Penn Warren) 曾写道:“故事的名字将是时间, / 但你不可呼唤它的名。 / 给我讲一个深情愉悦的故事。”

说到时间和深情愉悦:我们回到了楼上的卧室,我在梯子上贴了一大块白色纸板,并举起我们可靠的沥水篮。天哪,对吧?你当时在哪里?是在高山上,在田野里,还是像我们一样在顶楼房间里?首先是纸板上的光点,完美的圆形圆盘:渐渐地,渐渐地,一个新月形的缺口在图案的每个碎片上蔓延,显示出月亮正经过太阳的表面。即使在我们城市的街道上:蓝色的黄昏,突然的寂静。然后是晚餐时间。将太阳从沥水篮中洗掉,然后沥干意面。在过去两周里,你一定在这一报纸上读到了不少关于拯救乔德雷尔银行 (Jodrell Bank) 的努力,那是位于切希尔中心地带的巨大无线电望远镜。原因就在于此:在太阳系巨大的旋转中,我们所有人都能在某一时刻体验到宇宙奇迹的一次微小演示。被高科技淹没——手机的暴政,一台想要和我说话的洗衣机——我从厨房抽屉里舀出的白色搪瓷碗,将我与阿尔德利边缘 (Alderley Edge) 附近那台宏伟的仪器联系在一起。我再说一遍:无价之宝。


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

31

读者来信

公众最受益于一个能够实现康复的监狱系统

蕾切尔·西尔维斯特(Rachel Sylvester)关于万兹沃思监狱(HMP Wandsworth)新设“斯堪的纳维亚翼楼”的文章提供了一个及时且充满希望的提醒:监狱改革并非是对犯罪采取软弱态度,而是对犯罪采取聪明对策。(见上周新闻,“提供钢琴、台球和茶会的‘斯堪的纳维亚翼楼’可能有助于解决监狱危机”)。

在我们的监狱面临前所未有的压力和无与伦比的审视,且伴随过度拥挤、高水平暴力、自残以及人员短缺的时刻,看到一种更具建设性的方法能够产生切实成果,令人感到鼓舞。

据报道,万兹沃思和彭顿维尔(Pentonville)相关单元内袭击、自残和员工缺勤情况的减少,应当引起所有政治倾向的决策者的注意。

长期以来,关于监狱的辩论一直陷入在惩罚与康复之间一个虚假的抉择中。而实际上,两者并非互不相容。

监禁本身就是惩罚。接下来的关键在于,人们在离开羁押后,再次犯罪的可能性是增加了还是减少了。一个仅仅将人们安置在不安全、过度拥挤环境中的系统,不仅是对内部人员的失败,也是对大多数囚犯最终将回归的社区的失败。

监狱改革信托基金(Prison Reform Trust)长期以来一直主张,尊严、目标和积极的人际关系在监狱中并非奢侈品,而是安全与改变的基石。斯堪的纳维亚模式的底层原则——包括增加员工与囚犯的互动、强调尊重,以及提供更多培养责任感和技能的机会——是基于关于有效康复因素的证据。它们承认一个事实:当人们被当作具有改变能力的人类来对待时,他们更有可能发生改变。

万兹沃思项目特别令人瞩目之处在于,其显而易见的成功并非是在一座专门建造的北欧监狱中实现的,而是在英格兰最具挑战性的监狱环境之一中实现的。要让这些翼楼发挥作用,需要协调一致的努力和出色的领导力。

当然,没有任何一项单一举措能解决我们监狱面临的所有问题。我们迫切需要采取行动以减轻过度拥挤,改善心理健康支持,扩大教育和就业机会,并加强对出狱人员的支持。此类创新证明,当监狱领导者被赋予自由和支持,使其能够专注于康复而非仅仅是禁锢时,改变是可实现的。

公众希望一个能够保护社区、支持受害者并减少未来伤害的司法系统。而实现这些目标的最佳方式,就是帮助人们建立守法的生活。

现在的问题不再是我们是否负担得起从这些创新中学习,而是我们是否负担得起不这样做。

皮娅·辛哈(Pia Sinha) 监狱改革信托基金首席执行官

英国理念,重现光芒

蕾切尔·西尔维斯特赞扬了在伦敦两所陷入困境的监狱翼楼中率先试行的斯堪的纳维亚模式——但这并非斯堪的纳维亚的发明。它是在 40 年前由一名英国监狱长伊恩·邓巴(Ian Dunbar)率先提出的,他将其称为“动态安全”概念。其三大支柱是物理安全、员工与囚犯的关系以及有目的的活动。挪威监狱服务部门曾引用邓巴的工作作为其自身方法的基石。因此,与足球不同,它现在才真正“回家”。

事实上,它从未离开——但在我们过度拥挤且危机重重的监狱系统中,它被淹没并被削弱了。监狱是一个生态系统的一部分,其中还包括不堪重负的缓刑服务以及资金不足的社区心理健康和支持服务。除非我们能找到一种方法对“非监狱”领域进行适当投资,否则监狱将继续被过度使用且表现不佳。

安妮·欧尔斯女爵(Dame Anne Owers) 前监狱首席监察官

选择的问题

我以一名 82 岁的人文主义者的身份写下这段文字,我总体上很健康,但发现自己无法做的事情清单正在增加。从这个角度来看,我认为福克斯男爵夫人的信(“更好的姑息治疗应先于辅助死亡”,见上周“读者来信”)令人真正震惊。正是那些认为辅助死亡完全不可接受的人,将辅助死亡与姑息治疗联系在一起。两者是截然不同的。

我对人间地狱的想象是:拥有最好的姑息治疗,但失去了许多身体机能且处于痛苦之中,而其他人决定我必须忍受多少痛苦——这让我完全失去了自由意志。

福克斯男爵夫人从她的人文主义观点出发,就什么是可接受的提出了论点,但这否定了辅助死亡的根本目的:减轻痛苦。

鲍勃·欧文 (Bob Owen) 多塞特郡,切特诺尔

我的丈夫在 62. 岁时死于延髓起病的运动神经元病 (MND)。临终关怀院的表现非常出色,但没有任何姑息治疗或支持能够缓解 MND 的症状。为像鲍勃那样患有绝症的人提供辅助死亡的选择,并不会对其他弱势群体构成威胁。它为一种无法忍受、令人痛苦且不可治愈的疾病提供了一个尊严且平静的终结。

让所有人享有体面的教育

菲利普·柯林斯认为,20 世纪 60 年代通过 11-plus 并因此获得文法学校教育的学生,是其同龄人中最聪明的 20%(“严肃的职业教育是帮助失败学生的最佳方式”,见上周“论坛”)。我在小学期间,每年在班级 90 名学生中都能排进前 10 名。但我 11-plus 没过。当时,该考试对男孩的合格分数线低于女孩。不成比例数量的中产阶级孩子通过了考试。而且我当时住在市政房里。

16, 岁离开学校后,我在全职工作的同时,通过公开大学获得了荣誉一等学位。对于一个在 11, 岁时被分到非文法学校的 80% 的学生之一来说,这还不赖,而那些“最聪明”的(但不是最聪明的工人阶级女孩)则去了好得多的学校。体面的教育是一项基本权利。让我们为了所有孩子的利益而为此努力。

黛比·卡梅伦 (Debbie Cameron) 默西赛德郡,福姆比

抛弃香港

英国与中国达成了一项为期 50 年的协议,根据该协议,香港现有的制度保持不变,但很明显,中国共产党 (CCP) 无意履行其协议义务。(“在被单独监禁六年之后,黎明之狱信预言殉道者的结局”,见上周“世界”版)

我们生活在一个道德混乱的时代,世界许多地方日益独裁的政府将其借口归结为“情况发生了变化”。为了让日益强硬的中国共产党感到满意,历届英国政府都采取了这种做法,而没有对近期曾是英国王室臣民的人们的未来稳定与安全承担任何道德责任。

不要责怪人类

埃里卡·瓦格纳在“我心中所想”(见上周“杂志”)中写到战争,提到“伊朗的泥潭”变得“更加致命,我们又来了”。她得出结论说,“这就是我们人类所做的事”。

我不敢苟同。这是男人所做的事。我敢打赌,几乎每个女人都对此感到厌恶至极。

玛丽-安·莫雷尔 (Mary-Anne Morel) 伦敦,泰丁顿

坚实的基础

伊朗当代建筑面临的挑战之一是如何保留身份认同和意义

SAF

而不会被某种转瞬即逝的视觉风格所束缚(见上周《新评论》,“伊朗如何成为现代建筑的前沿”)。

建筑时尚来去匆匆,建筑作品往往在建成之初就显得过时。对我而言,建筑的延续性并非来自对历史形式的重复,而是来自理解这些形式为何存在,并将它们的内在特质转化为当下的条件。

Alireza Modarresi 伊朗马什哈德 Barsav 事务所联合创始人兼首席建筑师

继续奔跑

我也是一名九旬老人,也将参加在韩国举行的世界大师田径锦标赛(见上周《体育》,“遇见英国最快的九旬老人”)。在 90 岁这个年纪,我参加 100 米、200 米和 400 米的比赛,因此我仅在 400 米项目中与他竞争。我期待在开跑前与 Colin 相见。顺便记录在案,我是 87 岁才开始尝试短跑的。

Hamish McKenzie 爱丁堡

img-76.jpeg

更正声明

  • 由于图片社的错误,我们上周封面的照片并非如标题所示为喀喇昆仑山脉的博罗德峰(Broad Peak)。该图像实际上描绘的是同一山脉中的加舍布伦四峰(Gasherbrunn IV)西壁。
  • 一篇调查特写(《政治边缘的明信片》,《新评论》,8 月 2 日,第 12 页)错误地称诺里奇郡议会(Norwich County Council)由 Reform 控制。此处应为诺福克郡议会(Norfolk County Council)。诺里奇市议会(Norwich City Council)由绿党管理。

征集观察者

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32 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

论坛

教育与就业

安迪·伯纳姆的技术教育计划并非速成方案 Alun Francis

安迪·伯纳姆希望在14岁时建立一条新的技术教育路径,使其与学术路径具有同等地位,并与当地就业机会挂钩,根据职业结果对学校进行评判,引入雇主参与,并由市长协调规划。

这一雄心值得赞赏。大学之外的替代方案一直被忽视,技术选项也发生了变化。年轻人对工作的实际内容知之甚少。因此,提高路径的透明度并创造职场经验至关重要。

然而,其框架存在缺陷。它将技术学习与解决年轻人脱节的问题混为一谈——这可能会导致局面变得混乱。

技术学习与学术学习之间的区别通常是基于前者需要较少的“知识”。英国一直有这样对待技术选项的历史,即削减认知内容并降低评估标准。在20世纪90年代,国家职业资格证书(NVQs)刻意将“能力”与知识分开。直到2010年代,信息技术3级资格认证仍将困难的数学模块设为“可选”。

这种情况的发生是因为我们将“技能”与“用手做的事情”联系在一起,并结合了为学术成绩较低的学生寻找更容易通过的资格认证的愿望。这几乎没有成效,因为技术工作既需要大量的认知能力,也需要实践技能,而除非资格认证能反映这一点,否则它们毫无意义。对学徒制和T-levels(技术等级证书)的改革已将知识恢复到技术学习的核心地位。我们需要维持这一点。

我们还需要承认,学术学习和技术学习并非互斥的替代方案。它们是互补的。几乎每个人都会两者兼顾。我们都从学术通用教育开始,然后大多数人进入技术培训。区别在于转型的阶段以及采取的形式。

诸如法律等专业。

英国高等教育入学人数

img-78.jpeg

来源:高等教育统计局(Higher Education Statistics Agency)

会计或教学等专业拥有一个培训流程,基于学位入学,随后获得职业资格,并由行业监管支持。另一些专业则在 16 岁时开始转型,例如建筑工艺贸易或美发。后者在英国受到监管的可能性要低得多。而像新闻业或地方政府这类专业则处于中间地带:监管较少,但通常依赖学位。

这一格局复杂且变化迅速。出现了诸如网络安全和项目管理等新的技术职业。高级学徒制和学位学徒制也允许在 18 岁时进入职业路径,是在获得学位之前而非之后。

是否有理由通过在 14 岁设立一个转型点来增加这一路径?欧洲有一些运作良好的先例,但在英国应用这些先例将非常复杂。它们涉及筛选形式、不同的机构安排以及监管更严格的劳动力市场。它们是不同的系统。

我们的历史表明,对于英国学校教授技术科目,我们应当保持谨慎。在 2004 年至 2010 年间,学校每年的技术资格证书数量从 15,000 个增加到 575,000 个。这些证书比传统的 GCSE 考试更容易通过,但其中许多毫无价值。16 岁的青少年发现自己完全没有准备好进入职场,也没有进一步提升的技能。

健康和社会护理是否应该由生物老师通过书本来教授?欧洲模式提供的是一种独特的技术学习体验,而不仅仅是给学校提供几个“技术选项”的许可证。技术教师需要行业经验,雇主需要参与课程设计,学习环境需要模拟工作场所。学院具备这些条件,而学校不具备。

由沃尔夫审查(Wolf Review)推荐的一个方案是,由学院提供 14-16 岁的选项。包括我所在的学院在内的许多学院都提供此项服务。学生在学习 GCSE 的同时选择一门职业课程,每周在学院学习一天。贝克-迪林信托基金(Baker Dearing Trust)有一个类似的模式,基于大学技术学院(University Technical Colleges)。但这需要外部资金和明确的规则。市长可以在学校组之间协调此事。但选择必须是高质量的,由专家交付,并针对那些有需求的人。它们绝不能主要聚焦于不投入学习的学生,也不能取代学术成就。

学院里充满了通用教育水平较低的年轻人。大量学生在重考英语和数学的 GCSE。而且 25% 的 19 岁青少年在读写和计算能力方面仍然有限。对于这个群体中的大多数人来说,技术课程无法解决他们的问题,也不会神奇地带来更好的结果。如果没有英语、数学和合理的通用教育,他们参与工作并进一步晋升的前景将受到限制。

我们不能回避这样一个事实:大多数高层工作涉及认知能力和实践技能,缺乏这两者的人将会陷入困境。我们确实需要为所有年轻人明确职业路径。看到学术研究与技术成果之间的衔接,可以起到激励和鼓舞作用。有证据表明,大曼彻斯特国际文凭(MBacc)已经实现了这一点。但需要注意的是,它并没有要求对学校课程进行重大更改。

Alun Francis 是布莱克浦和法尔德学院集团(Blackpool and the Fylde College Group)的首席执行官,以及社会流动委员会(Social Mobility Commission)的主席

img-79.jpeg

学习如何准备

许多毕业生发现,优异的成绩并未带来理想的工作,Shuab Gamote 撰文指出

A-level成绩公布日感觉像是成年生活的起点:屏幕上的几个字母就能决定你住在哪里,结识谁,以及接下来的几年将如何度过。在重建技术教育(这确实迫在眉睫)的喧嚣中,我们不应开始诋毁大学。但大学需要做更多工作,以赋予学生在面对未来时所需的经验、信心和就业能力。

对于许多年轻人,尤其是家族中第一个上大学的人来说,大学仍然是通往机遇的通行证。我对此深有体会——我的父母没有上过大学。但大学的价值不仅仅是我拿到的学位。它是我所结识的人,我建立的信心,我接触到的职业,以及一种意识到现在我可以想象自己属于某些地方的感觉。这就是为什么“学生体验”如此重要。

英国大学协会(Universities UK)主席兼曼彻斯特大都会大学副校长马尔科姆·普雷斯(Malcolm Press)简单地将其概括为:“大学赋予了这些学生社会资本和信心。”曼彻斯特大都会大学拥有全国规模最大的第一代大学生群体之一。

曼彻斯特大都会大学提供了一个关于这在实践中如何运作的缩影。普雷斯谈到了密切倾听学生的心声,提供学术和生活支持,赋予教学在学术职业生涯中应有的地位,并将雇主引入课程设置。

通过米尔本审查(Milburn Review),彼得·海曼(Peter Hyman)和我已经与数百名来自……

一份离校学生报告

在12年级时,我们被邀请前往汉普斯特德的一所私立学校,参加一场面向公立学校学生的牛津剑桥录取活动。我们被该校的设施惊呆了。我感到一种自卑的种子开始生长:起初我甚至拒绝申请牛津大学,因为我觉得我不属于那里,我觉得自己不够聪明、富有或有趣。如果没有老师们的鼓励,我永远不会迈出那一步。

然而,我也没意识到自己有多幸运。我就读于一所表演艺术学校,因此在艺术和音乐方面的重视从未缺失——而这并非每个人都能享有。从一个非神经多样性的白人中产阶级女性的角度来看,我也无需在成长过程中与制度性种族主义、语言挑战和缺乏特殊教育需求(SEN)支持等障碍作斗争。

我发现自己在思考“聪明”究竟意味着什么。讽刺的是,这种更具创造性的思维方式正是我被告知牛津大学在录取过程中所优先考虑的。问题在于,这正是我们在学校被鼓励去避免的东西。但仅仅因为一个人没有学术倾向,并不意味着他们不聪明。不应让任何孩子因此而感到自己愚笨。


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徒弟理发师使用练习头进行训练。Jean-François Fort, Hans Lucas / AFP, Getty

接下来是什么

英国。最让我惊讶的是,竟然有这么多人难以适应从教育阶段向成年生活的过渡。这不仅仅是那些早早离开学校的人所面临的问题:在不在校、未就业且未接受培训的年轻人中,约有 15% 拥有学位。

一名年轻的毕业生直截了当地说道:“人们告诉你一个简单的故事:上学院,上大学,然后找工作。但事实根本不是这样。我觉得我做了我被告知要做的一切。但已经快一年了……我仍然在努力争取一个职位。”

另一位则描述了自己太晚才意识到其他因素的重要性:“现在人们非常强调经验以及在毕业前获得实习机会。我只是不知道那是回事……上大学,拿到好成绩,找工作——这就是那种简化的思维方式。有很多信息是我之前不知道的。”

大学需要提供卓越的教学、与雇主的有意义的接触、职业支持、建立那些特权学生可以视为理所当然的人脉网络的机会,以及为接下来的生活做认真的准备。但我们必须承认,大学目前的财务状况岌岌可危,一些学校将难以让学生获得他们所需的东西。曼彻斯特都会大学(Manchester Met)之所以能够取得进展,是因为多年来稳健的财务管理以及对国际学生收入的依赖较低。

更广泛的挑战在于,如何让所需的这种支持水平成为常态而非特例。

舒亚·加莫特(Shua Gamote)是米尔本审查(Milburn Review)的战略顾问

我 10 年级的生物课同学们一致认为,成功的唯一方法就是背诵评分标准,这证明了 GCSE 考试本质上就是死记硬背。这种死记硬背的学习方式感觉与我们将要进入的世界没什么联系。另一个问题是对金钱信息的缺乏。

回顾过去,我很欣慰地说,我对学校生活的感受在很大程度上是积极的。对心理健康日益增加的重视,意味着像焦虑症这样被污名化的主题变得更容易讨论。然而在公立教育体系中,大班授课和不堪重负的教师很常见,这可能会很艰难。在 8 年级时,我被分到了数学底组,因为前一年在 30 人的班级里我几乎保持沉默。在我讨厌的一门学科上,我变得更加不自信。但我的老师们付出了额外的努力来支持我。尽管他们得到的尊重(和薪水)不足,但他们的热情是维持这些公立机构生存的力量,我几乎将一切归功于他们。

罗米莉·考克斯(Romilly Cox)就读于伦敦的玛丽勒本英格兰教会学校,将前往牛津大学学习历史和西班牙语。

学位帽与安全帽都能带来职业保障 Graham Watts

在 GCSE 取得不错成绩后,克里斯蒂安·托马斯(Kristian Tomas)并不想从事办公室工作,也不想背负学生贷款。“我想要一份实用的工作,只要努力就能获得晋升并获得丰厚收入。”16 岁时,他开始参加 1 级砌砖课程,早期的一条极佳建议鼓励他将学院学习与现场工作相结合。

仅仅 6 年后,托马斯现在担任 GSQ Brickwork 的主管,已经在领导一个建设 50 栋房屋社区的团队。“我热爱管理繁忙项目的多样性和挑战性,但只要有机会,我就会尽可能多地拿起抹灰刀。”他甚至将自己的手艺变成了一项运动,参加了英国规模最大的砌砖比赛。“我是官方认证的英国第六快砌砖工。在 42,000 名从业者中,这还不赖!”

25 年前,托尼·布莱尔(Tony Blair)提出了让一半年轻人上大学的宏愿,这一目标最终在 2019 年实现。上周四,Ucas 首席执行官乔·萨克斯顿(Jo Saxton)宣布,今年有创纪录的四分之一百万名学校毕业生(262,820 名)获得了大学录取名额——比 2025 年增长了 3%。

然而,在同一天,技能大臣杰奎琳·史密斯(Jacqui Smith)在 BBC Radio 的《今日》(Today)节目中表示,政府将采取行动,停止那些并非良好投资的大学课程的扩张。这与安迪·伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)近期宣布的对英格兰教育系统进行重大改革的计划一致,该计划允许 14 岁青少年从 2028 年 9 月起,在核心学术科目之外选择技术和职业路径。这将使托马斯在实现砌砖抱负方面提前两年起步。

因此,钟摆在摆动,从一位工党首相对学术的依赖转向另一位对技术教育的关注。简单的事实是,自 C.P. 斯诺(CP Snow)1959 年发表具有影响力的里德讲座(Rede Lecture)以来,情况并未改变。斯诺将“两种文化”定义为科学和人文,但将其

英格兰的学徒制

按学年结束及等级(单位:千人)

img-81.jpeg

来源:教育部和就业养老部

论点扩大到学术教育与技术教育之间,以及从事办公室工作与户外工作的人员之间的隔离,也是合理的。

关键必须是在较早的年龄引导年轻人的教育和职业路径,伯纳姆将重点提前到 10 年级的抱负是明智的。目前,该系统显然没有发挥作用。劳动力市场充斥着毕业生,社会公正中心(The Centre for Social Justice)今年早些时候的一份报告指出,有 700,000 名毕业生处于失业状态。另一方面,许多学习建筑贸易的年轻人并没有在那个领域

关键在于尽早引导年轻人的职业路径

行业。特许管道与供暖工程学会最近指出,管道工学徒的结业率低于 27%。

我同意建筑环境大学的亚历德·威廉姆斯(Aled Williams)对我所说的话:“将技术教育与学术学习置于同等地位是一个正确的目标。但这不能变成在安全帽和毕业帽之间进行二选一。建筑环境需要涵盖技术和专业角色全光谱的人才,而这些界限正变得日益模糊。”

“真正的挑战在于确保我们的技能体系不仅让人们为当下的空缺岗位做好准备,还要为我们将需要的能力做好准备……因为人工智能、数字化和新的交付方法正在重塑我们的行业。”

建筑领导委员会的技能负责人兼建筑环境未来议会主席马克·法默(Mark Farmer)强化了这一观点:“人工智能的出现已经让人们产生一种认知,即某些专业角色的未来就业保障将会降低。”

“承担全日制学位学习,背负学生贷款压力,且最后可能没有工作,这种前景是没有吸引力的。很有可能下一代人才及其关键影响者已经开始积极转向他们认为‘AI免疫’的工作,包括贸易和技术员角色,而不管政府目前传达的是什么信息。”

然而,法默认为存在一种风险,即摆钟可能会向另一个极端过度倾斜,导致学徒制的申请人数比现在更加过载,而对于寻求就业导向培训路径的年轻入职者来说,可提供的岗位却不足。“这意味着雇主可能需要更好的支持、激励措施和经济条件,以增加他们对 16 岁以后受训者的需求。这与其说是教育和技能挑战,不如说是一个根本性的就业市场挑战。如果这个问题得不到解决,我们可能会面临安全帽和毕业帽两类人群中 NEET(不就业也不进修的青年)积压增加的风险。”

托马斯(Tomas)是一个成功地在早期选择将技术教育与实际工作经验相结合的人。他在我们的聊天结束时说:“我完全支持将建筑业作为职业选择。这里有赚钱、学习和建立事业的机会,只要你愿意努力工作,所有人都能获得回报。”

格雷厄姆·瓦茨(Graham Watts)自 1991 年起担任建筑工业委员会首席执行官,并自 2020 年起成为建筑领导委员会成员。


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论坛

讣告

诺玛·福克斯 (Norma Fox)

这位拥有“狮子般勇气”的丹麦空中飞人曾多次死里逃生,以其表演令全球观众倾倒

唯一让“拉·诺玛”(La Norma)在离地 60 英尺的高空荡在秋千上感到紧张的事情,那就是当他们给她准备安全网的时候。

虽然她“从未心甘情愿地离开过横杆”,但在马戏团 35 年的职业生涯中,诺玛·福克斯的表演动作始终与横杆保持最微小的接触。一个蜷曲的膝盖、一个勾住的脚踝、一只手的抓握,甚至是用牙齿咬住,就是她唯一需要的保险。当某个城镇坚持要在她下方安排消防员拿着毯子接她时,她表示反对。“这把我吓死了,”她说,“如果他们没接住我怎么办?”

“拉·诺玛”——这是她 16 岁起就使用的艺名——曾在全球各地的马戏帐篷中演出,从她的家乡丹麦到东京和夏威夷,其中还包括在林格林兄弟和巴纳姆-贝利马戏团(Ringling Iros and Barnum & Bailey Circus)工作三年。她曾在法国总理面前,在悬挂于埃菲尔铁塔上的秋千上荡漾,并在塞西尔·B·德米尔(Cecil B DeMille)获得奥斯卡奖的 1952 年电影《地球上最伟大的表演》(The Greatest Show on Earth)中担任贝蒂·哈顿(Betty Hutton)的替身。一名记者写道,“她拥有六头狮子般的勇气”。

当然,也曾有过挫折。1962, 年,固定她圆环的绳子打滑,她坠落在地,导致脚踝粉碎性骨折,盆骨左侧受损。七年后,在 40 多岁依然在表演的福克斯在南卡罗来纳州进行一项与登月相关的表演,其中她荡在秋千上,而秋千悬挂在一个连接在火箭上的旋转空间卫星上。

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诺玛·福克斯,她在 1952 年塞西尔·B·德米尔的电影《地球上最伟大的表演》中留下了空中体操的影像记录。

当她落在沙地上时,布景坍塌在她身上。

“他们不得不对我进行抢救,”她在 2013. 年说道。福克斯缺席了七个月,但随后在波多黎各重返高空。“我必须证明这不是我的错,”她说。

她最终在 48 岁时退休,住在佛罗里达州萨拉索塔的一个马戏团人员社区中,在那里,她利用花园里树上悬挂的离地 30 英尺的横杆指导下一代。书籍《马戏团传奇》(Circus Legends)的作者托尼·赫尔南德斯(Tony Hernandez)称她为“一个娇小但充满力量的强者,不知为何看起来比现实生活中的人更伟大。

她是我们这一代最伟大的空中飞人之一。”

诺玛·英加·尼尔森(Norma Inga Nielsen)1926, 年出生于日德兰半岛的兰德斯,是一名电影院经营者的女儿。她和 11 个兄弟姐妹在祖父母的农场度过夏天,但她自称因为太怕牛而无法干活。她和四个姐姐一起在芭蕾舞学校学习,其中一人后来在丹麦皇家芭蕾舞团跳舞。当时,她被埃米莉·阿尔滕堡(Emilie Altenburg)注意到了,后者与女儿共同表演一项名为“弗洛里塔姐妹”(Florita Sisters)的马戏节目。阿尔滕堡的女儿即将结婚离开,她需要一名新搭档。

尼尔森的父母同意让对方带走他们 14 岁的女儿。

那是一段艰苦的训练,从平衡梯表演开始,逐渐过渡到秋千,如果她犯错就会被殴打。在德国占领丹麦期间,她们在挪威和瑞典巡演。1946, 年,在贝利马戏团(Circus Belli)工作时,她遇到了法国骑术团的表演者安德烈·福克斯(André Fox),后者鼓励她离开阿尔滕堡。他们结婚后在英国工作了八个月,在黑普尔池塔(Blackpool Tower)演出,并育有一个儿子吉尔伯特(Gilbert)。

1949, 年,这对夫妇移居美国,加入林格林兄弟和巴纳姆-贝利马戏团,一年中有七个月在城镇间奔波,每天演出两到三次,每周七天无休。

她吸引的人之一是波士顿的一个男孩,他在 15 岁时离家投奔马戏团,成为了美国最伟大的秋千杂技演员之一。2016, 年,托尼·斯蒂尔(Tony Steele)回忆道:“拉·诺玛非常美丽,她会与观众调情。她在这方面有特殊天赋。面对一个有 3,000 人的礼堂,她仅凭眼神就能与其中的每一个人调情。”

福克斯于1974年退役。除了培训年轻表演者,她还制作了马戏团表演的陶瓷模型。“她是那种无论走到哪里,身上似乎都带着一点马戏团气息的人,”埃尔南德斯说道。

几年前,她告诉他自己有一个重复出现的梦,梦见自己回到了空中飞梯上。“他们一直告诉她不要荡得那么高,但诺玛从来不听,”他说。“她用力地荡起飞梯,直到她的脚拍在帐篷顶端。她告诉我,在那些梦里,她感到完全地充满活力,醒来时带着微笑。如果真的有来世,你可以打赌诺玛现在就在那里。”

帕特里克·基德 (Patrick Kidd)

诺玛·福克斯 (Norma Fox),空中飞梯艺术家,出生于1926年2月9日,逝世于2026年8月8日,享年100岁

我的一周

燕尾蜂鸟

**中庸之道并非我的道路。生活在于平衡极端:极致的速度与极致的静止。清醒时,我以生理极限的速度生活;入睡时,我让自己尽可能地接近死亡。我的世界里完全没有“适度”的空间。

周一

我需要宇宙中最强效的食物来驱动我的高速生活;而如果没有这种高速生活,我就无法获取这些燃料。这就是定义我的闭环:速度越快,花蜜越多;花蜜越多,速度越快。

周二

在蜂鸟中我算大的:身长六英寸,尽管其中一半是尾巴。我也很凶猛。任何靠近我的花朵的东西我都会攻击,我说的是任何东西。饥饿让我变得野蛮,而我生活在一个永恒饥饿的世界里。我的速度让我几乎无坚不摧。我会俯冲攻击任何威胁我心爱花朵的目标:任何蜂鸟——无论什么品种——都不被允许出现在这里。今天出现了一只卷冠蜂鸟,体型是我的两倍,但很快就狼狈逃窜了。

周三

速度在静止中达到顶峰。为了留在原地,需要耗尽所有能跑起来的力气。在我的一朵花前盘旋并饮饱每一分钟里,我的翅膀扇动 4,000 次,心脏跳动 1,200 次,呼吸 250 次。

世界的其余部分都处于慢动作中:当其他人还在读题时,我已经解决了问题并进入了下一题。

周四

漫长的一天结束了。我在黄昏时喝下最后一口水,休息时间到了。这不是我在高速运转间隙进行的短暂栖息,而是真正的休息。我不睡觉:睡眠需要消耗太多能量。有些生物为了度过冬天所做的事,我用来度过夜晚:我进入休眠状态。一切都减速到正常速率的十五分之一:心率、呼吸

饥饿让我变得野蛮,而我生活在一个永恒饥饿的世界里

以及其他所有事情,在不真正死亡的前提下尽可能接近于零。

周五

对我而言,飞行意味着爆发力。当然,我钦佩我的表亲雨燕,它们整天整夜在空中度过,但飞行在短暂且极其锐利的爆发中更有意义。看看天空中的鸟类:它们能盘旋吗?肯定没有我盘旋得好。它们能向后飞吗?不,完全不能。它们能像我一样剧烈地改变方向吗?绝无可能。

周六

啊,但我并不赶走每一只鸟。有时我也允许自己被追逐:不是为了逃跑,而是为了测试。如果他飞得足够好,能跟上我的脚步——那么,我也许会停留一会儿。我甚至可能加入他的之字形飞行,那是极致的快乐。但现在,该喝水了;当我的翅膀变得不可见时,你就知道我真的在飞了。

燕尾蜂鸟简历

寿命:五年左右 饮食习惯:在吞咽花蜜的间隙偶尔吃些昆虫 爱好:速度 择偶偏好:空中大师

口述给 Simon Barnes


论坛

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

35

个人资料

乔恩·奥索夫

民主党在南方那位年轻且精明的明星是否是他们下一个政治希望?爱德华·赫尔莫尔(Edward Helmore)对此提出疑问。

上周末,当美国政治辩论聚焦于民主党的动荡时,参议员乔恩·奥索夫(Jon Ossoff)正站在佐治亚州琼斯伯勒的神圣信仰国际事工教会(Divine Faith Ministries International)的讲坛上,将《旧约》和希伯来圣经中的亚哈王与唐纳德·特朗普进行类比。

“问责制即将到来,”奥索夫说,“经文中充满了因自身傲慢而陨落的邪恶君主。”这种类比引起了这座非宗派黑人巨型教会信众的掌声。

在民主党的生态环境中,奥索夫是一个特殊的存在,因为他是唯一一位在特朗普赢得 2024. 年大选的州中面临连任挑战的美国参议员。他看起来有望战胜由特朗普支持的候选人迈克·柯林斯(Mike Collins)。

39, 岁的奥索夫很年轻。他是犹太人,并指出他的祖先曾被“在纳粹死亡集中营中屠杀”。他宣称对以色列持有“铁律般”的支持,但同时也是以色列总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡的批评者。他支持佛蒙特州参议员伯尼·桑德斯(Bernie Sanders)限制美国向以色列出售军火的努力。此外,他使用关于贫富差距的话术,谈到“统治我们国家的……爱泼斯坦阶层”。

上个月,奥索夫因在确认听证会上对国家情报总监提名人杰伊·克莱顿(Jay Clayton)的严厉质询而获得赞誉。他追问克莱顿,为何前洪都拉斯总统胡安·奥兰多·埃尔南德斯(Juan Orlando Hernández)在被判定贩毒罪并被判处 45 年监禁约 18 个月后,竟被特朗普赦免。他还玩起了民主党的修辞忠诚度测试游戏,询问克莱顿 2020 年大选是谁赢了。

克莱顿显得局促不安。“无法回答这个问题难道不令人感到羞愧吗?”奥索夫问道,“必须去纵容总统的妄想吗?我们知道,你知道,这个房间里的每个人都知道那个问题的真实答案。你为什么不能给出答案?”

奥索夫在很大程度上避免了陷入民主党进步派与中间派的政治陷阱。2017, 年,桑德斯表示他“不知道”与全民医疗保健和“绿色新政”纲领保持距离的奥索夫是否属于进步派。但 YouTube 评论员哈桑·皮克(Hasan Piker)称奥索夫是他 2028 年的“黑马之选”。

当中期选举尘埃落定后,注意力将不可避免地转向总统候选人。民主党的竞争格局目前完全开放,较少

“他对居住在郊区、农村和城市地区的人来说都是可以接受的”

至于共和党,他们必须在塑造后特朗普时代的身份认同方面进行博弈。近几周,奥索夫(Ossoff)的名字被多次提及。

虽然还有更显赫的名字——前副总统卡玛拉·哈里斯(Kamala Harris)、加利福尼亚州州长加文·纽森(Gavin Newsom)——但每个人都带着政治伤痕,且很容易被贴上“沿海精英”成员的标签。

民主党战略家汉克·谢因科普夫(Hank Sheinkopf)表示,奥索夫处于弥合党内分歧的有利位置。“他来自南方,因此人们认为他更保守。但他的意识形态听起来并不那么保守。”

“他对居住在郊区、农村和城市地区的人来说都是可以接受的。他既不是极左,也不是极右。根据问题的不同,他处于中左翼的某个位置。人们在寻找中间地带。他们对美国民主社会主义者代表的极左翼感到反感,也对特朗普代表的极右翼感到反感。”

奥索夫还解决了民主党的年龄问题。“他在代际上是合适的,”谢因科普夫说,但他将不得不“在左、右和中间之间周旋”。奥索夫的犹太信仰不是一个问题,因为人们认为他首先是南方人,其次才是犹太人:“这在这里不适用,因为他在佐治亚州被接受……这意味着他可以在大多数地方开展活动。”

乔恩·奥索夫 (Jon Ossoff) 出生地 佐治亚州亚特兰大 母校 乔治城大学、伦敦政治经济学院 职业 美国参议员 家庭 已婚,有两个孩子

插画由 Andy Bunday 绘制

奥索夫本人曾表示,他对 2028 年竞选总统“毫无兴趣”。Polymarket 的赔率将其排在党内提名竞争中,略低于纽森。

“奥索夫是否正成为本轮政治周期的明星?我认为这个评价是公正的,”民主党战略家詹姆斯·卡维尔(James Carville)说道,他曾帮助最后一位来自南方的民主党人比尔·克林顿(Bill Clinton)赢得总统之位。“他不仅有技巧,而且在不断进步,”他说。

但卡维尔提醒道,“外面还有其他才华横溢的人。比如 [肯塔基州州长] 安迪·贝希尔(Andy Beshear)?或者 [宾夕法尼亚州州长] 乔希·夏皮罗(Josh Shapiro)?”卡维尔还否定了关于奥索夫信仰的问题,他说,“唯一告诉我犹太人无法当选的人是犹太人。就像民主党人说黑人女性永远无法当选总统一样。这是民主党人的心理拐杖。我不买这个账。”

《亚特兰大犹太时报》(Atlanta Jewish Times)的出版人迈克尔·莫里斯(Michael Morris)将奥索夫对以色列的承诺描述为“掩人耳目的把戏”。他写道:“停止对我和你选民撒谎。当一项法案向以色列提供切实战略支持——弹药、步枪、炸弹、军事和财政援助——时,你的记录糟糕透顶,而且你把以色列给出卖了。”

在佐治亚州,奥索夫得到了经常去教堂、拥有房产的黑人选民的支持,而这正是北方各州进步派通常缺乏的。他擅长社交媒体,其快速评论吸引了数百万次观看。而且他是一个极具能力的筹款人,在本轮政治周期中筹集了超过 8100万美元。奥索夫批评特朗普攻击伊朗的决定,从而赢得了进步派的支持。特朗普称奥索夫“糟糕透顶”,将其比作皮威·赫曼(Peewee Herman),尽管他在纠正自己之前说的是“平基·赫曼”(Pinky Herman)。白宫称他为“一个伪装成温和派的彻头彻尾的骗子”,理由是他支持跨性别权利。

奥索夫并非出身于政治世家。他在佐治亚州长大——他的父亲理查德(Richard)经营着一家亚特兰大的出版公司;他的母亲海瑟(Heather)在澳大利亚悉尼出生并长大。奥索夫就读于乔治城大学外交学院和伦敦政治经济学院。

在已故的民权领袖兼国会议员约翰·刘易斯(John Lewis)手下实习后,他曾为佐治亚州国会议员汉克·约翰逊(Hank Johnson)工作一段时间。随后他成为一名纪录片制作人,为英国广播公司(BBC)等机构制作关于非洲国际腐败、战争罪行和人权侵害的影片。

他与阿利莎·克拉默博士(Dr Alisha Kramer)结婚,后者是乔治亚州的一名产科和妇科医生。两人在高中时期开始交往,并于2017年结婚。他们与两个女儿伊娃(Eva)和莱拉(Lila)一起住在亚特兰大。

乔治亚州杰克逊县民主党主席皮特·富勒(Pete Fuller)表示,奥索夫(Ossoff)的政治优点之一是他一直相对低调。“他没有在每一个机会出现时都发表演讲或登上电视。他实际上一直在踏实工作。”

富勒补充道,与纽森(Newsom)相比,“他身上有一种真实感”,而且给人的印象是“一个来自南方的、友善且优秀的人,能够获得两派选民的支持”。这是一项罕见的资产,可能会让他走得比他目前所表示的意向更远。


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商业

经济、工作与金钱

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

37

“在 1989 年水务公司出售之前,许多聪明的人就指出,这次私有化注定会失败”

→ 马修·毕晓普(Matthew Bishop),第 37 页

全球各地的企业预计,来自俄语黑客的攻击将会增加。 S& Doherty / Getty

债券市场动摇,美国借贷成本创 25 年新高

本·扎兰科(Ben Zaranko) 经济编辑

由于对全球最大经济体的通胀压力和政府挥霍行为的担忧日益增加,美国不得不提供更高的利率,以说服投资者购买其债务。

上周四一次 250亿美元 的 30 年期美国国债拍卖导致收益率达到 2001 年以来的最高水平 (5.22%)。前一天,一次 420亿美元 的 10 年期国债销售导致收益率达到 2007 年以来的最高水平 (4.68%)。更高的收益率意味着政府的借贷成本更高,且偿还其日益增长的债务规模也变得更加昂贵。

美国 7 月的通胀率略有下降,至 3.4%,低于 5 月的 4.2%。但这仍高于美联储 2% 的目标,而且中东冲突的升级,加上关税带来的通胀影响,可能会在未来几个月将该数字推高。

一些投资者质疑,由凯文·沃什(Kevin Warsh)领导的美联储——他是由一位毫不掩饰降低利率愿望的总统任命的——是否愿意通过足够大幅度的加息来挤出顽固的通胀压力。美国 7 月份减少 23,000 个就业岗位的意外消息缓解了短期内加息的压力,但对中期通胀前景的担忧依然存在。

与此同时,尽管经济状况相对良好,美国政府的借贷规模依然处于高位。由于关税收入短缺 2500亿美元,国会预算办公室目前预计本财年的预算赤字为 210万美元,高于 2 月份预估的 190万美元。这意味着本财年的预期赤字接近 GDP 的 6.5%,而英国为 GDP 的 3.6%。

美国政府近期干预以支撑日元汇值的一个因素,是担心日本当局可能会通过出售美国国债来为其自身的干预融资。这将导致美国债券价格下跌,且由于两者呈反向变动,会进一步推高收益率——政府深知自己无法承受这一点。

特朗普允许私营公司发起网络攻击

美国总统采取攻势,出台一项旨在打击全球犯罪团伙的政策决定,与此同时,一个俄语团体正将英国公司列为目标。巴尼·麦金泰尔(Barney Macintyre)报道

唐纳德·特朗普签署了一份总统备忘录,允许美国私营公司对外国犯罪组织发起进攻性网络攻击。

这一重大政策转变指示联邦机构释放“私营部门的创造力”,而此时专家们正警告称,与俄罗斯有关的网络犯罪团伙发起的攻击正在升级。获得“授权”的公司将被允许摧毁敌对网络,并被要求缴纳$1m保证金,如果该公司违规操作,该保证金将被没收。

“美国政府基本上是在说,仓库外面有抗议活动,它将正式批准仓库保安代表国家采取行动,以阻止犯罪分子,并在街上追捕并攻击他们,”皇家联合服务研究所(RUSI)的研究员约瑟夫·贾内基(Joseph Jarnecki)表示。

一个名为“Clop”的俄语团伙本周声称,已从50家跨国公司(包括壳牌和飞利浦)窃取了大量数据。两家公司均确认正在调查相关事件,但淡化了大规模数据被盗的威胁。

一家最近与埃隆·马斯克的SpaceX签署了6200万美元 (4600 万英镑) 合同的英国国防与航空航天制造商也成为了俄罗斯网络犯罪分子的目标。

Filtronic是一家总部位于塞奇菲尔德(Sedgefield)、在伦敦AIM指数上市的公司,该公司在刚过一周前遭到了黑客组织Qilin的攻击。该组织此前曾承认对医疗服务提供商Synnovis发起攻击,导致2024年6月NHS医院出现大规模混乱。

Filtronic的一位发言人确认了此次泄露,但表示:“迄今为止,尚未发现有证据表明公司、第三方或员工的数据被访问、泄露或外传,业务仍保持全面运行。”

周五,该公司股价今年以来上涨了43%,这得益于与SpaceX重新建立的合作伙伴关系以及与空中客车(Airbus)和莱昂纳多(Leonardo)签署的合同。其最新财报显示,营业利润为400 万英镑(低于上一时期的1340 万英镑)。

在去年针对包括合作社集团(Co-op Group)和捷豹路虎在内的英国大公司的攻击之后,各企业正在加强网络防御。服务提供商从中获利丰厚;自2月以来,一组网络安全股票的涨幅大约是S&P 500的两倍。特朗普的备忘录可能会带来进一步的利好,同时也能减轻

“我们无法知道有多少公司只是支付了赎金而没有被列入名单”

艾登·辛诺特(Aiden Sinnott),研究员

联邦机构消除威胁的能力。但这也带来了显著的风险。

安全智库皇家联合服务研究所最近的一份报告在权衡英国复制这种“私掠”方式的可能性时指出,“有组织的网络犯罪分子与国家行为体之间并不总是存在明确的区别。这意味着如果一家英国公司获得授权,那么它就有非零的风险可能会在无意中影响外国国家的利益,并卷入地缘政治紧张局势。”

随着大型公司的董事会和高管们加强武装,黑客组织正将目标转向其供应链中的小型公司。像Filtronic这样的制造商由于攻击导致的“停机时间”而成为极具吸引力的目标。

“一旦生产线停止,收入也就停止了,”NCC集团网络情报与响应副总裁马特·赫尔(Matt Hull)解释道。“这些威胁行为者将此类实体工业作为目标是非常有效的,因为他们可以利用这一点产生强大的影响力。”

上周,制造业贸易组织Make UK的一份报告发现,30%的会员在过去12个月中经历过网络事件。

Qilin 在今年已成为暗网中最活跃的“勒索软件即服务”(RaaS)组织,声称自去年 7 月以来发起了 1,454 次攻击,是任何其他组织的两倍。其中 55 次发生在英国。


38

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

简报

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交易与收益

AI巨头在公开上市前披露营收

随着两家公司竞相寻求首次公开募股,OpenAI和Anthropic已开始披露营收数据。Anthropic的支持者告诉《金融时报》,他们预计这家前沿实验室的年度年化营收在2026,年底前将达到$100bn至$120bn之间,这意味着其在10月上市时的估值将达到$2trn或更多。接近OpenAI的消息人士告诉彭博社,该公司预计年化营收将达到400亿美元,不过由于对比并不精确,且两家公司均未公开披露数据。面对来自中国更廉价的竞争,两家实验室都开始推出低价模型。然而,OpenAI似乎面临人员问题。该公司的首席营收官在本周离职,在职时间仅九个月,而资深高管布拉德·莱特卡普(Brad Lightcap)也已离职,旨在“开始一些新尝试”。

风险雷达

美国干预未能解决日元问题

日元发生了什么?尽管在7月下旬与美国进行了剧烈的联合货币干预,日本当局仍难以支撑日元汇率。日本银行维持低利率,以降低服务于日本巨额国债的成本。这导致资金流向海外寻求更高回报,从而削弱日元,提高进口成本并推高国内通胀。提高利率并允许政府债券收益率上升将支撑日元,但可能会引发债务危机。交易员正准备在未来几周内迎接进一步的干预。

分析师感到不安,石油库存下降

国际能源署上周警告称,石油库存已降至79亿桶以下,为2025,年4月以来的最低水平,低于美伊战争初期的约83亿桶。摩根大通的分析师估计,如果全球库存降至76亿桶以下,石油存储系统将面临“运行压力”,并将67亿桶描述为系统运行所需的“运行浮动量”。由于担心海湾地区冲突再次升级,原油价格本周小幅上涨,趋向每桶$90。但总体而言,全球经济应对战争后果的表现好于最初的担忧,严重的能源短缺这一最坏情况并未发生。国际能源署预计全球石油供应将在明年反弹,这将允许库存得到补充。一如既往,未知因素在于中东接下来的发展。

观察者报商业矩阵

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下周预告...

  • 公司财报:Klarna;必和必拓(BHP Group);沃尔玛(Walmart);海斯集团(Hays plc)。
  • 经济数据 / 报告:日本第二季度GDP;Cornwall Insight 10月能源价格上限预测;国家统计局(ONS)劳动力市场、通胀及公共财政数据发布;7月零售销售数据。

公司治理

要求提高非执行董事薪酬

欧洲最大的激进投资者Cevian发布了一份报告,呼吁富时100指数(FTSE 100)中英国非执行董事(NEDs)的薪酬应更好地与国际竞争对手接轨。报告发现,标准普尔500指数非执行董事的中位数总薪酬几乎是富时100指数的三倍,并敦促英国公司将年度总薪酬提高至约 16 万英镑。Cevian持有史密斯安德纽(Smith & Nephew)大量且不断增加的股份(14%),并推动为这家在伦敦上市的医疗设备制造商的美国首席执行官迪帕克·纳斯(Deepak Nath)提供一份1500 万英镑m的薪酬方案。

权力风向标

莎菲克离开唐宁街10号,但其他人留任

据彭博社报道,基尔·斯塔默的首席经济顾问米努什·莎菲克(Minouche Shafik,见下图)已离开政府。这位前英格兰银行副行长兼哥伦比亚大学校长在离职之际,安迪·伯纳姆的经济运作

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开始成形。经济学家安迪·霍尔丹、吉姆·奥尼尔和理查德·休斯在伯纳姆准备执政期间均提供了非正式建议,但目前尚未有人被授予政府中的正式职务。与此同时,据报道,蕾切尔·里夫斯的两名前顾问被留任,尼尔·阿明-史密斯加入唐宁街10号,斯宾塞·汤普森留在财政部。

  • 丹尼斯·怀特,麻省理工学院(MIT)教授,全球核聚变科学与工程领域的顶尖先驱之一,已被任命为英国原子能局集团(United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Group)首席执行官。
  • 在零售业,彼得·鲁伊斯将在担任约翰刘易斯(John Lewis)总经理不足三年后,于9月卸任。接替他的是前River Island和The White Company负责人威尔·克南。

热点商品

低卡冰品在热浪中夺冠

气温飙升——以及GLP-1药物用户的激增——正驱动消费者转向低卡路里冰淇淋。波士顿咨询公司(BCG)的数据显示,制造商面临着重大障碍,因为减肥药用户在过去一年的消费量至少下降了10%。该市场的赢家是像Halo Top桶装冰淇淋和Wall's旗下的棒冰(如Twister和Calippo)这类产品,它们大肆宣传其低卡路里、高蛋白的含量。冰淇淋巨头Magnum告诉路透社,尽管如此,它仍希望在健康意识转型的同时保留口感:“我们仍然想要享受美食,但希望在其中加入一点健康光环。”

创业者

小布莱尔寻求国防初创资金

由托尼之子尼克·布莱尔经营的一家国防初创公司在2026 launch前,正寻求在首轮融资中筹集2亿美元。关于这位40岁人士的第二家科技公司Pyra的在线细节很少,但据《金融时报》(FT)报道,该公司正在开发一项允许用户将不同系统整合到单一来源的技术。布莱尔的职业生涯始于足球经纪人,但现在他正押注于全球国防领域,而目前正是该行业的获利期。今年上半年,国防科技公司从风险投资基金中筹集了123亿美元。

关键统计数据

0.4%

2026年第二季度英国经济的增长幅度,由于家庭和企业支出对中东战争表现出出人意料的韧性,该数据超出了预期。继上一季度增长0.6%之后,这意味着今年前六个月经济的年化增长率为2%。这是G7国家中增长最快的(前提是日本第二季度的数据尚未公布)。

-0.3%

在2024和2025, 英国经济在年初快速增长,随后放缓。在这两种情况下,最后两个季度的平均增长率比前两个季度低0.3%。一些分析师将此归咎于国家统计局,其季节性调整方法受到了审查。另一些人则认为,每年秋季由预算引起的政策不确定性导致企业的招聘和投资决策处于停滞状态。无论如何,英国经济强劲的开局仍有可能最终化为泡影。

1.7%

英国经济出人意料的强劲表现部分是由企业对硬件投资水平的增长所驱动的。2026年第二季度,全经济投资增长了1.2%,企业投资增长了1.7%,因为各公司在信息和通信技术方面投入巨资。目前尚处于早期阶段,但这可能是一个早期迹象,表明与AI相关的投资正为经济提供助力,正如在美国所见的那样。养老金大臣托斯滕·贝尔(Torsten Bell)表示,看到这一点“尤其令人欣慰”,因为“缺乏投资是英国的顽疾”。


商业

观察者报 16.08.26

39

“大学和房屋建筑商有什么共同点?两者都无法降低标价”

观点

Ben Zaranko 经济编辑

新房买家的优惠方案很少包括降低挂牌价,因为开发商在寻求清理空置库存的同时,不希望对市场产生更广泛的影响。

在上周四的 A-level 成绩公布日,各大学通过清理系统(clearing system)提供各种优惠,以争夺尚未决定去向的学生。有些大学提供免费笔记本电脑;有些提供免费健身房会员;还有一家提供了生活补贴。

唯一没有被提供的是降低每年学费的折扣。这一点与另一个买方占据主导地位但价格却出奇坚挺的市场有着强烈的相似之处——即新建房屋和公寓。

开发商长期以来一直提供各种优惠来吸引潜在买家,从分担印花税到免费升级地板。现在,他们的手段变得更加多样。几周前,《今日住房》(Housing Today)报道称,一家大型房屋开发商提出,为在伦敦北部一个开发项目购房的买家支付两年的私立学校学费。

然而,房屋建筑商——就像大学一样——不愿降低标价。其背后的原因揭示了该行业的脆弱性。

房屋交易记录在土地登记处。抵押贷款机构在确定特定地块房产的价值,以及决定愿意向潜在买家提供多少贷款时,会参考最近的交易记录。因此,如果开发商为了卖房而降低标价,该价格就会成为整个开发项目的基准。随后,即使市场条件改善,也很难再次提高标价:如果银行看到类似的房屋最近的成交价为 27 万英镑,他们为什么会按照 30 万英镑 的价值提供贷款?

结果就是,最初的标价下调不仅降低了涉事房屋的市场价值,还降低了该项目所有其他未售房屋的价值。在某些情况下,这将导致开发商违反债务契约条款,迫使他们向贷款方追加更多现金。

由于该行业整体盈利能力的挤压,尤其是首都的城市开发项目,这种情况变得更加困难。房地产研究公司 Molior 的董事 Tim Craine 表示:“在伦敦,公寓的售价在 10 年内没有增长。而建设成本在过去五年中上涨了 30%。”他补充道,“因此,这些开发项目的利润已经不多了。你没有多少利润空间可以用来在保护银行契约的前提下进行削减。”

因此,开发商更倾向于依靠其他类型的激励措施来吸引买家。但如果这些措施还不够怎么办?

英国最大的房屋建筑商之一 Vistry Group 已经开始降价。该公司 7 月宣布,2026 年上半年向私人买家提供的平均折扣为 7.1%,高于 2025 年上半年的 1.4%。其他房屋建筑商一直在向机构投资者打折出售,但采取的是大宗交易方式。Built Place 的市场分析师 Neal Hudson 认为,采取这种方式的优势在于,“这些交易不会像你我向他们买房那样出现在土地登记处。它不会传导并影响(其他单元的)估值,因为它实际上被归类为一项大型企业交易。”

即便有这样的折扣,在利率较高的环境下,买家数量依然在减少。Hudson 认为,在这种情况下,对许多房屋建筑商来说,最明智的做法是“静观其变”并“削减活动”。

“我们看到提交的规划申请减少了。我们看到活动有所放缓,实际竣工的房屋数量也在减少。在这种经济环境下,这正是预料之中的结果,”他说道。

对于一个拥有雄心勃勃的房屋建设议程的政府来说,这是一个问题。

其中一个选项是提前拨付政府可负担住房计划中的部分资金,该计划此前被推迟,以便在下一届议会期间提供更多资助。这将允许地方议会和住房协会填补空白,为可负担住房提供保证需求,并有可能吸收市场上部分过剩的库存。这会让约翰·希利(John Healey)的预算平衡之举增加数十亿的难度,但会给住房市场带来有益的推动。

零售商警告零小时合同改革可能导致高达 30亿英镑 的损失

艾玛·哈斯莱特 (Emma Haslett)

零售商对政府旨在“打击”零小时合同的提案表示强烈不满,称这可能给企业带来高达 30亿英镑 的成本。他们表示,在需求高峰的季节性期间,企业依赖临时工来维持运营。

在 6 月启动的政府磋商中所概述的提案中,使用零小时合同的企业将被迫向员工提供每周保证的工作小时数,为最后一刻取消的班次支付费用,并就班次给予员工“合理的通知”。

政府周三公布的数据显示,这些提案给雇主带来的直接成本每年可能在 3.5 亿英镑 和 29亿英镑 之间。

“这些成本出现的时间不能更糟糕了,”英国零售联合会 (British Retail Consortium) 首席执行官海伦·迪金森 (Helen Dickinson) 表示,她指出年轻工人将成为此次改革的最大受害者。

“在青年失业率飙升之际增加进一步的成本,可能会给年轻人的就业前景带来沉重打击,而此时全国各地的企业恰恰需要创造更多机会。”

这些数据公布的同一周,政府概述了旨在缓解商业街状况的计划,目前商业街正因购物者可支配收入被压缩而遭受苦难。

安迪·伯纳姆 (Andy Burnham) 上周一宣布将“打击”不受欢迎的商业机构,包括电子烟店和博彩店,希望以此使“空心化”的商业街恢复活力。两天后,他暗示将利用秋季声明对商业税率做出进一步调整。

零售商谨慎地欢迎这些公告。Primark 的一名发言人表示:“零售商需要合适的条件来投资和增长。”他们补充道:“这包括一个公平且可持续的商业税率体系,以及继续采取行动应对零售犯罪等挑战。”

赛维尔斯 (Savills) 英国零售主管艾伦·斯宾塞 (Alan Spencer) 对这些计划表示欢迎,他表示面对高成本和被压缩的消费者预算,零售商为了找到合适的定价点正在进行一场“持久战”。他说:“为了生存,你不得不面对消费者并不真正想支付更多钱的背景来提高价格。现在尝试寻找平衡点真的非常困难。作为一名零售商,你正处于危急边缘。”

零售分析师兼 JDM Retail 创始人乔纳森·德·梅洛 (Jonathan De Mello) 补充说,那些幸存下来的商业街零售商正在对其战略做出激进的改变。

他以 Next 为例,该公司本月公布的第二季度业绩显示,其收益比自身预测高出 7000 万英镑;他还提到了 Sports Direct 的所有者 Frasers Group,该公司周五宣布收购了哈维·尼科尔斯 (Harvey Nichols) 百货公司。他将这些商店视为实施“市场”模式的典范,通过进货更多品牌来吸引购物者。他说:“零售商正试图从他们能想象到的任何渠道获取销售额。”

什罗普郡的一家空置零售单元。安迪·伯纳姆已宣布计划使“空心化”的商业街恢复活力。盖蒂图片社 (Getty)

为什么动物养殖是一场全球性灾难

1950年,在我一岁时,世界人口约为25亿。如今,这一数字已超过85亿。随着热浪、干旱和洪水的日益严重,人们对粮食安全和地球未来的担忧达到了前所未有的程度。然而,很少有人意识到,动物农业处于当今许多环境危机核心的位置。

动物养殖占据了约87%的粮食生产用地,却仅提供了全球18%的热量。它是亚马逊森林砍伐的主要原因,其中牛牧场约占当前森林损失的80%。每毁掉一公顷土地,都会削弱地球上最大的碳汇之一以及最丰富的生物多样性储备库之一。

动物农业也是极度耗水的。农业约占全球淡水使用量的70%,而农场动物消耗了其中不成比例的份额。生产一吨牛肉大约需要15,400立方米的水,其中大部分仅用于种植饲料作物,而这些作物本可以直接养活人类。

该产业也是水污染的主要来源。粪便和化肥的流失使河流和沿海水域的氮和磷过载,从而创造出海洋生物无法生存的缺氧“死亡区”。目前全球已发现400多个此类死亡区。

对野生动物的影响同样深远。森林、草原和湿地继续消失,以给放牧和饲料作物让路,而巨大的单一种植区取代了复杂的生态系统。随着农场动物数量的增加,野生动物种群崩溃,导致仅有极小部分的地球哺乳动物生活在野外。

工业化养殖还威胁到人类健康。农场动物生产中常规使用抗生素导致了抗生素耐药性,这与2019年全球超过100万例死亡相关。污染物和毒素还通过食物链在动物产品中累积。

根据赛莱什·劳(Sailesh Rao)博士的研究,如果将用于农场动物的土地所损失的碳存储能力计算在内,农场动物农业就成了气候变化的主导驱动因素。他的系统分析得出结论:如果我们想要解决全球变暖、生物多样性丧失、森林砍伐、水资源短缺以及人类目前面临的许多环境临界点,那么改变我们的食物系统至关重要。

绝大多数被养殖的动物在工厂化农场中度过一生。仅在美国,几乎所有的鸡、猪和火鸡,以及所有的养殖鱼类和大多数产蛋母鸡,都是在密集禁闭系统中饲养的。在全球范围内,约75%的养殖动物处于工厂化养殖状态。

统计数据看起来可能令人不堪重负,但每一个数字都代表一个能够感受到痛苦的个体生命。

如果我们认真对待保护气候、恢复自然和保障未来,我们也必须认真对待改变我们的饮食。向植物基食物系统的转型,为减少环境破坏并使数十亿动物免于不必要的痛苦生活提供了最大的机遇之一。

本文是系统工程师、Climate Healers创始人赛莱什·劳博士研究的摘要。更多信息请访问 www.climatehealers.org。

杰夫·弗朗西斯(Geoff Francis,Hillside长期支持者及志愿者)

Hillside动物庇护所

成立于1995年,旨在帮助并为需要帮助的动物发声,特别是那些在密集工厂化养殖业中每天遭受痛苦的动物。

我们是2500匹获救的马、矮马和驴,750头牛,300头猪,850只羊和山羊,以及包括狗和鹿在内的许多其他动物的家园……

您可以扫描此处进行捐赠或在线订购,谢谢

为什么最新的美国关税可能帮助工人——但并非国内工人

唐纳德·特朗普的动机可能令人怀疑,但据称旨在应对强迫劳动的征税正对海外工作条件产生意想不到的影响。马修·毕肖普(Matthew Bishop)报道

在唐纳德·特朗普尝试过的所有身份中,远方工厂被剥削工人的捍卫者可能是最不可信的一个。然而,他称这就是他最新一轮关税的原因。

On 24 July,来自60个经济体的商品(涵盖至少99%的美国进口额)被征收10%至12.5%的关税,表面原因是强迫劳动违规。令人惊讶的是,一些领先的现代奴隶制活动人士认为,这些关税实际上可能会有所帮助。

关于特朗普哪怕稍微关心那些他喜欢称之为“垃圾国家”的工人的观点,在国内外大多遭到了质疑。更合理的看法是,总统将结束强迫劳动的事业作为一种掩护,以恢复他长期以来认为的能够提振美国经济的最佳政策之一(尽管主流经济学家大多持相反观点)。

这是他重新当选以来第三次尝试实施广泛的关税政策。今年2月,最高法院推翻了他2025年4月的“解放日”关税以及随后采取的一项临时“紧急”措施。该裁决迫使政府退还从进口商那里收取的估计$100(£78)的款项。

本月,25个由民主党领导的州起诉政府,要求同样判定24 July的关税非法。据报道,官员们目前正在研究工业产能“过剩”的国家案例——这是对补贴生产的简写。这可能是第四轮关税的基础。

到目前为止,关税的主要经济影响是在已经处于“负担能力危机”之中的消费者面前提高了价格。最新估计显示,关税给美国普通家庭增加了高达$1,900的额外成本——虽然低于原定“解放日”关税若维持生效时预计的每户$4,700,但依然显著。关税本应减少的美国贸易逆差基本保持不变。至于将目前进口商品的制造业转移到美国,目前几乎没有迹象。

那么,如果关税最终改善了被剥削的外国工人的生活,这将多么讽刺。虽然有充分的理由持怀疑态度,但这确实有可能发生。美国自1930.起就禁止进口强迫劳动制造的商品。诚然,由于美国国内无法采购的商品享有豁免权,这项禁令在很长一段时间内并未得到严格执行。国会在2015,废除了该豁免权,随后执法开始认真开展:第一任特朗普政府开始拦截来自指定生产商的进口商品,将其视为其“美国优先”经济武器库的一部分。乔·拜登随后推出了《维吾尔强迫劳动预防法》,这成为了限制中国进口商品的一根有用的鞭子。

这一策略在一定程度上取得了成效。美国海关和边境保护局已为被封锁企业的工人追回了$85的被扣工资和招聘费。Since 2018, 16家产品最初被封锁的公司在修正错误后被取消了禁令。去年4月,在韩国律师的请愿后,海关拦截了来自新安县一家农场的食盐进口,那里的人们被强迫工作以偿还雇主提供的贷款(即所谓的“债务奴役”)。

特朗普政府在罕见地采取全球方法时正确地指出,这个问题不能仅由美国单独解决。利用剥削劳动力制造的商品通过其他看似体面的供应链转移,一直以来都太容易了。

“进口禁令是极少数能真正打击公司底线的工具之一”

尼克·格罗诺(Nick Grono),自由基金(Freedom Fund)

那些没有封锁此类进口的国家,随后再转运至美国。

例如,澳大利亚就因此而臭名昭著。在最近的一篇文章中,人口贩卖法律中心的马蒂娜·范登堡(Martina Vandenberg)指出,随着特朗普政府开始表明其对贸易伙伴缺乏强迫劳动法律的调查是认真的,“一些有趣的事情发生了……各国开始大量采取强迫劳动进口禁令”。据她估计,目前受到新关税影响的60个国家中,至少有20个已开始采取强迫劳动进口禁令的进程(其中13个已将新法律入册,包括澳大利亚,而一年前这一数字仅为3个)。

“从倡导者的角度来看,进口禁令是极少数具有问责机制且能真正打击公司底线的工具之一。其余很多手段缺乏真正的威慑力,”自由基金(Freedom Fund)首席执行官尼克·格罗诺(Nick Grono)表示。该基金在2024年共同发起了一个旨在推广进口禁令的联盟,但在特朗普的威胁变得严肃之前,该联盟一直毫无进展。

关键问题在于,这项关税是否仅仅是为了给特朗普增加财政收入。对于那些采取新法律并认真执行这些法律的国家,是否会有一个真正的关税退出机制?目前没有证据表明采取行动的政府会因此获得奖励。供应链人权促进领域的资深人士、工作资本基金(Working Capital Fund)的丹·维德曼(Dan Viederman)表示:“如果新关税从根本上是为了增加收入,那么政府就有充分的理由永远不承认任何改善,因为每一次让步都意味着收入的损失。这是一个有趣且有用的步骤。如果它能由一条成功路径、一套针对企业的清晰步骤以及对工人福利的关注来支撑,我愿意在未来对此大声喝彩。”

怀疑论者指出,2025年3月,特朗普政府取消了分布在40多个国家、涉及69个项目的$57劳工部拨款,而每一个项目都在打击强迫劳动和童工。这些拨款至今尚未恢复。一个真正的捍卫者应该明白,这是在开历史倒车。

格罗诺对激励机制的解读则截然不同。公布关税减免的标准“可能在很多年内都不会影响他们的关税收入。但这将回应那些批评者,他们认为这并非一个可信的反奴隶制干预措施。”这听起来像是特朗普可能会喜欢的交易:对他而言毫无成本,却能让他获得关心现代奴隶制的赞誉,并反击所有称整个计划只是遮羞布的人。

中国棉花工人的状况一直是多份人权报告的主题。Chain-mix Ching / Getty

机器人能耗预计将超过英国年发电量

Jeevan Vasagar 气候编辑

本周发表的一项研究显示,在十年之内,工业机器人和人形机器人的能耗总和可能会超过英国去年的发电量。

此次分析出台之际,数据中心正因其电力使用问题面临日益严重的抵制,而机器人产业则在匆忙商定一套适用于其机器的能效标准。

能源咨询公司 Wood Mackenzie 预测,到 2035, 全球机器人的电力消耗将达到 363 太瓦时,其中工业机器人占据绝大部分。去年,英国的发电量为 292 太瓦时。

亚洲正经历着机器人部署的最大规模繁荣,而中国是最大的市场,2024. 全球所有在运行的工业机器人库存中,中国占 43%。自 2019, 以来,全球工业机器人的数量平均每年增长 11%。

中国机器人制造商 Uniree(以其跳舞和拳击的人形机器人而闻名)正准备本月在上海进行首次公开募股(IPO)。此次 IPO 已被散户投资者大幅超额认购,这表明它可能会成为 AI 之后的下一个市场宠儿。

一项旨在制定首个工业机器人能耗标准化衡量标准的计划正由 ABB Robotics 领导,预计很快将公布。

国际机器人联合会(International Federation of Robotics)秘书长 Susanne Bieller 表示:“能耗取决于机器人的工作状态——包括其闲置时间、移动状态以及移动方向。”

“这很难贴标签,但客户希望通过对比来做出购买决定,而且我们从会员那里了解到,不同的最终用户有不同的能耗衡量方案。”

她表示,将工业机器人的能耗与其周围高能耗工厂的能耗区分开来可能非常困难。例如,焊接等工艺所消耗的能量可能比焊接机器人的动作本身更多。

到目前为止,几乎没有证据表明能源价格减缓了机器人的采用,其驱动力似乎主要来自制造业的集中度(除中国外的四大市场是日本、美国、韩国和德国)以及劳动力成本。

机器人也可以提高效率,减少浪费。Bieller 表示:“生产良率更高,废料更少。”全自动化工作场所的运行温度可以更低,照明也可以比人类所需更暗,从而显著降低能耗。但人形机器人的广泛采用可能会增加能源需求,因为更多的自主机器将严重依赖 AI。Bieller 补充道:“如果我们使用更多 AI,能耗将再次上升。”


42 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

商业

其他商业事务

泰晤士水务的救援代价不菲

泰晤士水务(Thames Water)向其管理层支付巨额资金,包括向首席财务官史蒂夫·巴克(Steve Buck)支付 100 万英镑 的签约费,其观感无疑是非常糟糕的。

正如一名政府发言人上周所言:“一家表现最差的水务公司在应该专注于提高业绩和重建公众信任的时候,却向其高管发放巨额款项,这是不可接受的。”

然而,目前经营泰晤士水务的人员正处于进退两难的境地。这家公司在公关上和实际运作上都像一场糟糕的闹剧,财务状况混乱,正遭受债权人的攻击,且可能即将被国有化。对于那些真正能够拯救公司的顶尖人才来说,这样一份工作很难让他们心动——这些高管可能会合理地认为,面对如此潜在的职业灾难,他们需要获得高薪才愿意接手。

从这个意义上说,从企业的角度来看,招聘和留才款项可能是合理的,即便这些款项有违反英国多家水务公司所执行的高管奖金禁令的风险。而且,泰晤士水务支付的巨额资金在行业内或其他规模相似的公司中也并非极不寻常。

归根结底,这是一个更深层次问题的最新症状:水务公用事业根本不应该被私有化。在 1989 年出售之前,许多睿智的人(并非所有人都反对私有化)就指出,这次特定的私有化注定会失败,因为不可能建立一个既能产生政治上可接受的水价,又能激励公司进行现代化水务和污水基础设施所需巨额投资的监管框架。这个可怕的决定越早被扭转越好。

作者:马修·比肖普(Matthew Bishop)

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泰晤士水务位于伦敦贝丁顿巷(Beddington Lane)的污水处理厂。彭博社

ATG 出售赌注 60亿美元 于现场活动

萨里郡的通勤小镇沃金(Woking)并不以创业热土或数十亿美元企业的所在地而闻名。但在好莱坞传奇人物阿里·埃马纽埃尔(Ari Emanuel)的 Mari 集团上周以 60亿美元 收购当地的 ATG 娱乐公司(ATG Entertainment)之后,情况或许会改变。

大使剧院集团(ATG)由霍华德·潘特(Howard Panter)及其妻子罗丝玛丽·斯奎尔(Rosemary Squire)于 1994. 共同创立。该公司目前拥有全球约 70 家顶级剧院,以及蓬勃发展的制作和票务部门。

2013 年,这对夫妇将控股权出售给了 Providence,一家专注于媒体和娱乐的美国私募股权公司,该公司表示其在押注现场活动的健康未来。新所有者埃马纽埃尔也表达了类似的观点,他曾主张,随着人工智能等新技术的出现,人们将有更多的时间和金钱去“出门活动”,现场活动将会繁荣。

这并非一场稳操胜券的赌注。安德鲁·劳埃德·韦伯(Andrew Lloyd Webber)最近强调了在百老汇上演剧目的糟糕经济效益,而最新一波技术浪潮可能并非埃马纽埃尔所预测的节省时间与创造财富的工具。但有迹象表明,严肃的投资者认为,基于真实的人利用其才华进行现场表演以振奋他人精神的业务是有未来的。

震惊离职后,塔塔家族内部权力洗牌

在争夺塔塔之子(Tata Sons)控制权的战争中,一场决定性的战斗或许已经分出胜负。塔塔之子是印度最大的企业集团,旗下拥有多家著名的英国企业,包括捷豹路虎(Jaguar Land Rover)、Terley、英国盐业(British Salt)和塔塔钢铁(Tata Steel)。

首席执行官纳塔拉詹·钱德拉塞卡兰(Natarajan Chandrasekaran)上周三出人意料地宣布,在明年2月任期结束时他将不再寻求连任——这显然是 69 岁的诺埃尔·塔塔(Noel Tata)所领导的家族派系,相对于那些忠于其已故的伟大同父异母兄长拉坦·塔塔(Ratan Tata,于 2024 年去世)的派系取得了胜利。

拉坦领导该集团度过了其最辉煌的时期,该集团自 1868 年创建后在帝国时代首次繁荣,目前估值约为 2800亿美元。他的第一任继任者赛鲁斯·米斯特里(Cyrus Mistry)于 2012 年被任命,但在一个充满领地意识和家族内斗的复杂公司群内部,由于深层分歧而陷入苦战。

2017 年,他被钱德拉塞卡兰取代,后者亲切且外交的手腕似乎恢复了一种平静进步的状态。但在拉坦去世后,这种情况发生了变化,当时印度航空、捷豹路虎、塔塔钢铁和塔塔咨询服务公司(Tata Consultancy Services)正面临问题,并且

有传闻称(虽被强烈否认),钱德拉塞卡兰希望在诺埃尔的反对下将集团控股公司上市,而诺埃尔领导着管理该帝国的家族慈善信托基金。

许多塔塔内部人士担心,由诺埃尔亲手挑选的继任者在一些高调的商业问题尚未解决之时,会带来不稳定和清算行为。(该公司将失去钱德拉塞卡兰在威斯敏斯特的人脉,这些关系曾帮助其钢铁和汽车业务赢得了政府的财政支持。)

至少,在印度进入 AI、能源和绿色转型、存在巨大商业机会需要争夺的时刻,该集团的领导层现在可能会将注意力转向内部。

伯纳姆不能过度依赖生活成本的削减

威廉·基根 (William Keegan)

当玛格丽特·撒切尔在她的第一个任期内屈服于由米尔顿·弗里德曼领导的货币主义者的要求时,英格兰银行行长戈登·理查森告诉我,她为自己制造了“一个麻烦的根源”。而且对许多其他人也是如此。

控制货币供应的徒劳尝试导致利率不断升高,从而使制造业陷入瘫痪。即便在 2003 年弗里德曼否认了他曾经宣扬的学说,也无济于事。损害已经造成。制造业至今仍未完全恢复。

那个片段给出的教训是,政府应当警惕将信心寄托在最新的所谓万能药上——如果他们宣布打算以实现一个超出其控制范围的目标的成功与否来接受评判,则更应如此。这就把我们带到了安迪·伯纳姆对生活成本的痴迷上。在深入探讨之前,我应该强调,我希望伯纳姆能够成功,并且赞同他为提振商业的“动物精神”以及经济学家所称的“消费者”(即我们)而做出的乐观努力。问题在于,尽管他做出的一些“微观”宣布将稍微缓解价格压力,但更广泛的生活成本是一个超出其控制范围的“宏观”问题。它将由石油、能源、化肥和食品的全球价格决定。

但伯纳姆坚持那些排除重返欧洲关税同盟和单一市场的“红线”——而这本可以是改变局面的因素。好消息是,负责欧盟关系的新任内阁部长哈米什·法尔科纳(Hamish Falconer)决心建立更深层的联系。他告诉《卫报》

玛格丽特·撒切尔屈服于货币主义者的要求。盖蒂图片社

更广泛的生活成本将由石油、能源、化肥和燃料的全球价格决定

在红线之内仍有发挥抱负的空间,他将研究“可能之术”。

不幸的是,这些红线对可能实现的目标构成了严重的限制。伯纳姆表达了希望在我们有生之年重新加入欧盟的愿望。我希望他的意思也包括在他的首相任期内。我可以理解那些不希望再次经历全民公投的人的忧虑。但越来越多的证据表明,大多数选民已经意识到脱欧曾经是,并且现在依然是一场灾难。

如果“伯纳姆反弹”代表了公众对我们新任首相尊重的真实提升,他应该认真考虑泰德·希思当年在没有举行公投的情况下,带领我们加入当时被称为欧洲经济共同体的方式。那才是领导力与政治家的风范。

--。

横向

1 非定制的 (3-3-3) 8 极易爆炸的 (8) 9 宗教图像 (4) 10 鱼类呼吸器官 (4) 11 香烟残渣容器 (7) 13 呼吸装置 (6,5) 15 加入基督教会的仪式 (7) 17 埋葬 (4) 20 芭蕾舞服装 (4) 21 网球比赛捡球员 (4,4) 22 不活跃的 (9)

纵向

2 天赋 (7) 3 叉子的齿 (4) 4 允许更换舞伴的舞蹈 (6,2) 5 正式命令或公告 (5) 6 音乐诗 (4) 7 沼泽地或湿地 (6) 12 现实且可实现的 (8) 13 不透光的 (6) 14 轻盈、平静的睡眠 (7) 16 敌对行动的临时停止 (5) 18 旧式儿童弦线玩具 (2-2) 19 过量,过剩 (4)

答案 No.1,609

img-105.jpeg


一直忠于你的银行?

在他们那里存了多年?

试试这个……

打电话给他们,要求 4% 的 储蓄利息。

看看这种忠诚 是否是双向的。

不要容忍不活跃的银行

搜索 >> Active Savings

HARGREAVES LANSDOWN


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LDN

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重量 100kg 座位 22 登机口 B

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目的地 - 巴黎

16-08-26 航班 137376

PAR

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19-08-26 航班 121054

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重量 32kg 座位 100 登机口 D

PMI

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18-08-26 航班 137376

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DUB TO PAR

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航班 42368 17-08-26

姓名: Oscar I 座位: 08 登机口: A

PMI TO LDN

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航班 137376

姓名: Miles E 座位: 100 登机口: D

TO

16-08-26 航班 137376

姓名: Niesi W 座位: 07 登机口: C

LDN TO

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姓名: Chris N 座位: 08 登机口: A

TO LDN

登机牌 19-08-26

航班 121054

姓名: Lola W 座位: 202 登机口: D

TO

登机牌 22-08-26

航班 42368 重量 100kg

姓名: Jon H 座位: 22 登机口: B

AMS TO DUB

登机牌 22-08-26

航班 843019

姓名: Rob T 座位: 22 登机口: B

TO DUB

登机牌 16-08-26

航班 843019

姓名: Emma D 座位: 22 登机口: B

DEN TO DUB

登机牌 16-08-26

航班 42368

姓名: Phillip L 座位: 08 登机口: B

AMS TO LDN

姓名: Tom S 座位: 137 登机口: B

LDN TO

航班 121054

姓名: Polly S 座位: 100 登机口: D

姓名: Sarah M 座位: 137 登机口: C

航班 121054 重量 32kg

姓名: Pete G 座位: 100 登机口: D

航班 843119

姓名: Jess H 座位: 28 登机口: B

ALC TO DUB

登机牌 17-08-26

重量 21kg 航班 42368

姓名: Ted W 座位: 137 登机口: A

AMS TO LDN

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随着暑假的正式到来,许多幸运的前往海滩度假的人们正在计算他们的行李箱究竟能装下多少东西。你能找到

一副太阳镜 一本护照 一名日光浴者 一个沙滩球 一个 silver 一支 tube of sumercam 一双人字拖 一个水桶和一把铲子 一个潜水管 Aot of beans 扑克牌

插画由 Paromate Knapin 绘制

您的每周逻辑页面,包含两道专为 The Observer 编写的谜题

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几个月前,本杂志编辑部收到消息,一只老虎从德国东部德尔齐格(Dölzig)的一个工业园区逃脱,并在短时间内处于游离状态。你可以想象,随后出现了许多疑问,包括“它为什么在那儿?”“它是怎么逃出来的?”以及更直白的一句:“一只老虎?”这只动物的所有者是卡门·赞德(Carmen Zander),一名 50 多岁的女性,在马戏团圈子里被称为“老虎女王”,并曾出现在不止一部关于老虎的纪录片中。事实上,赞德拥有九只老虎。多年来,她将它们关在停靠在加油站附近的拖车里,近到顾客能听到动物的吼叫声。五月的一天,加油站的用户听到老虎方向传来了人类的尖叫声。警方被叫到了现场,消防部门也被通知。当他们到达时,一只体重 900kg 的雄性老虎桑多坎(Sandokan)已经失踪。

那个月晚些时候,我派遣作者伊莫金·韦斯特-奈茨(Imogen West-Knights)前往德尔齐格,以查明发生了什么:桑多坎究竟是如何逃脱的?他后来怎么了?以及,老虎最初怎么会出现在德国的郊区?她在镇上度过了三天——追溯老虎的足迹,寻找它最终被枪杀的地点,走过在那个致命决定做出之前这只动物正前往的繁忙分配地(allotments)——她在本周的封面故事中报道了当天的事件。但真正让韦斯特-奈茨着迷的是桑多坎背后的故事:卡门·赞德是谁?为什么她被允许在如此小的空间里饲养这么多老虎且时间如此之久?为什么这么多住在德尔齐格的人支持她?这是一个迷人的故事。请欣赏。

亚历克斯·莫沙基斯(Alex Moshakis) 编辑

撰稿人

索菲·怀伯德 (Sophie Wyburd) (特约主厨,第 40 页) 索菲是一位来自伦敦的厨师、食谱作者和内容创作者。她的食谱可见于她的食谱书《Tucking In》及其时事通讯《Feeder》。你最想在野外看到什么动物? “我想看北极熊——在安全的距离之外。”

迈尔斯·埃林厄姆 (Miles Ellingham) (Chris Chung,第 18 页) 迈尔斯是《观察者报》的高级撰稿人。在过去的九个月里,他被派往了饱受战争蹂躏的乌克兰、一场狗展、一座冰岛冰川、威尼斯双年展以及格雷特亚茅斯(Great Yarmouth)的游乐园。他同时也是《Dispatch Media》的特约编辑和猎鹰训练负责人。

你最想在野外看到什么动物? “显然是‘Gentoo 15’。我对这件事持有非常坚定的看法。可能还有《料理鼠王》里的雷米。”

伊莫金·韦斯特-奈茨 (Imogen West-Knights) (郊区的老虎,第 12 页) 伊莫金是一位常驻伦敦的记者、作家和电子游戏作家。你最想在野外看到什么动物? “我最想看到负鼠,它是自然界中最迷人的小怪胎之一。”

丹尼尔·西韦塔 (Daniel Civetta) (家居,第 30 页) 丹尼尔是一位意大利摄影师,主要专注于室内和建筑。他目前居住在佛罗伦萨。

你最想在野外看到什么动物? “我想看大象。”

劳拉·梅·托德 (Laura May Todd) (家居,第 30 页) 劳拉是一位常驻米兰的记者和作家,专注于设计、建筑和室内装饰。她的著作《Italian Interiors》于 2014 年由 Phaidon Press 出版。你最想在野外看到什么动物? “我的猫,吉吉(Gigi)。可怜的小家伙一生都被关在米兰的一套公寓里。我相信它一定会很喜欢去森林逛逛!”

封面图片:Pablo Delcan。《观察者报》杂志 • 伦敦 Berners Street 22号, W1T 3LP • magazine@observer.co.uk 印刷于 Walstead Bicester Ltd, Chaucer Business Park, Launton Road, Bicester, OX26 4QZ

16.08.26 《观察者报》杂志

3


观察者报

文化俱乐部

展览

生命之纹:埃尼德·马克斯与现代英国设计 (The Pattern of Life: Enid Marx and Modern British Design) 在 Compton Verney / 2 for 1 门票,节省 £17

城市肖像 (Portrait of a City) 在 Dulwich Picture Gallery / 2 for 1 门票, 节省 £14

节日

长路 (The Long Road) / 门票 20% 折扣,节省 £45

旅行与体验

历史名屋 (Historic Houses) / 年费会员 15% 折扣,可省 £11


观察

p6 与演员 Allan Mustafa 共度一小时

预订

北方的奢华

挪威偏远地区 Træna 的一家新酒店将自然视为核心

抵达 Ytri 本就是旅程的一部分。宾客需跨越开阔海域前往 Træna——挪威最偏远的有人居住群岛,随后抵达这家新开业的 15 间房度假酒店。“我们希望宾客能感受到一种即时的身心放松,”经理 Kine Willumsen 表示,“以这种方式抵达能创造一个天然的边界。”这家酒店是与岛民们十年合作的结果——其中许多人参与建设了这个由传统风格谷仓组成的微型村庄。原木和当地石材镶嵌的全景窗户宛如观察大西洋的“安静镜头”,而酒店则将 Willumsen 所描述的“原始的自然暴露与绝对的庇护”相结合。在这里,生活的节奏由“海洋和变幻的北极光,多变的季风和午夜阳光”决定,反映了 Træna 6,000 年的捕鱼历史,在那段历史中,人们依靠彼此生存。

从 9 月下旬到 4 月初,酒店的北极光休息室(Northern Lights Lounge)提供了观测极光的最佳机会之一。此外,来自邻近 Lovund 的现烤咖啡将陪伴着瑜伽、桑拿环节以及环绕 Hussy 的漫步,而乘船之旅和 12 道菜的主厨定制餐则展示了周围的海岸线。夜晚在火炉旁结束,群山与大海消失在北极的暮色之中。“Ytri 并没有将你与北方的自然隔绝,”Willumsen 说,“自然才是主角。” ● TABITHA JOYCE

走红

St Michael 回归

如果你在 90 年代上学,你的校服领口缝制的可能不仅有你的名字,还有 St Michael 的名字——它是灰色 V 领衫和百褶裙的守护神。如今,原版的 M&S St Michael 单品成为了 Vinted 和 eBay 上许多搜索的目标,需求量极大。幸运的是,时尚之神决定赐予我们一次梦幻般的合作:潮流品牌 Aries 创作了一个包含 26 件单品的系列,借鉴了 M&S 一些最具辨识度的标志,包括 Logo T 恤、开襟羊毛衫和内裤套装,以及经典绿色购物袋的皮革版本,将于 8 月 20 日推出。

● HELEN SEAMONS

论证...

Zoom 视频通话

我有一个挺有意思的、涉及不少名人的故事,它完美地捕捉到了视频通话的双重性。我曾有幸为一家美国杂志采访维尔纳·赫尔佐格(Werner Herzog)。在半小时的时间里,他就是你所能想象的一切——温文尔雅、深不可测、热情且古怪。不幸的是,由于我是在都柏林进行通话,而他在洛杉矶,我说的每一句话和他的回应之间都存在着漫长的延迟,这给每一句陈述都增添了一种令人心碎的紧张感。在你提出一个问题,然后面对赫尔佐格长达五秒钟的石化沉默之前,你还没有真正考验过自己的自尊心。

当然,视频通话的某些方面并不那么美好。它们在某种程度上缺乏人情味,这是面对面交流所没有的;而且我们很少有人能逃掉缓冲、卡顿,或者在说再见与点击退出按钮之间那短暂而尴尬的僵硬时刻。但无论好坏,Zoom 通话处于高投入与低投入之间的基质地带,只要对方只需要付出 31 分钟的时间并打开一台笔记本电脑,几乎任何人都可能愿意接见你。

暂时将目光集中在视频会议的真正益处上,它为全球人口居家办公所提供的便捷,带来了近一个世纪以来残障人士权利最剧烈的变革之一,同时也让数百万人拥有了更健康的工作与生活平衡,以及在照顾孩子和出行方面更大的灵活性。但即便在最基础的层面上,它们真正的恩赐在于对所有人的便利。有些会议本可以用电子邮件解决,而 Zoom 通话至少让你在穿着短裤时也能处理这些事务。有了这样的好处,我和我亲爱的密友维尔纳·赫尔佐格之间五秒钟的延迟又算什么呢? ● SEAMAS O'REILLY

米格尔·福兰(MIGUEL FORLAN)

5


观察

AN

描述你完美的一小时

在泰国进行了一次非常愉快的游泳后走出水面。那是这一天的结尾,我买了一些辛辣的面条,然后骑着轻便摩托车向着日落驶去,完全不知道前方等待着我的是什么。也许我还用上了一些正在学习的泰语,这让我感到很自豪。这是一个小小的成就。

如果你可以生活在任何时代,会是哪个?

20 世纪 70 年代的纽约——嘻哈和涂鸦的早期阶段。那个 OG 时代,当这些事物刚刚诞生时,一定是一个如此特别且富有创造力的时期,充满了粗粝感和美丽的艺术。

如果你可以与任何名人共度一小时,会是谁?

安东尼·波登(Anthony Bourdain)给了我巨大的启发。对于什么应该或不应该向世界地呈现,他就像一个道德指南针。

你最常白日梦地想起生活中的哪个部分?

幻想过去可能是消极的。但当我感到沮丧或焦虑时,我会回想起在西西里岛的斯科佩洛(Scopello)闲逛的日子,除了在阳光下吃美味的意面,没什么特别的事要做。我去过那里三次,而且我打算在那里结婚,所以对我来说那是个特别的地方。

你最后一次后悔吃掉的东西是什么?

没有我后悔吃掉的东西。我唯一感到恼火的时候是我想减肥,而吃进去的东西其实并不好吃,因为那样我就白白浪费了胃的空间。

你最后一次偷东西是什么时候?

偷窃是我成长过程中文化的一部分。我

HOUR

WITH

沉迷于涂鸦,所以可以说,大多数时候是偷大公司的东西。

你最后一次哭是什么时候?

伙计,我很容易哭。前几天晚上我在电影院看了《邀请》(The Invite),结尾哭了。我的意思是,它是一部喜剧,但也是一部关于关系的剧情片。

你最后一次发生性行为是什么时候?

和另一个人?

你最后一次查看社交媒体是什么时候?

我今天早上删了 Instagram,然后不久在出租车里又下载了,因为我太无聊了。这是一种瘾。

你最后一次用 Shazam 识别的是什么?

挺尴尬的,是 Streets 乐队的一首歌——《Geezers Need Excitement》,这首歌的名字我本该知道的。

什么事情是你永远觉得时间不够用的?

阅读。伙计,我希望自己能多读些书。我的借口是我工作时要读剧本,所以眼睛需要休息——而且我得去刷 Instagram。

上一次有人把你认错成别人是什么时候?

有一次在夜店里,有人走过来找我,他可能服用了一些某种“情绪增强剂”。他说:“兄弟,没错,Chabuds。”他以为我是 Chabuddy G [出自《Kurupt FM》,由 Asim Chaudhry 饰演]。这很容易认错。是同一个剧组,而且 Asim 是我的好哥们,所以我就坦然接受了。

你会给年轻时的自己什么建议?

尽量不要在意别人怎么看你,尤其是那些你根本不在乎的人。 ●

ALLAN 'SEAPA' MUSTAFA

这位 40 岁的英国演员、喜剧演员兼作家,最著名的角色是在《People Just Do Nothing》中饰演 MC Grindah。这是一部关于虚构的英国车库音乐组合 Kurupt FM 的 BBC 伪纪录片。他们的新 EP《Grindah's Decided We're Doing Music Again (GDWDMA)》将于 8 月 21 日发行。

6

口述给 RICH PELLEY • 肖像摄影 JOSHUA TARN


观察者报 (Observations)

EVA WISEMAN

身体政治 (BODY POLITICS)

“任何坚持佩戴 Meta 眼镜的人都应该被羞耻感和污名所笼罩”

你知道我对谁感到同情吗?是对那 50 个左右佩戴 Meta AI 增强摄像头眼镜、但既不是色情狂也不是怪胎的人。你能想象吗?你可能只是个温和的家伙,想,我不知道,为你那个迅速增长的社交媒体频道“Rice To Meet You”拍摄一段自己做西班牙大锅饭的视频,或者想要一个免提地图来引导你在葡萄牙进行徒步度假(同时为你的旅行博客“You Don’t Have To Be Madeira To Walk Here”拍摄),但当你戴上眼镜的那一刻,砰,被鄙视了——人们觉得你很古怪。就是你!瞬间发生。你试图记录一家温馨的葡萄牙咖啡馆里正常的喧嚣。但周围的人一旦注意到你的眼镜及其微小的“我在看着你”指示灯,他们就会陷入沉默。他们开始尴尬地离开,或者在镜头前轻微地表演,正常生活完全没有继续的可能性。

我同情这些智能眼镜的所有者,他们可能从未想过在给客户进行比基尼脱毛时佩戴眼镜(曾在纽约发生),或拍摄自己在街上骚扰女性(毫无疑问现在正在发生,并被网络上的男性圈影响力人物转化为内容),或在未经对方同意的情况下用它们拍摄性行为(一名男子 1 月在沃灵顿治安法院被罚款 £800),或在 LGBTQ+ 活动的洗手间里拍摄陌生人以试图“记录诱导行为”(5 月在那不勒斯骄傲节发生),或用它们监视移民社区和和平活动人士(全美各地的 ICE 特工)。然而,即便你不是怪胎,当你戴上眼镜时,这些人就成了你的“同类”。

对这些眼镜的抵制反应迅速、机智且经常充满愤怒。一款名为 附近 Glasses 的新应用利用蓝牙来定位佩戴者。在伦敦的公交车站,出现了印有佩戴 Meta 眼镜的杰弗里·爱泼斯坦面孔的海报,配文是:“给那些不尊重同意权的人准备的眼镜。”另一则广告则给佩戴 Meta 眼镜的凯莉·詹娜贴上了标签:“我们一直在注视。”随后是建议。在 Instagram 上,视频提醒女性如果怀疑有人在偷偷拍摄她们,就播放迪士尼歌曲,其理念是迪士尼的版权检测算法会拦截任何未经同意拍摄的视频。

随着每一个新故事的出现,窥淫癖是如何被植入其商业模式中的变得越来越清晰。2 月有报道称,被雇佣来训练 AI 系统并检查眼镜视觉查询功能的肯尼亚承包商,被强迫审查包含裸体、性行为、个人财务细节以及人们在厕所里的片段。Meta 对此的处理方式仅仅是终止合同。

对这些眼镜的大部分抵制来自 Z 世代,他们成长过程中对同意权和隐私观念非常熟稔,因此在这些眼镜中看到了滥用、敲诈和政府监视的明显机会。然而,他们仍在购买!在推出了由雷朋背后的公司设计的款式,并通过像詹娜这样的影响力人物大力推广后,仅去年就售出了超过 700 万副。这意味着关于其腐朽本质、关于其黏糊糊的混乱局面——这个想要攫取我们的时间、金钱、欲望,并注视着我们在曾经私密生活的废墟中无助爬行的东西——相关消息并未产生足够的影响。答案就是施加污名。答案是,我带着爱意地这么说,就是去评判。

在立法跟上技术并禁止在公共场所使用这类眼镜之前,应该教会孩子们识别现在被广泛称为“色情眼镜”的东西,并让他们走开,或者大声告诉成年人那边那个家伙在给他们拍视频。成年人则承担着额外的责任,去嘲笑或排斥佩戴者,或者(如果他们是前述那些非猥琐之辈)积极地表达他们的担忧。我也很喜欢将时尚作为一种反抗的想法,由那些使用旨在利用计算机视觉系统弱点的“对抗性图案”的设计师所推动。想象一下,如果凯莉·詹娜(Kylie Jenner)穿着这样一件衣服而不是戴一副色情眼镜会怎样。想象一下局势将如何转变。我们需要开始在 Meta 的道路上布下这样的钉子。让智能眼镜的佩戴者蒙羞并不可耻,尤其是在女性将迪士尼歌曲当作强奸警报使用的时候。 ●

Eva Wiseman 是《观察者报》的撰稿人

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观察(Observations)

一件兼作上衣的泳衣可以简化你的行李和穿搭——无需携带大量背心(而且在裤子下面线条更流畅——再也不用在背心卷起时偷偷地将其塞回去)。选择纯色或带有简单对比色滚边的款式,以实现最大的多用途价值。

一件单色连体泳衣可以搭配短裤或吊带裙,穿成连体衣,再配上人字拖。晚上可以换成宽松的裤子,或者选择一件带有蕾丝边饰的吊带裙,再配上一只夸张的耳环。Whistles 有很多洗后效果良好的连体泳衣(在泳池浸泡后请冲洗,以保护面料免受氯的影响;避免拧干,并在避开阳光直射的阴凉处晾干)。M&S 是今年的高街赢家,提供了无数 40 英镑(£40,)以下的选择,包括高领款式,尺码 6-24,分为常规款和长款,以及软塑形款,价格均为 36 英镑(£36.)。Seafolly 的巧克力色配白色滚边款目前在约翰刘易斯(John Lewis)促销,价格为 84 英镑(£84)。

Hunza G 标志性的皱褶面料有多种色调,包括欢快的祖母绿或带有对比色滚边的清新柠檬绿,以及一系列亮色和黑色,采用修身的方领设计,搭配牛仔裤效果极佳。如果你计划进行大量游泳而非闲逛,请寻找运动品牌或具有额外支撑力的款式——Skims 的工字背款式尺码从 XS 到 4X,能让一切固定到位。

比基尼也适用同样的逻辑:纯色套装比印花套装更通用。在深 V 领的卡夫坦长袍下穿一件比基尼上衣,能营造出一种恰到好处的轻松度假氛围,而有钢圈的文胸则会瞬间破坏这种氛围。关于遮阳外衣的最后一点建议:一件超大号衬衫在海滩上很时髦,而且在烈日下观光时非常适合穿上。把它系在腰间,或者和毛巾及海滩读物一起卷在包里。 ● HELEN SEAMONS

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--。

观察心得

对比色滚边增添了运动气息,无论是白天的跑步短裤和牛仔裤,还是晚上的阔腿裤或裙装,都能完美搭配。

用大胆的配饰为单色泳衣增添一抹亮色。选择皮革人字拖,以便在海滩之外也能穿着。

将泳衣作为连体衣搭配吊带裙穿着;连体款式能保持平整,不会起皱或需要重新塞入,为您打造精致的造型。

1) 黑色泳衣,£175, Toteme (Mytheresa) 2) 蛇纹凉鞋,£90, Fitflop 3) 祖母绿泳衣,£175, Hunza G 4) 篮筐包,£38, M&S 5) 酒红色泳衣,£75, Cos 6) 编织包,£55, Topshop (Asos) 7) 棕色泳衣,£36, M&S 8) 绿色人字拖,£148, Reformation 9) 白色泳衣,£27.99, H&M 10) 蓝色人字拖,£35, Archies 11) 海军蓝泳衣,£99, Whistles 12) 串珠包,£510, JW Anderson

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来到郊区的老虎

当一只私人饲养的900公斤重的老虎在袭击一名饲养员后,逃进一座宁静的德国小镇时,警方别无选择,只能将其射杀。但这仅仅是故事的开始……

作者:伊莫金·韦斯特-奈茨 (IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS)

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这里是德尔齐希 (Dölzig),

德国

人口

1,800

9

只老虎

照片

马尔泽娜·斯库巴茨 (MÄRZENA SKUBATZ)


在五月一个温暖的周日,德国东部小镇德尔齐希的警员们接到了一些非常不同寻常的电话。德尔齐希位于一条繁忙高速公路——联邦9号高速公路 (Bundesautobahn 9) 的边缘,该公路连接柏林与慕尼黑。当警方接到关于事故的电话时,通常与交通有关。而这一次,电话是关于一只老虎的。

在德尔齐希的南侧有一个工业园区,周围环绕着一道2米高、有40年历史的链条围栏。在这个园区内,在家具折扣店、重货公司仓库和一家加油站旁边,有一个较小的围栏区域,里面住着一只名叫桑多坎 (Sandokan) 的九岁、300公斤重的西伯利亚-孟加拉杂交虎。桑多坎的围栏紧邻一家加油站,顾客们在加油站听到了尖叫声并报警,但老虎已经向相反方向逃离。现在,它正穿过工业园区边缘的长草丛,在它与真正的自由之间,只剩下那道旧围栏。

警方以及被召集协助的消防部门面临着两个极其紧急的情况。首先是捕捉逃脱的老虎。其次是救治一名被老虎袭击的男子——加油站的人听到的正是他的尖叫声。当消防员到达现场时,他们看到该男子躺在老虎围栏内的地面上,身上布满咬伤和撕裂伤,血流不止。但由于老虎仍在逃脱状态,他们被命令留在车内。当局面临着一个艰难的决定:该男子需要立即接受医疗救助,但他们无法得知是否还有其他危险潜伏在何处。

与此同时,警方需要处理桑多坎的问题。他们请求兽医协助,认为理想的解决方案是将老虎麻醉并重新安置;与当地警察不同,兽医拥有实现此操作所需的工具。但出现了一个问题。就在工业区正后方,隔着一组简陋的围栏,是一个公共分配地,在这个阳光明媚的周日下午,那里有很多正在打理地块的人。而桑多坎正朝着那个方向走去。

老虎已经逃脱了半小时。

到目前为止,它还没有离开工业区,但当局认为,如果这头动物决定进一步游荡,对人类生命的威胁将太大。一名警员站在一辆巡逻车的车顶上,用半自动步枪瞄准老虎,开火。桑多坎被当场击毙。

分配地上的园丁们已经意识到出事了——一架直升机在头顶低空飞行。枪响后,警员们冲进分配地,命令所有人躲进棚屋中。因为现在他们遇到了第三个问题:桑多坎并不是这个工业园区里唯一的一只老虎。这里还有另外八只。“这完全超现实,”一名带着五岁儿子在分配地的女性告诉当地新闻。

通过使用无人机,警方最终完成了清点。其余八只老虎全部仍在围栏内。危机结束了。被袭击的男子被紧急送往医院进行手术——而桑多坎死了。但这并不是故事的结尾。

德尔齐格(Dölzig)是一个整洁、礼貌的小镇,与规模稍大的施科伊迪茨(Schkeuditz)之间隔着两条小河和一条高速公路;从莱比锡市中心乘火车向西北方向行驶约20分钟即可到达施科伊迪茨。在施科伊迪茨,有一家理发店、一家面包店、一家中餐厅,以及一座宏伟的、带有山墙的市政厅,其钟声每刻钟响起一次。德尔齐格大部分地区只是整齐的郊区住宅和工业园区。这里安静而沉闷,只有围栏上挂着“Vorsicht vor dem Hund!”(当心恶狗!)标志的后方不时传来狗吠声。工业园区位于城镇南侧,向外延伸至宽阔、平坦且依然翠绿的田野。

老虎围栏由金属栅栏组成,高度略高于一辆重型货车(HGV)的驾驶室,透过栅栏可以看到一组旧拖车和临时遮蔽所。栅栏内有一小块由杂草和混凝土组成的区域,作为老虎的室外活动区。在我到访期间,一对路过的波兰年轻夫妇将车停在通往配给花园的侧道上,想窥视一下围栏内部。当时老虎全部在拖车内,视线不可见,于是这对夫妇很快失去了兴趣,继续开车离去。

这些老虎属于一名50岁出头的女性,名叫卡门·赞德(Carmen Zander)。赞德没有回应我为本文请求的评论,但寻找关于她的信息并不困难。她1973年出生于萨克森州的开姆尼茨(Chemnitz)。她记得小时候尽可能频繁地参观莱比锡200(Leipzig 200)的猛兽围栏,那时就已被大猫的威严所震撼。她的职业生涯始于杂耍表演和马戏团的杂技演员、舞者和杂耍艺人,19岁时,她获得了第一次在大猫表演中在笼中起舞的机会。

“第一次近距离接触大猫的感觉太不可思议了,”她最近告诉当地一家报纸。在花费12年时间取得动物训练师资格后,赞德于2006年在德国西部的北莱茵-威斯特法伦州的一家野生动物园购买了五只虎崽。她在2014年和2017年进一步购买了成年虎,并建立了自己的巡回马戏团表演,在马戏表演领域享有盛名。2018年,她在蒙特卡洛国际马戏节上获得了数项奖项,在那里她被赋予了“老虎女王”的绰号,并一直沿用至今。在德尔齐格的围栏上,栅栏上贴着德语标语,写着“我们支持在人类照顾下生活的老虎”,并配有老虎的照片。其中一辆拖车的侧面用草书写着已被阳光晒褪色的字样:“巡演中的老虎!”此外,还有赞德身着全套马戏团华服与其中一只老虎的合影,以及宣布她“老虎女王”绰号和蒙特卡洛奖项的文字。

警方录像截屏,显示老虎桑多坎(Sandokan)在逃

img-165.jpeg

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16.08.06 《观察者报》杂志


郊区的老虎

但德尔齐格围栏的气氛却是一种久远的、已然褪色的荣耀。赞德的行业正在衰落。与欧盟其他所有成员国不同,德国并没有任何形式的禁止野生动物出演马戏的禁令。但在过去的几十年里,公众对表演动物的兴趣已大幅下降。自2016年起,德尔齐格工业园区一直作为她老虎的冬季度假地;它们会在夏季作为她马戏团表演的一部分进行巡演。但部分由于疫情原因,赞德难以证明其拥有持续的预订量(这是她获得作为马戏相关专业人士赚钱许可的必要条件),因此在2022年需要续签执照时,她的申请被拒绝了。

从那时起,赞德被迫全年将她的动物留在德尔齐格(Dölzig),但这同样带来了问题。她现在必须遵守适用于动物园的相同规则,且每只老虎被要求提供20平方米的室内空间。德尔齐格的围栏总面积为65平方米,供所有老虎使用,这意味着自2022年以来,她一直违规饲养这些老虎。由于她无法再通过展出老虎来赚钱,赞德陷入了严重的财务困境。她每月需要花费6,000欧元至8,000欧元来饲养老虎,为此她一直在申请信用额度并向支持者募集捐款。她还有一小群志愿者帮助她进行部分维护工作。其中一名志愿者,一名70多岁的男子,被桑多坎(Sandokan)袭击并导致重伤。

近年来,赞德与当地警方发生了多次冲突。她从未获得过繁育老虎的许可证,但在2024年,围栏中诞生了一窝虎崽。困惑的路人看到她在赞德居住的莱比锡市郊区,用牵引绳牵着一只名叫伊马纳(Imana)的虎崽散步。去年,尽管缺乏必要的许可证,她仍在德尔齐格园区宣传老虎表演。她被艾伦堡(Eilenburg)地方法院处以1,000欧元的罚款,但免于监禁。

此外,还有关于她目前饲养动物方式的问题。多年来,德国Peta组织收到了多起关于赞德动物饲养情况的举报。其中一份来自去年6月的报告称,老虎“被关在货车拖车的小笼子里,挤在一个非常狭小的空间内。你可以听到动物在嚎叫和喘息,因为它们无法逃离拖车,即使在夏季的高温中也是如此”。

我采访了住在附近的一位女性加比·萨尔巴赫(Gabi Salbach),她曾参与支持赞德饲养老虎。她在2018年停止了这项工作,因为她“再也无法忍受目睹这些动物

被饲养和安置的方式”。她声称,即使在35摄氏度的高温下,老虎也被禁锢在笼子里,没有活动区域,没有淡水,也无法洗澡。她对我这样说道:“在这个场所发生意外只是时间问题。”

赞德本人强烈否认这些对其动物饲养方式的描述。在桑多坎死后的几周里,她参加了德国ARD电视台播出的一档辩论节目,该节目正在讨论饲养异域动物的问题。主持人暗示她拥有的空间不足且过于荒芜。“我的动物拥有它们所需的一切,”她回答道,“它们有大型设施和活动区域,有游泳机会和隐藏场所。这里有不同的地面覆盖物——草地、土壤和木屑——有设备齐全的现代化车辆、抓柱、垫料和锯末,还有加热灯和床垫。”

当我漫步在德尔齐格(Dölzig)时,从当地人那里听到的事情让我感到惊讶。如果在我居住的伦敦,有一只老虎从私人围栏中逃脱并袭击了某人,我可能会支持将老虎移到其他地方。但这里的许多人并非如此。雅克琳(Jacqueline)在镇北侧的一家农场商店工作,当我问她关于赞德(Zander)的情况时,她叹了口气。“这对她来说是个巨大的问题,”她说,“新冠疫情来了,她没有收入。但我并不害怕。它们是很可爱的老虎,从小就经过训练。”她指了指手臂上一个猫脸线条画的纹身,说道:“我也是个‘猫妈’。”在附近的一家墓碑石匠店,一个叫曼迪(Mandy)的女人耸耸肩告诉我,只有在分配地(allotments)工作的人才面临危险。“只有一只老虎,”她告诉我,“他们把它射杀了。”在工业园区的一家埃索(Esso)加油站,柜台后的女人说公司告诉他们不要就此事接受媒体采访,这无疑与埃索在德国的历史品牌标志中以老虎著称这一事实有关。“但我仍然不害怕,”她告诉我。

我遇到了 14 岁的海伦娜(Helena),她就住在距离工业园区几百米远的地方,当时她正放学回家。当她收到朋友关于桑多坎(Sandokan)逃脱的短信时,她正和父母在花园里吃午餐。“我当时心想,什么?”她说。但因为老虎在她生命的大部分时间里一直都在那里,直到现在,她其实并不在意它们的存在。“但我们都知道它们不开心,”她说,“它们住得太挤了。”

当我靠近围栏时,我交谈的人对这些动物变得越发讳莫如深。

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“当消防员到达现场时,他们看到那名男子躺在老虎围栏内,身上布满咬伤,血流不止”

在紧邻老虎围栏的家具折扣店里,一名年轻男子说他不对任何报纸发表评论,因为赞德就是他的直接邻居。在马路对面的马厩以及分配地里,情况也类似。在小城镇中,社区内部倾向于保守秘密。

不过,当地人的观点并不统一。在老虎逃脱当天,施科伊迪茨(Schkeuditz)和德尔齐格(Dölzig)的市长都发表声明,称老虎必须离开。不出所料,在老虎袭击当天在场的分配地使用者感到心有余悸。“我们的天堂被摧毁了,”一名 68 岁的女性告诉当地媒体。在袭击次日由 MDR Fernsehen 电视频道对当地人进行的采访中,一名女性表示,这类事情最终发生是不可避免的。你现在仍然可以访问赞德的网站,阅读她对桑多坎性格的描述,现在读起来令人不安。“这只体型庞大、威严的西伯利亚虎其实是个胆小鬼,”文中写道,“如果他误判了某些事情——不幸的是,即使是小事也会发生这种情况——他很快就会变得不知所措且缺乏安全感。未绝育的雄虎缺乏安全感并非没有危险。因此,攻击可能会更快且更出乎意料地被触发。”

另一份 2025 年 5 月来自当地居民的 Peta 报告描述了感觉 →

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对于必须与这些野生动物住得如此近而感到不安。他们写道:“如果你在花园里烧烤或吃一块蛋糕,你可以一次又一次地听到它们的吼叫声”,这“非常恐怖”。当我站在德尔齐格围栏外面时,我也能听到从拖车内部传出的、毫无疑问的老虎吼叫声。

我对桑多坎(Sandokan)被枪击当天事件的大部分还原,源自当地报纸《莱比锡人民报》(Leipziger Volkszeitung,简称 LVZ)的详细报道。但在理解那个周日下午桑多坎的围栏内究竟发生了什么方面,存在一个令人沮丧的空白。袭击发生时在场的唯一一人是那名被撕咬的志愿者,他被送往医院时状态极其危急,以至于无法接受警方的询问。在我身处德尔齐格(Dölzig)期间,当地人议论纷纷,说那个人处于昏迷状态,尽管这一点尚未得到证实。没有人知道他在围栏内执行的是什么任务。赞德(Zander)声称只有她被允许喂养老虎。在接受德国媒体采访时,赞德否认承担所有责任。“我没有做错任何事,”她在袭击发生后的几天里说道,“我的志愿者们经过了 100% 的培训。我不明白这里发生了什么。”

但在我身处德尔齐格期间,我变得不再那么关注发生了什么,而更关注为什么这件事偏偏发生在这座城镇。在德国,任何人都可以饲养任何他们喜欢的野生动物,前提是每只动物都必须被“根据其物种和需求适当”地安置,这是德国《动物福利法》的措辞。但法律并未定义这些需求具体是什么。由联邦农业部起草的一份名为《哺乳动物专家意见》的文件经常被用作指南,但它始终仅仅是:一份指南。正因如此,要证明有必要没收所有者的异域动物是非常困难的。自 2022, 以来,赞德未能达到其老虎最低建议的护理标准,但这并不意味着当局可以自动将其移除。

我采访了帕特里克·穆勒(Patrick Mueller),他曾参加过与赞德同一个 ARD 辩论节目。他的组织“动物倡导与保护”(Animal Advocacy and Protection,简称 AAP)此前曾提出,愿意将其在西班牙的保护区 Primadomus 作为赞德所有老虎的安置地。当我问到为什么德国在允许马戏团动物表演的法律方面如此落后于其他欧洲国家时,他显得很沮丧。“我去年向德国农业部问过这个问题,”他告诉我,“他们负责

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老虎都被安置在一组旧拖车和临时遮蔽所中,俯瞰着一些当地的分配地

img-168.jpeg

这件事,而他们的回答是:‘嗯,也许其他国家没有像我们这样优秀的马戏团传统。’这简直是,什么?!这就是你们给出的科学答案吗?”他认为,尽管无法证明,这可能是由于德国剩余的有影响力的马戏团进行了巧妙的游说,其中之一的克罗内马戏团(Circus Krone)还拥有大量房地产,包括德国政党用于举办大型活动的慕尼黑建筑。“但如果我们看看德国的野生动物宠物饲养情况,我们也同样糟糕,”他补充道,“德国已经成为了分销到整个欧洲的野生动物的市场和中转国,因为我们的地理位置如此中心,而且我们的立法如此薄弱。”

在德尔齐格所在的萨克森州,监管尤为宽松。动物饲养法律是在州级而非国家级决定的,而萨克森州是德国五个没有禁止私人饲养任何种类野生动物立法的州之一。那些

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郊区的老虎

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动物们不可避免地有时会逃脱。在桑多坎(Sandokan)逃脱几天后,一名在萨克森州哈茨山(Harz Mountains)徒步的女性发现了一条从私人饲养中逃脱或被释放的红 μπο亚蟒。几周后,徒步者在莱比锡发现了一只非本土蝎子。由于饲养野生动物是合法的,因此没有关于有多少此类动物在私人手中的确切记录。“人们会问,德国饲养了多少只老虎?答案是:我们不知道,”穆勒(Mueller)告诉我。“如果有人问某处有多少只老虎,这并不是一个好的答案。”

我想起了在德尔齐格(Dölzig)看到的那些“小心恶犬”的标志。也许,我在那里采访的人们对于住在家附近的老虎所表现出的某种淡漠态度,正是源于这种关于所有权的异常灰色地带。如果一只具有攻击性的狗是可以接受的宠物,为什么老虎不行?“在这种情况下,我不认识那些邻居,但在其他情况下,这在某种程度上也是一个身份地标,”穆勒说。“比如:我的邻居养了一只猴子,我的邻居养了一只狮子。这为偏远的村庄提供了一些独特、特殊且有趣的东西……”

自从桑多坎逃脱以来,德尔齐格的大部分对话都集中在赞德(Zander)剩余的老虎可以或应该如何处理。它们不能被放回野外,尤其是因为对于赞德的老虎来说,“野外”并不存在。它们是孟加拉虎和西伯利亚虎的混血,这并非自然存在的组合。但它们仍然是野生动物。德国 Peta 的伊冯娜·武兹(Yvonne Würz)告诉我,尽管许多此类动物的饲养者辩称它们因为出现在马戏团表演中而已经驯化,但这还不够。“那只是谎言,”她说,“因为从生物学上讲,即使你将它们囚禁了几年,它仍然是野生动物。那不是驯化过程。”与猫或狗不同,老虎并没有经过数百代的培育来与人类共同生活。

只有北萨克森州兽医办公室拥有将赞德的老虎从其看管下移走的必要权力,而且即便如此,这种权力也微乎其微。AAP 提供的在避难所安置它们的方案包括承担所有运输费用,但赞德本人并不支持这个方案。她说她的老虎不会喜欢炎热的天气,而且灰尘会对它们的呼吸系统有害。她的梦想是开设自己的老虎公园。她告诉 LVZ,她已经想好了一个地点,在距离德尔齐格 40 公里的一个前农场,但在那里建立公园需要大量她目前没有的资金。加比·萨尔巴赫(Gabi Salbach)告诉我,赞德不会与她的老虎分离,并且“绝不会自愿放弃它们”。事实上,就在桑多坎袭击前几周,赞德开始对地区行政部门采取法律行动,以重新获得公开展示它们的许可。

然而,在我从莱比锡回来几个月后,决定权被剥夺了

“在德国,任何人都可以饲养任何他们喜欢的野生动物,只要每只动物都根据其物种得到了适当的安置”

赞德失去了控制权。一个清晨,一大群兽医和警察抵达工业园区,使用吹管使八只老虎中的六只陷入昏迷——这是一个由名为达菲拉(Daphira)的母亲及其五只幼崽组成的家庭组——以便将它们送往西班牙的避难所。这是德国有史以来规模最大的老虎救援行动,之所以能够实现,是因为在桑多坎杀人事件后,公众向北萨克森州兽医办公室施压,要求其最终采取行动。目前,两只老虎仍留在赞德身边,因为在其他老虎离开后,这里可以说有足够的空间。这六只老虎目前仍在西班牙隔离,但 AAP 的一名代表表示,它们健康状况良好,将在几周内准备好被释放到新的户外围栏中。

除了法律问题和饲养野生动物这种令人质疑的伦理之外,最棘手的问题或许在于,人类往往会开始爱上那些由自己照顾的动物。赞德爱她的老虎。她称它们为她的“小老鼠”,在围栏里拥抱它们,并将它们视为自己的孩子。(事实上,她确实从出生起就抚养了其中许多老虎。)但接下来的问题就变成了我们如何表达这种爱,以及这种爱服务于谁。任何不得不安乐死心爱宠物的人都熟悉这种心痛。我们希望它们留在我们身边,但我们的责任是意识到,当它们的痛苦超过了我们对陪伴的渴望时,该如何抉择。“正因为她爱这些动物,她才看不清什么才是对它们最好的,”Peta 的维尔茨说道。避难所确实似乎更能提供动物们所需的东西。即便在其中一只老虎因伤害一名照顾人员而被处死后,赞德依然无法意识到这一点,这表明她或许永远也不会意识到。而且,如果没有了这些老虎,她会是谁?正如穆勒告诉我的那样:“她是德国老虎女王,如果老虎没了,她不会变成德国女王,她就只是一个普通人。”

在老虎被带往西班牙一周后,发生了一起更严重且更悲剧性的进展。在住院两个月后,那名被桑多坎袭击的 72 岁男子最终因伤势过重不治身亡。他于 7 月 10 日在医院去世。赞德对其老虎围栏内所发生事件的清白申辩,现在将面临更为严厉的审查。根据当地媒体报道,警方目前正在调查她是否将面临刑事指控。然而,赞德在她的网站上仍然声称,很快将再次开放预约她的私人老虎抚摸活动。网站上用大号字体补充道:“排除所有责任。” ●

17

--。

“人们感到

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克里斯·钟(Chris Chung)身着 背心、运动裤 以及运动鞋,全部来自 杜嘉班纳(Dolce & Gabbana)。 人造草坪来自宜家(IKEA)

18


震惊

我并不

《慢马》(Slow Horses)让克里斯·钟 因饰演罗迪·霍(Roddy Ho)而闻名。但在那份 自信的姿态背后,是一个关于身体形象、 刻板印象以及几乎选择放弃的故事

作者:迈尔斯·埃林厄姆(MILES ELLINGHAM)

令人厌烦的

摄影 BRIAN DALY

时尚编辑 HELEN SEAMONS

19


Chris Chung

英国式的神秘感似乎在萎缩。詹姆斯·邦德被卖给了现实生活中的邦德反派杰夫·贝佐斯。肖恩·康纳리와罗杰·摩尔都已经离世,随之而去的是他们那个时代的某种沙文主义和后帝国主义幻象。如今,崭露头角的伦敦间谍穿着随意,在佩卡姆赖(Peckham Rye)度过的时间比在死火山度过的时间还多。军情五处(MI5)的“特工”们取代了军情六处(MI6)那些环球旅行的特工。而且这些特工吃薯片,他们甚至还会分拣垃圾。

这就是热门剧集《慢马》(Slow Horses)所传达的主导氛围,该剧目前已进入第六季。这部剧改编自米克·赫伦(Mick Herron)的系列小说,讲述了斯劳房(Slough House)的起起落落——这是一个虚构的、肮脏的安置区,用来存放那些从军情五处正职岗位被降级的情报人员。剧中仍有冷战惊悚片的残余,但仅限于残余。斯劳房由贪婪且粗鄙的杰克逊·兰姆(Jackson Lamb)监管,他大部分时间都在那里放屁、咒骂和酗酒。兰姆曾是一名勒卡雷风格的硬核间谍,但由于与东德国家安全部(Stasi)发生过多起冲突,且像英国本身一样,他已退化为一种愤世嫉俗的疲惫感。兰姆由加里·奥德曼(Gary Oldman)精湛地演绎,他依然宝刀未老。但在奥德曼身边,一个相对无名的人物利用他新获得的 Apple TV 资历,将自己的职业生涯推向了主流:38 岁的 Chris Chung,他在剧中饰演那个古怪的电脑天才罗迪·霍(Roddy Ho)。

“在某种程度上,他现在就住在我的脑海里,以一种我没想到的方式……” Chung 在谈到他的角色时说道。“每当我走在街上,看到商店橱窗里的东西,我就会想,‘他绝对会在家里放这个,或者穿一件这样的 T 恤。一些非常糟糕的东西……比如‘女性身体检查员’,或者类似这样的东西。’”

如何向不熟悉的人解释罗迪·霍?他可以说是一个反社会人格者,基本缺乏同理心,是个惯常的幻想家,甚至能因为有人抢了他的公交车座位就将对方列入性犯罪者登记册。霍交替地称自己为“巨龙”、“罗德斯特”、“冲撞者”和“人体三脚架”。尽管如此,Chung 还是设法将他塑造得讨人喜欢,这需要极高的技巧。而他们两人——Chung 以及随之而来的霍——还共享最后一个深刻的特征:他们都

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在参加《澳大利亚偶像》(Australian Idol)试镜后,梅尔·B 告诉他他有“一副好身材,但也就那样了”

肌肉线条极其明显。采访一名演员有时感觉像是在和一匹夏尔马对话。Chung 是我采访过的第一个身体在某种程度上模仿了真实马匹色调起伏和隆起程度的演员。我在绿意盎然的汉普斯特德(Hampstead)他最喜欢的咖啡馆外见到了他的肱二头肌,他与妻子、演员弗朗西丝·梅莉·麦肯(Frances Mayli McCann)居住于此。

Chung 于 2012 年从墨尔本搬到伦敦寻求职业机会,最终在 BBC 第一频道的《滑铁卢路》(Waterloo Road)中饰演阿奇(Archie)一角而崭露头角。他在 2014 年在国家剧院的一部剧中结识了麦肯。这对夫妇首先通过结婚来确认彼此的承诺,几年后,又养了一只名叫 Keiko 的高冷柴犬。因为这里是汉普斯特德,一个讲究血统的地方,Chung 把 Keiko 也带来了,在我点一份汉普斯特德必备的牛油果吐司和一种我从未见过的软饮料时,它坐在桌下,看起来有点无聊。

身体对 Chung 来说很重要。他是斯劳房中唯一一个有兼职的演员;他同时还担任现实生活中的私人教练,指导人们如何让自己看起来更像他。他不愿放弃这份职业,因为他认为

这让他保持脚踏实地。打理身体教会了他自律。他通常在早上 6 点左右起床,喝咖啡,然后去健身房进行一小时的全身锻炼,通常在周三和周五休息。他还雇用了自己的私人教练,以防止自己产生自满情绪。

钟最近刚从澳大利亚拍摄完即将播出的 Netflix 系列剧《我的辉煌生涯》回来,他在剧中饰演一名肌肉发达的万人迷。据我所见,这是继《纽约时报》之后,第二篇将他描述为“肌肉线条分明(ripped)”的严肃报纸特写。你可以在他健身房 Fred's 的网站上找到他的私人教练简介,上面写着:“我的主要目标是让你在面对自己的身体时感到自信且有能力”,这不禁让人好奇,钟是否一直对自己的身体感到自信且有能力。

“所以我 21 岁的时候去了纽约接受演员培训……”当我请他讲述何时以及为何变得肌肉发达时,他回忆道,“当我回到澳大利亚时,当时我在那里有一个经纪人,我记得走进办公室和他谈谈我现在能做什么……”钟的健身故事始于在那次 →

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夹克、短裤和包均来自 Versace,背心来自 Lemaire(均购自 Mytheresa);袜子来自 Zara;运动鞋来自 Camper。对面页:两件开襟羊毛衫均来自 JW Anderson;短裤来自 Geordie Campbell;袜子来自 Uniqlo;运动鞋来自 JW Anderson x Diadora。


克里斯·钟(Chris Chung)

办公室里听到的 11 个清晰的词:“我们只需要让你变得更具商业价值一点。”

那时与现在一样,好莱坞的澳大利亚男性演员倾向于高大且 / 或强壮:克里斯·海姆斯沃斯、利亚姆·海姆斯沃斯、卢克·海姆斯沃斯、罗素·克劳、休·杰克曼、萨姆·沃辛顿、乔尔·埃哲顿。在此之前,是跃过高地蕨类植物的梅尔·吉布森,以及告诉人们什么是刀的保罗·霍根。也有少数演员打破了这一趋势:例如希斯·莱杰在职业生涯后期那种迷人的古怪感,或者杰弗里·拉什那种圣贤般的气质。但在钟的经纪人看来,这些都是幸运的特例。钟回忆起对方伸手越过办公桌抓住了他的下巴。“是的,我们还得把你牙齿给修一下。”那次会面成为了一个决定性的时刻。钟在那时意识到自己是一个产品,一个他必须通过努力工作来改进的产品。但这个建议让他铭记在心的原因还有另一个,这与他的姨妈们有关。

钟的父亲一方是马来西亚广东人。他戴着一条作为结婚礼物收到的翡翠项链。根据传统,如果翡翠项链断了,意味着佩戴者避开了一场灾难。(他的项链依然完好。)钟说,在他刚起步时,他可能是经纪人名下唯一的东亚男性。

钟解释说,在他的父亲的文化中,评论一个人的外貌是非常正常的。钟在青少年时期超重——一度身高约 5 英尺 5 英寸,体重 8 公斤(此处原文如此)。他不会说粤语,但他从未忘记“fei zai”(肥仔)这个词。钟仍然记得 12 岁时,他的母亲把好吃的零食藏在米桶里,这样他就找不到。当他的姨妈们来访时,他会听到“肥仔”这个词在午餐桌上被以一种令人痛苦的实事求是的态度地传来传去。随后他进入高中,他是少数几个东亚孩子之一,而且他超重,并且想要成为一名表演者。Shènghuo hao nán。“生活艰辛。”

我问他,在经纪人的评论之下,是否潜藏着家庭餐桌上的遥远回响。“我想可能不是那种特定的方式,”他说,“但更多是在大方向上。这是对我身体的一种评论。”钟承认,在某个遥远的地方,一直存在着关于他从未意识到自己患有的饮食失调的记忆。

到毕业时,钟减轻了体重。为此他必须在饮食中剔除米饭,这在他家里是一件大事。他还开始唱歌,他非常热爱唱歌。在研究这篇文章时,我挖掘出了 20 年前《澳大利亚偶像》第四季的一集冷门片段,在其中你可以看到一个戴着软呢帽的青少年

用一种非常可爱、贾斯汀·比伯风格的假声演唱史蒂夫·汪达的《Signed, Sealed, Delivered》。

“我太他妈喜欢那个了!”他喊道。“你是第一个提起这件事的人!”

他进入了前100名参赛者之列,但没有获胜。在参加完《澳大利亚偶像》后,他一直试图寻找机会,随后试镜了《X Factor》,并在那里在梅尔·B(Mel B)面前进行了表演。“她其实没那么出色,”他说。在试镜结束时,她告诉他他拥有“一副不错的身材,但也就那样了”。“你还好意思说别人,”郑在事后回应道。

如今,郑为自己能够突破东亚演员被预期的角色界限而感到自豪。他在行业中经历了不少刻板印象的定型。郑经常发现自己试镜的角色是医生或外卖厨师。他还被要求在一些并非必须要求口音的角色中带有口音地说话。他认为这是编剧室试图将他们的角色简报“他者化”,因为在他们看来,东亚角色就是这样——一个听起来不同的人。

当郑在苏格兰拍摄《滑铁卢路》(Waterloo Road)时,他是一个25岁的人,与其他15岁的人一起扮演一个15岁的人。他必须与两名演员同事同住。“我得教他们怎么购物,怎么洗衣服。我基本上成了他们的监护人,”他回忆道。“这不是我来英国的目的,不是为了醒来走进客厅,发现地板上有一只虾,因为他们前一天晚上在打食物仗。”但郑逐渐发现自己被合作演员掩盖,随着焦点转移到白人角色身上,他的戏份被削减得所剩无几。

郑在2021年第一次试镜《慢马》(Slow Horses)。在他发送试镜录像时,他几乎已经打算放弃了。在接到电话后,他非常担心自己太强壮了,无法扮演罗迪·霍(Roddy Ho),他原以为这个角色会是一个瘦弱的天才。米克·赫伦(Mick Herron)最初将霍设定为一个戴眼镜且幻想自己很强壮的人。但郑确实很强壮。结果这并不重要。编剧喜欢霍的身材,并将其写入了剧本。

六季之后,霍开巴士撞进了一栋房子,用一把双手剑击败了一名戴面具的入侵者,并被一名利比亚特工用美人计诱捕。他的迪克·范·戴克(Dick Van Dyke)式伦敦东区口音有所提高,虽然只有一点点。

在《慢马》获得众多 BAFTA 提名的一次活动中,赫伦坐在 Apple TV 制作人杰伊·亨特(Jay Hunt)旁边。两人面对着郑,郑脱掉了衬衫,露出里面的背心。他们都被他看起来如此“健硕”所吸引。

“这就是你想象中的罗迪·霍吗?”亨特向赫伦低声问道。

“不,”他回答道,“那是罗迪·霍想象中的罗迪·霍。”

我问郑是否喜欢这部剧。

“喜欢,”他说。

“为什么?”我问。

“剧本写得极其出色,”他说,“演员阵容顶尖。通过一个巨大的国际流媒体平台获得了惊人的曝光度。这是一个工作中能拥有的一切,而且非常稳定。”

他告诉我《慢马》在欧洲的表现有多好,这让我觉得很奇怪,因为它如此地聚焦于伦敦本地。“我认为这就是人们热爱它的原因,”他说。“他们看到了真实的伦敦,它是粗粝的,是肮脏的。它的间谍活动不具有向往感,它不是詹姆斯·邦德穿着汤姆·福特(Tom Ford)的西装喝着马提尼。它是杰克逊·兰姆(Jackson Lamb)穿着一件简直和第一季一模一样的外套。”

“人们热爱《慢马》。他们看到了真实的伦敦。它是粗粝且肮脏的。它不具有向往感”

郑在《慢马》第五季中饰演罗迪·霍,与合作演员露丝·布拉德利(Ruth Bradley)同框;以及在《我的辉煌生涯》中饰演哈里

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造型由 CARLOS PERRAZ 在 CAROL HAYES MOMY 使用 HUMBLE AND HUMBLE 和 DR DAVID JACK 完成,时尚助理 FREYA GOODCHILD-SHIDOE,摄影助理 JOHN CHONIN,图片来自 ALAMY, NETFLIX

我问他与三次奥斯卡提名者奥尔曼合作的感觉如何。钟说在第一次进组前的三天里,他因为太焦虑而无法正常睡眠。但他说,“他是一位真正的领导者”,“片场工作的每个人都有戏剧背景,所以他把我们当作一个演员剧团来对待……总是非常有协作精神”。奥尔曼经常邀请合作演员深入讨论某个场景的结构以及他的角色应该如何表现。

关于加里·奥尔曼的一点是,他已经足够出名,以至于他只需要是加里·奥尔曼就足够了。目前,钟是以罗迪·霍这个角色出名的,而这个角色往往不讨喜。“听我现场采访的人,”他解释道,“总是惊讶于两点:第一,我是澳大利亚人;第二,我并不是一个令人厌恶的混蛋。”他仍然会遇到一些人在街上径直走向他,说类似这样的话:“你是个混蛋,对吧。”

就我所知,钟并不是个混蛋。至于罗迪·霍是否是个混蛋,则更为微妙。简单的回答是:是的。但钟在塑造这个角色时非常谨慎,为我们带来了一个努力趋向于讨喜但从未完全达到的角色。

“为什么人们会喜欢他?”我问。

“他在某种程度上是可爱的,是以一种功能失调的方式,”他说。“我喜欢在每一季中加入一些展现他人性——展现他是一个真实的人的时刻。当你看到他被告知他的网恋女友是个机器人,看到他的整个世界崩塌时,你就能看到这一点。观众可以从他身上感受到共情时刻……他是有层次的。”

“表演的感觉是什么样的?”我问。

“这是一个巨大的问题,”他回答道。“从小我就去表演,而且我会非常焦虑。但只要你踏入那道聚光灯,焦虑就消失了……当你走出来时,你会觉得,‘噢,我他妈居然做到了’。”

我被这一点所吸引,这种吸引力让演员们继续追逐一个将他们视如草芥的行业,以及一个大多数人永远无法实现的梦想。曾经,我在一家地方报社工作时,被派去采访在西区公开试镜队列中的人们。数百名有抱负的演员在凌晨时分现身,在寒冷的街道人行道上露营。有些人来自其他城市,几乎买不起车票。有些人则从美国飞来。在排队12小时后,一名选角官员走出来,兴高采烈地告诉人群,他们中的大多数

img-176.jpeg

他仍然会遇到一些人在街上径直走向他,说:“你是个混蛋,对吧”

人根本没有机会参加试镜。我记得每个人在那一刻同时感到泄气,因为甚至连被拒绝都成了一种特权。这是我见过的最凄凉的景象之一,而我曾去过乌克兰。

但钟成功了,而且他对那些没成功的人持有同情心,因为他曾经也是其中之一。(但同时他也说:“演艺圈,婊子。”)钟曾多次几乎放弃表演。最剧烈的动摇发生在八年前,在他主演了《Heather:音乐剧》之后。钟热爱音乐剧;他将音乐剧演员视为运动员。《Heather》耗费了他大量精力,但取得了成功。随后工作机会枯竭。接着疫情爆发。“我生病了,无法工作,”他说,“有些机会找上门,但我没有信心,或者没有能力,也没有心境去应对

它们。我想,我要退出一段时间,因为我觉得我无法继续这样下去。”

“你退出了吗?”我问。

“没有,”他说。“因为我投递了《慢马》的试镜带。”

事情总有奇妙的解决方式,不是吗?钟点点头。他也谨慎地不将自己的成功视为理所当然。“它不欠你任何东西,”他说。“职业生涯不欠你任何东西。你完成一项工作,然后再次从零开始。我认为这是最好的心态。”这给我一种非常像健身式的心态。你可以把演员带离健身房…… ●

《我的辉煌生涯》现已在 Netflix 上线。 《慢马》第六季将于 9 月 16 日在 Apple TV 开始流媒体播放

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--。

“我真的很爱你,伙计”

当朱德和埃尔林在挪威与英格兰的世界杯比赛结束时相拥时,我们都发出了由衷的“啊——”声。从锁喉和拥抱到对永恒之爱的宣言,“兄弟情”(bromance)绝对地回归了。但如果男性友谊如此重要、如此深邃,为什么它们被对待得如此轻率?

作者:乔尔·戈尔比(JOEL GOLBY)

插画:JHON BOY

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    1. 20 《观察者报》杂志

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总的来说,关于这个夏天的世界杯,真正值得深情回忆的事情并不多。恩佐·费尔南德斯(Enzo Fernández)很邪恶,汤姆·克鲁斯(Tom Cruise)很激烈且古怪,而佛得角队的门将很出色,老实说,这就是我记得的所有内容。但挪威与英格兰四分之一决赛中带有“兄弟情”色彩的基调除外——在那场比赛中,皇家马德里那像匹闪亮骏马般英俊的中场动力源朱德·贝林厄姆(Jude Bellingham)对阵曼彻斯特城那像是在血祭中从泥潭里爬出来的不死维京战士般的巨型前锋埃尔林·哈兰德(Erling Haaland),在英格兰获胜结束时,他们在中心圆附近 sort of 拥抱了一下。我喜欢朱德·贝林厄姆。他看起来很敏锐、可靠且博学,而且他真的很听妈妈的话。我也喜欢埃尔林·哈兰德,他看起来有一种非常古怪的幽默感,而且如果你在 Uber 车的 AUX 线接口交给他,他绝对会播放最糟糕的音乐。我喜欢他们是朋友,他们曾在几个赛季前一支令人惊叹的多特蒙德队中共同度过了少年神童时期,他们拥抱、打闹,并以一种感觉真实、深入骨髓且亲昵的方式公开开玩笑。

那么,谈谈男性友谊吧。恐怕这是一件奇特的事情。感觉在全世界范围内,它呈现出一种巨大的、奇怪的弧形曲线。我想我父亲大约只有一个朋友,也许两个。而且你父亲唯一的哥们儿是不是经常就是一个绰号古怪、本质上是他的纵容者的人?近年来,人们对男性孤独流行病讨论很多,还有一个反复出现的梗:男人可以一起去酒吧,共度数小时,然后却并不真正知道,例如,其中一个人刚刚订婚,或者即将迎来第一个孩子,甚至不知道对方从事什么工作。(我有一个朋友,澳大利亚的汤姆,我明确禁止他告诉我他的工作是什么:汤姆,我已经喜欢你了!谈论你在办公室、油田或任何地方做的工作,不会增强我们的聚会体验!)

成年男性甚至很难交到朋友,而且随着男性进入成年期越深,那些在学校、学院或大学建立的纽带就开始变得遥远、磨损和稀释,直到,砰的一声,突然你在 Facebook 上意识到,一个你曾经在两人都还拥有一头浓密头发的年代里每个周末都会亲昵地锁喉的男人,竟然搬到了比利时,再也见不到他了。男性似乎从根本上缺乏一套建立和维持友谊的工具包,并且经常用一些古怪的东西来填补留下的空白,比如模型火车或自酿啤酒。这就是为什么“幻想足球”(Fantasy Football)存在的原因,为了给男人提供谈资:一个基于积分的晦涩系统,专注于哪个英超右后卫比其他人状态稍微好一点,这可以消磨 45 分钟的对话,而这些时间原本可能会被浪费在建立真正的情感连接上。

直到现在!热爱你的哥们儿回来了,而且生意兴隆。“Bromance”(兄弟情)——这个词是由《老大哥》(Big Brother)编辑戴夫·卡尼(Dave Carnie)在90年代末创造的,用来描述和定义他的杂志所神化的那些男性滑板手之间异常亲密的朋友关系——它将一个自古希腊人书写阿基里斯与帕特罗克洛斯,或大旅行时代浪漫主义者之间强烈的男性友谊以来就一直存在的概念用语言表达了出来。在20世纪80年代,每两部电影中就有一部是关于两个男人——他们肌肉发达到T恤袖口都快塞不进胳膊——在彼此身上发现某种深刻而深沉的东西——在尊重与恐惧的边缘谨慎地试探——然后他们一起做复杂的握手礼,接着击败海浪、外星人,或者《洛奇3》里的克拉伯·朗。在21世纪初,兄弟情大爆发——《速度与激情》那帮人在车之间庄重地颔首,每一部贾德·阿帕托的电影,说着“no homo”(没那意思),看着《Jackass》——然后,在最近几年,某种讽刺主义的毒害在某种程度上造成了阻碍。男性友谊变得有点冷淡,有点疏离,有点脱节。但这一切都在消失。

这是心理性欲方面的问题吗?有时是(我的意思是……古希腊;以及“他终身未婚而死,只留下他最好的同伴,两人共眠30年”),但大多数时候不是。2026年初《激烈竞争》(Heated Rivalry)引发的文化爆炸在进入实质阶段之前,涉及了相当多忧郁的兄弟情,但有时它仅仅是那种安静低语的熟悉陪伴,比如鲍勃·莫蒂默(Bob Mortimer)非常细心地为保罗·怀特豪斯(Paul Whitehouse)准备一份心脏健康晚餐,而后者则在庄重地钓着空鱼。我认为,兄弟情的复兴也是近年来那些带有“跟你的哥们儿聊聊,伙计”编码的男性心理健康对话的长尾效应,这些对话有时可能有点生硬——经常只是泰森·富里在拳击场上试图对抗脑震荡时眨眼次数过多,对着一个模糊的麦克风咆哮着“心理健康很重要!”,或者是一个提醒你偶尔要出门走走的博彩广告。但现在,这个信息已经真正地根深蒂固了,感觉公开、大声地表达对朋友的爱正是其中一种

真挚的兄弟情:识别指南

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埃尔林·哈兰德与朱德·贝林厄姆

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保罗·怀特豪斯与鲍勃·莫蒂默

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大卫·特南特与迈克尔·辛

图片来源:GETTY IMAGES, BBC, NETFLIX, ALAMY

26


兄弟情(Bromance)

兄弟情的强度不仅建立在爱之上,更建立在真正的关怀之上;很高兴我们现在都能腾出空间,让这种行为变得酷且正常。”

其持久的积极影响。仅限男性的治疗性谈话小组的兴起——例如 Men’s Circle(喝着康普茶,做着瑜伽动作,向其他有共鸣的男性大声倾诉自己的问题),或者 Andy’s Man Club(周一晚上在教堂大厅里,坐在塑料椅子上吃着饼干地谈心),或者是汤姆·斯金纳那个虽被诟病但终究是件好事、在周日早晨进行的心理健康散步——所有这些都让表达情感变得良好、正常且平常。对哥们儿说一句“我爱你,伙计”就是这种趋势下的自然副作用。

当然,我是在以英国顶尖的“爱哥们儿人士”之一的身份在说话。最近一次和兄弟们去巴塞罗那的年度旅行中,这件事成了一个重复的笑话:我的哥们儿丹会严肃地抽一口电子烟,喷出大约一立方吨的三倍芒果味烟雾,然后说:“我爱你们,兄弟们——我们应该多这么说”,接着被提醒他那天已经说过50次了。在过去五年里,我参加的每一次单身派对,最后总会在某个时刻演变成我搂着一个曾经在军队待过、且我在36小时前才认识的家伙,向彼此宣告我们的崇拜(“作为男人,你懂的?”)。我们拥抱,我们蹭鼻子,我们亲吻脖子,我们在 YouTube 上给对方发送氛围音乐混音,当我们注意到其中一个人变得沉默时,我们会发短信关心对方,我们还有侧边群聊,在里面讨论那个不在群里的唯一一个人,以确保我们都确认他状态良好。兄弟情的强度不仅建立在爱之上,而且建立在真正的关怀之上,很高兴我们现在都能腾出空间,让这种行为变得酷且正常。

当然,这种情况是双向的。我有一个朋友,在我 20 岁后期和 30 岁初期时,我们之间有着极其强烈、近乎狂热的兄弟情,但某种潜在的竞争心——另一种男性特质——最终成了阻碍。我们决裂得和陷入爱河时一样剧烈,绝对且猛烈,起因是连续几次糟糕的聚会、一条被误解的短信,以及在新冠疫情的距离下难以维持的过分亲密,结果导致三年没有说话,而且,为了记录在案,这主要是我 的错。他离开了,成熟了,还做了非常得体的隐形矫正牙套。我离开了,大致保持原样,实际上在各方面可能深刻地变得更糟了。

三年后,我们在一个共同朋友的派对上偶然重逢,在南伦敦一家酒吧花园闪烁的灯光下共饮一品脱啤酒,那种旧时的熟悉感、喜爱以及成为哥们儿的理由再次出现——依然,且永远存在——我们现在又是好朋友了,但感觉不同了,这是一种更睿智、更成熟的亲密友谊,没有了那些嫉妒或竞争带来的尖锐灼伤感。你知道吗,我真的在四个小时后就要去参加他的订婚酒会了。我计划给他们两人准备一份非常精美、体贴的礼物,但邮寄需要很长时间,等到礼物寄到时,感觉已经太晚,不再像是在庆祝订婚这件事了。我们的友谊是我生命中伟大的、温暖的基础纽带之一。

兰德和贝林厄姆即使在这样一个大声表达对哥们儿之爱的现代时代,感觉也像是奇怪的异类——在早期 Twitter 那种“让他们随便发推!”的人格爆发期之后,职业运动员最近被处理得如此干净、被媒体磨平、被像肯娃娃一样塑形,以至于在他们能够抢在后卫之前头球破门的能力之下,任何闪现的真实人性都显得令人惊讶。

但对于“杰林”来说并非如此:他们开玩笑,在角球战术时彼此吸引,跳到对方背上,在 Instagram 的评论区互相打趣,闯入对方的新闻发布会。这很健康,而且真心很好,正是那种我们经常称赞运动员为榜样、而他们其实并未付出多少努力就获得这种赞誉的榜样精神。我想说的是,我深受启发。我要和我的朋友乔恩一起去看《奥德赛》了,之后我要把他锁进头锁,告诉他我有多爱他。●

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马特·达蒙和本·阿弗莱克

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罗梅什·兰加纳森和罗布·贝克特

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马克·鲁法洛和小罗伯特·唐尼

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了解更多 并在此 预订您的 门票

观察者报 读书会

订阅《观察者报》,仅需 £1 即可免费加入我们的读书会

欢迎来到《观察者报》编辑部或在线参与我们每月与顶尖作家的对话

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1 September 6:30 - 7:30PM 西蒙·西巴格·蒙特菲奥里 (Simon Seabag Montefiore)

23 September 6:30 - 7:30PM 威廉·博伊德 (William Boyd)

直播

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与以下机构合作:

FORA


家与远方

p40 与众不同的 鸡肉沙拉

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时尚与家居设计师 亨利·霍兰德 (HENRY HOLLAND) 以及他的巴哥犬拉里 (Larry),在伦敦维多利亚公园的清晨与显化实践

维多利亚公园是拉里的快乐之地。他还是小狗的时候,每天早上 5am 就会醒来,迫不及待地想来这里散步。那时,我和慢跑者们一起等待管理员打开大门。责任和常规通常不是我向往的词汇,但能有一个早起并沉浸在自然宁静中的理由,感觉很棒。— 15 年前,我和丈夫搬到维多利亚公园附近时,我们就知道这是一个神奇的空间。地平线上金丝雀码头的天际线让你觉得既身处宇宙中心,又身在宁静之所。一年到头,我们带着拉里在同一个环路散步,看着季节更替,感觉很特别。— 这里有两棵树的地方,我们会停下来进行“显化”。我母亲很喜欢关于积极思考的书籍,所以我是在这种信仰体系中长大的。我们会停下来,花一点时间说出我们希望看到的事情,比如一个我们希望顺利完成的项目,或者为他人祈愿。设定意图是开启新一天的好方法。— 作为一名创业者,随时都有成千上万件事要处理。这契合我忙碌的大脑,但有时也会让人精疲力竭。当我在这里时,我不查邮件,也不戴耳机。相反,我倾听公园的声音,在一切变得疯狂之前给自己留出思考的空间。•

口述给 海莉·迈尔斯 (HAYLEY MYERS) • 肖像 萨姆·迪尔登 (SAM DEARDEN)

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家与远方

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在埃尔巴岛,一座牧羊人小屋变成了艺术静修地

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家与远方

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纺织艺术家伊莎贝尔·法奇 (Isabel Farchy) 在孩提时代的每个夏天都会去埃尔巴岛看望她住在米兰的祖母。每次旅行,她和两个年长的兄姐都严格遵守一套常规:“我们必须早起去海滩,”现年 40 岁的法奇说。三人随后会一直待在水里,将石头扔进深处并比赛谁先捡回来,直到中午,那时地中海的阳光被认为太烈而无法继续。一旦洗净脚上的沙子,他们的祖母卢西亚娜 (Luciana) 就会在露台上提供简单的午餐,如米沙拉,或火腿配甜瓜,然后每个人都会在花园的吊床中进行强制性的午睡。→

文字 劳拉·梅·托德 (LAURA MAY TODD) • 摄影 丹尼尔·西韦塔 (DANIEL CIVETTA)

31

“这座岛屿并未成为另一个名流社交场,而是演变成了一个深受人们喜爱的避暑胜地”

这种惯例在她的记忆开始之前就已存在。埃尔巴岛距离托斯卡纳大陆有一小时的轮渡路程,最著名的或许是作为在1814年至1815年间庇护了被流放的拿破仑300天的前哨站。除了这段历史轶事,这里在某种程度上一直是个秘密。其224平方公里(86平方英里)的土地上散布着葡萄园、橄榄林和建于20世纪60年代的现代主义海滨度假村;当时开发商希望将其打造成为那不勒斯湾卡普里岛或撒丁岛翡翠海岸的北方对应版。但这座岛屿并未成为另一个名流社交场,而是演变成了一个深受人们喜爱的避暑胜地,吸引着一代又一代的家庭年复一年地回到这里,为了其崎岖的地貌和惬意的慢生活节奏。

不在埃尔巴岛时,法奇与她的丈夫——49, 岁的电视制作人安东尼·威尔科克斯(Anthony Wilcox)以及他们的两个孩子,六岁的埃利奥(Elio)和四岁的玛戈(Margot)住在伦敦。自2022年起,她一直在发展一项手工纺织实践,承接私人委托,并在伦敦以及哥本哈根的丹麦设计节“3day-sofdesign”上展出作品。法奇利用回收面料和天然染料,制作出轻盈如蝉翼的拼布壁挂和窗帘,其色调让人想起埃尔巴岛那土褐色的、被阳光灼烧的地貌。她经常使用从岛屿海岸线采集的植物和矿物质,为她的作品注入色彩。“埃尔巴岛从伊特鲁里亚时代起就是一座矿业岛,”她说,“所以这里有很多天然的富铁土壤,可以用作泥染。”

房子本身——一座两居室的单层前牧羊人小屋——在法奇家族中传承了四代。“我的曾祖父以前常来这里度假。当他看到这块地出售时,立即乘轮渡过来把它买了下来,”她说。和法奇一样,她的祖母卢西亚娜(Luciana)一生都在造访这座山顶

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法奇的祖母卢西亚娜及其艺术家朋友们的画作被钉在其中一面卧室墙上。在客厅里,由吉安·弗兰科·莱格勒(Gian Franco Legler)设计的 Oasi 85 野游椅上装饰着由卢西亚娜创作的几何图案靠垫。

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HOME & AWAY

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避难所,距离海滩仅10分钟步行路程。

卢西亚娜1919年出生于米兰,但在第二次世界大战期间为了逃避对犹太人的迫害而逃往伦敦。她在伦敦印刷学院学习书籍装订。“她会制作这些精美的皮革装订书,”法奇说。她最终在20世纪60年代回到米兰,进入了包括建筑师路易吉·卡恰·多米尼奥尼(Luigi Caccia Dominioni)以及极具影响力的女性建筑师兼设计师盖·奥伦蒂(Gae Aulenti)在内的创意圈子。“在那个时代,女性很难成为艺术家,”法奇说,“所以我祖母的许多作品都存在于家庭内部”。埃尔巴岛是她永恒的灵感之源。“她会和她的创意朋友们一起来,把它几乎当作一个艺术家驻留地,”她说,“他们会在这里停留数周,只是绘画和创作。”

在卢西亚娜去世十多年后,埃尔巴岛的这座房子里依然充满了那些 →

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HOME & AWAY

“这是一座相当简朴的房子。没有华丽的装饰。床是行军床,淋浴则是花园水管”

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珍宝。“这是一栋相当简朴的房子。没有华丽的装饰。床是行军床,淋浴是用花园软管,水来自水井。大多数物品都是用她找到的东西制作的,”法奇(Farchy)说道,并指向一排从海滩上收集的赤陶色石头。在扭曲的木制壁炉架上方,有一束干草,包括橄榄叶和野茴香,像一面展示家族徽章的盾牌一样挂在那里。附近,一张蛋壳色的沙发顶部由一截在岸边收集的结节漂流木弯曲而成,看起来像是从墙上长出来的一样。

“我的祖母创造了一个小小的避风港,”她说。从主起居空间有两扇小门——一扇通往厨房,另一扇通往两个睡眠区。后者装饰着法奇早期的设计之一:一块轻盈的、色块拼接的纺织面板,当海风吹来时会轻轻飘动。“这里以前挂的是一块巨大的黄麻窗帘。正是那件作品启发了我转向纺织设计,”她说。在面纱之后,是她所谓的“非常简陋”的卧室,纯白色的墙上钉着卢西亚娜(Luciana)及其朋友们创作的无框风景画。

在埃尔巴岛,室内的居家环境次于岛上的户外魅力。在夏季,生活在户外展开,法奇的房子——现在属于她的父亲约瑟夫(Joseph)——也不例外。客厅的双层玻璃门几乎时刻

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向周围的自然环境敞开,那里有橄榄树、巨大的芦荟植物和开着粉色花的夹竹桃,簇拥在向海边倾斜的景观前。然而,即使是包裹着房子的景观也没能逃过卢西亚娜的创意关注。在混凝土露台上,嵌入了用海滩捡来的石头拼成的小太阳和笑脸图案,看起来像是她存在过的微小考古提醒。尽管岁月流逝,卢西亚娜设定的夏季仪式——清晨游泳、露台午餐、吊床小憩——依然延续至今。“我们仍然几乎完全遵循同样的模式,”法奇说。“这是一种与过去建立联系的方式。” ●

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这座前牧羊人小屋在法奇家族四代人的传承中基本保持不变——俯瞰附近海滩的景色亦然。

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KITCHEN STORIES

这家当地的小餐厅在周四至周六晚上营业,供应诸如配蒜泥蛋黄酱和佛卡夏面包的爱尔兰鱿鱼炖菜,以及配以费塔奶酪和红椒蘸酱的焦香花椰菜和西葫芦。

CHESTNUT

这家位于前酒吧建筑内的小餐厅在2018年开业后的六个月内就获得了一颗米其林星。虽然它将在10月底关闭,但主厨 Rob Krawczyk 的下一步动向值得关注。其菜单植根于当地景观,严谨而不繁琐。

WORKING ARTISTS STUDIOS

在白天,这家由艺术家经营的独立画廊实行开放政策,同时也作为工作工作室使用。晚上则设有音乐之夜和艺术家讲座。你甚至可能会遇到 Budds 的所有者兼主厨 Jamie Budd 在这里朗诵他的诗歌。

周边推荐

BALLYDEHOB

西科克 (West Cork)

西科克或许是“野性大西洋之路”的起点,但请在 Ballydehob 停留,这是一个充满色彩且影响力远超其规模的小村庄。从这里出发,你可以前往爱尔兰大陆的最南端——米曾角 (Mizen Head);每年夏天,该地区都会举办戏剧、文学和艺术节,充满活力。Ballydehob 波希米亚式的反主流文化历史依然吸引着艺术家和创作者,其中包括 Native 的 Didi 和 Simon Ronan,那里是爱尔兰最酷的生态隐居地。今年,他们邀请了包括前伦敦 Café Cecilia 主厨 Clare Geraghty 在内的厨师,举办周一晚餐系列活动。• TABITHA JOYCE

AUDLEY COVE

这个砾石海滩距离村庄 10 分钟车程,是当地人早晨进行冰冷游泳的首选地。稍远一点的 Ballyrisode 海滩同样迷人,而移动式的西科克木火桑拿车会在周五下午出现在 Dereenatra 码头。

LEVIS CORNER HOUSE

这家酒吧拥有传统爱尔兰酒吧的氛围,接待来自世界各地的新兴音乐家。本月,由倡导爱尔兰可持续饮食的主厨 Caitlin Ruth 经营的墨西哥晚餐俱乐部将在啤酒花园快闪营业。

HOME & AWAY

NATIVE CABINS

就在主街旁边,这个设计避风港旨在推介爱尔兰创作者。这座前农舍现在拥有六间卧室——其中三间位于花园中,并配有移动桑拿房和冷水池——且将 20% 的利润投入到野化重建中。

BUDDS

亮蓝色的 Budds 是一个社区中心,供应自家烘焙的白巧克力花生酱布朗尼块。这里还有不断更换的午餐菜单,可能包括点缀花瓣的羊肉串或高级香料袋。

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这款意大利提拉米苏意式冰淇淋 配以浓郁的马斯卡彭奶酪

HITS

DIFFERENT

提拉米苏意式冰淇淋,480ml

£2.49

特选 SELECTED

特选提拉米苏意式冰淇淋片,2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 及更多。 视供应情况而定。产品和价格在店内可能有所不同。苏格兰、威尔士、旧本地及在线渠道。照片仅为建议呈现。


渴望

“酷暑之日 需要一些辛辣、 酸爽且清新的味道, 并带有辣椒的余韵”

有人喜欢热辣

厨房日记 奈杰尔·斯莱特 (NIGEL SLATER)

当你看到我在吃绿咖喱时,你就知道夏天已经达到了顶峰。酷热难耐的日子——这个夏天这种日子比我能承受的要多一些——需要一些辛辣、酸爽且清爽的东西,或许还带着柑橘和辣椒的余味。一份带有椰香的绿咖喱正合心意,虽然食材清单很长,但大部分都进入了香料膏中,在食物处理机里几秒钟内就被搅成了浓稠的泥状。这类食谱买食材花的时间比烹饪的时间还长。 →

肖像画 查理·克利夫特 (CHARLIE CLIFT)

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渴望

“我觉得两三颗小辣椒就能提供恰到好处的辣度,至于再加多少则取决于你”

这个版本的核心和灵魂是甜玉米。这类食谱的最终调味很大程度上取决于厨师,可以调整青柠或鱼露的分量,用更多的椰奶来降低辣度,或者用更多的甜玉米或额外的一把香菜叶来增加酱汁的浓稠度。对我来说,完美的质感介于汤和酱之间,足够稀到需要用勺子,但又足够浓稠到能包裹住蔬菜。

我把香草——欧芹、罗勒、莳萝和香菜——用湿厨房纸包裹起来,放在冰箱的塑料盒里。这能让它们在好几天内保持良好状态。(有时它们拿出来时的状态比放进去时还要好。)混合生菜袋——红菊苣、水菜、橡叶生菜之类——最好也这样储存,紧密封闭在冰箱的最底层。今年夏天最难处理的是西洋菜,它可能是我夏天三明治中最喜欢的配料。我一把它带回家就大快朵颐,将一捆捆西洋菜浸在冰块和水中,直到茎部变得脆爽。当它与叶片柔软、口感如黄油般的生菜搭配时,那种辛辣味尤其受欢迎。

再一次,每顿午餐或晚餐似乎都以水果收尾。这没什么不好的。正是这一年中的那个时节,我必须提醒自己,软果季节转瞬即逝。今年的第一批李子配上一杯冰镇麝香葡萄出现在餐桌上;草莓——小颗的,用来蘸抹上了一点玫瑰水的法式酸奶油;填入了拉布尼奶酪 (labne) 和烤杏仁的杏子。我们在食用前在上面淋了一点蜂蜜。

餐桌上还有一份甜点,一份我用月桂叶调味并留在酒杯中凝固的白巧克力慕斯。在端上桌之前,我将温热的黑莓舀在表面。当我们把勺子伸进慕斯时,深红色的果汁流进了甜美、浓郁的深处。

夏季蔬菜绿咖喱

这是我经常制作的绿咖喱的一个版本,这次使用了夏季蔬菜。这里有很大的发挥空间,你可以根据手头现有的食材加入其他蔬菜。豌豆、蚕豆、四季豆和夏季南瓜(绿肉品种)都是极佳的选择。加入多少个辣椒完全取决于个人口味。我觉得两三个小型热辣辣椒能提供适中的辣度,但具体增加多少当然由你决定。

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摄影 JONATHAN LOVEKIN


渴望 (CRAVINGS)

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分量:4.人份。准备时间:45分钟 大蒜 3 瓣 小型热辣绿辣椒 2-3 个 生姜 35g 青柠 2 个 香茅 2 根(饱满的) 香菜 75g,另需少量用于装饰 细砂糖 1 茶匙 鱼露 1 汤匙 蔬菜油或花生油 2 汤匙 甜玉米 2 根或 1 x 400g 罐装 椰奶 1 x 400ml 罐装 青柠叶 3 片 四季豆 75g 西兰花 150g 西葫芦 2 个 (200g) 橄榄油 2 汤匙 泰国罗勒 一把

将大蒜去皮,将蒜瓣放入食物处理机的碗中。去掉辣椒的梗和种子。将生姜去皮切碎,与辣椒一起放入碗中。

将青柠皮细细磨碎,将果汁与皮屑一起挤入食物处理机的碗中。去掉香茅茎坚硬的末端,剥掉纸质的外层叶片,然后将内部的心细细切碎,与香菜叶、茎、细砂糖和鱼露一起放入碗中。倒入蔬菜油或花生油,处理成浓稠且色泽鲜艳的酱料。

在宽底锅中用大火加热,加入一半的酱料搅拌 1 分钟或 2 分钟,直到颜色略微变深并散发出辛辣的香味。

如果你使用罐装甜玉米,将其沥干,与椰奶一起加入酱料中。如果使用新鲜玉米,剥掉玉米棒的外皮并切下玉米粒。在沸水中煮 8-10 分钟,然后沥干放入锅中。将青柠叶在手掌中揉皱,丢入锅中。加热至快要沸腾,然后调低火力炖 7-8 分钟,随后离火。让青柠叶留在锅中以浸出香味。

用一个小锅将水烧开并加盐。将四季豆的茎和尖端修剪掉,然后切成短段——长度不要超过你希望用勺子舀起的大小。将它们放入沸水中,煮 4-5 分钟直到变软,然后用漏勺捞出。将西兰花切成小块,在沸水中快速煮熟,然后沥干。

将西葫芦纵向对半切开,再切成短段。在浅锅中加热橄榄油,将西葫芦煎至软嫩且金黄。备用。

从混合物中捞出青柠叶。取出甜玉米和椰奶混合物的一半,放入搅拌机中处理成浓稠的奶油状,然后将其搅拌回混合物中。拌入西葫芦、西兰花和四季豆。盛入碗中,根据个人喜好加入青柠角、新鲜切碎的香菜和泰国罗勒叶。

img-214.jpeg

白巧克力慕斯配温黑莓

6人份。准备时间 2 小时 牛奶 100ml 月桂叶 3 片 白巧克力 250g 双层奶油 300ml 蛋白 3 个 黑莓 150g

将牛奶倒入一个小而深的锅中,用中火加热。将月桂叶在手中揉皱后放入牛奶中,然后加热至接近沸腾。就在牛奶即将沿锅壁上升之前,将其移离火源,静置浸泡。

在个中号汤锅中倒入足够的水,水量大约达到锅壁高度的三分之一。找一个耐热的玻璃或瓷碗,使其能稳当地放置在汤锅顶部,碗底略高于水面。

将锅置于中火上。

将巧克力掰成小块,放入置于微沸水上的碗中,然后让其融化,不要搅拌(如果搅拌,巧克力会“凝固”,变得有颗粒感或结块)。

将浸泡过的牛奶通过筛网倒入融化的巧克力中,轻轻搅拌至充分混合。注意不要过度搅拌巧克力。

将奶油打发至足够浓稠以保持形状,然后轻轻地将其翻拌入巧克力混合物中。彻底清洗并擦干打蛋器和碗,然后将蛋白打发至浓稠且蓬松,并翻拌入巧克力混合物中。

倒入 6 个玻璃杯或小罐中,放入冰箱冷藏定型两小时。

准备食用时,将黑莓与糖一起放入汤锅中并煮沸。倒入水壶中,在食用前将黑莓舀在每份慕斯的表面上。 ●

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渴望 (CRAVINGS)

SOPHIE WYBURD

到目前为止,我想我们都认同鸡腿肉比鸡胸肉更出色。由于脂肪含量较高,鸡腿肉不仅更鲜嫩,而且在烹饪时更容易掌控。想要把鸡腿肉煮干比把鸡胸肉煮成棉絮状要难得多。缺点是带骨鸡腿需要更长时间才能熟透并软化,但去掉骨头会快得多。在超市里很难找到带皮的去骨鸡腿肉,但去骨是一项简单的任务,而得到的鸡腿柳可以用更短的时间烹饪。当然,你也可以用无皮柳肉来实现,但那样还有什么乐趣?

在热锅中将带皮鸡腿柳压实煎熟,是我在工作日期间最喜欢的吃鸡方式。酥脆的表皮和多汁的中心是应对周一接连不断的会议或周二火车延误的完美解药。用这种方式烹饪的鸡肉有许多用途,但为了契合季节性,这里推荐两款超级沙拉。我通常认为沙拉不能算是一顿正经晚餐,但我保证,这些沙拉的分量足够充足且扎实,即使是我也会感到满足。

腿肉之极 (The thigh's the limit)

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摄影 LAURA EDWARDS


渴望 (CRAVINGS)

香脆鸡腿肉

Serves 2. Ready in 20 minutes 带皮鸡腿 4 块 植物油 1 汤匙

将鸡腿皮朝下放在切菜板上。用削皮刀在骨头两侧切开切口。用刀尖滑入骨头下方,将其与下方的肉分离,然后用手指进一步将其弄松。在顶部周围切割以将其释放,然后用刀将肉向下刮开以露出。在基部周围切割将其从肉中分离,并丢弃。在鸡腿各处撒上盐调味。

用中火加热大煎锅中的油,将鸡腿皮朝下放入。在上面覆盖一张正方形烘焙纸,然后用一个厚底锅(我使用炖锅)压住鸡腿。就这样烹饪 7 minutes。

移走锅和烘焙纸,将火力调至中高火。继续烹饪鸡腿 3-4 ,直到表皮变得酥脆金黄,然后将其翻面,在另一面烹饪 4 。将鸡腿从锅中取出,静置 5 再使用。

绿女神鸡肉沙拉

绿女神酱汁的成分各异,但其主题是由混合香草和某种奶油状物质(无论是蛋黄酱还是酸奶)组成,以提供充满活力的酱汁。这里的奶油感大部分来自酪乳,以防止其过于厚重,而罗勒的加入则保持了其明亮感。用它来搭配脆爽的蔬菜,感觉符合其加利福尼亚的起源。

Serves 2. Ready in 30 ** 酸种面包 100g 橄榄油 2 汤匙 盐和胡椒 适量 新鲜细香葱 15g 帕玛森干酪 40g 新鲜欧芹 20g 新鲜罗勒 25g**

小蒜瓣 1 瓣 红葡萄酒醋 1 汤匙 酪乳 120g 蛋黄酱 50g 小宝石生菜 1 棵 熟透的牛油果 1 个 小萝卜 100g 煮熟的带皮鸡腿肉 4 块

将烤箱预热至 200℃ / 燃气档位 6. 将酸种面包切成 inch-thick 的片,然后撕成一口大小的块状。将它们放在烤盘上,淋上橄榄油和一大撮盐,然后用手搅拌,使所有面包块都均匀裹上油盐。烹饪 15-20 ,中途翻动一次。

将 1 汤匙细香葱切碎备用。将帕玛森干酪切成块,放入搅拌机中高速搅拌至碎末状。加入剩余的细香葱、欧芹和罗勒。剥开大蒜加入,然后加入醋和酪乳。搅拌至顺滑。

加入蛋黄酱并混合,然后根据口味用盐和胡椒调味。切掉小宝石生菜的根部以分离叶片,并将牛油果肉切成丁。将小萝卜切成薄片,将鸡肉切片。

将生菜、牛油果和小萝卜摆放在大盘中。淋上部分酱汁,然后将面包丁和鸡肉摆在顶部。再淋上更多酱汁,撒上预留的细香葱,即可上桌。

img-216.jpeg

脆米芒果沙拉

脆米带来的那种韧中带脆的口感简直绝妙,这或许解释了为什么 naem khao 在老挝如此受欢迎,以及为什么其他相关食谱在过去几年中大量涌现。这是我的尝试:一个加入了芒果、椰子、青柠和香草的 naem khao 版本,旨在保持口味的清新与活泼。这里搭配的脆皮鸡效果惊人,不过用炸豆腐块代替也同样合适。

Serves 2. Ready in 45 minutes 熟茉莉香米 400g 植物油 1 tbsp 熟芒果 1 个(约 350g) 红辣椒 2 个 大蒜 1 瓣 全脂椰奶 100ml 鱼露 2 tbsp 青柠 2 个 香葱 1 个 烤无盐花生 60g 新鲜香菜叶 15g 新鲜薄荷叶 15g 熟带皮鸡腿肉 4 块 盐 适量

将烤箱预热至 220℃ / gas mark 7. 在大型烤盘上铺上烘焙纸,将熟米倒入盘中。淋上油并搅拌,直到米粒全部均匀裹油。烘烤 30 分钟,中途搅拌一次以确保受热均匀。米粒应呈现金黄色且口感酥脆。

用勺子将芒果肉挖出并切成块状。将辣椒切成细丝,去掉大蒜皮。

将 70g 芒果、一半的辣椒和全部大蒜放入搅拌机,加入椰奶、鱼露和 1 个青柠的汁液。搅拌至顺滑,然后用盐调味。

将香葱去皮并切成薄圆片。用研钵将花生捣碎,然后将鸡肉切片。将米饭、鸡肉、芒果、香葱、香菜、薄荷、剩余的辣椒丝以及除 1 tbsp 以外的所有花生放入搅拌碗中。加入酱汁,充分翻拌均匀。

将沙拉分装在盘中,最后撒上剩余的花生。搭配额外的青柠角一同上桌。 ●

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CRAVINGS

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我们在一周前预订了 Kismet,这是一家新开的塞浦路斯土耳其式 meyhane(餐厅兼酒馆),就位于伦敦 Borough Market 桥区市场里布里奇特·琼斯(Bridget Jones)以前住过的公寓原址。但在我们预订的那天,走高端路线的美食博主频道 Topjaw 发布了一段关于 Kismet 的视频……

RESTAURANTS REBECCA NICHOLSON

Kismet

位于 Globe Tavern 二楼, 8 Bedale Street, SE1 9AL (kismet.london)。 前菜(Meze)£6-14,烧烤 £18-30,甜点 £4-13, 葡萄酒 £38 起,鸡尾酒 £11

我们原以为自己只是在碰运气,尝试一家由前 Harwood Arms 和 BiBi 主厨 Keiran Mustafa 以及 Bistro Freddie 餐厅老板 Dom Hamdy 共同打造的热门新店,但突然之间,感觉就像是在开放麦之夜观看泰勒·斯威夫特(Taylor Swift)演出一样。当我们到达时,店内已经坐满了穿着宽大白色 T 恤、戴着棒球帽、看起来很有钱的年轻情侣。房间里弥漫着某种能量,一种身处其中的酷炫快感,以及一种显而易见的期待感。

这是一个繁忙的夏季周六午餐时间。波罗市场(Borough Market)正试图喂饱伦敦的每一个游客。我们穿过人群控制线和芝士烤面包的排队队伍,来到了 Globe Tavern。这家酒吧的二楼房间曾举办过各种快闪店——例如 Barang 和 Khao Bird——而现在将通过计划为期一年的驻店形式迎来 Kismet。如果你呼出一口气,可能会直接靠在邻居的膝盖上,因此考虑到目前的需求,这个拥挤的空间能否支撑 Kismet 驻店那么久仍有待观察。

一家 meyhane(土耳其酒馆)应该是欢乐的,由拉克酒(raki)、前菜(meze)和良好的交谈来驱动。几分钟之内,我就被这种热闹的氛围所感染,在面包、冷前菜以及一项坦白说相当大胆的选择——发酵芜菁汁(fermented turnip juice)的滋养下,从前一天的节日疲劳中恢复了过来。这是一种颜色如血、质地如水的古怪、辛辣、带有大蒜味且咸鲜的液体。“老实说,没多少人喜欢这个,”服务员以一种令人愉悦的坦率说道。闻了一下并喝了一口后,我明白了原因,但随后我想到了所有读过的关于益生菌的内容,并希望它至少对我的身体有好处。

在我们周围,人们开始兴奋地交谈起来。我们用蓬松且酥脆的面包搭配冷前菜,面包上厚厚地涂抹着盐和牛至。鹰嘴豆泥(hummus)像一个光滑奶油般的盆子,盛着一片复杂的橄榄油湖;cacik(酸奶黄瓜酱)则是浓稠的过滤酸奶,带有柠檬、薄荷和黄瓜的新鲜感——两者虽然简单,但新鲜得令人惊叹。girit ezme 包含来自克里特岛的酸味白奶酪块,由核桃块提供质感,并点缀着莳萝和薄荷。我通常是莳萝的反对者,原则上反感它的甘草味,但在这种情况下,它成功地唤起了原野与新鲜空气的感觉。

最棒的是 zeytinyagli sebzeler,薄薄的刀豆条裹在不可抗拒的番茄、软洋葱和橄榄油涂层中。把它放进

42

照片 LORNA ROACH


CRAVINGS

葡萄酒

大卫·威廉姆斯(DAVID WILLIAMS)

罐装出售,而且能按箱卖掉。我们之前被提醒不要吃太多面包,所以为了不再点餐,我们用 sigara boregi(一种填满了春葱、费塔奶酪和有韧性的卡萨奶酪的酥皮雪茄卷)来蘸掉最后几块残余的酱料。

在我当服务员的时候,我工作的酒吧供应的炸鱼薯条里有一块大得离谱的黑线鳕鱼。每班至少有两次,顾客会说:“这不是鱼,这是鲨鱼,”而我会像从未听过这句话一样微笑。当我向我们可爱的服务员滔滔不绝地讲述我有多饱时,我意识到这种饱腹感可能就是他的“鲨鱼”。他迁就我们,祝贺我们能撑到这个地步,并承认到目前为止,有相当一部分人因为在前菜(meze)上用力过猛,而试图取消主菜。

那将是一个糟糕的主意。Mangal(炭烤)由单根签子组成,在木炭上烤制。鸡腿肉(tavuk şiş)售价 £20,鮟鱇鱼售价 £30,这让人清醒地意识到,这是顶级的美食,而不是我东伦敦青年时代那种自带酒水的土耳其餐厅。这里看起来很随意,铺着纸桌布,配着金属餐巾纸盒,但不要被这些蒙蔽。这里的烹饪水准极高,且深知自己的价值。

鸡腿肉外皮烟熏酥脆,内部鲜嫩,肉汁渗入下方一把尺子长度的面包中。鮟鱇鱼气势十足,肉质厚实,铺在酸奶和辣椒黄油底上,我也在的前菜菜单上注意到了这种辣椒黄油。那种辣椒黄油是一种低调而令人惊叹的东西,带有泥土般的芬芳和温暖的辛辣感。在向厨师的专业技艺致歉的同时,我也把鸡肉蘸在了里面。

Patates kizartmasi 是用牛至和大量盐调味的炸薯条。它们美味且柔软,成了确保不浪费任何辣椒黄油的载体,让我免于用勺子刮酱料的尴尬。在提供的三种甜点中,我们点了一块甜美且有嚼劲的巴克拉瓦(baklava),以及一球令人上瘾且口感浓郁的开心果冰淇淋,上面撒了盐和橄榄油,随后是土耳其茶,在盘子被撤走后立即用悬挂托盘端了上来。

Kismet 开业时间不长,但已经给人一种历史悠久的机构感,就像一个在吧台讲故事的睿智长者。我再次向服务员重复,我真的非常、非常饱了。他慈祥地微笑着,显然已经习惯了这一幕——这无疑将成为这里的常见景象。我们就称之为“Kismet 的幸福迷雾”吧。 ●

罗伯特·塞缪尔·汉森(ROBERT SAMUEL HANSON)

开普十字军

英国人花了很长时间才真正领悟舍南白葡萄酒(chenin blanc)的魅力。这并不是说这种白葡萄品种一直没有拥趸:当然,那些熟悉 Domaine Huet 出产的人——这家著名的生产商位于舍南白葡萄酒的故乡,即卢瓦尔河谷的武夫雷(Vouvray)——深知这些白葡萄酒能够优雅地陈年数十年而又不失其神韵与活力的能力。

人们总觉得英国的葡萄酒饮用者不知道该对武夫雷以及来自其他知名度较低的卢瓦尔舍南产区(如 Savennières、Montlouis 或 Saumur)的酒抱有怎样的期待,也不清楚究竟何时饮用最合适。其中很多酒是以半干的“demi-sec”风格酿造的,作为开胃酒或晚餐酒来说太甜,但作为甜点酒又不够甜。它的多功能性似乎也让人们感到困惑。在白葡萄品种中,只有雷司令(riesling)拥有与舍南相当的跨度,其风格涵盖了从紧致矿物感的干型起泡酒到像太妃糖苹果般的甜酒。

与长相思(sauvignon blanc)相比,舍南目前仍更多是小众爱好者的心头好,而非畅销产品。事实上,当你查看全球葡萄品种的排名表时,它正变得越来越冷门:自千禧年之交以来,全球长相思的种植面积增加了一倍多,使其成为全球第10大种植面积的葡萄品种;而舍南则失去了全球总种植面积的三分之一以上,在排行榜上跌至第30位。

然而,尽管舍南如今在廉价大宗葡萄酒中的角色有所下降,但可以说它在葡萄酒爱好者中的知名度比以往任何时候都要高。这归功于卢瓦尔河谷一代富有创造力的酿酒师。但很大一部分功劳必须归于他们在另一个国家的同行,而那个国家拥有全球超过一半的舍南葡萄园:南非。

南非有着悠久的舍南传统:这种葡萄的第一批插条(在开普地区传统上被称为 steen)于1655年抵达。但直到千禧年之交,开普舍南才开始追求卓越,尤其是利用该国现有的老舍南灌木藤酿造出浓郁而充满活力的干型葡萄酒。开普的酿酒师还完善了一种明亮、酸爽且不经过橡木桶处理(uncoated)的风格,充满了热带水果气息,这是开启探索这种极具辨识度葡萄品种之冒险的最佳起点:无论产地、酿造工艺、甜度、气泡感或浓郁度如何,它总是伴随着一种令人垂涎的、酸爽的银色快感——这一特质也使其成为极具通用性的配餐伙伴。

为了获得完整的舍南体验,我可能会从 Domaine Catherine 和 Pierre Breton Vouvray Brut NV (£26.30, SipWines) 开始,它具有青苹果的清脆感和丹麦糕点的浓郁感。接下来,是一款展现南非无桶风格热带活力的性价比之选,来自舍南的原始大师:来自斯泰伦博斯(Stellenbosch)的 Ken Forrester Petit Chenin Blanc 2025 (£14, 或作为六瓶混装箱的一部分售价 £10, Majestic),它是绝佳的夏日夜晚清口酒。卢瓦尔河谷的 Domaine Alexandre Cady Anjou Blanc 2024 (£15.60, Haynes Hanson & Clark) 是一款纯净的干型无桶风格,带有刺痛感的酸度和经典的卢瓦尔舍南苹果店气息。若想搭配新鲜酸爽的奶酪或辣椒风味面条,选择一款经典的半干型:Waitrose No 1 Vouvray 2025 (£13, Waitrose) 正好合适;而对于烤鸡,我会选择来自斯瓦特兰(Swartland)的 Mullineux Kloof Street Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2025 (£16.50, London End Wines) 那种充满活力的能量——这款酒将帮助任何人领悟舍南的奇妙之处。 ●

本周之酒 Mullineux Kloof Street Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2025, £16.50, London End Wines

img-219.jpeg

43


CRAVINGS

Cool as a cucumber

这种低调的水果在烹饪领域产生了持久而强大的影响

还有比黄瓜更具“热浪属性”的食物吗?清脆、新鲜且清凉,这些渴水的植物在烈日下的潮湿环境中茁壮成长,就像桑拿房里的海绵一样。它们处于不断的生长运动中,卷须蔓延,茎干挺立,心形叶片掩盖着下垂的、像飞艇一样的果实;由于 90% 都是水分,它们简直是浆果形式的饮料。黄瓜的作用在于抚慰,其目的就是:清爽。

我们以痴迷来回报这种慷慨。从古罗马皇帝提比略(他对黄瓜的贪婪食欲促成了温室的发明),到自我意识强烈的维多利亚时代的人(他们热爱昂贵的爱好),再到 20 世纪 90 年代电视剧中标志性的水疗美学“黄瓜敷眼”,这种水果总能巧妙地引领时尚。我们曾疯狂追求汉堡配菜中的炸酸黄瓜(frickles),热情地将中式的拍黄瓜纳入我们的食谱,而最近,我们又养成了一种整根食用黄瓜的偏好。

2024, 美国内容创作者洛根·莫菲特(Logan Moffitt)在 TikTok 上发布了一段视频,用一种古灵精怪的 Z 世代腔调说道:“有时你需要吃掉一整根黄瓜。”他用切片机将黄瓜切入一个高圆柱形的塑料容器中,加入调料,盖上盖子并剧烈摇晃。那段视频获得了 16.5m 次观看。洛根现在用不同的调料重复了这一形式,并拥有超过 700 万名粉丝。他的视频对黄瓜崇拜程度的影响如此之大,以至于在冰岛(指国家,而非超市连锁店)引发了短缺。6 月,玛莎(M&S)开始销售“摇摇黄瓜”杯——切片黄瓜配一包自选调料,装在——没错——一个高圆柱形的塑料容器里。相当于半根黄瓜(185 克)的价格为 £2.90,在上市时便走红。

虽然莫菲特自封为“黄瓜男”,但美食作家兼厨师梅莱克·埃尔达尔(Melek Erdal)却成了伦敦无意间成为的黄瓜影响力人物。黄瓜是埃尔达尔烹饪历史的一部分(她拥有库尔德血统),尤其是与酸奶一起食用。相比于较长的英国黄瓜,埃尔达尔更青睐通常被称为“波斯黄瓜”的小品种。“我觉得它们更脆,含水量更低,”她说。她会将它们纵向切片,加入盐和漆树粉(sumac),或者撒上墨西哥辣椒青柠调味料 Tajin。

黄瓜的味道很难描述。“它无法与任何东西相比,”埃尔达尔说。脑海中浮现的词汇更多是关于感觉而非味道:新鲜、清凉、纯净。像草本?像绿色?埃尔达尔说有一种“泥土气息”,尽管很微妙,她认为这存在于皮中。但她声称,这种难以捉摸的特质正是黄瓜清爽特性的核心部分。“你知道生蚝尝起来像大海是因为它们生活在其中?黄瓜就像是吸收了生长地的味道,因为它的含水量。”

黄瓜能表达风土(terroir)吗?

全球至少有 100 个黄瓜品种,这是一个有趣的课题。向全英国餐厅以及 Ocado 供货的专业批发商 Natoora 销售两种意大利品种:Barattiere(圆形,黄绿色皮,可长到哈密瓜大小)和 Carosello(小巧、粗壮,有深绿色条纹),从植物学上讲,它们属于甜瓜。Natoora 的贝克斯·布伦迪(Bex Blundy)表示:“红色粘土沿海土壤带来了甜美、浓郁的风味,且含水量比许多商业黄瓜低得多。”

随着 Carosello 进入 Natoora 的库存,2025 看到它在餐厅菜单上的受欢迎程度激增。在钦福德(Chingford)的 Gina 餐厅,它与盐渍里科塔奶酪一同供应;在 Noble Rot 餐厅,它配以丝滑的 ajo blanco(白蒜冷汤);在曼彻斯特的 Thirds 晚餐俱乐部,它则化身为消暑的 gazpacho(西班牙冷汤)。在杰克逊·博克瑟(Jackson Boxer)的 Vesper 餐厅,腌制黄瓜块配以加利亚甜瓜、腰果奶油和烟熏辣椒油。博克瑟将 Carosello 描述为一种“当代黄瓜”,因其缺乏“苦味或涩味”而备受推崇。

黄瓜归根结底是一种充满矛盾的水果。它能接纳强烈的伴侣,却不被其掩盖。它无处不在且触手可及,却拥有激发狂热赞赏的力量——莫菲特(Moffitt)的追随者敦促人们“加入黄瓜社区”,而埃尔达尔(Erdal)的粉丝则向她发送他们在“野外”发现的黄瓜照片。

在《英国饮食:一部人民史》(English Food: A People's History)中,戴安娜·珀基斯(Diane Purkiss)在关于黄瓜三明治和下午茶的一段文字末尾,将这种习惯描述为“一种微妙且不必要的享受”。或许就是这样。黄瓜给人一种小奢侈的感觉——就像在酷暑之日喝下一杯冰凉的长饮。总是那些安静的东西最耐人寻味。 ●

趋势 海伦·格雷夫斯(HELEN GRAVES)

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摄影 PATRICE DE VILLIERS


1


我心之所想

安德烈·阿西曼 (ANDRÉ ACIMAN)

这位美国作家是《请以你的名字呼唤我》(现已改编为图形小说)、《八个白色夜晚》和《走出埃及》的作者。他同时也是纽约市立大学的比较文学杰出教授。

将重音放在正确的位置:20%

我最近在写关于圣方济各的内容,并意识到在乔瓦尼·贝利尼为他创作的画作中,这位圣徒手上有着非常模糊的伤口,被称为“stigmata”(圣痕),即与基督手脚上的伤口相对应的身体伤口。几乎所有人都把这个词发音得像是重音在第二个音节上——stig-matə——而实际上,就像在古希腊语中一样,它应该只在第一个音节上发音,即 stig-matə。我是否要因为如此挑剔而与全世界作对?不。每当有人读错这个词时,我会感到尴尬吗?会,但仅限于那些试图装作博学的人。当人们在读作曲家亨利·普赛尔(Henry Purcell)或诗人安德鲁·马维尔(Andrew Marvell)的名字时将重音放在第二个音节,我会纠正他们吗?不。诗人托马斯·凯鲁(Thomas Carew)的发音应该是 Carey,而不是与 kangaroo 押韵!我会说什么吗?不。为什么?因为我是个外国人,我自己也经常读错单词。

应避免的词汇:8%

我开始厌恶这些来自法语的借词:jouissance(快感)、interstices(间隙)、quotidian(日常的)、inclement(严酷的)。英语有更简单的词。请使用那些词。不要费心使用这些让你听起来像知识分子,但仅在那些不懂行的人面前才起作用的词!不过,拜伦笔下的 burglariously 依然美妙。

我的骑行:12%

我喜欢每天骑两次自行车,绕曼哈顿的中央公园骑一圈。无论什么季节我都这么做,一次在早晨,一次在傍晚。冬天,我会穿好几层厚衣服,只有在非常、非常冷的时候我才会避免出门。夏天,我喜欢只穿一件 T 恤、一条轻便短裤和凉鞋。这就是我喜欢度过娱乐时光的方式。通常我每次骑行需要 40 到 45 分钟,所以我并不快。有时我会去超市,用车把把东西带回家。但我喜欢听小说,就这样听了无数本长篇书籍:《白鲸》、《豹》、《大卫·科波菲尔》、《罪与罚》、《希罗多太》,现在在听《塔西佗》。我仍然分不清我是为了听书而骑车,还是为了骑车而听书。偶尔,我会用壶铃锻炼。我应该加入一家健身房,但我缺乏意志力,而且坦白说,我懒得离谱。

我的生日:27%

几周前,一位朋友反驳我,说生日很重要,我真的应该停止在这种事情上挑剔,并庆祝自己的生日。我告诉他,小时候我喜欢自己收集派对小礼物,独自在卧室里玩,远离所有人。我不喜欢客人,不喜欢我所谓的那些朋友,不喜欢总是出席的家长们,我甚至不喜欢蛋糕。生日派对是给别人准备的。这些年来,我总能设法避开自己的生日。我甚至把这一点传给了我的孩子们:没有生日派对,没有生日礼物,什么都没有。我给了他们很多礼物,只是绝不在他们的生日当天给。然后,突然之间,在我这个年纪,我五个最好的朋友聚在一起,邀请我去一家餐厅。我爱他们每一个人,而我最爱的是他们彼此也深爱着。我确实很幸运。

消失的泳池:3%

朋友们告诉我,我们应该建一个泳池。我们有足够的空间建一个漂亮的泳池,但谁会使用这个泳池,从而证明建它的合理性呢?此外,我不想四处打听谁是值得信赖的泳池建筑商。只要想到工程、挖掘、工人、壁龛以及为了幼儿而设置的泳池围栏,就足以让我想要把考虑泳池的事推迟到明年。我更喜欢我的自行车和我听的书。

我的结肠:8%

结肠镜检查最糟糕的部分并不是检查本身,而是检查之前。这比在机场被搜身,或者在别人家里被要求脱鞋后发现其中一只袜子有个显眼的破洞更让人感到卑微。你向世界关上了门,但在面对自己时却感到羞愧欲死。你想要摆脱这种羞耻感。所以,谢天谢地,你将在麻醉中入睡,

对任何事情都毫无知觉。除非——这次就发生在我身上——你被告知你的肠道准备得不够彻底。噢,双倍、四倍的羞耻!

我儿子要来纽约:22%

他说他深夜从旧金山抵达。我已经两个月没见他了,但他被指定为我在结肠镜检查醒来后接我的人。目睹父亲的窘态是多么令人羞愧的一件事。“别在意,”他说,拿出一个香蕉蛋糕,我立刻将其吞下。 ●

46

插画 ALMA HASER


周六 下午4:41

他们真正来的目的只是为了时尚。

乔恩花了几周时间寻找

一件完美的千鸟格夹克。

但当一辆福特 GT40 以 150 英里 / 小时的速度轰鸣而过,

导致他把饮料洒在全身时,

他惊讶地发现自己一点也不在意。

没有什么能比得上

古德伍德复兴赛(Goodwood Revival)


pooky

你看到光了吗?

观察者报 体育版

伯明翰的一周

乔治·西姆斯(George Simms)报道欧洲田径锦标赛

观察者报 16.08.26

2

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

本周

记者:杰里米·惠特尔(Jeremy Whittle)和杰西·帕克·汉弗莱斯(Jessy Parker Humphreys)

威尔士自行车手芬莱·塔林在比赛中丧生

在芬莱·塔林(Finlay Tarling)于葡萄牙自行车赛中丧生不到 24 小时后,比赛于周六继续进行。其倒数第二赛段从帕拉德斯(Parades)到蒙迪姆-德-巴斯托(Mondim de Basto),全长 141 公里,包含近 3,500 米的爬升。

尽管塔林所属的 NSN 发展车队退出了比赛,但人们几乎没有回头看一眼。

主车群照常排队,社交媒体上出现了几条帖子,赛段起点举行了一场“致敬”仪式,并伴有一些思念与祈祷。

但看来,这场表演,以及当然还有利润丰厚的电视转播,必须继续下去。

周五,当 19 岁的威尔士车手(英国奥运选手乔什·塔林 [Josh Tarling] 的弟弟)在高速行驶中与一辆面包车相撞时,周围没有摄像机捕捉到那一刻。这辆面包车不知为何被允许逆着主车群的方向驶入赛道。现场只剩下一辆破碎的自行车和一块破碎的前挡风玻璃。

英国自行车队的性能总监斯蒂芬·帕克(Stephen Park)表示:“芬是一个才华横溢的车手,前途光明,他是一位忠诚的队友,一个全方位优秀的年轻人。在这个悲剧时刻,我们向他的父母和哥哥乔什表达最深切的同情。”

碰撞的具体情况尚不清楚,目前正处于警方调查中。塔林在碰撞发生时显然是在车队的后方骑行。司机是否违反了警察和赛事调度员的指令?他是否被告知比赛已经通过,道路已重新向公众开放?

一名住在事故现场(一段下坡路上的急左转弯处)的目击者接受了 RTP 电视台的采访。

“比赛通过了,然后警车护送队经过,摩托车警员在分流交通。我的房子距离道路只有大约一米。他们全部

经过后我们就回到了屋内,以为一切都结束了。

“然后,片刻之后,门边传来一声巨响。我们都出来了,我的邻居去查看,他已经在那儿了。他已经死了。”

除了三大欧洲大环赛外,许多规模较小的赛事在努力筹集资金以覆盖不断攀升的成本时,经常与灾难擦肩而过。

幸运的是,大多数时候他们侥幸逃过一劫,但毫无疑问,在多次情况下,赛中安保措施充其量只能说是糟糕。没有更多死亡病例在很大程度上取决于车手们的技巧。

社交媒体上流传的视频显示,葡萄牙赛事的其他地方也出现了混乱的调度。对于许多车手来说,这并非新鲜事,他们在参加欧洲的小型赛事时已经习惯了安保漏洞。

自行车运动的死亡人数在增加,但似乎很少有改变。

2024 年,另一名青少年穆里尔·富雷尔(Muriel Furrer)在瑞士举行的 UCI 世界锦标赛中去世。她的死亡情况导致相关部门建议引入 GPS 追踪,以便应急服务部门能够定位遇险车手。但这尚未得到全面实施。

世界管理机构引入了针对车手行为的新纪律措施,并加强了旨在提高风险评估的政策,但小型赛事往往过于依赖自我监管,且缺乏实施这些措施的资源。

关于终点线护栏、车把宽度、轮组设计和齿比的讨论很多,但关于赛事组织者确保车手安全的关怀义务,讨论却少之又少。现实是,一些赛事对于精英竞技来说仍然是不安全的。

和富雷尔一样,塔林的名字现在将被加入到这份日益增长的名单中——这些年轻车手本可以被救下来,只要能为那些每次别上比赛号码布就冒生命危险的人分配更多的安保资源。

本周简讯

劳尔回归狼队,凭借点球抢得一分

劳尔·希门尼斯在回归伍尔弗汉普顿流浪者队(Wolverhampton Wanderers)的比赛中,在第93分钟攻入一记点球,帮助球队在对阵布莱克本流浪者队的比赛中抢得一分。赛前,希门尼斯向每位主场球迷赠送了一条围巾,以庆祝他重新加入这家他在2023年首次离开的俱乐部;而在周五晚上的比赛中,当球队在进入伤停补时阶段时仍以2-1落后时,他挺身而出挽回了局面。在英冠联赛的其他赛场,威尔·兰克希尔终结了林肯城在1961年以来首场升级至第二级别联赛的比赛中从米德尔斯堡队抢分的一线希望。这位21岁的前锋上周以£2000 万从托特纳姆热刺加盟,他在比赛早些时候已经打入一球扳平比分,随后在第91分钟再次破门。在英甲联赛中,卢顿与雷丁之间的一场戏剧性较量中,杰克·威尔希尔率领的球队在3-1落后的情况下逆转,以4-3获胜。

巴黎圣日耳曼签下世界杯冠军前锋托雷斯

世界杯冠军射手费兰·托雷斯以£5000 万的价格加盟巴黎圣日耳曼,在巴塞罗那效力四年后离队。这位26岁的球员在巴黎圣日耳曼主教练路易斯·恩里克麾下完成了西班牙国家队首秀;在加盟之前,他在巴塞罗那的赛季中出场49次打入21球,并在世界杯决赛中打入制胜球。曾在该决赛中为阿根廷首发的克里斯蒂安·罗梅罗以3400 万英镑m从托特纳姆热刺加盟马德里竞技,而他的前中后卫搭档米基·范德文在与俱乐部签署新合同后,将成为托特纳姆热刺的队长。

状态低迷的拉姆塞-皮蒂未能晋级半决赛

亚当·拉姆塞-皮蒂在欧洲游泳锦标赛上延续了糟糕的状态,他甚至未能获得50m蛙泳半决赛的资格。拉姆塞-皮蒂在预赛中排名第八,总排名第20位;在本周早些时候,他在100m蛙泳决赛中获得第五名,在混合泳接力中获得第四名。这位英国游泳运动员表示,他的表现“糟糕到让我感到困惑”。

诺丁汉郡反击成功晋级单日杯半决赛

诺丁汉郡将在单日杯(One Day Cup)半决赛中对阵莱斯特郡,此前他们在对阵约克郡的比赛中,在追逐273分时一度以1-3落后,随后成功反击。凭借杰克·海恩斯(116*)和凯尔·维雷恩(105)的世纪得分,球队在还剩8球的情况下以3个三柱门(three-wicket)的优势获胜。在另一场半决赛中,本·斯托克斯率领的球队以162分的优势击败兰开夏郡,因此米德尔塞克斯将对阵达勒姆。单日杯今年夏天尤其受欢迎,吸引的观众人数远超同期进行的“百球赛”(The Hundred)。决赛将于9月20日在特伦特桥球场举行。

目录

杰西·帕克·汉弗莱斯谈欧足联抵制行动的首批受害者

数据是否让英超变得无聊?作者:罗里·史密斯

乔治·史密斯谈伯明翰繁忙的一周

封面

主图:艾米·亨特庆祝又一枚短跑金牌;从上至下:罗梅尔·格雷夫赢得100m冠军;亚历山大体育场仍有空间;雅各布·英格布里格森参加5000m比赛;基莉·霍奇金森获得一枚银牌

Morgan Harlow / AF / Sam Barnes / Sportziller / Sona Maleterrea / Miss Lindsay / Julian Finney / Getty

安德鲁·巴特勒的“言行录”

过度自信的男性警报

在一些最不出人意料但绝不理智的民调新闻中,一项新研究发现,38%的英国男性认为,如果他们从今天起在专业教练的指导下开始训练,他们将能够代表英国队参加2028年洛杉矶奥运会。在一项针对2,000名成年人的研究中,12%的男性声称他们能在100米内跑完在少于15秒的时间内,尽管其中20%的人实际上从未尝试过;而45%的成年人认为最难精通的运动是体操。如果一项研究中还不具备足够的男性自信,那么数据是:38%的男性认为自己在综合运动能力方面优于普通人,而49%的女性认为自己较差。

惊人的业余高手

业余高尔夫球手马修·维格斯(Matthew Vigurs)击出了一球进洞,高尔夫管理机构认为这可能创下了英格兰最远一球进洞的纪录。这位 32 岁的球员在沃尔索尔(Walsall)的大巴尔高尔夫俱乐部(Great Barr Golf Club)的 3 号 4 杆洞击出了一记 411 码的远距离球。炎热干燥的天气意味着许多高尔夫球手在今年夏天击球的距离比平时远得多。

一个简单的品牌重塑

拥有 149 年历史的足球俱乐部克鲁亚历山德拉(Crewe Alexandra)由于与由狐獴担任代言人的 Compare the Market 达成了英格兰足球联盟(EFL)合作伙伴关系,暂时将品牌重塑为“克鲁亚历山德”(Crewe Alexander)。此次品牌重塑将持续在英乙联赛(League Two)赛季的开赛首周,期间狐獴角色“亚历山德”(Alexsandr)出现在了俱乐部体育场的新标志牌上。


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

3

保罗·海沃德(Paul Hayward)

杰夫·贝佐斯对利物浦的收购企图与看台上依然存在的平等精神背道而驰

img-231.jpeg

这位世界第四富豪想要获得这家安菲尔德俱乐部的少数股权。这与尚克利式的社会主义格格不入,但美国亿万富翁们日益将英超俱乐部视为稳赚不赔的投资。

在利物浦首次面对美国所有权期间,一名后来领导唐纳德·特朗普竞选连任活动的董事曾通过电子邮件与一名俱乐部球迷发生冲突。

早在 2010 年,俱乐部共同所有者的儿子小托马斯·O·希克斯(Thomas O. Hicks Jr.)对该球迷的执着感到愤怒,并留下了这样一句名言:“去你的,混蛋。下地狱吧。我受够你了。” 世界上没有任何一名公关救火员能救得了他。小希克斯随后辞职,七年后成为了共和党全国委员会的共同主席,致力于让特朗普重返白宫。

利物浦球迷会发现,想要给杰夫·贝佐斯发邮件要困难得多。这家俱乐部的大股东是美国的芬威体育集团(Fenway Sports Group),而这位新晋的部分所有者不太可能就票价或厕所设施进行私人交流。但为了与 2010 年结束的汤姆·希克斯(Tom Hicks Sr.)和乔治·吉莱特(George Gillett)那段动荡的所有权时期保持连续性,这里依然存在着与特朗普的联系。

贝佐斯是世界第四富豪——身价约 2000亿英镑 ——他与 Facebook 联合创始人爱德华·萨弗林(Eduardo Saverin,身价 230亿英镑)以及前女王公园巡游者共同所有者阿米特·巴蒂亚(Amit Bhatia)组成财团,买下了这家曾根植于比尔·尚克利社会主义的俱乐部 30% 的股份;这家俱乐部在看台上至少依然忠于一种平等精神,除非所有者想打一场持久战,否则没人敢对此妄加干涉。

像许多美国的科技大佬一样,贝佐斯在特朗普重掌权力之前具有自由主义倾向。他支持民主党提名人,支持同性婚姻,并向奥巴马基金会捐赠了 3亿美元 (£7km)。然而,特朗普的回归验证了《纽约时报》对贝佐斯的描述,称其为一名“才华横溢但神秘且冷酷的企业巨头”,多年来一直被指责给亚马逊员工的薪水过低。

默西赛德郡以其

img-232.jpeg

文化冲突:利物浦球迷抗议美国所有权;杰夫·贝佐斯(下图)旨在通过财团购买 30% 的股份

如果贝佐斯认为他可以无视利物浦的球迷文化,那么他将迎来一次冲击

img-233.jpeg

幽默感而自豪。因此,安菲尔德的常客们会喜欢这个笑话:在 5 月份接受 CNBC 采访时,贝佐斯认为特朗普在担任总统的第二任期内“更加成熟,更加自律”。

这与新任主教练安多尼·伊拉奥拉(Andoni Iraola)能否激发弗洛里安·维尔茨(Florian Wirtz)的最佳状态有什么关系?关系很大,因为在过去的两周里,我们都在为詹尼·因凡蒂诺(Gianni Infantino)计划将世界杯卖给特朗普相关投资者的方案而愤怒,与此同时,一名特朗普的辩护者买入了英国最具特色的足球俱乐部。

利物浦是一家私人俱乐部。国际足球是公共财产。但我们应该诚实地面对英超的现状。阿布扎比的皇室拥有一个俱乐部。沙特阿拉伯的主权财富基金拥有一个俱乐部。而现在,一个代表了不可理喻之财富的寡头,夺取了利物浦的一块份额(而且据推测,总有一天会夺取全部)。

从希克斯 / 吉莱特到 FSG / 约翰·亨利,再到亚马逊创始人的这一序列讲述了一个故事。2010 年,新英格兰体育风投(New England Sports Ventures,即当时的 FSG)出资 3 亿英镑 将利物浦从财务混乱中拯救出来。它建设了新的训练场,将安菲尔德的容量增加到 61,000 人,并赢得了奖杯。

美国的大型体育特许经营权昂贵且难以购买。本周,洛杉矶湖人队被出售给了鲍勃·艾格(Bob Iger)和约书亚·库什纳(Joshua Kushner,即那些潜在的国际足联投资者),据报道该交易对湖人队的估值为 125亿美元 (92亿英镑) ——这比利物浦高出近 40亿英镑。美国投资者购买更便宜的英国足球俱乐部是为了“增加资产价值”。在英超 20 支球队中,他们拥有或部分拥有 11 支。

如果 FSG 出售给贝佐斯及其伙伴的利物浦 30% 股份价值 16.5亿英镑,那么该俱乐部的估值就是 55亿英镑——而 FSG 在 2010, 的初始投入仅为 3 亿英镑。这种天文数字般的收益将被亿万富翁和私募股权基金经理视为一种经济文化的终极认可,正是这种文化将英超联赛变成了全球资本的梦幻目的地。

若需进一步证据,可参考格雷泽家族自 2005 以来,在 20 年间通过债务利息、股息偿还以及向家族支付的费用,估计从曼联抽走的 12亿英镑(与此同时,他们将商业收入提高了五倍)。

当新老板到来时,支持者们开始幻想转会目标,但贝佐斯、萨夫林和巴蒂亚共同拥有的数十亿资金并不能将基利安·姆巴佩或拉明·亚马尔带到安菲尔德。联赛的阵容成本比率系统将支出限制在足球产生的收入以及球员销售净损益的 85% 以内。

贝佐斯肯定研究过这些数字,并将其视为一项受保护的赌注。这些投机者中没有人知道英超收购价格上涨的上限在哪里,但他们似乎都相信还有更多价值可以榨取。

利物浦在 19 世纪 90 年代的首任所有者是保守党市长约翰·霍尔丁,所以这里并非一直都是香克利式的社会主义。但这次与特朗普支持者的新结盟,将引发比当年与希克斯和吉莱特那场注定失败的强迫婚姻更深层的沉思。在足球领域,正如在社会中一样,利物浦的支持者可能和我们所有人一样,在不可控的全球力量面前,采取一种试图坚守自身理想的策略。

但如果贝佐斯认为他可以无视一种大多数其他英超支持者感到困惑但又钦佩的球迷文化,那么他将会大吃一惊。


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禁赌赞助令部分俱乐部陷入填补资金缺口的困境

大卫·鲍威尔(David Powell)写道,没有长期协议的英超俱乐部面临约 8000 万英镑 的资金缺口

进入今年夏天,英超联赛中近一半的球队发现自己面临着同样的商业难题。

早在 2023, 4 月,所有 20 家会员俱乐部共同同意从 2026. 夏天起,终止与博彩公司签订的球衣正面赞助协议。此举是由政府期待已久的博彩改革白皮书促成的,且最终采取的措施比部长们预期的更为激进。

考虑到此类举措可能给足球金字塔底层俱乐部带来的严重财务后果,该白皮书此前并未建议在整个体育领域全面禁止博彩赞助。

但英超联赛在独立足球监管机构(Independent Football Regulator)阴影的笼罩下,看到了一个机会,可以证明其无需外部干预即可实现自我管理。

随着 2026-27 赛季英超联赛临近,该决定的后果已完全显现。多年来,博彩公司支撑着联赛中下游球队的商业现实,提供了其他行业根本无法、或不愿匹配的高额赞助费。它们的标志变得无处不在,成为英超转播产品中一个标志性的视觉特征。

随着自愿禁令现已生效,这种显眼程度已大幅下降。

袖口赞助仍然被允许,但俱乐部球衣上最值钱的“地产”——球衣正面,已不再向博彩公司开放。

阿斯顿维拉、伯恩茅斯、布伦特福德、水晶宫、埃弗顿、富勒姆和诺丁汉森林感受到的冲击最为剧烈。所有这些俱乐部在今年夏天都面临着寻找新合作伙伴的局面。

寻找替代赞助商的进程已延伸至

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黄金位置:若昂·戈梅斯(João Gomes)穿着阿斯顿维拉的球衣,正面赞助商为 Visit Rwanda,俱乐部于今年夏天与其签约。Neville Williams / Aston Villa FC / Getty Images

休赛期。令人惊讶的是,一些俱乐部仍在寻找。全球最大的体育赞助咨询公司之一 Octagon 的副总裁迈克·海伍德(Mike Haywood)表示:“根据我们的计算,这些俱乐部需要填补的资金缺口总计约为 8000 万英镑。大约有 8 到 12 家俱乐部需要填补这一缺口。其中一些俱乐部仍在寻找长期解决方案,而另一些则在等待市场回暖。”

“在没有赞助商的情况下进入新赛季并不是一件好事。桑德兰的球迷虽然在称赞他们没有赞助商的新球衣,但俱乐部迅速声明将会落实赞助。这些商业团队需要将其售出。”

对于英超最大的

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俱乐部来说,这种动荡几乎没有产生影响。它们的商业生态系统运行在另一个维度,由拥有长期承诺的全球蓝筹品牌组成。阿森纳继续与阿联酋航空绑定,利物浦与渣打银行绑定,曼城与阿提哈德航空绑定,曼联与美国科技巨头高通旗下的 Snapdragon 绑定,托特纳姆热刺则与跨国保险公司 AIA 绑定。

但对于其余的英超俱乐部而言,挑战是巨大的。

它们在同一时间进入市场,在这样一个不太可能复制博彩公司在近几个赛季愿意支付的破纪录数字的环境中竞争合作伙伴。市场

持续协议:西汉姆联在降级至英冠联赛后,继续与博彩公司 Boyle Sports 保持赞助关系。Rob Newell / CamersSport / Getty

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竞争激烈且时机不利。

“这一切中包含着某种形式主义的成分,”足球财务专家、《足球的价格》(The Price of Football)一书的作者基兰·马奎尔(Kieran Maguire)解释道。“当英超联赛游说反对独立足球监管机构(IFR)时,这被视为他们可以用来证明自己能够进行适当自我管理的一种手段。而现在,在他们看来,他们面临着最糟糕的情况:既有独立足球监管机构,又失去了博彩收入。”

马奎尔认为其影响是不均衡的。“这一举措实际上只影响那些排在‘六大’或‘七大’俱乐部之下的球队,”他补充道。“他们本来就无法获得博彩赞助,所以几乎没什么好担心的。

“即便如此,我们讨论的是


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空白空间:

詹森·琼斯(Jenson Jones)穿着桑德兰队没有赞助商的球衣,因为该俱乐部在进入新赛季前尚未达成协议。

Icon Sportswire / Getty

这些交易在不利情况下会损失 200 万英镑 到 300 万英镑。为了提供一些背景参考,这相当于英超联赛每家俱乐部每年约 200 万英镑 的法律费用。”

通过重新谈判的中央广播协议,一些缓解措施已经出台,这为俱乐部金库注入了额外资金,并有助于减轻打击。但博彩公司留下的空白仍需要紧急关注。

今年夏天出现了一波活跃势头。阿斯顿维拉与 Visit Rwanda 达成合作。伯恩茅斯与 Vitality 签约。布伦特福德将袖口赞助商 Indeed Recruitment 提升到了球衣正面。水晶宫引入了 AI 和软件平台 Temporal 来取代 NET88。富勒姆与技术和数据公司 ClickHouse 达成协议。埃弗顿迎来了在线金融交易平台 CMC Markets 来取代 Stake。

“这是一个买方市场,”海伍德(Haywood)表示。“在接下来的三四年里,这里将感受到影响,我们已经看到一些价值大幅下降。但事实依然是,与英超俱乐部合作对品牌具有很大吸引力。

“英超联赛拥有全球影响力,且观众群体在不断增长。这就是吸引营销资金的地方。球衣正面赞助是一项媒体资产,并被如此对待。它具有极高的可见度。”

“这并不是前六名俱乐部的问题,但我认为从长远来看,这对俱乐部来说并不是一件坏事。跨市场的多元化是一件好事。

“挑战在于,像布伦特福德这样的俱乐部无法承受在没有球衣赞助商的情况下进入本赛季。

“展望未来,足球赞助行业传统上一直是新兴产业的风向标。我认为在未来几年,有些行业可能会大规模进入这个领域,例如制药业。对于某些俱乐部来说,这仅仅是一个阵痛期,仅此而已。”

嘿,小额消费者的朋友们!博尔顿在德比日赢得胜利

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博尔顿流浪者 S. Dalby (14) T. Gale (25)

普雷斯顿北端 J. Erdis (86)

场馆:Toughsheet社区体育场 入场人数:26,262

Jessy

Parker Humphreys

当球迷们前往 Toughsheet 社区体育场时,主要的抱怨是北铁路公司(Northern Rail)没有考虑到增加更长的列车。只有四节车厢用来挤进试图观看英冠赛季揭幕战的博尔顿流浪者和普雷斯顿北端球迷。这种交通上的无能有力地提醒人们,俱乐部足球回来了。

这是两支球队自 2019 年以来首次交手;这场兰开夏郡德比最早始于 1885.。这也标志着博尔顿结束了在英冠的流亡,凭借在温布利球场赢得的附加赛决赛,回到了英格兰足球的第二级别联赛。

在进入本赛季之前,人们一直担心博尔顿在升级阵容方面缺乏投入(从英甲升级)。在开球前,博尔顿在博彩赔率中被列为降级概率第二高的球队。更乐观的 Opts 则将其列为第五。首发阵容中没有一名球员曾在英冠联赛中进球,不过这种情况在 14 分钟内得到了解决,当时萨姆·达尔比(Sam Dalby)抢在普雷斯顿门将丹尼尔·伊弗森(Daniel Iversen)扑出球后将其补射入网。蒂埃里·盖尔(Thierry Gale)在 11 分钟后加入,完成了一次迅猛的反击。尽管普雷斯顿在第 86 分钟扳回一球,但博尔顿顶住了压力,取得了自 2019 年 3 月以来的首场英冠胜利。

博尔顿夏季的支出无疑是非常节俭的。从利物浦加盟的卢卡·斯蒂芬森(Luca Stephenson)花费了 70 万英镑,以及从雷克斯汉姆加盟的刘易斯·布伦特(Lewis Brunt)花费了 50 万英镑,是主要的现金投入。相比之下,普雷斯顿花费了俱乐部纪录的 600 万英镑,以永久获得前租借球员阿尔菲·德文(Alfie Devine)的服务。

在英冠联赛中大肆挥霍的诱惑可能比足球界任何其他联赛都要大。上赛季该级别联赛的平均亏损为 2160 万英镑。老板们通过烧钱试图触及彩虹尽头的金罐——英超联赛。今年的诱惑进一步增加,因为历史上首次,获得第八名即可确保一个附加赛席位。

博尔顿在走到今天这一步的过程中绝非节俭。他们 2024 / 25 赛季最新的财务报表显示亏损了 1390 万英镑。当年只有查尔顿和雷克斯汉姆的亏损额更高,且这两支球队都在该赛季末升级到了英冠。值得注意的是,它们在上赛季也都保级成功。然而,博尔顿的支出属于那种让升级变得至关重要的类型,因为俱乐部的工资单占其营业额的 98.8%。

这家俱乐部比大多数人都更清楚当财务天平向不利方向倾斜时的风险。2019 年,他们进入了破产管理程序,球员们近半年没有拿到工资。当时,训练场的淋浴间没有热水。由于无法履行赛程,他们还面临一项暂缓执行的扣分处罚。

自接管以来,Football Ventures 向俱乐部投入了超过 600 万英镑0m,但在结果公布时,首席执行官大卫·雷(David Ray)告诉《博尔顿新闻》(The Bolton News),他们不想“无限期地维持这种规模的亏损”。

英冠联赛在本赛季引入了新的阵容成本规则,试图防止俱乐部承担的财务风险。这些现在是针对赛季的特定规则,将阵容支出与俱乐部的收入挂钩,数值设定为 85%,外加由所有者提供的股权补足额度,三年内上限为 3300 万英镑。

人们希望这一框架能够实现整个赛季更好的实时监控,而不是像之前的利润和可持续性规则那样,往往在事件发生很久之后才导致处罚。

然而,在被要求遵守这些规则的情况下,俱乐部可能会不遗余力地寻求增加收入。在英冠联赛中,博尔顿的情况比较特殊,他们没有接受博彩公司的赞助。相反,他们的球衣上印着 Victorian Plumbing 的标志,该公司的总部位于莱兰,距离球场约 15 英里。球场则由当地建筑产品供应商 Toughsheet 赞助。上座人数的增加也将有助于充实金库,例如周六他们创下了离开英超后的最高纪录,达到 26,262 人。

英超俱乐部已集体选择不再将博彩公司作为球衣正面赞助商,因此这些交易在较低级别的联赛中显得更具吸引力。然而,依赖那些提供古怪金融产品的晦涩公司可能会带来重大风险,正如伯恩利所经历的那样。该俱乐部在英冠赛季开始的同一天,出于不明确的原因,解除了与球衣正面赞助商 Finotive One(一家自称是“交易生态系统”的公司)的合作。

在支出与收入之间寻求可持续平衡的尝试就像走钢丝,而且对俱乐部来说,这条钢丝正变得越来越难走。

出错的风险在整个足球金字塔中随处可见,尤其是在一场与博尔顿同时开球的比赛中。2015 / 16 赛季的英超冠军莱斯特城在 League 1 的第一场比赛中仅获得一分。这是自 2009, 以来首次,他们被诺茨郡逼平,而后者刚从英乙联赛升级。当球队在财务上过度扩张时,跌落的速度之快,足以让人质疑那一抹成功的曙光是否值得。但对于大多数英冠联赛的所有者来说,这是他们将继续承担的风险。

观看指南

沃特福德 对 南安普顿 伯恩利 对 西汉姆联

Sky Sports 今日,1.30pm 和 4pm


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等待之局: 英格兰 U-20 主教练 Lydia Bedford 在 她的球队等待 欧足联(Uefa) 决定期间, 维持现状。 Carlos Rodrigues/ The FA / Getty

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U-20女足可能成为欧足联抵制国际足联的首批受害者

与国际足联(Fifa)之间持续的争端使英格兰球员的世界杯计划陷入不确定状态,杰西·帕克-汉弗莱斯(Jessy Parker Humphreys)在里斯本报道

当莱拉·德鲁里(Layla Drury)在周四晚上的这场对阵葡萄牙的比赛中打入英格兰队的第二粒进球时,这位17岁的球员有理由梦想自己已经锁定了下个月U-20世界杯的大名单席位。

即便对于这位曼联女足历史上最年轻的进球球员来说,这依然是一个特殊的时刻,让她离那场被英格兰队主教练利迪亚·贝德福德(Lydia Bedford)认为是青年足球巅峰的赛事更近了一步。

但尽管英格兰队赢得了比赛,德鲁里及其队友前往波兰参加世界杯的机会依然悬而未决。

贝德福德必须将她的阵容从36人削减至21, 但英格兰足协(FA)预计下周才会得知她是否还需要为此费心。这次赛事可能会成为欧足联(Uefa)抵制国际足联赛事的首个牺牲品,这是其与足球世界管理机构,尤其是其备受争议的主席吉安尼·因凡蒂诺(Gianni Infantino)之间持续冲突的一部分。

英格兰是六支获得该赛事资格的欧洲球队之一,但上个月,欧足联警告所有球队将抵制国际足联的赛事,直到因凡蒂诺关于在世界杯中引入外部投资的提议被“完全放弃”,并获得“具有约束力的保证”,确保“国际足联绝不会再次将其治理或赛事向私人所有权开放”。

因凡蒂诺的计划确实很快被放弃了,但欧足联坚持认为,由于没有保证此类事件不会再次发生,抵制的威胁依然存在。欧足联还明确表示,它对因凡蒂诺领导这一全球体育管理机构失去了信心。

这一切意味着,在里斯本郊外的足球城(Cidade do Futebol)少数观众的注视下,一小群英格兰和葡萄牙的青少年球员在不确定性的阴影下,希望能引起各自主教练的关注。

英格兰队与其他获得参赛资格的欧洲足协一样,在假设自己将参赛的前提下继续推进,他们凭借艾娃·贝克(Ava Baker)和德鲁里的进球,以2-0击败了葡萄牙。

虽然英格兰足协已与球员就此情况进行了沟通,但这在阵中并未成为一个主要的讨论点。

“我们收到足协的信息是照常进行,”贝德福德在赛后表示。“所以我们就是这么做的。如果我们不这样做,就无法充分利用当下的机会。”

当被问及欧足联球队是否会抵制U-20世界杯,以及在什么具体条件下会解除抵制时,欧足联的一位发言人仅提及他们最近的一份声明。这是一封与中北美及加勒比足联(Concacaf)以及亚足联(AFC)共同撰写的公开信。这两个管理机构都将有球队参加U-20世界杯,但两者都没有做出同样的抵制承诺。

在那封公开信中,三个管理机构呼吁对因凡蒂诺最初计划是如何产生的进行审查,“由一个完全独立的第三方执行,而非由国际足联本身、其员工或足球界内的任何利益相关者执行”。

由于英格兰年轻球员在女子超级联赛(Women's Super League)中的机会匮乏,U-20世界杯的重要性进一步增加。


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女子超级联赛对于年轻的英格兰球员来说机会寥寥。随着联赛竞争的加剧,教练们不愿通过派遣缺乏经验的球员来冒险影响比赛结果。国际赛事已成为年轻球员成长过程中至关重要的里程碑。

英格兰队自2018, 年以来未能获得U-20世界杯的资格,而此次回归是对该年龄段球员的专项奖励,因为他们的资格是基于在去年U-19欧洲锦标赛上的表现。

“我以前从未参加过世界杯,所以这绝对会是一件极其重大且美妙的经历,”19岁的曼联后卫露西·纽厄尔(Lucy Newell)说道。“显然,由于关于抵制的讨论,这件事存在一些不确定性。对我们来说,一切照旧,如果真的发生了,我们会去应对。”

“对于大多数[球员]来说,这是她们足球生涯至今最重大的经历,”贝德福德(Bedford)表示。

“这是青年足球的巅峰。平均有九名[U-20阵容中的]球员最终会晋升到成年队。所以,这就像一个诱饵,而且她们将在九月份迎来巨大的曝光。每个人都想登上那架飞机。”

关于女子赛事是否会成为抵制行动中首个被牺牲的对象,人们持有分歧。文化大臣丽莎·南迪(Lisa Nandy)告诉BBC,她不支持那种在“女子足球日益强盛”之时却“惩罚”女性和女孩的抵制行为,并补充说她“通常不支持任何形式的体育抵制”。

这与两周前的立场有所转变,当时她将抵制描述为一项她“强烈”支持的“原则性决定”。

露西·布朗兹(Lucy Bronze)曾在2010年U-20世界杯代表英格兰队出战,随后成为切尔西和英格兰女足(Lionesses)的球星,她持有不同观点。她

“这次抵制不仅是为了我今天和明天,更是为了在我们之后的所有小女孩或小男孩”

露西·布朗兹,英格兰队球员

表示,这次抵制对“足球运动的未来”至关重要。

“[这]不仅是为了我今天和明天,更是为了在我们之后的所有小女孩或小男孩,以确保在未来几十年的足球发展进程中,他们能处于一个良好的环境,而不仅仅是明天。”

布朗兹肯定意识到错过这次赛事可能产生的影响。她是在切尔西的季前巡演期间发表的上述言论,而包括莱克西·波特(Lexi Potter)和克洛伊·萨威(Chloe Sarwie)在内的多名年轻队友,都期待能被贝德福德征召。

全球女子足球由国际足联(Fifa)管理。那些引入私人投资的计划,可以说对女子足球的影响更大,因为商业贪婪可能会与以适合其自身而非追求最高利润的速度发展足球的需求产生冲突。如果欧足联(Uefa)实施抵制,一批球员将失去一个重大的发展机会。

将抵制威胁定格为由男性决定男性行为的决策,忽略了这样一个事实:欧足联内部的女性在制定该组织对国际足联计划的应对方案中发挥了关键作用。

毕竟,首先建议全面抵制的是一名女性——欧足联副主席劳拉·麦考利斯特(Laura McAllister);而另一名欧足联执行委员会成员丽丝·克拉文内斯(Lise Klaveness),在担任挪威足球协会主席期间,长期以来一直是国际足联的激烈批评者。

世界杯的最终名单即将提交给国际足联,这可能标志着一个不可逆转的临界点。如果欧足联不派遣球队,尤其是考虑到赛事在波兰举办,这将是一个表明其严肃态度的明显信号。

然而,关于球队是否出行的缺乏透明度,是目前最难与球员们心中期盼相调和的因素——她们肯定希望能达成一项允许她们参赛的决定。

在对阵葡萄牙队的比赛最后时刻,德鲁里(Drury)单刀直入,将球狠狠地击过门将,随后她在一名摄影师面前庆祝,将球衣上的队徽对着镜头展示。

这只是一群希望在足球赛事中代表国家出战的青少年。

非洲国家管理不善的困境撼动女足世界杯格局

杰西·帕克·汉弗莱斯 (Jessy Parker Humphreys)

如果在今年的非洲女子国家杯中有一个趋势,那就是组织管理不善所带来的危险。

过去三周,非洲女足的传统格局被颠覆了。所有四支半决赛球队都可能是首次夺冠者,而曾10次夺冠的尼日利亚则在四分之一决赛阶段被淘汰。

随后,他们在世界杯资格赛附加赛中输给了南非——这是在比赛期间增加的一轮比赛,旨在决定两支在四分之一决赛中落败的球队中,谁将参加跨洲附加赛——这意味着,他们将历史上首次无法参加女子世界杯。对于一支在2023年仅在点球大战中输给最终进入决赛的英格兰队的球队来说,这无疑是一次巨大的跌落。

相反,马拉维、摩洛哥、阿尔及利亚和喀麦隆将成为明年夏天在巴西举行的世界杯中非洲的保证代表,而加纳和南非则有可能通过跨洲附加赛加入其中。马拉维和喀麦隆都将是世界杯的新面孔,在经历了一系列出色表现后,他们理应争夺非洲女子国家杯的决赛席位。

这次赛事将陷入混乱的迹象在首轮比赛中就已显现,当时世界排名第153位的马拉维以 3-2. 击败了尼日利亚。考虑到马拉维由于资金限制甚至没有参加 2024. 年本届赛事的预选赛,单凭这一点就已是一次重大冷门。接下来的发展则更加惊人,他们不仅在小组赛中名列第一,随后又击败了加纳和阿尔及利亚闯入决赛。

谈到马拉维的成功,人们的关注点自然会转向查温加姐妹(Chawinga sisters)的传奇故事。塔比莎(Tabitha)出生在国家北部的农村地区,在签约瑞典丙级俱乐部 Krokom / Dvärsåtts IF 后,她成为了马拉维第一位在欧洲踢球的女足运动员。

在转会至 Kvarnsvedens IK 后,她建议俱乐部同时签约她的妹妹特姆瓦(Temwa)。由于俱乐部持怀疑态度,塔比莎提出由她支付妹妹的机票费用,前提是如果俱乐部签约特姆瓦,则予以报销。最终她拿回了这笔钱。

那是近十年前的事了,这对姐妹随后在全球俱乐部足球赛场上大放异彩。塔比莎目前效力于里昂,而特姆瓦则凭借在堪萨斯城电流队(Kansas City Current)的连续两个赛季表现,成为了美国国家女子足球联赛(NWSL)的最有价值球员。

然而,这在某种程度上掩盖了一个可能更有趣的故事,这个故事讲述的是长期的体制发展,而非一对天赋异禀的姐妹。

当弗利特伍德·海亚(Fleetwood Haiya)在 2023, 年接管马拉维足协时,他帮助建立了首个国家女子联赛,并确保国家队在每次国际比赛日都有赛程安排。与此同时,培养球员的青训学院在全国各地涌现。

通过 Ascent 学院培养的罗斯·卡兹雷(Rose Kadzere)在 2024 年加盟蒙彼利埃后,成为了首位直接转会至欧洲五大联赛的马拉维球员(无论男女)。卡兹雷在对阵加纳的比赛中打入一记精彩的绝杀球,帮助马拉维进入半决赛并确保了世界杯资格,但由于在对阵摩洛哥的比赛中一次鲁莽的挑战被红牌罚下,她将缺席决赛。

另一位 Ascent 学院的毕业生、19 岁的费思·钦齐穆(Faith Chinzimu)在半决赛对阵阿尔及利亚的比赛中助攻了马拉维的第二个进球。钦齐穆在去年签约瑞典的 BK Häcken 俱乐部之前,曾试训过多家欧洲俱乐部。

这与尼日利亚足球协会支持其球队的方式形成了鲜明对比。球员和工作人员的薪资支付长期存在问题,导致球队曾威胁要抵制 2023 年女足世界杯。此外,赛事准备工作也受到质疑,有人指出水准低下的友谊赛导致他们准备不足。在其他国家选择投资并组织球队时,尼日利亚却在衰落。在男足错过今年的赛事后,其女足未能获得 2027 年女足世界杯的参赛资格。

并非只有尼日利亚在与足协之间存在问题。加纳队在世界杯资格赛附加赛(该场比赛他们获胜)的前一天发布了一份声明,列举了未支付的奖金,并要求对其福祉提供更好的支持。

尼日利亚队被喀麦隆队淘汰,而喀麦隆队是在赛事临时扩军至 16 支球队后才获得参赛资格的。他们得益于门将米凯莉·比希纳(Michaely Bihina)的出色发挥,她在本次赛事中表现惊人。

这是一个巨大的冲击,因为在尼日利亚出局后,摩洛哥被视为夺冠热门,此前他们在过去两届非洲女足杯(Wafcon)决赛中均输给了“超级猎鹰队”(Super Falcons)。在西班牙世界杯冠军教练豪尔赫·比尔达(Jorge Vilda)的带领下,摩洛哥队的表现不尽如人意,目前尚不清楚这位充满争议的教练是否将带领他们参加明年的世界杯。

当红球星:堪萨斯城的特姆瓦·奇温加(Temwa Chiwinga)代表马拉维参赛,马拉维足协为其国家队提供了更多长期的支持。 马拉维足协


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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

下赛季英超联赛的未知数

如果阿隆索能理顺切尔西

没有哪支球队比切尔西经历过更多的变动。再一次。但这次会有所不同,对吧?阿隆索聪明、有魅力,且拥有无可挑剔的球员履历;切尔西通过签下乔丹·亨德森和丹尼·韦尔贝克解决了阵容缺乏经验的问题,这两位球员的年纪大到足以出现在《奥德赛》的书本版本中。对于 BlueCo 来说,第六次尝试肯定能带来好运。

底线在哪里

上赛季伍尔弗汉普顿和西汉姆联的降级再次证明,在英超联赛中,停滞不前是致命的。富勒姆、埃弗顿甚至水晶宫是否也面临着同样的命运?纽卡斯尔在同一个夏天失去了两名最优秀的球员和他们的主教练。但三支 newly-promoted(新升级)球队中,是否有任何一支足够强大,能够惩罚其中任何一支球队?

英超的告别之夏,留下后瓜迪奥拉时代的权力真空待填补

谁将成为下一个巨头(如果真的有的话),目前尚不明确,罗里·史密斯(Rory Smith)写道。

上一次我们关注英超时,感觉每个人都在道别。贝尔纳多·席尔瓦(Bernardo Silva)和约翰·斯通斯(John Stones)得到了曼城队友们的荣誉护卫队迎接。穆罕默德·萨拉赫(Mohamed Salah)和安迪·罗伯逊(Andy Robertson)在安菲尔德球场走了一圈,眼神中充满血丝。詹姆斯·米尔纳(James Milner)和西姆斯·科尔曼(Seamus Coleman)则以恰到好处的坚毅姿态鞠躬谢幕。

考虑到此后发生的一切——一场时长仿佛经历了二叠纪的世界杯,以及詹尼·因凡蒂诺(Gianni Infantino)那如烟花般绚烂的傲慢所引发的公开爆发——人们很容易忘记上赛季最后一天具有明显的告别氛围。由于几乎没有真正的悬念,英超各俱乐部转而将精力投入到一些竞争性的纪念活动中。

无论看向哪里,到处都是真挚的马赛克拼图、令人动容的致敬以及泪洒现场的演讲。其中最引人注目的是佩普·瓜迪奥拉(Pep Guardiola)的演讲,他向一座现在部分冠以其名字的体育场,以及一个被他彻底改变、变得面目全非的联赛告别。“这他妈太有趣了,”他对着一群狂热且心碎的观众说道。

伊蒂哈德球场的场景既像是一场尖锐的快讯——比赛本身基本上成了瓜迪奥拉离职演讲这一主事件之前的填充内容——又充满了浓厚的世纪末气息。在那一天,某种东西正在终结。

在过去的几年里,英超过去十年中的许多标志性人物一个接一个地在某种形式的落日余晖中被送走。哈里·凯恩(Harry Kane)和萨迪奥·马内(Sadio Mané)在2023年夏天离开;尤尔根·克洛普(Jürgen Klopp)和毛里西奥·波切蒂诺(Mauricio Pochettino)在2024.离任。孙兴慜(Heung-min Son)和凯文·德布劳内(Kevin De Bruyne)在一年后紧随其后。

这个夏天,这种零星的流失变成了奔涌的溪流。萨拉赫、席尔瓦、斯通斯和其他人在某种程度上是幸运的:他们至少有机会说再见。在过去的几个月里,英超显得异常低调,首先是被世界杯掩盖,随后又是因凡蒂诺试图将足球这项运动的部分核心资产移交给某个次等继承人的失败尝试。

然而,几乎每次英超闯入大众意识时,似乎都是为了标志着又一次离去。阿尔内·斯洛特(Arne Slot)、马尔科·席尔瓦(Marco Silva)和埃迪·豪(Eddie Howe)已经离开。在月底之前,罗德里(Rodri)很可能也会加入这场大迁徙,这位瓜迪奥拉麾下伟大曼城队的基石正处于前往巴塞罗那的边缘。

在一个夏天里,英超不仅将失去过去10年中最具破坏力的球员萨拉赫,还将失去最具统治力的球员罗德里。在那些处于帝国阶段的曼城和利物浦球队中,仅剩下少数几位老将。

理论上,新赛季的开始是对每个人的重新启动。积分榜被重置,记录被抹除。但在实践中,情况并非如此。也许一直以来都不是,但现在绝对不是,因为足球在任何时刻都断然拒绝松开它像虎钳一样死死抓住我们前额叶皮层的掌控。一个赛季不可避免地滚入下一个赛季。过去发生的事情被重新包装成悬念,为即将到来的事情做铺垫。

无论如何,通常是这样。但在发生如此之多变动的情况下,这是否适用则是另一回事。由于这么多长期占据我们想象空间的标志性人物的缺席,联赛在某种根本方式上发生了偏移:这与其说是一个新剧集,不如说是一部全新的剧集。

例如,有九家俱乐部将带着新主帅进入本赛季。这使得伯恩茅德的马尔科·罗斯(Marco Rose)成为了联赛中任职时间第12长的教练。而他实际上从未带领自己的俱乐部参加过一场正式比赛。

所有这些都使得预测本赛季将呈现何种形态成为一项徒劳之举。也许——正如逻辑所暗示的——它会比平时更加开放,近期过去那种僵化的等级制度将在代际交替中被扫除;也许我们关于本赛季的所有假设都将被推翻。

也许哈比·阿隆索能理顺切尔西那 46 人的庞大阵容。也许罗伯托·德泽尔比的挥金如土能推动托特纳姆在积分榜上攀升。也许恩佐·马雷斯卡能成功,而安多尼·伊拉奥拉不能,或者反之亦然。也许埃梅里率领的阿斯顿维拉能利用这种不确定性,进一步在积分榜上向上撬动。

或者,也许会发生完全相反的情况,而阿森纳——唯一一支没有在夏天陷入变革阵痛、且似乎并未试图建立全新身份的顶尖球队——将以最小的波折,且极有可能凭借最多的角球,连续第二次夺冠。也许近未来看起来与近期过去极其相似。

这至少有助于回答笼罩在即将到来的赛季之上的另一个问题。在英超过去几年经历的所有告别中,瓜迪奥拉的离去无疑是最具影响力的;十年来,他不仅是英格兰足球占据主导地位的教练,更是其头号招牌、最大吸引力和最耀眼的星光。

借用摔角术语来说,他既能扮演“正面角色”(face)也能扮演“反派角色”(heel):根据情况以及在某种程度上的心情,他可以是英雄或恶棍,是反叛者或暴君,是理性的声音或挑衅者。无论以何种身份出现,他所说、所做或所想的一切都能成为新闻。他成为了这个联赛的门面,这种影响力在之前的教练中仅有少数几人具备;就像亚历克斯·弗格森、阿尔塞纳·温格、若泽·穆里尼奥以及在某种程度上的克洛普一样,瓜迪奥拉拥有真正的影响力。

英超历史上第一次,本周开赛时这些教练将全部不在场。米克尔·阿尔特塔是联赛中唯一一位赢得过英超冠军的教练。突然之间,这个联赛感觉像是缺失了一个核心人物。

最终由谁来承担这个角色,将在某种程度上定义英超小心翼翼地进入后瓜迪奥拉 era 的基调与色彩。在一个长期以教练水准定义自身的赛事中,阿尔特塔似乎是最可能的候选人,在目前占据联赛技术区的那些温文尔雅的巴斯克人和德国人中,他是唯一一个可以说拥有某种公众人格的人。

或者也许还会有另一种转变;也许英超孕育出的这种追求微小差距(fine-margins)版本的比赛,将使重点重新回到那些能决定胜负的球员身上。世界杯证明了埃尔林·哈兰德无疑是英超场上最突出的球星。他足够古怪,以至于完全令人着迷。

当然,也可能是其他人,或者几个人,或者根本没有人:也许一个主导人物的概念本身就是过时的。也许瓜迪奥拉是最后一头“巨兽”。随着他的离开,某些东西结束了。在他的缺席中,某些新东西将会出现。可能只需要一些时间来弄清楚,那究竟是什么。

观看指南

阿森纳 对阵 曼彻斯特城 TNT Sports 1 今日,下午3点


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

9

数据是否让英超变得乏味?

罗里·史密斯 (Rory Smith)

在执教水晶宫的最后一场比赛前十天,奥利弗·格拉斯纳 (Oliver Glasner) 与他的教练团队以及俱乐部的分析部门坐在一起。他们此行的目的是制定一项赢得欧协联决赛的计划,这是水晶宫在一年内争取第三座奖杯的机会,也是格拉斯纳的告别礼。

这本身并没有什么特别之处。格拉斯纳和几乎所有现代主教练一样,在每场比赛前都会举行类似的会议。不过,这次会议在两方面显得与众不同。首先,它开始得很早:在面对巴利亚多利德(Rayo Vallecano)之前,水晶宫至少还有一场英超比赛。其次,会议时间很长。格拉斯纳和他的同事们谈了很久,持续了五个多小时。

会议的目的也很常规。分析师们肯定观看了数小时巴利亚多利德的录像,剖析其比赛的每一个方面。在他们提交研究结果后,格拉斯纳及其团队制定了一套方案,旨在抵消对方的优势并利用其弱点。

现在格拉斯纳在诺丁汉森林,他的大多数会议将不会持续这么久。即便考虑到水晶宫当时是绝对热门,这依然是一个特殊的场合,一场规模较大的决赛。尽管如此,这说明了现代教练团队对对手研究的(有时甚至是极端的)细致程度。现在每家俱乐部都拥有一个人员充足的分析部门来研究下一个对手:观看其比赛,挖掘表现数据,并就预期情况出具深度报告。越来越多的球队在阵中配备了专门负责评估对方定位球的人员。等到比赛开始时,主教练对面对的球队之了解程度几乎与对自己球队一样深。

精英足球领域充斥着如此海量的知识,以至于分析师和教练都认为,主要挑战在于如何将其浓缩成一种实用、易懂且可操作的形式。阿斯顿维拉的主教练乌奈·埃梅里 (Unai Emery) 以热衷于开会而闻名:他每周举行三次会议,每次时长约 90 分钟。

这比大多数人传统上能接受的时间要长——通常情况下,主教练尽量将与球员的视频分析环节控制在半小时以内——但这或许是一个前兆。一些在视频录像环境下成长起来的球员现在也雇佣了自己的分析师。

这就是足球的信息 era.。比赛正被数以太字节(terabytes)计的统计数据、数十亿个关于身体输出、个人能力和集体努力的数据点所包围。它正部署着日益先进的技术、日益卓越的头脑和日益创新的指标,以更深入地挖掘其不可见的现实。它比以往任何时候都更聪明。

至于是否变得更好,则是另一回事。

正如现在每年似乎如此一样,切尔西在夏天挥霍了巨额资金。不过,他们今夏最具代表性的签约并非一名球员。6月,切尔西触发了奥斯汀·麦克菲 (Austin MacPhee) 在阿斯顿维拉合同中的解约金条款。麦克菲在夏天与葡萄牙队共事后,成为了该俱乐部的一线队新任定位球教练。

凭借其标志性的金色长发,麦克菲在过去几年里成为了一个熟悉的身影;每当维拉赢得角球时,电视摄像机总会可靠地切到他的镜头。他的名声、他的知名度以及最终他的转会,似乎是对 2026 年英超状态的一个相当精准的总结。

上赛季顶级联赛演变成一场“炮战”的事实并非没有被注意到。定位球定义了整个赛季。阿森纳在夺冠之路上通过定位球打入了 29 球,这让他们的定位球教练尼古拉斯·乔弗 (Nicolas Jover) 在酋长球场附近拥有了一幅带有半讽刺意味的壁画。在整个联赛中,超过四分之一的所有进球来自任意球。

人们对于探讨这种转变的原因缺乏兴趣:仅有少量关于禁区内混战中自由裁量裁判标准的讨论;少数关于这是否由比赛的数据分析师驱动的尝试性探讨;以及相当一部分传统主义者的快感,认为英国足球终于摆脱了瓜迪奥拉 era 的觉醒(woke)废话。

但显而易见,对定位球的关注是一个结果而非原因,是一种反应而非选择:世界上最富有的球队发现,通过阵地进攻得分、通过在场上压制对手来赢得比赛变得更加困难。而联赛本身正逐渐陷入一种光鲜的僵局。定位球成了仅存的少数优势之一。

多年来,教练们一直在劝阻球员进行远射,这种建议既根植于数据,也根植于受瓜迪奥拉影响的美学主义。与此同时,在 2004 和 2024 之间,每场比赛阵地进攻中的(高空)传中次数几乎减少了一半。

那么,或许上赛季定义英超的风格——中后卫为了长传球而缓慢前插、球员围堵守门员、角球时无休止的推搡——就是自然的下一步,就像篮球球队试图模仿斯蒂芬·库里的三分雨所引发的变革一样。正如在许多其他生活领域一样,我们追随数据的指引。这是踢足球最聪明的方式。电脑是这么说的。

这是否令人愉悦并不完全相关。在世界杯决赛后,美国体育挑衅者斯基普·贝勒斯(Skip Bayless)宣称:“西班牙凭借令人窒息的防守赢得了比赛,这让 [梅西] 变成了普普通通的一名球员。足球又变回了它一直以来的样子:枯燥。”萨姆·安德森(Sam Anderson)在《纽约时报》中写道:“这场比赛怎么会变成这样?为什么它没有改变?”

这就是足球内部的核心矛盾。它没有娱乐的义务。在球场上的人,在会议室里的人,以及钻研数据的人:他们的工作不是寻找最好的踢法,而是在一个胜负差距极小的运动中,寻找最好的获胜方式。

本文的更长版本可在网上阅读。

阿森纳接下来的局面

除了佩普·瓜迪奥拉之外,上一次成功卫冕英超冠军的教练是亚历克斯·弗格森爵士,那得追溯到2009年。从那时起,切尔西(三次)、利物浦(两次)和莱斯特城(情理之中)在夺冠后的次年都陷入了低谷。米克尔·阿尔特塔需要打破这一规律。

img-245.jpeg

角球时的允许行为

上赛季的英超联赛基本上是一场大型推搡比赛,偶尔被足球运动所中断。本赛季的性质,以及冠军的归属,很可能取决于联赛裁判是否决定禁区内不应再是毫无约束的混战。

谁是竞争者

除了阿森纳,理论上的“六强”中其他所有成员都在过去五个月内任命了(正式)主教练。恩佐·马雷斯卡在曼彻斯特城可能是一个延续性的任命,但在八月结束前,他很可能会失去三名瓜迪奥拉的忠实部下。

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10

observer.co.uk^{}[] 16.08.26

希望你也在现场?体育荣耀战胜冷漠

在伯明翰举行的欧洲锦标赛一直问题不断,但乔治·西姆斯(George Simms)在赛道上见证了伟大

周四

这是 2026 年在伯明翰举行的欧洲田径锦标赛的第四天。在前往亚历山大体育场的路上,我的 Uber 司机问我“那边是不是出什么事了”。很难责怪他,因为当我为了寻找一辆错过的巴士而在市中心徘徊时,几乎看不到任何迹象表明,一群世界上最有天赋的运动员正在四英里外进行比赛。

在经历了三天理所应当的批评后,我抵达现场时预想的是空座位和种种不便,然而,体育场 23,000 个席位中的 20,000 多个已被填满。这是一个完美的场景:蓝天映衬着蓝色跑道,傍晚的温暖让人从下午极其酷热的阳光中解脱出来。田径是一项糟糕的观赏运动,除非它突然变得精彩——在任何给定时间里,要么发生的事情太多,要么太少。于是,我开始等待,并试图辨别女子三级跳远决赛中正在发生什么。

我最终放弃了,但随着时间推移,星光出现了。利奥·诺伊格鲍尔(Leo Neugebauer),一名身高 6 英尺 7 英寸、体重略低于 110 公斤的德国人,在男子十项全能的 1500 米决赛中排名 20 人中的第 19 位,甚至无法将双腿拖过终点线。然而,他在前九项比赛中领先如此之多,以至于依然赢得了金牌;他躺在地上,披着黑-红-金三色旗,指向天空以确认这一事实。与此同时,掷圆盘一项由一名戴眼镜的斯洛文尼亚巨人克里斯蒂扬·切赫(Kristjan Ceh)夺冠,他看起来就像在尝试打水漂,身材比例如此完美,你简直无法想象他会做其他任何事情。马克·英格利什(Mark English),一名 33 岁、头发花白的爱尔兰医生,赢得了男子 800 米冠军。他此前曾两次获得欧洲赛铜牌——分别在 2014 年和 2022 年——但这次比赛是对坚持力量的纪念,提醒人们职业生涯和人生很少是线性的。

接着是女子 200 米比赛,参赛的英国选手有三位:艾米·亨特(Amy Hunt)、迪娜·阿舍-史密斯(Dina Asher-Smith)和萨克塞斯·埃杜安(Success Eduan)。亨特赢得了周一的

“我今天早上醒来就知道,无论其他人跑得如何都无关紧要,我注定会赢”

100 米冠军,但更长距离的比赛更适合她的身高和身体机能。这次胜利让她在六天内潜在的四枚金牌目标中完成了一半,有望成为首位在单届欧洲锦标赛中实现此成就的运动员。

显然,营销主管们很喜欢亨特,因为她——一名多次获得奥运会、世界赛和欧洲赛奖牌,拥有剑桥大学英语文学二等一(2:1)学位,且曾被《英国版 Vogue》评为“定义 2020 年代的面孔”之一的人——具有“亲和力”,而这大概是她唯一不具备的特质。即便刚刚以 22.19 的成绩赢得了 200 米冠军,她看起来也没有出汗,戴着王冠巡游,妆容完美,牙齿洁白,后梳的发型依然稳固。最终,你只能将她归类为像朱德·贝林厄姆(Jude Bellingham)那样的人——就是那些单纯地“比你强”的人,然后试着继续过你那平庸的生活。亨特是最有趣的英国运动员之一,并非因为她为,嗯,牛津剑桥的毕业生提供了急需的代表性,而是因为她所谓的“这种激进的、完全疯狂的自信”。她对自己的自信和野心有着一种独特的 Z 世代的坦率,你怀疑随着名声的增长,这会让一些人感到不适,但同样地,这似乎对她有效,并激励着她。在 200 米比赛后,她说:“我今天早上醒来时感到如此平静,因为和 100 米一样,我有一种强烈的预感,今天将是我的日子。我知道无论其他人跑得如何都无关紧要,我注定会赢。”她拥有那种罕见的能力,能够融入时刻,融入比赛,其形象和身份已经完整且统一。她热爱关注且不以为耻,像电影《角斗士》中的罗素·克劳那样举起双臂问道:

“你们还没被满足吗?”观众热爱她,正如世界很快也会热爱她一样。我看了一眼数千名排队等车返回伯明翰的人群,再次打开了 Uber。

周五

今天是所谓的“基莉周”的基莉日——如果这真的被宣传成了“周”的话——所以让我们从结尾开始。基莉·霍奇金森(Keely Hodgkinson)坐在亚历山大体育场的跑道上,凝视着远方,面露难色,焦虑地抖动着右腿。感觉有些东西发生了偏移,或许是永久性的,一种新的世界格局正在出现。霍奇金森跑出的800米成绩在过去应该是足够好的。她也认为足够。她让奥黛丽·韦罗(Audrey Werro)在逆风中领跑,自己采取保护姿态等待,随后在外道发起冲刺。然而,差距从未缩小。韦罗将44年的锦标赛纪录打破了半秒多(1:54.81),夺得了霍奇金森曾在2022年和2024年赢得的冠军。这并非两人的最快成绩,但在逆风的情况下,两人在座无虚席的体育场面前都闯入了史上最快前30名。


**

observer.co.uk

16.08.26

11

终于获胜:爱尔兰33岁的马克·英格利什(Mark English)在800米比赛中率先冲线

Ben Stansall / AFP via Getty

img-248.jpeg

巅峰时刻:艾米·亨特(Amy Hunt)在伯明翰赢得200 metres比赛后庆祝。

Daniela Porcelli / Getty

显而易见的问题是,霍奇金森还能多少次击败韦罗。韦罗比她高5英寸,且小两岁,今年两次跑进1:54.00,这是史上第三和第四快的成绩(仅次于80年代的两项纪录,而那两项纪录比奈杰尔·法拉奇的捐款更令人怀疑),而霍奇金森从未达到过这个标准(她的纪录是1:54.33)。在韦罗赢得斯德哥尔摩钻石联赛分站赛后,霍奇金森曾说:“我不会让这种情况再次发生。”而在这里,她没有太多选择,她强调自己处于有史以来最好的竞技状态。“有时我退一步思考,你会发现即使你如此渴望,但仅仅渴望可能还不够,”她在赛后说道。她谈到了重新整顿和再次出发,谈到了全力以赴,但似乎意识到她短暂的黄金时代可能已经结束。

紧随韦罗和霍奇金森之后的是费姆克·布罗德斯-博尔(Femke Broeders-Bol),她最近从400米栏项目转项而来。布罗德斯-博尔的跑步动作优雅得令人惊叹,在赛场外她像个林中精灵,带着一种轻盈的积极感和米妮鼠般的声音。她承认自己仍在学习如何掌控800米比赛的节奏和体感,但即便如此,她依然追平了1:55.54, 的荷兰纪录,比六个月前她的首次800米竞技成绩快了3.5秒。在这里待久了,你不可避免地会被这种接连不断的卓越表现所震撼,这些壮举提醒着人们人类惊人的能力与多样性,以及进步与创造的潜力。这种景象随处可见——卡斯滕·沃霍尔姆(Karsten Warholm)打破400米栏锦标赛纪录,吉安马可·坦贝里(Gianmarco Tamberi)在34岁时赢得跳高冠军,随后在体育场指挥观众为他1岁大的

img-249.jpeg

img-250.jpeg

女儿唱《生日快乐》歌,还有韦罗,甚至包括霍奇金森。但田径运动总能找到自我阻碍的方式,欧文·安萨(Owen Ansah)在赢得200m冠军的同时,正面临因错过药检而即将到来的禁赛,这导致德国队没有选他参加接力赛,因为被禁赛的可能性太高了。

周六

正如周五一段甜腻的宣传视频向亚历山大体育场的观众所告知的那样,“田径是对超越昨日之我的追求”,但这似乎总是难以实现。然而,英国队在 4x100 米接力赛中赢得了荣耀,亨特与阿舍-史密斯、埃杜安以及伊马尼-拉拉·兰西库特一起赢得了她本周的第三枚金牌,在伯明翰一个凉爽的夜晚,男女代表队均以绝对优势轻松获胜。在当晚早些时候,意大利选手安迪·迪亚兹·埃尔南德斯以 18.15m 的世界领先成绩赢得了三级跳远冠军,而德国的朱利安·韦伯和安德烈亚斯·阿尔姆格伦分别打破了标枪和男子 10,000m 的锦标赛纪录,瑞典选手阿尔姆格伦领先除三人以外的所有竞争对手一整圈。在男子 1500m 比赛中,英国选手的希望在最后直道崩溃,杰克斯·怀特曼和海沃德失去领先地位,失去了争夺奖牌的机会。而现年 33 岁的卡塔里娜·约翰逊-汤普森在过去一年中仅参加过一次比赛——5 月的一场

巨大飞跃:利奥·诺伊格鲍尔在跳远沙坑中落地,在十项全能比赛中向金牌迈进。

Ben Stansall / AFP via Getty

铅球项目——并在女子七项比赛中获得第 21 名,看起来疲惫不堪且心碎,这很可能是她那段由竞争和遗憾定义职业生涯的最后日子,她牺牲自我,旨在参加首届在本土举办的欧洲锦标赛。

对于英国田径协会来说,最大的担忧是伯明翰的失败会让伦敦在竞争慕尼黑、内罗比和罗马举办 2029 年世界田径锦标赛的申办过程中显得逊色——这竟然是英格兰第一次举办欧洲锦标赛。

尽管人们在讨论票价——重大场次的最高档票价为 £150——但在本周早些时候,同样数量的低价票也未能售出。“我认为本可以多做一些广告,”霍奇金森周五说道,这显然说得过于含蓄了。

但还存在更严重的问题。前往亚历山大体育场需要强大的心理素质和体力——如果你没抢到沃尔索尔贝斯科特体育场每天 650 张售价 £20 的接驳停车票,你的其他选择包括从佩里巴尔车站步行 25 分钟,乘坐像桑拿房一样闷热的市中心巴士,或者花 £17.50 将车停在步行 45 分钟远的地方。一旦进入场内,一瓶水售价 £3.95,一个猪肉卷售价 £18.50。这些琐碎的后勤问题与票价一样,极有可能将人们推开。组织者还遭遇了不幸:关键道路因维修或事故关闭,火车反复取消或延误,距离体育场步行距离内的唯一车站周四晚上因接触网问题关闭,这成为了英国基础设施持续衰败故事中的又一章节。

然而,在周日,亨特将再次冲击金牌,追求某种独特的东西,追求她一直认为自己应得的、一直相信终将到来的星光与成就。尽管存在种种琐碎的争论,她几乎肯定将成为本次赛事的遗产。

竞争所需之物

所有这些……只为了获得第二名:一部 BBC 体育纪录片揭秘了基利·霍奇金森为欧洲锦标赛进行的精疲力竭的训练


12

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

比赛的权利:阿富汗难民板球队与军队队及剑桥大学队比赛;马拉拉·优素福扎伊与哈利达·波帕尔(下图)。 Sophie Evans 为《观察者报》拍摄;Kelly Defina / Getty Images

阿富汗女运动员为代表国家的权利而战

逃离塔利班威胁的足球运动员和板球运动员希望难民球队获得认可,Um-E-Aymen Babar 撰文

2011年,哈利达·波帕尔(Khalida Popal)为了逃避塔利班而离开阿富汗时,她认为自己一周后就会回去。15年后,她依然生活在流亡之中。

五年前,在美国撤出该国后,塔利班重新夺回政权,女性被迫承受毁灭性的限制——被禁止接受教育、参加体育运动、参与政治,禁止在自家屋内大声笑,禁止在公共场合与其他女性交谈,禁止开车,禁止使用智能手机,禁止前往公园和健身房,名单还在继续增加。

最近出台的一项最令人心碎的法律允许男性殴打妻子,只要他们没有打断骨头或留下可见的伤口即可。如果丈夫对妻子的袭击严重到那种程度,那么处罚仅为15天监禁。而虐待动物的处罚最高可达五个月监禁。

波帕尔,39, 将阿富汗描述为一座“露天监狱”。这与她2007年居住在那里、创建该国第一支国家足球队并担任队长时的景象截然不同。“女性被剥夺了生存这一基本人权,并且正在失去她们的未来,”她说。

“我们试图成为姐妹们的发声者。我们想尽一切可能,不让世界忘记我们国家的女性和女孩。”

“她们在绝望地寻找某种方式,以逃离那座监狱。我们希望尝试一切可能,成为一个平台。”

2014, 波帕尔创立了非营利组织“女孩力量”(Girl Power)。2021年8月,该组织发起了一场活动,通过与其他机构合作,促成了600多名女性和女孩的撤离。

“无论是足球、板球、音乐,还是我们拥有的任何力量,我们都希望提高人们的意识。这是我们的倡导和战斗方式,”波帕尔补充道。

“这就是我的基金会成立的目的。我们希望成为那些没有机会发声的姐妹们的发声者。”

今年4月,国际足联(Fifa)宣布了一项具有里程碑意义的裁决,允许由难民组成的“阿富汗女性联合队”(Afghan Women United)代表阿富汗作为该国的官方国家队,而无需获得塔利班的批准。

“这听起来很简单,对吧?女性和女孩应该能够踢足球。但实际情况要复杂得多,”波帕尔解释道。

“这将是一支没有家园的球队。我们必须依赖海外侨民和流亡球员。”

“当时出现了一些抵触情绪,因为人们质疑这一决定是否会促使其他女性球队脱离其所属的足协。”

“但阿富汗是唯一一支女性在社会生活中被完全抹除的球队,而这些对话挑战了每个人对足球和体制的看法。”

该裁决意味着这支球队将有资格参加国际赛事,例如2028年夏季奥运会的预选赛,但对她们而言,胜利并非由结果定义。

“每次我们踏上球场,就是一次胜利,”波帕尔说。

“在最高水平的比赛中竞技对我们来说有不同的含义。这意味着被允许进入球场,携带我们的旗帜并唱起我们的国歌。我希望这是一个美好旅程的开始。”

“有时我会担心,我会收到警告,但我的目标一直如此坚定,没有任何恐惧能让我退缩。”

“我的目标是通过足球回馈,因为这就是我的活动主义开始的方式。足球是我的语言,也是我的工具。”

“如果我告诉你我不害怕,那是谎话。”

板球运动在认可阿富汗流亡女运动员方面进展较为缓慢。

2017年6月,阿富汗板球委员会(ACB)说服国际板球理事会(ICC)授予其正式会员资格,使男子队能够参加正式的测试赛(Test matches)。尽管ACB未能满足关于女子板球的标准(即需要建立“令人满意的女子发展路径结构”),但这一结果依然实现了。

2020年,25名女性获得了中央合同,但一年后,在塔利班统治下,女子队的款项被切断,而男子队则继续参赛,出现在多次世界杯、测试赛和冠军杯中。

“我们希望国际板球理事会允许我们以阿富汗的国旗和名称参赛,”阿富汗快球投手图巴·萨尔瓦里(Tooba Sarwari)说道,她于2021年持人道主义签证逃往澳大利亚。

“代表我的国家是我的权利。现在是国际板球理事会采取行动的时候了,他们需要承认我们的球队。为了走到今天,我们面临了许多挑战。”

萨尔瓦里在学习国际关系和政治的同时,担任教师和板球教练。

“阿富汗女性的处境非常糟糕,这就是为什么我们如此努力,我们希望成为数百万甚至没有基本人权的妇女和女孩的发声者,”萨尔瓦里补充道。

上个月,国际板球理事会指派了一个特别工作组,负责制定一份路线图,旨在让阿富汗难民队在2030年前能够参加国际板球理事会的资格赛。

队中许多女性的女性家属仍生活在阿富汗塔利班的压迫法律之下。对于波帕尔(Popal)来说,梦想依然是有一天能回到阿富汗。

“我想回去创办一所女子学校,创办一个足球学院,并在那里开展我现在所做的所有工作,”她解释道。

“每当我试图朝着那个方向迈进时,总会遇到挫折。

“但我们没有失去希望,希望依然存在。我能做的就是不断地激励、支持并创造机会,让年轻一代能够将自己视为未来的部长、总统和领导者。”


observer.co.uk 16.08.26 13

百分赛(The Hundred)真实价值的考验将是其首次涉足残酷的自由市场

竞争的影响尚待揭晓

卡梅伦·庞森比 (Cameron Ponsonby)

英格兰和威尔士板球委员会(ECB)喜欢数据。广播收视率上升了,数字化指标也是如此。而且现场观众的人口统计数据——即女性和儿童——“非常积极”。

但板球迷不喜欢这些数据。他们不喜欢计分板在屏幕上的显示方式有所不同;他们不喜欢 Compare the Market 的猫鼬吉祥物一直出现在那里;他们也不喜欢被视为国民板球之父的迈克·阿瑟顿(Mike Atherton)和纳赛尔·侯赛因(Nasser Hussain)在电视上穿着 T 恤而不是纽扣衬衫。请保护这些一级列名的板球评论员吧。

但对百分赛持愤世嫉俗的态度很容易,甚至可能很无聊。提醒一下,这一切的起源是 ECB 大约十年前进行的一项调查,该调查要求 2,500 名儿童随口说出 10 项运动,结果 60% 的孩子根本没有提到板球。必须采取行动。

问题在于,10 多年过去了,我们仍在争论所采取的路线是否正确。包括本文在内的报纸版面以及播客时长都被此类讨论占据:这项赛事是什么?它是为谁准备的?它将产生什么影响?而不是关注,你知道的,实际的板球比赛。萨姆·比林斯(Sam Billings)在不久前还是英格兰队的半常驻球员,他在赢得过去三届冠军后,曾带领一支球队连续四次进入决赛。他在今年的赛事中被椭圆无敌队(Oval Invincibles)——现名为 MI 伦敦队——弃用,随后加入特伦特火箭队(Trent Rockets),并在新东家那里重复了这一壮举。这是一个好故事。

但这种冷漠在很大程度上是因为,作为一名球迷,板球被视为一项伟大的被动活动。那些等待百分赛场上动作能够“产生突破”的人将永远等待下去。因为,悄悄告诉你,从来没有人真正关心板球本身。这正是它的美妙之处。近期南伦敦红球赛的兴起——萨里队(Surrey)在郡冠军赛中拥有创纪录的观众人数——很大程度上是由于 25 岁的道尔斯顿人(Dalstonites)意识到,在板球场度过一天,啜饮饮料并与朋友聊天才是最棒的。

道尔斯顿人意识到在板球场度过一天是最棒的……但板球本身很少是主角

他们是对的。板球是这一天的背景,但它很少是主角。

因此,人们心中对百分赛依然存在的隐忧是,在将这项赛事出售给私人投资者时,我们永远地交出了夏季假期的钥匙。将其与吉安尼·因凡蒂诺(Gianni Infantino)试图将国际足联世界杯拆分出售而引发的轩然大波相比,在板球领域,我们已经把它卖掉了。

在今年赛事的很大一部分时间里,体育场的人群显得稀疏。因此,当 ECB 报告今年赛事的门票销售额在赛事六年的历史中排名第三高时,人们感到很惊讶;而且在百分赛没有紧随针对澳大利亚或印度的蓝色门票测试赛系列赛之后的情况下,这是最高纪录,而这个前提确实产生了影响。

当 ECB 首席执行官理查德·古尔德(Richard Gould)描述周一晚上在卡迪夫观看威尔士之火队(Welsh Fire)对阵南部勇士队(Southern Brave)的“9,500-10,000 人的庞大观众群”时,人们得以洞察板球运作的生态系统。上赛季,足球队的斯托克波特郡队(Stockport County)在英格兰足球联赛第一组的每场比赛平均入场人数为 9,440 人。他们是英格兰前四个级别联赛中观众人数排名第 56 位的球队。

百分赛最理想的情况就是它仅仅是“还不错”。资深板球迷将其视为一种消遣,而新板球迷则喜欢它,直到被它分散注意力。

img-260.jpeg

吐舌头:赛弗特(Seifert)为曼彻斯特超级巨人队(Manchester Super Giants)击球。 Nathan Stirk / Getty Images

比赛的形式和结构(以球数而非轮数来计算)仍然是现有球迷感到恼火的一点,并且至少在2028年之前将保持不变。届时,关于是坚持这一形式以保留其带来的优势(即比赛时间更短,让前往现场观看的家庭能更早休息),还是将其废除(因为,怎么说呢,它有点烂),这一权衡问题将再次浮现。

同样,2028, 年也将迎来对其真实价值的首次考验。目前,“百球赛”(The Hundred)的广播权与国际板球赛和郡赛捆绑在一起。从2028年起,如果投资者和英格兰及威尔士板球委员会(ECB)希望将它们解绑并单独出售“百球赛”的版权,他们可以这样做。在全球范围内,广播权泡沫早已破裂,因此认为“百球赛”首次涉足残酷的自由市场后,其增长曲线仍能持续向右上方攀升的想法

是不太可能的。

最后以一个单独的备注结束。用ECB的话来说,“百球赛”自成立之日起的任务就是“向所有人敞开板球的大门”。

一个月前,国际板球理事会(ECB主席理查德·汤普森在其中担任董事,古尔德是首席执行官委员会的成员)投票决定,实际上将单日国际赛(ODI)世界杯的参赛队伍从14支减少到12. 支。苏格兰板球协会和荷兰板球协会将这一最后一刻做出的决定描述为“削弱了国际板球的可信度和完整性”。

周五,古尔德暗示他更希望规模更小:“我认为从竞争和商业价值来看,10支球队的锦标赛在很大程度上被认为是最好的。”

上帝关上一扇门,会打开一扇窗。而古尔德则更喜欢反过来。

“百球赛”真的好吗?

安德鲁·巴特勒 (Andrew Butler) 体育副编辑

在夏季几个短暂的闲暇时刻,为了证明我其实是个很有趣的人,我喜欢查阅我最喜欢的公司注册处(Companies House)账目。目前对我来说最顶尖的是英格兰及威尔士板球委员会(ECB)的账目,今年其中有一行列出的“出售股份资产收益”为5407亿英镑。这项“收益”来自于出售其在八支“百球赛”球队中的股份。在确保这项运动在这个国家的未来成功方面,这个数字——本质上是由ECB在五年间凭空放大出来的——必须成为这项运动继续繁荣的重要因素,只要

这笔钱在板球领域被正确且明智地使用。

是的,它有其问题——五球一组的“套组”仍然很笨拙,“MI伦敦”是个糟糕的名字,而且在被正确删除之前,我们不得不忍受利兹太阳升队(Sunrisers Leeds)演绎的《齐心前进》(Marching On Together)。

但其质量是显而易见的——南勇队(Southern Brave)中阿迪尔·拉希德、穆因·阿里和乔弗拉·阿彻的经济三剑客,乔斯·巴特勒像在Sixes酒吧喝了几杯后那样随兴地打球,德瓦尔德·布雷维斯的盲打六分球,18岁的蒂莉·科廷-科尔曼戏弄比她大两倍的球员——在一年仅占用四周时间的比赛中,这些都是极佳的娱乐。它并不完美,但它将长期存在——其长期影响应该会让整个英国板球受益,而不仅仅是这个版本。

基思·布莱克摩尔 (Keith Blackmore) 体育编辑

美国职业棒球大联盟(MLB)在赛季开始时会举行本垒打大赛,期间“强力击球手”们竞争谁能从投球机中击出最多的本垒打。这很有趣,但毫无意义。

“百球赛”就是板球中的对应物。只不过“百球赛”在盛夏横跨三周,而不仅仅是几天。全明星赛(ASG)有历史,“百球赛”没有,却声称自己是未来。多么可怕的想法。

是的,看着乔斯·巴特勒或哈里·布鲁克在中外野手头顶击出一个又一个高耸的六分球确实很愉快。但就像任何过度之物一样,它很快就会让人厌倦。至于赞美一名投球手

因为投出了一个刚好在宽线内侧的空球——那是对板球之神的亵渎。

这些情况在Twenty20(T20)中同样存在,但那种形式的比赛仍尊重其赖以建立的传统。而The Hundred则蔑视这些传统(例如使用“组”而非“轮”等)。而且,人们可以支持当地的T20球队、郡队或国家队——即便你住在某个The Hundred“特许经营球队”附近,你真的能对一组高薪雇佣兵产生比对另一组更高的忠诚度吗?

你可能会说,特许经营板球无害、获利丰厚且有趣。那么明年,灰烬杯测试赛——灰烬杯测试赛!——将被挤进初夏,以便为The Hundred赛事腾出空间。英国板球管理人员是时候清醒过来了:金钱真的不是一切。


16 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

“我不会想和艾玛·拉杜卡努交换位置”

柯斯蒂·吉尔莫(Kirsty Gilmour)在羽毛球领域的排名高于其网球同行,她在 32 岁时赢得了她的首个重大赛事冠军。现在,她渴望获得一枚世界奖牌

自我宽慰

克斯蒂·吉尔莫尔(Kirsty Gilmour)是一位三届奥运选手,四个月前,她成为了英国 40 年来首位欧洲女子单打羽毛球冠军。她在羽毛球领域的全球排名比艾玛·拉杜卡努(Emma Raducanu)在网球领域的排名更高。

然而,周四当她飞往德里参加下周的世界锦标赛时,机场并没有太多人回头惊诧地看她。吉尔莫尔可以很轻松地进行每周一次的购物而不会被人群围堵。

在英国,羽毛球给人的印象是“在后花园里把球打过晾衣绳”,因此并不经常占据太多的播出时间或报纸版面。吉尔莫尔手持球拍所取得的成就理应获得更高的关注度,她也不会拒绝随之而来的代言合同,但她也意识到了体育匿名状态带来的好处。

“这对大多数人来说可能听起来很疯狂,但我可能不会想和艾玛·拉杜卡努交换位置,”吉尔莫尔说道。

“我不是百万富翁——我可以确认这一点——但当你权衡金钱与关注度时,我倾向于认为关注度带来的负面影响更多。”

“当你状态不佳时,没有那些刻薄的文章写你,是一件好事。网络喷子经常告诉我我有多糟糕,谢谢他们。”

“我无法想象在如此巨大的聚光灯下从事这份工作并尝试对自己温柔。想要保持专注(屏蔽外界干扰)会非常、非常困难。”

“我非常尊重她在承受如此多关注的情况下所取得的成就。我完全无法想象那会对心理产生怎样的影响。”

吉尔莫尔的职业轨迹与拉杜卡努截然不同。

吉尔莫尔曾五次进入欧洲锦标赛决赛但每次都遗憾失手,在 2016 和 2018 年的英联邦运动会上也遭遇了同样的命运,她曾是那个永远的“陪跑者”。

随后,在四月,在西班牙的卡罗琳娜·马林体育宫,她在 32, 岁时终于打破了玻璃天花板,击败了头号种子、来自丹麦的琳内·凯尔斯费尔特(Line Kjærsfeldt)。那座难以企及的首个大满贯冠军头衔终于属于她。

“我进入那场决赛时并没有想:‘好,必须是金牌,除此之外都不行。’我拿过这么多枚银牌,所以我非常清楚银牌是什么感觉,而且事后看来,感觉也没那么糟。所以我真的不害怕再次获得银牌,我认为这反而

img-262.jpeg

高飞者:克斯蒂·吉尔莫尔的目标是在下周的世界锦标赛中获得奖牌。Europa Press Sports / Getty Images, Cristina Quicier / 让我释然了。

“我认为之前发生的所有事情都是为了让这一次发生。我必须吸取很多教训。”

“我是否希望早点拿到金牌?当然。那样可以省掉很多眼泪,但我认为等待让这个故事变得更精彩。”

恰如其分的是,马林——这位曾击败吉尔莫尔四次决赛的退役前奥运冠军——在以她名字命名的体育中心为吉尔莫尔颁奖。

“赢得金牌并没有改变我作为一名羽毛球运动员的任何特质,但它可能改变了我定义整个职业生涯的方式,”吉尔莫尔说。

“我之前赢过一些比赛,但没人知道或在乎什么是萨尔-卢森堡-卢森堡公开赛(SaarLeurLux Open)。现在,我不需要再解释任何事情了。我不需要说:‘我是欧洲银牌得主。我向你保证,伙计,我很多次都离冠军非常近。’”

“能够直接说:‘你好,很高兴认识你,我是克斯蒂。我是欧洲冠军’,这种感觉太棒了。”

那枚金牌此时正毫无美感地放在一个纸箱顶上,就在她与伴侣罗宾(Robyn)在格拉斯哥郊外共住的房子里。吉尔莫尔是巡回赛中唯一公开出柜的女子羽毛球运动员。

“在日常生活中,我不会大肆宣扬,但我也不掩饰,”她说。

“我确实知道其他一些女同性恋球员,但羽毛球

遭受着与大多数体育项目相同的文化影响。作为一名女同性恋者,你可能会被认为更具阳刚之气,尽管并非所有情况如此;而作为一名男同性恋者,你则会被认为更具阴柔之气,而这并不是你在体育运动中想要塑造的形象。

“但我必须说,根据我的经验,羽毛球粉丝并不在意,只要你是一名优秀的球员,并且在赛场上拥有良好的道德和标准。”

“我从未遇到过哪怕一点点麻烦——即使在那些将此行为定为犯罪或不被认可的国家。”

吉尔莫(Gilmour)是这项运动的热心倡导者,她提到了羽毛球在基层水平上的包容性,以及在精英水平现场比赛中呈现出的快节奏奇观。

她承认,当她发现羽毛球成为了被砍掉的格拉斯哥英联邦运动会项目之一时,她感到“相当疯狂”。她预测,四年后在艾哈迈达巴德(Ahmedabad)的比赛中,羽毛球将会回归。

“印度是一个羽毛球大国,所以它不可能不在项目清单中。他们绝不会在印度的英联邦运动会中剔除羽毛球,”她说。

“在那届比赛时我还会在场吗?我想不会了。目前,我真的看不到 2028 年洛杉矶奥运会之后的计划。那将是我参加的第四届奥运会,我想对我来说这就足够了。”

她的时间表让她在世界锦标赛上还剩下两次机会,因此下周在印度首都的比赛至关重要。她此前走得最远的是四分之一决赛,而这次她抽到了一个艰难的签组,首轮将面对来自中国的 5 号种子韩悦,但 2026 年已经是一个充满“第一次”的年份。“这将是一项艰巨的任务,但如果我能把她击败,抽签形势就会变得有利,”吉尔莫说。“如果能增加一枚世界赛奖牌,那就太好了。”

足球

| ENTERPRISE NATIONAL LEAGUE: Aldershot | |

0 Northport (2) Boston 1 / Manchester 2, FC Dublin 3 0 Burnham West 1, Gateshead 2, Woking 6, Kidderminster 1, Eastleigh 5, Solihull 3, Watford 2, Eastleigh 1, Southend 1, Sutherland 1, Kilmarnock 1, Tamworth 1 / 2 5, Solihull 3, Watford 2, 1, 1, Watford 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 1 AFC Exile 2, Middlesbrough 1, Fife 1, Woking 1, Forest Union 2, 1, 1 1, 1 / 2 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 2 Darlington 1, Buckley 1, Helphins Town 1, Chester FC 2, King's Lynn Town 0, Hathrow 0, 0, Hathrow 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 / 2 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 3 Blythe 1, Southend 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 / 2 1, 1, 1, 1, 1

威尔士超级联赛 (CYMRU PREMIER): 巴里镇联 (Barry Town United) 1 卡迪夫大都会联 (Cardiff Met Utd) 6,卡纳冯镇 (Carnarfon Town) 1,科尔斯特里斯特 (Colster Rist) 1。 布里登高地联赛 (BREEDON HIGHLAND (GB)): 布赖斯 (Brice) 4 斯波茨奥利尔 (Spots Olier) 2,克拉肯科辛 (Clarkencothin) 1,基思 (Keith) 1,伯恩茅斯 (Bournemouth) 3,罗瑟 (Rothe) 6。

弗雷泽堡 (Fraserburgh) 2,奈恩郡 (Nairn County) 0,汉蒂 (Hanty) 3,威克学院 (Wick Academy) 0,法灵顿 (Farrington) 1,法灵顿联 (Farrington United) 1,莱什茅斯 (Leishmouth) 2,费罗尔斯机械 (Ferrols Mechanic) 1,斯特拉斯派蓟 (Strathpye Thistle) 1,伊梅诺尔里昂工厂 (Imenore Leon Works) 3,泰瑞尔联 (Tyrrell United) 1,巴克斯蓟 (Bucks Thistle) 2。

低地联赛 - 东区 (LOWLAND LEAGUE - East): 贝里克 (Berwick) 3 斯特灵大学 (Stirling University) 2,马瑟尔堡 A10 (Musselburgh A10) 0,利特尔格罗夫玫瑰 (Littlegrove Rose) 2。

低地联赛 - 西区 (LOWLAND LEAGUE - West): 阿尔比恩 (Albion) 2,加里东布劳恩 (Caledonian Brawn) 0,达尔马丁之星 (Dalmartin Star) 1,凯尔特人 (Celtic) 8, 1, 格雷特纳 2000 (Gretna 2000), 3, 坎伯兰布料 (Cumberland Cloth) 3, 大型蓟 (Large Thistle) 3, 阿什姆洛克塔博特 (Aschimlock Talbot) 0。

体育直销布什超级联赛 (SPORTS DIRECT BUSH PREMIERSHIP): 班戈足球俱乐部 (Bangor FC) 0, 埃尔索恩迪 (Elthorndy) 5, 科尔雷恩 (Coleraine) 0, 利默里克 (Limerick) 0, 库纳丁 (Cunardine) 3, 拉比尼昂老队 (Rabyneon Old) 1, 大学队 (University) 1, 卡罗尔 (Carroll) 2, 洛索尔德 (Lothold) 2, 格雷舍姆 (Gresham) 1, 波塔当 (Portadown) 0, 格兰加莫尔海飞 (Grangamore Seafly) 1。

信用联赛 (CREDITING): 邓迪 (Dundee) 1, FMC 1, 费兰德迪塔德 (Ferland Dittard) 1, 坎巴尔 (Cambal) 1, 乌梅维奇 (Umevich) 1, A21 1, 威廉二世 (William II) 1, NEC 4。

联盟式橄榄球 (RUGBY LEAGUE)

Betfred 超级联赛: 布拉德福德 (Bradford), 威根 (Wigan) 1, 托顿 (Teuton) 1, 哈德斯菲尔德 (Huddersfield) 1, 曼斯菲尔德 (Mansfield) 1, 沃本 (Woburn) 1。

Betfred 女子超级联赛: 伯纽雷达尔女子队 (Burnue Radars Women) 14, 富勒顿林流浪者 (Fullertonine Rovers) 22, 朗格洛奎尔 (Langleauquille) 0, 哈德斯菲尔德巨人 (Huddersfield Giants) 34, 圣海伦斯 (St Helens) 24, 利兹 Rhires (Leeds Rhires) 34, 威根海军陆战队 (Wigan Marines) 44, 约克瓦尔基里 (York Valkyrie) 0。

联合式橄榄球 (RUGBY UNION)

国际赛: 澳大利亚 56, 日本 17。

板球

第一场测试赛

澳大利亚对阵孟加拉国: 马尔博罗体育场 (Marlboro Stadium) 第 3 天(共 5 天),澳大利亚 100 (55 轮), 0 / PO Smith 79, H'Mahmud 0-55) 以及 90+4 (53 轮), 孟加拉国 426 (138 轮), 7H Tyson 105, 9H Shardo 84, M+4 Minu (55), J H Hashwood 0-89)。

第一场测试赛

印度对阵斯里兰卡: 加拉国际体育场 (Galla International Stadium) 第 1 天(共 5 天),印度 2100 (2.75 轮), D / D Piyabhad U'mu 4, 1, Patra 77 净伤, R / R Pant 2, 7nd, 斯里兰卡尚未击球。

斯威德内斯 (SWEDNES)

WST 中国公开赛 (邵): 半决赛: N Sarapahan (即 Y Zhao (一) 6-5), M Sathy (英) 9-3, Bingham (英) 0-2。

网球

ATP & WTA 辛辛那提公开赛(俄亥俄州): 男子单打第一轮 / 第一轮: H'Mahan (Pitt) 9-1, Uttarakhand 1, Jami 8-7 6-4, A Valdez (Pitt) 9-1, Szapá () 9-2, 7-4, 5-4, G Halay () 9-3, Kopino (Cai) 7-6 (7-5) 6-4, D Athaia (Gai) 9-2, Wong (Wig) 1-6 6-5 6-4, S Talsapa (Gai) 9-1, Royer () 7-6.

(7-6) 7-5, 5 Booz (Aug) 9-2, Givitton (Bal) 1-6 6-3 6-4, 女子单打: S Rejini (Cai) 9-1, Pilsburg (Cai) 6-6 6-2, J Broom Women (Jani) 9-1, Ransal (Jani) 6-2 7-6 (7-5) 0-3, Sagar (Shi) 9-1, Yavuzhchana (Shi) 6-4 6-1, L Bofannin (Shi) 9-2, Coctavette (Shi) 3-3 6-6.

高尔夫

Dumb 高尔夫锦标赛: Hertsmobile, Furrer's 第二 / 三轮(针对 6-9)除非另有说明(针对 72),第二轮第一名 (Leopaspa (Fry) 69 68 67, 第二轮第一名 (Zou (Cho) 69 67 67, 第二轮第一名 (Fry) 69 68 67, 第二轮第一名 (Fry) 69 68 67, 第二轮第一名

VP Bank 瑞士女子公开赛(Roch-Rothrouz): 决赛 结束 (Gib & K) 除非另有说明(针对 72),第二轮第一名 (Lewis (Gib) 68 68, 第二轮第一名 (Lewis (Gib) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68 67, W Wilder (Aas) 66 67 68, 第二轮第一名 ( (Gari) 68 68, 第二轮第一名 ( () 68 68, A Farnterling () 68 68, 第二轮第一名 ( () 68 68, A Farnterling () 68 68, 第二轮第一名 ( () 68 68, A Farnterling () 68 68, 第二轮第一名

赛程

除非另有说明,开球时间为 3.00

今日

英格兰足总社区盾杯

Arsenic + Bar City(在卡迪夫的千禧体育场)。

SKY BET 冠军联赛

Bourbon + Bournemouth (43), Watford + Southampton (1,30).

FREDDY 赛事

Liverpool + Limerick (0,00), Newcastle + Strobburg (0,00), Notts Forest + Bristol (2,00), Tottenham Hotspur + Hoffenheim (Nairn).

除非另有说明,开球时间为 7.45

板球

Blue Day 半决赛: Leicestershire + Nottinghamshire (Dulce Road), Middlesex + Durham (Dublin).

明日

SKY BET 冠军联赛

Cardiff + Broom (0,00).

ISTHMRAK 联赛第一分区北区

Redbridge + Broom & Pines.

8月18日,星期二

欧冠联赛 - 附加赛首回合

Limele Uxby + AIV Athens (0,00), Driane Zayed + Viking FB (0,00), Frenheim + Lyon (0,00).

VERTU TRIPHY - 北区 B 组

Wigan + Wace Villa (121 (7.00).

C 组

Stamford County + Everton (121 (7.00).

南区 E 组

Reading + Weycette (7.00).

F 组

Bourn's Arsenal (2), Leyton Orient + AFC Wimbledon (7.00).

G 组

Northampton + Brighton (121 (7.00).

橄榄球联盟

Betfred 超级联赛: Hull 6 6 + Barrington (0,00).

8月19日,星期三

Carter + LAM (0,00), Steven Breitabes + Old Gate (0,00), Haysel River Shea + Salad Baba (0,00), NEC + Body / Glind (0,00).

VERTU TRIPHY - 北区 D 组

Westfield + War City (121 (7.00).

板球(至周日)

第一场测试赛 Martin (Copper) + Pelican (Headleague).

8月20日,星期四

欧冠联赛 - 附加赛首回合

Solihull + Maverick (1,00), Hants + Right Hovey, Lincoln Red

Indy + Limerick (1,00), Motherwell + Froberg (7,30), Rangers +

Latham, Shamrock Rovers + M / A (0,00), Trenton + Brighton (0,00).

SKY BET 第一联赛

Sheffield + Bradford (0,00).

橄榄球联盟

Betfred 超级联赛: Hull 6 6 + Toulouse (0,00).

8月21日,星期五

英超联赛

Arsenic + Carleton (0,00).

WILLIAM HILL 苏格兰锦标赛 Imeresca (7) + Partick (7,30).


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

15

迈克·卡特愿意再次冒险尝试

在赴斐济就任新职之际,这位 2003 年世界杯冠军在接受 Ben Coles 采访时,谈到了与前队友们保持联系、在澳大利亚的生活,以及球员在面对脑损伤时所承担的风险。

那个包含 2003 年英格兰橄榄球世界杯所有冠军成员的 WhatsApp 群组在生日期间会变得热闹起来。它可能会沉寂一段时间,然后突然活跃起来,但对于任何需要倾诉的人来说,它一直都在。“你知道,就是一些小事,”迈克·卡特在悉尼的家中告诉我,“偶尔群里没什么玩笑话,然后突然有人过生日,你就会收到 32 条‘生日快乐’的消息。你可以联系他们,想聊就聊。我们依然通过这个群组保持着联系。”

现在,这群英格兰最伟大的球员们比以往任何时候都更需要彼此。卡特阅读了《观察者报》最近对菲尔·维克里(Phil Vickery)的采访,在那篇采访中,这位前英格兰队长讨论了他与疑似 CTE(慢性创伤性脑病)作斗争的经历——健忘、焦虑,以及对未来的恐惧。

幸运的是,卡特本人没有症状。但看着那些队友受苦——英格兰队的钩手史蒂夫·汤普森(Steve Thompson)甚至无法记得英格兰队的胜利——是非常痛苦的。“我特别喜欢菲尔·维克里的一点是他很诚实,你知道吗?一个真正诚实的人。我也喜欢他的说话方式,以及他传达情感的方式。”

在 2007 年法国世界杯上,卡特由维克里担任队长。“我们举行过几次聚会,我也遇到了几个伙计。显然,汤普森甚至不记得参加过决赛。这很糟糕,”他说。

“这很令人难过。这种情况发生在某些人身上,而很多人则没有。也许我们很幸运。也许,我们只是幸运。不幸的是,某些人的骰子掷向了另一面。这很遗憾。”

仅仅是暗示卡特在脑震荡方面只是“幸运”,这本身就令人心惊。职业化的黎明是一次向未知的狂野飞跃,1995 年,卡特成为了橄榄球联盟第一位全职职业球员,当时他辞去了在一家报刊店工作、年薪为 8,000 英镑 的工作。

当时巴斯队(Bath)的赞助者之一马尔科姆·皮尔斯(Malcolm Pierce)让俱乐部的球员担任各种职务。卡特凌晨 2 点就要起床堆放报纸,然后将它们送到商店,之后再去训练。

他通过代表英格兰队参赛获得的赞助费开始超过他的工作薪水。于是他冒险辞职了。

“然后幸运的是一年后,[这项运动] 职业化了。从一年八千到一年天文数字般的薪水,简直是,哇。为了做自己热爱的事情。即使不给钱我也愿意做。”

至于职业化在训练量和恢复方面究竟意味着什么,则是另一回事。

“我们知道自己签署了什么样的协议。至于他们是否照顾我们,那是另一回事,”卡特承认。

“我认为没有人知道职业化应该是什么样子。不幸的是,对于一项接触性运动,教练、管理人员以及所有这些人需要一段时间才能明白什么是正确的,什么是错误的。”

在我们通话当天,卡特正在从一次膝盖手术中恢复,并为他的下一次执教冒险做准备。在伦敦爱尔兰队(London Irish)、英格兰队、爱尔兰队,以及最近在悉尼战争队(Waratahs)任职之后,这次将是最令人兴奋的一次。上周,他被宣布为超级橄榄球太平洋联赛(Super Rugby Pacific)球队斐济 Drua 队的新任高级助理教练。“我在澳大利亚度过了最精彩的两年,我的孩子们热爱这里的每一秒,我们在那里有了真正的体验。然后我并不特别想回到英国。我觉得我在这里还需要一些东西。”

这给了卡特(Catt)一个机会,让他首次在一个橄榄球不仅是绝对的第一大运动,而且是一种痴迷的国家执教。“我上周去那里实地考察了一次,我们在开车行驶,所有的广告牌上都是Drua队的,每个人都在谈论橄榄球,”他说。“就像在南非那样,你知道,有拉西·埃拉斯姆斯(Rassie Erasmus)在那里。这不仅仅是一场橄榄球比赛,它比橄榄球本身更伟大。”

还有几个话题需要触及。比如他对目前英格兰队在经历了一个脱节的赛季后的看法——“我仍然认为我们还没有看到李(Lee [Blackett],英格兰队的进攻教练)能为球队带来全部的影响”——以及与年轻的史蒂夫·博思威克(Steve Borthwick)共事的记忆,当时这位英格兰主教练还是个十几岁的少年,初到巴斯(Bath)。卡特和那个“瘦小的家伙”在训练后会花好几个小时练习重启演练,博思威克对细节的渴望在当时就显而易见。“他那时还是个孩子,只想不停地去做,去做。”

很明显,卡特非常崇拜安迪·法雷尔(Andy Farrell)。法雷尔是爱尔兰队的主教练,两人曾在斯图尔特·兰开斯特(Stuart Lancaster)率领的英格兰队中共同担任助理教练,随后卡特在2020年加入法雷尔的爱尔兰教练组,共度了五年。

法雷尔目前已与爱尔兰橄榄球联合会续约至2031年,期间赢得了两次六国赛冠军,包括2023年的全胜冠军(Grand Slam)。卡特是否认为法雷尔未来会出任英格兰队主教练?

“我认为他会做出对他家庭最有利的选择,”卡特回答道,并提到法雷尔十几岁的儿子加布里埃尔(Gabriel)在都柏林的布莱克罗克学院(Blackrock College)效力期间表现出色。

“对于法兹(Faz)你永远不能说绝,知道吗?任何事情都有可能,但同时,他非常稳重,清楚自己需要去哪里以及需要做什么。爱尔兰人民太棒了,球员们也令人惊叹。整个系统,以及他们建立的架构,对于实际参与这项运动的有限球员数量来说是非常好的。”

至于卡特,下一站是斐济的一次冒险,以及在那之后的任何橄榄球运动将他带去的地方。他希望尽可能长时间地参与橄榄球运动,传授他通过参加八届橄榄球世界杯(包括五届作为球员参加)所积累的知识。

当他谈到这项运动时,流露出一种强烈的感激之情,就像维克里(Vickery)最近提到的那种归属感。如果有机会,卡特会很乐意再次掷骰子,把这一切重新经历一遍。“它为我提供的东西以及赋予我生活的经历是卓越的。我有许多知识可以传授给这些年轻孩子,让他们开始这段旅程,”他解释道。

“我能说的就是,我经历了一段最不可思议的旅程。这项运动给了我的一切,如果现在让我回去重新来一遍,我会吗?100%。我度过了一段最不可思议的时光。”

“说实话。这个世界,这些人,以及我给家人带来的经历。这一切简直太神奇了。”


16

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

下周

乔·马勒放弃《我是名人》,选择格斗棒

这位前英格兰队的柱球员将成为首位“名人角斗士”。只要别提到莎伦·戴维斯就行……

吉尔斯·史密斯

关于乔·马勒的转会新闻:他去了《角斗士》(Gladiators)。去年秋天,他在《名人叛徒》(Celebrity Traitors)中与大卫·奥卢索加、卡特·伯恩斯和艾伦·卡尔等人同台并赢得了广泛赞誉,这位前哈利昆队和英格兰队的柱球员现在将在 2027 年将自己的名声押在 Nitro、Viper 和 Diamond 等格斗棒持有者之间。

正如 BBC 的新闻稿所言,这是马勒“将他标志性的身体对抗能力和竞争精神带到了电视界最艰苦的竞技场之一”。这并非夸大其词。《角斗士》是轻娱乐目的下,大量填充保护装备的格斗类节目的代名词——除非你把美式足球也算在内,但我们中没多少人这么做。

然而,我并非不尊重该节目,也不轻视像“墙”(The Wall)、“悬空挑战”(Hang Tough)等这类深受茶点时间观众喜爱的经典挑战,但是

有很多人原本期待看到马勒的“标志性身体对抗能力”和“竞争精神”在其他——我们可以说——更体面的名人节目形式中大显身手。

事实上,在《叛徒》城堡中的强劲表现之后,全国上下对他敏锐的分析思维和略带威慑力的气场评价极高,许多人认为马勒会立即乘胜追击。事实上,他的上限在哪里?人们认为,到目前为止,他应该已经习惯于在名人赛的顶级赛事中走得很远——比如《舞动奇迹》(Strictly Come Dancing)或《我是名人》(I'm A Celebrity)。甚至并非不可能,他现在正准备在《名人主厨》(Celebrity Masterchef)中大展身手——该节目的第 21 季将于下周开播——从而完成名人挑战类电视节目的罕见“全满贯”。

但并没有。相反,在经过长时间的深思熟虑后,马勒签署了协议,去穿一些并不好看的衣服,并在周六把几个没人听说过的人撞倒。再次强调,我并非不尊重。但他如果留在橄榄球界,也能这么干。

而且,是的,我们听到了传闻,马勒很快将进入下一期《名人烘焙大赛:挺身对抗癌症》(The Great Celebrity Bake-Off: Stand Up To Cancer)的帐篷。显然,这是一个好的公益事业。但在我们对他寄予的希望背景下,这简直是杯水车薪——如果他在制作招牌甜点时把烘焙时间搞错了,可能字面意义上真的成了稀粥。

不,我们原本认为他会参加那些真正重要的节目。去年秋天,我们想象着他钻进《我是名人》营火旁令人向往的睡袋里,轻而易举地给马丁·肯普和 YouTube 上的 Angryging 等人上一课,教他们怎么玩。但什么也没发生。

《舞动奇迹》也是一样。今年冬天将是马特·道森在该舞池获得亚赛的 20 周年——在职业名人舞厅的交汇点上,橄榄球界经历了二十年的阵痛,像克里斯·罗布肖和乌戈·蒙耶这样的人在拉丁舞环节的关键时刻都令人失望地折戟。许多人本能地将马勒视为橄榄球界最有可能止颓的舞者。

结果又是没有。2025, 年没有,而且在 2026. 年的闪光球候选人名单中也还没有他的迹象。肖恩·赖特-菲利普斯?有。莎拉·斯托里女爵士?当然有。乔·马勒?没有。他说过“不会跳舞”。但乔,这正是重点所在。与此同时,多年来体育界最受期待的名人电视希望,据报道正身处一个工作室,绰号叫“Mauler”,在一个高级的软体游戏区里追逐那些渴望奖金的公众成员。

好吧。至少他们为了适应他而调整了形式。我们被告知要将马勒视为“第一位名人角斗士”。你可能会大喊:“那莎伦·戴维斯呢?那位伟大的奥运选手在1995年的节目中撕裂前交叉韧带难道是白费了吗?”嗯,如果我没理解错的话,其核心理念是戴维斯将她更广泛的名气融入到了担任角斗士的工作中,而马勒则将作为一名名人辅助人员与角斗士们共同工作。这是一个微妙的区别,但长寿电视节目的形式焕新就取决于这类细微的区分。

所以情况就是这样。而且我们被承诺会有“充满力量、个性且包含大量惊喜的特别亮相”。这并非我们所希望的——差得远了。但这是一个平台——如果谈论的是“决斗”环节,那可能是一个相当高的平台。也许他最终会利用它,跳向那些渴望已久的更伟大的成就。

英格兰板球运动员的宵禁终于结束。大家干一杯?

帕特里克·基德(Patrick Kidd)写道,测试赛系列赛即将开始,曲棍球世界杯和俱乐部足球的回归也在议程之中。

英格兰板球队的午夜宵禁结束了。队长乔·鲁特(Joe Root)表示,他相信他的队员在对阵巴基斯坦的测试赛系列赛期间能像“成年人”一样行事。让我们为此干杯。在因廉价地丢掉球门(wickets)而名声不佳之后,他们在场上是否也能做出正确的决定?让我们希望英格兰的顶层打击线能做得比仅仅安全地撑到午餐时间更多(周三开始,天空体育板球频道,11am)。

巴基斯坦在曲棍球方面传统上很强,曾创纪录地四次赢得男子世界杯,尽管自1994.年以来就再未夺冠。他们在昨晚对阵英格兰,开启了在比利时和荷兰举行的最新赛事。世界排名第三的英格兰队还将对阵印度(明天,2pm)和威尔士(周三,11.30am,所有比赛在 Channel 4 的 YouTube 频道播出)。在荷兰队寻求第四次连续夺冠的女子世界杯中,英格兰队分别抽中了南非(今天,9am)、中国(周二,11.30am)和印度(周四,2pm)。

如果不是因为一名实习生无法在树后隐蔽,南顿(Southampton)本可以用一场对阵曼联的比赛开启他们重返英超的征程。而这个奖励落到了赫尔城(Hull City)手中,他们将在周六进行英超的早场比赛(TNT Sports 1, 12.30pm)。另一方面,圣徒队(Saints)今天将在客场对阵沃特福德开启他们的英冠赛季,他们深知即使获胜,在因间谍行为被扣除 4 分后,他们仍将处于垫底位置(天空体育足球频道,1.30pm)。

阿森纳将在周五主场迎战考文垂城,以此开启英超赛季,后者是自2001年以来首次重返顶级联赛(天空体育主频道,8pm)。就在八年前,这支“天蓝色军团”还处于英乙联赛,但在弗兰克·兰帕德(Frank Lampard)的领导下,他们在上赛季提前三场比赛赢得了升级资格。首先,阿森纳将与曼城进行社区盾杯比赛,由于温布利球场将举办 The Weeknd 的演唱会,比赛将在千禧体育场举行(今天,TNT Sports 1, 3pm)。

南非对阵新西兰或许是“橄榄球最伟大的宿敌”,这是给周六开始的四场测试赛系列赛贴上的相当多余的标签,但这是全黑队(All Blacks)30年来首次对对手进行全面巡赛,当时他们以 2-1 击败了跳羚队(Springboks)。而在此之前的 50 年,他们极具争议的种族隔离时代巡赛导致 29 个国家抗议并抵制奥运会。世界排名前两位的球队在今年夏天的国家冠军赛中,对阵欧洲对手的三场比赛均获得了最高分,但面对彼此时肯定会发现前景更为艰巨(周六,天空体育 Action 频道,4.10pm)。


安东尼·霍普金斯(ANTHONY HOPKINS)。

新评论

作曲家。

这位 88 岁的演员创作了他的首张古典音乐专辑。

他向菲奥娜·马多克斯(Fiona Maddocks)讲述了创造这张专辑的关于不和谐与和谐的生活。


2

议程(Agenda)

每周日最犀利的艺术、科学、书籍和思想写作

img-265.jpeg

议程 4-7

  • 在现实生活中,瓦妮莎·索普(Vanessa Thorpe)观看阿曼达·诺克斯(Amanda Knox)备受争议的喜剧表演;基利安·福克斯(Killian Fox)品尝爱尔兰葡萄酒;福妮·米措普鲁(Fonie Mitsopoulou)访问“伦敦最古怪的剥削电影院”;斯蒂芬妮·梅里特(Stephanie Merritt)在萨塞克斯进行海狸狩猎之旅
  • 网格:德国生物学家恩斯特·海克尔(Ernst Haeckel)的写生图
  • 采访:The Killers 乐队主唱布兰登·弗劳尔斯(Brandon Flowers)谈其个人专辑

评论家 16-23

  • K Biswas 会见正在改变电影制作的导演组合
  • 瓦妮莎·索普(Vanessa Thorpe)和劳拉·卡明(Laura Cumming)在爱丁堡艺术节
  • 基蒂·帝国(Kitty Empire)评论菲比·布里杰斯(Phoebe Bridgers)宏大的第三张专辑
  • 温迪·艾德(Wendy Ide)谈安东尼·波登(Anthony Bourdain)传记电影的成功秘诀

特写 8-15

  • 封面故事:菲奥娜·马多克斯(Fiona Maddocks)与安东尼·霍普金斯探讨其作为作曲家的新职业
  • 戏剧:安德鲁·汉金森(Andrew Hankinson)与作家彼得·弗兰纳里(Peter Flannery)及导演杰克·麦克纳马拉(Jack McNamara)探讨《北方的朋友们》(Our Friends in the North)的舞台呈现
  • 访谈:巴西亚·卡明斯(Basia Cummings)就母亲身份与露西·莱特比(Lucy Letby)之问访调查记者瑞秋·阿维夫(Rachel Aviv)
  • 约翰·诺顿(John Naughton)评议充斥在就业法庭中的 AI 主张

书评 24-29

  • 弗朗西斯科·加西亚(Francisco Garcia)会见西班牙挑衅者、《瞬间剖析》(Anatomy of a Moment)的作者哈维尔·塞尔卡斯(Javier Cercas)
  • 梅根·诺兰(Megan Nolan)重新发现露丝·雷曼(Ruth Rehmann)1959 年的处女作《幻象》(Illusions)
  • 菲奥娜·诺布尔(Fiona Noble)汇总最新的爱情主题青少年小说
  • 珍妮·法根(Jenni Fagan)评议卡罗尔·阿瑟顿(Carol Atherton)的收养回忆录《如此多归属之方》(So Many Ways to Belong)

益智游戏与电视

30-40

  • 普通人填字游戏、数独、Gemelo、国际象棋、猜图、电影连连看、Lexipedia 测验以及金发姑娘填字游戏
  • 本周电视与广播亮点
  • 芭芭拉·艾伦(Barbara Ellen)评穆里尼奥。这部纪录片是否足够“特别”?

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在 Instagram 上关注我们 @ObsNewReview;发送电子邮件至 review@observer.co.uk

撰稿人

-267.

  • 菲奥娜·马多克斯(Fiona Maddocks,第 8 页)是《观察者报》的古典音乐评论家。她的最新著作是《再见俄罗斯:流亡中的拉赫玛尼诺夫》(Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile)。

-268.

  • K Biswas(第 16 页)是一位评论家,同时担任 Resonance FM 的主席,并在该电台主持关于斯图尔特·霍尔(Stuart Hall)教授与英国文化的系列节目。

-269.

  • 安德鲁·汉金森(Andrew Hankinson,第 11 页)居住在纽卡斯尔。他为《观察者报新评论》(Observer New Review)撰写的故事包括《格雷厄姆·莱内汉(Graham Linehan)没完没了》。

-270.

  • 珍妮·法根(Jenni Fagan,第 29 页)是一位苏格兰小说家和诗人。她关于在看护系统中成长的回忆录《Ootlin》在 2025 年获得了戈登·伯恩奖(Gordon Burn prize)。

-271.

  • 阿布拉乔蒂·查克拉博蒂(Abhrajyoti Chakraborty,第 34 页)撰写随笔和小说。他曾是爱荷华作家工作坊(Iowa Writers' Workshop)的研究员,现居新德里。

-272.

大图赏析

斯科特·奥芬(Scott Offen)拍摄的这张妻子被枝叶环绕的照片,让人得以窥见一个存在于彼端的魔幻世界。

封面人物:安东尼·霍普金斯(Anthony Hopkins),由埃里克·卡特(Erik Carter)在洛杉矶贝尔艾尔酒店为《观察者报》拍摄。妆发由 Exclusive Artists 的索尼娅·李(Sonia Lee)使用 YSL Beauty 产品打造。


这张由斯科特·奥芬拍摄的照片带有一种相当神秘、梦幻且略显滑稽的感觉——画面中一名女性面朝下地潜入一片竹林之中。她是正穿过枝叶进入一个只有她知道的秘密空间,一个魔幻的幽冥世界?还是在茂密的叶丛中钻行,为了遇见……更多的叶子?

这张照片并非拍摄于某个充满童话能量的深邃黑暗森林,而是在波士顿的阿诺德植物园(Arnold Arboretum),这是一个隶属于哈佛大学的大型公共公园。画中的女性是奥芬的妻子格蕾丝(Grace),他花了七年时间为她拍摄照片,并以她的名字命名其处女作。奥芬在放弃金融职业后学习了摄影,他受到了埃米特·高温(Emmet Gowin)和李·弗里德兰德(Lee Friedlander)等人的启发,后两者的作品同样以妻子为中心。在这里,正如在那些项目中一样,很明显格蕾丝不仅仅是他相机的拍摄对象。“从一开始这就是一次非常协作的过程,”奥芬说道。有些图像出现在他的梦中,他花费了很长时间——在某些情况下长达五年——执拗地试图将其完美呈现。另一些则是格蕾丝的想法,她会指导丈夫完全按照她的想象来捕捉画面。“我们两个人都倾向于完美主义,”他说。

《格蕾丝》(Grace)入围了 2026 年阿尔勒国际摄影节(Rencontres d'Arles)图书奖的短名单,书中的图像反映了主角对自然和户外活动的兴趣,以及她的性格——奥芬将其描述为“非常独立且相当内敛”,但同时也富有童心。他们共同对《爱丽丝梦游仙境》和《奥兹国》系列书籍的热爱渗透到了许多照片中,包括这一张。

那些故事讲述的是小女孩们头也不回地闯入魔幻世界。而在这里,经历冒险的人是一位年长的女性。奥芬表示,这本书探讨的是“如何面对变老意味着什么,以及年长女性在我们的文化中是如何被忽视的”。在奥芬的照片中,格蕾丝向相机展现了她所有的热情和特质,即便她正远离我们,融进叶丛之中,进入一个属于她自己想象的私人世界。Killan Fox

《格蕾丝》(Grace),斯科特·奥芬著,L'Artiere 出版(€60)


4

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

现实生活

来自手机屏幕之外世界的观察与场景

舞台之上

机遇之诺克斯

早在阿曼达出现之前,“诺克斯”这个名字在这座城市就已赫然在目,成为了道德正直的代名词。在爱丁堡雄伟的蒙德山高处,一座纪念16世纪改革神学家约翰·诺克斯的雕像伫立在学院四合院的基座上。相比之下,站在我面前的这位美国人显得多么渺小,而她正处于自己一场伦理反叛的中心。

她身材纤瘦,但并不虚弱,仿佛是用钢缆锻造而成,而且动作灵活,甚至带有某种杂技感,在表演完她那标题大胆的个人秀《Cartobel》后,她一边与陌生人交谈,一边不停地在两脚之间重心切换。

“在登场之前,我的心跳会加速,”诺克斯告诉我,“然后,在表演结束后,我会陷入一种真实的情绪宿醉中。”她说,每晚的演出让她精疲力竭,但同时也给了她希望,尽管她在 Gilded Balloon Teviot 剧场进行边缘艺术节(Fringe)首秀时遭遇了强烈的抗议。

“我在写作过程中理清了这些想法,它开始变成我对女儿安全问题的担忧,以及将要发生在她身上的所有糟糕事情,”她说,并补充道,由于她长期生活在他人地想象中,许多人将她视为一个虚构人物。

“有些母亲带着女儿来看我,告诉我说她们很难相信我是真实存在的。这就是为什么我喜欢在房间里与人们面对面交谈并听到他们的反应,”她说。

“我总是这么笨拙,”她笑着对一名男子说。这名男子在购买了她的书或售价 £15 的橡胶腕带后,出人意料地走上前与她握手。这些腕带是当年要求释放诺克斯及其当时的意大利男友拉斐尔·索莱奇托(Rafaelle Sollecito)的运动遗物,两人在 2009 年最初被判定谋杀梅雷迪斯·克切尔(Meredith Kercher)。

早些时候,在场馆的葡萄酒吧礼堂里,诺克斯将她这场门票售罄的演出介绍为“爱丁堡最具争议的演出”,并感谢满座的观众光临。随后,她将自己比作哈吉斯(haggis):了解她的人热爱她,不了解她的人憎恨她。这正是她试图证明自己既可爱又深刻的典型做法。就像当时每一个边缘艺术节的表演者一样。

但诺克斯的演出——被批评、被抵制且成为一项日益增长的请愿目标的演出——与其他的节目不同。看着她勇敢地应对观众紧张的笑声,以及随后面对一群渴望自拍的兴奋粉丝,很容易理解为什么有些人认为将她的演出贴上“喜剧”标签是误导性的,甚至是某种挑衅。边缘艺术节上有许多忏悔式的

img-274.jpeg

演出。在走廊对面,澳大利亚人弗兰基·麦克维尔(Frankie McVair)在每晚分享一个关于虐待与康复的令人心碎的故事后都会落泪。在楼上,艺术节资深人士杰克·多尔蒂(Jack Doherty)以坦率的诚实揭露他对死亡的恐惧;而在对面的 The Pleasance 剧场,马克斯·奥莱斯克(Max Olesker)讲述了他皈依正统犹太教的那些荒诞却严肃的细节。这些演出是真实的,且刻意地触碰禁忌,但它们在设计上主要还是为了娱乐。

那么,当全世界都知道她是谁,却往往记不清她是否谋杀过某人时,诺克斯该怎么做?也许是改变身份,或者相反,逐个观众地挑战公众,分享她所谓的古怪个性——以及她的愤怒。

在舞台上,诺克斯向她失去的朋友梅雷迪斯表达了简单的致敬,而梅雷迪斯的家人则谴责她的表演是一场怪诞的马戏。但当她的愤怒最为明显时,这场演出才最具力量。她随后承认,这对诺克斯来说很难承认,因为她经常被要求在公开场合展示情感的真实性。她抗议道,传闻中她在意大利警察局内表演的那个臭名昭著的侧手翻从未发生过。她仅仅是在漫长的审讯间隙,在走廊里做了一些瑜伽拉伸。

然而,真正让她愤怒的是,在 2008 年被判定谋杀梅雷迪斯·克切尔、2021 年获释且目前面临新袭击指控的鲁迪·格德(Rudy Guede),从未受到如此恶毒的唾弃。

诺克斯是否应该闭嘴并改名?不,她认为不应该,因为那将意味着她做错了事,而且是对她的家人以及曾经的那个女孩的背叛。

瓦妮莎·索普(Vanessa Thorpe)

食品与饮品

都柏林开瓶

这是一个炎热且万里无云的日子,也是近期连续晴天中的一天。我正站在都柏林郡北部的一片葡萄园里,欣赏着半掩在葡萄叶下的成串果实。再过几个月,这些葡萄将变成深紫色,汁液充盈。而现在,它们呈翡翠绿色,硬如子弹。它们能生长在这里,承受爱尔兰天气的变幻莫测,本身就堪称一个奇迹。

卢卡葡萄园(Lucca vineyard)是果农大卫·刘易林(David Llewellyn)倾注心血的项目,这片六英亩的土地位于爱尔兰首都以北20英里处,大部分面积种满了果树。刘易林凭借出色的苹果汁、苹果酒和醋赢得了声誉,并在全国各地的商店和市场销售,但现在他将大部分精力投入到了葡萄酒中。

这听起来并不像那么疯狂。随着气候变化导致全球变暖,葡萄藤能够繁茂生长的区域正在向两极扩张。近年来,我尝试过来自英国、比利时和瑞典的极佳葡萄酒,这些国家利用更温和的冬季和更长的生长季节,并在耐寒杂交葡萄品种的帮助下实现了发展。甚至挪威和加拿大也在尝试。但出于某种原因,尽管我住在都柏林并喜爱爱尔兰的农产品,我从未认真地将爱尔兰视为一个葡萄酒产区。

后来,我偶然地与《爱尔兰时报》的葡萄酒评论家约翰·威尔逊(John Wilson)聊天,他告诉我,目前爱尔兰有几十家酿酒商在运营。其中,他点名了三家能酿出真正好酒的酒庄,刘易林就是其中之一。于是我决定去拜访他。

刘易林在他那令人愉悦的、略显破旧的农场院子里迎接了我,周围是装瓶棚和一辆被黑莓丛覆盖的旧大众汽车。虽然他在电话里听起来有些谨慎,或许是不希望被当作某种新奇的噱头来展示,但面对面时他非常热情。我们走进一片朗多(rondo)葡萄田——这是一种起源于西伯利亚的杂交品种,对爱尔兰气候的适应性极好——我们坐在塑料椅子上,听他讲述他的葡萄酒之旅。

这一切始于 20 世纪 80 年代后期,他在完成园艺学位后的一次德国工作体验之旅。他工作的那个果园也种有葡萄,此前从未尝试过葡萄酒的刘易林,从此培养出了酿酒和饮酒的兴趣。他回到家后,在劳伊斯郡(County Laois)父母的花园里种了一块试验地。

刘易林在不同的地点潜心钻研多年,但直到 2002 年买下这块土地后,他才能够集中精力。 “这里的土壤很棒,”他说,“我离海岸线不过近,不会受到海风和盐分的影响,离内陆也不太远,不会有霜冻问题。这里是爱尔兰最干燥的地方。”

当然,挑战依然存在。即使是爱尔兰最干燥的地方依然相当潮湿,刘易林花了很长时间才找到合适的葡萄品种。但他说,目前最大的挑战不是天气,语气中带着阴郁:“是假爱尔兰酒。”

他指的是那些在温暖国家生长,然后运过来冒充爱尔兰产地的葡萄酒。他非常确定,附近的一家酒庄就在这么做。除了法律问题,这还给消费者带来了关于爱尔兰葡萄酒可能达到什么水平的不切实际的认知。“人们被骗了,”他愤愤地说,“我的意思是,谁知道我们有爱尔兰葡萄酒?结果我们竟然已经有了假爱尔兰酒!”

至于真正的、正宗的爱尔兰葡萄酒,现在是我尝试的时候了。我们走向装瓶棚,刘易林展示了他的系列产品。我正准备让自己保持礼貌。毕竟,与我喜爱的法国和意大利葡萄酒相比,这肯定只是个苍白的影子——顶多勉强能喝,最差就是像醋一样。在我品尝时,刘易林仔细地观察着我。

令我倍感欣慰的是,他倒出的每一款酒我都喜欢。其中一些酒非常出色,比如 Llewellyn 与戈尔韦厨师 JP McMahon 合作酿造的起泡红酒,采用了 rondo 葡萄和其他品种的混酿。我无法断定其中是否有典型的爱尔兰特色,但我确实很欣赏 rondo 红酒中的黑莓气息,因为我们周围到处都是黑莓果实。

这些酒并不便宜。由于规模极小,每瓶的价格至少为 £60。但考虑到 Llewellyn 面临的挑战以及他所达到的品质,很难苛求这个价格。(零售商 wineonline.ie 提供发货至英国的服务。)

我告诉他,我简直不敢相信我正在喝的这款带有葡萄干般甜味的特级红酒,竟然产自离我住处仅 20 英里远的地方。“我自己也感到惊讶,”Llewellyn 凝视着他的地块说道,“我经常掐自己一下。我真的在都柏林酿出了这款酒吗?”——Killian Fox

当全世界都知道诺克斯(Knox)是谁,但却经常想不起她是否杀过人时,她该怎么办?

--。

电影评论

磨坊电影之夜

如果你曾觉得必须得看一部你认识的任何人都没听说过的电影,比如《神圣娼妓的海狸》(Beavers of a Holy Whore),或者是迷幻生物片《憎恶之神庙》(Shrine of Abominations),那么你的祈祷得到回应了。“伦敦最古怪的磨坊电影院”The Nickel 提供所有大胆的内容:离奇的动漫、色情主义、被遗忘的苏联现实主义电影、黑暗的地下电影以及武术片。

The Nickel 吸引着口味多元的资深影迷——那些已经厌倦了只放映新片的商业院线的人——以及偶尔出现的显眼的金融男,因为该院线坐落在伦敦金融城法灵顿(Farringdon)的周边地带。

当你进入时,迎接你的是大量的电影周边器材和焦油。楼下肮脏的酒吧里装饰着处于各种脱衣阶段的女性海报。洗手间的窗户上挂着一件胸罩。

每个周五都会有一部神秘电影。在我最近访问的一个晚上,观众们欣赏到了一部相当有灵感的 20 世纪 60 年代印度尼西亚版《终结者》,名为《女性终结者》(Lady Terminator),片中出现了一条寄居在古代女神子宫颈中的蛇。显然如此。

The Nickel 不做重映——他们的经营前提是自己随时可能被关闭,因此他们试图尽可能多地放映电影。节目由电影制作人、音乐家或内行策划,其中大多数人最初是顾客。店主多姆·希克斯(Dom Hicks)告诉我,他们的理念是:“这就是我们要放映的烂片,我们会放映它,哪怕面对的是一个空房间。”

影院隐藏在厚重的窗帘后面,仅能容纳 37 人。希克斯希望它感觉有点像客厅。这里没有广告,取而代之的是约翰·沃特斯(John Waters)的开场致辞:他是一位演员、电影制作人,并拥有一撇非常独特且做作的铅笔胡。他被小说家威廉·S·巴勒斯(William S Burroughs)冠以“垃圾教皇”之名,他拿着一根五岁小孩用的公主主题派对魔杖,为房间以及其中的“变态们”进行“祝福”。

有时,在放映更成人化的电影时,人们会对“客厅”氛围的理解过于字面化。“在这些 70 年代的电影中,有很多古怪离奇的玩意儿,感觉在基调上相当不协调,”希克斯在谈到那些更具拉伯雷式风格的影片时说道。他提到了《水能》(Water Power),这是一部由黑手党资助的色情片,基于 20 世纪 60 和 70 年代伊利诺伊州现实生活中的“灌肠强盗”的经历,即使是他们也“还没有足够的勇气放映”。

希克斯认为:“如今,现代电影的状态令人绝望。”它变得太像是一项“可行”的职业投资,产品太像“名片”一样刻板。他认为,在过去,这个行业“吸引着怪胎和疯子”,而这些人“往往对事物有更有趣的看法”。

即将步入 40 岁的希克斯看起来像个被困在海滩上的遇难者。在创办这家成为伦敦讨论度最高的独立电影院之一之前,他从事过他所谓的“相当卑劣的工作”:电视购物广告。“那是魔鬼的生意。”

希克斯将创建电影院比作身处黑暗森林,手电筒只能照亮前方几码的路。如果他早知道其中涉及的所有工作,他就不会开始(或者他声称如此)。当我问到电影院的起源时,他说:“我就这么做了。”他在众筹时超过了 1 万英镑 目标,从陌生人那里筹集了 1.4 万英镑,所以他说他别无选择。“有很多时刻我觉得,‘这简直就是财务自杀’——大概这会导致真正的自杀。这是一个糟糕的主意,但如果我不这么做,我就得离开这座城市,改个名字,开始新生活。”幸好 The Nickel 取得了相当大的成功。

Nickel 的常客约翰·海耶斯估计,他大约来过 20 次,因为这里是一个“惬意且随意的聚集地”。他说,参加者是一群“形形色色的人”;有穿着“夏威夷衬衫、染着蓝发”的人——我在那场放映中都看到了——“但也有就是很普通、看起来很古板的人”。他大概是指他自己和我。Fanie Mitsopoulou

乡村生活

海狸巡逻队

“海狸可以拯救世界!”我们的向导里娜(Rina)告诉我们,她点击着 PowerPoint 幻灯片上的地图,这些地图记录了德文郡奥特河(River Otter)周边景观在英格兰首个野生海狸重新引入项目(2015-20年)五年间的变化。她并非完全夸张:地图清晰地显示,随着海狸开始重新改造此前由人类工程化改造的水道,曾经狭窄且受到严格控制的河道年复一年地扩张成一系列池塘和支流。前一天晚上,我在萨塞克斯的内普庄园(Knepp Estate)露营,这里或许是英格兰最著名的野化项目;奥特河海狸试验与这里的工作密切相关,因为它的成功为政府去年决定授予野生海狸释放许可证(需经过艰苦的申请过程)铺平了道路。内普庄园在过去五年里将海狸安置在一个受监控的 2 公顷(5 英亩)围栏内,不过当其野生释放许可证最终获批时,这在很大程度上将具有象征意义:海狸精通工程,很快就摸清了围栏的最佳逃脱路线,一段时间以来一直快活地在整个庄园内出入,并且每年成功繁殖(一旦它们有了幼崽,为了动物福利,通常认为最好不要尝试重新捕捉它们)。

乘坐一辆颠簸的全地形车行驶一小段路,我们来到了海狸的领地。即便没看到这些生物本身,它们的劳动成果也立即显现出来;在一个酷热的日子里,在像旧门垫一样颜色枯黄的干旱景观之中,海狸建筑周围的区域依然保持着郁郁葱葱的凉爽绿色,部分地区泥泞不堪,昆虫活跃。一段河岸边排列着一排排被削成尖顶的树桩,就像儿童绘本里那样,志愿者们将其称为“铅笔削笔刀小巷”。这些动物砍伐树木的热情是反对者用来攻击它们的论点之一,但海狸在伐木时是有选择性的,其效果与林地的萌条更新(coppicing)相同,能为光照和新生长腾出空间,从而促进生物多样性。

由业主查理·伯雷尔(Charlie Burrell)和伊莎贝拉·特里(Isabella Tree)开创的内普野化项目已经运行了 20 多年。这一概念一直充满争议。在本月对萨福克郡邓威奇荒原(Dunwich Heath)毁灭性火灾的报道中,“野化”根据你的政治倾向,被呈现为罪魁祸首或潜在的救星。右翼媒体急于将火势迅速蔓延归咎于英国皇家鸟类保护协会(RSPB)等组织的“绿色议程”(但并无证据:邓威奇并非野化景观),而环保主义者则反击称,将栖息地恢复到更自然的状态是应对全球变暖加剧所带来风险的最佳方式;尤其是海狸,可以在创建充当天然防火带的湿地方面发挥重要作用。

10 多年前在一次苏格兰之旅中,我爱上了海狸。当时我带着 12 岁的儿子去参观一个重新引入这些动物的野生动物项目,我们从岸边的掩体观察它们在湖中挖掘。那时它们看起来极其异域;而现在,它们的水坝和巢穴很有可能很快成为英格兰乡村随处可见的景象。它们分布得越广泛,支持它们的证据就越充分,也就越容易减轻那些依然抵制这些毛茸茸魅力的农民和地主的恐惧。与此同时,如果你能在附近找到海狸野生动物之旅,非常值得去欣赏它们的杰作。我们依赖它们的时间可能比想象中更早。斯蒂芬妮·梅里特(Stephanie Merritt)

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仍在上映

观察者报评论员推荐的不容错过之作

艺术

“苏尔巴兰的信仰感似乎超脱了那个 era 的西班牙艺术。与几乎任何同时代艺术家相比,他更进一步、更深入地展现了当时的真实面貌、视觉呈现以及内心感受。”苏尔巴兰的作品将在伦敦国家美术馆展出,直至 23 August。劳拉·卡明 (Laura Cumming)

电视

“从一开始,这部剧就跳动着一种典型的女性愤怒以及冰冷的临床目的感,每位女性主角都在执着地追求自己的目标。”由艾米·罗瑟姆 (Emmy Rossum) 和洛拉·佩蒂克鲁 (Lola Petticrew) 主演的《愤怒》(Furious) 仍在 Disney+ 播出。芭芭拉·艾伦 (Barbara Ellen)

戏剧

在伦敦诺埃尔·考沃德剧院(Noël Coward theatre)上演至 5 September 的《西拉诺·德·贝尔热拉克》(Cyrano de Bergerac) 中,艾德里安·莱斯特 (Adrian Lester) “在舞台上的移动犹如激光一般。他通过挥动手臂,仿佛平衡在无形的波浪之上,呼应了措辞精妙的优雅”。 苏珊娜·克拉普 (Susannah Clapp)

现正预订

古典乐

史蒂夫·赖希 (Steve Reich) 作品集的专家——柯林·库里小组 (Colin Currie Group) 将演绎这位极简主义作曲家的一系列多样化作品,从标志性的《拍手音乐》(Clapping Music, 1972) 到《电台重写》(Radio Rewrite, 2012)。该演出是爱丁堡国际节日的一部分,将于 28 August 在亚舍大厅 (Usher Hall) 举行。

流行乐

Sisin 音乐节将于 15-17 October 在卡迪夫的多个场馆举行,目前已确定了一批顶尖新秀的演出阵容,包括来自曼彻斯特的另类流行三人组 The Orielies、前 Porridge Radio 成员达娜·马戈林 (Dana Margolin) 以及爱尔兰民谣歌手多夫·埃利斯 (Dove Ellis)。此外,还有更多艺人即将公布。

戏剧

喜剧演员罗素·凯恩 (Russell Kane) 将于 17 September-10 October 在纽卡斯尔的新维克剧院 (New Vic Theatre) 登台,饰演其首个严肃戏剧角色——《罗密欧与朱丽叶》中的罗密欧。


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Agenda

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Ammontista. — Bumendiphan.

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Tracticidae. — Jantou.

网格

  1. Opegians: Athelina, No 2-3. Tympaniidae, 3.1.1. Imipepius, No 1.2.1. Imipepius, No 4-5.1. , 3.1.1. , No 2-3.1. , No 4-5 1. , No 2-3.

19世纪德国艺术家兼生物学家恩斯特·海克尔(Ernst Haeckel)那精巧的艺术作品,旨在对地球上令人眩晕的多样性进行编目。

在人类对自然世界的威胁感日益剧烈的当下,19世纪德国艺术家兼生物学家恩斯特·海克尔的作品提醒着人们,森林、原野、山顶,乃至深海之中,蕴含着天生的奇迹。海克尔的作品由精细的几何绘图、水彩画以及无数奇异而美丽的生物(从珊瑚、蜘蛛到地衣)的素描组成,旨在阐明并解释地球生命的生物多样性。

新版书籍《恩斯特·海克尔的艺术与科学》(The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel)以近乎百科全书的形式呈现了他细致入微的创作,并附有莱纳·威尔曼(Rainer Willmann)和朱莉娅·沃斯(Julia Voss)的随笔。对于动物学家威尔曼而言,海克尔作品的重要性部分在于向观众展示了那些对我们不可见、但对环境运行至关重要的生物。他解释道:“单细胞生物是海洋食物网的基础。与几乎所有生物多样性元素一样,其中许多正受到人类在水域活动的影响。因此,海克尔的绘图所提供的对其独特性的认知,可能支持这样一种观点:不仅要保护鲸鱼、珊瑚和海龟等,还要保护整个海洋环境。”

海克尔的一些观点在2026年很难被认同:他曾是一名社会达尔文主义者和优生学家。但这些图像依然证明了一位被威尔曼描述为“启蒙运动晚期代表”的科学家,他曾为科学摆脱天主教会的束缚而奋斗。塔拉·乔希(Tara Joshi) 著

《恩斯特·海克尔的艺术与科学》由 Taschen (1150) 出版

Haukel, Kunstforum der Natur.

Tabl. 42 — Ostracion.

Ostraciontes. — Borkovskie.

Borkovskie. — .

. — .

. — .


议程

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布兰登·弗劳尔斯 (Brandon Flowers)

音乐人,45岁

以及

杀手乐队(The Killers)主唱谈起成为三个青春期儿子的父亲、他的摩门教青年时代以及他带有乡村风格的第三张个人专辑

布兰登·弗劳尔斯是杀手乐队的主唱。自2001年在拉斯维加斯成立以来,该乐队已发行了七张录音室专辑。他们2003年的歌曲《Mr Brightside》是英国排行榜历史上在 Top 100 单曲榜停留时间最长的单曲,在排行榜上的记录超过500周。本周,弗劳尔斯发行了《Thrasher》,这是他第三张受乡村音乐影响的个人专辑。他是六个孩子中最小的一个,也是一名虔诚的摩门教徒,与妻子塔娜(Tana)以及儿子阿蒙(Ammon)、冈纳(Gunnar)和亨利(Henry)住在犹他州的帕克城。

你曾说过,对你父亲称之为“乡村西部”音乐的热爱是你成长过程中的秘密。是一个心虚的秘密吗?

我确实对此感到心虚。我觉得我必须做出选择。我从哥哥那里接触到 New Order 和 The Smiths。而我的父亲则在播放威利·纳尔逊(Willie Nelson)、强尼·卡什(Johnny Cash)和默尔·哈格德(Merle Haggard)。我选择了 New Order,并且对我最初的选择感到满意。但随着年龄增长,我开始重新倾向于那些音乐。

这也是你最私人的一组歌曲。在《Miss America》中你唱到:“在你迷上速度之前,你曾叫我美国小姐 / 也许我会去找个摩门教男孩 / 一个会像对待女王一样对待我的男孩。”这是谁的故事? 我的姐姐谢莉(Shelly)。她比我大15岁。我是一个意外!我更喜欢说是个惊喜……她很年轻就结婚了,当时她16, 17岁,处于一段虐待关系中。她很长时间[无法]离开。经历了太多殴打。太多那样的事情。但当我八岁时,我父母搬到犹他州,那里足够远,为她创造了一个逃离的机会。这些事情是

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你直到长大后才会思考的。现在我明白了。

《Paradise》讲述了你的家庭以及他们在拉斯维加斯的历史。你现在如何看待这座城市?

黄金时代已经过去了。2000年代有一个甜蜜期,当时埃尔顿·约翰(Elton John)在进行他的“红色钢琴”驻场演出。他们正在把人们赶走。他们开始收取停车费。我在《拉斯维加斯评论报》(Las Vegas Review-Journal)上写了一篇关于此事的评论文章。我们的文化是:你来了就给代客泊车员小费。我对这件事感到愤怒。我的表弟就是一名代客泊车员,他把我的报道钉在了员工休息室里。

作为三个青春期男孩的父亲,感觉如何?

糟糕的是,他们继承了我的性格。我不是一个最擅长社交的人。我经常沉浸在自己的世界里。所以有时很难读懂他们在想什么。但他们都非常好。

我们没怎么经历过叛逆期,几乎没有。

他们有音乐天赋吗?

阿蒙是个出色的钢琴手,但他热爱古典音乐——拉赫玛尼诺夫和巴赫就是他的摇滚明星。至于冈纳,他迷恋恐怖题材,那是他进入垃圾摇滚(grunge)的入口。亨利则是个彻头彻尾的摇滚客。我得给利亚姆·加拉格尔(Liam Gallagher)打个电话,确保他没在我妻子身边出现过。[他给我看了一张照片] 他看起来就像个加拉格尔!他完全接纳了足球和 Oasis 乐队。他用吉他学习他们的歌曲,而我用钢琴伴奏。我正在学习诺埃尔(Noel)的所有技巧。有太多伟大的歌曲了。

五月份在布达佩斯的欧冠决赛上与杀手乐队共同演出感觉如何?

像一场白日梦。是我人生中最快的六分钟。体育场里简直有80%的人是阿森纳的球迷。你可以听到他们在合唱。那里没有

我的儿子看起来像个加拉格尔!我得给利亚姆打个电话,确保他没在我妻子身边出现过

巴黎圣日耳曼的球迷。我们在法国从未突破。你在镜头里看不到,但我的背对着法国球迷,我在为我的支持者演奏。我非常享受其中。

杀手乐队首先在英国取得了突破。你如何看待这段长达二十年的情缘?

很幸运。人们没意识到当时的情况。美国每一家主流唱片公司都拒绝了我们。然后[现已倒闭的伦敦独立厂牌] Lizard King 在这里给了我们一次机会。我生命中的一切都由此而生。我热爱这里。我现在选择在这里度假——而且是用 holiday 而不是 vacation 这个词。

20年前在接受《观察者报》采访时,你对我说过:“迪伦说得最到位。你不能既是犹太人又很酷,你不能既是摩门教徒又很酷。”在光鲜亮丽的独立摇滚圈度过了25年后,你的信仰受到了怎样的影响?

嗯,我发现你可以既是摩门教徒又很酷。但这确实是一段心路历程。我们开始的时候我太年轻了。我被灌输进了这个教会,我明白这一点。但在某个时刻,你必须决定这是否将成为你的信仰。这就是关键所在。一旦我真正致力于这条道路,我的信仰就加深了。现在我觉得决定要做什么样的选择不再那么困难了。

我想,在早期花费这么多时间处于那个“独立颓废风”(indie sleaze)时期的伦敦,应该有点挑战吧……

确实如此。那种摇滚生活当时依然盛行。我们演出时皮特·多尔蒂(Pete Doherty)会现身,感觉就像在问:“今晚会发生什么?”这对一个年轻的摩门教男孩来说很艰难。我曾以为为了显得真实,我必须做一些事情。总之,我现在想通了。

《Thrasher》这个标题唤起了什么样的记忆?

当我们搬到犹他州时,我发现乡村的孩子和内华达州亨德森[Flowers一家此前居住地]的孩子不同。更强悍。我被揍过几次,我父亲知道。他是在打斗中长大的,有一天他试图向我解释如何打架。我坐在那里想,我不是那种人……但这并非石沉大海,因为我在日常生活中,或者在写歌时,会用到他教我的一些东西。如果你在舞台上看到我,我一直在打空击。我在专辑封面上也这么做,我意识到:我仍然在试图向我父亲证明,我能做到他能做的事。

所以 thrasher 是一种战士 / 格斗者?

是的,是获胜的那种。你 thrash(痛击)某人,你把他们击倒。所以我在词曲创作领域是一个 thrasher。Craig McLean

《Thrasher》将于 21 August 在 Island Records 发行。Flowers 的英国巡演将于 14 October 在伯恩茅斯开始。

“不是一个战士”:布兰登·弗劳尔斯(Brandon Flowers)。 Rob Loud / arcobloud


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封面故事

“对我而言,创作音乐是一种超越。它是通往内心平静的路径”

在准备发行一张涵盖 60 年创作生涯的个人专辑之际,这位威尔士演员与 Fiona Maddocks 聊到了他的音乐童年、对父母记忆的执着、酗酒以及上帝

F

在极短的一瞬间,那个微笑令人不安。那张熟悉的面孔——沉稳而锐利的眼神,宽阔的额头,清晰的下颌线——在过去的半个多世纪里,无论是正面还是侧面,在光影交错中填满了我们的屏幕:在《沉默的羔羊》中,他是所有反派之首、深不可测的汉尼拔·莱克特;在《长日将尽》中,他是压抑且坚忍的管家史蒂文斯;在《两任教皇》中,他饰演了一位令人信服的教皇,片中可见他弹钢琴的身影;在《父亲》中,他则是一个令人心碎的患有认知障碍的老人。名单很长,他的许多角色都以冷静的强度和一种极其沉稳且不可撼动的克制而著称,从而产生一种强大的吸引力。毋庸赘言,他并非他所扮演的角色。然而,在很多场合,包括在去年的回忆录《我们过得还行,孩子》(We Did OK, Kid)中,他对自己描述为“冷漠的人”,疏离;习惯上,他是一个独行侠,信奉一种强硬的“振作起来,继续前行”的态度,以此作为抵御生活痛苦与失望的保护壳。

而现在,眼前的安东尼·霍普金斯(Anthony Hopkins),88 岁,准时得惊人,对着镜头温暖地笑着,穿着一件色彩欢快、喧闹的猎游衬衫——红色、橙色、黄色——并配了一块巨大的橙色手表,通过视频链接从洛杉矶轻松地聊天。这位演员的威尔士口音显而易见,声音轻柔但直接,笑声自然。他身上没有任何阴郁之气,而这在他扮演的角色中却如此常见。这就是真实的霍普金斯吗?他现在是否已经变得温和了?他对这个想法轻笑了一声。“有时我的妻子斯特拉(Stella)会问:‘你究竟是谁?’我说:‘我不知道。我一点主意也没有。’”

作为演员的霍普金斯工作仍在继续:目前至少有四个项目在进行中。但在这些晚年,仿佛有一种紧迫的欲望想要记录下那些可能会丢失的生活片段,他转向了绘画和音乐。8 月 21 日,德卡古典(Decca Classics)将发行一张由霍普金斯在六十多年间创作的作品集。这张名为《人生如梦》(Life Is a Dream)的专辑由爱乐乐团(Philharmonia Orchestra)、巴赫合唱团(Bach Choir)和温彻斯特大教堂合唱团(Winchester Cathedral choir)演奏,并由格莱美奖超级巨星古斯塔沃·杜达梅尔(Gustavo Dudamel)指挥——这无疑是一次巨大的成功。

霍普金斯的好友布拉德利·库珀(Bradley Cooper,曾执导并主演伦纳德·伯恩斯坦传记片《大师》)将他介绍给了这位指挥家。杜达梅尔和专辑中的大提琴手格雷戈里奥·涅托(Gregorio Nieto)均来自委内瑞拉。专辑销售所得将捐用于支持该国近期地震后的救援工作。

从嘹亮的号角和进行曲,到抒情的浪漫曲和威尔士合唱的爆发,其风格兼收并蓄且技巧娴熟——时而像沃恩·威廉斯的余响,时而像流行歌曲,时而具有俄罗斯式的雄伟。贯穿其中的情感是直接的:一首写给妻子的情歌,一首为侄女创作的无词叙事曲,一段对马戏团的怀旧回忆。音乐在他的生命中是如何开始的?

霍普金斯是独生子,出生并成长在南威尔士波特塔博的一个郊区马格姆(Margam)。他的父母对他而言是永恒的记忆,他们不懈地努力,将最好的东西给予这个儿子,而他自己承认,在大部分学生时代里,他一心只想反抗。然而,音乐始终是一种生命力。

“我六七岁的时候开始接触,”他说,“我母亲给我买了一架小型的乡村钢琴。我记得上面的日期:1827。那是一架威尔士钢琴,木质框架。我开始上一些音乐课。我当时可能太小,无法应对。我很快学会了识谱,但我不喜欢那些技术要求,比如弹奏音阶。于是我开始分心,弄了一些原稿纸。我会写一些小曲子,但我没有理论技术让它真正成型。但我坚持了下来,几年后,我开始更认真地在钢琴上即兴创作。”

1964年,作为一名在利物浦剧院(Liverpool Playhouse)工作的年轻演员,霍普金斯养成了在剧院休息室等待出场时弹奏立式钢琴的习惯。就在那时,他写下了《圆舞曲在继续》(And the Waltz Goes On),几十年后,在霍普金斯的妻子秘密地将这首曲子寄给小提琴家兼指挥安德烈·里厄(André Rieu)后,该曲名声大噪。(这首曲子被收录在《人生如梦》(Life Is a Dream)中。其大调与小调的转换,以及古怪、朗朗上口、如旋转木马般的氛围,让人想起肖斯塔科维奇在1950年代为电影创作的那些爵士圆舞曲。)

霍普金斯对电影作曲家的工作方式产生了浓厚兴趣,这种兴趣最早源于他学生时代听到威廉·沃尔顿(William Walton)为劳伦斯·奥利弗(Laurence Olivier)主演的《哈姆雷特》(1948)创作的配乐,霍普金斯后来与奥利弗共事。“所以,当我开始拍电影时,我会请求去旁听管弦乐编曲,”他说。“我请求了乔治·芬顿(George Fenton),他当时在为理查德·阿滕伯勒(Richard Attenborough)导演的《影子之地》(Shadowlands)创作音乐 [在片中霍普金斯饰演作家C.S.路易斯]。于是我们去了一家伦敦郊外的录音室。那里有一个完整的管弦乐团,乔治开始指挥,并让我试着指挥了一小会儿。我被

埃里克·卡特(Erik Carter)拍摄

安东尼·霍普金斯 上周在洛杉矶 比尔艾尔酒店(Hotel Bel-Air) 的花园中 为《观察者报》 拍摄

妆造:Sonia Lee 为 Exclusive Artists 使用 YSL Beauty


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封面故事

深深吸引。最终,在1996年,我为我的电影《八月》(August)创作了音乐,这是安东·契诃夫的《万尼亚大叔》的一个威尔士版本。我之所以这么做,仅仅是因为乔治说他太忙了。之后,我想:‘我想多做一些这样的工作。’

霍普金斯在他 Decca 专辑中最引人注目且最动人的曲目之一《Margum》中,重新使用了这段音乐素材。他称之为“对我父母的颂歌,对我 idyllic 童年的回忆,以及春天与祖父一起采集蓝铃花的记忆”。他对那段时光的回忆,被提炼成了比他在回忆录中描述的更为温和且富有诗意的东西,而在回忆录中,欺凌、学业失败以及他所谓的“愚蠢的傲慢”倾向是常态。

那时所有被压抑的情感是否都通过音乐的抽象表达得到了释放?

“对我来说,音乐是超越性的——是一条通往内心平静的道路。专辑中的曲目反映了我童年的主题。它们与我在威尔士的早期记忆相关,这在独奏大提琴的心碎之声中经常能听到。生命是一场漫长的告别。我们告别童年,告别青春。我们告别那些苦涩的事物。然后,最终,一切都结束了。对我而言,在录音和创作中存在着一种慰藉和美感——尤其是为大提琴写作。”

“C.S.路易斯在《影子之地》的结尾说:‘如果失去如此痛苦,为何还要爱?……现在的痛苦是那时幸福的一部分。这就是交易。’这些话一直在我脑海中回响。‘我不再有答案,除了我所经历的生活。在那段生活中,我有两次面临选择。一次在少年时,一次在成年后。少年选择了安全。成年人选择了承受痛苦。’”

霍普金斯热爱日期、事实,以及他背诵的数千行诗句,他回到了自己学生时代的转折点。“1955年复活节。就在耶稣受难日之前。我很担心,”他回忆道。“我知道我的学校报告单会很糟糕,而我的父亲必须阅读它。那是极其糟糕的。评语是:‘安东尼远低于学校的标准。’我记得我的父亲是一名面包师,在那些战后人们处处挣扎的岁月里,他艰难地供我接受良好的教育……我记得他说:‘我不知道你以后会变成什么样。’我们当时站在店后方的厨房里,那是我们在波特塔尔博特(Port Talbot)的家族面包店。我说:‘有一天,我会证明给你看的。’我父亲说:‘好吧,我希望你能做到。’我母亲说:‘我相信你一定能做到。’然后我们三个人一起去了电影院。”

不久之后,在似乎几乎没有得到任何人直接鼓励的情况下,霍普金斯获得了奖学金,进入了现在位于卡迪夫的皇家威尔士音乐与戏剧学院。几年之内,他成为了国家剧院(当时位于伦敦南部的旧维克剧院)奥利维尔剧团的一员,并出演了他的第一部故事片《冬狮》(1968),该片由彼得·奥图尔和凯瑟琳·赫本主演。

“我小时候一点也不聪明。我被视为某种笨蛋——‘笨蛋丹尼斯’——然而出于某种奇怪的、无法解释的原因,我在生活中得到了这样的天赋,这样的机遇。所以我认为,无论我们内心拥有什么样的力量,无论你称之为上帝或任何你想要的称呼,是所有存在的领域,还是灵魂,无论它是什么,我完全不知道——除了现在,在这个年纪,我比以往任何时候都更能感受到它。在那个时间点,70年前,那个存在对我说道:‘好了,开始行动吧,系好安全带。’表演需要思考和工艺来创造。我在奥利维尔、琼·普劳赖特和玛吉·史密斯身上看到了这一点。这种自律是你生存所需要的。否则,你会陷入泥潭。”

他提到的另一个转折点是什么?当时他引用了《影子之地》中刘易斯关于一个人选择受苦的论述。

答案涉及他被广泛报道的与酒精的斗争。在某种意义上,虽然其他私人话题是禁区,但他愿意讨论这段经历,因为他知道,或者希望,有类似斗争的人能从中受益。

“我回想起1975年12月27日。我当时开着车去参加一个派对。我处于酒精性意识丧失状态。我知道酗酒的问题,但我不想面对它。我意识到我可能会因为我的

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霍普金斯与指挥家古斯塔沃·杜达梅尔在伦敦亚历山德拉宫录制《人生如梦》期间;右图为他三岁时与父亲的合影。 Charlie Gray, SAS Summit Books

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驾驶而撞死一整个家庭。纽约有人说过:‘如果你想找人谈谈……拨打这个号码。’于是周一早上,我拨了那个号码。那是AA(戒酒会)。我说:‘我会去见你们。’我不希望任何人来找我。我仍然保留着某种自尊。

‘那里有一位年长的女士,非常亲切。她问:‘你感觉如何?’我说:‘我知道我陷入了巨大的麻烦,我不知道该怎么办。’她说:‘嗯,你永远不必再喝酒了。’然后她说——我知道她要这么说——‘你为什么不试着信赖上帝?’我跪在街道上,内心响起一个极其强大的声音说:‘现在一切都结束了。你可以开始生活了……而这一切都是有目的的。’于是对酒精的渴望离开了我的身体。它再也没有回来过。在50年里。’

他对上帝的看法涵盖了一种超越的力量,而非有组织宗教的形式。说他‘信仰’上帝是否正确,还是说这样太简单化了?

‘我绝不会梦想去试图感化任何人。但我很高兴窗户为我打开了。因为生活在无神论哲学中——我也可能错了,我不是什么知识巨擘——就像生活在所有窗户都关闭的状态中。确定性是人类经验中最可怕的事情之一。斯大林是确定的。希特勒是确定的。在这种确定性中,存在着谋杀、混乱和悲剧。所以我认为,一旦我们睁开眼睛并思考:‘嗯,也许有什么,也许有一个上帝,’百叶窗就打开了。我怎么能在86岁时还在这里?我本该在1975年就死掉了。我带着全部的谦卑这么说,因为我无法理解。回顾我的整个一生,我对发生的事情感到惊讶。’

他的回忆录可能主要关于他自己的生活和事业,他的三次婚姻(分别与佩特罗内拉·巴克、詹妮弗·林顿,以及现在的斯特拉·阿罗亚韦),他的好莱坞

“如果我长时间把脚搁在阳台栏杆上,凝视涅槃或我的肚脐,我会觉得这简直诡异得令人难以置信。我会疯掉的”

生活,以及他与巴克(Barker)所生的成年女儿之间疏离的痛苦——关于这一点,他在书中坦率地写道,但拒绝口头谈论。然而,最重要的是,这本书就像他创作的大部分音乐一样,是对他父母的致敬。尽管在成长过程中,他极度渴望寻找一种远离那个威尔士小社区的生活,但霍普金斯对父母及其给予他的东西始终保持着坚定且令人动容的忠诚。

在好莱坞或纽约的每一次首映礼或颁奖典礼上,他们都出席了,并自豪地被介绍给那些明星。他们见过了好莱坞星光大道,多年后,他们的儿子在那里获得了自己的星标,那是第2,237颗,于2003年9月24日授予(我加入这个细节是为了满足霍普金斯本人对日期和数字的热忱)。

“我很高兴我的父亲活得足够久,能看到我变得非常成功。他变得相当迷糊。他问:‘你是怎么做到的?’这激起了我内心的爱与怜悯。他自己在生活中没有机会。他从14岁起就在面包店工作,没有受过教育。他是个极度焦虑的人,是个悲观主义者,但他内心有着伟大的精神。我的母亲则是支撑,让一切保持平静。在演戏时,我总是尝试在角色中体现我父亲的影子。

“因为我理解他身上的一些东西,而这也在我的天性之中。努力工作。心怀感激。付出最好的一面。不要放弃。我对年轻人这么说。生活是艰辛的。生活是残酷的。不要放弃!你必须面对灾难,面对生活的灾难:‘谁愿忍受时间的鞭笞与嘲弄, / 压迫者的不公,傲慢之人的社群。 / 卑微之爱的阵痛……’这出自《哈姆雷特》。人类的悲剧。”

霍普金斯对父亲去世的描述留下了深刻的印记。“他死于心脏病。他是个坚定的无神论者。我问:‘爸爸,你感觉怎么样?’他说:‘天哪,看——我的父亲和母亲就在那边……’至于这句话是怎么来的,我不知道。我想是幻觉吧……科学家知道什么?谁能解释银河系,以及之外的星系?我们之中有谁知道什么?在他去世后的第二天,我走在纽波特的公园里。那是春天。三月。公园里所有的花都开了。我想:‘就在那里。生命,正萌发着嫩芽。鸟儿在歌唱。狗在吠叫。孩子们在玩耍。刀子深深地刺入。如果失去如此痛苦,为何还要爱……’”

又是这个重复的主题。他急于声明,在所有这些忧郁倾向中,他并没有抑郁,只是感到困惑,并被其无尽地吸引。“我看我的生活。我很幸福。童年,成年,青春期。你获得了成功。你赚到了钱。然后突然间,你在远山之上看到了死亡。其中蕴含着巨大的雄辩与美感。它将我们的注意力集中在重要的事物上。我听起来有点像个传教士,不是吗?”

2025年,霍普金斯和他的妻子在洛杉矶的帕利塞德斯大火中失去了房子。他和他的嫂子及侄女目前住在临时住所,直到新房子准备好。他没有沉溺于损失,当时在Instagram上发帖称:“我们唯一能带走的是我们给予的爱。”他依然忙碌。正如他在回忆录中所说,如果“把脚搁在阳台栏杆上太久,凝视着涅槃或我的肚脐,我会觉得极其诡异。我会疯掉的”。他将与理查德·艾尔(Richard Eyre)和盖·里奇(Guy Ritchie)合作电影,第三部基于迪兰·托马斯(Dylan Thomas)的作品以及另一部作品也正在筹备中。他希望在今年晚些时候与杜达梅尔(Dudamel)以及委内瑞拉的年轻音乐家合作。“我想写一部宏大的、柏辽兹风格的史诗作品,也许是为2个管弦乐团和合唱团而作!”他担心人们对他专辑的反应吗?肯定有人准备嘲笑如此晚期的职业转型。“担心?我一点也不在乎。如果他们不喜欢,那就随他们去。”

霍普金斯是一位爵士,曾两获奥斯卡奖、四获英国电影学院奖(Baftas)、两获艾美奖,并获得无数终身成就奖,如今他已找到某种平衡。“我被树木、蜂鸟和猫咪环绕。我想:‘这一切到底是为了什么?’我看着我的猫。他并不担心这些。他的人生没有任何野心。但他是一个如此美丽的生物。如此无知且纯真。生命是多么美妙而可怕的壮丽。我想:‘我依然在这里。就享受这一天,审视这段人生。’”

《人生如梦》(Life Is a Dream)将于 21 August 在 Decca Classics 发行


访谈

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安德鲁·汉金森(Andrew Hankinson)写道,彼得·弗兰纳里(Peter Flannery)这部获得英国电影学院奖的剧集是 20 世纪 90 年代最伟大的电视剧集之一,而现在一个新的舞台版本在一个更加分裂的英国回归

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我们北方的朋友:下一代

并不是说我想让安迪·伯纳姆(Andy Burnham)成为首相。显然,他会是另一个灾难。但对我而言,面对我有生之年(我出生于1980年)第一位来自北方的首相,人们的反应很有启发性。这就像一块石头被移开了,人们对我们的真实感受随之倾泻而出:“为了养活那些懒惰的北方人,我们将不得不缴纳更多税款。他们是纯粹的领取者。在烂账上追加投入。不值得进行所谓的‘升级’(levelling oop)。”

在伯纳姆被任命的前几天,我采访了电视剧《我们北方的朋友》(Our Friends in the North)的创作者彼得·弗兰纳里(Peter Flannery),这是一部关于工人阶级被政治家辜负的史诗故事。这次采访是关于他将该故事改编的新舞台剧,但我询问他认为由一位来自利物浦的前大曼彻斯特市长担任领导人,可能会给北方带来怎样的改变。

“嗯,你知道,[我现在是以] 一个南方人的身份在说话,因为我已经在这里住了快30年了,”他在他位于牛津郡集镇沃灵福德(Wallingford)的家中告诉我。“伯纳姆说他要将权力归还给北方。只要不再是那个‘北方经济强市’(northern powerhouse)的鬼话就行,因为那纯粹是垃圾。既然出自那两个人——[大卫]·卡梅伦([David] Cameron)和[乔治]·奥斯本([George] Osborne)之口,注定是垃圾;他们根本不知道这个国家的其他地方是什么样子。我对他们没有任何期待。”

“我对伯纳姆确实有所期待。我不太清楚具体是什么,但他正在说——尽管所有证据都相反,尽管我人生中大部分时间都在写关于腐败和谎言的内容,但我仍然试图相信政治家所说的话——他说他将使北方复兴。[但] 这不仅仅是给北方一些权力;而是要削弱伦敦和南方的权力。”

“如果他尝试这样做,他绝对会被媒体猛烈抨击,因为媒体是以南方为基地的,是伦敦的、大都市的,我确实担心他可能会受到与[杰里米]·科尔宾([Jeremy] Corbyn)相同的对待,而且他不太可能取得一系列的成功。”

“我必须保持希望,因为我无法以其他方式生活。我已经足够愤世嫉俗了,不能再轻轻地转身离去并说:‘永远不会有改变。’我的角色经常这么说,但我不会这么说。我认为,在南方,没有人关心北方 [...] 只有住在北方并意识到自己被愚弄、一次又一次被剥夺资源、一次又一次被剥夺权力的人,才会将其视为一个问题。”

左上图: 克里斯托弗·埃克尔斯顿(Christopher Eccleston)、吉娜·麦基(Gina McKee)、马克·斯特朗(Mark Strong)和丹尼尔·克雷格(Daniel Craig)在1996年的剧照。在新的舞台版本中,这些角色由瑞安·诺兰(Ryan Nolan)、萨姆·尼尔(Sam Neale)、杰克·罗伯逊(Jack Robertson)和斯科特·特恩布尔(Scott Turnbull)重新演绎。 BBC / Chris Bishop


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采访

“我梦想能够拨乱反正。盖房子。建医院和学校。照顾穷人和老人。从富人那里拿回他们抢走我们的所有钱。”

——摘自弗兰纳里1982年原版舞台剧《我们北方的朋友》中尼基(Nicky)的对白

北方充满了理想主义者。这阻碍了我们把事情办成。杰克·麦克纳马拉(Jack McNamara)并非来自北方。他在瑞士长大,于2021年搬到泰恩赛德(Tyneside),担任纽卡斯尔Live剧院的艺术总监。从那时起,他一直在寻找可以讲述的故事,在原剧播出30年后,他成为了《我们北方的朋友》重返舞台的原因。

“当我接手这份工作时,那些不了解东北部的人会说:‘噢,那么,《我们北方的朋友》’,”麦克纳马拉说。“在文化对话中,你自然会对它有所认知,”他补充道。“你会注意到那四个演员以及他们现在的成就。从这个意义上说,它就像莎士比亚的作品一样。”

这部电视剧于1996年在BBC Two播出;共九集,讲述了四个工人阶级人物——乔迪(丹尼尔·克雷格饰)、玛丽(吉娜·麦基饰)、尼基(克里斯托弗·埃克尔斯顿饰)和托斯克(马克·斯特朗饰)——在1964年至1995年间,其生活如何被纽卡斯尔和伦敦的权力与腐败所冲击。该剧赢得了Baltas,被认为是英国最伟大的电视剧集之一。

再次观看时,它并不完美。有不合理的巧合,化妆效果也挑战想象力。对于乔治亚(Geordie)观众来说,用乱石滩冒充沙质的惠特利湾(Whitley Bay)破坏了沉浸感——就像一部把巴士画成黄色的伦敦剧集一样。但它曾吸引了全国观众,这是一个关于北方近期历史的谴责之作,播出的时间正值经济、文化和政治乐观主义盛行的时期:“酷不列颠”(Cool Britannia)。一个幸福的结局在当时是必然的。

但后来并非如此。三十年后,我们曾认为稳定繁荣的国家现在却穷困潦倒、分崩离析且愤怒不已,而曾经起到约束作用的两个主要政党已磨损至崩溃边缘。正是在这样的氛围中,麦克纳马拉的新作将拉开帷幕。

他在2024年凭借这个项目取得了突破,当时他正在伦敦皇家剧院执导《边界》(The Bounds),并被介绍给弗兰纳里的经纪人。随后双方安排了一次Zoom会议。

回忆起那次交谈,弗兰纳里说麦克纳马拉询问他是否愿意为原剧写一个续篇。“我说:‘不,我不想——我已经把它写完了,’”弗兰纳里说,

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他提议改为改编最后四集(这些剧集是在原剧本之后编写的,因此从未上演),并在两个晚上演出。“杰克说:‘我们不能那样做,’而我说:‘好吧,谢谢你的电话,但是……’”

麦克纳马拉坚持不懈。那么只改编第六和第七集,即1979年和1984年的内容,包括矿工罢工如何?“我仍然认为这是一个需要一遍又一遍讲述的故事,”弗兰纳里告诉我。“它基本上标志着工会运动的终结,以及民主能为人们提供什么的巨大转变。”他心动了。

“我对杰克说:‘好吧,我不想写,’他说:‘那么,如果由我来写呢?’”麦克纳马拉写了一份剧本,但弗兰纳里觉得原剧中的个人风格丢失了。随后他与仍住在东北部的兄弟姐妹商量。“他们说:‘等一下,这必须由你来写,否则人们会觉得被欺骗了。’”

弗兰纳里同意了。“于是我对杰克说:‘现在让我试一次。’我写了第一稿,放弃了杰克写的内容,回到了原始剧本和我的原始风格。”麦克纳马拉专注于导演角色,将一部30年前的电视剧转化为当代戏剧。弗兰纳里则在创作一部新剧。

“感觉就像一个没有真正活力的国家,你知道的——像是在衰落。人们似乎很困惑。没有人可以仰望。没有什么值得奋斗的,你知道,‘既然可以领救济金,为什么要工作?’之类的事情。我这个年纪的男人就是这样。实际上,这让我感到悲哀。我很庆幸能离开那里。”

——摘自弗兰纳里1982年的剧作中,兰斯从英国返回罗得西亚(现津巴布韦)后的独白

东北部不再产生像弗兰纳里这样的人了——这是我的观点。他在贾罗(Jarrow)长大(他的祖父参加了贾罗大游行),就读于一所天主教文法技术学校。当来自这里的人就读于文法学校时,这一点总是很明显:

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敏锐、受过深厚教育、自信。如今我们在东北部没有文法学校了。现在的成功人士往往来自宗教学校或私立学校。

他在南希尔兹参加了青年剧团,随后离开前往曼彻斯特大学学习戏剧。“那里感觉更大,更国际化,”弗兰纳里说。“那里有更多我们现在所说的多样性;在60年代,要比纽卡斯尔更具多样性并不难。感觉挺令人兴奋的。”

不过,远离家乡是很艰难的。“贾罗是一个典型的工人阶级城镇,直到上大学我才意识到,原来还有人不住在市政房里。”突然之间,他置身于一群“有着不同期望、对学位有计划”的人之中。“我那时还在街上吐痰——这让我的大学同学感到非常惊讶。”

他并不热爱这门课程,但他完成了学业。他读了一年研究生,并接了一些小的写作

(图注:原电视剧中,左侧为埃克尔斯顿与克雷格,下方为斯特朗与麦基。) BBC

(图注:在由彼得·弗兰纳里编写的新舞台剧中,尼尔带领着一个全由东北英格兰人组成的演员阵容,见右图。) Chris Bishop, Gary Calton 为《观察者报》供图

工作。他获得了一项最佳新剧奖。1979年,他成为了皇家莎士比亚剧团的驻团作家。“那一年他们正在排演所有的历史剧,所以我观看排练和演出,与演员和导演交流。我唯一需要做的事情就是在那一年里为他们写一部剧。”

“我想:‘好吧,我看着所有的理查和亨利,以及莎士比亚将社会各阶层浓缩在舞台上的方式。他不仅仅在写国王和权势人物,他也在写高层和底层。当国王开始与王子反目,女王开始与公主反目时,底层穷人身上发生了什么。’”

他也受到了父母的影响。“他们是绝对纯粹的工人阶级,在艰苦的生活和时代中成长,期间经历了战争、贫困、贾罗大游行,以及所有那些——失业、困苦。但他们对政治嗤之以鼻。他们绝对地嗤之以鼻,而我当时并不这样,这在我看来反而是反常的。”

他想:“为什么他们不对自己的政治遗产和已取得的成就感到自豪?他们的生活已经变得更好了,看看我,一个婴儿潮一代;我得到了免费教育,我轻而易举地找到了工作,情况肯定好多了。‘腐败’这个词不断出现。我并不太相信这一点,但我认为:‘好吧,他们比我更了解生活,而且他们是通过艰苦的方式,而不是简单的方式,不是通过书籍,而是通过生活学到的。’于是我花了一年时间研究英国公共生活中可能存在的腐败。”

他给托尼·本(对方不愿与他交谈)和哈罗德·威尔逊(对方说会谈但随后病倒)写信。在电话簿中,他查到了 T·丹·史密斯,这位前纽卡斯尔市议会领导人因腐败(涉及建筑方案的不正当款项)而被监禁。“他说:‘这里有一出莎士比亚规模的戏剧。’这鼓励了我,我想:‘他在说什么?’我花了很多时间与丹交谈,他很贪婪,但很乐于提供帮助。”

怎么个贪婪法?

“他想要报酬,但我说:‘算了吧,丹,我没钱。’”

弗兰纳里研究了政府丑闻,并与布莱斯的国会议员埃迪·米尔恩交谈,后者曾发起反对东北部地方政府腐败的运动。弗兰纳里在酒吧里会见了《私人之眼》(Private Eye)的记者。他阅读了马丁·贝利的《Oligate》一书,讲述了石油公司违反针对前罗得西亚的制裁,而英国官员对此视而不见。书中的一行字写道:“石油公司的机密文件会含蓄地提到‘我们北方的朋友’。”

他微调了这句话作为标题。(《我们在东北方的朋友》会更准确,但没人会看。)他将剧本设定在纽卡斯尔、伦敦和罗得西亚(非洲的剧情线在电视剧中大部分被删除了)。它讲述了乔迪、玛丽、尼基和托斯克从1964年到1979.的故事。一部史诗。“这部剧的时长大约为3小时20分钟,”根据1982年的剧本文字记载。

这部剧首先在斯特拉特福-upon-Avon的皇家莎士比亚剧团(RSC)的Other Place剧场上演,随后在纽卡斯尔的Gulbenkian工作室上演。“我告诉RSC,这基本上是一部为斯特拉特福和纽卡斯尔而作的剧,而不是为了伦敦——至少在最初是这样,”弗兰纳里在1982年告诉纽卡斯尔的《日报》(the Journal)。接着,它在伦敦巴比肯中心的Pit剧场上演。(我那本二手剧本里夹着两张Pit剧场演出的票;票上的名称印错了,写成了《来自北方的朋友们》)。《每日快报》的一篇相关新闻报道称其为“聚焦工党最糟糕的过度行为”。

“情况很复杂,”弗兰纳里说。“每当有人说:‘这令人大开眼界,我太喜欢了’,就会有其他人说:‘这他妈的实在太长了,应该在电视上播。’”当时BBC的区域剧集负责人迈克尔·韦林(Michael Wearing)在弗兰纳里经纪人的提醒下,前往Gulbenkian剧场观看了演出。他试图说服弗兰纳里将其改编为电视剧,甚至亲自前往他位于切希尔郡麦克尔斯菲尔德附近兰利的家中。


访谈

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“迈克尔花了很多时间才说服我,让我意识到这可能会成为一件真正具有重大意义的事情,”弗兰纳里回忆道。“你知道的:‘你将告诉人们他们需要知道的事情。只有10,000人能在舞台上看到它——而你现在有机会在数百万人面前讲述这个故事。’我真的很喜欢迈克尔;我觉得他就是个特立独行的人。”

韦林于2017年去世,此前他已经制作了艾伦·布利斯代尔(Alan Bleasdale)的《黑料男孩》(Boys From the Blackstuff),讲述的是利物浦失业的铺路工的故事。“我大约在那个时候遇到了艾伦·布利斯代尔,”弗兰纳里回忆道。“我们是同一类人,我想:‘好吧,这里有一条路可走——这件事是可行的。’但在那时,我还没意识到我得等待13年。”

高管们调职了。律师们犹豫了。预算上涨了。到1990年代中期,国家正处于上升期:谁还想听关于住房、腐败和政治失败的故事?随后,1994年在伦敦的Ivy餐厅举行了一次会议,弗兰纳里与时任BBC Two新控制人的迈克尔·杰克逊(Michael Jackson)共进晚餐。

“那次会议是对我的馈赠,”弗兰纳里说。“迈克尔·杰克逊说:‘我决定委托制作这部剧,共九集。’我本应该顺从地接受,像被挠痒痒一样舒服地躺在那儿。”然而,当杰克逊说每集时长为60分钟时,弗兰纳里建议他“搞砸了”——每集需要“根据需要而定时长”。而这并不是BBC电视运作的方式。

由于我无法联系到晚餐时的任何相关人员,这里只能依赖弗兰纳里的讲述,他说:“我们面前铺着一张巨大的白色桌布,于是我向服务员要了一支粗头记号笔,在桌布上写下1到9,然后我说:‘我在这些数字旁边写的数字就是每一集需要的时长。你必须同意这一点,否则我们在这里就是在浪费时间。’然后(杰克逊)起身离开了。”

弗兰纳里打赌杰克逊会妥协。事实也的确如此。这个来自贾罗的小伙子赢得了他的主张。

“你必须准备好失去一切,”他说。

“这与领导者无关。这与权力有关。领导者只是捷径。最终他们无法让你到达任何地方。真正的工作是让人们走远路,去寻求对自己生活的一点掌控权——而不是将其交给别人并寄希望于最好的结果。”

——弗兰纳里原剧中的当地议员埃迪

“现在这就是个barm(一种面包卷),没人能告诉我不是。显然,有些人可能会管它叫cob、bap、batch或者stottie。”

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在一个地方有意义的事情,在另一个地方显然并不一定有意义。

这是伯纳姆本月在社交媒体上拿着一个面包卷(不是stottie)时说的话。这就是一个来自利物浦或曼彻斯特的人被贴上“北方之王”标签的问题所在:他们可能并不太了解自己的整个王国。因此,东北部需要为自己发声。

这里有两个关于格迪人(geordies)尝试这样做的故事。

杰米·伊斯特莱克(Jamie Eastlake)在诺森伯兰郡的布莱斯长大。他以前常在学校演出(曾在一次受《星球大战》启发的演出中,代表英格兰参加世界杯的丹·伯恩饰演了帕尔帕廷皇帝)。随后,伊斯特莱克前往伦敦成为一名演员,因为你必须这么做,不是吗:去有工作的地方。“结果我在特拉法加广场的 Wetherspoons 餐厅工作了一年,没钱,”他说。

他在一家伦敦剧院获得了一份编程工作,这得益于他制作的爱丁堡演出。

“莎士比亚用社会各阶层的人填满了舞台。他描写的是高层和底层。”

他利用一次 Uber 车祸后获得的 4,000 英镑 赔偿金创建了一家剧院公司,在伦敦上演剧目,但他的商业伙伴去世了,他们也失去了场地。2019年,他回到了布莱斯,他的 Eastlake Productions 公司因与 Unpolished Theatre 公司共同制作戏剧《血与骨》(Flesh and Bone)而获得了一项奥利维尔奖。

他卖过锅炉,刷过墙,并在 2021 年在惠特利湾一个前皇家水牛会(Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes)俱乐部原址上开设了一家拥有 60 个座位的剧院。他将乔纳森·图洛克(Jonathan Tulloch)的书《季票》(The Season Ticket)改编为《杰里与塞威尔》(Gerry & Sewell)。该剧门票售罄,随后在 Live 剧院演出,接着进入纽卡斯尔的皇家剧院(Theatre Royal),并于今年在伦敦的奥德威奇剧院(Aldwych theatre)上演。

我们在他现在合作的皇家剧院办公室里交谈。“他们终于让我进来了,”他说。Eastlake Productions 正在与 Live 剧院和皇家剧院共同制作《北方的朋友们》(Our Friends in the North)。“将这个地区——这个地区的人才——搬上舞台,在我成年后的绝大部分时间里一直是我关注的重点,”伊斯特莱克说。“我们希望它在这里创作,然后走遍全国,并向伦敦推进。”

这就是一个来自布莱斯的人在艺术领域取得成功所需经历的一切。另一个关于乔迪人(geordie)的故事。

萨姆·尼尔(Sam Neale)出生在盖茨黑德本舍姆的一栋市政住宅里。她在学校学习大提琴。在 Live 剧院参加青年剧团。16 岁离开学校,在纽卡斯尔学院学习戏剧课程。在纽卡斯尔的 Cluny 酒吧找了份工作,找了经纪人,然后登上了电视。这看起来很简单。“我当时很年轻,长得漂亮,可以演女主角,”她说。“抱歉,不是女主角——我是说女性受害者。”

她在 ITV 侦探剧《薇拉》(Vera)的第一集中被杀。(出生于北希尔兹的萨姆·芬德也在那一集中被杀;他的荧幕母亲由 McKee 饰演,后者在电视剧《北方的朋友们》中饰演玛丽。)但工作变得零星,在尼尔生孩子后,工作量“断崖式下跌”。她从事写作和剧院工作,但在《北方的朋友们》回归的试镜公告发布时,她正处于一次“计划外休息”中。“告诉我你要去试镜,”她的母亲说。

尼尔错过了截止日期,但她的经纪人为她在皇家剧院争取到了一次试镜机会。她读了台词,感到有些局促,但最终获得了这个角色:她饰演玛丽,加入了一个全由东北英格兰人组成的演员阵容,这与电视剧不同,当时 McKee 是主演中该地区唯一的代表。“这太重要了,”她说。“观众会有期待,但这感觉很好,因为这就像是在邀请乔迪观众进入其中。”

现在的乔迪观众与 1996 年时截然不同。上个月,纽卡斯尔泰恩中心和西区的工党议员奇·翁武拉(Chi Onwurah)访问了皇家剧院,并在推特上表示她期待这个新改编版本:“一部由东北英格兰人创作的关于东北英格兰的戏剧!”

工党在五月份失去了市议会,被自由民主党、改革英国党(Reform UK)和绿党击败。在河对岸,工党在 52 年来首次失去了盖茨黑德议会,被改革党击败。托斯克、玛丽、乔迪和尼基正回到一个分歧严重得多的泰恩赛德。

然而,许多问题依然没有改变。根据健康基金会(Health Foundation)慈善机构的数据,2024年伦敦有超过 27% 的学校被评为“优秀”,而东北部则不足 9%。同样,伦敦 70% 的学生在 11 岁时能达到预期标准;而在东北部,这一比例为 63%。伦敦人的平均寿命比东北部的人长三年。

东北部有自己的故事要讲述,而这个故事需要在伦敦以及奔宁山脉两岸被听到。

《北方的朋友》(Our Friends in the North)将于 10 月 15-24 日在纽卡斯尔皇家剧院上演


14 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

访谈

“露西·莱特比的故事就像一场实时上演的神话”

瑞秋·阿维夫通过对这名护士谋杀罪定论提出质疑而成为头条新闻。她向巴西亚·卡明斯讲述了她关于母亲与女儿的新书——以及她为何从未停止追问

当《纽约客》作者瑞秋·阿维夫(Rachel Aviv)加入我们的通话,讨论她的新书《你无法摆脱它》(You Won’t Get Free of It)时,我身后正上演着该书主题的真实写照:我的幼儿正抓着关上的门大喊“妈妈”,因为我就在附近,能听到声音却触不可及,这让她感到恼火。“我每天都在经历这种情况,”阿维夫温暖地对我说道。正是向母亲身份的转变,促使这位屡获殊荣的调查记者重新审视早期的报道,并汇编成这本关于母亲与女儿的新集。但她说,起初,书中这种“母亲视角”的框架让她感到不适。诚然,这并不是一本关于我们早已习以为常的现代母职裂痕的书:书中没有提到传统妻子(trad-wife)、唐纳德·特朗普或罗诉韦德案,也没有对母亲自我牺牲的理想进行明确的解构。相反,阿维夫关注的是母女之间这种“不常被作为平行关系来书写”的双向关系。这些故事讲述了女性如何塑造彼此的生活,她们“终身地被彼此捆绑”,且往往从截然不同的现实出发去面对同一事件。

阿维夫回顾了一篇 2011 年的作品,当时她 28 岁,讲述的是琳达·毕肖普(Linda Bishop)的故事。琳达是一名患有双相情感障碍的母亲,被发现死在一家废弃农舍中,死因是饥饿,她在那里仅靠苹果和雨水生存了数月。她重新讲述了汉娜·阿普(Hannah Upp)的故事,后者经历着分离性失忆(dissociative fugues)并多次失踪。书中还包含了阿维夫对短篇小说作家爱丽丝·门罗(Alice Munro)所受指控的卓越调查,门罗被其女儿指责,称其忽视了女儿在门罗第二任丈夫杰拉尔德·弗雷姆林(Gerald Fremlin)手中遭受的性虐待。

这些故事亲密且具有层次感;一股强烈的共情之流引领她穿梭于大量的法庭文件、医疗记录和日记之中,她调查的不是近年来被普及的作为一种身份的母职,而是一个封闭系统:亲密且完全抵制单一视角的解读。其他记者利用调查技巧揭露腐败或有组织犯罪,而阿维夫则更靠近家庭和内心。“我非常喜欢我在前言中引用的一句话,”她告诉我,“[作家李翊云]说父母与孩子之间的关系就像捉迷藏。当我读到这句话时,我意识到我一直在书写的一种动态关系变得清晰了:那些触不可及的女儿,以及将一生致力于试图理解她们的母亲,或者是试图弄清楚母亲身上发生了什么的女儿。”阿维夫说,某种程度的失败是这种关系中固有的一部分。“当你进入一段浪漫关系时,亲密程度始终有可能保持不变。但在亲子”

Maria Spann 绘制的肖像

在亲子关系中,可能会有一种蜜月期的感觉,但它终将结束。有一种即将失去的预感

img-300.jpeg

关系中,可能会有一种蜜月期的感觉,但它终将结束。有一种即将失去的预感。”

这种失去在艾玛(Emma)的故事中体现得最为清晰,她将九个女儿留在菲律宾,前往纽约照顾他人的孩子。这是一次关于外包母职经济中爱、金钱与权力交换的调查。艾玛告诉阿维夫:“我将我对自己孩子的爱转移到了这些女孩身上,我把她们当成自己的女儿对待。”与此同时,艾玛自己的孩子们对母亲的缺席感到愤恨。一个女儿写信给多年未见的艾玛:“有一天,当我拥有自己的家庭时,我会带着这种痛苦一起。”你无法摆脱它。

我询问阿维夫关于她这项事业的复杂性。她不仅是在事实的领域——日期、记录、医疗笔记——中写作,而且是在一个往往被扭曲的、甚至对当事人而言也某种程度上不可知的心理领域中写作。在一段令人难忘的文字中,寻找女儿的汉娜·厄普的母亲芭芭拉告诉阿维夫:“我必须意识到,无论我对她了解多少,无论我进一步了解到多少,依然存在着一个谜团。”

阿维夫说,她试图描述的是“谜团的轮廓”,而非去破解它。“有时最富有成效的对话发生在我已经开始写作的时候,”她告诉我,“如果我对某件事不理解,我会与我写作的对象分享这一点。这可以使‘不理解’的空间变得更加清晰。”厄普在2017年最后一次失踪。她的尸体从未被找回。阿维夫并不试图寻找它。但在写作过程中,在描写她的同时,她剥离了精神病学教条和家族历史的层层外壳,而这些因素似乎塑造了厄普这些走向未知的旅程。

在自己成为母亲并随着年龄增长的过程中,这不仅重新点燃了她对早期这些报道作品的兴趣:阿维夫还对它们进行了补充,写进了原稿中遗漏的细节。“我曾某种程度上认为自己是在从女儿的视角写作,”她写道。她现在对这些文章进行了修订,以“纠正我所认为的一种不平衡,即对这对母女中母亲那一半的好奇心缺失”。

在关于琳达·毕晓普的原始散文中(毕晓普向她的女儿和家人否认自己精神不健康),阿维夫后来发现自己忽略了一个细节:毕晓普年轻时曾被强迫放弃一个婴儿。阿维夫以一种犀利的口吻写道28岁时的自己:“显然,在当时,我不认为失去孩子是一个足够相关到需要提及的传记事实。”在厄普的故事中,阿维夫遗漏了另一个失去的婴儿:厄普的母亲生下了一个婴儿,但该婴儿在出生后不久便夭折,而时间恰恰发生在厄普的游离状态似乎开始发作的那个时节。这些细节现在已被补写进去。


科学与技术

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

15

这是一个大胆的承认,尤其是考虑到新闻业中存在的一条潜规则——这或许是报纸曾作为“记录报”时代的遗留影响——即发表的文章具有某种终结感。人们抵制修改,且修改通常会在文章下方附带一段严厉的免责声明。我问阿维夫如何看待这些早期的遗漏——是错误?还是不准确?“我认为(那些作品)只是关注点不同,”她说,“我觉得我现在是一个不同的作者了。虽然不是完全不同,但在某种程度上是的。”

尽管阿维夫在美国是一位知名作家,但在英国,她因对露西·莱特比故事的卓越介入而更为人熟知。莱特比是一名新生儿护士,被判定在2015年至2016年期间在切斯特伯爵夫人医院杀害了七名婴儿并企图谋杀另外七名婴儿。她关于莱特比的散文并未收录在本书中,但却像幽灵一样笼罩其上。“啊,”阿维夫说,“我开始以为你不会提到那个。”我向她解释,那篇文章在英国发表时像炸弹一样引起轰动,拆解了控方的论点,并对判定莱特比有罪的统计分析提出了质疑,无论是在法庭内,还是在法庭外的英国公众之中。

阿维夫表示,她最初是对莱特比的故事产生兴趣,是因为了解了凯瑟琳·福尔比格(Kathleen Folbigg)的案例。福尔比格是一名澳大利亚女性,此前因谋杀自己的孩子而被定罪,但随着基因检测技术的进步,该判决被推翻。与莱特比一样,针对福尔比格的起诉在很大程度上依赖于她的日记条目,她在其中表达了对母亲身份的矛盾心理。“我认为这种对模糊性的不容忍很有意思,”阿维夫说,“这被视为证据,证明[福尔比格]不仅对为人母持有复杂的情绪,而且她一定杀了[她的孩子]。我觉得在露西·莱特比的案例中,真正令人震惊的是,甚至连警察都觉得:‘没错,她身上没有任何迹象表明她会有理由到处杀婴。’”阿维夫说,莱特比的故事感觉就像一个在现实时间中上演的神话,“一个具有极强共鸣的神话。”

阿维夫和《纽约客》都位于美国,他们决定在英格兰仍实施报道限制期间发表文章,这导致了一个荒诞的局面:这篇文章在网络上疯传,但在英国被屏蔽,不过购买纸质杂志的人以及使用 VPN 的在线用户仍然可以阅读。尽管审判已经结束且莱特比已被判刑,但她的案件仍处于上诉阶段。我问为什么在那个时间点发表。“我觉得针对媒体出版的封锁并没有效果,”阿维夫说,“关于莱特比已经发表了海量内容,但全部都在传播检方的说法。我的希望是在上诉之前发表,因为我希望它能产生影响,并促成一次更理性的讨论。”

在这个国家,报道限制的合理化依据是它们有助于保护公正审判,并防止陪审团产生偏见。“但这每天都在《每日邮报》上铺天盖地,”阿维夫说。“所以,这种限制仅在‘提供不同于检方叙事的视角’这一意义上起作用。我理解隐私很重要,但就实现正义而言,很难反驳‘透明度并非实现该目标的一步’这一观点。”

莱特比仍被囚禁——她的直接上诉渠道已全部用尽,目前案件正由刑事案件审查委员会(CCRC)进行审查。“我们现在讨论这件事简直太疯狂了。她还在监狱里。就好像我们在讨论一个案件已被推翻后的她,但实际上什么都没有改变。”

阿维夫正确地抵制了这本书中对“母亲框架”的设定。当她的作品触及更深层的亲密感和不确定性时,其力量最为强大。她在序言中引用了哲学家 L.A. 保罗(LA Paul)的话,后者将决定生育孩子描述为一种“特殊的认识论情境”。阿维夫将这种转化状态同样应用于她自己以及她的采访对象。她的写作并非固定不变,而是随着她的改变而改变。也许她将永远与自己的报道处于某种对话之中。也许所有记者都是如此。与此同时,我自己的认识论情境正在敲门。阿维夫笑了。就寝时间到了。你无法摆脱它。

《You Won’t Get Free of It》由 Vintage 出版(£20)。可通过 observershop.co.uk 订购,价格为 £18 (10% off RRP)。可能产生配送费用。

社交达人

约翰·诺顿 (John Naughton)

雇佣法庭因 AI 辅助索赔激增而陷入过度负荷

《经济学人》最近的一篇标题大声疾呼“AI 如何摧毁英国政府”,这家杂志向来以冷静克制自豪。该杂志报道称,公民们正“转向人工智能来提交异议和上诉,并索要其应得的权益。由此产生的投诉和要求之洪流,将使那些为邮政和电话时代而建立的官僚机构不堪重负。为了防止国家陷入瘫痪,目前所做的努力太少了。”那么,英国政府的哪个部分正受到这项技术的严重威胁?正是遍布全国的雇佣法庭系统,即裁决雇员与雇主之间纠纷的地方法院。这些法院现在显然被 AI 生成的案件堵塞了。根据该杂志的数据,截至 2026 年 3 月的一年里,向雇主提起索赔的人数比前一年增长了 39%,达到 50,000 人,而案件的解决或驳回率则有所下降。

案件的激增有两个显而易见的原因。一是英国雇佣法的适用范围极广。直到最近,雇主被起诉的理由仍有 100 项以上,而新的《雇佣权利法》现在又增加了约 25 项。从明年 1 月起,不公平解雇的索赔在雇佣六个月后即可提出,而此前则需两年。而且至关重要的一点是,雇佣法庭比其他法院更向公众开放,因为任何人都可以提交投诉。

另一个因素是 ChatGPT、Claude 等 AI 的普及,它们可以被用来将一份投诉转化为一份表面上令人印象深刻的文件。毕竟,这些机器已经“阅读”(即摄取)了所有相关立法,并且完全有能力用三层顶级的法律术语来掩盖废话。当《经济学人》的研究人员尝试使用一名虚构的原告(该原告称因喜欢星座而被欺凌)时,机器指出这尚未成为一项受保护的

我在读什么

约翰·诺顿(John Naughton)的推荐

被裁减 《哈佛学院裁减写作中心主任并整合中心》(Harvard College Lays Off Writing Centre Director, Consolidates Centre)是来自哈佛大学学生杂志《哈佛深红报》(Harvard Crimson)的一篇有趣报道。

脚注 由常驻孟买的迪利普·德索萨(Dilip D’Souza)撰写的关于克服童年障碍的优美回忆录是《三次出局》(Three Away the Boot)。

拒绝机器人 麦克斯韦·泽夫(Maxwell Zeff)在《连线》(Wired)杂志上发表的《为什么普通人不使用AI智能体》(Why Normal People Aren’t Using AI Agents)展现了令人钦佩的常识。

歧视法下的受保护信仰,但纯素主义却是!

利用技术来应对国家或企业官僚机构的想法,似乎比《经济学人》(Economist)意识到的要早。2015年,一名在斯坦福大学就读的英国青年约书亚·布劳德(Joshua Browder)创建了DoNotPay,这是一个免费的聊天机器人,通过引导用户进行问答流程来寻找漏洞或技术细节,从而协助用户对停车罚单提出异议。该应用最初在伦敦推出,随后扩展到纽约和西雅图。2016年,布劳德声称DoNotPay在伦敦和纽约挑战了超过250,000张停车罚单,并赢得了其中的160,000张,不过这一说法似乎尚未经过独立验证。

多年来,DoNotPay与美国监管机构之间经历了起起伏伏,但它仍在运行,将其自身定义为一个“利用人工智能帮助消费者对抗大公司并解决问题(如取消停车罚单、申诉银行费用以及拦截自动拨号电话)”的组织。

雇佣审裁处在20世纪60年代引入时是一项激进的创新,它被视为一种“人民法院”,旨在快速且经济地解决争议,且没有普通法院那种程序上的刻板。提起诉讼无需付费,不需要法律代表,而且——与大多数民事案件不同——在大多数情况下没有义务支付对方的诉讼费用。

《雇佣权利法》(Employment Rights Act)是一部令人钦佩的立法,旨在减少不稳定就业,禁止零小时合同和其他不道德的雇佣行为;换句话说,就是纠正当代资本主义中隐含的长期失衡。然而,该法的起草者显然没有预见到,其意外后果之一可能是雇佣审裁处系统的瘫痪——尽管在法案成为法律时,ChatGPT已经成了老掉牙的东西。

那么关键的启示是什么?要系统性地思考,并且要小心你所祈求的东西。

瑞秋·阿维夫(Rachel Aviv)在她的纽约家中


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访谈

“如果你和我们一起走在街头,你会看到一些疯狂的东西”

Burnermunde 正在为 YouTube 时代地改变低成本电影制作,其作品涵盖了从手机拍摄的超现实主义短片,到由韦恩·鲁尼身着拉夫领服装主演的耐克广告。这对导演组合在接受 K Biswas 采访时,谈到了在 Craigslist 上招募演员、电影《四狮》(Four Lions)的遗产,以及为什么他们对成为未来的克里斯托弗·诺兰毫无兴趣

肖像摄影:Cian Oba-Smith

深夜,镜头捕捉到两名南亚青年走出一家电子烟店。一名中年白人男子与他们目光交汇,自信地自我介绍。他将这对组合称为“鸡丁咖喱双胞胎”,并怂恿这两名“电子烟处男”向他购买一款顶尖的电子烟——HufflePuff。他们被那块像基础款 iPhone 一样发光的触摸屏所吸引,翻阅着它的附加功能:计算器、天气和消息应用,以及俄罗斯方块。它的壁纸显示着前首相里希·苏纳克的面孔,他是英国首位具有印度血统的领导人。销售员要求支付“11 卢比”,在两人递过一张崭新的 10 英镑钞票后,他欣喜地走开了。“回头见,孟买土豆们!”他在远处大喊,发出狂躁的笑声。其中一人渴望尝试新买的设备,深深地吸了一口,表情陶醉。在呼出的电子烟雾云中,我们看到苏纳克的面孔从屏幕上消失,设备响起一声提示音,收到一条短信:“Garry:停止船只!”设备随即爆炸。

负责这部超现实主义短片的团队是导演组合 Burnermunde,其风格让人想起英国最顶尖的讽刺大师克里斯·莫里斯。阿兰·阿尚(Arran Ashan)和穆斯塔法·“穆斯蒂”·穆罕默德(Mustafa “Musti” Mohamoud)均在 20 岁出头,他们约我在埃奇韦尔路(Edgware Road)一家装饰华丽的中东餐厅 Shishawi 见面。“如果我们进不去夜店,就来这里,”两人的经纪人奥尼古尔·拉赫曼(Onigur Rahman)告诉我。在享用沙威玛和果汁时,他们解释说,他们的名字是由两个词拼接而成的。“就像一个‘小号’(burner)Instagram,”阿尚说,“有人有一个主账号,然后有一个用于‘发疯 / 发烂帖’(shitposting)的次号”——即在社交媒体上开玩笑地贬低他人,他的合作伙伴穆罕默德认为这是他们的“共同点”。“而 munde,”阿尚继续说道,“在旁遮普语中意为男孩,所以就是‘小号男孩’。读起来很顺口。”

阿尚是第二代英国旁遮普人的儿子,在莱斯特长大。“那里就像一个小伦敦。极其多元,有庞大的南亚社区,”他说,规模大到足以让旁遮普流行巨星 Jay Sean 在该地区巡演,并曾在阿尚的学校演出。阿尚从小就对视听文化着迷,他会在 YouTube 上花一整天时间搜索他最喜欢的音乐家。“那是我们唯一看的东西。我们的朋友经常来我家,就为了看音乐录影带。”

“我们那时非常痴迷 grime 音乐,”阿尚回忆道,并认为获得 Mobo 和水星音乐奖的词曲作者 Skepta “显然是最强的”:“我认为他在 2015 年之后凭一己之力让英国震撼”


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爱丁堡艺术节 Vanessa Thorpe 和 Laura Cumming 带来 边缘艺术节(Fringe)之外的 精彩亮点

observer.co.uk 16.09.26

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阿尚目前与说唱歌手 Sainte(一位来自家乡的朋友)住在东伦敦的贝克顿(Beckton),这是一个浸透了电影制作遗产的社区。这里反乌托邦风格的煤气厂出现在 1984 年改编的乔治·奥威尔小说《1984》中(由约翰·赫特主演),几年后,这些工业建筑被斯坦利·库布里克有选择性地炸毁,用于拍摄他的越南战争史诗电影《全金属外壳》中的战斗场景。

莫哈穆德是两人中较年轻的一位,来自同一个伦敦自治市——纽汉(Newham),他的父母在20世纪末逃离索马里内战后定居于此。他出生于2001年,孩提时代他会从所在的斯特拉特福(Stratford)住宅区凝视这座城市,看着在2012年奥运会筹备期间拔地而起的新建筑。由于从小就沉浸在媒体文化中——他承认自己曾囤积过大量免费的《标准晚报》(Evening Standard)——莫哈穆德“一直很清楚世界上发生了什么”,这在很大程度上是因为电视上没完没了地播着滚动新闻。“我们都把它当成时钟,”他说,“在我小时候,每个人的目标都是上电视。”利用手机摄像技术的进步,两人发现自己记录下了绝对的一切。阿尚拍摄滑板视频(“我所有的朋友都玩滑板,但我并不玩”)以及偶尔与同学一起拍摄的喜剧短剧。

两人都希望通过在大学学习电影来增强自学技能,但他们的课程恰逢新冠疫情限制期,最终未能如愿。阿尚转而选择将精力投入到音乐人的拍摄和管理中。“我当时在做与音乐相关的事情。我有一些艺术家朋友,我在帮他们。”与此同时,莫哈穆德将自己的服装品牌作为副业进行推广(在财务上,这仍然是他的“主业”),两人在Instagram上注意到对方后,于四年前首次会面,共同拍摄一部音乐录影带。

“你当时只是剪辑了一些你拍的哥们儿的随机片段,”阿尚提醒莫哈穆德。“而阿兰以前也这么做,”莫哈穆德回应道,“我敢打赌,正是这一点让我们走到了一起。”阿尚提到,在他们20岁出头的时候,“我们对自己的现状并不满意。”莫哈穆德回忆起被商业工作挫败时的想法:“我真的做不下去。我意识到这根本不值得。就在那时,很随机地——这是一种精神上的感应,太疯狂了——我接到了阿尚的电话,他说:‘伙计,咱们真的拍几部电影吧’。”

“我们做了2015年Skepta那个项目——我们只是回归了基础,”阿尚解释道,“我们从英国电影开始。我们热爱克里斯·莫里斯(Chris Morris),而《四只狮子》(Four Lions)是我个人最喜欢的电影。”与此同时,莫哈穆德沉迷于英国社会现实主义,提到了安德里亚·阿诺德(Andrea Arnold)的早期短片,以及迈克·李(Mike Leigh)1996年的长片《秘密与谎言》(Secrets & Lies)。“我一直被黑暗的结局所吸引。”他们致力于研究电影经典并希望效仿其风格,这一点令人瞩目。

在厌倦了记录私人生活后,他们将目光转向了公共领域。“穆斯蒂和我,我们有一种奇怪的磁场,”阿尚说,“‘麻烦磁铁’!我这么称呼它。如果你和我们一起走在街上,总会发生点什么。你会看到一些疯狂的东西。”Burnermunde的早期纪录片《6Till6》(2024)和《State》(2025)证实了这一点。《6Till6》记录了他们在社区周围一次24小时的游走,从早上6点开始,期间他们遇到了充满活力的慢跑者、无家可归者、醉酒的狂欢者、低端罪犯、东伦敦的黑人和棕色皮肤原住民,以及白人绅士化移民。

而《State》则是一场五分钟的感官冲击,截取自他们四年间积累的手机录像带,就像亚当·柯蒂斯(Adam Curtis)的B-roll素材配上环境电子乐。这对游击电影制作人在冷峻的光线下捕捉到了日常城市景观的画面:外卖员和毒贩,警务程序和可悲的爱国抗议,金融家,逃票者,挥舞旗帜的人和打架斗殴的人。根据阿尚的说法:“我们的纪录片就是真实的生活。它们字面上就是我们被讲述的故事,是我们遇到的人物。”

今年,Burnermunde的天赋不仅吸引了网络观众的关注,还吸引了

更成熟的资源。在获得展示导演技巧的机会后,他们接手了一些工作,包括天空电视台(Sky)引进的美国素描喜剧节目《周六夜现场》(Saturday Night Live)的片头,以及为世界杯拍摄的一则耐克(Nike)与 Palace Skateboards 的广告。在广告中,韦恩·鲁尼(Wayne Rooney)身着伊丽莎白时代的拉夫领,手持一个绘有圣乔治十字旗的头骨,占据了中心位置。这位前英格兰足球队长朗诵了一段莎士比亚《理查二世》(Richard II)中的独白,而观众则随之穿越时空,从巨石阵的建造一直来到现代多元文化自豪感的瞬间。由于英格兰队在与阿根廷队的比赛中随着终场哨响而落败,原本约定在英格兰进入决赛后拍摄续作的承诺落空了。

今年 4 月,Burnermunde 在 YouTube 上发布了三部短片——《赫夫帕夫》(Hufflepuff)、《眨眼者》(Winker)和《乞求》(Beg)——每部都是仅几分钟长的黑色讽刺剧。他们说,《赫夫帕夫》的制作成本仅为 £60,其中一半花在了电子烟上。“那是一款带有应用程序和屏幕保护程序的真实电子烟,”Ashan 解释道,“所以我看到了它,花 £30 买了它。”另一半则用于雇佣阴森的推销员 Garry(饰演“Peter Paneer”),他是在搜寻 Craigslist 时被发掘的。“他演得太棒了,而且价格非常便宜。”

他们指导自己的朋友和业余群众演员,包括在《乞求》中饰演目击一名女性在地上铁(Overground)上与一名无家可归者发生令人尴尬互动的通勤者。他们自己也会在镜头前表演。Ashan 拉来了一位童年好友与他一起饰演《赫夫帕夫》中不幸的电子烟寻找者,而 Mohamoud 在《眨眼者》中饰演的核心角色则表现得炉火纯青。一个用他自己的话来说,在学校里只为了 GCSE 考试而“学过戏剧”的人,是如何地将一个在节礼日(Boxing Day)被一名公开自慰者在自家门外打了一拳后陷入迷茫的男人,演绎出如此引人入胜的悲喜剧效果的?

“这是一个真实的故事,就发生在他身上,”Ashan 笑着指了指 Mohamoud,“他是唯一能演好这个角色的人。”保持低开销很重要,但屏幕上的代表性也是一个因素。“我认为人们看到我们的面孔在某种程度上很重要,”

Ashan 说,对于那些索马里或南亚裔的孩子来说——他们需要看到这一点。我们成长过程中从未真正见过那样的人。在流行文化中,我们的出镜率根本不够。”他们最近完成了

“我们做了 2015 年 Skepta 那样的事情——我们只是回归基础”:穆斯塔法·‘穆斯蒂’·Mohamoud(左上)和阿兰·Ashan(左下)。下方,韦恩·鲁尼在《这就是英格兰》耐克世界杯广告中朗诵《理查二世》的独白。Burnermunde

“《赫夫帕夫》的制作成本仅为 £60,一半花在了电子烟上,另一半花在了雇佣在 Craigslist 上发现的 Garry 身上。‘他演得太棒了,而且价格非常便宜,’Ashan 说

迄今为止最宏大的项目。纪录片《注射》(Injection)是对锡克教硬汉贾斯帕尔·辛格·桑杜(Jaspal Singh Sandhu,绰号“Injection”)的 30 分钟人物研究。他是一位来自南奥尔(Southall)、说话飞快的社交媒体影响力人物,也是一名自封的社区领袖,经常讲述离奇的故事并暗示自己有着黑暗的过去。Burnermunde 在采访主角时,他正坐在公园健身房里,身边牵着一只戴着口套的 XL 恶霸犬,并陪同他进行深夜的私刑突袭或白天的谒访谒寺(Gurdwara)之行。正如片中一名青少年公正地评价道:“Injection 是个帮派分子,但也是个好人。”在上个月于 Curzon Mayfair 举行的首映礼上——这次放映的费用超过了该纪录片的全部制作资金——年轻的观众接触到了令人眼花缭乱的电影风格,从摇晃的手持镜头到丰富的电影感摇镜,从 CCTV 截取的片段到 4k Instagram 视频,从颗粒感十足的新闻短片到大预算的商业大片。

对话转向了克里斯托弗·诺兰的《奥德赛》(The Odyssey),该片采用IMAX 70mm拍摄,耗资2.5亿美元,且在与他们的首映同一周发行。他们是否也渴望有一天能执导一部属于自己的好莱坞史诗大片?穆罕默德出生于“互联网还很新”的时代,成长过程中在电视上看到的是“独立、超低预算的作品”,此时他变得激动起来。“为什么现在,在生活成本危机如此严重、一切都变得糟糕透顶的时候,我们不反其道而行之,回归基础,用手机,用我的——我不知道,用GoPro或网络摄像头来拍电影?这才是我们现在应该做的事。”

“有很多电影制作人花三年时间向某个该死的公司乞求资金,而我觉得,如果你真的想做,下周就能开始。这就是为什么我热爱grime(格莱姆音乐),它就像在说:‘看,这就是我们拥有的,’对吧?‘我们就用这些。’我认为一群在市政住宅区长大、一无所有的年轻人能够创造出定义整个时代的音乐,这简直太酷了。”

阿尚表示赞同:“如果你听grime,它听起来很有工业感。它有种诱人的声音。它一度变得有点主流,然后变成了常态。”他沉思了一秒。“所以我们只是在等待成为常态。”

《注射》(Injection)将于 19 August 在YouTube上发布

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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

评论家

爱丁堡艺术节

古典音乐

米西·马佐利(Missy Mazzoli)这部令人震撼且触目惊心的新作,通过一个致幻的游乐场骑乘设备的寓言,探讨了成瘾问题在美国造成的毁灭性影响。

瓦妮莎·索普(Vanessa Thorpe)

《奔腾之治》(The Galloping Cure) 爱丁堡节日剧院,爱丁堡国际艺术节

今年在爱丁堡首演的这部震撼歌剧,就像一场旋转的游乐场骑乘,传达了阿片类处方药的诱惑力,而这些药物正摧毁着美国人口的整个阶层。

在这里,大批量出售给贫困、抑郁社区的强效止痛药,被超现实地表现为一座旋转木马景点的到来,它提供了逃离日常枯燥生活的狂喜分心。诱人的、闪闪发光的骏马,带着“猩红的缰绳和海玻璃般的眼睛”,在

阿片类药物危机歌剧

一个瞬间被电光点亮的舞台上旋转,该舞台由丽贝卡·林格斯特(Rebecca Ringst)和灯光导演露西·卡特(Lucy Carter)共同打造,效果惊人。

这部由纽约音乐界宠儿之一米西·马佐利为苏格兰歌剧院(Scottish Opera)和Opera Ventures Productions创作的《奔腾之治》,是一个触目惊心、发自肺腑的故事,其阴郁的方式最终证明不仅仅是巧妙的隐喻。导演汤姆·莫里斯(Tom Morris)在马匹题材方面已有卓越的记录,他是《战争之马》(War Horse)的共同创作者。不过,这部作品并不适合家庭观看。

马佐利间接受到了弗兰茨·卡夫卡故事《乡村医生》的启发,但与其这部由罗伊斯·瓦夫雷克(Royce Vavrek)撰写犀利剧本的阴郁盛宴最明显的文化对比,无疑是罗杰斯和汉默斯坦备受喜爱的《旋转木马》(Carousel)。一个名叫幸运(Lucky)的圆滑骗子是这部歌剧中的游乐场“叫卖员”,也是那个致幻马骑乘设备的看管人;站在他身边,《旋转木马》中任性的比利·比格洛(Billy Bigelow)看起来会像个相当温顺的灵魂。男中音贾斯汀·奥斯汀(Justin Austin)饰演的幸运纯粹是威胁的化身,他无情地推销一种能让镇民面孔“绽放笑容”的疗法。这是一个关于即将到来的血腥惨剧的不祥暗示。

戏剧

在《审判》中,巴西之星瓦格纳·莫拉饰演易卜生的反英雄

《审判》:继《人民之敌》之后

爱丁堡国际艺术节,莱西姆剧院

无论你观看的是一场单口喜剧还是快闪音乐剧,在爱丁堡艺术节期间,舞台与观众席之间的界限通常都是模糊的。观众经常会陷入各种互动环节之中。

今年夏天,同样的参与压力也被施加到了参加国际艺术节的人身上——这个高雅艺术活动项目,每年都被规模庞大且不受约束的“边缘艺术节”(Fringe)围绕着旋转。这意味着,任何一名在莱西姆剧院灯光渐暗时安静入座的匿名剧迷,都可能发现自己被召唤担任陪审员,被要求对托马斯·斯托克曼博士做出评判,而他正是亨利克·易卜生剧作《人民之敌》中的英雄——或者说是反英雄。好的一面是,他们随后会发现自己与瓦格纳·莫拉(右)同台,后者是全球最受推崇的荧幕演员之一。极具磁性的莫拉是

这部巴西改编剧作中最引人入胜的元素。该剧设定在易卜生原著剧作事件之后的一场公开审判中,这场审判显然是由米德洛锡安的治安官们召集的,尽管其原因有些难以解释。如今,激进的斯托克曼孤身一人,被指控因轻率地公开其温泉水被污染的说法而撕裂了他的小镇,使许多依赖此业的企业和生计陷入风险。他的忠诚女儿佩特拉为他辩护。而起诉方则是镇长,同时也是斯托克曼的兄弟。

戏剧需要危机感,或者至少是一个扣人心弦的焦点,而这部剧将莫拉——他因去年的《秘密特工》(该片为其赢得了奥斯卡提名)以及在 Netflix 的《毒枭》中饰演毒枭巴勃罗·埃斯科巴而闻名——置于被告席上。事实上,这部由克里斯蒂安·贾塔希改编并导演的剧作,真正受益于两个“莫拉”:一个扮演着善良(或不那么善良)的医生,另一个则是俏皮的叙述者,他跳出角色来构建并解读剧情。这位巴西之星在担任叙述者时令人赏心悦目,且对此心知肚明,他与观众轻松交谈,最终呈现出一种像是在唱着桑巴舞曲、面带微笑的乔治·克鲁尼或加里·格兰特式的人物形象。

然而,在饰演那位激进的医生时,他主要使用葡萄牙语说话——对于一个名叫斯托克曼的人来说这很奇怪,正如他的叙述者人格在剧初用英语得意地指出的那样。斯托克曼、佩特拉与镇长之间的大段法庭对话通过大屏幕上的字幕传达给观众,而这些字幕随后成为了情节本身的一个特点。由此产生的不可避免的时间滞后,在观众、演员和临时选出的陪审员之间建立了一种紧张的三方动态。注意力被奇怪地分散了,而且这场戏剧(没有中场休息)开始让人觉得,这既是对斯托克曼的道德考验,也是对观众的考验。相比之下,结尾处通过电子方式宣布的裁决,则更像是一场粗俗的电视游戏节目。

易卜生的故事直击人心,因此衍生出了许多版本,包括托马斯·奥斯特迈尔最近在西区尝试的版本,该版本同样包含一个沉浸式、参与式的阶段。每一次重述都追踪了一次对抗既得利益的自我毁灭式尝试。最著名的是史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格的《大白鲨》,其中潜伏的危机伴随着电影史上最著名的主题曲之一。莫拉甚至在剧中的许多


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男中音贾斯汀·奥斯汀(居中)在《奔腾之疗》中饰演圆滑的骗子拉基。 Andrew Perry / 爱丁堡国际艺术节

贾斯汀·奥斯汀饰演的拉基纯粹是种威胁,他冷酷地推销一种能让镇民脸上‘绽放笑容’的疗法——这是对即将到来的血腥场面的不祥预示

那位处于小镇风暴中心的医生兼单身母亲——由丹妮拉·马克(Daniela Mack)以动人的细腻感演绎——很快因其持续的偏头痛以及无法应对叛逆女儿而陷入漩涡。这两者之间的关系是剧情的核心,但英国女高音苏珊·布洛克(Susan Bullock)饰演的脾气古怪的老妇伊沃娜(Ivona)表现出众,该角色在药物的作用下短暂地进入了一种类似于《Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds》的幻境。

马佐利(Mazzoli)那令人不安的配乐精准地唤起了慢性疼痛的感觉,尽管在接近尾声时,坚持不懈的末日舞曲节拍有淹没那些通过旋律表达的原始情感的危险。恰如其分的是,这里就像许多游乐场设施一样,小镇上悲痛欲绝的幸存者们在之后感受到的是令人作呕的悔恨。

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这些元剧场时刻,以及对朱莉娅·罗伯茨(Julia Roberts)主演的传记片《艾琳·布罗科维奇》(Erin Brockovich)的致敬,在后者中,一个美国真实小镇水源的污染同样是关键因素。

但这部对 1882 年原剧的续作虽然在有趣的文化互文和技术奇巧方面有所收获,但最终在鲜活的人类故事讲述上有所缺失。由于在所有重大背叛发生之后才接起易卜生的故事,其冲击力有所减弱。如果不能实时见证斯托克曼(Stockmann)世界的安稳,那么失去它的感觉也就没有那么深刻。

诚然,《大白鲨》(Jaws)的剧本也没有表现出高度的个人背叛,但它用一只阴森的鲨鱼进行了补偿——即便是在 Jaws 2. 中。莱西姆剧院(Lyceum)这部《人民之敌》(An Enemy of the People)的续作中没有出现一只盘旋的大白鲨。幸运的是,它可以部署一个像莫拉(Moura)这样的顶级掠食者——带着他那迷人的微笑。瓦妮莎·索普(Vanessa Thorpe)

艺术

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所有的曲折与转折

英国最大的视觉艺术节是一个松散且不可预测的活动集合——今年的纽带是由杰出的女性艺术家在每种媒介中创作的扣人心弦的作品。

劳拉·卡明(Laura Cumming)

爱丁堡艺术节 日期与地点不一;持续至 8 月 30 日

此刻在爱丁堡,光线透过欧文·约翰(Owen John)最受喜爱的一幅画作中的窗户洒下,画中是那间巴黎阁楼,她的藤椅在那里永远地等待着。在温迪·麦克默多(Wendy McMurdo)拍摄的精彩溜冰场照片中,亨利·雷纳特(Henry Raehnert)著名的沃克牧师(Rev Walker)在另一位飞跃冰面的滑冰者身旁滑行。

在伊娃·罗斯柴尔德(Eva Rothschild)精巧的雕塑作品《胡迪尼》(Houdini)中,一串扭曲的连帽衫升向天花板(或者是在下降?)。美国艺术家约翰·巴尔德萨里(John Baldessari)出现在深色天鹅绒背景前,像一幅霍尔拜因(Holbein)的作品,出现在凯瑟琳·奥皮(Catherine Opie)的人像摄影展中;而在皇家植物园的活色景观中,威廉米娜·巴恩斯-格雷厄姆(Wilhelmina Barns-Graham)那幅精炼至近乎抽象的绝妙画作里,秋天开始笼罩奥克尼(Orkney)。

在今年的爱丁堡艺术节(EAF)中,女性在每种媒介中都占据主导地位。三位职业中期雕塑家填满了大型当代艺术画廊。在水果市场(Fruitmarket)展出的罗斯柴尔德充满了灵动的机智与探究,她追问如果将这个旧足球与那件破碎的瓷器、这些情侣锁与那个钢环放在一起会发生什么。

罗斯柴尔德将一塔色彩鲜艳的床垫像齐古拉特(ziggurat)一样平衡地堆叠在一块石头之上,这是一个美妙的反击,暗示无论是谁,更不用说那个所谓的过度敏感的女孩,都永远无法到达顶端。她的足球柱像布朗库西(Brâncuși)的作品一样无穷无尽,但却是瘪的。一团无法辨认的橡胶线在网格中穿梭,被机智地命名为《速记》(Shorthand)。

最出色的是那些弯曲的钢筋交织在一起,像一张巨大的网一样从入口处的钩子上悬挂下来。其中穿插着涂有鲜艳色彩的铸造圆柱体——这是工业材料与传统工艺的典型结合。沿着圆柱体看去,你很快会看到一张挤满了闪亮鲑鱼的渔网。这是罗斯柴尔德迄今为止最好的展览。

在塔尔博特·赖斯(Talbot Rice)展出的安妮·哈迪(Anne Hardy)利用了爱丁堡大学整个乔治亚风格的画廊,创造了一个前启示录与后启示录的景观。霓虹灯以不规则的模式明灭,赋予了这场展览一个坦率的标题——《感受》(Feelings)。披着斗篷的人物跪在地上,呈现出祈求的姿态。失真感在噼啪作响并燃烧。

在某些地方,哈迪的作品像是一首浓缩的十四行诗:两根木棍轻轻地并排放在地上,名为《恋人》(Lovers);两个脚——一个生锈,另一个被枷锁束缚——位于一根断柱之上,唤起了不止一段历史往事。但创造单一统一氛围的尝试最终失效了,在这个庞大且缺乏说服力的反乌托邦场景中,散布了太多无名的物体。

在卡尔顿山(Calton Hill)的集体画廊(Collective Gallery)中,爱丁堡的景色在脚下延伸,东至亚瑟王座(Arthur's Seat),远至大海,杰出的苏格兰艺术家凯蒂·帕特森(Katie Paterson)在一部迷人的装置作品《来世》(Afterlife)中将两者结合在一起。由浅色打磨木材精巧打造的海岸线,在画廊中起伏波动。

“灵动的机智与探究”:左图为伊娃·罗斯柴尔德的《速记》。下方插图为温迪·麦克默多的《化身》(Avatar)。 基思·亨特(Keith Hunter)

在画廊的各处,微小的护身符像岩池中的海星一样吸引着目光。两只亲吻的鸟喙、一颗奥尔梅克(Olmec)玉米、一个瞪眼的小鬼,或是被封装在一个微型青铜环中的整个太阳系——这些护身符旨在被握在手中,像祈祷一样,或放在口袋里以求生存。

近 200 件作品,代表了从美索不达米亚到维京、前哥伦布时期、印度和古希腊的每一个文明,都被帕特森用新近处于濒危状态的材料重新创作。一小块古珊瑚,融化冰川下的岩层,工业制造的碳颗粒,由此产生了一枚致密且漆黑的奈芙蒂斯(埃及夜之女神)护身符:每一件作品都具有其额外的意义。这不仅仅是像在博物馆中那样展示物件,而是一种全新的祈祷形式,其中每一个引人入胜的物件现在都获得了双重含义。

麦克默多通过“减法”进行创作。她在苏格兰国家肖像馆展出的照片显示了没有道具的人物:滑冰者失去了将其托举在空中的搭档,孩子面对着一台隐形的电脑,双手悬停在被麦克默多通过数字化手段移除的键盘之上。

当场景看起来相当正常时,这些图像显得格外凄美:当地博物馆里的孩子们,躺在填充动物的玻璃展柜前,但没有了他们的 iPad。最令人动容的是那些穿着锡箔纸和涂色纸箱、装扮成机器人的学童:那是进入 AI 世界之前的纯真年代。

用艺术节的术语来说,这些展览都被称为合作伙伴展。如果没有它们,EAF 将会变成什么样?目前仍然很难分辨这个由短暂活动(如克雷格米拉的街区派对、墓地里的酷儿图像)和合作伙伴展览组成的松散联盟是为了什么,更不用说它是为了谁而举办了:是为了市民还是过往的游客?今年的主要博物馆展览包括三个从南方转移过来的项目——现代艺术馆一号馆和二号馆的约翰与奥皮展。

《爱德华时代:优雅之年》从伦敦的国王画廊转移到了圣鲁德宫。

但今年还有最后一位女英雄:珍·沃森(1877-1974),她帮助爱丁堡购买了大量苏格兰艺术品。通过她的慷慨捐赠而获得的部分宏伟收藏目前正在城市艺术中心展出:JD 弗格森、琼·厄德利、伊恩·汉密尔顿·芬莱、艾莉森·瓦特,以及——坦白说,这令我既欣喜又悲伤——我父亲詹姆斯·卡明的一幅大画;他心中与眼中的微缩景观,全部统一在了一张赫布里底群岛的桌面之上。

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评论家

流行音乐

本周艺术家

天上的忏悔录

互联网将仔细研读菲比·布里杰斯(Phoebe Bridgers)关于心碎、悲伤和糟糕男人的故事——但真正的兴趣点在于她大胆的创意扩张

基蒂·帝国(Kitty Empire)

《迷失周末》(Lost Weekend) 菲比·布里杰斯 (Dead Oceans)

“如果我创作一些听起来不像我以前的作品,但依然是我自己的东西,会怎样?”独立音乐现象级人物菲比·布里杰斯在 2022, 曾自问。当时,一些对她歌曲的亲切模仿正在流传,这些模仿通常围绕着精妙的“忧郁女孩”观察或旋律性的吉他动态展开。

她的 2017 处女作《阿尔卑斯山的陌生人》(Stranger in the Alps)巧妙地过渡到了随后的热门作品《惩罚者》(Punisher,2020),而这位创作歌手的核心标志保持完好。就像超级英雄可以通过剪影被识别一样,布里杰斯那种柔焦摇滚具有不可磨灭的创作者印记,这帮助她成为了同代中最引人注目的音乐家之一,实现了从分众痴迷到主流关注的跨越。

事实上,她现在已经是一名流行明星,但她是凭借演奏深思熟虑的吉他音乐而获得大众吸引力的——且没有任何明显的艺术妥协。如果说有什么变化,那就是更广泛的受众开始向她的声音靠拢,这一趋势也体现在泰勒·斯威夫特在疫情期间录制了更朦胧、更偏向独立风格的专辑。

此后,布里杰斯与全女性超级组合 Boygenius 一起赢得了格莱美奖,将她个人的特质融入到了一个更大的整体之中。在离开三年后,她今年早些时候以一首新曲《迷失男孩》(Lost Boys)回归,在歌中惊叹于自己似乎总能吸引不成熟的男人(“迷失的男孩们,找到我”)。其苦乐参半的喧闹感瞬间就能被识别。但它有所不同;像被干扰的信号一样闪现,远处小号的叹息让人想起苏夫扬·史蒂文斯(Sufjan Stevens)。它变得更加迷幻。

她的第三张专辑《迷失周末》(Lost Weekend)加倍强化了这种创意扩张。这依然是布里杰斯,但更具氛围感。大多数艺术家必须解决一个数学难题:在保持一致性的同时更新自己的作品;在产品管理的同时保持创造力的活力。她在这里从容地应对了这一点,在她的调色盘中加入了合成器的薄雾、采样声音、班卓琴、口哨、南亚拉弦乐器萨朗吉(sarangi)甚至声码器。其中有哔哔啵啵的声音,暗示着太空旅行或手摇风琴,有振荡和哭泣的踏板钢吉他;

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一段来自她已故父亲的语音信箱完美地融入了这段声音拼贴中。

一层薄雾笼罩着一切,这与亚伦·德斯纳(Aaron Dessner)在斯威夫特的《民俗》(Folklore)和《永恒》(Evermore)中应用的蕾丝般朦胧感相似,但更为复杂——一种带有转折的低鸣。演奏和制作名单非常庞大,涉及超级制作人杰克·安东诺夫(Jack Antonoff)、独立吟游诗人亚历克斯·G(Alex G)、Boygenius 的伴唱,以及一个叫作 Son-John Johnson 的人——

也就是 Geese 乐队的卡梅隆·温特(Cameron Winter)——参与了《我等不及了》(I Can't Wait)和《杀死我》(Kill Me)。

声码器的效果首先冲击你的感官,随后是布里杰斯写作中那未曾减弱的特质。在《局外人》(The Outside)中,她的声音经过了沉重的处理,让人想起 Bon Iver 的人声实验,而且不知为何,还像 Daft Punk;这种错位感强调了布里杰斯正悬浮在自己生活之上的感觉,在叙述着:“穿着西装打着领带在哭泣 / 但你应该看看另一个家伙,”

她低吟道,回想起 Boygenius 穿着西装出场的样子。

《迷失周末》感觉几乎像是布里杰斯之前作品的主题反面。如果说 Boygenius 的《记录》(The Record)是一张强调女性在性别歧视行业中存在感的专辑,那么《迷失周末》则经常关注男性的缺失。布里杰斯的父亲托尼在 2022, 年去世,而这位歌手与

其他专辑

Lost In Another World

James Ellis Ford (Domino)

身患重病往往让人感觉像是跨越了面纱进入了另一个世界,一个带有预后不确定性,以及医院节奏中那种静谧、恐惧与枯燥的世界。James Ellis Ford 曾为 Arctic Monkeys、Blur 和 Fontaines DC 担任 8-list 制作人,他在 2025 年接受了白血病治疗,并将医院这个孤立的平行世界描述为一座“恐怖谷”。

的第二张个人专辑是来自那个地方的一封信,是一张使用便携设备和笔记本电脑制作的卧室流行乐(bedroom pop)唱片。这是 在摇摆中的声音;像 Homesick for Another World 这样苦乐参半的歌曲强化了那种普遍的文化冲击感;他处于免疫抑制状态的“气泡”在太空旅行(Parallel Dimension)中找到了参照。在此期间, 还在筹备被水星音乐奖(Mercury prize)提名的合辑专辑 Help(2)。 的嗓音和极简的编曲有时让人想起 Damon Albarn 的个人作品;相比之下,This too Shall Pass 则拥有某种 motorik 的律动感。尽管化疗带来的屈辱被提及,但在这张唱片中,绝望始终保持在一定距离之外,它以坦率的诚挚和活力对微小的恩赐表达感激。Kitty Empire

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Sunshine Jungle (Catola)

对于这支最具夏日气息的乐队来说,由于在季节如此之晚才发行第五张专辑,从而错过了几十年来最漫长、最炎热的季节的大部分时间,这一定有些令人恼火。但乐观主义贯穿于 Jungle 的音乐之中,而前作 Volcano 的全球成功可能意味着这支乐队再也不必忍受英国的冬天。

长期合作者 Lydia Kitto 现在与创始双人组 J Lloyd 和 Tom McFarland 一起成为了正式成员,但她的加入并未给 Jungle 的声音带来显著变化。事实上,《Sunshine》不过是对该乐队在过去十年中坚定坚持的流畅放克(smooth funk)的一次巩固。像 Where Are You Now?More Like You Do 这样的歌曲过于依赖切碎的人声采样,以及在通用中速律动中重复歌曲标题。

更好的作品是由 Kitto 主唱的单曲 Carry On,它拥有宁静的原声吉他、假声和谐音,且更注重歌曲创作而非氛围。The Wave(让人想起他们第二张唱片 For Ever 中更强有力的曲目)与 Someday, Somewhere 的结合为专辑中期带来了提升。但总体而言,《Sunshine》就像是音乐冰淇淋:它提供了短暂的快感,但几乎没有营养。Lewis Huxley

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Fata Morgana L'Rain (Mexican Summer)

自从发行同名首张专辑以来,Taja Cheek 就将拒绝音乐界限视为一种美德。在她以 L'Rain 之名发行的第四张专辑中,她从“社会 malaise(不安 / 倦怠)”、耶利哥玫瑰的复活以及深海生物的生物发光中汲取灵感。结果是一部自信、多变且具有凝聚力的流行、R&B、摇滚和福音音乐合集。

主打单曲 Soutless Cycle 将其对自我怀疑的精疲力竭的重复(“I'm a psycho cycle / I'm a psycho cycle”)推向了由失真吉他和鼓点组成的重金属高潮。Joly Sth 以模糊的人声在指弹吉他和合成器中闪烁开始,随后一切像漂浮的薄雾一样散去。当资深舞厅艺术家 Screechy Dan 切入时,你会迅速意识到 L'Rain 的宇宙中没有任何东西是静止的。

《Fata Morgana》在无常中寻找美,暗示希望不在于跑赢黑暗,而在于学会与黑暗共存。


评论家

剧院

observer.co.uk

16.08.26

21

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“薄雾笼罩 一切”: 独立音乐现象 Phoebe Bridgers。

Olaf Grind

正如她在 Blue 中唱到的:“阴影只能由光产生。” Georgia Evans

Beneath Lifted Skies

Linda May Han Oh & Melissa Aldana

(Hopkilla)

贝斯手琳达·梅·汉·欧(Linda May Han Oh)和萨克斯手梅丽莎·阿尔达纳(Melissa Aldana)是目前在纽约工作的最全能的两位爵士乐器演奏家。欧曾与钢琴家维杰·艾耶(Vijay Iyer)和吉他手帕特·梅西尼(Pat Metheny)合作,而阿尔达纳则领导自己的四重奏,并与萨克斯手乔·洛瓦诺(Joe Lovano)和约书亚·雷德曼(Joshua Redman)共同演出。在这张首张合作专辑中,这对组合现在将亲密俱乐部演出那种流畅的能量,转化为对爵士标准曲的富有想象力的诠释。

查理·帕克(Charlie Parker)和迪齐·吉莱斯皮(Dizzy Gillespie)的曲目《人类学》(Anthropology)奠定了轻快的基调,将原曲旋律的闪现与强有力的问答式交流交织在一起。其他快节奏的亮点还包括约翰·柯特兰(John Coltrane)的《26-2》中流畅的泛音,以及萨姆·里弗斯(Sam Rivers)的《循环片段》(Cyclic Episode)中盘旋的模式。

两人汲取了深厚的即兴灵感,在赫比·汉考克(Herbie Hancock)的《术士》(The Sorcerer)中,欧在极高音和极低音之间切换;而在韦恩·肖特(Wayne Shorter)的《尸体之舞》(Dance Cadaverous)中,阿尔达纳则贡献了一段令人惊叹的独奏。这是两人之间大师级的对话,足以与任何规模更大的乐团相媲美。阿玛尔·卡拉(Ammar Kalla)

演员保罗·梅斯卡(Paul Mescal)在同年12月。而《依然屹立》(Still Standing)是一首关于前者的歌曲,她的母亲在布里杰斯(Bridgers)19岁时与他离婚;这位歌手此前曾描述过一个复杂的童年,期间见证了配偶间的虐待。

另一首令人心碎的曲目《迷失周末(重现)》(Lost Weekend (Reprise))随后回到了布里杰斯街,或许也回到了他的唱片收藏:“我是我老爹最年长的儿子,”布里杰斯愤慨地唱道,“我与墙壁搏斗,而墙壁赢了。”《迷失周末》中一些最动人的细节聚焦于艺术家的母亲,她在水槽边流血,或独自开车前往医院。

《迷失周末》中多少浪漫的痛苦与梅斯卡有关,这对互联网用户来说是一个值得钻研的争议点;而像《州长华尔兹》(The Governor's Waltz)这类歌曲中尖刻的轻描淡写提供了充足的素材。同样,对“鲍比”(Bobby)的提及可能意味着,也可能不意味着喜剧演员博·伯纳姆(Bo Burnham),布里杰斯此后一直与他传出绯闻。另一首标志性的独立摇滚作品《鲍比》(Bobby)暗示布里杰斯已经退休,将其视为“一个我不再搞的盒子里的东西”。巡演音乐人的生活提供了更多的背景色彩:在人群中冲浪、飞机、酒店房间、失眠。

但《迷失周末》并非一张关于名声的专辑。布里杰斯身份带来的负面影响被暗示为阴郁的旁白;在《其他计划》(Other Plans)中,她唱道“在被枪击前挺过我的天赋”。她简洁如笔触般的歌词贯穿始终,依然摄人心魄。但在这里的声音实验中,也有一种悠闲的自信,例如在《全景图》(Panorama)等间奏曲目中。

还有其他声音设计完全主导的时刻,比如在同名曲的后半部分。喘息声与疾驰的电子音交替出现,而交叉淡出则将其他音乐揉合在一起,就像在转动收音机调频旋钮。许多其他伟大的词作者允许他们的乐器演奏和编曲承担大部分的叙述工作——比尔·卡拉汉(Bill Callahan)便是一个典型的例子。布里杰斯在音乐叙事方面日益增强的自信,是《迷失周末》最大的发现。

戏剧

喧闹的

爱的劳苦

汤姆·利特勒(Tom Littler)的露天双剧目巧妙地将莎士比亚在战争前后的两部喜剧融合在一起,挖掘出文字游戏与多样性的乐趣。此外,环球剧场轻盈的弗拉门戈式舞台呈现也值得关注。

“全场表演精准”:詹姆斯·谢尔顿(James Sheldon)饰演《无事生非》中的贝尼迪克,菲比·普赖斯(Phoebe Pryce)饰演碧翠丝。

苏珊娜·克拉普(Susannah Clapp)

《爱的劳苦》:《无事生非》

里士满,托马斯学院;至 22 August

《爱的劳动》(Love's Labours Lost)

伦敦 SE1 全球剧院(Globe theatre);展出至 9 月 13 日

多么灿烂的一天。露天剧场很少能如此轻快地取得成功:双剧目演出极少能如此流畅且连贯。汤姆·利特勒(Tom Littler)将《爱的劳动》与《无事生非》结合在一起,在阳光的眷顾下,避开了听不清的风险——他的演员在没有麦克风的情况下依然清晰无比——也避免了被周围环境淹没。在由于其橙树剧院(Orange Tree theatre)正在装修而临时搬迁期间,利特勒与吉尔福德莎士比亚公司(Guildford Shakespeare Company)联合制作的演出在托马斯学院(Thomas's College)的校园内举行:塔楼和淡色石墙构成了合适的宫廷背景,一棵巨大的、枝叶繁茂的冷杉则成了关键偷听情节的便捷藏身之处。舞台后方拉长的阴影暗示着一个不确定的过去与未来。

教堂钟声的敲击、“BBC家庭服务频道”(BBC Home Service)的播报,以及轰炸机的轰鸣,将剧情移至 20 世纪 30 年代;马修·弗洛伊德·琼斯(Matthew Floyd Jones)精准的配乐中,隐约可见令人心醉的阿尔·鲍利(Al Bowly)风格、舞曲,以及为笨拙的脚步伴奏的喜剧钢琴音符。尼尔·爱尔兰(Neil Irish)用考究的服装让简约的布景变得华丽:平顶草帽、带有亮色丝绸衬里的背心、斜裁的修身连衣裙、配有折纸帽的护士挺括制服,以及双色平底鞋和 T 型带凉鞋。

这次成功的关键在于将两部剧作编织在一起,使角色融合,其历史被第二次世界大战打断。《爱的劳动》中的贝罗恩(Berowne)被完全令人信服地焊接到了《无事生非》的贝尼迪克(Benedick)身上,变成了贝尼迪克·贝罗恩。剧中巧妙地引入了《亨利五世》的一些台词(以及利特勒的一些台词),用以表明一部剧中的善良角色在下一部剧中如何“变得心怀恶意”:关于“腿、臂和头被砍掉”的记忆使他深受创伤。《爱的劳动》中高速的文字游戏——一个“词语篮”——演变成了《无事生非》中精炼的对话。

随着年龄的增长而沉稳,因战争而变得酸楚,情侣们和丑角们逐渐进入一种更有目的性、较少自我陶醉的生活。詹姆斯·谢尔顿(James Sheldon)饰演的贝尼迪克精准地捕捉到了那种傲慢,他在被奉承中陷入爱河,以一种滑稽的惊讶表达自己的感受。菲比·普莱斯(Phoebe Pryce)饰演的碧翠丝在震惊中产生了爱意;在那个她偷听到同伴议论她的片段中,不同寻常的是,这并非一个幽默的时刻,而是一个痛苦的自我觉醒时刻,体现了她那种带着泪光、尖锐而细腻的表演。整体表演极其精准:尤其是莎拉·戈兰(Sarah Gohran),她饰演的“贵族”威严而优雅,声音听起来就像是在水晶吊灯上弹跳一样。

《爱的劳动》很容易被其自身的睿智之词所击垮:“玩笑的成功在于听者的耳中,而不在于说者的舌尖。”大多数事情都被说了两次:通过同义词、重复、改写、双重表达;许多事情被做了两次。这种浪漫并非针对某个人,而是针对文字游戏。要同时实现驱动力和可理解性很难,但利特勒的制作精美地展示了情节如何像伊丽莎白时代的结状花园一样,在变奏中旋转。

这部剧的难点与魅力在环球剧院的一次弗拉门戈风格的演出中得到了体现。通过将剧情“西班牙英语化”,将专业舞者与新接受弗拉门戈训练的演员结合——编舞由卡门·伊加萨(Carmen Igarza)负责——印第安纳·洛恩-柯林斯(Indiana Lown-Collins)打造了一个令人眩晕的夜晚,在自身的逻辑下十分连贯,菲利普·阿尔迪蒂(Philip Arditti)饰演的贝罗恩(表现尤为出色)与伊泰亚·塞古拉(Itea Segura)饰演的罗莎琳之间火花四溅,诺拉·洛佩兹·霍尔登(Norah Lopez Holden)饰演的公主则气场强大。重新演绎与热情相匹配。一次猎鹿活动变成了斗牛:视觉上令人着迷,唤起了一种不同的内心生活。关于复杂词汇的笑话被改编了:“remuneration”(报酬)变成了“remuneration”。

即便是一场“伟人”的巡游也具有冲击力。我很少渴望在莎士比亚戏剧中看到戏中戏,尤其是那些充斥着费力的古语笑话和对卑微表演者无端嘲讽的戏码。然而在这里,格洛里亚娜(Gloriana)和赫拉克勒斯(Hercules)的巨大头颅带着狂欢节般的热情摇摆。剧中充满了顽皮的暗示。纸扇被挥向臀部,又被像阴茎一样摇摆。

最令人印象深刻的是,劳恩-柯林斯(Lown-Collins)在弗拉门戈舞中找到了与诗句起伏和冲劲相匹配的节奏。每一次跺脚(显然一些男演员起初抵制穿高跟靴,但现在已成了拥趸)、每一次转手和耸肩都变成了一个辩论点或一次召唤。其结果是一幅生动的视觉和听觉地图。然而,《爱的徒劳》(Love's Labours Lost)赞美并讽刺了那些“绸缎般的词句”。仅捕捉动态和态度是不够的。词汇的特殊性在莎士比亚的作品中始终至关重要;它们潜入观众的生活。感谢利特勒(Littler),他的辛劳看起来像是出于热爱,我现在将下午视为“一天的后部”(the posterior of the day)。

《观察者报》订阅者在环球剧场(the Globe)观看《爱的徒劳》可享受 10% 的票价优惠。请访问 theobserver.tixculture.com


22

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

评论员 电影

本周电影

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多米尼克·塞萨(Dominic Sessa)饰演年轻时的安东尼·波登,“似乎垄断了那种笨拙且棱角分明的‘万事通’角色市场”。 A24 / Saacia Paxas

在与酒吧员工发生冲突后,他被强行驱逐出一家不起眼的海鲜小店。几小时后,店主兼主厨(由充满灵魂的安东尼奥·班德拉斯饰演)在水沟里发现他昏迷不醒,对他产生了怜悯之情。第二天,托尼在主厨简陋海边小屋门廊的吊床上醒来,心中充斥着宿醉后的羞愧感。托尼的钱包空了,没钱回家。于是他恳求主厨宽恕,用厨房的苦力活来换取在吊床上多住几个夜晚。

厨房里那种充满火药味的气氛——包括那种大男子主义,以及叛逆的副主厨萨尔(Leo Woodall 饰,表现出色)与厨房助手斯塔夫罗斯(Stavros Halkias 饰)之间尖刻的互怼——令人耳目一新。这里充满了危险的明火和刻薄的嘲讽,对于那些认为把双节棍塞在牛仔裤腰带里走来走去很酷的青少年来说,简直是极具吸引力的诱饵。片中不乏犀利的对话,但剧本真正的营养在于将年轻的托尼置于坏小子萨尔和理想主义主厨这两股相互冲突的影响力之间——电影暗示,这两者都给这个男人未来的成长留下了印记。

这是一部大胆且极具娱乐性的影片——剪辑干脆,怀旧而不至于陷入感伤。这标志着特立独行的加拿大独立导演马特·约翰逊(Matt Johnson)的一次转型,他之前的作品包括《黑莓》(Blackberry)以及最近的低保真时空旅行电影《涅槃乐队秀》(Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie)。他的长期合作伙伴杰伊·麦卡罗尔(Jay McCarrol)提供了将全片串联起来的丰富配乐,再加上一些有力且符合时代背景的插曲——埃里克·伯顿(Eric Burdon)、底格斯乐队(the Stooges)、理查德与琳达·汤普森(Richard & Linda Thompson)——为影片增添了诱人的点缀。

这是约翰逊的首部好莱坞作品,或许也是他迄今为止最常规的一部电影。虽然托尼可能缺乏导演之前作品中的那种邪典潜力,但约翰逊注入了足够的古怪视角,避免将这位复杂的烹饪异端的起源故事变成陈词滥调。

成为波登的少年

一部大胆的传记电影捕捉了一个复杂人物的成长过程,记录了这位美国名厨生命中极具影响力的疯狂一年

温迪·艾德 (Wendy Ide)

《托尼》(Tony)(106 分钟,15 级)导演:马特·约翰逊 (Matt Johnson);主演:多米尼克·塞萨 (Dominic Sessa)、安东尼奥·班德拉斯 (Antonio Banderas)、艾米莉亚·琼斯 (Emilia Jones)

一部优秀的传记电影的关键是什么?是精简。太多的传记剧作试图塞进每一个可能的细节和每一件重大事件,导致最终呈现出的像是一场耐力测试般的苦旅,抹杀了故事中任何精神火花和个性。而《托尼》采取了相反的方法,仅处理生命的序幕而非主章节。这是一个关于一个刻薄且迷人的角色在成长过程中的精彩快照。

影片捕捉了厨师兼作家、电视节目主持人安东尼·波登 (Anthony Bourdain) 生命中一个关键的成长年份,他于 2018 年去世,享年 61 岁。那是 1975 年。由《留守学生》(The Holdovers) 主演多米尼克·塞萨饰演的托尼当时 19 岁。在酒精、胡言乱语和自信的驱动下,他为了追求一个女孩来到了鳕鱼角的普罗温斯镇。他希望用自己的文学抱负让她惊叹。然而,他最终在一家餐厅厨房里洗盘子,这段经历改变了他的人生轨迹。

少年时期的托尼既傲慢又天真,且毫无掩饰地令人讨厌。波登著名的著作《厨房机密》(Kitchen Confidential) 中一段令人卸防的开篇语为故事定下了基调:“坦白说,我曾是一个被宠坏的、痛苦的、自恋的、自我毁灭且鲁莽的年轻混混,急需被狠狠地教训一顿。”我们不能说没有收到警告。塞萨饰演的托尼,透过他那凌乱且像被油炸过的乱发愤怒地盯着人,他对自己的知识分子伪装如此认真,以至于你几乎会尴尬得在座位上扭动。他是个鲁莽的蠢货,一个轻而易举且不经思考的谎言制造者,一个随时可能引发性骚扰案件的人。但尽管他精心塑造了这种见多识广的人设,他其实极易受影响。

塞萨延续了他在《留守学生》中饰演那个在寒假被家人抛弃的倔强高中生时所展现的潜力,那次表演让他走红。凭借这两个主角,再加上在《现在你看不见我 2》(Now You See Me: Now You Don't) 中饰演的一个雇佣混蛋配角,塞萨似乎垄断了那些笨拙、棱角分明的自以为是者的市场。在饰演托尼时,他再次充分利用了那种刻在脸上的优越冷笑,但如果能看到他尝试完全不同类型的角色将会很有趣。

托尼人生的转折点是他在普罗温斯镇的第一个夜晚。他醉得东倒西歪,且动手动脚

“托尼,透过他那凌乱、 像被油炸过的乱发 愤怒地盯着人,他对 自己的知识分子伪装 如此认真,以至于你 几乎会尴尬得在 座位上扭动”


observer.co.uk

16.08.26

23

建筑

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“荒诞的恐龙大屠杀”:郊区科幻惊悚片《橡树街的终结》(The End of Oak Street)。下方为《淑女》(Lady) 中的希安·克利福德 (Sian Clifford)。

以及其他... 文 / 温迪·艾德 (Wendy Ide)

《橡树街的终结》(The End of Oak Street)

(99 分钟,12A 级)导演:大卫·罗伯特·米切尔 (David Robert Mitchell);主演:安妮·海瑟薇 (Anne Hathaway)、伊万·麦格雷戈 (Ewan McGregor)、梅西·斯特拉 (Maisy Stella)

科幻电影的问题在于,为了让虚构部分奏效,科学部分需要有一颗可信的内核。大卫·罗伯特·米切尔的新片假设 20 世纪 80 年代初美国郊区的一块区域可以与一片史前景观互换位置,且伴随着横冲直撞的恐龙,这部电影似乎认为简单地提到几次卡尔·萨根 (Carl Sagan) 的名字就足以作为解释。事实并非如此。但这仅仅是这部由安妮·海瑟薇和伊万·麦格雷戈主演的高概念家庭冒险片中潜在的问题之一。

这部斯皮尔伯格式的冒险故事在完美的美国小镇白栅栏背景下展开,伴随着轻快的、约翰·威廉姆斯 (John Williams) 风格的配乐,其间穿插着邻居们的内脏被史前食腐动物啄出的镜头。这本该完全行不通。然而,尽管我没有一刻相信过剧情,但这完全没有妨碍我极大地享受这场荒诞的恐龙大屠杀。

Lady

(95 分钟,15 级)导演:萨缪尔·亚伯拉罕斯(Samuel Abrahams);主演:希安·克利福德(Sian Clifford)、劳里·凯纳斯顿(Laurie Kynaston)、奥利萨·奥德莱(Olisa Odele)

“我曾两次成为皇家赛马会(Royal Ascot)的门面,而不仅仅是一次,”渴望成为网红的伊莎贝拉女士(由希安·克利福德饰演,表现得极其华丽且张扬)大声嚷道。她将深红色的双唇噘成诱人的表情,将一杯饮料塞进倒霉的电视导演萨姆(劳里·凯纳斯顿 饰)手中,萨姆被雇来拍摄一部关于她创意事业的 Netflix 真人秀。然而,Netflix 对这部剧根本一无所知,而伊莎贝拉在她的庄园大宅中徘徊,只有那些濒危物种的标本陪伴在侧,显然已经陷入了妄想。

虽然这部由萨缪尔·亚伯拉罕斯执导的古怪伪纪录片起初是在讽刺一个过于熟悉的刻板印象——那些毫无才华、渴望成名且认为名声与

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崇拜是其天经地义之权的自大狂——但这部电影之所以引人入胜,是因为它在很大程度上背离了讽刺伪纪录片的公式。一次超现实的叙事转向为故事增添了一抹荒诞感,同时也增强了我们对这个只想被关注的孤独、古怪女人的同情。并非所有情节都奏效——我仍然不认为幻觉蘑菇能作为一种合理的剧情推动手段——但克利福德的表演非常有趣。

Sunny Dancer

(106 分钟,15 级)导演:乔治·雅克斯(George Jaques);主演:贝拉·拉姆齐(Bella Ramsey)、鲁比·斯托克斯(Ruby Stokes)、尼尔·帕特里克·哈里斯(Neil Patrick Harris)

《最后生还者》的演员贝拉·拉姆齐凭借极具情感冲击力的表演,提升了这部讨喜但套路化的英国青春成长电影,使我们几乎忽略了第三幕出人意料的揭秘所留下的疑问。

拉姆齐饰演 17 岁的癌症幸存者艾薇,她不情愿地参加了一个被她轻蔑地称为“化疗营”的项目——这是一个在苏格兰为患有相同疾病的青少年举办的为期四周的寄宿营。艾薇心中仍充斥着对癌症这种随机不公的闷火;面对营地里那种欢快乐观的气氛,她表现出的敌意如此强烈,以至于可能在里氏规模上有所体现。

但与壮丽的背景相呼应,随着艾薇与一群核心朋友建立联系,并与一个名叫杰克(丹尼尔·奎恩·托耶 饰)的温柔甜美男孩开始恋爱,她的视野也随之开阔。故事中有一种不稳定的凌乱感,在处理方式上显得非常符合青少年的真实状态,但在典型的夏令营闹剧之下,是对接近死亡如何从根本上改变生活方式的真诚探索。

一场重新发现之旅

六年时间及 2000 万英镑 的投入之后,赫尔(Hull)翻新后的航海博物馆重新开放,在讲述码头与海上生活历史的同时,也承载着浓浓的情感。

Rowan Moore

赫尔海事博物馆 赫尔,维多利亚女王广场

赫尔之城建在水上。它并不完全像威尼斯,但一系列规模宏大的工业码头贯穿其中心,连接着这座城市的两条河流——亨伯河与赫尔河。码头办公室位于其中两个码头与陆地的关键交汇处。这座顶端沉重、拥有三个圆顶的展馆完工于1871年,其风格融合了折衷主义、意大利式和矫饰主义-巴洛克风格,布满了壁柱、拱门以及以航海为主题的浅浮雕。

虽然现在的码头部分已被填平,但考虑到这座城市的生命始终与海洋的财富、奇迹、危险和艰辛紧密相连,这里依然是自1975年起便入驻的赫尔海事博物馆的理想之所。在经历了六年的关闭以及耗资2060 万英镑m的翻新后,博物馆现已重新开放,其公共空间增加了一倍,展出的展品增加了50%。

博物馆的内部与其外观一样,充满了各种物品:刻骨雕、精度惊人的船模、一只填充的北极熊、鲸鱼骨架、北极装束、药品、手枪、鱼叉、一个木制的狗形船首像、被重新利用的一角鲸牙,以及水手留给家人的纪念品。

这些物品传达出了捕鲸和捕鱼活动中的某种独创性、诗意、恐惧、勇气、枯燥、渴望和同志情谊。博物馆还讲述了陆地上的生活与工作故事,其中设有关于孤儿院的展品——由于捕鱼船队的损失(据估计在约150年间有6,000人死亡),这些孤儿院的建立成为了一个悲剧性的必然。它向莉莉安·比洛卡及其一群“头巾革命者”致敬,在1968年冰岛海域有58名男子死亡且三艘拖网渔船被毁后,她们成功地发起了争取更高安全标准的运动。

这个地方承载着一种在博物馆中并不常见的情感冲击力和重要意义,这体现在一个专门记录死者名单的账簿室中,现在该账簿还增加了一个数字化版本。这次由Purcell建筑师事务所和约克的Simpson承包商负责的翻新,旨在让建筑的功能更完善并凸显其特色。他们将原先作为办公室和储藏室的二层开放为新展厅,并增加了

坡道和电梯。他们将一个旧的光井改造成了中庭。他们修复了金属件和灰泥。他们安装了一座楼梯,公众可以通过它进入其中一个圆顶,俯瞰城市景观。他们委托来自珀斯和金罗斯的可持续家具制造商安格斯·罗斯(Angus Ross)创作了波浪形状的长凳和楼梯上扭曲的栏杆。展览设计师Haley Sharpe Design设计了由实物、静态图像和动态图像组成的多层展示。

这带来了一种繁忙且拥挤的体验,部分原因是旧建筑的一些空间较为狭窄。这绝对更好;比起空旷和极简,这种风格更符合藏品和建筑的精神,尽管有时,新工程似乎过于刻意地想要引起注意——例如,那些波浪形长凳,以及看起来像肋骨和脊椎的钢结构。而在其他时候,或许由于预算限制,一些饰面和细节——例如新坡道的细节——看起来较为粗糙且简陋。

博物馆内部充满了各种展品:刻骨工艺品、精度惊人的模型船、一只填充的北极熊、鲸鱼骨架以及鱼叉

与此同时,这座翻修后的博物馆是一个名为“海事赫尔”(Maritime Hull)的更广泛的 7000 万英镑 计划的一部分。该计划由赫尔市议会、国家遗产彩票基金和慈善信托基金资助,旨在将其与其他公共场所和遗产地联系起来,例如自三月起向公众开放的斯普恩灯船(Spurn lightships),以及仍在进行中的“北极海盗号”(Arctic Corsair)拖网渔船的修复工作。

总的来说,这些项目是赫尔在 2017. 年担任文化之都期间留下的遗产。该计划感觉是一项有意义且有价值的投资,因为它根植于一个独特且非凡之地的历史。

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“这带来了一种繁忙且拥挤的体验”:重新开放的赫尔海事博物馆中的帆船时代展厅。Huffson+Crow


24

书籍

访谈

“唯一的规则就是没有规则”

西班牙作家哈维尔·塞尔卡斯(Javier Cercas)在讲述其备受赞誉的关于 1981 年震惊全国的军事政变失败之作时,向弗朗西斯科·加西亚(Francisco Garcia)透露,他打破了文学惯例

哈维尔·塞尔卡斯在位于贝尔赫斯(Verges)的家门口迎接我。这座位于加泰罗尼亚的小镇是这位西班牙最著名且最具挑衅性的在世作家之一的家。我们走向他的办公室;房间里摆满了从地板到天花板的书架,存放着西班牙语、英语和法语的书籍。塞尔卡斯是一位 60 多岁、像叔叔一样亲切且略带顽童气质的人物,他舒舒服服地坐在堆满文件的办公桌后的黑色皮椅上。我们会面的原因是《瞬间的解剖》(Anatomy of a Moment)的新英文版(由安妮·麦克林翻译)出版,这是塞尔卡斯对西班牙 1981 年受挫政变的一次史诗般且毫不留情地详尽的重述。那年 2 月 23 日 6.23pm,一名不满的上校安东尼奥·特赫罗(Antonio Tejero)在 200 名叛变国民卫队的陪同下,闯入了位于马德里的西班牙议会。他们的任务很明确,逻辑坚定不移。

弗朗科将军在长期患病后于 1975 年最终去世。六年之后,在阴谋者的眼中,这个国家在独裁之后尝试民主的雏形实验已被证明是一个丑陋的偏差。他们要求回归威权统治,理想状态是在一个军事委员会的领导下。当士兵们开始开火时,聚集在一起的政治家们纷纷寻找掩护。有三个人拒绝屈服:即将离任的总理阿道夫·苏亚雷斯(Adolfo Suárez),他为引导西班牙巧妙地走出威权主义做了很多工作;右翼将军古铁雷斯·梅利亚多(Gutiérrez Mellado),他勇敢地向特赫罗逼近;以及长期领导共产党(该党在经历了 40 年的国家镇压后刚刚合法化)的圣地亚哥·卡里略(Santiago Carrillo)。

这次政变企图通过广播进行了现场直播,并由国家电视台的摄影师拍摄,尽管直到第二天议会获救后才播出。现代西班牙的奠基时刻中,很少有像这次一样强有力的。虽然现在人们普遍将其理解为民主对极右翼的胜利,但这个结论绝非命中注定。“所有西班牙人对这次政变都有自己的理论,”塞尔卡斯说。“如果你当时在世,”他继续道,“你几乎肯定记得自己当时在哪里。”但记忆往往不可靠:许多人回忆起自己在电视上实时观看事件展开,尽管当时并没有这样的传输。“毕竟,”塞尔卡斯在书的序言中写道,“有理由将这次政变解读为集体神经症的产物。或者是集体偏执。或者更准确地说,是一部集体小说。”

在 21 世纪初,塞尔卡斯开始尝试将这次政变转化为小说。他 400 页的第一稿是“一个奇怪的实验版本的《三个火枪手》”。这是他人生中巨大的创作危机之一。“如果我给你看我关于 2 月 23 日的[研究],它就像那样,”他告诉我,用双手比划出一个滑稽的巨大缺口。“我与很多人交谈并重新阅读了所有资料。我意识到我所拥有的东西行不通。我清楚地记得那种感觉,我觉得自己犯了错……它没有紧张感。这次[政变]就像肯尼迪遇刺一样。它本身就是一部虚构作品。”

对于塞尔卡斯来说,要呈现这一事件及其深远的余震,以及其中时而英勇、时而令人抓狂地愤世嫉俗的轮番登场的人物,只有一种方法。他们的谜团并不需要太多的进一步润色。他将纯粹地坚持事实,撕掉松散的第一稿,重新开始。他后来写道,如果感觉“现实在要求一部关于政变的小说”,那么他可以“尝试在没有虚构的权力与自由的情况下去理解它,而[虚构]正是

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‘挑战这本书为自己设定的目标’。其结果是一本奇怪且往往具有推进力的书,难以被简单地归类。它基于事实且研究极其细致,Fitzcarraldo Editions 将像出版所有非虚构类书籍那样,为其配以白色封面。但其形式明显具有小说色彩,视角频繁切换且伴有重复片段,暗示了主角们的心理状态。塞尔卡斯(Cercas)作为一个狡黠且近乎全知的叙述者,在纷争之上盘旋,定期进行限定和背景说明。‘一部没有虚构的小说?那到底是个什么东西?’塞尔卡斯说,‘为什么不行?小说是绝对自由的体裁。’塞尔卡斯表示,这就是第一位且最伟大的西班牙小说家塞万提斯通过《唐吉诃德》传下的礼物。‘唯一的规则就是没有规则。你可以随心所欲。而我只听我妈的,或者听塞万提斯的。所以我说:‘管它呢,就这么干吧。’

读者在面对此类作家的宣言时,应当始终持保留态度。对于塞尔卡斯来说,这一点尤为正确。在过去的三十五年里,很少有其他欧洲作家能如此敏捷地书写集体历史记忆及其局限性。

塞尔卡斯 1962 年出生于埃斯特雷马杜拉省的一个村庄伊巴埃尔南多(Ibahernando),童年时期移居加泰罗尼亚。如今,他在巴塞罗那和韦尔赫斯(Verges)之间往返生活。据他自己所述,他生活低调,大多避开文学上流社会。但一个私人生活简单的人也可以是一个极具公众影响力的人物。在过去十年中,塞尔卡斯利用他在《国家报》(El País)的专栏,猛烈抨击西班牙及其他地区日益高涨的‘国家民粹主义’浪潮。在观点上,他支持欧洲且反对加泰罗尼亚独立,塞尔卡斯开玩笑地就脱欧带来的毒害遗产对我进行责难,在他看来,脱欧是一场无与伦比的国家级自我欺骗行为。

‘分离 [并不] 等同于独立。西班牙很庆幸自己不是独立的。我非常高兴自己不是独立的。我们依赖欧洲。我们拥有共同的货币 [和] 共同的司法。我们是一个邦联。’他补充道,脱欧那种独立是不可能的,或者说‘是一个

--。

本周

重读《幻象》 梅根·诺兰(Megan Nolan)评述“独特且被忽视”的德国作家露丝·雷曼(Ruth Rehmann)于 1959 年发表的处女作

《红城堡》 阿布拉乔蒂·查克拉博蒂(Abhrajyoti Chakraborty)评述阿米特·乔杜里(Amit Chaudhuri)关于一名获得奖学金前往巴黎的作家的小说

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“我的小男孩” 珍妮·法根(Jenni Fagan)评《如此多种归属方式》(So Many Ways to Belong),这是卡罗尔·阿瑟顿(Carol Atherton)关于收养孩子的感人回忆录

“小说是绝对自由的体裁”:哈维尔·塞尔卡斯(Javier Cercas)。

Berta Vicente Salas 为《观察者报》拍摄

“那场政变就像肯尼迪遇刺一样。它本身就是一种虚构”

“巨大的浪漫谎言”。这是他作品的核心论点之一:私人和集体的历史清算往往建立在令人宽慰但具有破坏性的谎言之上。

塞尔卡斯经常被拿来与法国作家埃马纽埃尔·卡雷尔(Emmanuel Carrère)比较,后者同样以大胆地模糊体裁界限而闻名。塞尔卡斯似乎并不介意这种比较。“(卡雷尔)曾告诉我:‘当法国作家模仿我时,他们说他们在模仿你。而当西班牙作家模仿你时,他们说他们在模仿我。’”

塞尔卡斯 2001 年出版的著作《萨拉米斯的士兵》(Soldiers of Salamis)记录了西班牙内战期间的一起被遗忘的事件。1939, 拉斐尔·桑切斯·马萨斯(Rafael Sánchez Mazas),一名作家兼西班牙法西斯政党“法兰格党”(Falange)的创始人,在巴塞罗那北部的一个村庄面对共和派的行刑队。在子弹奇迹般地未能将其杀死后,马萨斯逃入了附近的森林。一名共和派士兵发现他躲在一条水沟里,但允许他逃脱。书中的叙述者是一位名叫哈维尔·塞尔卡斯的穷困小说家,他痴迷于寻找那位被遗忘的共和派士兵。这是一个救赎性的、唐吉诃德式的计划,既是个人的,也是集体的。“当时刚刚发生了三件事,”我们的叙述者告诉我们,“首先是我父亲去世了;然后是我妻子离开了我;最后,我放弃了我的文学事业。”

虚构的塞尔卡斯最终在一名智利小说家罗伯托·波拉里奥(Roberto Bolario)等配角的帮助下,在一家法国养老院找到了那位被遗忘的士兵。但这位名叫安东尼·米拉莱斯(Antoni Miralles)的老兵真的是那个人吗?这个问题从未得到解决。《萨拉米斯的士兵》将事实与虚构焊接在一起。“真实”的塞尔卡斯婚姻幸福,他的父亲当时还活着,他的文学事业状态良好。而且,虽然桑切斯·马萨斯是一个著名的历史人物,但那位粗鲁的共和派救星安东尼·米拉莱斯在很大程度上是虚构的。这部小说在全球售出超过 100 万册。“这本书把自己呈现为非虚构作品,一个真实的故事,但它是虚假的。而且我完全确定,(一些)读者想要相信这是一个真实的故事,”塞尔卡斯带着苦笑说道。

《萨拉米斯的士兵》使塞尔卡斯迅速成为文学名流。这种蜕变很少能被轻易预见,但这部小说出现的时间恰到好处,当时西班牙社会长期积压的紧张局势正涌向一场清算。21 世纪初,在西班牙内战及随后四十年的独裁统治期间“失踪”的 100,000 多人的后裔开始要求更强有力地面对那段过去,包括挖掘遍布西班牙的万人坑。这被称为“历史记忆运动”。

《瞬间的解剖》(Anatomy of a Moment)于 2009 年以西班牙语出版,就在 2007 年《历史记忆法》出台后不久,该法律为数以千计试图寻找被佛朗哥政权谋杀的家人遗骸的人提供了迟到的救济。塞尔卡斯解释说,这很重要,即使其全部后果并非立即显现。该运动被国家政治阶层所挪用产生了一种寒蝉效应。一夜之间,很难找到愿意承认自己或其后代并非热忱反法西斯主义者的人。由此产生的伪善让塞尔卡斯感到不安,尤其是那种对易于消化的共和派英勇故事的新奇渴望——或者用塞尔卡斯在后来的一本书中所说的,“用历史良心调味的有毒感伤饲料”。

问塞尔卡斯,他是否仍然对那个被贬称为“历史记忆产业”的东西感到矛盾。不,他回答道,这没什么好犹豫的。“我完全反对它。这与真实的记忆和真实的历史完全相反……我不是说不要回顾过去。要正确且诚实地回顾。[但]不要欺骗你自己。”在他在 2014 年出版的著作《冒充者》(The Impostor)中,塞尔卡斯记录了恩里克·马尔科(Enric Marco)丰富的幻想生活,这位加泰罗尼亚机械师声称自己在西班牙内战结束后被囚禁在纳粹集中营中。马尔科由谎言拼凑而成的面具最终在 2005. 年被揭穿。正如塞尔卡斯所言,问题不仅在于马尔科——一个绝对不可信的人物——是如何在如此离奇的谎言中全身而退的,而是在于为什么这么多人选择将这些谎言视为令人慰藉的政治童话而选择相信。

针对 1981 年政变的抵抗举措提供了另一个完美的案例研究。“这是一个充满意义的时刻。这是西班牙历史上内战、弗朗哥主义以及三个世纪以来政变——不断的政变——终结的时刻,”塞尔卡斯说道。

但任何阅读《瞬间剖析》(Anatomy of a Moment)并期待遇到定义明确的英雄的人,要么是不了解塞尔卡斯,要么是对人性期望过高。苏亚雷斯、梅利亚多和卡里略是复杂且有时并不完美的男人,但在最关键的时刻,他们展现出了巨大的勇气。残酷的事实是,并非每个人都能如此。

“[其余的人] 寻找掩护。而西班牙的其他民众则留在家里。这很可怕。这是这本书讲述的最沉重的事情。[同时]这也是最显而易见的事情。”

哈维尔·塞尔卡斯(Javier Cercas)的《瞬间剖析》(Anatomy of a Moment)将于 8 月 27 日由 Fitzcarraldo Editions 出版(售价 £16.99)。可通过 observeershop.co.uk 订购,价格为 £15.29(低于建议零售价 10%)。

周日诗篇

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兰尼翁 (Lannion)

苏珊娜·V·埃文斯 (Suzannah V Evans)

四条鱼排列在一个蓝色塑料筐里——“Bar Sauvage, 27,906”——一条细长的身躯向下指,其余的向外延伸,银亮的身躯捕捉着白色包装冰,在市场的喧嚣中如此静谧苍白,在那个注意到鳕鱼背肉 (DARNE CABILLAUD) 那长胡须且不苟言笑的头部而不断哭泣的孩子叫声中,如此洁白而沉默,直到他的父母将他抱高,好让他能直接凝视那玻璃般的眼睛 . . .

. . . “Akaignée 12,50kg”——红色的腿肢狂乱地交叠在一起,被灼成深红色,腹部洁白,脆薄的气泡在表面形成纹理,就像油加热时浮现的那些颤动形态。圆钝的结节上点缀着黑白相间的斑点,它们与从精致的裂缝关节中溢出的白色肉质相呼应,也与白灰色的螯肢相呼应,而那些螯肢就像早晨将你从床上弹起的爱人的掐捏之指 . . .

苏珊娜·V·埃文斯在布鲁姆斯伯里诗歌 (Bloomsbury Poetry) 出版的处女集《在蓝色之下》(Under the Blue) 入围了 2026 年国际迪兰·托马斯奖。一部名为《跑步如何》(How Running Is) 的新诗册将于 9 月由 Guillemot Press 出版。

插画:克里斯·里德尔 (Chris Riddell)


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图书

重读

她所创造的幻象

在她的 1959 年寓言式处女小说中,德国作家鲁斯·雷曼(Ruth Rehmann)沉思于国家的法西斯过去,同时对一个更加个人主义的未来提供了先见之明。作者:梅根·诺兰(Megan Nolan)

在一栋光鲜亮丽的办公大楼里,四名员工收拾好随身物品,准备离开这个他们宣誓效忠的独立王国。一名窗户清洁工——一名在休假期间工作的马戏团成员——在劳作时在空中轻快地跳跃。他拥有独特的视角来观察这些员工,而这些员工正处于一种二元对立的存在状态中:对职责的意志与对个人主义的向往在彼此博弈。

从 1947 年到 1967, 德国作家开始每年聚集在一起,重新探讨第二次世界大战后文学应有的面貌。由汉斯·维尔纳·里希特(Hans Werner Richter)创立的 47 组(Group 47)举行讨论会并朗读新作品,投票选出最佳范例。尽管该组织影响深远,培养出了诺贝尔奖得主君特·格拉斯(Günter Grass)和彼得·汉德克(Peter Handke),但其中的女性作家并未获得应有的关注。因此,鲁斯·雷曼(Ruth Rehmann,1922–2016)的处女小说《幻象》(Illusions)在很大程度上被遗忘了。法伯出版社(Faber)选择重新发行这部迷人的作品至关重要,这不仅是为了纪念一位独特且被忽视的作者,还因为《幻象》对那些在战后以及如今依然困扰西方社会的问题有着残酷而深刻的洞察。在这里,雷曼以最宏大的规模探讨了是什么促使人心趋向于从众、指令,以及最终趋向于法西斯主义本身。

我们的员工包括三名女性和一名男性。保罗·韦斯特曼(Paul Westerman)很年轻,但看起来年长得多,他对几乎不记得自己曾选择过的妻子和孩子感到幻灭,并沉溺于

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一位独特且被忽视的作者:鲁斯·雷曼。Brigitte Friedrich / Süddeutsche Zeitung 照片 / Alamy

《幻象》对那些在战后以及如今依然困扰西方社会的问题有着残酷而深刻的洞察

他更快乐的过去中一段充满冒险色彩的友谊的回忆。施拉姆夫人(Frau Schramm)是一位 60 多岁的资深秘书,她匮乏的生活仅通过对公司的奉献才获得意义。特蕾莎(Therese)是一个心不在焉的 19 岁打字员,她初现雏形的自我认同已被心碎地爱情带偏了方向。而卡门·维奥拉(Carmen Viola)则是一位难以捉摸的、年长的美女,外貌多变,带着一名情歌歌手般戏剧化的心跳。这四个人将在本周六离开办公室,此时他们都处于某种重大动荡的边缘。

初读此书最令人瞩目的是其电影般的视角。雷曼冷静的目光像那个警觉的窗户清洁工一样,以全景式的权威环绕着她的主体。紧凑的时间结构——一个周末——使她能够以极高的自信地游走于这四人的出入之间,大胆地从他们平凡的买菜日常和身体机制,转向对未竟内心世界的毁灭性闪现。我们最终看到的是四幅关于孤独与绝望的画像,它们在极度

小说

佛蒙特州一个古灵精怪的年份

[...OMITTED...]

Country People

约翰·默里出版,£20,320页

小说家兼精神科医生丹尼尔·梅森(Daniel Mason)凭借《钢琴调音师》(The Piano Tuner,2002年)和《冬日战士》(The Winter Soldier,2018年)等严肃的历史小说成名,但近来他的风格转向了轻快。他的短篇小说集《我在地球上的通行登记簿》(A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth,2020年)具有实验性和古怪色彩,而他上一部小说《北林》(North Woods,2023年)则以一种俏皮的选集形式,讲述了三个世纪以来马萨诸塞州一座房子的居民故事。

他的新小说《乡村之人》(Country People)是梅森迄今为止最轻飘飘的一本书——但它表明,即便作者在寻找乐趣,这种乐趣并不一定会传递给读者。故事设定相当简单:夫妻俩迈尔斯和凯特正从加利福尼亚搬到佛蒙特州,以便凯特能在当地一所著名的学院担任为期一年的职务。迈尔斯将成为两个孩子(以及一只狗)的全职爸爸,同时开展一项拖延已久的关于俄罗斯民间故事的研究。

故事讲述了这个家庭安顿下来,以及迈尔斯逐渐了解当地人古怪习俗的过程。叙述中点缀着许多感叹号,这既反映了这家人们对新家的兴奋(“他们出发去探索他们的新世界”),对读者而言,也是一个讽刺他们天真的标记。事情远没有迈尔斯预想的那么简单,从儿子的夜惊症,到出轨的诱惑,再到这个地方古怪程度的顶峰:一个致力于纪念当地男子杰里迈亚·怀尔克斯(Jeremiah Wylkes)的社团,此人在19世纪声称在森林中发现了一个通往地心世界的入口。

诚然,这本书提供了很多娱乐性。梅森让角色注意到任何物品或人物时都会对其进行即兴发挥,从“带有法西斯主义字体的能量饮料”到亚马逊上的狗项圈评论:“就密歇根妈妈(MichiganMom!,受惊的狗现在躲在沙发下)而言,两颗星,颜色加1分”。全书的基调是轻微的讽刺,甚至是古怪的。在迈尔斯之前的工作单位,厕所里的“小便池排列成玫瑰花形,以促进创造力和沟通”。在从加利福尼亚前往佛蒙特州新家的途中,这对夫妇开车经过印第安纳州,“那里已成功地用广告牌取代了大多数生物”。每一个配角都是梅森展示其古怪精神的机会:一个认为自己长得像加菲猫的捕鼠人,或者名叫诺伯特·伦菲厄斯(Norbert Rumphius)或瑙西卡·托雷斯-莱克曼(Nausica's Torres-Lakeman)的人——后者是一位戏剧导演,希望在学校制作的《仲夏夜之梦》中恢复色情元素。

但在这种轻快亲昵的叙述口吻中,透着一丝绝望。其中一个章节开头写道:“距离我们提到老杰里迈亚已经有一段时间了,他——”

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在这种轻快亲昵的叙述口吻中,透着一丝绝望


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不同的迭代;我们还能感觉到所有这些汹涌的情绪是如何被企业的运作机制便捷地吞噬的。她还向我们提供了一个令人信服的观点,即那些被操纵以加强纳粹政权的永恒人类冲动。她的关注点——个体与系统之间战争所导致的精神疾病——在这部小说中提供了一个先见之明,揭示了文学和文化在1945年后的世界中将如何重新配置。

我们的每个角色都可以通过一种被告知该做什么的绝对需求来理解。最直接的是施拉姆夫人,她对公司的忠诚心极强,且这种忠诚变得越来越令人不安。她是预判上级需求的专家,而这反过来满足了她自身最大的需求:被控制,被宠溺,像宠物一样被认可。她对主管先生的尊重演变成了一种黏糊糊的感伤,尽管她绝不会允许个人感情进入职业生活而让自己丢脸。然而在家里,在与年迈的朋友交谈时,她允许自己被触动。“她轻声说,‘他说得那么美。那么真诚。不像个老板,像个凡人,像个朋友。’她清了清嗓子,羞愧地转过身去擦掉眼泪。”

然而,她渴望的并非一个凡人,而是一个彻头彻尾的老板。即便在她能想象到的最大崩溃——被公司解雇——发生时,她仍沉浸在对他天生领导能力的虔诚钦佩中,回想起在他刚被雇佣后初次见到他时的兴奋:“毫无疑问他是个老板!他有一种难以言表(je ne suis quoi)的特质。”在她对主管先生、对所有老板所产生的母性与孩童般冲动的融合中,我们看到了为了公司、为了集体的利益而被升华的混乱情欲冲动。工作是对她作为一个孤独年长女性的惩罚,也是她的慰藉。

尼科尔·赛弗特(Nicole Seifert),《Some》作者

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“他迄今为止最轻飘飘的一本书”:作者丹尼尔·梅森(Daniel Mason)。保罗·斯图尔特(Paul Stuart)

记忆力好的读者可能会记得他上次出现在这些页面中的样子;在其他地方,一个脚注将一个角色称为“兽医伊薇特(这就是她的名字,我没在编)”——对此读者唯一的反应只能是:是的,你在编。有些章节被用来记录两个当地电台主持人之间嬉皮笑脸的对话记录。而梅森对那些……有种弱点

《绅士们对此有所评价》(Gentlemen Said Something About It)是一部关于 Group 47 被遗忘的女性作家的历史,书中指出,尽管该团体整体被定位为反法西斯,但许多女性在提及近期的恐怖事件时更为明确:“该团体的男性创始人是第二次世界大战中的士兵,并在战后将自己视为反法西斯主义者。但他们同时也认为自己对那些恐怖行径没有责任,不想听到任何关于大屠杀的事情;他们希望将自己视为受害者……她们的写作表明,她们理解法西斯主义和父权制在战后德国是如何协同运作的。”

在《幻象》(Illusions)中,雷曼揭示了强制集体服从所需的条件,以及这些条件与共生社会病灶——厌女压制——之间的伙伴关系。三个女人以逐渐消退的厌恶感看待彼此。所有人都在强加给她们的人为匮乏中运作,这种匮乏假设她们不具备个人或独特的价值,而仅仅是功能性的和具体的。

我们现在可能会正确地对 20 世纪后期占据主导地位的个人主义感到反感,当然,这种个人主义也定义了小说的格局。有很多值得反对的地方,尤其是真正的唯我论所导致的同情心与美感的丧失。但在雷曼的案例中,揭露多种相互冲突的个人经历是那个时代进步且激进的选择。当欧洲开始小心翼翼地想象其未来时,一代人通过谴责某些力量为非人性且不可改变,从而让自己远离责任。这本书敢于提出所有伟大作家以某种方式都会提出的问题:那时生活是什么样的,那里是什么样的人?

本文为梅根·诺兰(Megan Nolan)为鲁斯·雷曼(Ruth Rehmann)著、罗布·马多尔(Rob Madole)译的《幻象》(Illusions)所写序言的编辑版本,该书由 Faber Editions 于 27 August 出版(£9.99)。可通过 observershop.co.uk 订购,价格为 £8.49(10% off RRP)

JB Priestley 用他喜欢赋予迈尔斯(Miles)的绰号称呼《Kornic Kapitals》(“不幸的学者,受伤的滑雪者,白色的谎言,勇敢的旧乡道行者”)。

所有这些轻快的琐碎之物不仅是装饰,更是这部小说弱点的核心——只要能跳到下一个分心之物上,它就绝不会深入探讨任何事物或任何人。我一直在等待故事安定下来并找到焦点,但它从未如此。问题在于作者过于放纵:所有的古怪、旁白和特立独行的角色。我们感觉到,梅森(Mason)并没有舍弃心爱的部分,而是用它们填满了整本书。因此,如果能更节制地运用,本可以成为一种享受的内容,现在却变成了一项苦差事。约翰·塞尔夫(John Self)

请在 observershop.co.uk 订购副本,价格为 £18(低于建议零售价 10%)

三本关于女性身体的书

由 Erin Maglaque 挑选

《发生》(Happening),安妮·埃尔诺 著 (2020) 埃尔诺讲述了自己在法国将堕胎合法化之前,秘密堕胎的经历。她将堕胎描述为一场身体折磨,令人难忘。但埃尔诺也唤起了一段关于压迫与羞耻的完整历史,在那个时代,“人们根据法律进行评判,而不会评判法律”。如果说女性的身体生活经常被忽略且未被记录,那么埃尔诺的这本书就是一次激进的修正。她写道:“我相信任何经历,无论其性质如何,都拥有被记录的不可剥夺的权利。不存在所谓的次要真相。”

《助产士的故事》(A Midwife's Tale),劳雷尔·萨彻·乌尔里希 著 (1990) 这是我最喜欢的历史书。乌尔里希利用一名 19 世纪之交缅因州乡村助产士留下的日记来重建她的世界:出生与死亡;祈祷与暴风雪;她种植用于药用的草药;她所在小镇的丑闻。玛莎称自己为一名“游走者”(gadder),一个四处帮助邻居的女人,而她的邻居们都出现在书中。这是一份充满活力的记录,既记录了一个消失的世界,也记录了女性身体一直以来所经历的磨难。

《不朽》(The Undying),安妮·博耶 著 (2019) 这是一部关于博耶在 41 岁时治疗乳腺癌的回忆录。她以令人惊叹的优雅笔触书写疼痛、精疲力竭与苦难。但她同时也是一名愤怒且深刻的批评者,探讨在一个不公正的社会中,创作艺术与陷入疾病分别意味着什么。博耶纪念了那些过早离世的作家,从玛丽·沃斯通克拉夫特到奥德雷·洛德。尽管她声称自己宁愿写一本关于任何其他主题的书,但我很感激像博耶这样坚定且富有诗意的作家记录了疾病意味着什么——以及在过去对女性而言意味着什么。

Erin Maglaque 的著作《存在:女性身体的隐藏历史》(Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body)由 Jonathan Cape 出版

小说

初学者的巴黎

阿布拉乔·查克拉博蒂(Abhrajyo Chakraborty)写道,阿米特·乔杜里(Amit Chaudhuri)的第九部小说延续了他对错位与迷失这些熟悉主题的即兴探讨

《红城堡》(Château Rouge) 阿米特·乔杜里 著 Faber 出版,£14.99,208页

据说居伊·德·莫泊桑每天都在埃菲尔铁塔内的一家餐厅吃午餐,因为那是巴黎唯一一个看不到铁塔的地方。阿米特·乔杜里的第九部小说《红城堡》的叙述者是一位获得奖学金前往巴黎的印度作家,他原本很想住在能看到铁塔的公寓里。然而,他却被困在红城堡区的一间转租房中,那里位于“北站(Gare du Nord)两站路之遥”——他在电话里不断向妻子强调这一点——这是一个以非洲裔为主的区域,完全看不出巴黎的样子。他懊悔没有住在城市中那些更具历史气息的地区:“我觉得自己被剥夺了,被孤立了。”

乔杜里的小说可以被描述为对某种情绪的纤细即兴创作。书中没有太多情节——他的角色很少一起大笑,很少争吵,也很少坠入爱河——但你禁不住将他的书视为关于喜悦(《奇异而崇高的地址》)、思乡(《午后之路》)以及迟来的丧失感(《不朽者》)的优雅论述。典型的乔杜里式场景通常平淡无奇,但致力于赋予平凡事物以优雅的应有之义,这在精神上接近美国散文家伊丽莎白·哈德威克(Elizabeth Hardwick)曾对一名采访者说的一句话:“如果我想看情节,我会去看《达拉斯》。”

在《红城堡》中,这位像叔叔般亲切的叙述者在蒙马特附近的小普莱街(Rue Poulet)长时间散步,与几位孟加拉国花生商结交(他的父母和乔杜里一样,出生在未分裂的孟加拉),并在某一时刻被一名跨性别女性手中挥舞着假阳具的景象所震撼:“那是纪念碑式的,像出自罗丹工作室的作品。”他的学术妻子从牛津来访几天,她指出,如果海明威生活在今天的巴黎,他可能会住在像红城堡这样的移民社区。叙述者开始通过她的眼睛重新审视这座城市。几页之后,他报告说自己“没有搬走的打算……想到另一个地方已经变成了一种调情”。

在断断续续的日记条目中,我们遇到了一个“未被品味、未被绘制”的巴黎,它由小巷以及众多家乐福(Carrefour)和玛莎(Marks & Spencer)门店之间的间隙组成。乔杜里发挥了他作为顽固印象派“随想录”(pensées)鉴赏家的长处。他偶然闯入蒙帕纳斯附近的一场“黄背心”抗议活动,并观察到抗议者展现出一种“历史参与者的目的感”。一次前往名为 Tati 的百货公司的行程让他想起了电影制作人雅克·塔蒂(Jacques Tati)。在向我们介绍他的塞内加尔清洁工奥马鲁(Oumarou)之后,他立刻开始雄辩地谈论德里克·沃尔科特(Derek Walcott)的史诗长诗《预兆》(Omens)。在小说的中段,他坚持认为在现代巴黎不可能成为一名“闲逛者”(flâneur),因为自从沃尔特·本雅明和海明威走在这些街道上以来,这座城市已经发生了太大的变化。叙述者沉思道,现在想要成为海明威,必须从零开始。

《红城堡》(Château Rouge)及其前作《苏瓦松》(Soissons,2022年)给我的感觉是,它们是对那种既非原住民也非游客的迷失感的两种变体探讨。在这两部小说中,一名中年印度作家凭借奖学金在欧洲城市(巴黎、柏林)居住一年,并定居在远离波希米亚式聚集地的社区。两位叙述者在抵达城市时都感到迷茫,并且在停留期间一直处于这种迷茫之中。当地街道和地标的名字被强迫性地反复提及,仿佛它们构成了叙述者内心世界的地图。在乔杜里(Chaudhuri)的小说中,过去曾是提供慰藉的支撑,而现在则消失了。当下就是全部。在某个时刻,叙述者在火车上丢了钱包。片刻后找回钱包时,他发现丢失了一些现金,但信用卡和其他身份证明文件完好无损。“我觉得自己被选中了,”叙述者认定,“在世俗世界中,死里逃生就等同于奇迹。”

请前往 observershop.co.uk 订购副本,价格为 £12.74(低于建议零售价 15%)


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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

图书

本月青少年图书推荐

爱能征服一切

罗密欧与朱丽叶启发了露西·斯特兰奇(Lucy Strange)和凯莉·麦考林(Kelly McCaughrain)的浪漫奇幻作品,而深受喜爱的图形小说系列《心跳停止》(Heartstopper)则迎来了终章。作者:菲奥娜·诺布尔(Fiona Noble)

来自弗朗西丝·哈丁(Frances Hardinge)那才华横溢且古灵精怪的想象力的全新小说,总是值得庆祝。在《叛徒之继》(Traitors' Next,First Ink 出版,£16.99,8月 27 日出版)所构建的替代性中世纪英格兰中,神一般的“玩家”们在阴森的“大游戏”中像移动卒子一样移动城堡。当伯尔(Burr)的乡村生活因一座新城堡的到来而被颠覆时,在村民们和一名神秘继承人的帮助下,他发现自己卷入了反叛与冒险之中。独特的世界观构建和古怪而复杂的人物塑造,推动了一个关于权力与道德的惊险故事。

在法里达·阿布利凯-希米德(Faridah Abliké-ḥimidé)的《继承者》(The Heirs,Usborne 出版,£9.99)中,一起谋杀谜案成为了对财富、特权和成功意义的一次耐人寻味的揭露。巴顿(Button)家族的继承人们是一位臭名昭著的亿万富翁的五个孩子,他们从出生起就被收养并被训练成天才,每个人都被认为是各自领域的领导者——但每个人都过得很痛苦。他们的父亲在一年一度的“神童舞会”上被谋杀,而每个孩子都有理由希望他死去。这是一部充满反转且令人上瘾的惊悚小说,复杂的家庭动态提升了其格调。

在充斥着香艳浪漫奇幻作品的海洋中,两部健康的浪漫小说在年轻青少年读者中脱颖而出,将自我发现的主题编织进爱情故事中。《野马之夏》(Wild Horse Summer,Faber 出版,£8.99)由劳伦·圣约翰(Lauren St John)撰写,讲述了美国女孩摩根(Morgan)被送到英国埃克斯莫尔(Exmore)与她的英国家人同住,以从一次可怕的事故中恢复。在马厩工作以及与当地一名冲浪者的联系给了她慰藉,并让她慢慢解开心中的创伤。得益于圣约翰富有诗意的文字,这是一部具有真实灵魂的、令人欲罢不能的夏季读物。同样具有层次感的是《在小星辰中将他剔除》(Cut Him Out in Little Stars,Chicken House 出版,£8.99),这是中级读物作者露西·斯特兰奇(Lucy Strange)面向青少年的处女作。这部二战冒险小说取名自《罗密欧与朱丽叶》,背景设定在肯特郡的一个海滨村庄,那里德国入侵的威胁感觉非常真实。由于战斗机飞行员未婚夫的去世而心碎,这位“朱丽叶”卷入了一起当地谋杀案的谜团中,并在此过程中获得了第二次恋爱机会。这是一个极具氛围感的成长故事,带有一抹哥特色彩。

img-329.jpeg

《心跳停止》始终忠于其根源,而这最后一章则充满了苦乐参半、喜悦且完全令人满意

“一个具有情感深度和真实性的暖心爱情故事”:《心跳停止:第 6. 卷》,爱丽丝·奥塞曼(Alice Oseman)

《罗密欧与朱丽叶》还为凯莉·麦考林(Kelly McCaughrain)的《又一个死掉的男孩》(Just Another Dead Boy,Walker 出版,£8.99)提供了灵感。在一个每个人出生时身体上就印有死亡之日的世界里,里根(Regan)在一家豪华的临终度假村担任“朱丽叶”。她的工作是为那些处于生命最后阶段的富家男孩伪装成与他们坠入爱河——直到她最新的客户朱德(Jude)看穿了这层伪装。反乌托邦的背景和“欢喜冤家”的设定使其成为一部逃避现实的假期读物,而底层则支撑着关于爱、死亡和生命意义的沉重思考。

最后,爱丽丝·奥塞曼(Alice Oseman)著名的图形小说系列在《心跳停止:第 6 卷》(Heartstopper: Volume 6,Hachette 出版,£14.99)中迎来结局。这是学校的最后一年:查理(Charlie)正忙于竞选学生会主席,尼克(Nick)正准备离开去上大学,而他们的朋友圈子则在思考生活接下来将把他们带向何方。尽管它已成为一种全球现象,但《心跳停止》始终忠于其根源,在暖心的爱情故事与情感深度和真实性之间取得了平衡。这最后一章时而苦乐参半,时而充满喜悦,且完全令人满意。

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本周平装书推荐

作者:Chris Power

基蒂·姆罗索夫斯基(Kitty Mrosovsky)的最后一部小说在她去世 40 年后终于出版,为性欲提供了一幅坦率且特立独行的画像。

《震颤》(Quake) 基蒂·姆罗索夫斯基 著 McNally Editions 出版,£13.99,288页

在《震颤》的故事进行到三分之二时,叙述者奥利维亚——一名三十多岁的英语教师,正与一名 22 岁的西西里人罗萨里奥(Rosario)维持婚外情——审视起自己的身体。她的乳房“在状态最好时也从未像传闻中的甜瓜那样”,而像“塌陷的鼹鼠丘”。她的臀部有些赘肉,挤压起来有种“炒蛋般的质感”。但她的腿长且强健,她的脸虽然有“凹坑”,但在合适的光线下可以显得“幽暗且诱人”,而且“我的屁股还不算太糟”。她总结道:“总而言之,我想这种美与丑的结合相当具有挑逗性。”

也许基蒂·姆罗索夫斯基的第二部也是最后一部小说——她于 1995 年因艾滋病相关疾病去世,享年 48 岁——在 20 世纪 80 年代中期被认为过于挑逗,因此当时未能找到出版商。直到现在,40 年后,它才被付梓。它为我们呈现了那个 era 的伦敦中,女性欲望、孤独、抑郁和执念的一幅极其坦率且特立独行的画像。

奥利维亚如此渴望罗萨里奥的高潮,“以至于那像是一场渴望的爆发。我完全不在意我自己的”。这种失衡将被证明代价高昂,但在事情发展到那个地步之前——甚至在那之后——仍有大量的性爱发生。姆罗索夫斯基对此的描写非常出色,在技术性与比喻性之间找到了那个难以捉摸的平衡点,并使其显得完全是生活的一部分(“在他射在我的脸颊上时,我的一缕头发被粘住了”),这种自然感在文学作品中极少能实现。

《震颤》的大部分篇幅是一部关于伦敦的小说,但其开头和结尾由意大利的片段包围。其中一段是奥利维亚写的一部虚构作品(让人想起《光年》时期的詹姆斯·索尔特),她通过想象进入了罗萨里奥、他的女友杰斯(Jess)以及一群在度假的英国社交圈朋友的生活。另一段则是奥利维亚在无法忍受伦敦的处境时进行的一种朝圣,这完全不同:一次如此具有幻觉色彩的孤独旅程,以至于它本身也像是一部虚构作品。

这第二个意大利章节提升了整本书的格调,因为在描述奥利维亚对罗萨里奥的挫败感、与邻居猫的关系以及语言学校的琐事时,内容变得重复。毫无疑问,《震颤》篇幅过长,其松散的结构有时显得像是作者的放纵,但读者的耐心几乎总能得到回报。在一个具有代表性的章节中,姆罗索夫斯基用了四页冗长的篇幅写星座运势,然后用了五页对委拉斯开兹的《罗基比的维纳斯》进行大胆而精彩的分析。奥利维亚将其投稿给一家艺术杂志。就像《震颤》一样,它被拒绝了。

封面文案对这一切进行了尽可能积极的诠释,称这本书是“迷宫般的”。即使是小说家玛吉·吉(Maggie Gee)在序言中也承认,这部小说像拼贴画一样的结构“有掩盖其核心叙事情感吸引力的风险”。但书中有足够真正优秀的内容,使其缺陷仅是损害而非致命。就像吃鸡翅一样,要获得所有的鲜美需要付出努力,但鲜美确实存在:肯特郡天空中的云朵,“像被击穿的丝绸靠垫一样倾斜”:

《震颤》毫无疑问篇幅过长,但读者的耐心几乎总能得到回报

翁布里亚的亚西西小镇是“一本靠在山丘讲坛上的石头祷告书”;一名建议奥利维亚去出版业找工作的精神科医生,则代表了“男人心中聪明女人的位置”。

姆罗索夫斯基是一位极具天赋的学者,但由于对教学价值产生怀疑,她放弃了大学讲师的工作,转而从事自由职业。她与克雷格·雷恩曾有过长期的性关系,这段关系始于他的婚前并延续至婚后。这是那些经常附着在某些女性作家传记中的、令人厌烦且具有贬低意味的细节之一,但我在此提及,是因为在她去世后,她最广为人知的身份成了他某些诗作的主题。从其中一首诗中我们得知,与奥利维亚不同,她确实拥有像“甜瓜”一样的乳房。吉承认,姆罗索夫斯基仅激发了“糟糕的诗作”,其措辞令人钦佩且简洁。随着《震颤》(Quake)的出版,我们可以转而关注她优秀的散文。

请前往 observershop.co.uk 订购副本,价格为 £12.59(建议零售价 10% 折扣)


书籍

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

29

回忆录

父母的馈赠

卡罗尔·阿瑟顿讲述了她的领养之旅,并探讨了将他人的孩子接回家中时所伴随的偏见与恐惧。作者:珍妮·法根

《如此多种归属方式:一个关于领养的个人历史》

《如此多种归属方式》是一部回忆录,探讨了英语教师卡罗尔·阿瑟顿及其丈夫马修成为一个小男孩父母的旅程。我们陪伴他们度过这段脆弱的时光,因此,当他们站在房门前,迎接那个即将成为他们儿子的红发孩子时,我们能理解为了到达这个特殊且令人紧张的时刻,他们必须经历的诸多阶段。虽然作者的语调带有深厚的个人色彩,但本书也无缝地探讨了关于领养更广泛的社会和历史呈现。

这对夫妇的领养故事始于 20 年前。阿瑟顿慷慨地描述了她的经历:她意识到她和马修所经历的不孕症,将引导他们更深入地思考究竟是什么构成了家庭。我们按照时间顺序,跟随阿瑟顿经历了一个非亲生儿子的母亲身份阶段。起初,她疲惫地推着孩子走,在六周内因压力以及对自己最初是否能胜任母亲这一新角色而产生的巨大怀疑而减轻了 28 磅(two stone)体重,此时这个孩子被描述为“那个小男孩”。

正如阿瑟顿所写,人们可能会对“巢中杜鹃”产生深深的担忧。孩子可能经常(尽管并非总是)经历过巨大的创伤。出于对孩子隐私的尊重,以及意识到分享与否仅由孩子本人决定,阿瑟顿选择不讲述儿子的早年生活故事。“我也无权讲述他此后的生活故事,”她写道,“从某种意义上说,这本书在他两岁半时就停止了,那时他还是个有着亮红色头发、精力充沛且咯咯笑个不停的幼儿。但在另一种意义上,它在延续。它汲取了我 20 年领养父母生涯中所学到的一切。”

在引言中,阿瑟顿告诉我们,当她紧张地在养父母家门外等待第一次见到孩子时,她注意到了 uPVC 窗户。接着文中提到了精心打理的花园,但正是这个早期的细节让我意识到阿瑟顿

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领养如果是在安全且意图正确的情况下进行的,永远应当受到赞赏和尊重

可能并不住在有 uPVC 窗户的房子里,这引导我走向那个令人恐惧的 c-词:阶级(class)。虽然我们希望认为领养一个来自不同阶级或拥有不同 DNA 的孩子不会受到内化歧视的影响,但无论一个人多么体面,这种歧视仍可能渗入他们对孩子性格展开的感知,或对其未来行为的担忧。这种不同出身的碰撞无疑影响了领养世界;内化的歧视可能会渗入到

对一个来到你家中生活的婴儿所表现出的信任中。

我承认,我在面对领养这个话题时并非没有偏见或经验。我经历过两次领养,而我的养父母对领养孩子的智力或道德水准抱有较低的期望。他们表现得像是体面且开明的领养者,但在两次安置中,我在情感和身体上都遭受了巨大的伤害。阿瑟顿描述了“小报如何刊登关于那些被吸毒亲生父母地摧毁到无法修复,进而撕裂其领养家庭的孩子们的耸人听闻的文章”。然而她也解释说,被领养的孩子“不知道如何分享,因为他们才刚刚意识到有些东西确实是属于他们的。在点心时间,他们会抢更多的饼干,因为在过去,食物是匮乏的,他们学会了在能吃到饼干时尽可能多地吃”

是什么让一次领养成功而另一次失败?

机会。”我对其中一些概括性的陈述感到反感,因为我遇到的所有被收养的孩子都截然不同,就像任何亲生孩子同样具有个体差异一样。

当阿瑟顿解释说,她的孩子——他可能并不一定建立了依恋纽带或接受过母乳喂养,或者可能遭受过虐待或忽视——这种脱节可能意味着他在神经系统上的稳定性不如同龄的其他孩子时,她并没有错。应该为此给予时间。然而,我们也看到在那些就读于最顶尖寄宿学校且看似拥有关爱家庭的人身上,也存在极其糟糕的行为。我在护理系统中遇到过许多善良的孩子,并在特权阶层的地方目睹了彻头彻尾的惨剧。不良行为并非只有问题儿童才会出现。

同样重要的是,必须考虑一个非常现实的担忧,即一些收养父母和寄养父母在被委托抚养孩子后,竟然虐待这些孩子。我们绝不能简单地将系统中的孩子视为潜在的“坏孩子”,而将收养者视为永远的“好人”。我在收容所或临时安置点遇到了很多孩子,他们和我一样,在收养或寄养安置中遭受虐待后,被重新送回了护理系统。

是什么让一次收养成功而另一次失败?在莱姆恩·西赛(Lemn Sissay)非凡的回忆录《我的名字叫为什么》(My Name Is Why)中,他的收养父母将他的名字改为诺曼(且从未告诉他原名),并对他表现出深深的不信任。在光谱的另一端,杰基·凯(Jackie Kay)的《红尘路》(Red Dust Road)则展示了在一个并非通过基因而是通过爱而结合的家庭中,纽带可以多么美好。阿瑟顿的探索为这些公开的收养故事带来了另一个维度,这个维度是克制且自觉的,并且来自一个收养者的视角——一个其声音不常被如此清晰地听到的人。在《如此多种归属方式》(So Many Ways to Belong)中,展现了阿瑟顿作为一名收养母亲所投入的巨大奉献和体面,她愿意研究与促成家庭团聚的过程相关的一切。

收养涵盖了世界历史的如此多方面。有通过殖民主义、战争、爱尔兰天主教母亲之家而导致的大规模儿童被强行带离。我经常想到那些分离家庭的冰冷设施,或者一个孩子在经历了一场危险的海上航行幸存后,在海滩上被从母亲怀中夺走,仅仅因为她在成为父母之前被描绘成一名“移民”。无论在生活中的哪个阶层,母亲都必须得到支持,即使是那些无法抚养自己孩子、并做出巨大牺牲以希望他人能提供她们无法提供之物的人。

在书的结尾,阿瑟顿将她成年后的儿子描述为幽默、聪明且独立。但当她说“他一部分是我们的孩子,一部分是别人的孩子”时,我感到有些难过——即便这句话旨在表示接纳。我想知道,阿瑟顿是否给了她和丈夫足够的肯定,因为所有育儿行为都包含着巨大的慷慨。可以肯定的是,一个良好的收养家庭可以将孩子从寄养或机构护理中的严重脱节和风险中拯救出来;它甚至可能拯救他们的生命。我并非轻率地说出这话。只要在安全且意图正确的情况下进行,收养永远应该得到支持、赞赏和尊重。它是全球家庭网络中至关重要的一部分。阿瑟顿作为一名母亲,致力于让所有人更了解这一过程,这本身就是一份伟大的证明。

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30

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

谜题

劳拉·卡明(Laura Cumming)的猜图

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本周问题: 请写出(上方)艺术家的名字? 下周日公布答案。

上周的细节出自比利时画家詹姆斯·恩索(James Ensor)1890年的杰作《阴谋》(The Intrigue)。画面展现了一位戴着高顶礼帽、身穿皮大衣并围着厚围巾抵御寒冷的绅士,身边是一位留着蓝色头发、身穿绿衣的女性。她是艺术家的妹妹米切(Mitche),而那位绅士是她的中国未婚夫。他们的订婚引起了恩索家乡奥斯坦德(Ostend)的愤怒,因此画面中出现了嘈杂的八卦面具。恩索的母亲出售面具,他在这些人造面孔的陪伴下长大,并以如此充沛的活力将其绘制。他的面具始终保持着神秘感,是一个充满强力人格和狂野场景的剧场。但恩索将它们描述为进行夸张社交姿态和“精致动荡”的机会。

-333.

-334.

电影连连看

每周我们展示三张剧照。请猜出涉及的电影以及将它们联系在一起的导演。(如果能按时间顺序排列,可获得额外加分。)

-335.

-336.

-337.

出题人:基利安·福克斯(Killian Fox) 答案见第 31 页

Everyman 纵横字谜 No. 4,165

横向

1 环游欧洲的一天 (6) 5 邋遢之辈竟然有脸! (6) 8 每个普通人都具有进步的潜力,解题者:诚实地 (1,7,3) 11 艾尔(Eyre)听到一条需要裁剪以准备表演的线 (9) 12 紫色中的小型体育俱乐部 (5) 13 公司建造的筒仓:它们巨大无比 (7) 14 骗子退休,极度渴望休息 (7) 15 小小的花环很精致,遭到轻视 (7) 17 丢弃周围全部腐烂的肉 (7) 20 发回 - 也许是开车回去,土豆? (5) 21 宣布“到了穿束腰的时间”的高耸建筑 (4,5) 22 重新处理猪肉:尴尬的失误 (3-3,5) 23 船尾的一个独裁者 (6) 24 一个主要占据主导地位,但由裙带关系任命的人,确保了王位? (6)

纵向

2 没有逃脱可能的多个句子,例如企鹅? (10,5) 3 据报道,访问希腊岛屿时取得的一些进展 (7) 4 入场特许权 (9) 5 绳索材料定期被带入马厩 (5) 6 词曲作者的报酬:泰勒收集了日元 (7)

-338.

7 “期限”、“誓言”、“新闻”、“聊天”? (4-6,5) 9 被传说中的鸟类抓住,一个有几十颗牙齿的人 (4) 10 蛋糕装饰者的指令被退回,并进行了两次裁剪 (4) 14 边缘呈波浪状,建筑坍塌 (9) 15 确定潜在伴侣的年龄 (4) 16 一场纸牌游戏?裁剪 (7) 18 提供风险证据:芭比的男朋友接受了爱 (7) 19 在暴政中提供两个极端的人,右翼分子? (4) 21 作者丹(Dan)被烤焦了 (5)

姓名

地址

邮编

解题者可以通过以下方式在线参加我们的字谜比赛: www.observer.co.uk / puzzles 或发送电子邮件至:competitions@observer.co.uk 鼓励无纸化参赛;仍接受邮寄参赛。 随机选出的五个正确答案将各获得一张 £15 的图书代金券。 如需参加 Everyman 抽奖,请通过在线方式或邮寄正确答案至:Everyman No. 4,165, The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W1Y 3LP 电子邮件参赛必须在主题行中包含与印刷版一致的字谜名称和编号(例如“Everyman No. 4,165”)。主题不正确的参赛作品将不被接受。仅限 18 岁及以上的英国居民。每人最多参赛一次。在线参赛的截止日期为出版后的周六;邮寄参赛必须在出版后的周六之前盖戳,且必须在谜题出版后十天内送达(即出版后下周三之前)。获胜者将在出版两周后的周日公布。 完整条款与条件请访问: https: / observer.co.uk / puzzles / everyman / article / 1 / crossword-prize-draws

Gemelo No. 41 解答与注释

img-347.jpeg

Gemelo 使用一种加密简写来解释答案,可在以下网址查看:https: / observer.co.uk / puzzles / gemelo / article / gemelo-key

横向:1.1 THORATIC - 15 8.10, 13.1 ONCAC, 13.7 ST. (FRY HAOK - 23 (H)ER? THEMA(bc), 15 FRIES around 4℃, 18 GOHN AW - 27 E in VALI, 18 FRI(ER) in INST. 22 (PLZASANT JOD) + - 5CT+ 24 K AHM A, 26 LE around (II VV), 28 RIO+ in UNDO, 30 POP UTE LA,

31.US (co)T) in LIOI, 32.ILL in MS &it [ref (assistance)], 33 (eh)S (Bo) SCOT, 34 BUND / ABIKS - BURG.

纵向:5 dU, 2 GJB, GN D, 3 ACT ON, 4 HAT+ IN I, 5 A MAD in RILL O(m), 7 SPH18 + 2 APP, 8 (VINE TESTS) + 9 (US), W, 10 (c)P1925 I, 14 L US SCARED(4), 15 FAR AND OLE, 19 PINTO M(ur)SC, 20 K(er)I TT in NICE, 21 ((mnd)EE, EU KE(d))+, 23 (N MUTUA(I))+, 25 S(NM)+, 27 VALI D, 29 tM.

规则与要求

如需参加 Gemelo 奖品抽奖,请通过以下方式提交正确答案:在线提交至 https: / observer.co.uk / puzzles,发送电子邮件至 competitions@observer.co.uk,或邮寄至:Gemelo No. 44, The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W17 3LP

电子邮件参赛作品必须在主题栏中包含与印刷版一致的填字游戏名称和编号(例如“Gemelo No. 44”)。主题不正确的参赛作品将不被接受。鼓励无纸化参赛。仅限 18 岁及以上的英国居民。每人最多提交一份作品。在线参赛的截止日期为出版后的周六;邮寄参赛作品的邮戳不得晚于出版后的周六,且必须在谜题出版后十天内送达(即出版后下周的周三)。将随机抽取三个正确答案,每位获胜者将获得一张 £25 的图书代金券。Gemelo No. 44 的获胜者将于 2026 年 9 月 13 日周日公布。

完整条款与条件请访问:

https: / observer.co.uk / puzzles / everymon / article / crossword-prize-draws

Gemelo No. 41 中奖者

P B Mildred, Leverburgh, Isle of Hants

C Chatwin, Kenilworth Warwickshire

J Smalew, Ruddington Nottingham

Killer by Godefridus

img-348.jpeg

适用常规数独规则,但灰色线条内的单元格数字之和必须等于曲线中的数字。在灰色线条形成的每个形状内,数字不得重复。

Cinema Connect 答案

《杀手》(2023)、《功绩》(2020) 和《十二宫》(2007) 均由大卫·芬奇执导。

Chess by Jonathan Speelman

图表 1

在这里,12岁的苏普拉蒂特·巴内吉(Supratit Banerjee)在对阵苏格兰青少年弗雷迪·沃尔德豪森·戈登(Freddie Waldhausen Gordon)时完成了一次精妙的终结。你能找到它吗?(见文末。)

什雷亚斯·罗亚尔(Shreyas Royal)在经历了上周日于华威大学举行的一场极其紧张的决赛轮后,成为了今年的英国冠军。

乌克兰青少年斯维亚托斯拉夫·巴扎库察(Svyatoslav Bazakutsa,现居住于此)在早期处于领先地位,并一直保持竞争力,直到在倒数第二轮中被西蒙·威廉姆斯(Simon Williams)在一场典型的狂热对局中击败。在那一轮结束时,皮特·罗伯森(Pete Roberson)在对阵哈里·格里夫(Harry Grieve)时处于胜势,仅需三步精准走法——诚然第三步并不那么明显——即可迫使对方认输。但他失误了,随后迅速让局面在 180' 处发生了反转。

决赛轮开始时,罗亚尔、格里夫和威廉姆斯均以 6.5 / 8 分领先于四名获得 6. 分的选手。罗亚尔干净利落地击败了格里夫,在卢克·麦克谢恩(Luke McShane)击败威廉姆斯后,罗亚尔成为了唯一的获胜者。12岁的苏普拉蒂特·巴内吉,在图表 1 中完成了精妙终结,他被迈克尔·亚当斯(Michael Adams,见下文)击败,而获得 6 分的第四个人,印度国际大师(IM)西瓦·马哈德万(Siva Mahadevan)与阿米特·加西(Ameet Ghasi)战平。

罗亚尔最终获得 7.5 / 9 分,领先于获得 7 分的麦克谢恩和亚当斯,以及四名获得 6.5. 分的选手。11 岁的博达娜·西瓦南丹(Bodhana Sivanandan)成为了新的女子冠军,在两人均获得 5.5 / 9 分后,她在附加赛中击败了爱尔兰女子特级大师特里莎·卡尼亚马拉亚(Trisha Kanyamaraia)。

罗亚尔在 1 月时 17 岁,他是历史上最年轻的英国冠军,将迈克尔·亚当斯保持的纪录缩短了一个月。(奈杰尔·肖特在 1979, 年首次并列第一时仅 14 岁,但罗伯特·贝林在附加赛中击败了他和约翰·纳恩。)

罗亚尔出生于班加罗尔,三岁时随家人移居伦敦。2018 年曾发起一场大规模运动以让该家庭留在英国,直到当局最终让步,为其父亲续签了工作签证。两年前,他成为了历史上最年轻的英格兰特级大师,他在 2023 年伦敦经典赛中获得 4 / 9 分,这是一个非常值得称赞的特级大师等级分标准。在过去一年左右的时间里,他处于某种平台期,但这次令人印象深刻的不败胜利应该会重新点燃他的上升势头。

什雷亚斯·罗亚尔 对阵 卢克·麦克谢恩

华威 2026 苏格兰开局

1e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 exd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nxc6 bxc6 6 e5 Qe7 7 Qe2 Nd5 8 g3 8℃4 Bx6 是主线 8...g6 9 Bg2 Bg7 10℃4 Bx6 11 0-0-0 12 Re1 Wxe8 13 Qc2 Qc5 14 Nd2 这一线路此前已被多次采用。黑方可以赢得 e 兵,但局面会有些混乱。根据计算机分析,14...Bxe5 14...Rxe5 略好。15 Bf1 Nb6 16 Nb3 Qf8 17 Be3 Na4 可行,但这成了后来一段不幸旅程的第一步。17...d5 立即来看是可以的。18 Rad1 d5 19 cxd5 Bxf1 20 Rxf1 Nxb2? 显然这就是卢克在走 Na4 时所预想的。这匹“故事马”看起来像是能逃脱,但什雷亚斯预见到了不同的结果 21 Bc5 Qg7

图表 2

22 Rd41 a5 最佳机会。如果 22... Bxd4 23 Bxd4 Qf8,那么任何一次捕捉都应能相当轻松地获胜 23 Qxb2 a4 24 Nc1Ra5 25 Re1 25 Nd3 Rxc5 26 Re1 转换至 25...Rxc5 26 Nd3 Rb5 27 Qc2 cxd5 或者如果 27...Qf6 28 Rd4 + Rxd5 29 Qe2 赢得该子。28 Qxa4℃6 或者 28...Rb8 29 Rxd5 (R 30 Rd7 Re7 31Rxe7 Qxe7 32 f4Qd6 比如 33 Qc4 + 29 Rxe5 Rxe5 30 Qa8+ Qf8 31 Qxf8+ Kxf8 32 Nxe5 Rb1+ 33 Kg2 Rc1 34 a4 f6 35 Nd3 Rd1 36 a5 Ra1 如果 36...Ke7 37 Rd4 Rxd3 38 o6 决定胜负 37 Rf4 Ke7

图表 3

38 Nb4 即将失去至少一个中心兵,麦克谢恩认输。

为行星命名

所以你想给一颗行星命名?别急,哥白尼——即便你发现了一颗,如果没有国际天文学联合会(IAU)的许可,你也没有权力为其命名。自1919年成立以来,IAU一直负责天体的命名工作。恒星、行星、小行星、海王星外天体、近地天体、行星卫星、行星表面特征、环以及更多——它们都需要名字,而管理这些名字的正是IAU。

我说它们“需要名字”,但这并不完全准确。宇宙中存在着无数的恒星、行星和卫星,在大多数情况下,天文学家使用它们的正式编号来称呼它们:TrES-1b, 51 Pegasi b, Wasp-19。虽然在IAU的《恒星名称目录》中可以找到像 Uhallamacha, Asuasiha 和 Khepdenreret 这样充满异域色彩的名称,但它们在很大程度上只是装饰性的。学者们更倾向于使用科学的字母数字编号:HD 155985, HR 6092 和 HR 6324。

但名字自有其用武之地。不仅公众和媒体喜欢它们,而且当一个天体足够重要时,命名就成了必须之举。有时,名字是主要的识别形式。在所有这些情况下,命名都需要规则。例如,NameExoWorlds 是 IAU 的一项倡议,旨在让每个国家为一颗系外行星及其宿主恒星命名,该倡议禁止使用在世人物的名字,以及任何具有政治、军事或宗教意义的名称。宠物动物的名字也是禁忌,商标和商业名称同样不行,因此不会出现“可口可乐行星”,遗憾的是,也不会有“皮革世界”。

为了确保宇宙被正确命名,还存在数十条其他规则。考虑到可观测宇宙中估计有 2000 亿美元 兆颗恒星,以及更多的行星,IAU 最好赶紧行动起来。这些恒星可不会自己给自己起名。

Joshua Blackburn 是《语言爱好者的词典》(The Language-Lover's Lexipedia,Bloomsbury 出版,£14.99)的作者。可在 observershop.co.uk 以 £13.49 订购。可能产生运费。

Goldilocks 解答 No. 37

img-353.jpeg

img-354.jpeg

扫描订阅 The Puzzle Edit —— 由谜题编辑 Caitlin O'Kane 撰写的每周 newsletter

Goldilocks 纵横字谜 No. 38

不过难,不过易,恰到好处。

Goldilocks 线索不包含字数提示;在尺寸中等的纵横字谜中,这只会让原本紧凑的谜题变得更简单。乐趣在于发散思维、对网格的观察以及鲜明的现代英国口语。订阅 observer.co.uk 即可在线游玩 Goldilocks 存档。

横向

  • 1 不幸孩子的同学签署的物品
  • 5 碧昂丝在《狮子王》中的角色
  • 9 Nintendo Switch ___(更小、更便宜的版本)
  • 10 这可能不是个好兆头
  • 11 平方英尺
  • 12 许多不负责任的节日参与者遗弃的东西之一
  • 13 干扰公主睡眠的人
  • 14 对应刘易斯版华生的福尔摩斯
  • 15 战斗服材质
  • 17 水星音乐奖得主,可能
  • 19 炸鱼薯条店的选择
  • 22 富含粘土的土壤
  • 23 模仿号角声的词
  • 24 北欧神话中的恶作剧之神
  • 25 “我现在就处理这件事!”
  • 26 以极快的速度行驶
  • 27 “别跟我在这儿 ___”

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纵向

  • 1 雷声
  • 2 流经利兹的河流
  • 3 Greggs 的肉类选择
  • 4 阿萨姆或乌龙
  • 5 不可接受的,或不舒服的
  • 6 浓缩咖啡 + 热水
  • 7 可能是鱼眼或长焦
  • 8 沿着 ___ 向上

  • 14 Castleton 的 ___ Tor(字面意思是“母山”)

  • 16 闷热的
  • 17 ___ 结局圆满
  • 18 高端耳塞品牌
  • 20 北欧神话中的父亲之神
  • 21 常在斋月开斋时食用
  • 23 加(总计)

Godefridus 的大苹果数独

img-356.jpeg

每一行、每一列以及每第二行都是数字 1-5,外加一个特别之处——四个高亮的 3+3 蓝色方格共同组成了一组额外的方格,其中同样包含 1-6 且不重复。

1 拥有一个完美的驾驶舱,源自拉丁语 utopia(编号)。每一个都源自希腊语 no(左)+ Sopo(一个地方)。

  1. 所有岛屿上的英国哲学家 Thomas Miller 无法为他的书(Slopo (1316),其中是一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到这个词,并且

来自世界上第一个,在 世界上第一个,在 的时间。

  1. 的,的 t 的。

  2. 的,的 t 的。

  3. 的,的 t 的。

  4. 的,的 t 的。

  5. 所有岛屿上的英国哲学家 Thomas Miller 无法为他的书(Slopo (1316),其中是一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到这个词,并且

  6. 的,的 t 的。

  7. 所有岛屿上的英国哲学家 Thomas Miller 无法为他的书(Slopo (1316),其中是一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到这个词,并且

  8. 的,的 t 的。

  9. 所有岛屿上的英国哲学家 Thomas Miller 无法为他的书(Slopo (1316),其中是一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到这个词,并且

  10. 世界首创,那个时刻 世界首创。

  11. 所有的岛屿英国哲学家托马斯·米勒无法为他的书(《Slopo》(1316),其中描述了一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到词汇,并且

  12. 所有的岛屿英国哲学家托马斯·米勒无法为他的书(《Slopo》(1316),其中描述了一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到词汇,并且

  13. 所有的岛屿英国哲学家托马斯·米勒无法为他的书(《Slopo》(1316),其中描述了一个虚构的岛屿生活)找到词汇,并且


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

33

居家生活

音频

日常的顿悟

三档播客分享了来自普通人的深刻见解和非凡故事,其中包括一位教小学生学会梦想的美国诗人

Xavier Greenwood

Signal Hill

Signal Hill

A View from a Bridge

Joe Bloom

Strangers on a Bench

Tom Rosenthal

在名人播客和寓教于乐的节目泛滥之时,人们很容易忘记最非凡的智慧可能来自普通民众。但由自由独立制作人创建的非营利音频杂志 Signal Hill 深谙此道。其最新一期内容包括:一位戏剧创作者记录自己今年每一个清醒时刻的苦乐参半的日记;美食作家 Ruby Tandoh 关于勇敢尝试拯救鲁特琴的英雄们的特写;以及一组在美国新墨西哥州徒步旅行的小学生的“派遣报告”。

这些故事以最出人意料的方式令人愉悦,但没有哪个比《月亮内部有什么》(What's Inside the Moon)更令人动容。它讲述了肯尼斯·科赫(Kenneth Koch,见插图)的故事,他是一位纽约学派的美国诗人,被一群作家同行聘请来教孩子们写诗。1970年,科赫出版了《愿望、谎言与梦想》(Wishes, Lies and Dreams),这部里程碑式的作品记录了他的努力。半个多世纪后,Jess Shane 联络了科赫以前的学生,以了解他如何改变了他们的人生。

该集制作精良,使用了科赫及其学生的档案录音,其中一些学生当时年仅六岁。“当你写诗时,你可以随心所欲地说任何话,”科赫在一段录音中解释道,“可以是真实的,也可以是谎言。重要的是,你所说的话让你觉得好听。”也就是说,科赫鼓励他教的孩子们去梦想。

当你听到这些如今已在 60 岁左右的学生描述他们的梦想如何改变、如何保持不变,以及有多少梦想仍未实现时,心中会涌起一阵酸楚。“我 67 岁了,”马里昂·麦克莱斯(Marion Mackles)在自我介绍时说道,“我住在纽约市西 42 街,但我幻想住在其他任何地方。”随后我们听到了她的诗,那是她在跟随科赫学习的小女孩时期写的。“我睡着了,我梦见蓝天,梦见玫瑰和一座雏菊之屋,”麦克莱斯朗诵道,“当我醒来,这一切都成了真。”

希望的实现与否也是《桥上的视角》(A View from a Bridge)的主题。这是一个在 Instagram 上走红的账号的音频改编版,其中各色各样的人在对着桥上的一部红色电话说话时,沉思人生与死亡。Joe Bloom 的这档播客上个月重启了新一季,当它避开名人时表现最出色。姑息治疗护士莫莉(Molly)回忆起一位前屋顶工,他在佩卡姆(Peckham)一座高层建筑的顶层度过了最后的日子,天花板上有一个洞。莫莉起初对公寓的状态感到恐慌,但随后意识到乔治(George)其实很满足。“他觉得自己在天空中,”莫莉说,“他觉得自己在看着鸟儿飞进来。”

《长椅上的陌生人》(Strangers on a Bench)现在要暂时告别了,在播到第 100 集后,该节目将无限期

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休整。音乐家汤姆·罗森塔尔(Tom Rosenthal)的这档播客通过在公园里接触人们并与他们展开对话,已成为一个记录普通生活起伏的深刻时间胶囊,始终保持匿名且没有广告干扰。罗森塔尔以一种巧妙的方式为节目收尾:一位 55 岁的波兰女性反转了形式,开始向他提问。

这位女性对自己的感受比较谨慎,但她分享了关于我们每个人有时都会怀有的幻想的看法。“永远不要停止梦想,”她说,“永远不要停止。当你停止想象的那一刻,你就死掉了。”

忏悔类节目引发了关于剥削、关怀责任以及观众窥淫癖的合理质疑。但如果处理得当,一个由普通人讲述的非凡故事可以成为任何人一天中的一缕阳光——直到节目结束,听众与倾诉者再次变回陌生人。

Miranda Sawyer 休假中

观察者报

文化俱乐部

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立省 £50

皇家芭蕾舞团与歌剧流媒体服务

此外,还为热爱文化的人士量身定制了价值 £800 的额外福利

在 observer.co.uk / culture-club 解锁此优惠及更多福利


34

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

电视

作者:Craig McLean, Kay Ribeiro 以及 Stephen Armstrong

电影评论:Jonathan Romney

本周亮点

今日

今日推荐

《黑表》(Black Watch)

BBC Four, 10pm

在爱丁堡边缘艺术节首演 20 年后,这部由苏格兰国家剧院制作、在丁沃尔实况拍摄的剧作将再次播出。2004 年的伊拉克:黑表团的士兵们在所谓的“死亡三角地带”的道格伍德营地驻守。与此同时,英国政府计划通过将其并入一个单一的苏格兰单位来解散该团——这对士兵们的士气来说是致命一击。随后在 11.35pm 播出《一名士兵的故事》(A Soldier's Story),深入探讨剧作家格雷戈里·伯克(Gregory Burke)的这部杰作。CMc

比尔·奥迪回归自然(Bill Oddie Goes Wild)

BBC Four, 7pm

在 85 岁的自然保护主义者比尔·奥迪(Bill Oddie)近期去世后,观众将再次有机会欣赏他回顾其 2000 年代初期三季野生动物节目中的最喜爱时刻。这位前“好伙计”(Goodies)明星对观鸟的热情将在 7.30pm 的《与比尔·奥迪一起观鸟》(Birding With Bill Oddie)中展现,随后在 8pm 播出《比尔·奥迪的十大鸟类》(Bill Oddie's Top Ten Birds)。KR

阳光之夜(Sunny Nights)

ITV1, 10.15pm

这部以澳大利亚为背景的趣味喜剧剧集由 Will Forte 和 D'Arcy Carden 饰演吵闹的美国兄妹 Martin 和 Vicki,他们将希望和财富全部寄托在他们新开的喷雾美黑公司上。Forte 和 Carden 之间有着极强的化学反应,而 Martin 被拖入悉尼犯罪地下世界的支线剧情既离奇又有趣。KR

电影

《礼帽》(Top Hat)

(Mark Sandrich 导演,1935 年)

BBC Two, 9.30am

用这部电影开启时尚的一天,这是弗雷德·阿斯泰尔(Fred Astaire)和金格·罗杰斯(Ginger Rogers)作为主创搭档的第三部作品。作为他们最受喜爱的电影,片中采用了欧文·柏林(Irving Berlin)的配乐,包括《礼帽,白领结与燕尾服》(Top Hat, White Tie and Tails)、《这难道不是个Lovely Day(被雨淋)》(Isn't This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain))以及无可挑剔的《脸贴脸》(Cheek to Cheek)(最后一首曲子在伍迪·艾伦 1930 年代背景的电影《开罗的紫色玫瑰》中让米娅·法罗饰演的女主角陷入狂喜)。剧情涉及在欧洲穿梭的演艺圈人士之间的身份误认,配角包括 Eric Blore 和 Edward Everett Horton,但这里最值得提及的大名是编舞 Hermes Pan 和美术指导 Van Nest Polgase。纯粹的愉悦,纯粹的格调。JR

周一

今日推荐

《与迈克尔·辛一起被掩埋》(Buried With Michael Sheen)

BBC Two, 9pm

与 Netflix 的剧集《毒城》(Toxic Town)一样,这部两集纪录片探讨了无辜平民遭受中毒的情况以及他们为正义而战的历程。50 年来,道格拉斯·高恩(Douglas Gowan)一直声称威尔士人正被美国化学公司孟山都(Monsanto)倾倒的“永久性化学物质”PCB 中毒。一些神秘人物试图抹黑高恩(他于 2018, 年去世),但现在演员迈克尔·辛(Michael Sheen)协助接手了他的事业,揭露这种不法行为令人惊恐的程度和后果。KR

揭秘:欢迎来到格拉斯哥(Disclosure: Welcome to Glasgow)

BBC Two, 11.05pm

“欢迎来到战区——这里是格拉斯哥市中心,”该市报纸《先驱报》(the Herald)在 4 月的头条如此写道。迈尔斯·邦纳(Myles Bonnar)在苏格兰最大城市的残酷街道上度过了一周,调查关于某些地区因反社会行为、犯罪和无家可归而成为“禁区”的报道——而反移民情绪加剧了这种不安。CMc

每个人都在撒谎(Everybody Lies)

Channel 4, 12.05am

文森特·埃尔巴兹(Vincent Elbaz)在一部八集法国犯罪剧中饰演脾气古怪的侦探文森特·维纳(Vincent Verner),该剧遵循了可靠的公式。维纳在巴黎被解雇,在一家书店工作,直到年轻的检察官爱丽丝·莫若迪(Alice Mojodi,Mariama Gueye 饰)邀请他加入她由不合群者组成的新团队,调查腐败的权势人物。这正合他的心意。KR

电影

《猎巫将军》(Witchfinder General)

(迈克尔·里夫斯,1968)

Legend Xtra 频道,1.30am

值得关注的是,两部最著名——至少在邪典电影圈被奉为经典——的英国恐怖片(本片与《柳条人》)都围绕着古老而诡谲的英格兰展开。然而,这部内战题材的剧作并非纯粹的惊悚片,它得到了天才年轻导演里夫斯独特的风格化处理,里夫斯在电影上映后不久便去世,年仅 25. 岁。文森特·普莱斯饰演现实生活中的猎巫人马修·霍普金斯,在东安格利亚地区残酷地大肆杀戮。这部电影在很大程度上是对暴力和政治腐败的研究,普莱斯在片中展现出的形象,比他在罗杰·科曼电影中饰演的那些温文尔雅的欧洲怪物更加庄重。里夫斯镜头下的英格兰原野始终染着血腥的红色。JR

Tuesday

Pick of the Day

《名人名厨》(Celebrity MasterChef)

BBC One 频道,9pm

米其林星级厨师乔治奥·洛卡特利加入格蕾丝·登特的《名厨》厨房,作为新评委带来了温暖与智慧。参赛明星包括举重运动员艾米莉·坎贝尔和真人秀明星莎基拉·汗,他们带来了各自的风味。喜剧演员乔·帕斯夸莱在制作他的“弗兰肯斯坦派”时采取了“越多越好”的方法,而主持人杰森·穆罕默德则自信地认为他的基玛肉末(keema)会令人印象深刻。遗憾的是,歌手杰伊·麦金尼斯缺乏这种自信。本节目周三和周五继续播出。KR

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《ADHD 的大谎言?》(The Great ADHD Myth?)

Channel 4, 8pm

这部纪录片的标题本身就带有争议,它探讨了 ADHD(注意缺陷多动障碍)诊断率“激增”的现象。10. 年前,注意缺陷多动障碍还“相对罕见”。现在,估计有 250 万 人患有此病。专家提出这是一种社会建构,并质疑用“化学强击”(chemical cosh)治疗儿童的有效性。CMc

《小鸟》(Little Bird)

Sky Atlantic, 9pm

近 200 年来,加拿大的原住民儿童被强行与家人分离,被关在寄宿学校中,并被交给白人家庭收养。1967, 年,贝齐格·小鸟在萨斯喀彻温省的一个保留地玩耍。1985, 年,埃丝特·罗森布鲁姆在犹太社区参加了一场订婚派对。这部剧作记录了她在这两者之间的心路历程。CMc

电影

《不可触碰》(The Untouchables)

(布莱恩·德·帕尔玛,1987)

BBC One 频道,10.40pm

有两件事掩盖了这部电影的声誉。1. 是向《战舰波将金号》中的奥德萨阶梯片段致敬的精彩枪战。二是罗伯特·德尼罗坚持穿着阿尔·卡彭的内衣来扮演这个黑帮头目(是卡彭偏好的风格的内衣,而非实际的那件衣服)。本片由大卫·马梅编剧,根据执法人员埃利奥特·内斯(凯文·科斯特纳饰演)的回忆录改编,讲述了他与禁酒时代芝加哥帮派统治作斗争的故事。肖恩·康纳利凭借一名资深警察的角色赢得了奥斯卡奖,德帕尔玛的导演功力极其强悍。此外,这部电影展现了导演纯粹的动作模式,他 1996 年的《碟中谍》(BBC iPlayer)也以极具风格的方式开启了汤姆·克鲁斯的系列电影。JR

Wednesday

Pick of the Day

《T 教授》(Professor T)

ITV1 频道,9pm

虽然我们现在并不需要任何带有“温馨”色彩的东西,但欢迎本·米勒饰演的剑桥大学犯罪学家回归,他将自己的强迫症(OCD)像低功率超能力一样运用自如。在第四季开始时,我们在侦探警佐丽莎·唐克斯去世六个月后见到了这位被愧疚折磨的教授,他无法继续开展他的“治疗性”警察工作。但一名失踪网红的谜团将他重新吸引了回来。这为明天《路德维希》(Ludwig)的回归提供了一个恰到好处的温和铺垫。CMc

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《山谷之声》(Voices of the Valleys)

Sky Arts, 8pm

这部温馨剧集的最终部分见证了三支威尔士男声合唱团在参加各自的比赛时,倾注了全部心血与嗓音。最后一刻的紧张情绪和飙升的气温带来了挑战,但他们的情谊和强烈的威尔士精神将带领他们度过难关——此外还有一些创新的道具。KR

爱你至死 (Love You to Death)

Channel 4,晚上9点

2010年,丽莎·海登-约翰逊(Lisa Hayden-Johnson)因虐待儿童和妨碍司法公正而被监禁,这是一个令人震惊的代理孟乔森综合征案例。在这部三集纪录片中,那些帮助结束丽莎对其儿子进行“医疗和心理折磨”的人详细讲述了此案,马修(Matthew)本人也参与其中。丽莎则试图为其行为辩护。KR

电影

猛兽 (The Beast)

(贝尔特兰·博内洛,2023)

Film4,晚上11.40分

贝尔特兰·博内洛(《夜曲》,《僵尸孩子》)目前是法国电影界最具概念性的作者导演,他偏好挑衅,并采用一种俏皮的解构方式来处理叙事。本片灵感来自亨利·詹姆斯的短篇小说《丛林中的猛兽》,并在三个时代中探索其主题及其变体,由蕾雅·赛杜和乔治·麦凯在每个时代中饰演一对情侣。1910年的巴黎,赛杜是一名钢琴家,麦凯似乎能够驱散她的倦怠;2014年,她在洛杉矶被他跟踪;而在2044年,他们准备在一个由人工智能统治的世界中清除自己的情感。随着时间线的交织,电影融合了拼贴、社会评论,甚至带有一丝水下危机。这部电影在一种令人沉醉、幻觉般的博弈方式中展现出理智之美。JR


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周四

今日精选

路德维希 (Ludwig)

BBC One,晚上9点

你现在可能会认为,既然大卫·米切尔(David Mitchell)饰演的谜题设计者约翰成为了警察顾问,生活应该会变得更简单。可惜并非如此。在躲避警察局长齐格勒(Ziegler,拉尔夫·伊内森 饰)和帮助他的嫂子露西(Lucy,安娜·麦克斯韦尔·马丁 饰)寻找他的双胞胎兄弟詹姆斯之间,他的压力水平很高。在第二季令人愉悦的开篇中,约翰前往剧院推断究竟是帕特里夏(Patricia,丽贝卡·弗朗特 饰)还是波西亚(Portia,杜恩·麦基琴 饰)为不幸的谋杀受害者拉下了帷幕。KR

龙穴 (Dragons' Den)

BBC One,晚上8点

随着图克·苏莱曼(Touker Suleyman)离场,美容企业家苏西·马(Susie Ma)和珍娜·米克(Jenna Meek)加入德博拉·米登(Deborah Meaden)、彼得·琼斯(Peter Jones)和史蒂文·巴特利特(Steven Bartlett)的行列,这是女性“巨龙”首次占据主导地位。护发产品吸引了“绿色女王”德博拉的注意,而传统糖果则吸引了彼得,但新成员马则是一个更难攻克的硬骨头。KR

诺瓦克·德约科维奇:冬日之狼 (Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter)

Prime Video

诺瓦克·德约科维奇被广泛认为是男子网球历史上最伟大的球员,但他可能是这项运动中最被误解的明星之一。这部出色的纪录片包含了前对手、专家、家人以及他本人的评论,记录了他非凡的故事,其特点是 inat —— 一个表示顽强反抗的塞尔维亚词汇。KR

电影

塔尔 (Tár)

(托德·菲尔德,2022)

BBC Two,凌晨12.05分

前演员托德·菲尔德(曾出演斯坦利·库布里克的《大开眼界》)在凭借这部挑衅性的剧情片真正走红之前,执导了两部广受好评的长片(《卧室》,《小孩子》)。凯特·布兰切特饰演备受推崇的管弦乐团指挥利亚·塔尔,其表现具有极强的掌控力,而当她被指控存在性行为和职业操守不端时,她的名声和心理状态随之崩溃。《塔尔》在描绘热门话题时立即引发了争议,但它通过复杂的叙事、神秘的执行以及出色的演员阵容(包括本周在国家剧院的《伊莱克特拉 / 人格》中与布兰切特再次合作的妮娜·霍斯)超越了单纯的时事状态。除此之外,片中对马勒作品的运用之多,简直多到让你挥舞指挥棒都数不过来。JR

周五

今日精选

迈尔斯·戴维斯:逍遥音乐节庆典 (Miles Davis: A Celebration at the Proms)

BBC Four,晚上8点

为了纪念这位爵士小号手的诞辰一百周年,一个夜晚的管弦乐致敬演出,由美国爵士小号手安布罗斯·阿金穆西雷(Ambrose Akinmusire)和日本爵士音乐家 / 作曲家波多米穗(Miho Hazama)参与。在皇家阿尔伯特音乐厅主持的是克莱夫·迈里(Clive Myrie),他是一位终身爵士乐迷,将戴维斯的《波吉与贝丝》视为他最喜爱的作品之一。曲目包括那张1959年专辑中的经典曲目,以及《西班牙素描》、《迈尔斯前行》等。简直太精彩了。CMc

Heat(热浪)

5, 晚上9点

丹尼·戴尔(Danny Dyer)在澳洲内陆反思自己的人生选择?不,这不是《我是名人》(I'm a Celeb)……而是 5 的 2023 年澳洲惊悚片。片中,戴尔饰演一名商人,他每年一次探访老友的家庭旅行变成了一场地狱般的假期。如果那些迹象明显的紧张气氛和潜藏的激情没让他们全部崩溃,那么迫在眉睫的丛林大火可能会。KR

Station Eleven(第十一站)

天空大西洋频道,晚上9点及 10.05点

这部由希梅什·帕特尔(Himesh Patel)和麦肯齐·戴维斯(Mackenzie Davis)主演的HBO剧集将播出双集大结局,该剧四年前曾在美国首播。这是一部精彩的末世史诗,具有典型的莎士比亚风格,重点讲述了一个在后疫情地狱景象中穿行的剧团。剧情在近现代与 2040 年之间切换,令人心碎不已。CMc

电影

Chicken Run(逃离鸡笼)

(彼得·洛德,尼克·帕克, 2000 年)

BBC Three, 7. 40pm

虽然不像《超级无敌 Wallace 和 Gromit》系列那样被全球热爱——也不那么精巧——但这仍然是阿德曼(Aardman)动画长片中最受欢迎的作品之一,对20世纪40年代的战俘剧进行了温和的戏仿。故事设定在一个由暴政的特威迪夫人(米兰达·理查森配音)经营的约克郡农场,勇敢的母鸡金杰(朱莉娅·萨瓦拉)一直在制定逃跑计划。随着一只美国公鸡、自称飞行王牌的洛基(梅尔·吉布森)的到来,这些计划开始变得可行。影片沉浸在阿德曼对所有温馨英国元素的温柔揉捏之中。它还愉快地嘲讽了“罕见如母鸡牙齿”(rare as hen's teeth)这个短语,因为工作室标志性的粘土模型让每一只喙都闪闪发光。JR

周六

今日推荐

Motown之夜

BBC Two,晚上8点起

在《马文·盖伊:普罗姆斯致敬音乐会》(Marvin Gaye: A Tribute at the Proms)的基础上扩展,由BBC音乐厅管弦乐团和客座歌手带来一个充满汽车城(Motor City)魔力的夜晚。《马文·盖伊最伟大金曲—— 1976 年阿姆斯特丹现场》( 9. 30pm)之后是《戴安娜·罗斯在BBC》(晚上10.25点),接着是并非那么娇小的史蒂夫(Stevie)在 1995 年举办的录音室音乐会《奇迹之夜》( 11. 25pm)。对Motown内部词曲作者拉蒙特·多齐尔(Lamont Dozier)的致敬节目《在BBC》( 12. 30am)以及《Motown在BBC》( 1. 30am)为这场星光熠熠的庆典画上句号。CMc

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The Voice UK(英国之声)

ITV1,晚上7点

威尔士情歌王子汤姆·琼斯(Tom Jones)在演艺圈故事方面遇到了对手,因为天命真女(Destiny's Child)成员凯莉·罗兰(Kelly Rowland)加入了他的行列,与will.i.am以及McFly的汤姆·弗莱彻(Tom Fletcher)和丹尼·琼斯(Danny Jones)一起担任这档歌唱才艺竞赛第14季的导师。凯莉曾担任英国和美国《X Factor》的评委,并作为独唱艺人在全球售出4000万张唱片,她绝对经验丰富。KR

Match of the Day(今日之赛)

BBC One,晚上10.20点

足球赛季开球时刻,马克·查普曼(Mark Chapman)将与艾伦·希雷尔(Alan Shearer)以及认为“那太烂了”的韦恩·鲁尼(Wayne Rooney)一同主持。节目将播出周五冠军球队阿森纳对阵考文特里的比赛集锦,以及赫尔对阵曼联、埃弗顿对阵水晶宫、伊普斯维奇镇对阵桑德兰、诺丁汉森林对阵利兹以及布伦特福德对阵托特纳姆的比赛。CMc

电影

The Third Man(第三个人)

(卡罗尔·里德, 1949 年)

BBC Two,上午10.15点

一部迷人的黑暗梦幻电影,每次观看都会揭示出更多的深度。剧本由格雷厄姆·格林(Graham Greene)编写——他先将其写成中篇小说来测试素材——由约瑟夫·科顿(Joseph Cotten)饰演一名误入战后维也纳深层阴谋的通俗小说作家。电影拥有大量堪称标志性的元素,从安东·卡拉斯(Anton Karas)的颤音主题曲到高潮部分的地下追逐戏,而由罗伯特·克拉斯克(Robert Krasker)拍摄的欧洲明暗对比法则从未如此具有诱惑力且令人沉浸。但人们很难不认为,实际上这一切都围绕着奥逊·威尔斯(Orson Welles)饰演的哈里·莱恩(Harry Lane)在第一个特写镜头中那个耐人寻味的坏笑。威尔斯显然也这么认为,谁会说他错了呢?JR

电视流媒体

本周精选

自 1940 年的《英加吉之子》(Son of Ingagi)以来,黑人电影制作人一直将超自然生物作为白人统治、权力与剥削的隐喻。近期——随着电影《逃出绝命镇》(Get Out)、《罪人》(Sinners)以及最终令人失望的剧集《洛夫克拉夫特之国》(Lovecraft Country)的出现——这种恐怖感变得日益具体。英国才刚刚开始面对我们双手沾染的鲜血,而由编剧卡拉·克罗姆(Karla Crome)创作的卓越剧集《附身》(Possession),正是我们即将讲述的故事的早期预兆。最后一集将于周四在天空大西洋频道(Sky Atlantic)播出,全季五集可在 Sky / Now 上流媒体观看。古古·姆巴塔-罗(Gugu Mbatha-Raw)在剧中饰演一名年轻的双种族律师,被派往牙买加处理一起敏感的继承权剥夺问题(就像乔纳森·哈克被派往特兰西瓦尼亚帮助当地一位伯爵处理房产问题一样)。一名糖厂主将他唯一的孩子从遗嘱中剔除,将所有财产留给了神秘的库乔·伊斯特(Cudjoe East)。乔尼·李·米勒(Jonny Lee Miller)饰演的被排斥者奥利弗(Oliver)表现得极其优雅且紧张,并随她一同前往调查。两条故事线交织在一起——第一条设定在 300 年前,当时奥利弗的祖先残酷地镇压了一场种植园起义;第二条设定在现在,讲述了一次与谢尔顿·谢泼德(Sheldon Shepherd)饰演的库乔之间诡异的邂逅,后者声称自己快 300 岁了。灵魂附身、被偷走的孩子以及对正义的呐喊充斥在结局中,但解决这一切并不像赔偿那样简单。

回到 2022, 年,英国广播公司(BBC)自然历史部门的创意总监迈克·冈顿(Mike Gunton)曾与《 Jungle Book》导演乔·法夫罗(Jon Favreau)合作拍摄剧集《史前星球》(Prehistoric Planet)。现在他们再次联手打造了《狮子》(Lion,Disney+,周四播出),该剧追踪了一群狮子,特别是名为 Kio 的幼狮,它在争夺霸权的战斗中面临着失去、流放和激烈的竞争对手。这部现实版的《狮子王》是迪士尼最不甜腻的作品,由汉斯·季默(Hans Zimmer)提供配乐。

更残酷且血腥的是《迪士尼世界构建者》(Worldbuilders,Disney+,周四播出),该剧追踪主题公园设计师(即“幻想工程师”),记录他们尝试将迪士尼电影改编成游乐设施的过程。想知道他们是如何在上海创建动物之都(Zootopia Land)或在巴黎创建冰雪奇缘世界(World of Frozen)的吗?这部剧就是为你准备的。如果你更想知道迪士尼对于新纳粹在其 LGBTQ+ 友好日期间在公园外游行,或者准军事组织奇卡诺(Chicano)团体在那里游行抗议 ICE 驱逐出境的立场,那么这部剧可能不太适合你。SA

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古古

姆巴塔-罗:

在《附身》中

前往

牙买加。

Des Riffle


36 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

今日电视节目

Sunny Nights, ITV1, 晚上 10.15 D'Arcy Carden 尝试在澳洲经营她的美黑业务

BBC One / BBC Two / ITV1 / Channel 4 / 5 / BBC Four

6.0 Breakfast (T) 7.25 欧洲田径锦标赛:伯明翰 2026 (T) 10.35 TEU 《鳄鱼莱尔》(Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile) Grant Gordon, Will Speck, 2022 (T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 1.0 News (T) 1.10 Weather (T) 1.15 Songs of Praise (T) 1.50 Money for Nothing (T) 2.35 Escape to the Country (T) 3.05 The Making Game (T) 3.45 Homes Under the Hammer (T) 5.05 News (T) 5.20 Regional News (T) 5.30 Countryfile (T) 6.30 Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) / 6.25 Countryfile (T) (R) 7.25 Breakfast (T) 9.0 Prayer and Reflection (T) (R) 9.30TEU Ho Hall (Mark Sandrich, 1935) (T) 音乐剧,主演 Fred Astaire 和 Ginger Rogers 11.05 The Best Dishes Ever (T) (R) 11.35 The Great British Sowing Bee (T) (R) 12.35 TEU Superman Nr. The Quest for Peace (Sidney J Farre, 1987) (T) 2.0 板球:The Hundred (T) 女子决赛(开始时间 2.15pm) 6.0 板球:The Hundred (T) 男子决赛(开始时间 6.0pm)。 / 6.0 James Martin's American Adventure (T) (R) 7.0 James Martin's Saturday Morning (T) (R) 9.25 News (T) 9.30 Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh (T) (R) 11.30 Fern Britton: Inside the Ve's (T) 12.30 Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy (T) (R) 10.0 News (T) 1.05 Force of Nature (T) (R) 2.10 TEU Scissoway (1983) (T) 4.45 The Chase Celebrity Special (T) (R) 5.45 The Chase Around the World (T) (R) 6.40 News (T) 7.0 Force of Nature (T) / 6.20 Cheers (T) (R) 7.40 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 8.30 The Simpsons (T) (R) 10.0 Sunday Brunch (T) 1.0 The Dog House (T) (R) 2.0 Four in a Bed (T) (R) 4.35 Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids (T) (R) 5.35 Worst House on the Street (T) (R) Scarlet 和 Stuart 面临迄今为止最大的挑战之一 6.30 News (T) 7.0 Gogglebox (T) 第 27 季精彩片段合集,Gogglebox 观察员们将点评更多最顶尖的电视节目。 / 6.0 Mikshake 9.05 Entertainment News on 5 (T) 9.15TEU 《海绵宝宝》电影 (Stephen Hillenburg, 2004) (T) 儿童动画喜剧 11.0 Happy Campers: The Caravan Park (T) (R) 1.0 Cruising with Susan Calman (T) (R) 3.0 Cros Watch Steve Backshall (T) (R) 4.0 Cros Watch Steve Backshall (T) (R) 5.0 Sicily Michael Portillo (T) (R) 6.25 News (T) 6.30 Birds of a Heather: 30 Years of Laughs (T) (R) / 7.0The Best of Bill Oddie Goes Wild (T) Bill Oddie 在汉普斯特德荒野回顾他的旅程。 7.30Birding Bill Oddie (T) Bill 重新访问他童年观鸟的旧地,探索这些地方发生了怎样的变化。 / 7.30 欧洲田径锦标赛:伯明翰 2026 (T) Gabby Logan 在亚历山大体育场主持第七天也是最后一天晚间赛事的报道。由 Jessica Ennis-Hill 和 Greg Rutherford 提供分析。 / 9.30 Q1 (T) (R) Ed Byrne, Cally Beaton 和 Jack Dee 与常驻嘉宾 Alan Davies 参加这场喜剧小组问答赛,由 Sandi Tokvug 围绕戏剧相关主题提问,最有趣的答案将获得积分。 / 8.0 Van Der Valk (T) 犯罪剧,Marc Warren 主演。一名研究癌症的科学家被发现疑似被暗杀,Piet 调查此死因并发现其与一名制药亿万富翁有关。本系列最后一集。 / 8.0 Richard E Grant's Very Modern Odyssey (T) Richard 在突尼斯寻找神话中具有催眠作用的莲花果实。 9.0

《钢琴》(The Piano) (T) 由克劳迪娅·温克尔曼 (Claudia Winkleman) 主持,决赛入围者准备在伯明翰交响乐厅举行音乐会。 / 8.0 坚信(非常)糟糕的狗狗 (T) (R) 在本集中,格雷姆·霍尔 (Graeme Hall) 遇到了两只让驾驶者无法集中注意力的幼犬。 9.0 四季酒店内幕:帕克巷 (T) 纪录片 工程总监加里 (Gary) 开始对总统套房进行翻新。 / 8.0 比尔·奥迪的十大鸟类 (T) 一本轻松的指南,主持人将盘点英国最受喜爱的 10 种鸟类和最令人讨厌的 10 种鸟类。 9.0 逍遥音乐节首演 (T) 对创造了逍遥音乐节历史时刻的庆祝,包括里程碑式的首演和卓越的亮相。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 10.25 地区新闻 (T) 天气 10.30 TEU 使命:不可能 2 (约翰·布利斯 [John Bliss], 2000) (T) 12.25 TEU 蜘蛛侠:远离之战 (乔恩·沃茨 [Jon Watts], 2019) (T) 2.25 天气 2.30 新闻 / 10.0 TEU 法国联络线 (威廉·弗里德金 [William Friedkin], 1971) (T) 11.40 TEU 邦尼和克莱德 (亚瑟·潘恩 [Arthur Penn], 1967) (T) 1.30 标志区域:安·德罗伊德 (T) (R) 喜剧系列剧。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 天气 10.15 阳光之夜 (T) 新剧集,澳大利亚喜剧。 11.15 在阿富汗的 25 年 (T) 1.05 电视购物 3.0 伊朗内幕:战争与革命 (T) (R) 4.10 与 ITV 一起放松 (T) / 10.0 名人 Gogglebox (T) (R) 11.05 TEU 亲爱的爱丽丝 (玛丽·奈伊 [Mary Nighy], 2022) (T) 惊悚片。 12.45 拉姆齐的酒店地狱 (T) (R) 1.35 吉普赛妻子的秘密生活 (T) (R) 2.25 夫妻来我家用餐 (R) / 10.0 当房车假期糟糕透顶时 (T) (R) 11.30 英国最严重的天气灾难 (T) (R) 1.0 邮轮电视 (T) (R) 2.0 GPS:闭门之后 (T) (R) 纪录片系列。 / 10.0 黑表卫队 (T) 11.35 黑表卫队:一名士兵的故事 (T) 12.35 简·奥斯汀:未见的肖像? (T) 1.35 逍遥音乐节首演 (T) 2.35 比尔·奥迪走进荒野 (T)

周一 17

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Walter Presents: 《每个人都在撒谎》(Everybody Lies), 第四频道, 凌晨 12.05 Vincent Elbaz 的 laumans 拒绝对腐败视而不见

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 第四频道 5 BBC Four
6.0 早间节目 (T) 9.30 乡村生活宝藏 (T) (R) 10.30 花园救援 (T) (R) 11.15 房屋拍卖 (T) (R) 12.15 淘宝猎人 (T) 1.0 新闻 (T) 天气 1.35 地区新闻 (T) 天气 1.45 新闻 (T) 天气 2.0 免费之财 (T) 2.45 逃往乡村 (T) 3.35 修理铺 (T) (R) 4.30 答案赛跑 (T) 5.15 无用之题 (T) (R) 问答 6.0 新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 7.0 综合节目 (T) 7.30 东区东街 (T) 6.45 榉树林花园 (T) (R) 7.15 答案赛跑 (T) (R) 8.0 手语区:修理铺 (T) (R) 9.0 新闻 (T) 1.0 Richard Osman 的游戏屋 (T) (R) 1.30 终点线 (T) (R) 2.15 你了解你的位置吗? (T) (R) 2.45 动物公园之夏 (T) (R) 3.30 塞伦盖蒂 II (T) (R) 4.30 古董路演 (T) (R) 5.15 蛙跳 (T) (R) 6.0 Richard Osman 的游戏屋 (T) (R) 6.30 Bear Grylls:荒野清算 (T) (R) 7.0 全球之眼 (T) 7.30 宗师 (T) 6.0 英国早安 (T) 10.0 今晨 (T) 1.30 新闻 (T) 天气 1.55 当地新闻 (T) 天气 2.0 Dickinson 的真实交易 (T) (R) 3.0 黄昏或无交易 (T) (R) 4.0 倾点 (T) (R) 5.0 追击 (T) (R) 6.0 当地新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 新闻 (T) 天气 7.30 Fletchers 家族农场 (T) (R) Kelvin 致力于扩大牛群规模,Mamie 为产羔季做准备。Milo、Kelvin 及其父亲开始修理一台旧古董拖拉机。本系列最后一集。 6.30 皇后之王 (T) (R) 7.45 每个人都爱雷蒙 (T) (R) 9.10 弗雷泽 (T) (R) 喜剧系列。 11.10 地狱厨房美国版 (T) (R) 12.05 新闻 (T) 12.10 寻找、修理、出售 (T) (R) 1.10 豪宅赠送 (T) (R) 2.10 倒计时 (T) 3.0 阳光之所 (T) (R) 4.0 顶级 B&B 挑战 (T) (R) 5.0 DV 城堡 (T) (R) 6.0 美国拾荒者 (T) (R) 一家玩具博物馆准备出售其珍藏。 7.0 新闻 (T) 头条。 6.0 Mikshake 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 新闻 (T) 12.50 Matt Allwright (T) 2.20 TEU 《致命之情》(An Affair to Die For, Tamar Halpern, 2023) (T) 由 Ryan Francis 主演的惊悚片。 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 一名空中警察在飞行途中被谋杀。 4.55 热爱自然 (T) (R) 5.0 新闻 (T) 6.0 塞浦路斯:地中海之珠 (T) (R) 地中海岛屿简介。 6.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 交通警察 (T) (R) 警员们正在搜寻一辆涉嫌克隆的车辆。 7.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 铁路建筑学 (T) 在伦敦的国王十字车站。 7.40 飞行园丁 (T) Chris Beardshaw 访问 Beth Chatto 花园。 7.55 西班牙艺术 (T) 由 Andrew Graham-Dixon 主持。
--- --- --- --- --- ---
8.0 全景:儿童抚养费:压力下的父母 (T) 儿童抚养费制度是否让父母陷入困境? 8.30 诈骗拦截者 (T) (R) 抓捕骗子。 9.0 绝世天堂 (T) (R) 一名说唱艺术家在音乐会试音时被枪杀。 8.0 唯有连接 (T) Accrual World Like on the Kintwits. 8.30 大学挑战赛 (T) 问答节目 Beth Gakes 对阵 City St George's。 9.0 与 Michael Skeen 一起埋葬 (T) 这位演员调查威尔士南部的有毒污染指控。 8.0 艾默代尔 (T) Ruby 策划盗窃 Jimmy 的货物。 8.30 公约街 (T) George 惩罚 Christina。 9.0 寻找失散家人:无迹可寻的出生 - 发生了什么

Next (T) 关注 Susanne Barrow 和 Tom Yeo 的故事。 / 8.0 Martin & Roman's Irish Road Trip (T) Martin 和 Roman Kemp 探索米斯郡和都柏林。 9.0 Celebrity Hunted (T) 两名在逃名人光顾利兹的一家表演酒吧。一条社交媒体帖子为搜捕者提供了突袭一家养老院的线索。 / 8.0 Street Cops: Catching the Yoke (T) 纪录片系列。警员在发现一支经过改装的棒球棍后追捕一名青少年。 9.0 Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law (T) 调查人员搜寻一名被认为逃票金额超过 2,300 英镑 的女性。 / 8.0 Street Cops: Catching the Yoke (T) 纪录片系列。警员在发现一支经过改装的棒球棍后追捕一名青少年。 9.0 Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law (T) 调查人员搜寻一名被认为逃票金额超过 2,300 英镑 的女性。 / 9.0 Mastermind (T) Magnus Magnusson 主持 1977 年系列问答赛的第二轮预赛。 9.30 Call My Bluff (T) 游戏节目。Frank Muir, André Previn 和 Tina Brown 与 Patrick Campbell, Tom Conti 和 Barbara Kellerman 竞争。 / 10.0 News (T) 10.30 Regional News (T) 天气预报 10.40 Have I Got for You (R) 11.10 TEU Mission: Impossible 8 (J) Abrams, 2006) (T) 1.05 Weather for the Week Ahead (T) 1.10 (T) / 10.0 Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (T) (R) 10.30 Newsnight (T) 天气预报 11.05 Disclosure: Welcome to Glasgow (T) 纪录片。 12.05 A House Through Time (T) (R) 主持人 David Olusoga。 / 10.0 ** (T) 天气预报 10.45 Cold Case Forensics: In the Blood (T) (R) 系列最后一集。 11.40 The Assembly (T) (R) 12.05 Shop on TV 3.0 The Staircase (T) (R) 4.05 Unwind with ITV (T) / 10.0 Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives (T) 真人秀系列。 11.05 Surgery Secrets of the Super Rich (T) (R) 12.05 Walter Presents: Everybody Lies (T) 1.0 Ramsay's Hotel Hell (R) / 10.0 Police Interceptors: Taking Down the Shoplifting Gangs (T) (R) 纪录片。 11.05 Traffic Cops (T) (R) 12.05 Car Pound Cops (T) (R) 1.0 Cruise TV (T) (R) 2.0 GPS: Behind Closed Doors (R) / 10.0 Art on the BBC: Michelangelo - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (T) 11.0 Arena: Art & Design: The Journey (T) 11.25 Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes (T)


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

37

周二 18

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《小鸟》(Little Bird) 天空大西洋频道(Sky Atlantic),晚上 9 点 达拉·孔托伊斯(Darla Contois)主演的 这部加拿大剧集毫不避讳地展现现实

BBC One / BBC Two / ITVI / Channel 4 / 5 / BBC Four

6.0 早安节目 (T) 9.30 乡村宝藏 (T) (R) 10.30 花园救援 (T) (R) 11.15 锤下房产 (T) 12.15 淘宝猎人 (T) 13.0 新闻 (T) 天气 1.35 地区新闻 (T) 天气 1.45 新闻 (T) 天气 2.0 免费之财 (T) 2.45 逃往乡村 (T) 3.30 修理铺 (T) (R) 4.30 答案竞速 (T) 5.15 无用之题 (T) (R) 6.0 新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 7.0 综合节目 (T) 7.30 东区东街 (T) / 6.30 逃往乡村 (T) (R) 7.15 免费之财 (T) (R) 8.0 手语区 (T) (R) 9.0 新闻 (T) 1.0 理查德·奥斯曼的游戏屋 (T) (R) 1.30 终点线 (T) (R) 2.15 你了解你的位置吗? (T) (R) 2.45 动物园之夏 (T) (R) 3.30 塞伦盖蒂 (T) (R) 4.30 复古古董路演 (T) (R) 5.15 把它卖了 (T) (R) 6.0 理查德·奥斯曼的游戏屋 (T) (R) 6.30 贝尔·格里尔斯:荒野清算 (T) (R) 7.0 尼格尔美食 (T) (R) 7.30 与潮竞速 (T) / 6.0 英国早安 (T) 10.0 此时此刻 (T) 1.30 新闻 (T) 天气 1.55 当地新闻 (T) 天气 2.0 迪金森的真实交易 (T) (R) 3.0 成交或不成交 (T) (R) 4.0 倾斜点 (T) (R) 本·谢泼德主持这场以街机为主题的问答赛。 5.0 追击 (T) (R) 由布拉德利·沃尔什主持的问答赛。 6.0 当地新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 新闻 (T) 天气 7.30 朗廷酒店内幕:英国首家豪华酒店 (T) 接待主管罗德里戈迎接他的一位舞蹈偶像。 / 6.30 皇后之王 (T) (R) 7.45 大家都爱雷蒙 (T) (R) 9.10 弗雷泽 (T) (R) 11.10 厨房噩梦美国版 (T) (R) 12.05 新闻 (T) 12.10 寻找、修理、出售 (T) (R) 1.10 豪宅赠送 (T) (R) 2.10 倒计时 (T) 3.0 阳光之所 (T) (R) 4.0 顶级 B&B 挑战赛 (T) (R) 尼古拉和罗伊迎接他们的第一批客人。 5.0 城堡 DIY (T) (R) 6.0 美国拾荒者 (T) (R) 一位弗吉尼亚蓝草音乐传奇人物拥有几件珍贵的纪念品。 7.0 新闻 (T) / 6.0 Milkshake! 9.15 杰里米·Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 新闻 (T) 12.50 马特·奥尔赖特 (T) 2.20 DNB 危险邻居 (John Murkowski, 2023) (T) 克里斯蒂·默多克出演的惊悚片。 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 热爱自然 (T) (R) 5.0 新闻 (T) 6.0 直布罗陀:地中海之珠 (T) (R) 西班牙南部半岛的简介。 6.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 警用拦截车 (T) (R) 两个开面包车的男人在四个郡之间展开一场危险的赛车。 7.55 新闻 (T) / 7.0 铁路建设的建筑 (T) (T) 关于约克郡山谷单位的内容。 7.45 飞行园丁 (T) 克里斯·比尔德肖探索伦纳德郡花园和谢菲尔德公园花园。 / 8.0 英国缝纫大赛 (T) 在儿童周,缝纫者们制作芭蕾舞裙、毛绒玩具和超级英雄服装。 / 8.0 海上救生 (T) 新系列。接到一个关于一名渔民落水的 999 紧急电话。 / 8.0 艾默代尔 (T) 乔给大家准备了一个惊喜。 / 8.0 ADHD 的伟大神话 (T) 马克斯·彭伯顿挑战目前关于 ADHD 的观点。 / 8.0 高速公路警察:抓捕英国超速者 (T) 一辆未投保的梅赛德斯面包车在 M6 高速公路上拒绝停车。 / 8.0 贵族出身 (T) 奥德丽和德维尔发生冲突。 / 9.0 名人主厨 (T) 新系列,乔·帕斯夸莱、杰森·穆罕默德、艾米莉·坎贝尔、莎基拉·汗和杰伊·麦金尼斯同场竞技。 / 9.0 24 / 7 急救 (T) 新系列。观察急诊部门 [...OMITTED...]

在布里斯托尔的南米德医院(Southmead Hospital),揭示该医院每天面临的压力。 / 9.0 《街道冠冕》(Coronation Street)(T) Kit 让 Sarah 独自应对 Kacey 的威胁。 / 9.0 《名人猎杀》(Celebrity Hunted)(T) 猎手们将两名名人逃亡者追踪到利兹的一家酒吧。广播界的传奇人物 Gloria Hunniford 为两名需要帮助的逃亡者提供了避风港。 / 9.0 《罗布·林德与露丝·古德曼的乔治时代》(The Georgians with Rob Rinder & Ruth Goodman)(T) Rob 和 Ruth 探讨 1820 年乔治四世的加冕礼——这是英国历史上最奢华的加冕礼之一。 / 8.30 《维持体面》(Keeping Up Appearances)(T) Hyacinth 决定买一座乡村度假屋——但她的计划自然而然地出了差错。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 10.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 10.40 DNB 《不可触碰》(The Untouchables) (布莱恩·德·帕尔马, 1987) (T) 黑帮惊悚片。 / 10.0 《阿波罗现场》(Live at the Apollo)(T) (R) 10.30 《新闻之夜》(Newsnight)(T) 天气 11.05 《吸血鬼莱斯特:吸血鬼访谈》(The Vampire Lestat: Interview with the Vampire)(T) 恐怖片双片会。 / 10.0

新闻 (T) 天气 10.30 当地新闻 (T) 天气 10.45 DNB 《章鱼姑娘》(Octopussy) (约翰·格伦, 1983) (T) 1.10 Shop 3.0 《峰会》(The Summit)(T) (R) 3.50 《解体》(Unwind)(T) 5.05 《失散多年的家人》(Long Lost Family)(T) (R) / 10.0 《谷歌盒子》(Gogglebox)(T) (R) 11.05 《秘密生活...》(Secret Lives...)(T) (R) 12.05 《摩纳哥豪宅》(Monaco's Superhomes)(T) (R) 1.05 《酒店地狱》(Hotel Hell)(T) (R) 1.55 《钢琴》(The Piano)(T) (R) 2.45 DNB 《猎户座》(Orion)(2023) (T) 4.20 《夫妻共进晚餐》(Couples Come Dine)(T) (R) / 10.30 《詹姆斯·布尔格:审判》(James Bulger: The Trial)(R) 12.05 《连环杀手之妻》(Serial Killer Wives)(T) (R) 1.0 《邮轮电视》(Cruise TV)(T) (R) 2.0 《全科医生:闭门之后》(GPs: Behind Closed Doors)(T) (R) 2.50 《城堡》(Castle)(T) (R) 3.40 《老友记》(Friends)(T) (R) 4.30 《高地兽医》(The Highland Vet)(T) (R) / 9.0 《镜头前:BBC的摄影师》(On Camera: Photographers at the BBC)(T) 对几位现代伟大摄影师的深刻洞察。 / 12.35 《击中名单》(The Hit List)(T) (R) 1.20 天气 (T) 1.25 新闻 (T) / 12.50 《手语区:离奇》(Sign Zone: Uncanny)(T) (R) 1.50 《手语区》(Sign Zone)(T) (R) / 1.50 《手语区》(Sign Zone)(T) (R)**

10.0 《聚焦英国:摄影史》(Britain in Focus: A Photographic History)(T) 11.0 《植物的秘密天才》(Secret Genius of Plants)(T) 11.55 《土壤科学》(The Science of Soil)(T) 12.50 《聚焦英国》(Britain in Focus)(T) 1.50 《飞行园丁》(The Flying Gardener)(T) 2.05 《BBC的摄影师》(Photographers at the BBC) |

周三 19

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《爱你至死》(Love You to Death), Channel 4, 晚上 9 点 讲述丽莎·海登-约翰逊 (Lisa Hayden-Johnson) 令人震惊的欺骗行为

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 早晨节目 (T) 9.30 乡村宝藏 (T) (R) 10.30 花园救援 (T) (R) 11.15 房屋拍卖 (T) 12.15 淘宝猎人 (T) 13.0 新闻 (T) 天气 1.35 地区新闻 (T) 天气 1.45 新闻 (T) 天气 2.0 免费之财 (T) 2.45 逃往乡村 (T) (R) 3.30 修理铺 (T) (R) 4.30 答案赛跑 (T) 5.15 无用之题 (T) (R) 6.0 新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 7.0 综合节目 (T) 7.30 东区东街 (T) 6.15 房屋拍卖 (T) (R) 7.15 免费之财 (T) (R) 8.0 手语区 (T) (R) 9.0 新闻 (T) 1.0 理查德·奥斯曼的游戏屋 (T) (R) 1.30 终点线 (T) (R) 2.15 你了解你的位置吗? (T) (R) 2.45 动物公园之夏 (T) (R) 3.30 塞伦盖蒂 (T) (R) 4.30 复古古董路演 (T) (R) 5.15 把它卖了 (T) (R) 6.0 理查德·奥斯曼的游戏屋 (T) (R) 6.30 贝尔·格里尔斯:荒野清算 (T) (R) 7.0 测试赛今日动态 (T) 6.0 英国早安 (T) 10.0 今晨 (T) 1.0 新闻 (T) 天气 1.20 当地新闻 (T) 天气 1.30 ITV 赛马:来自约克的爱 (T) 埃博会议第一天。 4.30 巅峰之点:最佳像素 (T) (R) 5.0 追击 (T) (R) Juke, Abby, Mahesh 和 Paul 参加。 6.0 当地新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 新闻 (T) 天气 7.30 朗廷酒店内幕:英国第一家豪华酒店 (T) 团队庆祝朗廷酒店 160 周年纪念。本系列最后一集。 6.30 皇后之王 (T) (R) 7.45 大家都爱雷蒙 (T) (R) 9.10 弗雷泽 (T) (R) 11.10 厨房噩梦美国版 (T) (R) 12.05 新闻 (T) 12.10 寻找、修复、出售 (T) (R) 1.10 豪宅赠送 (T) (R) 2.10 倒计时 (T) 3.0 阳光下的地方 (T) (R) 4.0 顶级 B&B 挑战赛 (T) (R) 5.0 城堡 DIY (T) (R) Becky 和 Mark 匆忙准备开放日。 6.0 美国捡物者 (T) (R) Mike Wolfe 和 Frank Fritz 在俄亥俄州。 7.0 新闻 (T) 6.0 牛奶昔! 9.15 杰里米·Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 新闻 (T) 12.50 Matt Alwright (T) 2.20 DNB 阁楼里的尸体 (Damian Romay, 2023) (T) 由 Abigail Hawk 主演的惊悚片。 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 热爱自然 (T) (R) 5.0 新闻 (T) 6.0 卡普里:地中海之珠 (T) (R) 地中海最小的有居民岛屿之一。 6.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 扣车警察 (T) (R) 追踪因各种违规而被扣押的车辆。本系列最后一集。 7.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 海边村庄 (T) 考古学家 Ben Robinson 访问北爱尔兰的 Cushendall。 7.30 运河船日记 (T) Robbie Cumming 在约克郡对他狭长的船只进行临时维修。
8.0 真伪之间?后续进展 (T) 关于两本速写本是否为年轻时的图卢兹-劳特累克作品的最新进展。 8.0 为英国挖掘 (T) (R) Alice Roberts 探索英国西部的考古宝藏。 8.0 艾默代尔 (T) Kev 做出令人震惊的坦白。
8.0 非凡扩建 (T) 一对 Coyolion 夫妇建造了一个谷仓扩建部分。 8.0 伤员 24/7:每秒国家 (T) 冬季压力影响了 Barnsley 急诊室,导致患者增加。 8.0 西蒙·塞巴格·蒙蒂菲奥里回忆录——罗马:永恒之城的历史
9.0 名人主厨 (T) 参赛者为他们的嘉宾、主持人 Paddy McGuinness 烹饪派。 9.0 谋杀审判:遛狗者之死 (T) 两名前

猎场看守大卫·坎贝尔出庭作证,他被指控谋杀其同事。 / 9.0 谋杀审判:遛狗者之死 (T) 第二部分,前猎场看守大卫·坎贝尔出庭作证,他被指控谋杀其同事。 / 9.0 爱你至死 (T) 新剧集。讲述一名母亲伪造其儿子患病,并使其接受不必要医疗程序的故事。明日继续。 / 9.0 999:危急状态 (T) 一名男子担心在一次道路交通事故后可能再也无法行走。本系列最后一集。 / 8.15 罗马:永恒之城的历史 (T) 宗教在城市权力中的作用。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 10.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 10.40 MOTO:欧冠联赛 (T) 附加赛行动。 / 10.0 伴侣治疗 (T) 10.30 新闻之夜 (T) 天气 11.05 伴侣治疗 (T) 12.05 与迈克尔·辛共同埋葬 (T) (R) 1.05 标志区域:古董:一个

起源故事 (T) 1.55 进化 (T) (R) / 10.0 新闻 (T) 当地新闻 10.45 寻找失散亲人 (T) (R) 11.40 英国房车赛 (T) 1.05 商店 3.0 爱与死 (R) 3.50 朗廷酒店内部 (T) (R) 4.10 放松 (T) 5.30 汤姆·克里奇烹饪意大利美食 / 10.0 荒野谋杀公路 (T) 新剧集。 / 10.0 急诊:事故现场紧急救援 (T) (R) 11.05 救护车:红色代码 (R) 12.05 急诊之夜 (T) (R) 1.0 邮轮电视 (T) (R) 2.0 全科医生:闭门之后 (T) (R) 2.50 城堡 (T) (R) / 9.15 玛丽·比尔德的终极罗马:无垠帝国 (T) 帝国中的身份与公民权。 / 11.30 DNB 猴子人 (Dev Page, 2024) (T) 首播。 / 11.25 天气 (T) 1.30 新闻 (T) / 10.15 L 克劳狄斯 (T) 12.0 澳大利亚战争 (T) 12.55 运河船日记 (T)

1.25 罗马:历史 (T) 2.25 海边村庄 (T) 2.55 玛丽·比尔德的罗马:无垠帝国 (T) |


38

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

周四 20

诺瓦克·德约科维奇: 冬日之狼, Prime Video 这位塞尔维亚 网球冠军的生平

BBC One / BBC Two / ITV1 / Channel 4 / 5 / BBC Four :--- 6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.30 Countryville Treasures (T) (R) 10.30 Garden Rescue (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.35 Regional News (T) Weather 1.45 (T) 2.0 Money for Nothing (T) 2.45 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 3.30 The Repair Shop (T) (R) 4.30 The Answer Run (T) 5.15 Pointless (T) (R) 6.0 (T) 6.30 Regional (T) 7.0 The One Show (T) 7.30 EastEnders (T) / 6.30 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 7.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone: Gardeners' World (T) (R) 9.0 (T) 1.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 1.30 The Finish Line (T) (R) 2.15 Do You Know Your Place? (T) (R) 2.45 AnimalPark Summer (T) (R) 3.30 Serengeti II (T) (R) 4.30 Vintage Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 5.10 Flag It! (T) (R) 6.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 6.30 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 7.0 Today at the Test (T) / 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 10.0 This Morning (T) 1.0 (T) 1.20 Local (T) 1.30 ITV Racing: Live from York (T) Ebor Meeting 第二天,4.30 Tipping Point: Best Ever Finals (T) (R) 该节目一些最戏剧性终局的合集。5.0 The Chase (T) (R) Jane, Winston, Daniel 和 Sammie 参加。6.0 Local (T) 6.30 (T) 7.30 Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy (T) 西西里的柑橘遗产。本系列最后一集。 / 6.30 The King of Queens (T) (R) 7.45 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier (T) (R) 11.10 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 12.05 (T) 12.10 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (T) (R) 1.10 The Great House Giveaway (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) 4.0 The Great B&B Challenge (T) (R) 5.0 Chateau DIY (T) (R) 一个牛棚被改造成商务套房。6.0 American Pickers (T) (R) 挖掘出一辆福特 Model-A 拖车。7.0 (T) / 6.0 Mikshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 (T) 12.50 Matt, Allwright (T) 2.20 TIME Tins in the Family (Alex Caulfield, 2023) (T) 由 Monique Plante 主演的惊悚片。4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 Love Nature (T) (R) 5.0 (T) 6.0 Corsica: Jewel of the Med (T) (R) 镜头聚焦于这座法国岛屿。6.55 (T) 7.0 Around the World in First Class (T) (R) Josie Gibson 前往香港,入住 Rossevault 酒店。本系列最后一集。7.55 (T) / 7.0 Villages by the Sea (T) Ben Robinson 在诺福克的 Holtham 庄园有了惊人发现。7.30 Canal Boat Diaries (T) Robbie Cumming 被邀请参加一场夜间亮灯船队巡游。 / 8.0 Dragons' Den (T) 提案包括节水护发产品、糖果和手工调味香料。 / 8.0 The Big Deal with Steph McGovern (T) 剩下的六对搭档共同寻找并出售豪宅艺术品。 / 8.0 Emmerdale (T) Calcio 意图毁掉 Joe 的一天。 / 8.0 Renovation Rescue (T) 一个在建筑工地生活了 18 个月的家庭决定采取行动。 / 8.0 The Yorkshire Vet (T) Matt Smith 帮助一只在分娩后遭受严重脱垂的牛。 / 8.0 The Bridge: Fifty Years Across the Forth (T) 庆祝福斯公路桥的纪录片。 / 9.0 Ludwig (T) 新系列。一次不寻常的双重坦白在

剧场看到约翰成为中心人物,因为他必须证明谁没有犯罪。 / 9.0 《时间之屋》(T) 主持人大卫·奥卢索加探讨卡尔顿山上这座房子的维多利亚时代居民的生活。 / 9.0 《环球追逐》(T) 各队伍抵达最后一个城市雅典,在那里他们必须挑战并击败所有追逐者。 / 9.0 《爱你至死》(T) 随着一个不可思议的真相被揭露,丽莎的世界崩塌了——马修的病情并非表面看起来那样。 / 9.0 《贝尼多姆谋杀案》(T) 丹尼斯和罗娜调查一名赢得大奖的农民的死亡事件。犯罪剧,由约翰·汉娜和卡罗琳娜·贝克尔主演。 / 9.0 TIME 《法国连接》(T) (威廉·弗里德金, 1971) 奥斯卡获奖的基于事实的犯罪惊悚片,由吉恩·哈克曼和罗伊·谢德主演。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 10.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 10.40 《关于我被谋杀的真相》(T) 新剧集。12.40 艾伦·卡尔的图片点评 (T) (R) 1.25 未来一周天气预报 (T) / 10.0 《红矮星》(T) (R) 审问官登船。10.30 《新闻之夜》(T) 天气 11.05 《24 / 7急救》(T) (R) 12.05TIME (托德·菲尔德, 2022) (T) 2.35 标志区域:牛中之牛 (T) (R) / 10.0 新闻 (T) 天气 10.30 当地新闻 (T) 天气 10.45 TIME 《天幕杀机》(萨姆·门德斯, 2022) (T) 1.20 电视购物 3.0 《爱与死》(T) (R) 4.0 与ITV一起放松 (T) 日常逃离。 / 10.0 《爱你至死》(T) 系列最后一集。11.05 《内陆谋杀公路》(T) 纪录片。12.05 《内陆谋杀公路》(T) 系列最后一集。12.55 《犯罪现场清理员》(T) (R) / 10.0 《犯罪现场的杀手》(T) (R) 卡里亚·加斯比之死。11.05 《逃票者:与法律开战》(T) (R) 发生在伦敦。12.05 《街头警察:抓捕混混》(T) (R) 1.0 与LovettBookit一起巡航电视 (T) (R)

10.40 《波基普西洗牌:追踪法国连接》(T) 11.35 TIME 《毕业生》(迈克·尼科尔斯, 1967) (T) 由达斯汀·霍夫曼主演的喜剧正剧。11.15 《运河船日记》(T)** |

周五 21

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《第11站》(Station Eleven), 天空大西洋频道 (Sky Atlantic),晚上9点 一场争执让 杰森 (Jessan,Himesh Patel 饰) 走上了一条意想不到的道路

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 早安节目 (T) 9.30 乡村宝藏 (T) (R) 10.30 花园救援 (T) (R) 11.15 锤下之屋 (T) (R) 12.15 淘货猎人 (T) 1.0 新闻 (T) 天气 1.35 地区新闻 (T) 天气 1.45 新闻 (T) 天气 2.0 理发师谜案 (T) 2.45 逃往乡村 (T) (R) 3.30 修理铺 (T) (R) 4.30 答案奔跑 (T) 5.15 无用之题 (T) (R) 6.0 新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 7.0 综合节目 (T) 7.30 旅行拍卖师 (T) (R) 6.15 锤下之屋 (T) (R) 7.15 免费之财 (T) (R) 8.0 手语区:时光之屋 (T) (R) 9.0 新闻 (T) 1.0 理查德·奥斯曼的游戏屋 (T) (R) 1.30 终点线 (T) (R) 2.15 你了解你的位置吗? (T) (R) 2.45 动物公园之夏 (T) (R) 3.30 塞伦盖蒂 II (T) (R) 4.30 标记它! (T) (R) 5.0 体操:2026年欧洲锦标赛 (T) 第三天。 7.0 田径:洛桑钻石联赛 (T) Athletissima 赛。 6.0 早安英国 (T) 10.0 今日早晨 (T) 1.0 新闻 (T) 天气 1.20 当地新闻 (T) 天气 1.30 ITV 赛马:约克现场直播 (T) Ebor 赛马会第三天, 4.30 颠覆点:史上最佳决赛 (T) (R) 5.0 追击 (T) (R) Carol, Fuad, Victoria 和 Anthony 参加。 6.0 当地新闻 (T) 天气 6.30 新闻 (T) 天气 7.30 艾比·克兰西:名人住宅 (T) (R) 企业家 Seema Malhotra 和时尚设计师 Alice Temperley 的住宅。 6.30 皇后之王 (T) (R) 7.45 大家都爱雷蒙 (T) (R) 9.10 弗雷泽 (T) (R) 11.10 厨房噩梦美国版 (T) (R) 12.05 新闻 (T) 12.10 寻找、修复、出售 (T) (R) 1.10 豪宅赠送 (T) (R) 2.10 倒计时 (T) 3.0 阳光之所 (T) (R) 4.0 顶级 B&B 挑战赛 (T) (R) 5.0 城堡 DIY (T) (R) 6.0 F1 荷兰大奖赛冲刺赛排位赛集锦 (T) 6.30 阳光之所 (T) (R) 一栋位于大加那利岛的度假屋。 7.0 新闻 (T) 6.0 Mikshake! 9.15 杰里米·Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 新闻 (T) 12.50 Matt, Allwright (T) 2.20 电影时间 《家中的陌生人》(Stranger in My Home, Randy Carter, 2023) (T) 由 Angela Cole 主演的惊悚片。 4.0 城堡 (T) (R) 4.55 热爱自然 (T) (R) 5.0 新闻 (T) 6.0 克罗地亚:地中海之珠 (T) (R) 探讨亚得里亚海上的克罗地亚岛屿赫瓦尔。 6.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 汤姆·里德·威尔逊的大巡游 (T) (R) Tom 开启了一场托斯卡纳之旅。本系列最后一集。 7.55 新闻 (T) 7.0 测试赛今日动态 (T) 英格兰对阵巴基斯坦。回顾在利兹 Headingley 板球场举行的三场测试赛系列赛中第一场测试赛第三天的所有精彩动作。 8.0 名人厨神 (T) 名人们必须提供一套三道菜的餐点。 9.0 你会对我撒谎吗? (T) (R) 嘉宾包括 Richie Anderson, Taj Atsad, Chris McCausland 和 Katherine Parkinson。 9.30 安·卓伊德 (Ann Droid) (T) Michael 决定归还 Linda。本系列最后一集。

9.0 贝尔热拉克 (Bergerac) (T) 在 Kim 遇险之前寻找她的竞赛开始了,而当 Barney 准备质问 Margaret 时,Jim 有了一个震惊的发现。本系列最后一集。 9.50 现代生活的秘密天才 (T) (R) Hannah Fly 深入探讨冰箱的奥秘。 | 8.0 艾默代尔 (Emmerdale) (T) Jimmy 出售了他的货运业务。 8.30 加冕街 (T) Glemla, Mary 和 Christina 责备 Todd 的酗酒行为。 9.0

想成为百万富翁?名人特辑 (T) (R) Laura Kenny 和 Kristin Janis-Murthy 在问答节目中竞争。 / 8.0 超富豪的手术秘密 (T) Victoria 接受非手术皮肤紧致治疗。本系列最后一集。9.0*8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown* (T) (R) Jon Richardson 和 Judi Love 对阵 Rob Beckett 和 Katherine Parkinson。 / 8.0 Alexander Armstrong 在斯里兰卡 (T) (R) 主持人开启他在斯里兰卡冒险之旅的第二阶段。9.0*Heat* (T) (R) 两个英国侨民家庭在澳大利亚维多利亚州共度暑假并团聚,结果充满戏剧性。由 Danny Dyer 主演的剧集。 / 8.0 Miles Davis:逍遥音乐会庆典 (T) 向这位小号手致敬,纪念其诞辰一百周年。9.15*TOTP: 1982* (T) 嘉宾包括 Captain Sensible, Kids from Fame 和 Duran Duran。9.55**TOTP: 1987 (T)

表演者包括 Wax 和 Five Star。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 10.30 地区新闻 (T) 天气 10.40 TIME 7 Dresses (Anne Fletcher, 2008) (T) 浪漫喜剧。12.25*下周天气预报* (T) 12.30 新闻 (T) / 10.0 Qi (T) (R) 主持人 Rob Beckett。10.30Newsnight (T) (R) 天气 11.05TIME 7 Dresses (Johnny Barrington, 2023) (T) 首播。由 Louis McCartney 主演的喜剧剧集。12.30Today at the Test (T) (R) / 10.0 Amanda Knox 的扭曲故事 (T) 11.0新闻 (T) 天气 11.30本地新闻 (T) 天气 11.50TIME 7 Dresses (Brett Raines, 1998) (T) 喜剧。1.30电视购物 / 10.0 Big Fat Quiz: 精选集 (T) 11.05Sarah Millican: Bobby Dazzler (T) (R) 单口喜剧。12.10TIME 7 Processes (Adam Deacon, 2023) (T) 1.50 吉普赛妻子的秘密生活 (T) (R) 纪录片。 / 10.05 Heat (T) (R) 火灾蔓延的消息

给这个家庭增加了额外的焦虑。11.05Piers Morgan: Uncensored (T) 新闻与辩论节目。1.0Cruise TV with LovettBookit (T) (R) / 10.25 Nick Lowe: BBC Four Sessions (T) 不插电演出。11.25Indiang: BBC Four Sessions (T) 在伦敦。12.25Damien Rice: BBC Four Sessions (T) 表演。1.25TOTP: 1982 (T)

--。

周六 22

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

39

《英国之声》(The Voice UK), ITV1,晚上7点 凯莉·罗兰(Kelly Rowland)加入 教练组,该才艺系列节目回归

BBC One / BBC Two / ITV1 / Channel 4 / 5 / BBC Four

6.0 Breakfast (T) 10.0 Saturday Kitchen (T) 11.30 Anna Haug's Big Irish Food Tour (R) 12.0 Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 12.45 The Football Interview (T) 1.0 News (T) 1.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 2.0 Homes Under the Hammer (T) (R) 3.0 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 3.45 Final Score (T) 5.25 News (T) 5.35 Regional News (T) Weather 5.40 Weather (T) 5.45 The Hit List (T) 6.30 Alan Carr's Picture Slam (T) 7.15 The Paddington (Paul King, 2014) (T) 由休·博内维尔(Hugh Bonneville)主演的喜剧片。 / 6.0 Children's TV (T) 8.45 Around the World in 80 Gardens (T) (R) 9.45 This Wild Life (T) (R) 10.15 The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) (T) 由约瑟夫·科顿(Joseph Cotten)和奥森·威尔斯(Orson Welles)主演的惊悚片。 11.55 The Great British Sewing Bee (T) (R) 12.55 Race Against the Tide (T) (R) 1.25 The One at Dawn (Anthony Asquith, 1943) (T) 第二次世界大战冒险片。 3.0 Gymnastics: European Championships 2025 (T) 6.0 Pog (T) (R) 7.0 Today at the Test (T) / 6.0 James Martin's American Adventure (T) (R) 6.55 The Boonmaker (Lewis Gilbert, 1976) (T) 9.25 News (T) 9.30 ITV Racing: The Opening Show (T) 10.30 James Martin's Saturday Morning (T) (R) 1.0 News (T) 1.15 TV Racing: Live from York (T) 4.30 The Chase (T) (R) 5.30 News (T) 5.45 Local News (T) 6.0 Deal on No Deal: Celebrity Special (T) 凯瑟琳·瑞安(Katherine Ryan)挑战Barker。 7.0 The Voice UK (T) 新系列,艾玛·威利斯(Emma Willis)回归主持这场歌唱比赛。 / 6.10 Cheers (T) (R) 8.0 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.25 Frasier (T) (R) 10.55 The Simpsons (T) (R) 1.20 Four in a Bed (T) (R) 3.55 George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (T) (R) 建筑师访问葡萄牙最窄的房子。 4.55 Grand Designs (T) (R) 来自雷丁的扎拉(Zara)和她的伴侣朱利亚诺(Giuliano)在林肯郡的世界中建造他们梦想中的 400 平方米磨坊风格住宅,进行了一次信念之跃。 6.0 News (T) 头条新闻。 / 6.0 Mikshakel 9.15 Secrets of the Royal Palaces (T) (R) 11.0 Westminster Abbey: Behind Closed Doors (T) (R) 1.0 The Royals: Uncensored (T) 2.0 Coastal Adventures with Helen, Jules & Jill (T) (R) 3.0 Coastal Adventures with Helen, Jules & Jill (T) (R) 3.55 The Town Time to Time (Julian Fellows, 2009) (T) 由 Alex Etel & Suisson 主演的家庭奇幻冒险片,Jewel of the South Coast (T) 该系列最后一集。 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Cycling: Vuelta's España 2026 (T) 精彩回顾。 / 7.0 Planet Earth: An Elephant's Tale (T) 镜头记录了一头新生象及其母亲的艰辛。 7.05 Life on Earth (T) 大卫·爱登堡(David Attenborough)探讨我们星球上哺乳动物的极多样性。 8.40 The Weakest Link (T) (R) 嘉宾包括 Kerry Goddman, Janet Street-Porter, Bez, Josh Jones, Jowita Przystał, William Hanson, Danny Clarke 和 Ruby Bhogal。 / 8.0 Marvin Gaye: A Tribute at the Proms (T) BBC 音乐会管弦乐团向这位创作歌手兼音乐家致敬。 / 8.15 The 1% Club (T) (R) 问答节目,由李·麦克(Lee Mack)主持。 / 8.30 Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix Sprint and Qualifying Highlights (T) 史蒂夫·琼斯(Steve Jones)主持冲刺赛以及排位赛争夺战的精彩回顾。 / 8.0 The Jobless Prince: What Will Harry Do Next? (T) (R) 一组专家探讨萨塞克斯公爵的未来。 / 8.0 Hidden Wales: Last Chance to Save (T) 威尔·米拉德(Will Millard)探索威尔士一些被遗忘的历史建筑。 | | | | | | 9.30 New Are You? It's Alan (Partridge) (T) (R) 一个

.

死亡带来了一刻的宣泄。该系列的最后一集。 / 9.30 马文·盖伊:最伟大金曲 – 1976年阿姆斯特丹现场 (T) 这位灵魂歌手的一场演唱会,曲目包括《Let's Get It On》。 / 9.35 《幽灵》(Sam Morston, 2015) (T) 詹姆斯·邦德寻找一个秘密犯罪网络背后难以捉摸的幕后主使,该网络与他的过去有关,由丹尼尔·克雷格主演的惊悚片。 / 9.30 Night Fanger:资金从何而来? (T) 一项针对改革英国党(Reform UK)领导人财务状况的调查。 / 9.50 《喀布尔》 (T) (R) 一个男人和努尔拉必须寻找前往机场的自己的路。 / 10.0 新闻 (T) 10.15 天气 (T) 10.20 今日之赛 (T) 11.40 《水中的某些东西》(Hayley Easton Street, 2024) (T) 惊悚片 / 10.25 戴安娜·罗斯在 BBC (T) (R) 档案

演出。 / 12.20 英格兰足球联赛集锦 (T) 1.40 电视购物 3.0 WhatsApp 痴迷 斯蒂芬妮·汉森谋杀案 (T) (R) 3.50 《放松》 (T) 5.05 费恩·布里顿走进兽医诊所 (T) / 10.15 《瞬息全宇宙》(Daniel Scheitert, Daniel Kwan, 2022) (T) 喜剧。 / 10.30 当电视新闻在 Horniby 出错时 (T) (R) 12.30 《警察》 (T) (R) 12.55 5频道的娱乐新闻 (T) 1.0 与 Lovel Bookit 一起游轮电视 (T) (R) 2.0 闭门之后的全科医生 / 10.45 《天生贵族》 (T) 11.15 《维持体面》 11.45 《桥:跨越地球五十年》 (T) 12.45 《地球生命》 (T) 1.40 隐藏的威尔士:最后的拯救机会 (T) / 1.0 天气 (T) 1.05 新闻 (T) / 11.25 《奇迹之夜》 (T) (R) 12.30 摩城大师:拉蒙特·多齐尔在 BBC (T) (R) 1.30 摩城在 BBC (T) (R) / 12.50 《厨房噩梦 USA》 (T) (R) 1.40 《爱你至死》 (T) (R)**

电台节目单

周日

Radio 3

6.30am 早餐饮光 9.0 周日早晨 11.0 2026年BBC逍遥音乐节 1.30 音乐地图 3.0 索拉里斯马戏团(主持人:Candler Shaw) 4.0 爵士唱片请求 5.0 古乐节目 6.0 合唱晚祷 7.0 新一代艺术家 7.30 2026年BBC逍遥音乐节 10.0 夜间轨道 11.30 未分类 12.30 彻夜聆听

Radio 4

6.0am 新闻头条 6.05 心灵与灵魂 6.35 你的农场 7.0 新闻 7.0 周日报纸 7.10 周日 7.50 Radio 4 呼吁 8.0 新闻 8.0 周日报纸 8.10 周日礼拜 8.40 见证历史 8.50 今日推文 9.0 广播大楼 10.0 荒岛唱片 11.0 弓箭手 12.15 最后之言:以不同方式面对死亡 12.30 仅一分钟 1.0 本周末的世界 1.30 堕落前的骄傲 2.0 园丁问答时间 2.45 开篇词 3.0 戏剧天秤 4.0 选读四本书 4.30 英国之脑 5.0 见证历史 5.10 罪案背后 5.54 航运预报 6.0 六点新闻 6.15 本周精选 7.0 弓箭手 7.15 北大西洋家庭视频大档案 7.45 仅一件事(主持人:Michael Mosley) 8.0 反馈 8.30 最后之言 9.0 祝酒 9.26 Radio 4 呼吁 9.30 来自我们的通讯员 10.0 火星金发女郎:终极指挥官 11.0 伟大的生活 11.30 如何 11.45 短篇作品 12.0 新闻与天气 12.15 跨越大陆 12.45 周日腰带 12.40 航运预报 1.0 BBC世界服务 5.0 新闻摘要 5.04 最后之言 5.34 航运 5.43 今日祷告 5.45 农业

周一

Radio 3

6.30am 早餐饮光 9.30 经典精选 1.0 古典现场 4.0 本周作曲家 5.0 协调 7.0 2026年BBC逍遥音乐节 10.0 夜间轨道 11.30 午夜时分 12.30 彻夜聆听

Radio 4

6.0am 今日 9.0 伟大罪案之谜 9.30 我们如何走到这里:没有世界秩序 10.0 女性时间 11.0 罪案背后 11.45 本周之书:《山中之火:西西里、埃特纳及其人民》 12.0 新闻 12.04 你与你的 1.0 世界 1.45 人类智能 2.0 弓箭手 2.15 孤独 2.45 开篇词 3.0 伟大的生活 3.30 你对我而言已死 4.0 堕落前的骄傲 4.30 灵魂音乐 5.0 下午时分 6.0 六点新闻 6.30 仅一分钟 7.0 弓箭手 7.15 前排 8.0 简报室 8.30 BBC 内部科学 9.0 伟大罪案之谜 9.30 我们如何走到这里:没有世界秩序 10.0 今夜世界 10.45 睡前书 11.0 讣告 11.30 请读诗 12.0 新闻与天气 12.30 本周之书 12.40 航运预报 1.0 BBC世界服务

5.0 新闻摘要 5.04 堕落前的骄傲 5.34 航运预报 5.43 今日祷告 5.45 今日农业

周二

Radio 3

6.30am 早餐饮光 9.30 经典精选 1.0 古典现场 4.0 本周作曲家:费利克斯·门德尔松 5.0 协调 7.0 2026年BBC逍遥音乐节 10.0 夜间轨道 11.30 午夜时分 12.30 彻夜聆听

Radio 4

6.0am 今日 (Today) 9.0 无形之手 (Invisible Hands) 9.30 迈克尔·辛饰演角色 (Michael Sheen Gets into Character) 10.0 女性时间 (Woman's Hour) 11.0 添加至播放列表 (Add to Playlist) 11.45 本周之书 (Book of the Week) 12.0 新闻 (News) 12.04 呼叫您与您的 (Call You and Yours) 1.0 世界 (The World) 1.45 人类智能 (Human Intelligence) 2.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 2.15 广播剧:不,首相 (Drama No, Prime Minister) 3.0 露西·沃斯利主持的审判女士 (Lady on Trial with Lucy Worsley) 3.30 心灵与灵魂 (Heart and Soul) 4.0 英国最危险的书 (The Deadliest Book in England) 4.30 纪录片怎么了? (What's Up Docs?) 5.0 下午时段 (PM) 6.0 六点新闻 (Six O'Clock News) 6.30 保罗·辛哈的完美枢纽问答 (Paul Sinha's Perfect Hub Quiz) 7.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 7.15 前排 (Front Row) 8.0 将年轻人从谋杀中拯救:街头少年故事 (Saving Young Men from Murder The Homeboy Story) 8.40 保持联系 (In Touch) 9.0 跨越大陆 (Crossing Continents) 9.30 诈骗秘密 (Scam Secrets) 10.0 今夜世界 (The World Tonight) 10.45 睡前书 (Book at Bedtime) 11.0 内部野性 (Wild Inside) 11.30 请读诗 (Poetry Please) 12.0 新闻与天气 (News and Weather) 12.30 本周之书 (Book of the Week) 12.40 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 1.0 BBC世界服务 (As BBC World Service) 5.0 新闻摘要 (News Summary)

5.04 BBC内部科学 (BBC Inside Science) 5.34 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 5.43 祷告 (Prayer) 5.45 今日农业 (Farming Today)

周三

Radio 3

6.30am 早餐 (Breakfast) 9.30 经典精选 (Essential Classics) 1.0 古典现场 (Classical Live) 3.0 合唱晚祷 (Choral Evensong) 4.0 本周作曲家:费利克斯·门德尔松 (Composer of the Week: Felix Mendelssohn) 5.0 协调 (In Tune) 7.0 2026年BBC逍遥音乐会 (BBC Proms 2026) 10.0 夜间轨道 (Night Tracks) 11.30 午夜时分 (Round Midnight) 12.30 彻夜 (Through the Night)

Radio 4

6.0am 今日 (Today) 9.0 侧向 (Sideways) 9.30 打破循环 (Breakin' the Cycle) 10.0 女性时间 (Woman's Hour) 11.0 将年轻人从谋杀中拯救:街头少年故事 (Saving Young Men from Murder: The Homeboy Story) 11.40 本周历史 (This Week in History) 11.45 本周之书 (Book of the Week) 12.0 新闻 (News) 12.04 您与您的 (You and Yours) 1.0 世界 (The World) 1.45 人类智能 (Human Intelligence) 2.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 2.15 广播剧:联合王国 (Drama: United Kingdoms) 3.0

北大西洋家庭录像大档案馆 (The Grand North Atlantic Home Video Archive) 3.30 在同一个磁层之下 (All Under One Magnetosphere) 4.0 愧疚的力量 (The Power of Guilt) 4.15 媒体秀 (The Media Show) 5.0 下午时段 (PM) 6.0 六点新闻 (Six O'Clock News) 6.30 最佳医疗 (Best Medicine) 7.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 7.15 前排 (Front Row) 8.0 道德弥撒 (The Moral Mass) 9.0 无形之手 (Invisible Hands) 9.30 迈克尔·辛饰演角色 (Michael Sheen Gets into Character) 10.0 今夜世界 (The World Tonight) 10.45 睡前书:西杜先生的邮局 (Book at Bedtime: Mr Sidhu's Post Office) 11.0 诺拉·米多斯的健康周 (Nora Meadows' Week of Wellness) 11.15 跟随兔子 (Follow the Rabbit) 11.30 请读诗 (Poetry Please) 12.0 新闻与天气 (News and Weather) 12.30 本周之书 (Book of the Week) 12.48 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 1.0 BBC世界服务 (As BBC World Service) 5.0 新闻摘要 (News Summary) 5.04 侧向 (Sideways) 5.34 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 5.43 今日祷告 (Prayer for the Day) 5.45 今日农业 (Farming Today)

周四

Radio 3

Radio 4

6.0am 今日 (Today) 9.0 无形之海恩斯为经典发声 (Invisible Haynes Stands Up for the Classics) 9.30 吉他故事 (The Guitar Story) 10.0 女性时间 (Woman's Hour) 11.0 文化生活 (The Cultural Life) 11.45 本周之书 (Book of the Week) 12.0 新闻 (News) 12.04 诈骗秘密 (Scam Secrets) 12.32 切片面包 (Sliced Bread) 1.0 世界 (The World) 1.45 人类智能 (Human Intelligence) 2.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 2.15 广播剧:《观察者》之书 (Drama: The Observer's Book) 3.0 开放乡村 (Open Country) 3.27 Radio 4 呼吁 (Radio 4 Appeal) 3.30 隐喻顾问 (The Metaphor Consultant) 4.0 简报室 (The Briefing Room) 4.30 BBC内部科学 (BBC Inside Science) 5.0 下午时段 (PM) 6.0 六点新闻 (Six O'Clock News) 6.30 侧向 (Sideways) 6.15 弓箭手 (The Archers) 7.15 前排 (Front Row) 8.0 风险自担 (At Your Own Peril) 8.15 媒体秀 (The Media Show) 9.0 松散的末端 (Loose Ends) 9.45 牛群发疯了 (The Cows Are Mad) 10.0 今夜世界 (The World Tonight) 10.45 睡前书:西杜先生的邮局 (Book at Bedtime: Mr Sidhu's Post Office) 11.0 激进 (Radical) 11.30 请读诗 (Poetry Please) 12.0 新闻与天气 (News and Weather) 12.30 本周之书:山中之火——西西里、埃特纳及其人民 (Book of the Week: The Fire in the Mountain Sicily, Etna and her People) 12.40 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 1.0 BBC世界服务 (As BBC World Service) 5.0 新闻摘要 (News Summary) 5.04 简报室 (The Briefing Room) 5.34 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 5.43 今日祷告 (Prayer for the Day) 5.45 今日农业 (Farming Today)

周五

Radio 3

6.30am 早餐 (Breakfast) 9.30 经典精选 (Essential Classics) 1.0 古典现场 (Classical Live) 4.0 本周作曲家:费利克斯·门德尔松 (Composer of the Week: Felix Mendelssohn) 5.0 协调 (In Tune) 7.0 2026年BBC逍遥音乐会 (BBC Proms 2026) 10.0 晚间接点 (Late Junction) 11.30 午夜时分 (Round Midnight) 12.30 彻夜 (Through the Night)

Radio 4

6.0am 今日 (Today) 9.0 荒岛唱片 (Desert Island Discs) 10.0 女性时间 (Woman's Hour) 11.0 食品节目 (The Food Programme) 11.45 本周之书:《山中之火:西西里、埃特纳火山及其人民》 12.0 新闻 12.04 地球如何 (How Earth) 1.0 世界 (The World) 1.45 人类智能 (Human Intelligence) 2.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 2.15 戏剧:《中央情报》 2.45 生活在边缘 (Living on the Edge) 3.0 园丁问答时间 (Gardeners' Question Time) 3.30 短篇作品 (Short Works) 4.0 最后之言 (Last Word) 4.30 侧向 (Sideways) 5.0 PM 节目 6.0 六点新闻 6.30 民众已发声 (The People Have Spoken) 7.0 弓箭手 (The Archers) 7.15 添加至播放列表 (Add to Playlist) 8.0 有任何问题吗? (Any Questions?) 8.55 本周历史 (This Week in History) 9.0 隐形海恩斯捍卫经典 (Invisible Haynes Stands Up for the Classics) 9.30 打破循环 (Breakin' the Cycle) 10.0 今夜世界 (The World Tonight) 10.45 睡前之书:《西杜先生的邮局》 11.0 美国人 (American) 11.30 在同一个磁层之下 (All Under One Magnetosphere) 12.0 新闻与天气 12.30 本周之书:《山中之火:西西里、埃特纳火山及其人民》 12.48 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 1.0 BBC 世界服务 (BBC World Service) 5.30 新闻摘要 5.34 航运预报 5.43 今日祷告 (Prayer for the Day) 5.45 生活在边缘 (Living on the Edge)

周六

Radio 3

6.30am 早餐 (Breakfast) 9.0 周六早晨 (Saturday Morning) 12.0 早期...与朱尔斯·霍兰德 (Earlier... with Jools Holland) 1.0 关键变化:Radio 3 古典音乐精要史 2.0 唱片评论 (Record Review) 4.0 电影之声 (Sound of Cinema) 5.0 这种古典生活 (This Classical Life) 6.0 音乐星球 (Music Planet) 7.0 新一代艺术家 (New Generation Artists) 7.30 2026年 BBC 逍遥音乐会 (BBC Proms 2026) 9.45 谈论音乐 (Talking Music) 10.30 新音乐节目 (New Music Show) 12.30 彻夜 (Through the Night)

Radio 4

6.0am 新闻与报纸 (News and Papers) 6.07 开放乡村 (Open Country) 6.30 今日农业本周 (Farming Today This Week) 7.0 今日 (Today) 9.0 四分之一文化发生了什么? (What Happened to Quarter Culture?) 9.30 文档怎么了? (What's Up Docs?) 10.0 你对我而言已死 (You're Dead to Me) 10.30 灵魂音乐 (Soul Music) 11.0 激进 (Radical) 11.30 来自我们的特派记者 (From Our Own Correspondent) 12.0 新闻 12.04 祝酒 (Toast) 12.30 民众已发声 (The People Have Spoken) 1.0 新闻 1.10 有任何问题吗? (Any Questions?) 2.05 有任何答案吗? (Any Answers?) 2.45 弓箭手 (The Archers) 3.0 戏剧:《月食之夜》 4.0 周末女性时间 (Weekend Woman's Hour) 5.0 周六 PM 5.30 切片面包 (Sliced Bread) 5.54 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 6.0 六点新闻 6.15 松散的末端 (Loose Ends) 7.0 最后之言:以不同方式面对死亡 7.15 这种文化生活 (This Cultural Life) 8.0 Radio 4 档案:不确定时代 (The Age of Uncertainty) 9.0 道德弥撒 (The Moral Mass) 10.0 新闻 10.15 食品节目 (The Food Programme) 11.0 奥尔加·库尔斯的 OK 计算机 (Olga Kools OK Computer) 11.30 英国之脑 (Brain of Britain) 12.0 午夜新闻 12.15 四本书 (Take Four Books) 12.48 航运预报 (Shipping Forecast) 1.0 BBC 世界服务 (BBC World Service) 5.30 新闻摘要 5.34 航运预报 5.43 周日腰带 (Belts on Sunday) 5.45 保持联系 (In Touch)


[页码 40] [网站:observer.co.uk] [日期:2026年8月16日]

评论家

电视

穆里尼奥在面对 Netflix 时采取防守姿态

Barbara Ellen

穆里尼奥 Netflix

《我的辉煌生涯》 Netflix

《龙之家族》 天空大西洋频道

“他那冷硬的缺乏合作态度几乎令人赞赏”:下方是何塞·穆里尼奥,他是 一次“错失机会”的主角;上方是《我的辉煌生涯》中的菲莉帕·诺斯伊斯特。

这确实让人怀疑,穆里尼奥的职业生涯是否正被当作一场复仇幻想来度过。

新 纪录片系列《穆里尼奥》(Mourinho)的导演乔·珀尔曼表示,佩普·瓜迪奥拉曾被邀请出演。这位在巴塞罗那足球俱乐部与穆里尼奥互为死敌的西班牙人表示,如果穆里尼奥邀请他,他会参加。对此,这位葡萄牙教练回应道:“绝对没门!”曾执导 2018 年精彩作品《尖叫停止后》(Bros. After the Screaming Stops)的珀尔曼指出,这句话说明了这两个人的一切。不幸的是,它也概括了《穆里尼奥》全三集所能提供的一切。

从表面上看,现已被皇家马德里重新聘用的 63 岁穆里尼奥是一个迷人的主题。他取得了惊人的成功:在他的带领下,切尔西足球俱乐部三次赢得英超联赛冠军、一次足总杯冠军和三次联赛杯冠军。他带领国际米兰足球俱乐部赢得了包括欧冠冠军在内的重大胜利。在他职业生涯的其他阶段(包括在曼联、托特纳姆热刺和罗马的任职期间),虽有低谷和被解雇的情况,但很少有人会质疑他是其一代中最杰出的教练之一。

此外还有穆里尼奥的个性:反复无常、自负、权谋主义,而且这还是在他心情好的时候。2004 年,在带领波尔图足球俱乐部赢得欧冠冠军后,他加入切尔西,并称自己为“一个特别的人”(“a special one”,而非“the special one”;他在纪录片中指出了这一点,但依然如此)。他极具魅力且充满争议。那么,为什么在这部纪录片中,他如此僵硬且单调?

通常,这类系列的受访者希望被理解,但穆里尼奥抵制这一点。“你们在逼我谈论我自己,但我不想谈,”他说。他主要想在自己的“大佬”伟业上信马由缰:“获胜是什么感觉?”他平静地回答:“常态。”

受访者包括曼联的亚历克斯·弗格森,而前切尔西球员弗兰克·兰帕德、迪迪埃·德罗巴和约翰·特里则深入探讨了穆里尼奥(他在大学学习体育科学)是如何激励他们的。

接着是那些宿怨:阿森纳的阿尔塞纳·温格;与前切尔西老板罗曼·阿布拉莫维奇的权力斗争;巴塞罗那将穆里尼奥称为“翻译员”(他此前曾担任鲍比·罗布森的翻译),这显然仍令他耿耿于怀;以及更多,确实更多。这确实让人怀疑,穆里尼奥的体育生涯是否正被当作一场复仇幻想来度过。

一些后期的执教经历被处理得如此之快,以至于可以被归类为蒙太奇。穆里尼奥在谈到父亲去世,以及他的父亲(同样是一名足球教练)在圣诞节当天被解雇时变得情绪激动。

然而,穆里尼奥长久的婚姻和家庭生活仅被简略提及。

这种回避本身就很有趣:其背后潜藏着什么?但这使得人物画像变得失衡且奇怪地枯燥。考虑到那种乏味的、温吞且光鲜的纪录片类型,穆里尼奥冷硬的缺乏合作态度几乎令人赞赏。尽管如此,这依然是一次错失机会,未能让我们理解教练面具背后的那个男人。

在同一个流媒体平台上,还有《我的辉煌生涯》(My Brilliant Career),这是对迈尔斯·富兰克林 1901 年小说的六集改编,该小说是澳大利亚学校的指定教材(吉莉安·阿姆斯特朗著名的 1979 年电影版由朱迪·戴维斯和山姆·尼尔主演)。

故事背景设定在 19 世纪 90 年代的澳大利亚,由利兹·多兰创作,艾丽莎·麦克莱兰和安妮·伦顿执导。菲莉帕·诺斯伊斯特饰演充满活力的准作家西比拉,

她被送到正直的祖母(安娜·钱斯勒 饰)家中生活,以确保能找到一个富有的丈夫,从而将她的家庭从贫困中拯救出来。

西比拉从一开始就被塑造为一个特立独行的人:她在一次聚会上朗诵自己那些放荡不羁的诗作。她起初让周围的年轻人们感到困惑,随后又让他们为之着迷。克里斯托弗·钟(Christopher Chung,在《慢马》中饰演 Roddy Ho)饰演一名迷人的追求者,而杰克·邓恩(Jake Dunn)则饰演一名深陷情网的英国绅士。

剧中向《布里杰顿》(Bridgerton)致敬——包括穿插现代音乐——并增加了新的主题(原住民角色;关于同性恋的情节)。但《我的辉煌生涯》并非只是带有澳大利亚口音的奥斯汀式故事;其核心讲述的是女性对窒息的社会习俗的原始反叛。这是一部粗犷且直接的作品,同时带有明显的色情意味,包含在星空下自慰和性探索的场景。诺斯在饰演这位不可遏制的早期女权主义女主角时,贡献了如烈火般极具感染力的表演。最终,这部成长题材的时代剧成为了一颗未经雕琢的宝石,闪耀着独特的光芒。

在天空大西洋频道(Sky Atlantic)上,由瑞安·康德尔(Ryan Condal)执导的《龙之家族》系列大结局以坦布尔顿之战(Battle of Tumbleton)爆发。在这部关于王朝、合法性和至高权力的持续沸腾的奇幻史诗中,由艾玛·达西(Emma D'Arcy)饰演的雷妮拉·坦格利安终于不再扮演那个“让权力饥渴的男人显得很糟糕的睿智金发女士”。

在丈夫兼叔叔戴蒙(Daemon,由马特·史密斯饰演,“你手中掌握着绝对的权力”)的怂恿下,雷妮拉明显变得强硬,剧中展现了她处决拒绝册封她为女王的大 the High Septon 的场景。随后,她站在民众面前,宣布自己就是那个“被预言的王子”。

由詹姆斯·诺顿(James Norton)带着一种阴险的快感饰演的奥蒙德·海塔(Ormund Hightower),被剑残酷地处决,其方式是我在这样一份家庭报纸上不愿详细描述的。几条巨龙——维斯特洛的摆姿摇滚明星——在天空中俯冲并喷火灼烧。

艾蒙德(Aemond,由尤安·米切尔饰演)最近在那些玄学魔法情节以及关于母亲艾莉森(Alicent,由奥利维亚·库克饰演)的乱伦幻象中被浪费了,现在终于与伊冈(Aegon,由汤姆·格林-卡尼饰演)重逢,后者是他试图杀死(且是另一个主要王位继承人)的兄弟。可怜且注定悲剧的孕妇海莱娜(Helaena,由菲亚·萨班饰演)凄凉地停止了刺绣她的预言挂毯,然后跳出了窗外。

作者乔治·R·R·马丁一直对这部《权力的游戏》前传偏离其原著《血与火》(2018)深表不满。尽管如此,这仍是一个全力以赴的高潮,将血腥之欲、悲痛、凄美(戴蒙被坦布尔顿的平民死者包围)、最后一刻的背叛以及幽默交织在一起:“你唯一需要做的就是坐在你那该死的龙背上!”下一季将是最后一季:请就座,准备迎接维斯特洛的终局之战。

观看清单

芭芭拉·艾伦(Barbara Ellen)推荐的其他佳作

《大交易》(The Big Deal with Steph McGovern)(BBC第一频道)

艺术界的《学徒》(The Apprentice)?七对业余艺术交易商在竞争激烈的行业中竞相获利,否则将面临淘汰。首集聚焦于皇家艺术学院的毕业生,而由斯蒂芬·麦戈文(Steph McGovern,见下图)主持的该系列后续剧集将走访从柏林到马盖特等各地的艺术场景。

《击中点》(Hit Point)

(U&Drama) 一部设定在犯罪地下世界的非典型惊悚剧。由彼得·塞拉菲诺维奇(Peter Serafinowicz)、尼克·布鲁德(Nick Blood)和萨弗伦·霍金(Saffron Hocking)主演。

《他罪有应得》(He Had it Coming)(BBC Three)

澳大利亚喜剧剧集,由莉迪亚·韦斯特(Lydia West,曾出演《这就是罪》)饰演一名艺术系学生,她与一名网红(娜塔莎·刘·博迪佐 Natasha Liu Bordizzo)共同破解一起谋杀案。

From £2.40 for subscribers Sunday 16 August 2026 | www.observer.co.uk | No 12,245 | £4.50 (IR €5.00)

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The hounding of Jason Arday

‘White grievance is suspicious of Black achievement as coming at the expense of white people’ Seun Matiluko

David Kelly and Jason Arday were civilians in ‘wars’ not of their making Ceri Thomas

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THE OBSERVER

Established 1791

Powys, Wales Wednesday 12 August 2026 Temperatures reached 35C

Climate changed

The burning issue

Britain on fire: 1,205 wildfires in 2026. 43 in the last 24 hours

Homes razed: 38 houses burned in Stourbridge, 19 destroyed

Trains derailed in Sussex and Essex: 20 people injured

Drought declared: 10.5mm of rain since 1 July


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'The enemy of nonsense' George Orwell, The Observer

THE OBSERVER VIEW

Hounded

The news business has to look itself squarely in the mirror to understand the death of Jason Arday

Journalism is not just the first draft of history. It's also the pursuit of truth, which can be hard to find. Sources sometimes lie, cover their traces, make things up. An army of paid professionals exists to mislead, intimidate and spin. Batting aside such obstacles is a requirement of the trade. It can be difficult, and if society wants an independent press to do its job it must accept some bruises.

None of which excuses for one moment the hounding of Jason Arday, found dead on Friday a few days after standing down as the youngest Black professor in Cambridge University's history.

Arday seems to have had an unusual relationship with the truth. He may have been a fantasist. If so, he was not the first to be championed by Cambridge and he won't be the last. Whatever was true or not about his CV, though, he was entitled to expect more from the industry that took it upon itself to investigate his biography and credentials over the course of three years as minutely as if he were a career criminal. He was entitled to expect that the journalists and editors on his case be guided by a basic sense of justice and responsibility.

Context is crucial. Cambridge, like most old universities – and newspapers, come to that – is grappling with the legacy of centuries of racism in its profits from slavery and its glacial conversion to the idea that non-white candidates might need to be actively encouraged if they are to be fairly represented among students and staff. There has been progress. In Oxford as well as Cambridge, nearly 30% of teaching staff are now non-white – all the more reason why Cambridge had no need to make extravagant claims on Arday's behalf, promoting its own claim to diversity at the expense, it now appears, of his mental health. The result was that he became the focus of a grotesque media pile-on, and that is not justice.

A responsible approach to the story that Arday became would have acknowledged he was not, as Cambridge's vice-chancellor claimed, an 'aberration'. Plagiarism and alleged plagiarism are rife in academia. PhDs are often supervised and awarded by people with scant knowledge of the subject. Arday was a feature of the system but was treated as a bug, sometimes by media outlets that make little effort to disguise their political agendas.

Why were so many hundreds of stories published on Arday leading up to but also after his resignation? Was it the war on woke? Or was it commerce, elbowing editorial judgment aside because of the heavy digital traffic these stories attracted? Either way, it was an abdication of responsibility, because they all rested on research done by another former Cambridge academic who calls himself a 'race realist'. Nathan Cofnas was fired after claiming that in a true meritocracy Black people would 'disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sport and entertainment'. To be clear: 'race realist' is code for racist. Newspapers and TV stations that amplified Cofnas's vigilante 'war on woke' were amplifying racism.

Their target may have invented stories about his life, but there is no question that he was autistic. On Friday morning he spoke to his friend Simon Baron-Cohen, the Cambridge professor of developmental psychology. 'He really wasn't coping,' Baron-Cohen told the BBC afterwards. Earlier, Baron-Cohen wrote on social media that one in four autistic people has planned or attempted suicide. 'That's why I'm very concerned about the impact of the media coverage... I cannot stand by and watch when an autistic man is on the ground and the kicking continues.' Arday was found unresponsive in a flat in south London on Friday afternoon.

Unlike medicine, journalism cannot aim to do no harm. But it does have a responsibility towards its subjects – a responsibility

every outlet, including The Observer, inevitably neglects from time to time. But we cannot self-censor on the subject of our industry simply out of fear of being accused of hypocrisy. That is a recipe for cruelty and wilful blindness.

'Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?' Alexander Pope's question became a warning about the disproportionate use of power. It would be good to see those outlets that have gorged on the Arday story ask themselves two questions: has their reporting been proportional? And have they thought sensibly about their treatment of an autistic man, now dead? The answers are part of the truth.

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

3

Issue No. 12,245

Who says

Fariba Nawa

When I ask the girls who I'm in touch with what we can do from afar for them, they have different answers. A 14-year-old demanded to be armed with a Kalashnikov. A 17-year-old told me to find her work online so she could support her family. Most ask for scholarships abroad – or any way out of Afghanistan. World, page 22

Ben Zaranko

On A-level results day in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, universities scrambled to attract undecided students through the clearing system by offering sweeteners. Some offered free laptops; others, free gym memberships; one dangled a £6,000 cost of living allowance. The one thing that was not on offer was a discount on their £9,790 a year tuition fees. Here, there are strong parallels with another market where buyers have the upper hand, but where prices remain surprisingly sticky – newly built houses and flats. Business, page 39

Stephanie Merritt

I fell in love with beavers more than 10 years ago on a trip to Scotland, when I took my son, then aged 12, to a wildlife project where the animals had been reintroduced, and we watched them busying about in the loch from a shoreline hide. They seemed impossibly exotic; now there's a good chance their lodges could soon become familiar sights throughout the English countryside. New Review, page 5

Andrew Hankinson

Sam Neale started life in a council house in Gateshead. She played the cello at school. Did youth theatre at Live. Left school at 16 and did a drama course at Newcastle College. Got a job at the Cluny pub in Newcastle, got an agent and got on TV. It seemed easy. 'I was, like, young and pretty, and I could play the female lead,' she says. 'Sorry, I mean the female victim.' New Review, pages 11-13

Imogen West-Knights

On the south side of Dölzig there is an industrial estate surrounded by a 2m-high, 40-year-old chain-link fence. And within that estate, alongside furniture outlet stores and heavy goods warehouses and a petrol station, is a smaller fenced enclosure that houses a nine-year-old, 300kg Siberian-Bengal cross tiger named Sandokan. Magazine, pages 12-17

David Powell

For years, gambling companies have underpinned the commercial reality of the Premier League's middle and lower tier, offering inflated sponsorship fees other industries simply could not, or would not, match. With the voluntary ban now in effect, that prominence has sharply diminished. Sport, pages 4-5


4

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

7 days

Overheard

'It's definitely not Madonna'

Glastonbury organiser Emily Eavis attempts to quell rumours about next year's festival on Radio 4

The week in brief

Met police discloses names of Fayed victims

The Metropolitan police has apologised after accidentally disclosing the email addresses of about 140 women who say they were sexually abused by the late Harrods owner Mohamed Al Fayed. The force has referred itself to the Information Commissioner's Office after discovering it had shared details of all those who had signed up for monthly updates on the investigation for victims. A spokesperson blamed "human error", for which the force "sincerely" apologised.

5,000%

The rise in the number of people searching "eye injury" in the UK after the solar eclipse last Wednesday

Israeli settlers besiege West Bank homes

Dozen of Israeli settlers besieged three Palestinian homes in Qusra on the West Bank. They surrounded the houses last Sunday and prevented families from leaving as their food and water supplies dwindled. The Israeli army evicted the settlers on Thursday, but they returned several hours later. The US ambassador Mike Huckabee called the settlers "terrorists" – an unusual rebuke from the White House administration. All Israeli settlements are illegal under international law.

HIV pill can be taken weekly, says study

A clinical trial has shown that taking the HIV pill weekly is just as effective for treating the condition as taking it daily. Prof Chloe Orkin, who was involved in the research, said taking the pill only once a week would provide patients with "welcome relief from the burden of taking a pill every single day for the rest of their lives". Medication for HIV stops the virus from multiplying. Treatment typically reduces the viral load to undetectable levels, which protects the immune system and prevents onward transmission of the virus.

NHS 'deeply sorry' after patient data breach

The NHS has admitted that private medical data of transplant patients was routinely shared using an unencrypted pager network. In

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The annual cricket match between the Royal Southern and The Island sailing clubs on a sandbank that appears for 30-60 minutes at lowest tide in The Solent, Hampshire. The game lasts until the tide returns. Peter Macdormid

2019 Matt Hancock, then health secretary, said that the NHS would stop using pagers by 2021, but parts of the service continued to do so. The blood and transplant unit said it was "deeply sorry" and has reported the data breach to the Information Commissioner's Office. Pagers were originally used across the NHS to share information rapidly. A BBC investigation also found that ambulance trusts and hospitals sent hundreds of messages over a 10-day period.

Luigi Mangione admits killing healthcare exec

In a New York court on Friday Luigi Mangione pleaded guilty to federal charges and admitted to killing healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson. "I shot Mr Thompson in Manhattan and he died," he said. "I knew what I was doing was illegal". He could face life in prison when he is sentenced on 18 December. He is also facing charges in New York state, but his lawyers argue that a

The Observer news matrix

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"double jeopardy" law in the New York state means he cannot face the same charges twice.

Indonesia earthquake leaves nearly 50 dead

A powerful 7.7 magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia on Friday night, leaving dozens of people dead and hundreds of buildings damaged or collapsed. The quake's epicentre was in the sea north of Flores island. Indonesia's national disaster agency said 47 people had been killed and a further 50 people taken to hospital. Rescue agencies warned that both figures would rise, with some badly affected areas still inaccessible due to landslides. More than 150 homes were severely damaged, while 87 educational facilities and 18 health facilities were among the public buildings affected.

Hackers attack Tawain nuclear safety agency

Suspected hackers in China used publicly available AI tools to hack into government websites in Taiwan. The attackers used open-source agents to build a hacking tool that acted like a cyber team, mapping Taiwanese government systems and researching vulnerabilities. At least 85 government accounts were compromised and Taiwan's nuclear safety agency was attacked.

British hydrogen car sets land speed record

A British-built hydrogen car – or land rocket – has set a new land speed record on the Bonneville Salt

Long stories short

  • US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hit back at criticism for revealing she was freezing her eggs
  • Burgas, Bulgaria will host the Eurovision Song Contest 2027
  • Harry Potter fans blocked a £430m UK-Ireland power cable after claiming it would disturb a fictional grave
  • Twenty-one white storks were set free in Cornwall, the first ever released in the region
  • Brazilian police recovered eight Henri Matisse illustrations stolen from a São Paulo library last December

Flats in Utah. It has become the fastest hydrogen-power car and fastest zero-emission car, speeding across the desert at 406mph. "The car was terrific – stable, strong and fast," said wing commander Andy Green, who was driving. "This record is a huge achievement by a world-class team and superb technology," he said.

On the cover

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Wildfires continue to burn around the town of Rhayader in Powys, Wales on Wednesday. Graham M. Lawrence/LNP

Sections of The Observer are carefully collated at our print site and by newspapers. If any section of today's UK edition of The Observer is missing, call telephone 0800 839100. Back issues can be obtained from www. historic-newspapers.co.uk, or by calling 01300 669700. © 2026 Published by Tortoise Media Limited, 22 Berners Street, London W1T 3LP. Printed at Newsprinters (Broadcaster) Ltd, Great Cambridge Road, Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire, EN6 8DY; Reach Oldham Limited, Hollowood Avenue, Chadderton, Oldham GL9 8EP; Discovery Print, 90 Kingsway East, Dundee, DD4 9SJ; and Irish Times Print Facility, 4080 Kingswood Road, Citywest Business Campus, Dublin 24. Registered as a newspaper at the Post Office. ISSN 0029-7712


**

News

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

5

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We didn't have the resources to deal with tinderbox Britain, says fire chief

Chair of national council warns of insufficient engines and personnel for 'unprecedented' events

James Tapper & Jon Ungood-Thomas

Fire services did not have enough resources to immediately respond to all the wildfires in the UK last week, the country's most senior firefighter has warned.

Phil Garrigan, chair of the National Fire Chiefs Council, said that dealing with 11 major incidents at once meant that services were without sufficient numbers of fire engines and personnel to share with neighbouring areas on Thursday and Friday.

Instead, fire chiefs had to prioritise the most critical incidents. "It's unprecedented, but the new normality, nevertheless," Garrigan told The Observer yesterday.

"We still had 43 wildfires occur in the last 24 hours," he said. "Now we're back into a steady state, it becomes a bit more manageable and we're able to meet demand from those four services still dealing with major incidents."

Large parts of England have had

only a few drops of rainfall since mid-June, and after the UK recorded the hottest day of the year on Thursday – temperatures hit 38.1C at Kew in west London – the prime minister warned: "Britain is a tinderbox."

Questions have also been raised about the impact of the heat on the country's infrastructure.

Almost 40 homes were damaged or destroyed after a fire took hold at Stourbridge golf course in the West Midlands last Thursday. Yesterday residents began returning to houses that were not affected.

Others waited while the West Midlands fire service tried to dampen the ground to prevent the blaze reigniting. One was the Right Rev Martin Gorick, bishop of Dudley, who had fled with his wife and helped their elderly neighbours escape.

It was "a horrifying situation", he told the BBC. "You just hear those crackles, explosions, houses literally going up in smoke before your eyes."

'We are still woefully underprepared for heatwaves. We need more ownership of this by government'

Chloe Brimicombe, researcher

More than 50 people needed hospital treatment in the West Midlands, mostly for smoke inhalation, as well as nine firefighters across the country. In the Rhandirmwyn area, near Llandovery, in Carmarthenshire, fire crews were supported by a helicopter making water drops yesterday. There were other incidents in Luton, the New Forest and Peterborough.

Faced with 11 incidents at once, fire services had to "triage where there was the most significant risk to life and critical national infrastructure and property," Garrigan said. That meant when a service asked for 10 extra fire engines, they first received eight and two arrived later on.

"I don't have a crystal ball, but we think we're going to have wetter winters and more extreme summers, so we need to ensure we have the right capabilities, and that includes people, kit, equipment and specialist capabilities," he said.

Over the last 20 years, safer homes and better fire safety measures have meant fewer blazes, and the total number of the full-time equivalent (FTE) firefighting workforce in England has dropped from 51,700 in 2009 to about 40,000 in recent years. Among this workforce, there were 30,601 FTE firefighters in 2025.

"If we were reducing the number of firefighters when incident numbers were decreasing, then we cer-

tainly should be seeing an increase in the number of firefighters when incidents are increasing," Garrigan said.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham has announced a temporary nationwide ban on the sale of disposable barbecues and authorised the deployment of 200 army personnel in south Wales. He also pledged extra funds and a national aerial firefighting unit to support local fire and rescue services.

On Friday an emergency phone alert was sent to millions of people in England and Wales warning against

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Left, wildfire at Black Hill, Shropshire; below, the train derailment in Kent and low levels at a reservoir in Staffordshire Clun Fire Station/LNP/Getty

any activity that could start a wildfire, including use of fireworks or fire pits.

The fifth heatwave of the year has also caused damage to infrastructure across the country. Two people were seriously injured after a London to Eastbourne train derailed near Lewes, East Sussex, on Thursday. A second train derailed the following day near Wickford in Essex. The Rail Accident Investigation Branch is investigating the causes of both incidents. Network Rail has imposed speed restrictions on several stretches of track because of the hot weather.

Metal rails can get 20C hotter than the air temperature, causing them to buckle. Professor Phil Blythe, a former chief scientific adviser at the Department for Transport (DfT) and director of the National Hub for Decarbonised, Adaptable, and Resilient Transport Infrastructures at Newcastle University, said that whatever the cause, the material, design and monitoring of railway tracks would need to be upgraded or modified to cope with higher temperatures.

"It's going to cost a lot of money but we need to make our transport infrastructure more resilient and adaptable," he said. "We are learning, and Network Rail is adapting to deal with these more extreme temperatures, but not fast enough."

He said a resilience strategy was due to be published by the DfT shortly.

High temperatures can also cause the soil to shrink and crack, potentially undermining the stability of tracks. It also means more burst water pipes at a time when demand surges. Thames Water said last week there were 2,871 visible leaks across its network in July, an increase of more than 60% compared with the wetter summer in July 2025.

About 10,000 homes were affected by two water pipes bursting in South Woodford, east London, last weekend. Some residents were without water for four days.

A report by the Climate Change Committee to the government in May warned of public concern that the UK was "unprepared for climate change". It said more investment was required in heat-resilient infrastructure, better cooling systems and a more secure water supply. It also said that previous climate adaptation plans had not been fit for purpose.

"We are still woefully underprepared for heatwaves. We need more ownership of this as an issue by the government," said Chloe Brimicombe, a climate scientist and postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: "Climate adaptation underlines work throughout the whole department – from nature recovery to flooding response to sustainable farming on top of a direct and dedicated team. It is a key priority for this government."


6

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

News

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Fire rages through one of the 19 homes destroyed in Stourbridge last Friday, left. Sky News

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Drought and

devastation: UK counts the cost of heatwaves

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Clouds of smoke fill the air above Stourbridge golf course, left. Ioannis Alexopoulos/ LNP

A now redundant No Fishing sign sticks out of the earth at Kings Mere pond on Putney Heath, south-west London, right. Brook Mitchell/Getty

A family, left, braves last week's 37C heatwave on Wimbledon Common, south- west London. Alex Lenkati/LNP

Destroyed homes continue to smoulder after a blaze in Stoke on Trent, above. Christopher Furlong/ Getty

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Burnham says oil and gas can

help switch to clean energy

Catherine Neilan Whitehall editor

Andy Burnham says accelerating the extraction of oil and gas in the North Sea could help "bridge" the transi- tion to clean energy, as the country endured another peak in tempera- tures and wildfires last week.

Speaking from Stourbridge on Friday, where 19 homes were destroyed by fires, the prime minis- ter also announced £65m to support farmers grappling with drought and

the deployment of military person- nel to bolster the nation's firefighters, acknowledging the fire and rescue service "isn't properly set up to deal with these incidents".

That view is shared by nearly two- thirds (59%) of adults, according to exclusive polling by Opinium for The Observer. Only 12% think the coun- try is well prepared to deal with the impact of climate change. People are most concerned about the UK's water infrastructure, food security and pub- lic health, the polling reveals.

But the same survey found that many Brits share Burnham's prag- matism over North Sea oil and gas production. While around one in five oppose any new drilling, 61% back approving new fields as long as it comes with caveats including phasing out oil and gas production as quickly as possible. Nearly a quarter (24%) believe the UK should encourage the development of new oil and gas fields.

Burnham has left open the pos- sibility of granting approval for the Rosebank oil field off Shetland and the Jackdaw gas field, east of Aberdeen, with a decision expected imminently. He told BBC Radio SLive that approving the two plans could help "speed up the energy transition". Although he did not name the sites,

Burnham said: "We won't be able to stop using oil and gas for some time, that's just a fact. The question is whether we can accelerate use of it so that we pay for the transition, and one thing helps the other... whether that extraction can be the bridge to the clean energy future we need, and bring it forward."

Climate action group Friends of the Earth welcomed Burnham "breaking his silence" on the heatwaves, but said he must "demonstrate that he understands the causes and effects of the climate emergency by rejecting a third runway at Heathrow and ruling out new oil and gas developments."

Green party leader Zack Polanski said it was "gobsmacking that Andy Burnham's response to the deaths

from the climate crisis has been to pledge to try and stop the sale of sin- gle-use barbecues". A report by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) suggests there were 2,877 heat-asso- ciated deaths in May and June 2026, almost double the 2025 figure for the period.

The Conservatives – whose leader Kemi Badenoch has banned candi- dates from representing the party unless they abandon its former net zero policies – said Burnham should go further in support for farmers. The party's rejection of net zero has been met with criticism from across the political spectrum, but Badenoch shows no sign of backing down.

The Conservatives did not respond to requests for comment.


News

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

7

Relationship between teacher and pupil 'was an open secret at school'

Ex-pupil tells trial how woman accused of sexually abusing him as a teenager took him to staff drinks at a pub

Chloe Hadjimatheou

A woman on trial for sexually abusing two teenage boys at the school where she taught reported one of her alleged victims to police for threatening to rape her, a court heard. The rape allegation followed an interview the man gave to The Observer in 2025, the court was told.

Sally-Anne Bowen, who taught at Christ's College Finchley in north London between 1986 and 1988, faces eight counts of indecent assault relating to two former pupils. Both men, now in their 50s and who cannot be named, were 14 when the alleged relationship with their then 25-year-old teacher is said to have begun.

The relationship with one of the boys, the court heard, escalated over several months. The teacher and pupil took the bus together and met at a cafe near the school at lunchtimes. It was there that they looked through an explicit Penthouse magazine, and Bowen pointed to an image of a naked blonde woman and told the teenager: 'That is what my pussy looks like.' The man described it as a 'powerful experience' for a young boy.

Giving evidence via a recorded 2014 police interview, Bowen's former pupil said that soon after the magazine incident he walked Bowen home and, sitting on her bed, they began to kiss and undress. 'I can remember distinctly the first time I had sex with her properly. I didn't know. She had to tell me,' he told police. 'Then there was a conversation if I was still a virgin because I hadn't ejaculated.'

During the remainder of the 1988 school year, he said, the pair met at Bowen's flat 'three or four times a week' and had sex '20 or 30 times'.

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In a second police interview conducted in 2020, the man described a practice he'd believed was normal. 'She taught me to urinate inside her,' he said. 'My introduction into the sexual world was completely governed by Sally-Anne Bowen. How could I distinguish between what was normal and what was not?'

Defence barrister Mark Kimsey put it to the alleged victim that he was a fantasist obsessed with Bowen, quoting a line from The Observer's Lucky Boy podcast in which, when asked what he'd say to Bowen given the chance, he replied: 'I might want to hug her, I might want to kiss her, I might want to fuck her.'

'The issue is whether [Bowen] crossed boundaries that existed to protect them'

Madeleine Wolfe, prosecutor

The alleged victim said Bowen's barrister had left out the rest of the quote, in which he continued: 'I might want to punch her in the face, I might just want to cry. How about that? How fucked up's that?' He told the court: 'The only strange thing in my answer is punching her in the face. That's the only thing I haven't done before. All the other things I've done before.' He said Bowen had reported him to the police over that quote.

Responding to the suggestion he was fabricating evidence out of grievance, the alleged victim said he'd initially told police he was willing to drop the charges if Bowen agreed to talk to him. 'I offered no criminal proceedings. It's called restorative justice. The police said the charges are so serious they would not agree to that,' he told the court.

The man said he'd felt singled out by his teacher's attention and viewed it as a romance. 'I fell in love with her. I was a willing participant,' he said.

Prosecutor Madeleine Wolfe argued that framing missed the point. Bowen was 27 at the time the relationship

became sexual; her pupils were still children. 'The issue in this case is not whether the boys appeared flattered, willing or besotted,' Wolfe said. 'It is whether Sally-Anne Bowen, knowing her position and their vulnerability, crossed the boundaries that existed to protect them.'

The relationship was an open secret at the school, the court heard. The main alleged victim said teachers seemed aware of it, recalling how Bowen took him to end-of-year staff drinks at a pub, where his form teacher told her she hoped her pupil 'would get home safely'.

The court also heard that the boy's mother confronted Bowen by phone after learning her son was involved with a teacher, and briefly sent him to stay with relatives in Manchester to end the contact. It didn't work; Bowen kept calling, and her pupil soon returned to London, where the relationship resumed until Bowen broke off contact at the end of the summer.

The alleged victim described feeling abandoned and out of control: 'I thought I could do anything. I had no

respect for anyone,' he said. He was eventually forced to leave the school, and told police the relationship made it hard to interact with girls his own age: 'Maybe I'd seen a bit too much.'

Bowen's second alleged victim presented a less extensive pattern of contact, according to Wolfe. Meeting the teacher with other boys at the cafe, he said the group encouraged him to kiss her and fondle her breasts, and that he put his hand near her crotch on occasion. Bowen 'would not react negatively,' Wolfe said.

Wolfe said the second alleged victim also felt drawn in by a teacher he and his classmates found attractive. Both boys told police they'd seen Bowen behave in a flirty way, wearing clothing they considered inappropriate for a teacher at a boys' school.

Neither complainant reported the alleged abuse until more than 30 years later. The first victim went to police in 2014, after his stepchildren turned 14. 'That was the first time I realised I was a child [back] then,' he said in the recorded interview.

A decade later, he brought his allegations to the Teaching Regulation Agency, where Bowen faced a professional misconduct hearing. The second complainant came forward to police in 2025 after that hearing.

Bowen denies all charges. In police interviews, she described the main complainant as a 'nuisance' who followed her around the school. She denied the cafe conversations both described, saying any account of a sexual relationship was fantasy.

Her defence will also draw on medical evidence relating to a condition she says made intercourse painful during the period in question.

Her barrister put it to her former pupil that Bowen has a vaginal septum – a division creating two canals smaller than a normal vagina, which in 1988 meant penetration would have been extremely painful.

The alleged victim said Bowen never complained of any pain during sex. He also suggested that his age might have meant that sex with him was less painful for her: 'Did you ever think that's why she was having sex with a child, because they were smaller than a grown man?'

From the dock, Bowen shook her head and furrowed her brow as she heard her former pupil give his testimony. At one point, the alleged victim burst out: 'She remembers. She's staring straight at me.'

The trial continues.

Judge overturns abusive special forces soldier's parental access

Louise Tickle

A British special forces soldier has been banned by a high court judge from seeing his daughter after an Observer investigation into attempts by the Ministry of Defence to cover up his domestic abuse.

'I feel like my daughter and I have just been given our lives back. We now have the opportunity to move forward with stability, knowing we're protected,' said Jenny (not her real name), in the wake of a high court judgment published on Friday.

The judgment reversed a lower court's decision to award her husband, a proven abuser, extensive unsupervised contact with his young child. Instead, Mr Justice Garrido banned the father – who for legal reasons cannot be named – from seeing or speaking to her for at least three years. Garrido also barred him from entering the area where his daughter and her mother live, and restricted his ability to apply to vary the 'no contact' order for the same period.

The Observer is able to report on this case only after making an application in December 2024 to publish details of the original judge's ruling permitting unsupervised contact, which we reported on in May.

A judge had ruled during the original proceedings that the father's 'orchestrated and continuous controlling and coercive behaviour' had exposed his daughter to domestic abuse and that he posed 'a physical and emotional risk to the child'. Despite a family court adviser recommending that contact should be fortnightly and supervised, the judge ordered a schedule of contact that would end up in weekly unsupervised sessions. The adviser was so concerned by the decision that they

made a safeguarding referral to the local authority's children's services, and wrote in protest to the judge.

When The Observer tried to report the details of the case, the MoD fought to ban reference to the words 'special forces' on the grounds that it would be a national security risk. The evidence to support this claim was given in secret hearings from which The Observer was excluded, and the newspaper's interests were instead represented by a 'special advocate'. In January the MoD dropped its application for reporting restrictions.

Jenny said she felt able to apply to stop the father's weekly unsupervised contact only after the application to publish details of the case had been lodged, because the media proceed-

ings led to a new and more senior guardian being appointed to represent the child's interests in court, who again raised serious concerns about the father's contact with his daughter.

In Friday's judgment Mr Justice Garrido said that, taking expert evidence from a psychologist as well as a statement by Jenny and the guardian's recommendation into account, his decision was 'not finely balanced'.

'The immediate cessation of contact, whilst painful in the short term, is the only way to secure [the child's] medium and long-term welfare,' the judge said.

The father was asked through his solicitor if he would speak to The Observer. No reply had been received at time of going to press.


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‘Whatever Jason may have done, nobody deserves to be treated like this’

After the death of Jason Arday, colleagues have spoken of the tragic effect weeks of media scrutiny took on a ‘gentle soul’

Jon Ungood-Thomas, Lily Isaacs & Catherine Neilan

In the days leading up to his death, people who spoke to former Cambridge professor Jason Arday said he felt hugely distressed over the unrelenting scrutiny of his life and “didn’t see a way back”. He is said to have felt Cambridge University should have provided more support, as claims about his childhood, personal achievements and academic record were dissected by the media.

Arday was the youngest Black person appointed to a professorship at the university, but he resigned on 5 August after allegations of plagiarism. Intense media coverage questioned whether he could have completed marathons with a hairline fracture, whether he could have appeared in the documentary series Seven Up and whether a pig’s head was ever sent to his family home in a racist campaign.

Arday was branded a “fantasist” on social media, as revelation followed revelation. There were others who warned of his fragility. On Friday afternoon, he was pronounced dead at an address in south London. He was 41 and left two children.

“It’s an absolute tragedy, because he was a gentle soul,” said Robert Beckford, a professorial research fel-

low at the Queen’s Foundation, a college in Birmingham, who had been in touch with Arday to provide support. “He was a compassionate individual who cared deeply about his subject.”

Millie Kerr, who works as a anti-racist lead for a council and met Arday at a conference shortly after his appointment at Cambridge, said: “No matter what Jason may have done, nobody deserves to be treated like this.”

Arday was appointed professor of sociology of education at Cambridge in February 2023 at the age of 37. A university press release told the apparently remarkable story of a boy who had been diagnosed with a form of autism aged three, who was unable to read or write until he was 18 and who then rose to one of the top academic posts in the country. The appointment made headlines round

Jason Arday arriving for a TV appearance at the BBC in March 2025. Elliott Franks/Eyevine

Number of print articles mentioning Jason Arday in UK titles in the past year

As listed in NLA Clipshare

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Source: NLA. Note: Duplicate articles removed from count

Nathan Cofnas, the man at centre of plagiarism row

Lily Isaacs

The allegations against Jason Arday gained widespread attention after Nathan Cofnas, an academic who was dismissed by Cambridge’s Emmanuel College in 2024, posted a Substack alleging that parts of Arday’s PhD were plagiarised. He called Arday’s appointment “DEI ideology” and told Times Radio that Arday was “not smart” like a Cambridge professor.

Cofnas is a self-described “race realist” whose research focuses on philosophy of biology and ethics. In February 2024, he published a post on Substack in which he claimed that “under a colour-blind system” Black people “would disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment”. He called for a “revolution” against the “DEI devil” and for people to “accept that talent is not distributed equally”.

The following month a petition by Cambridge students and academics calling for his dismissal gained more than 1,200 signatures. There were protests against him, and 58 students launched formal complaints against him for discrimination against Black students.

In the complaints, students alleged that Cofnas was endorsing “the logic of a eugenicist” and that the university was encouraging “discriminatory and bigoted rhetoric” by funding his research. One of the complainants, philosophy student Jacob Bowden, said he was surprised to see Cofnas receive “positive attention” in the media in recent weeks.

Nathan Cofnas was dismissed from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, because of his views on race.

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With the support of the Free Speech Union, Cofnas sued Emmanuel College in August 2024 for belief discrimination. His fundraising page on the organisation’s website raised more than £85,000. The college won the lawsuit on the grounds that the blog’s impact was “immediate and significant” and that harm and reputational damage had occurred.

Cambridge dismissed the complaints by the 58 students against Cofnas late in 2025. The year before, free speech rules at the university had changed to allow “controversial or unpopular opinions within the law”. Cofnas’s views were protected by this policy. The university said all members of its community “are encouraged to exercise their rights

to freedom of speech”. Cofnas now works at Ghent University in Belgium, and posts regularly on X and Substack about his race-related views.

Kehinde Andrews, an academic of Black studies, said he believes Cofnas was inspired by the “playbook” of Christopher Rufo, a rightwing US commentator who accused the Harvard president Claudine Gay of plagiarism, and has laid out a framework for others to do the same.

“Many academics are accused of plagiarism. Why did this become such a story? It is because people like Cofnas simply don’t believe that Black people deserve to be professors at all. They don’t think they’re capable,” Andrews said.

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the world. Then on 21 July, the academic Nathan Cofnas, who has faced controversy because of his extreme views on race, published a Substack post with claims Arday was a plagiarist. Cofnas had run Arday's 2015 PhD thesis on peer mentoring among student teachers through plagiarism-detection software and said it found "substantial overlap" with other published work.

Cofnas's post fired a starting gun on widespread media coverage. Late July and August are some of the quietest weeks in Britain's newcomers and Arday faced three weeks of intense coverage. Liverpool John Moores University, where Arday was awarded his PhD, had previously investigated the allegations. It found he made "honest and reasonable" errors, dismissing the allegations of plagiarism.

There were also claims originally raised with Cambridge University in 2023 over a 2018 study published by Arday in the journal Social Sciences, which was said to have similarities to a paper published two years earlier in the journal BMJ Open. The article was

'The accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me'

Arday's resignation letter

corrected. Jack Grove, a Times Higher Education reporter, had contacted Arday in September 2025 over claims of plagiarism. He was sent a letter on behalf of Arday by the legal firm Carter-Ruck denying the allegations. He was also the subject of a police investigation that Mark Rowley, head of the Metropolitan police, admitted last week was a mistake.

While Arday's defenders said the most serious charge of plagiarism had been dismissed, reporters were now combing through every aspect of his life. The Telegraph questioned whether he had really run 600 miles in six days and raised £5.5m for charity, as he claimed. The Mail Online published a video of Arday claiming he was on the documentary series Seven Up, which was originally broadcast decades before he was born. And the Guardian investigated whether mutilated animals, including a pig's head, had been sent

to his family home. Arday was said to have been distraught at the intensity of the coverage.

On 5 August, Cambridge University announced an investigation into Arday's appointment and he resigned from his post. "The relentless accusations, speculation and public commentary have taken a profound toll on me and on those I love," he wrote in an open resignation letter.

An investigation and a resignation might have been expected to draw a line under the saga, but several newspapers and broadcast outlets continued to cover the story. The coverage included examining the exact age he started speaking and a report that some of his former students who received lower grades than expected had received "inadequate" supervision. (The Observer has published one news report and one opinion piece, both after Arday's resignation.)

The focus turned to Arday's forthcoming memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, due to be published later this month by Simon & Schuster. In it, he describes "autistic burnout" during lockdown, which he described as a "state of overwhelming physical and mental exhaustion". He planned his own suicide, but said a family member intervened and prevented him from taking his life.

Jolyon Maugham, executive director of the Good Law Project, a non-profit campaign group that has been supporting Arday, said he was in contact with the academic last Wednesday, and was hoping to persuade him to watch cricket at the Oval.

"He was very distressed," Maugham said. "He thought his life was coming to an end. He didn't see a way back. He had got more and more distraught. It became more and more difficult to make the case to him that this was going to end soon."

Arday's family said in a statement that he had been subjected to a "campaign of sustained abuse" since he accepted the professorship.

A Cambridge University spokesperson said last night: "Our thoughts and deepest condolences are with Jason's family and loved ones."

"Throughout his time at Cambridge, Jason received a range of support in relation to both his mental and physical wellbeing. This included the provision of counselling, advice, and security measures. Our support continued in the face of intense public and media scrutiny and after his resignation."

Autism expert claims 'bullying' was relentless

James Tapper

Two weeks ago, after he had a conversation with Jason Arday, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen posted a message on X.

The psychologist said that he was "very concerned" about the impact of media coverage on his friend, who had autism, and linked it to work that his Autism Research Centre at the University of Cambridge had done

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Jesus College, Cambridge, where Jason Arday worked. Brock Mitchell/AFP/Getty

showing that autistic people were at a greater risk of suicide.

"This is relentless bullying of a vulnerable autistic man and raises safeguarding issues," he wrote. "It's time to stop." X owner Elon Musk responded with one word: "Liar."

Yesterday, Baron-Cohen said Arday had sent him a voice note on the morning of his death. "He felt he couldn't go on," Baron-Cohen told Radio 4's Today programme.

Jill Aylott, founder of the National Autism and ADHD Centre, said that "accountability should never require us to abandon humanity."

"When somebody becomes the focus of sustained national criticism... institutions should be asking: who is checking that this person is safe?"

"Arday and Kelly were the casualties of two different kinds of war

COMMENT

Ceri Thomas

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Anyone who worked in BBC news in July 2003 will remember the chill that ran through the newsroom on the

day the body of Dr David Kelly was discovered – an almost physical thing. I felt it again on Friday evening when I heard that Jason Arday had been found dead.

Kelly was the government scientist who had been the source for a story by the BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan that alleged Tony Blair's government had "sexed up" a dossier about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction as part of its case for going to war.

Kelly's life unravelled at devastating speed. The government ensured that his name got into the public domain. He was disgraced, interrogated by a select committee of parliament, realised that he had lost his career and might forfeit his pension, and eventually, on 17 July, told his wife he was going for a walk, before taking his own life in the Oxfordshire countryside.

The surface parallels between Kelly and Arday are obvious enough. They were humiliated, scrutinised unsparingly and relentlessly in the press, and lost jobs that were surely important to their self-esteem. Both appear to have made mistakes: Kelly is not appreciating the significance of what he was telling journalists, and Arday, to admit only to the errors he made in the thoroughness of some of his early research papers. But there are deeper parallels, too. Both Kelly and Arday ended up as civilians in "wars" that were not of their making. Both, arguably, became victims of the loss of perspective that happens inevitably in wartime.

In 2003, the issues at least appeared war-sized: had the government misled the public and sent British troops into battle on a false prospectus? Today, it is a different fight, over diversity, equity, and inclusion, cultural advantage and alleged bad practice in another big institution, but it is treated with the same existential seriousness.

The tunnel vision that comes with conflict meant that some distinct anxieties about Gilligan in the BBC long before the story of the sexed-up dossier were overlooked. When the government went to war with the BBC – as the most senior people there thought it had at the time – the doubts were set aside and he became much more

"our boy" than he had ever been before. In its early responses to the public assault on Arday, Cambridge, too, hugged him close, and not necessarily to his advantage.

Twenty-three years ago, the flywheel of clickbait and social media pile-ons were nightmares we were yet to suffer, but what was true in 2003 has been true again today; one side's instinct to rally round becomes a provocation to the other, so an escalation in the fight is almost guaranteed.

The worst case – the one we have just witnessed again – is that the human being at the centre of it is reduced to a scrap to be fought over, even when the warnings of a risk to his life are loud and public.

If there was a precondition to the disaster that befell Kelly, it was a lack of communication. In the long run-up to his death, the BBC and the government had almost stopped talking. Even at the most senior levels, the most frequently used channel was the fax machine, not the smartphone. Part of the tragedy then was how fixable the problem felt; part of Arday's is how much more difficult it seems today, not between two institutions but between two badly defined sides in a very foggy culture war.

When Kelly's body was found, Blair was on a flight to Tokyo. Before his plane had even landed, he announced what became the Hutton inquiry into the scientist's death. For all the inadequacies of the Hutton report – one senior BBC person said that the inquiry's final document contained no lessons for the media but plenty for politicians – it speaks to a simpler time.

The universities that employed Arday will certainly come under scrutiny, none more so than Cambridge. But who will ask searching questions of the media – social as well as traditional – about their role in a death that might have been foretold?

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Government scientist David Kelly took his own life in July 2003.

In the UK and Ireland, the Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123


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Support for Reform UK on display in Clacton last week. Ben Montgomery/ Getty Images

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Farage could be the rising tide that sinks everything

The Reform leader won his byelection, but in what was meant to be its breakthrough year, his party is stalling, Ceri Thomas reports

A difficult few days for Reform UK have capped a dreadful three months for the party. If its leader, Nigel Farage, were to contemplate his pint honestly as it sat on the bar today, he would have to concede that Reform's glass is half empty at a point in 2026 when he had every reason to expect it would be more than half full. This was to be

a "breakthrough year"; instead, after the high point of the local elections in England in May, the party has suffered setback after setback.

At the same time, in spite of all his stumbles, Farage's own momentum has slowed but not stalled. Relatively speaking, he is succeeding while the party he leads is

failing, and the contrast in fortunes is making even some of his supporters uncomfortable.

For them, the Clacton-on-Sea byelection is a proof point. It was called, unilaterally, by Farage and diverted some of Reform's resources away from the bigger prize of the vote to replace Andy Burnham as Greater Manchester mayor. But the party gained almost nothing from the win in Clacton while Farage himself gained handsomely.

Senior party figures believe the result there means, in effect, he can stop worrying about the parliamentary inquiry into the undeclared £5m gift from the crypto-billion-

aire Christopher Harborne. The most severe sanction that could arise from the inquiry would be another byelection. And after Farage persuaded more people to vote for him last week than did so in the last general election, his close colleagues believe he looks unassailable in any contest in the constituency.

So a familiar question lingers: is Farage the rising tide that sinks everything around him? And the question has been sharpened by Reform's success as a money-raising machine. It ended last year having spent only £22m of the £32m it attracted in donations, and again pulled in more money than any other

This man made a mockery of those who fought so hard for the right to vote

COMMENT

Peter Hain

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As Nigel Farage's acolytes posed and pranced in the early hours last Friday morning, claiming his predictable Clacton byelection win as a victory for the people against the system, it was easy to forget how precious the right to vote is, how vital democracy is.

By resigning and triggering the byelection he made a mockery of that precious right.

Russian political leader Alexei Navalny died for it in 2024. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison for it.

Just ask one of Farage's favourites, Vladimir Putin, whether his Russian citizens really have a true democracy – when the president's opponents are killed and free media suppressed so voting becomes the right only to re-elect him. Or ask Ukrainians whether they have democratic rights in the face of equivocation by Donald Trump and Farage over Putin's savage invasion.

"We provoked this war," Farage told Bloomberg in 2025. Putin was

the world leader he most admired, he told GQ in March 2014.

As a British parliamentary observer back in April 1994, I witnessed thousands streaming out of the dawn haze in Soweto, South Africa. My official driver put his ballot form in the box, part triumphant, part astonished, punching the air in excitement.

A Black man in middle age, he had voted for the first time in his life, telling me he had been worried in case his ballot paper might be snatched away at the last minute.

An old woman in her 90s voted, a smile of eternity gracing her weathered face, as young men bounced out in their trainers, giving high-fives to friends.

Farage and his opponent Count Binface, right. Dan Kitwood/Getty

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Nigel Farage with his party's home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf. Carlos Imoto/MP/ Getty Images

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party in the first quarter of 2026 (the most recent figures available). If now is not the moment when Reform becomes an organised, professional force, then when?

Staffers say it is already happening. Reform's policy unit, they claim as an example, is bigger and better than any other party's. But the commentator and activist Tim Montgomerie – 33 years a Conservative before he joined Reform in December 2024 – sees an old culture still devouring its new organisation. "It's no longer good enough developing policy over boozy lunches in Victoria," he says.

Other senior Conservatives who have joined Reform have floundered.

A man flies the St George's flag as polls open in Clacton.

Aldo Ciarrocchi/LNP

The highest-profile of them, Robert Jenrick, is still nominally the party's treasury spokesperson but not seen, or used, as an asset by its inner circle. Suella Braverman has vanished almost without trace.

For Montgomerie, the frustration is that the fundamentals are good: "Reform got the big call right – better- off people going left, blue collar people going right. Reform are in such a better place strategically than the Conservatives, they just haven't got the personnel yet."

To an extent, that is common ground with Farage, who told a press conference that "I started off this year with us being called a one- man band... in month eight of the year, we've transformed the look of the party in terms of the breadth of the people that are able to go out and speak for us. Are there more gaps for me to fill? It's very much a work in progress?"

Progress in politics is more often measured against expectations than hard milestones. And on 8 May this year, the morning after local elec- tions in England and national votes in Scotland and Wales, Farage set them high. "It's a big, big day not just for our party," he said, "but for a complete reshaping of British politics in every way." Reform's results were strong, according to Farage, but only the beginning: a "stepping stone".

May's results did play a part in reshaping British politics – Keir Starmer was gone in a little over two months. But for Reform, mis-steps followed: a poor showing in the

Makerfield byelection, which sent Andy Burnham on the road to No 10, and then a worse one in the election to replace him as mayor of Greater Manchester where Reform got only 21% of first-round votes in a contest it thought it might win.

In the same elections, Restore Britain, the party set up by the for- mer Reform MP Rupert Lowe, after he fell out with Farage, got 9%. Reform's inability to figure out how to position itself against its new, further-right neighbour has created its most signif- icant strategic headache and focused attention on a relationship that has become a litmus test for the party, between Farage and his home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf.

Farage treats Restore, in part, as an old problem – one of those beyond- the-pale political parties like the BNP that he has always claimed to have stood as a bulwark against. But in comments last week, it was clear there was wiggle room. "So we can talk to Rupert Lowe," said Farage, "it's fine. But when you have... publicly supportive people demanding that all Jews be removed from the coun- try, just as an example – the condi- tion I would put on it is that those people would have to be out of the inner circle."

The spotlight has fallen on the Farage-Yusuf relationship because a number of Reform-friendly com- mentators worry that Yusuf polices the boundary to Reform's right much less diligently than Farage, and some see him actively trying to pull the party across it.

There was a flare-up last week when, in a social media post, Yusuf called the former Conservative defence secretary and decorated soldier, Ben Wallace, a moron and a traitor to his country. That raised questions about how a political insur- gency such as Reform matures into a potential governing party – was Yusuf's determination to spit in oppo- nents' faces cementing too many of its negative perceptions? – but the stra- tegic questions go deeper.

Montgomerie credits Yusuf with some rare political talents, but says: "He's the weirdest person I've ever come across in politics, and there's a lot of competition for that. Nigel Farage has consistently failed to bring him under control. Is he going to?"

For Montgomerie, the answer to that question is of primary impor- tance because it goes to the heart of the kind of party Reform becomes, faced with a challenge from its right. He sees Yusuf's authoritarian instincts as out of step with Reform, and arguably more suited to Restore: "If Zia had power in a job like home secretary, I would really worry."

As ever, in a party as dominated by a single individual as Reform is by Farage, personality and politics are inseparable. In spite of all the new money, the fresh faces and the struc- tures now in place, Farage's friendly critics worry that he is no more inter- ested now than he has ever been in serious policymaking, that he is essentially unreformable. And if he is, the party may be too.

A Farage supporter cannuses for Reform in Clacton. Tim Imoto/MP

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After all those long years of bitterness, state murder and torture, lives wasted away in prison, constitutional apartheid was being exorcised in a mighty triumph of democracy.

Fighters for great democratic causes, from anti-apartheid campaigners to slavery abolitionists, are invariably unpopular, or persecuted, at the very time they most need support – only to be glorified once they have prevailed.

People forget the long and hard struggle for all to have the right to vote in Britain. Today the suffragettes have iconic status, treated as heroines. Yet they were vilified during decades-long protests demanding votes for

women – only reluctantly conceded less than a hundred years ago.

Working-class men can vote today, as thousands did in Clacton last Thursday, yet the Chartists had to fight long and hard to secure that right. It too was only grudgingly conceded.

Is trouncing a trash-bin opponent amid a circus of bizarre byelection individualists really democracy? Or is Farage, like Trump, a Teflon politician? Dodgy donations, sleaze, rash rhetoric, hatred, prejudice cloaked in scapegoating, intimidating journalists – all seem to brush off him.

His supporters don't apply the standards to him that they demand of opponents, seeing the official

inquiry into his personal finances as a witch-hunt. Yet they demand that their opponents are pristine. One rule for them, another for the rest.

Imagine if Andy Burnham had ever been sued for alleged rape like Trump has? Or Kemi Badenoch had been handed £5m by a crypto king like Farage has? They would be toast.

Democracy? Last Thursday we had a vote by the people, certainly. But was it really for the people? Farage abused a hard-won principle that should be cherished, not trashed.

Labour peer Peter Hain is a former MP, cabinet minister and anti-apartheid campaigner


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Ride to school on an e-scooter: retailers try to lure children into illegal journeys

Shops call on underage riders to 'roll up to a friend's house' – even though it's unlawful on public roads

Ed Wiseman

Amazon and Debenhams are among several online shops promoting the unlawful use of electric scooters by underage riders, The Observer has found.

E-scooters are illegal to ride on roads or in public spaces, unless as part of an official scheme such as Lime or Voi rentals, and their use by children under 16 is restricted to private land. But several retailers are flouting advertising regulations by promoting e-scooters to parents and teenagers – including for journeys to and from school.

On the Debenhams site, an £81.60 Homcom-branded e-scooter is advertised as being 'an ideal' gift for a child and suitable 'for 7 to 14 year olds to use as an everyday commuter scooter'. One listing on Amazon, with an accompanying image showing two young people in school uni-

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Children under the age of 16 can only ride e-scooters on private land. Getty

form, describes a generic 'adult and teen' e-scooter as being 'perfect for overtaking or rushing through busy city streets'.

The scenarios set out in both listings would be unlawful in terms of on-road use and underage, unlicensed driving. While both sites include disclaimers telling buyers not to use the e-scooters on public roads, neither says explicitly that it is illegal.

Advertising Standards Authority rules state that these warnings are insufficient, and do not override an impression given elsewhere in the advert endorsing illegal use.

Smaller specialist retailers are targeting parents with 'back-to-school sales'. Retailer iSinwheel has a selection of electric scooters marketed specifically at 11-year-olds, which it says can be used to travel to school

or 'roll up to a friend's house with a big smile'. Chinese manufacturer iScooter makes overt references on its UK website to its 'back-to-school' range being suitable for road use.

'We take a firm line on ads that state or imply, in text or images, that electric scooters can be used in public spaces such as pavements, roads, cycle paths or parks,' a spokesperson for the Advertising Standards Authority said. 'We've previously taken action against ads that have broken the rules by irresponsibly implying that e-scooters could be ridden on public roads.' The ASA has limited statutory power and cannot issue fines but it has upheld complaints about e-scooter adverts from companies including Currys for being 'misleading' and 'socially irresponsible' for implying that they could be ridden on public roads.

Privately owned e-scooters are excluded from all roads, pavements and cycle lanes, and land to which the public has access. The only place they are legal to ride is on private land with the permission of the owner – a narrow permitted use case that does not explain the estimated 1.2m e-scooters that the Department for Transport believes to be in circulation in England. E-scooter injuries among under-18s are

rising sharply. The three major children's trauma centres in the north of England – Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield – have treated 477 children since 2019. Injuries in under-16s rose from 10 in 2019 to 150 in 2024 and the average age of those injured was 12. An estimated 59 people have died in e-scooter accidents, including Jacob Calland, a 14-year-old who was a passenger on the back of a vehicle driven by his friend when it crashed into a car in March 2025.

A recent review of e-scooter injuries among children, published in the BMJ Emergency Medicine Journal, showed that just 2.5% of injuries to riders or other parties occurred on private land.

Amazon confirmed it was investigating the listing highlighted by The Observer. It said in a statement: 'We

require all products offered in our store to comply with applicable laws, regulations, and Amazon policies. E-scooters sold on our store carry prominent banners and resources for our customers regarding safe and legal use.'

Debenhams, iSinwheel and iScooter were approached for comment.

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News

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

13

'I felt like, how does one make cash? One option was stripping'

Now with her own Edinburgh Fringe show, ex-topless model Keeley Hazell tells former anti-Page 3 campaigner Jessica Hayden what motivated her decisions

Keeley Hazell's show at the Edinburgh Fringe is an hour-long monologue about the men who, she says, exploited her and made money from her image. As one of the most famous Page 3 models of the noughties, Hazell became accustomed to seeing her topless photographs in newspapers alongside versions of herself she barely recognised.

Now 39, she walks on stage in leopard-print hot pants, her white top raised to expose her bra. The show is loosely based on her memoir of the same name – Everyone's Seen My Tits – and the conceit is that she is 'auditioning' to play Keeley. She is, after all, the real-life inspiration for the character Keeley Jones in Apple TV's Ted Lasso. In the Fringe show, as in real life, she doesn't get the part. Then she delivers harrowing tales of exploitation.

When Hazell was 20, the Sunday Sport published photographs from a private sex tape, sold to the newspaper by her ex-boyfriend. 'My full vagina was on show, in black and white, in a national newspaper,' she says during her show. She remembers seeing her ex-boyfriend drive around in an expensive car paid for by the profits

of the tape, while she felt that her own life had collapsed.

At the time, revenge porn (the act of sharing sexual images or videos without someone's consent) wasn't illegal. The paper was owned by David Sullivan, who is accused of sexually abusing women, many of whom met him in hopes of appearing in the newspaper. Sullivan denies the accusations.

Hazell grew up on a council estate in south-east London and left school at 16 to work in a hair salon. A colleague suggested she become a Page 3 girl and she sent off pictures to newspapers. 'It's a very weird system, and I just really wanted to make money,' she says. 'I felt like, how does one make money? One option was stripping. It just felt like there were really limited options to make money.'

Class sits at the heart of Hazell's complicated relationship with Page 3. 'My journey is a journey of class mobility,' she says. 'I say I'm a feminist, but I don't think appearing on Page 3 is a feminist act. But it was also complicated in terms of the campaign [to end Page 3]. The women who were campaigning against it, they had life opportunities and access to education that maybe some of the women going on Page 3 didn't.'

This is where our paths cross. When I was 16, I was one of the faces of the No More Page 3 campaign; Channel 4 made a documentary about my campaigning. I also campaigned to make revenge porn illegal, years after Hazell was affected by it. I sat in the House of Lords in a No More Page 3 T-shirt to watch the legislation pass.

At 16, I saw Page 3 as a black-and-white issue. I thought the answer

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'The campaigners had life chances and access to education that maybe some Page 3 women didn't'

Keeley Hazell, former model

was obvious: Page 3 was wrong, and women should not participate in it. I did not think about what it meant for someone like Hazell, who perceived herself as having limited options and who was keen to make money, to be offered an extraordinary amount of it for taking her clothes off.

Eleven years after the Sun dropped its topless feature, I tell her about my involvement in the campaign. She asks questions about why I did it, and I can see why she thinks the campaign missed something – the agency women like Hazell felt themselves to have – although she's not sorry the campaign succeeded.

'I felt like it was time,' she says. 'To me, Page 3 is an insane concept, and I think it is good that it is gone. What message does Page 3 give off in society? And that's part of the

Keeley Hazell, left Jessica Hayden, below, campaigning while being filmed for a documentary. In the car is former Sun journalist Andy Coulson. Guy Lowndes, Justin Talley/AFP/Getty Images

conflict of doing Page 3, for me. Taking a job that doesn't ethically and morally align, but pays me far more than I could earn in a hair salon.'

I tell Hazell what happened to me after the Channel 4 documentary aired. At 17, I was bombarded with harassment. A man worked out my home address from a clip showing my parents' front door. People shared photographs of my 17-year-old face superimposed onto the bodies of Page 3 girls. A video of me walking around my school in uniform, filmed for the documentary, was uploaded to a forum that shares sexualised pictures of children. I reported it to the police, but was told there was nothing they could do. It is still there.

After an hour of chatting, I ask Hazell whether she thinks we would have got on when we were both 16. 'Have you seen the play 1536?' she asks in response. I hadn't.

'It takes place in the year Henry VIII beheaded Anne Boleyn,' she says. 'And it's three girls in Essex, and they are dealing with the news that the king is about to behead his wife. It's interesting because they're all different characters. One of them is the Madonna, one's the whore, one's sort of an independent woman. And you suddenly realise when you get to the end that, for every one of them, they're fucked by men and the patriarchy. And so our experience is a similar thing. It doesn't matter which angle you look at the issue. You're fucked by men and the patriarchy.'

Hazell was never the enemy. She was a woman making choices within a system that had given her limited options, and an opportunity she felt she couldn't afford to turn down. I understand that now.

Salt Path probe may have cost the movie its US distributor

Stephen Armstrong

The Observer's investigation into The Salt Path author Raynor Winn may have lost the film its major US distributor, according to its star Gillian Anderson.

'[It] was doing really well in the UK – beyond my expectations,' she told the Radio Times last week. 'I think we were about to sign with Sony Classics for the US the week when the article came out, so it sucked, and continues

to suck.' It is the first time she has spoken publicly about the scandal.

The film, which was released in the UK in May 2025, stars Anderson as Winn and Jason Isaacs as her husband, Moth. It is based on Raynor's memoir in which she claimed the pair had walked the 630 miles of the South West Coast Path after being made homeless as Moth struggled with a neurodegenerative disease.

It will be released in the US after delays through the smaller independent Rialto Distribution this month.

Anderson described the revelations in The Observer – that Winn's account of how the couple became homeless were not true and that neurologists were sceptical about her husband's diagnosis of corticobasal degeneration – as 'very unfortunate'. She said: 'I hope people are able to experience [the film] as its own entity, separate from what may or may not be true or whatever controversy there is.'

The film has taken £16m globally, with about half of that coming from the UK. A US release with Sony Pictures Classics tends to lead to nationwide theatrical rollouts.

Last week Anderson's co-star Isaacs revealed they were still expected to do publicity for the film, describing the task as an 'interesting experience

now that there's been renewed scrutiny'. Isaacs told the podcast Kermode On Film he had questioned whether the team behind the film's US release actually wanted him to do any promotion for it, to which, he said, they told him yes, absolutely.

'Obviously, some of the things have been questioned,' he said, adding that The Salt Path is a 'beautiful film' and that 'much of it is still completely valid'. He did not state which parts of the story were still valid.

Gillian Anderson and Jason Isaacs in the film of The Salt Path

In July 2025 The Observer's Chloe Hadjimatheou revealed that Winn was accused of stealing tens of thousands of pounds from her employer, resulting in her arrest. To repay it, the couple borrowed from one of Moth's relatives at an interest rate of 18%.

Hadjimatheou quoted CBD experts pointing out that while the life expectancy of someone with the condition is usually from six to eight years, Moth had lived with it for 15 years.

Winn has called the allegations 'highly misleading'. A statement provided last year said: 'The Salt Path lays bare the physical and spiritual journey Moth and I shared, an experience that transformed us completely and altered the course of our lives. This is the true story of our journey.'


14 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Investigation

The Mandelson files: a record of mis-steps and arse-covering at the heart of Whitehall

Tim Adams chronicles what the emails reveal about the disgraced former ambassador's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, and the inner workings of the British government

The contradiction between Peter Mandelson's public insistence that he was at the "outer edge" of Jeffrey Epstein's circle and the evidence that he was an intimate confidant of the sex trafficker can be dramatised in several ways.

One is the 6,000 mentions of Mandelson in the Epstein files released last September by the US department of justice. But perhaps the most compelling shorthand of their special relationship is the photograph from those same files, of Mandelson at Epstein's Paris flat apparently conducting a meeting in his underwear.

Though the paedophile financier promised his guests discretion, he and Ghislaine Maxwell appear never to have missed an opportunity to collect collateral: party snaps of the powerful creeps in their orbit. The photograph of Mandelson is not one of those, exactly. But it is, as Epstein no doubt knew full well, compromising simply for the fact that Mandelson looks so totally at home in the living room of his "best pal". (In response to the picture, Mandelson has claimed not to recognise the apartment or the occasion – as if there were nothing to see in him briefing redacted young women in his tighty-whities.)

It was Mandelson's good fortune the image was released from the same cache that revealed Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on all fours above a young woman in the "massage room" in the same $10m apartment. That at least kept him off the front pages. Similarly, when the full shaming revelations of the emails that Mandelson and Epstein exchanged were released last September, the commentary quickly became more about the failures of Keir Starmer's vetting and judgment in appointing Mandelson as ambassador to the US than the precise history of Mandelson's relationship with Epstein.

Listening to The Observer's compelling new four-part podcast The Mandelson files redresses that balance. The series, forensically compiled by Ada Barumé and producer Amalie Sortland, is drawn from a close reading not only of the

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Epstein files but also of the 1,500 documents the UK government made public in relation to the vetting scandal. Those documents are, inevitably, a record of mis-steps and arse-covering by various civil servants. Shocking as some of those oversights are, however, it is the comprehensive trawl through the email exchanges between Mandelson and Epstein that still takes your breath away.

What on earth, for example, could Mandelson have been thinking when, on the very day that Epstein is convicted of trafficking a minor for sex (one of more than 80 cases he could have faced), he writes to his incarcerated pal to insist: "The whole thing has been years of torture [for you] and now you have to show the world how big a person you are. And how strong. I think the world of you and I feel hopeless and furious about what has happened... Your friends stay with you and love you."

Or how about the exchange that marked Epstein's release, having served 13 months. "How shall we celebrate?" Mandelson

asks. "With Grace and Modesty [the names of two strippers]," Epstein replies. "How's freedom feeling?" Mandelson inquires. "...fresh, firm and creamy," Epstein answers. "Naughty boy!" Mandelson exclaims.

Those kinds of exchanges were not the only ones that passed between the two. There are also those that reveal that, amid the global financial crash, Mandelson, a government minister, was secretly working with Epstein to protect the lifestyle of the bankers who caused it. "Should Jamie [Dimon, chief executive of JPMorgan] call Darling one more time?" Epstein asks Mandelson of his cabinet colleague Alistair Darling, the chancellor at the time, who was legislating for a one-off 50% tax on bankers' bonuses. "Yes and mildly threaten," Mandelson replies. Later when EU ministers are preparing a $500bn bailout to save the euro, Mandelson gives the sex trafficker warning of that market-sensitive information.

The police investigation continues into whether Mandelson has charges to answer in relation to misconduct in public office. He has repeatedly let it be known he believes he has not acted criminally or for personal gain and is co-operating with the


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

15

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Mandelson with Donald Trump in the White House last May, left; below, flanked by ambassadorial candidates Bear Grylls, left, and George Osborne. Jim Watson/MP/Getty

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Jeffrey Epstein with Ghislaine Maxwell. US department of Justice

I've warned you about that before. Behave or you will be punished like the bad boy that you are."

The second curious exchange comes a couple of years after Epstein's release. "I must tell you that after years by your side," Epstein writes to Mandelson, "supporting your boyfriend when he needed it, unwavering in my guidance... I'm disappointed in what appears to be a one-way street... you have yet to offer real assistance, sign of gratitude, or appreciation."

Mandelson insists to him by return that the depiction is unfair, adding: "During your trials and tribulations, I never left your side."

This exchange came at a time, it seems, when Epstein wanted to remind his friends what he knew about them. In a similar spirit, you recall, he took Prince Andrew out on walkies in Central Park. Was this email a sign that Epstein was also calling Mandelson to heel?

In January journalist Laura Kuenssberg questioned Mandelson about his loyalty to Epstein after he came out of jail. He offered this strange response: "I believed his story and that of his lawyer who spent a lot of time trying to persuade me of this – because I did go into it – that he had been falsely criminalised in his contact with these young women."

What kind of politician spends "a lot of time" hearing from an acquaintance's lawyer in order to convince himself that his acquaintance is not the nonce the courts have shown him to be?

If the motivation were not fear of exposure, what was it? The tempting answer is that Mandelson was intoxicated by the transgressive intrigue; that he was high on being Machiavelli. Listening to the exchanges I was reminded that I interviewed Mandelson for this paper after his unlikely return to frontline politics as business secretary in 2008, which Gordon Brown facilitated by elevating him to the House of Lords.

He couldn't have been more chipper, but he confessed to me some reservations about the scrutiny that would again come with it: "I wasn't sure whether I wanted people peering at all of my life again." It was in this period that he was corresponding with Epstein in his Florida jail. At the time I wrote: "he puts you in mind of those Tudor plotters, a Wolsey or a Wyatt, now the source of all power, now banished or exiled. Even

sitting cradling a lunchtime cup-a-soup, he strikes you not so much as a cabinet member but as a courtier; compelling, calculating and vain."

Looking back at my notes of that interview, I see I wrote how Mandelson "bizarrely" spent the first 10 minutes of our time quizzing me about my own status on the paper, as if trying to get his bearings on whether I was of the right pay grade to question him. I noted his "unusual desire to establish the power relations in even this interaction." To Epstein he frequently references Sun Tau's ancient wisdom. "Reminder," he writes. "You are fighting back so you need strategy, strategy, strategy. Remember The Art of War."

Does his lust for political agency explain away his loyalty to Epstein, his "travelling friend", despite everything? Perhaps. It was certainly for that quality a third Labour prime

Does his lust for political agency explain away his loyalty to Epstein, his 'travelling friend', despite everything?

minister, Keir Starmer, brought him back from the wilderness. The tariff-happy madness of Trump's office was a snake pit, the thinking went, so let's unleash our most effective viper into it.

Listening to The Mandelson files, it is hard not to despair at the desperate absurdity of the machinery of government as it tries to find reasons to justify a decision

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ministers have clearly already made. Reports indicate that Starmer was given a choice of three candidates for the Washington role, all of whom qualified for the "you couldn't make it up" award. Alongside Mandelson, the shortlist was George Osborne, architect of austerity, and the Etonian adventurer Bear Grylls, who had recently baptised Russell Brand in the River Thames.

Initial vetting of Mandelson raised questions of "general reputational risk", but he was waved through. There was then, the emails show, no end of farcical inter-departmental debate about the level of extra scrutiny required. "Developed vetting" was agreed upon, which required Mandelson to fill in a form detailing every foreign person he had dealings with. While he was still procrastinating about this, his appointment to Washington had been announced by the prime minister and ratified by the King.

To begin with, that appointment worked. The arch flatterer poured his unction into Trump's ear and helped to ease Starmer's audience at the White House with the golden-ticket promise of a second state visit to Britain. The emails reveal Mandelson's involvement in arranging that unprecedented event, centring on his idea to present a ministerial red box to Trump as a gift. A dozen civil service officers are, literally, on the case. "This is like something out of The Thick of It," Mandelson offered of the saga.

Over the following days he became once again the evil villain of that political drama. In September 2025 news broke about Mandelson's 10-page love letter to Epstein in the birthday book that Maxwell had organised to mark the sex trafficker's 50th. Olly Robbins, the senior civil servant at the Foreign Office, called Mandelson for a crisis meeting. Before that meeting Mandelson did a podcast interview with the Sun's Harry Cole in full penitential mode. "[Epstein] is like a piece of muck attached to my shoe," he said, "that I find very difficult to kick away. But I will do it."

The reasons he wasn't able to, and how he brought down a prime minister in the process, unfolded over the following months. In February, Mandelson resigned from the House of Lords. His lobbying business went into insolvency. He was pictured in the papers peeing against the wall outside George Osborne's home after a party. It was not the first time he had been caught by a camera with his trousers down, but this time he didn't have a pot to piss in. He was fined £300.

Another thing Mandelson said to Kuenssberg was this: "Do you really think if I knew what was going on and what he was doing with – and to – these vulnerable young women that I would have just sat back ignored it... do you think I would've written emails like that if I had had any one iota of knowledge or suspicion of what he was doing?"

The Mandelson files give you the opportunity to work your way closer to an answer to those questions. And as with all matters concerning Mandelson, those answers do not feel nearly as straightforward as he might want them to seem.

Whitehall Mandelson emails

"If action isn't taken there will be no manufacturing jobs from the minister for the UK." Ed, the above is from a friend who used to work in No 10. Nice guy! Mandelson to Ed Miliband, energy secretary, about a foreign minister he wanted him to meet

"This is like something out of The Thick of It... What incompetence... Whitehall has known about this since February" Mandelson to Morgan McSweeney, Starmer's chief of staff, about a gift for Donald Trump

"I will speak to Dan [senior Starmer aide] about making sure we are keeping the creation of new disclosable evidence within reasonable bounds" Olly Robbins, foreign office head, about the decision to hire Mandelson

inquiries. Whatever the legalities, former prime minister Gordon Brown suggests he was revolted by the revelations. "During the financial crisis... that a member of the cabinet was thinking more of himself and his rich friends is a betrayal of everything we stand for as a country," he said.

The question The Mandelson files asks is, what could possibly have possessed Mandelson to behave in this way? There is no documented evidence of blackmail threats issued by Epstein to those who enjoyed his dubious hospitality. A couple of the exchanges here do, however, hint at a degree of coercive menace behind the mostly juvenile banter. The first, in 2002, came when Mandelson had been forced to resign from the Blair government for the second time.

An exchange with Maxwell begins with her emailing Mandelson in reply to an unknown message. "Do not be disgusting," she writes. To which Mandelson replies: "I love disgusting. That's why I am wild and dangerous and twice fallen..." He goes on: "Nice to talk to JE yesterday... afraid I might have spoiled his lunch though." At this, Maxwell shifts her tone just slightly: "You spoiled Jeffrey's lunch, Pete?


16 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

News

The theoretical physicist and host of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific takes Xavier Greenwood on a journey through space and time, taking in free will, his childhood in Iraq, and his love of Match of the Day along the way

The Observer Walk Jim Al-Khalili

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'Time is a physical thing. You can squeeze and stretch it. It's not absolute'

The most beautiful sentence I've heard about love is also about time. Asked one evening why she loved her partner, my friend replied: 'He makes life feel so long.'

We are, all of us, embedded in time. We see days stretch out and years fly by, and though we understand that time feels slippery, most of us believe there is something objective to its rhythms. We imagine there is a flow to time that proceeds unhothered by our attempts to measure or traduce it. But as any expert knows, the universe is not so simple.

'Time is a physical thing,' Jim Al-Khalili says, as we march from Southsea to Portsmouth to a choir of winds, waves tickling the surface of the boardwalk. 'You can squeeze time and stretch time. It's not just this absolute clock that ticks by relentlessly.'

Al-Khalili, 63, would know. He is a theoretical physicist, a professor at the University of Surrey, and the host of BBC Radio 4's The Life Scientific. After writing books on subjects spanning quantum biology,

aliens and Arabic science, he has now taken on the subject of time. It is no coincidence that he has done so in his seventh decade. 'Growing older is a big part of it,' he says. 'You realise that time seems like it is speeding up. You realise you are not going to live for ever. You realise that time is limited. You are more conscious of the passing of time. You start to want to probe it a little more deeply.'

On Time, which is published next month, tries to answer a number of head-scratching questions that have occupied scientists and philosophers for millennia. Does time have a beginning? Can it point only toward the future? Is it even real? One imagines chalkboards and frenzied equations, a la Good Will Hunting, but Al-Khalili often does his best work in bed.

'A lot of my deepest thoughts come just before I fall asleep. Then the challenge is whether I can remember this line of argument or this way of solving a particular equation when I wake up in the morning,' he says. 'Because I'm damned if I'm going to get up and scribble something down. I'm not that obsessed.'

The lightness with which Al-Khalili wears his profession is what makes him endearing. As we walk through the fairground on Clarence Pier, members of the public recognise him; one person tells his friend: 'I love Jim.' Al-Khalili laughs when I ask how much he paid them, but the more we chat, the more I understand why he has a captive audience.

Al-Khalili knew he wanted to be a physicist as a teenager ('It felt like solving puzzles'), but he also would have been more than happy playing for Leeds United. He is proud of the fact that most of his friends are not scientists. He is a big brain, certainly, but also has that rare ability to communicate his ideas to the non-expert. The core audience of his output, which includes books, his radio show, a YouTube channel and a raft of television documentaries, is the curious layperson. 'You might not want to put this in the article, but a commissioning editor for the BBC once called my work 'mindful TV,' he says. 'It's to make people feel clever. As well as informing, as well as educating, as well as entertaining, it's to give people a sense of wonder.'

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He was born in Baghdad, but his family story also runs through Portsmouth. It is where his Iraqi father, studying abroad at the polytechnic, met his English mother, who was working in the central library. 'When my father graduated, they went back to Iraq, and my mother went with him,' Al-Khalili says. 'It was a great adventure for her.' Although Al-Khalili grew up in Iraq, he visited Portsmouth every couple of years to see family and kept in touch with British life on radio and TV, where he would watch Match of the Day thousands of miles away from the muddy fields of Britain. There was one kid in Iraq who'd never been to Baghdad, let alone Britain, he recalls. 'Big fan of Preston North End.'

When Al-Khalili was 16, two weeks after Saddam Hussein came to power in Iraq, he moved to Portsmouth with his parents. It is a difficult age to move halfway across the world, but he took it in his stride. 'It was a big adventure,' he says, repeating the phrasing he used to describe his mother moving in the opposite direction a generation before him. 'The school I went to was my mother's old

girls' grammar school, which had become a comprehensive. I was one of only three boys in a sixth form of more than 100 girls. I was head boy because the other two lads didn't want to do it.'

It was at school that Al-Khalili met his wife, Julie. They have since built a family in Southsea, part of the city of Portsmouth. Al-Khalili's house is a few minutes away from us. He has two children, his grandchildren and the sea for company. 'My wife and I started to really appreciate it when she was having cancer treatment around 18 years ago,' he says. 'She was going through chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and needed fresh air and exercise and something to clear her head. We came down here and would walk along the seafront.' Al-Khalili has not set foot in Iraq since he left nearly 50 years ago. The dictatorship of Hussein, who ruled between 1979 and 2003, completely changed the country. 'The Iraq I grew up in doesn't exist any more,' Al-Khalili says. Portsmouth, for so many a point of embarkation, has become his point of equilibrium.

So, time. It is the reason I have come to meet Al-Khalili, but of course it is much more than that.


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Photograph by Christian Sinibaldi

'Having an understanding of the world and appreciation of the physics fills me with wonder'

It is the way we structure every moment of our lives. It is a force that can bring us comfort or terror like nothing else. It is, as of yet, undefeated. Where to start? Perhaps with the end. The conclusion of Al-Khalili's book is that time does have a direction into the future and therefore has to be real. He argues that a phenomenon known as quantum decoherence shows it. Decoherence, Al-Khalili argues, is baked into the universe as the only truly irreversible process in nature.

The journey by which Al-Khalili gets here is thrilling, because it requires him to do battle with so many quirks of time. One quirk is that time it is not an inexorable clock, as Isaac Newton believed. It can be bent by speed and gravity. I'll spare you the finer details, which are better explained by the book than by me, but here is a sample of a couple of minutes with Al-Khalili by the sea.

"It's something we can tangibly almost control," he says over the roar of wind. "You can slow time down by travelling close to the speed of light." So much so, he goes on, that in the right conditions, one person could see event A happening before event B, while another sees

event B before event A. Before I can start getting my head around this, he pauses to point out a favourite pub overlooking the harbour. Good food, he says. Then he references Interstellar, the Christopher Nolan film. We talk for a bit about his thoughts on the depiction of time in cinema. "I don't get sniffy about science-fiction movies myself, unlike a lot of colleagues who do," he says. "For me, the clue is in the word fiction." Then it's straight on to Albert Einstein's block universe and free will.

There is something deeply impressive, if almost incomprehensible, about Al-Khalili's ability to remain in the real world when thinking so deeply about such mind-bending topics. It doesn't seem as if he finds it particularly difficult, but does he struggle to snap himself out of it sometimes?

"It's much easier to come out than get in," he says. "It's a bit like when you're reading a book. You put a place where you've got to in the book, but you can't restart from

there. You have to read the previous pages to get yourself back into it."

Al-Khalili doesn't let himself get too tangled in questions of existentialism. In his line of work, that would be easy. One consequence of Einstein's block universe, which posits that past, present and future exist at the same time, like frames on an analogue film strip, is that the future is fixed and real.

"I'm what's called a compatibilist," he says cheerily, referring to the philosophical view in which determinism and free will can be reconciled. "It is an 'I want to have my cake and eat it' attitude. I think the universe is deterministic, in the sense that what will be will be. In the block universe picture, what is going to happen will happen. But even in principle, we're never able to predict the future for a number of reasons. So, for all intents and purposes, that future is unknowable to us. Therefore, even if free will is just an illusion, it's a very real, powerful illusion."

When I ask him whether all this thinking about time has informed the way he lives his life, he responds with the humility not of a physicist

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

17

Jim Al-Khalili looks out from the mouth of the harbour at Portsmouth, his home since leaving Iraq in 1979.

explaining the particular science of how you can technically bend time, but of a regular, reflective, human in the world. "It's made me appreciate that I don't have control over time," he says. "I can't slow time down. People say: 'Live in the moment. Live in the present.' That's all we can ever do, by definition. I don't have any privileged view of how to live my life because I've been studying the nature of time. I think it has just crystallised the fact that my time is finite."

As we return towards Southsea Hoverport, I feel obliged to ask Al-Khalili about one more subject. Time travel is a bonus chapter in his new book. Is it possible? "If we subscribe to something like the 'many worlds' interpretation of quantum mechanics, and there are alternative realities, that does give us an out," he says. "It says you can travel back in time, provided you're not going back to your own timeline. Because you can't change what you remember: if you change something, that becomes a new timeline."

This might sound like a soft yes, but Al-Khalili thinks scientists will one day close the loopholes that theoretically allow time travel to the past. As for going to the future, the answer, he thinks, is also no – unless you cheat a bit. "If all you mean is getting out of everyone's timeline and getting to the future before everyone else, because you're travelling close to the speed of light, [then yes], but that's not real time travel."

That shouldn't put a dampener on those who dream of flux capacitors from Back to the Future, and of meeting Cleopatra. The triumph of Al-Khalili's book is that it proves you can scrutinise the most complex parts of the universe without removing the colour, excitement and possibility from human life. "Having an understanding of the world and appreciation of the physics of what's going on fills me with wonder," he says. "It's the opposite of what many people think – that you can't appreciate beauty if you're just trying to solve mathematical equations. You do." We are back then, I suppose, to the idea of love.

Our bodies pummelled by wind and spat on by waves, we say our goodbyes at the pier. The water is receding and has started to reveal the beach. Thanks to Al-Khalili, I feel as if I have a new way of seeing. I am looking at the grains of sand a little more clearly now. But I also have a hovercraft to catch. Time and tide wait for no man.

On Time: The Physics That Makes the Universe Tick by Jim Al-Khalili is published by Princeton University Press on 1 September, £28


NOBLE CALEDONIA

ADVERTI

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ST HELENA & BEYOND

A voyage from Accra to Cape Town over Christmas & New Year aboard the MS Hebridean Sky with Guest Speakers Rear Admiral John Lippiett & Reverend Richard Coles 21st December 2027 to 10th January 2028

Here is an epic voyage and marvellous adventure for those who love the sea and long voyages, enjoy travelling off the beaten track and the opportunity to be away from home for the festive period. Sailing aboard the 100-passenger MS Hebridean Sky we will journey from the shores of West Africa, crossing the equator and tracing historic maritime routes to the remote outpost of St Helena before continuing to Namibia and onwards to Cape Town where our journey will conclude.

Far beyond the familiar sea lanes of the South Atlantic lies St Helena, one of the world's most remote and compelling islands which has long captured the imagination of travellers, historians and naturalists alike. Colonised in the 17th century by the East India Company as an important staging post for their vessels, it is perhaps best known as Napoleon's final home. Our voyage offers the rare opportunity to experience the island in some depth, combining its remarkable history, dramatic landscape, unique culture and wildlife with a wider exploration of West and Southern Africa.

Travelling with just 100 or so fellow travellers aboard the all-suite MS Hebridean Sky, you can enjoy the small ship experience and the festive celebrations. Also joining you on board will be our Guest Speakers and expert on board team who also relish the opportunity to undertake such a unique journey and share their knowledge and enthusiasm through some fascinating talks.

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MS HEBRIDEAN SKY is one of the finest small ships in the world and offers exceptionally spacious and well-designed suites, beautifully appointed public areas and high standards of service and food. The vessel accommodates just 118 passengers and suites feature a seating area and some have a private balcony. The spacious and finely decorated public rooms include a lounge, elegant bar, library with internet access and a single seating dining room. Outside there is a rear sun deck where meals are served in warm weather under shade, a bar, observation area and comfortable deck furniture. The atmosphere on board is akin to a private yacht or country hotel and you can be assured that after a day of exploration ashore you will return to the comfort and peace of a well-run and luxuriously appointed comfortable small ship.

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For full details on this holiday call us today on 020 7752 0000 for your copy of our brochure.


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GUEST SPEAKERS

Rear Admiral John Lippiett had a 36 year career in the Royal Navy, serving in a large number of ships from aircraft carriers to minesweepers and deployed to all of the world's operational theatres. On promotion to Rear

Admiral, he flew his Flag at sea as Flag Officer Sea Training before serving in Naples as Chief of Staff of the NATO maritime forces in the Mediterranean. His final posting was as the Commandant of the Joint Services Command and Staff College. John retired and for nearly 13 years was the Chief Executive of the Mary Rose Trust. John now spends much time back at sea as a speaker on maritime history. He enjoys telling the stories both of exploration, often using old maps, and of naval ventures that have taken place on the world's oceans over the last two thousand years.

Reverend Richard Coles is a writer, broadcaster and an Anglican priest. He co-presents Saturday Live on BBC Radio 4 and appears, from time to time, on Q1, Have I Got News For You, and Would I Lie To You and documentaries about

religion, the arts, and far-off places. He has won Christmas Masterchef, Celebrity Mastermind twice, and captained Leeds to victory in Christmas University Challenge in 2019. He appears regularly in newspapers and magazines, writing major profiles for the Sunday Times Magazine, a regular column in the Sunday Times and is the author of half a dozen books, including the bestselling Canon Clement Mysteries. Richard also co-presents the history podcast 'The Rabbithole Detectives' with Cat Jarman and Charles Spencer.

THE ITINERARY IN BRIEF

Day 1 London to Accra, Ghana. Fly by scheduled flight. On arrival we transfer to the MS Hebridean Sky.

Day 2 Accra & Shai Hills Game Reserve. Today there will be a choice of excursions. You may wish to visit the capital city of Accra including the National Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography with artefacts showcasing the heritage of Ghana throughout history. We will continue to the Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum and Memorial Park before enjoying lunch with a view of the ocean at a beachside resort. Return to the MS Hebridean Sky via the Artists Alliance Gallery which has a wide range of artworks by renowned Ghanaian artists. Alternatively, drive to the Shai Hills Game Reserve and embark on a trek through the reserve's savannah plains to view antelopes, bushbucks, kobs, baboons, monkeys and many bird species including the Senegal parrot. After lunch we will continue to the Aburi Botanical Gardens. Established in 1890 as a convalescent for the British Colonial officers governing the then Gold Coast, the garden has over the years cultured a variety of tropical plants which attract many birds and butterflies.

Day 3 Elmina. From our anchorage off the historic town of Elmina, we will use our Zodiacs today to visit one of the largest and earliest slaving forts, Elmina Castle, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Built by the Portuguese in 1482 and captured by the Dutch in 1637 it was expanded when slaves replaced gold as the major export with storerooms converted into cells. A guided tour of the castle will take us through its history.

Days 4 to 7 At Sea. Leaving Ghana we begin our journey south and cross the equator as we sail towards St Helena. During our time at sea you can attend some of the lectures in the lounge and join our onboard naturalists on deck as they search for wildlife. We also hope for clear skies to enjoy stargazing in the evenings. During our passage to St Helena we will celebrate Christmas on board.

Days 8 to 10 Jamestown, St Helena. Discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, the island of St Helena has been both a Dutch and British possession. In the late 17th century the island became a strategically important port of call in the British Empire and was controlled by the East India Company for over 200 years. However, the island is perhaps best known as Napoleon's last place of exile. He died here in 1821 after a six year exile and we will visit Longwood House, Napoleon's residence. In addition there will be much to occupy us during our time on the island. We will explore the tiny capital of Jamestown and see the courthouse, government buildings and library. Those feeling active may want to climb the 699 steps of Jacob's Ladder with views over Jamestown. During a range of walks for all levels, there will be time to explore the surrounding countryside, experience some amazing views and witness the prolific birdlife, including the endemic St Helena wirebird. A visit to the most remote distillery in the world will provide the opportunity to taste the local gin, rum and 'Tungi' made from local prickly pears.

Days 11 to 14 At Sea. We have four relaxing days at sea as we sail back to the African mainland. We will welcome in the New Year along the way.

Days 15 & 16 Walvis Bay, Namibia. Arrive today in Namibia at the main coastal town of Walvis Bay which will be our base for a day and a half. During our time here we will have the option to visit Swakopmund, Namibia's seaside resort on the west coast, and a place of singular charm. It resembles a small Bavarian village nestling between the desert and the sea and enjoys a restful and relaxing atmosphere. The source of Swakopmund's continental vibe is the graceful Art Nouveau buildings, many of which are national monuments. We will also have the opportunity to drive past the imposing sand dunes to the Welwitschia Plains in the Namib-Naukluft Park and we hope to see the prehistoric Welwitschia mirabilis plants, unique to this region, as we drive through the lunar landscape. Those feeling active may wish to take 4x4 vehicles to Sandwich Harbour, a tidal lagoon located in the Namib-Naukluft Park surrounded by huge sand dunes.

Day 17 Luderitz. Sandwiched between the Namib desert and the South Atlantic, Luderitz is an isolated settlement and one of the few towns and sheltered harbours on the Namibian coast. First landed by Portuguese mariners in the 15th century, it was not until 1883 when the land was bought by a wealthy merchant, Adolf Luderitz, that the town developed as part of German colonisation of the region. An afternoon walking tour includes the Luderitz Museum and the colonial buildings such as the Goerke Haus and Felsenkirche. Nearby, visit the ghost town of Kolmanskop where the first diamonds were found in Namibia in 1908. Sparking a "diamond rush" the town grew in the ensuing years, peaking in the 1920s, until the discovery of richer deposits further south. By the 1960s the population had left and the town is now at the mercy of the weather and encroaching sand dunes.

Day 18 At Sea. Sailing to Cape Town.

Day 19 Cape Town, South Africa. In the late morning we sail into the beautiful city of Cape Town where we have a choice of excursions this afternoon. If weather permits, we will take the cableway to the top of the iconic Table Mountain, one of the city's most celebrated landmarks. From the summit we can enjoy the views down to the city below or take a walk along one of the trails amongst the endemic flora and fauna. Alternatively you may prefer to take the opportunity to visit one of the region's excellent vineyards where, after learning about the production techniques, we can enjoy a tasting.

Day 20 Cape Town to London. After breakfast we visit Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens. Take a leisurely stroll through these beautiful surroundings before returning to the ship for lunch. This afternoon we transfer to the airport for our scheduled flight to London.

Day 21 London. Arrive today.

PRICES & INCLUSIONS

Special offer prices per person based on double occupancy start from £13495 for a Standard Suite.

WHAT'S INCLUDED:

Economy class scheduled air travel • 19 nights aboard the MS Hebridean Sky on a full board basis • House wine, beer and soft drinks with lunch & dinner • Noble Caledonia onboard team including Guest Speakers • Shore Excursions • Gratuities • Transfers • Airport taxes • Port taxes.

NB: Ports and itinerary are subject to change. Travel insurance, visas for Ghana & Namibia and entry permit for St Helena are not included in the price. Zodiacs will be used to access St Helena. Our current booking conditions apply to all reservations.

Alternatively view or request online at www.noble-caledonia.co.uk

NOBLE CALEDONIA

SMALL SHIPS - BIG EXPERIENCES


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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

News

A-level boost offers brief respite for struggling universities

Patrick Kidd

A record number of A-level students won a place at university last week – even though they be the first to pay more than £10,000 a year for tuition. It may, however, just be a temporary respite for cash-strapped universities. The number of 18-year-olds will fall by 17% over the next decade, a drop in revenue that, combined with rising employment costs and the push to reduce the number of visas given to overseas students, could shake the foundations of some ivory towers.

The Commons education select committee warned recently that two dozen British universities are at risk of insolvency over the next 12 months, with more than 50 higher education providers thought to be vulnerable.

The education committee issued a report on the risk of insolvency in higher education in May. Of the 24 Russell Group universities, 16 reported a surplus for 2024-25, led by Imperial College London (£141.9m) and Oxford (£118.1m), but Nottingham had an £85.3m deficit and Cardiff £33.4m. Queen's University Belfast, Sheffield, Durham,

Leeds, Cambridge and Newcastle were also in deficit.

Of greater concern are the smaller universities that were reliant on fees from overseas students. The Office for Students (OIS), the regulator, told the committee that 24 providers, including seven with more than 3,000 students, were at risk of insolvency.

"Our report found immense financial instability in the sector," Helen Hayes, the Labour chair of the committee, said. "And the reduction in the numbers of students coming up through the system will add to the pressure." She said that the closure

of a university "would be catastrophic for a local economy".

The government has insisted that the sector is "fundamentally strong and remains world-leading" and that the economic outlook is better than last year, though it has euphemistically admitted that "some provider exit may occur".

Hayes insisted the government needs to reassure students starting their degrees in the autumn. "It shouldn't be the case that anyone embarking on a course should face not completing it because the institution closes," she said.

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Homeless figures on the rise despite royal intervention

Richard Palmer

Andy Burnham is not the only one who faces a difficult task in pledging to end rough sleeping and tackle the UK's housing crisis. Homelessness is rising in four out of six UK locations where the Prince of Wales has spent the past three years trying to show how the problem can be solved.

The challenge facing the heir to the throne at the start of the fourth year of his five-year Homewards project, which he hopes will serve as a model to end homelessness across the entire country, is laid bare in the latest government figures.

They show that the number of households assessed as homeless has increased in four of the six pilot project areas – Aberdeen; Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole; Northern Ireland; and Sheffield – compared with a year earlier. Only in Newport, in south Wales, and the London borough of Lambeth were there concrete signs of improvement, and even there the figures are still high.

Burnham vowed to end rough sleeping in Greater Manchester when he was mayor, but failed to achieve it, and made a similar nationwide pledge on his first day in Downing Street. He and William have swapped notes via aides regularly on tackling the wider problem of homelessness, which includes sofa surfers and others in temporary accommodation.

Burnham's efforts since 2017 in Greater Manchester have proved an inspiration for William, according to a royal source. But the latest figures for England, released last Thursday, show a mixed picture regarding the new prime minister's success.

Overall, across the 10 boroughs of Greater Manchester, there was a 3.38% year-on-year drop in those owed a legal duty of assistance to either prevent or relieve homelessness – although in five of those boroughs the totals had increased and in five they had fallen. In all of England there was a 0.48% rise in the same figure. Across the UK, around 440,000 households are currently assessed as homeless.

William's aim is to put each of his six locations on the path to ending homelessness – or at least make it rare, brief and unrepeated – by June 2028. Working with local authorities, charities and businesses, his tailored approach includes early intervention and employment support to try to prevent people losing their homes in the first place. But the project faces serious challenges amid a nationwide crisis caused by factors including a shortage of social housing, rocketing rents, spiralling house prices, a growing population, family breakdown and demand for accommodation for refugees.

In Northern Ireland, the number of people officially assessed as homeless has risen by 156% since 2014, from 24,729 to a record 63,426 at the end

ON OTHER PAGES

Why are house builders so loath to drop their prices? Business, page 39

of March this year. A report published by Aberdeen City Council in April also noted record levels of homelessness.

The key solution, according to homelessness charities, is to build more social housing. The government has committed £39bn to a 10-year social and affordable housing programme designed to create 300,000 homes, but some experts question whether this will be enough.

Sarah Elliott, chief executive of Shelter, one of 300 organisations working with Homewards, said: "Without enough genuinely affordable social homes, many families have nowhere to turn after being priced out of private renting, with little standing between them and homelessness."

Michael Corbishley, head of local delivery for Homewards at the Royal Foundation, said William's scheme was helping to prevent people reach crisis point, although homelessness continued to rise in places: "Affordable housing is essential, which is why Homewards is delivering housing projects. But lasting change depends on combining more homes with prevention and support."

morrisons.com Majority of stores. Excludes Morrisons Daily. Online varies. Charity. Reg No 207994 (England and Wales). SC038731 (Scotland). T&Cs: my.morrisons.com/marie-curie-eggb-iss/


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21

'We were waiting for news of her assassination. She dug her own grave' → Mystery death of an Assad aide, page 24

'It's like we live in a prison': women on life under Taliban's Big Brother regime

Since the US and UK pulled out of the country five years ago, thousands of CCTV cameras have been installed in Afghanistan. The climate of fear and control includes punishment for a clumsily tied headscarf or a stray word. Ruchi Kumar reports

A simple errand to a local shop has become a daunting task for 25-year-old Tahmina, a former teacher living in Kabul. Even a small misstep – a clumsily worn headscarf, a stray word or the absence of a male guardian – could be a reason for the Taliban's morality police to stop and question her; a question that could easily lead to her detention.

"The Taliban have cameras everywhere – you feel you are constantly being watched. They are waiting for you to break their laws so they can come and take you away," said Tahmina.

In 2023, two years after they swept back in triumph into Kabul, the Taliban announced a plan to install about 60,000 CCTV cameras around the capital and other cities, part of a growing surveillance system to enforce Afghanistan's return to Islamist rule.

Within a year, more than 90,000 Chinese-built security cameras had appeared across Kabul. In the city's northern neighbourhood of Khair Khana alone, about 8,000 cameras keep watch.

Taliban officials assured civilians that the surveillance project was intended to stamp out crime. But Khalid Zadran, a Kabul police spokesperson, warned ominously at the time: "We can see everything happening in different parts of the city and monitor public activities."

Comments like that were taken as a warning by people like Aqeela, a 30-year-old civil society activist from Kabul. She took part in the anti-Taliban protests to demand equal rights for women days after the militants took back the city. "I started to receive threats after that, and then in August 2022 they raided my house," she told

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Afghan women and children in Kandahar yesterday, the fifth anniversary of the Taliban's return to power. AFP/Getty Images

The cameras create this feeling of dread. That your behaviour is being monitored... that you are not safe, even in your home Aqeela, Kabul resident

The Observer.

Aqeela was not at home when the Taliban fighters showed up, and has never returned. "After that, I had to change my residence many times, and my life became that of a fugitive," she said. Every time she leaves her house now, which is rare, she fears that cameras might recognise her.

"For someone who has been threatened for their civic and protest activities, the cameras create this feeling of dread. This feeling that your every movement is being recorded, your behaviour is being monitored... that you are not safe, even in your own home," she said.

The Taliban re-entered Kabul in August 2021, routing Afghan forces in a lightning advance across the country that summer. A landmark deal with the US, agreed by Donald Trump in 2020 and confirmed by Joe Biden the next year, began the process of

withdrawing troops and bringing the longest war in US history to a close.

Afghans knew what was coming as one city after another fell to the Islamists. Within a few weeks, ordinary life, particularly for women, changed entirely and for the worse.

Afghanistan's new leaders swiftly reimposed the infamously repressive laws and policies of their previous regime that ruled the country through the late 1990s, before the US-led invasion of 2001. The rights and freedoms of women, minorities and other marginalised groups were restricted.

In the years since then, scores of decrees have steadily driven Afghan women to the margins of society, restricting their rights to speak, work, study, dress, get a job or move independently.

To enforce their control, the Taliban have expanded their grip on the country's security apparatus. Any

form of dissent or protest has been crushed and media freedoms have been sharply curbed. Watching over it all is an ever-expanding surveillance state.

The UN special rapporteur on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, noted in his 2025 report that Afghans today "live with a lack of legal certainty and in a climate of surveillance and fear due to harsh and inconsistent enforcement".

The Taliban put its security network to use when large-scale protests against the regime – the first of their kind in nearly three years – broke out in the western city of Herat in June.

Locals took to the street to protest the Taliban's detention of dozens of women accused of violating their strict dress code. Two people were killed in the clashes that followed as

Continued on page 22 >>


22 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

World

» Continued from page 21

the protests were suppressed. Then the real crackdown began.

“After the protests were put down, the Taliban went around collecting videos from the CCTV cameras on the streets and shops, and started arresting dozens of people who participated. I don’t know exactly how many,” said Omari, one of the protesters who has since fled the city. “The cameras aren’t here to protect us – they are here to protect the Taliban’s power over us,” he added.

The UN mission in Afghanistan also documented several instances of the Taliban intelligence department conducting random checks of mobile phones for messages and videos related to the protests.

Taliban officials have claimed that the security cameras are equipped with facial recognition technology. But experts question whether the group has the resources or capacity to realise its ideal surveillance state.

“Because of financial constraints... the Taliban are far from developing anything on par with serious surveillance states like China, Russia or Iran,” said Fereshia Abbasi, a researcher at Human Rights Watch. “But we can assume they would use this footage not only to monitor social behaviour.”

Afghanistan under the Taliban faces severe economic sanctions. Most humanitarian and development projects supported by foreign money were axed after the 2021 takeover as western powers struggled to navigate sending funds to the new government. A broken banking system also meant that any funds had to be sent in the form of cash shipments facilitated by the UN.

Western governments have wrestled with the question of how to provide aid to the Afghan people while doing business with the regime. The aid that has continued to flow, mainly for humanitarian projects, has come largely from the US, which remains the country’s biggest donor despite huge cuts to its foreign aid budget since Trump returned to power.

The UK and EU have also continued to support projects in Afghanistan, but only at a fraction of the levels needed by an already heavily aid-dependent country.

The combination of international sanctions, regional insecurity, the Taliban’s lack of governance and the exclusion of women from the workforce has contributed to a sustained humanitarian crisis in the country. A UN report found that nearly 28 million Afghans are living in poverty – almost two-thirds of the population.

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‘Injustice at this scale will lead to the shortening of the Taliban’s political survival’ Fawzia Koofi, former MP

Afghanistan received $1.1bn in humanitarian aid last year, the UN’s Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported. The current requirement exceeds $2bn. How much aid reaches the people or projects it is intended for is increasingly uncertain and disputed.

A US watchdog reported in 2024 that the Taliban was siphoning off foreign aid in the form of taxes, fees and other duties. The report argued that this risked “contributing to the legitimisation of the Taliban-controlled government in the eyes of the Afghan people”.

The UN insisted that “robust safeguards” remain in place to “ensure critical international assistance to the Afghan people reaches those who need it most”.

But the plight of its people and the state of the economy has not halted Taliban efforts to build its surveillance state. Reports at the time suggested the security camera network was launched in partnership with Chinese telecoms giant Huawei. The company, which is sanctioned by the US, denied involvement.

Several families in Kabul told The Observer that Taliban officials had pressured locals to pay for the cameras on their streets and for solar panels to power them, to the consternation of many Afghans.

“They are too afraid to say no,” said Rahim, who works as a driver in the capital. “People don’t have enough to feed their families, but they still have to pay for this.”

Tahmina said that every house on

her street in central Kabul had privately installed cameras. “Our landlord has paid for the installation of cameras and we always feel under its control. The Taliban come into the neighbourhood any time they like to check the cameras, or search homes and sometimes detain people,” she said. “Afghan citizens are tired and disappointed with this situation, but no one refuses them, or they will get into trouble.”

Beyond Kabul, the Taliban have stepped up surveillance in regions where their support is weakest. Northern cities such as Mazar-i-Sharif and Baghlan, and the northern region of Panjshir, where the Islamists traditionally lack ideological support, have also seen thousands of new cameras appear in recent years.

“For my pen pal, suicide became the only escape

FIRST PERSON

Fariba Nawa

I was born in Herat in western Afghanistan, fled the Soviet invasion as a child refugee to the US, then returned to work as a journalist in 2000. As American bombs dropped in villages and the Taliban suicide attacks terrorised Afghans in cities, women flourished in urban centres, becoming parliamentarians,

teachers, doctors, police officers. It was an unsustainable renaissance buoyed by a foreign power, but it showed how high Afghan women would rise if given the opportunity.

After the Taliban retook Afghanistan five years ago, it felt like I was rewriting stories from when the Taliban first seized the country in the 1990s – stories about secret schools, child brides and stonings. It felt utterly dystopian to do it again.

Afghan women tell me now about the pain of their daily lives as they circumvent the Taliban’s

draconian laws that keep women from going to school or work. One way is entrepreneurship and the creator economy. Dozens of YouTube channels feature women who market their cooking skills and livestream whatever they are doing at home in full covering required by the Taliban dress code.

Women have become ice cream vendors and saffron workers in fields; some remain as doctors in private clinics. But they fear that even these spaces will be taken from them.

A teenager from Badakhshan in

north-east Afghanistan became my pen pal on WhatsApp for a few months three years ago. She wrote me Persian poetry mixed with her future dreams and her dire present. The poem on the right was one she directed at the Taliban.

I looked forward to our correspondence, but she went silent. When I kept writing, her brother told me his 15-year-old sister had jumped off a cliff into the Kokcha river.

Suicide is a way of protest, and has increased among women since the Taliban comeback. But women still put on makeup, go to weddings


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Children in Kabul were flags during celebrations marking the fifth anniversary of the US and UK withdrawal from Afghanistan. AP

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Taliban delegates, above, assemble at the Loya Jirga Hall in Kabul yesterday. Afghan girls, left, attend a lesson given by their father at home in the city. AP, AFP/Getty Images

"There has never been a meaningful, genuine constituency for the Taliban in much of the north," said Fawzia Koofi, a former parliamentarian from Badakhshan, in north-east Afghanistan, who now lives in exile. "The Taliban are deeply insecure and afraid of losing control in these areas, and as a result target them with increased surveillance, frequent crackdowns and searching civilians."

The Taliban have also used biometric data collected under the earlier government to identify and target Afghans who've worked for foreign-backed militaries, agencies, and other international organisations. A report by Human Rights Watch in 2022 identified digital systems that the Taliban used to target Afghans. These included iris scans, fingerprints, photographs, jobs and addresses taken from government ID and payroll databases as well as the US Department of Defense database that was left behind during the American evacuation five years ago.

The Taliban's opponents still hold on to hope. Resistance in Badakhshan has surged in recent weeks. In mid-July, the Taliban briefly lost control of a district in the region, the first time this has happened in five years. Since

then, clashes between local groups and the government have continued, with reports of Taliban ranks switching sides.

"The harder they tighten their grip, the stronger the people will react," Koofi said. "They're becoming even harsher and harsher, and will do anything to exert control. Injustice at this scale will lead to their shortening their political survival."

But in Kabul, that still looks a forlorn hope. "It is hard to imagine now that only five years ago, I would move around this city freely, and go to work, meet my friends, family without any fear," Tahmina said.

"Women have lost their careers. They have no right to work or go to high school or study, and every step we take in the streets of Kabul is under the scrutiny of the Taliban. It's like we live in a prison."

She looks back on the years before the Taliban returned and remembers a happier time even amid the turmoil of war, with frequent terror attacks on the city. "Yes, there was always the fear of getting caught in an attack," she said. "But we were free."

Names have been changed to protect identities

and care for their household as they always did. Girls are being wed younger and younger, with early marriage no longer a crime.

When I ask the girls I'm in touch with what we can do from afar for them, they have different answers. A 14-year-old demanded to be armed with a Kalashnikov and believes women have to fight with weapons for their freedom. A 17-year-old told me to find her work online so she could support her family. Most ask for educational scholarships abroad – or any way out of Afghanistan.

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'We have been forced to hide our education'

Young girls in Afghanistan have to study in secret for fear of the Taliban, but many still cling to their dreams of a better future

Haroon Janjua Islamabad

For Sahar Gul*, a young girl in Afghanistan, education has become a secret pursuit. She studies at a friend's house, away from public view, forever conscious that being discovered could have terrible consequences.

A typical day of studying in secret begins for me with worry and caution, Gul told The Observer. "We hold our classes in a safe place, away from public view. We always have to be careful so that no one finds out."

Yet each time she opens a book, that fear gives way to something else: determination. "Despite all the fear, whenever I pick up a book and a pen, I feel that I am still fighting for my future," she said.

Gul is part of a generation of Afghan girls struggling to keep their education and ambitions alive since the Taliban returned to power five years ago. Within days of seizing Kabul in August 2021, the Islamist group banned girls from attending secondary school and women from universities, reinstating their brutal regime of the 1990s.

Just as they did then, the Taliban still claim the ban is "temporary". But five years on, there is no sign of it being lifted. Afghanistan remains the only country in the world to officially impose a gender-based education ban.

Unesco said last week that 2.4 million Afghan girls are excluded from secondary education – an increase of 200,000 in just one year. If the restrictions continue, that number could approach four million by 2030.

The girls and their teachers take huge risks attending class. The Taliban have spies and informants everywhere, and inspections of suspected schools are routine.

"We are forced to hide our education and speak cautiously even with those closest to us," said Gul. "This fear is always with us, but being deprived of education is even more painful."

Across Afghanistan today, a cat-and-mouse game of subterfuge goes on in private homes, and down quiet streets and alleys.

"A secret class is like this: we are sitting in the classroom when suddenly a member of the Taliban knocks on the door and comes in," said Fatima Zahra, a teenager in Kabul.

"He asks our teacher: 'What are you teaching them?' Our teacher says that we are studying the holy Qur'an or some Islamic lessons."

Some militants buy the ruse; some do not. In the city of Bamiyan, west of Kabul, more than 40 secret schools were shut down and scores of teachers and pupils arrested last year.

But in Kabul, Zahra said that the Taliban know where many schools are. Some turn a blind eye, or even help – for a price.

"They know girls are studying here. To let the class continue, some schools gather money for them as bribes," said Zahra.

"They check the girls' hijabs [as they arrive]. Sometimes they pick up girls after class and walk them home so their parents don't worry."

Gul said students depend on mobile phones and whatever limited resources they can find. Electricity cuts, weak internet connections and a lack of proper equipment can make even an online lesson difficult to attend.

"Sometimes, we have to wait for hours for the electricity or internet to return so that we can attend our classes," she said.

The result is an education conducted in fragments; when the electricity works, when the internet connects, and when it is safe to open a book.

Many conceal their attempts to continue studying even from their closest family. In the majority of areas, five years of Taliban rule have entrenched a return to the most conservative Islamist values.

"Opinions have changed. Our brothers and father sometimes speak with us like a Taliban member," said Zahra.

But Gul said she and her classmates refuse to let their futures disappear. She still wants to become a member of the judiciary and will not surrender the future she imagined during the years when the Taliban were out of power.

"I dream of continuing my education and to become a judge, so one day I can be useful to my people and my country," she said.

"The ban on girls' education has delayed many of our dreams, but it has not been able to destroy them. I still believe that every girl has the right to study, to make her own choices, and to build her own future."

To Gul's mind, studying is about more than a qualification now. In each secret classroom, there is an unspoken air of resistance.

"For me, education is not only about getting a degree," she said. "It is also a way of resisting hopelessness."

But many have watched with bitterness as their hopes for the future are snatched away. Life in Afghanistan has narrowed as the Taliban impose one decree after another on the nation's women and girls.

"I want to be free, travel alone [without a male guardian], and study at Kabul University," Zahra said with frustration.

"Before the Taliban, I had big dreams, but in these five years, I haven't had enough improvement in my life to achieve those dreams. Now we are trying to learn some skills like sewing and weaving."

*Names have been changed to protect the girls' identities

To the Taliban

You took my pen and paper But you left me my rage so I could swirl it into words of wisdom For my daughter, who will not be born Into a prison that you call peace Give me back the war That you called imperialism But it gave me room to breathe Let me die under those bombs But not under your God's wrath


24 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

World

‘She dug her own grave’: was the crash that killed Assad aide Luna al-Shibl an accident?

Rumours swirl that she paid the price for sleeping with Syria’s ex-dictator – or spying against his regime. By Chloe Hadjimatheou and Sarah Dadouch

On 5 July 2024, Syrian news channels broadcast a shocking announcement. One of President Bashar al-Assad’s closest advisers, Luna al-Shibl, had been killed in a car crash near the capital, Damascus.

Almost no one who knew her – and of her remarkable rise to the upper echelons of the Assad regime – believed her death was an accident.

“We were waiting for news of her assassination,” a source close to the regime’s inner circle told The Observer, referring to the months before her death. “She was digging her own grave.”

Within days, competing theories were circulating: she had been targeted by Iran for being a suspected Israeli spy; she had been Assad’s lover and he had grown tired of her; jealousy inside the presidential palace, primarily from the first lady, Asma al-Assad, had prompted Shibl’s sudden demise.

An Observer investigation, reviewing medical evidence and speaking to witnesses at the scene and from the hospital where she was treated, adds to the theory that her death was deliberate.

Shibl first made her name as a television host on Al Jazeera with the current affairs programme Lilnisaa Faqat (For Women Only). Poised and confident, she covered politics and social issues that affected women’s lives across the Arab world.

In 2010, at the height of her fame, she announced her resignation from the Qatari news channel, ostensibly over management remarks about her dress and appearance. In reality, she had received a better offer. For years, Shibl had been secretly meeting with Assad, the Syrian president, and a friendship had formed. In 2011 she resurfaced in Damascus working at the national security bureau, which coordinated and directed Syria’s powerful intelligence agencies.

Amira worked with Shibl for years in the first lady’s office. She said the intelligence chief, Ali Mamlouk, first introduced Assad

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to Shibl, recommending her as a talented media performer who could deliver forceful, nationalist messaging. “She was an artist with the media,” Amira said.

The Arab spring that swept the Middle East in late 2010 and 2011, during which pro-democracy protesters flooded the streets of Syria, demanded a quick media response. Shibl, in her new role, helped to legitimise the government’s policy of arresting, torturing and often murdering protesters on an industrial scale. She proved skilful at presenting

those opposed to the regime as terrorists, and the conflict as a war against Syria.

In February 2012, just months after her arrival, she was made head of the president’s media office. Four years later, she further cemented her position by marrying a regime loyalist, Ammar Saad. But even as the marriage was announced,

rumours had begun. “[She and Assad] had this intimate sexual relationship,” claims the prominent Syrian journalist Ibrahim Hamidi. Assad was known as a womaniser whose appetite reportedly extended to the wives of loyalists. Hamidi said Shibl seemed comfortable with the president’s sexual appetite. “She was in charge of bringing girls to him,” Hamidi said.

Amira also heard rumours that Shibl was asked to procure women for the president from “simpler backgrounds, including cleaners and the like”. But as Shibl’s relationship with the president became closer, a deep distrust and antipathy grew between her and the first lady.

Asma’s cousin Abdo al-Dabbagh said Shibl presented a serious problem for the first lady. “Just imagine: you’re sitting with your husband and his mistress and you can do nothing about her,” he said. “The relationship between Shibl and Asma is investigated in The Observer podcast We call her Emma, which chronicles the life of the first lady and her alleged complicity in Assad’s crimes. Asma’s father, Fawaz Akhras, said any claims that the former Syrian president was unfaithful are “based on spurious articles, with no foundation”.

Luna al-Shibl, left, and below with Bashar al-Assad, died in suspicious circumstances in 2024. Bikin Pien

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Listen to all episodes now observer.co.uk/we-call-her-emma

By early 2023, despite her loyal service to the regime, Shibl was being sidelined. She was later removed from the Ba’ath party’s central committee. Shibl struggled to accept the dwindling authority. A regime insider said: “You have to go quietly and just accept that you don’t have the same power... I don’t think Luna’s ambition could take that.”

“Luna lost it,” said Amira. “She was threatening them, saying she knows everything, that she would speak out. She was saying ‘I’m the real first lady’ and she was blabbing about [Bashar’s] relationships with other women.”

There was suspicion of Shibl and her role in Assad’s inner circle. A leaked memo written by Qassem Suleimani, the former commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, warned the head of Syrian intelligence that Shibl was a spy. “It is a very serious

‘Luna lost it. She was threatening them, saying she knows everything, that she would speak out’ Assad regime insider

accusation coming from someone like Suleimani,” says Hamidi. “She knew too much about everything.”

In the early months of 2024, Israeli assassinations in Syria surged: more than a dozen members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed. A few weeks later, Shibl’s brother and his wife were arrested at Damascus airport. Syrian intelligence accused him of leaking details of a sensitive meeting at the Iranian compound – intelligence that was allegedly sent to Israel before the Israeli strikes hit the consulate. Her brother’s arrest strengthened the suspicion that Shibl was a foreign agent.

Shibl’s nail technician, who saw her often during this period, described a woman unravelling. On 2 July 2024 the Syrian news agency Sana quoted the president’s office saying that Shibl had been involved in a car accident.

The Observer has spoken to a witness who arrived on the scene moments after the accident. He alleged that marks on Shibl’s car appeared to show her vehicle had been rammed off the road. The witness said Shibl’s security detail had been held back in traffic, and that her head injuries appeared consistent with a strike on the back of the head, not a crash. A scan of Shibl’s brain, seen by The Observer, taken the day of the accident at al-Shami hospital, seems to be consistent with blunt force trauma.

The witness said Shibl’s personal mobile phone was later found discarded in a bin but a second work device went missing. The Observer has seen a video of Shibl’s driver and her security detail being escorted out of the hospital in handcuffs by Syrian intelligence officers.

Syrian media mentioned a funeral but did not show any video footage, notable in its absence for such an important regime figure. One person who attended her funeral said Shibl’s body was not draped with the regime’s flag – usual practice for high-ranking officials.

Two years on, no official explanation has replaced the government’s account of the car accident. What is clear is how far Shibl had fallen by the time she died. The woman who once stood at the physical centre of Assad’s regime – helping shape its survival through a decade of war – was brushed aside.

A few months later, a rebel army from the north would sweep down and take over the country, and the president and first lady would flee in the middle of the night without warning, leaving behind dozens of senior regime officials to their fate.

Shibl believed proximity to power meant protection, but as others discovered, loyalty to a dictatorship only runs one way.

Names and identities have been changed or removed to protect sources


World

observer.co.uk^{}[] 16.08.26

25

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Somali pirates are back, haunted by poverty, lured by ransoms and loot

Driven by destitution and illegal fishing, a new wave of piracy is compounding the shipping crisis caused by the Iran conflict

Bandarbeyla, Somalia

In late April, the cargo ship Sward pushed out of port from Suez, laden with cement and bound for Mombasa.

As it rounded the Horn of Africa days later, the Sward was boarded by armed pirates who struck from the coast of Somalia. The ship's transponder was switched off and the vessel vanished from tracking sites. Its 15-man crew disappeared into captivity on the mainland.

Within days, two oil tankers were also hijacked, fuelling fears of a resurgence in piracy around the Horn of Africa at a time of crisis for the global shipping industry. Negotiations are under way for the release of scores of sailors being held hostage.

The Sward has since reappeared offshore from the Somali fishing town of Bandarbeyla, repurposed as a "mothership", an offshore base that allows the pirates to refuel and launch raids further out to sea.

About 10 hours' drive north-east from Garowe, Bandarbeyla is surrounded on one side by the rocky desert terrain of Puntland. On the other lies the glittering expanse of the Indian Ocean. The area feels like the edge of the world, a place where nothing

happens. But the ancient town is an infamous pirate hub and now the centre of a new wave of piracy that has compounded the crisis in global shipping triggered by the Iran war.

Pirate raids on shipping lanes off the Somali coast have been kept largely at bay since their peak 15 years ago. From 2005 to 2011, attacks in the Indian Ocean cost the industry millions of dollars in ransom payments and billions in international trade. Some hostages were held for years in atrocious conditions.

With the Strait of Hormuz closed by the US conflict with Iran, and Iran-backed Houthi militants stepping up attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, vessels across the region have been caught in vulnerable territory. International naval patrols that successfully shut down the last piracy wave are now stretched thinly across the region, leaving ships exposed.

The crisis coincides with an unending drought in Puntland and the depletion of local fishing stocks at sea, driven by illegal foreign trawlers that have wrecked the local economy. Economic desperation has driven many here to swap their fishing nets for guns and return to piracy.

"People take up arms at sea because of poverty... There are families that haven't eaten for three days because their men are not able to catch fish," said Farah Abdulkadir Rahman, a fisherman from Bandarbeyla. Many people here are reluctant to discuss pirates in the community for fear of being targeted by them, but their presence is an open secret.

"The issues out at sea have an impact on land... There are no fish to

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Mohamed Kolumbo, a fisherman for 20 years in Bandarbeyla.

catch like there once was, so this is impacting the local community and livelihoods are destroyed."

Using the Sward as a base, pirates hijacked two Iranian fishing boats in co-ordinated attacks on 16 July. The two vessels and their crews were released days later, after $20,000 was paid for each ship, according to clan elders. These were the first confirmed ransoms since the spike in pirate attacks began this year.

Most of the pirates are former fishermen disillusioned by their struggle to compete with large foreign trawlers which they say have robbed them of their livelihoods. Locals in Puntland say it is the surge in illegal fishing that has destroyed the local industry and driven some to crime.

"Thirty years ago, when I started as a fisherman, there were plenty of fish in the sea. Today that is not the case," said Mohamad Ali Farah, another fisher in Bandarbeyla, who has observed the decline of the trade over the generations and the impact

on his community. "A lot of it has to do with the illegal overfishing. It's affecting everyone economically," he said.

Months before Donald Trump launched his war with Iran and threw shipping across the region into turmoil, Somali fishermen turned pirates had been waging a territorial battle with foreign trawlers encroaching into local waters.

Officials in Puntland believe that an earlier hijacking of the Chinese fishing vessel Liao Dong Van 578 on New Year's Eve paved the way for the latest attacks.

"One Somali security guard was killed in the attack [on the Chinese ship]," police commander Abdulkadir Said told The Observer at the criminal investigation department for Puntland's Karkaar province, behind Garowe prison.

The ship and its crew were finally freed after mediation by clan elders, the Puntland government and Chinese ambassador. Reports at the time suggested a $2m ransom had

Photographs by Said Fadhaye

Members of the Puntland Maritime Police Force keep watch for pirates near Bosaso.

been paid by China, although Beijing has not confirmed this.

Trawlers from China, Iran, Pakistan and Thailand are feared and despised by local fishers. The Somali government has banned them from within 24 nautical miles of the coast. But ships routinely ignore the ban.

The Corno Africa Fishing Company (CaFco) is the economic hub of Bandarbeyla. Here, fishermen store their catch in freezers. Through open archways in the whitewashed concrete walls, the ocean shimmers in the distance. Prayer mats are scattered across the floor and a few fishermen lounge around, swapping stories about encounters with the trawlers.

"The foreign fishing boats cause us a lot of problems. They enter our seas, trawlers destroy our fish nets. We return to our boats empty," said an angry Mohamed Kolumbo, a rugged fisherman of 20 years in the trade.

Rahman described his experience alone at sea at around 2am one day. He was spotted by a trawler and the rival ship ran over his net and then charged at him, he said.

"It destroyed my boat and it capsized. It's the middle of the night, I'm out at sea, no one is around, I clung on to the wrecked boat and the motor for a day and half before I got help."

The plight of the fishing community is compounded by climate change and the catastrophic impact of seemingly endless droughts.

"It hasn't rained here in two years," said Abshir Farah, the deputy mayor of Bandarbeyla. "The sea is being emptied and on land there is a drought. So some people are going to attack and capture ships."

Authorities in Puntland have made token efforts to crack down on rising piracy, but officials admit that the pirates enjoy support from local clans. When one of the suspects in the Sward hijacking was arrested this summer, local militiamen stormed the police station to free him. One officer was killed in the firefight.

Puntland had enjoyed relative stability compared with the rest of Somalia since the civil war of the 1990s. But already scant security resources have been further stretched by an emerging terrorist threat, with a growing his presence in the Golis Mountains in northern Somalia. A renewed focus on counter-terrorism is allowing piracy to go unchecked.

"Puntland has been at war with terrorists since last year and [the pirates] are exploiting that," said Najib Hassan, captain of the Puntland Maritime Police Force, speaking to The Observer in the port city of Bosaso.

He gestures to the mountains beyond the city. "We fight pirates first on land," he said. "If they are able to make it at sea, then we isolate them on land by cutting off their supply routes."


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Right, Afua Hirsch, writer/broadcaster and podcast host. Left, Peter Frankopan, historian and podcast host

Legacy podcast: why understanding history is more important than ever (or, why AI is like a potato...)

From the Legacy of the Potato, the St George's Flag, and the Facelift, understanding where our ideas come from has never been more useful

Afua Hirsch is a journalist and filmmaker, known for her work on identity and culture, and author of bestselling book Brit(ish). Peter Frankopan is a professor of Global History at Oxford University and the author of global bestsellers The Silk Roads, and The Earth Transformed. They have been co-hosting Legacy together since 2023, and have covered topics ranging from Cleopatra to Picasso, Bob Marley to Alan Turing, and themes including the history and legacy of the facelift, wellness and the Belle Epoch.

Why is understanding history more important than ever?

Afua: We come at history from different angles. Peter is one of the

world's leading historians, who works on the Mediterranean, Russia, the Middle East, Persia and Asia and on exchanges and connections between regions and peoples. I'm fascinated by how history informs our present, how it shapes our identity, culture, politics and values. These are always relevant topics but feel especially urgent now when it's becoming clear how much we are grappling with seismic change. The fall of empires, radical new technologies and huge population migrations of the past suddenly seem not just nice to know but crucial for getting through the day.

Peter: There has never been a time when humans weren't interested

in our history, it feels like a very primordial thing. But sometimes it's easy to oversimplify history, or underestimate how much it has to teach us. Because we have such different backgrounds and approaches to history, we learn a lot from each other, while not agreeing about everything! And always bring our fascination with history back to what insights it offers for the times we are living through now.

What episode or series of the podcast best typifies this idea and why?

Afua: One answer would be, Gorbachev. We did a series about him and the end of the Cold War, a topic on which Peter has a lot of scholarly and lived experience. Or Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana to independence and triggered a wave of decolonisation that's very personal for me, because of my Ghanaian heritage. Or Marilyn Monroe, and the cult of celebrity and its proximity to political power, which feels pretty timely.

Peter: But in fact, we would say,

maybe the potato! The potato transformed the world beyond recognition, allowing urbanisation and arguably making imperial conquest possible by changing cycles of famine and facilitating population booms in Europe. Its discovery has echoes in new technologies now, like AI, and how they are changing everything about the way we live, work, and what we are capable of doing. In some ways that is good, but in others that seems sinister and scary.

Listen to Legacy wherever you get your podcasts. Advertise on Legacy exclusively through Acast.

Scan to listen to the podcast

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Forum

Opinion, People & Ideas

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

27

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All that emoting over soil, stone and wild places. Nature writing is just BS → Melanie Reid, page 28

This absurd, pointless byelection has consigned to the bin what little dignity Farage had left Philip Collins

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After losing a third of the vote to comedy candidates, the Reform leader has also lost the political magic that enabled him to survive

It is dawn on the beach at Clacton-on-Sea and the dancers are warming up on the sand when Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys turns up on a bicycle and buys a postcard from a kiosk. The owner moans to him about the state of modern politics. Tennant visits a flamboyantly dressed fortune teller while a troupe of nuns performs a risque cover of It's a Sin. This is the opening scene of It Couldn't Happen Here, a surreal 1987 film starring the synth-pop band, which was, until the last few weeks, the oddest thing ever to have happened in Clacton.

To which Nigel Farage said: "Hold my beer." Mr Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has spent the past few weeks fighting a byelection that he called – in a vain bid to forestall an inquiry into gifts he received from a crypto billionaire – against a man with a steel bin on his head and a list of sundry other opponents, which did not include any of the main political parties but did feature 20 independents, including Nick the Incredible Flying Brick, Howling Laud Hope and Baron Von Thunderclap of the Official Monster Raving Loony party, and Marcus White standing for Everyone Is God. Farage duly won this needless non-event, but confirmed its complete absurdity by refusing to turn up to the count. The result was declared to silence. Clacton is a victory from which Farage will struggle to recover.

Farage conceded a third of the vote to joke candidates, on a turnout of 44.3%. Less than three in 10 of the eligible voters of Clacton bothered to endorse him – which makes a mockery of his claim to have once again "stuck two fingers up to the entire political establishment". When you are pitching yourself against a political establishment that consists of a comedian with a bin on his head, you have lost your touch, not to mention your dignity. Farage tried desperately to maintain his status as the victim with the claim that he was unable to attend the count because there was a credible threat to his safety. Essex Police did not confirm

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Until recent weeks, a surreal Pet Shop Boys' film was the oddest thing to have happened in Clacton. IGR Collection/Nanny

that claim, and Farage gave the game away when he said he had no intention of turning up to be mocked and demeaned by nobodies.

In truth, Farage has done that to himself. Reform's polling numbers have been falling for a while, but the Clacton byelection seals the decline. Something has changed for Farage. He has lost his magic. Politics is about calculation, strategy and policy. But it is also about magic, and the politician who possesses a vial of magic is granted a holiday from the rules that govern the mortals. It is common to dismiss "magical thinking" as an unwelcome departure from the rational, and so it is. But magic is also the means by which the most gifted politicians make appeals that dissolve apparently fixed political boundaries.

Many years ago, when it was rumoured that I, the chief speech writer to Tony Blair, might be staying on to join Gordon Brown in the same capacity, I scotched the rumour by unwisely saying to Rachel Sylvester, now of this parish, that it wasn't a speechwriter Brown needed but a magician. In my lifetime, in Britain, four politicians have had the political magic to suspend the usual rules of engagement: Margaret Thatcher, Blair, Boris Johnson and Farage. They all lost their magic eventually – everyone comes to ground in time – but the magical politician can fly for a while.

David Cameron, by contrast, had no magic. He was just the swottiest, most accomplished student at the school of how to do politics. We are in the early stages of assessing whether Andy Burnham has a modern form of magic by TikTok. My own hunch is that he does not, and that he will soon have to rely on the conventional political strategy of getting some good done.

What this means is that Farage has, for some time

now, been judged according to the political rules that apply to everyone else. His magic – crying that the world is out to get him – is not working as it did. His likability rating has fallen to 24%; 65% of people say they do not like him. These are awful numbers for someone with designs on being prime minister, and especially so for Farage. People will vote for candidates they do not much like – Thatcher, passim, and Blair after Iraq are good examples – but only if they command respect through their capacity to get things done.

Nobody thinks of Farage as a model of policy ingenuity or administrative efficiency. He cannot make a claim to seriousness to replace the lost likability. This is a man who has raised the subject of Clacton in parliament just six times. He is the MP for a town with great and varied needs. Clacton has no obvious economic purpose, life expectancy is falling, there are too many homeless people and there is no A&E. Clacton needs an MP who cares. To confirm the fact that the rules now apply to him too, Farage will return to Westminster to meet Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, who has, since May, been assessing whether Farage broke the code of conduct by not declaring a £5m gift from Christopher Harborne.

It is possible to force a byelection on a point of principle. David Davis did at least try to talk about civil liberties after resigning his seat to trigger an eccentric byelection in Haltemprice and Howden in 2008. The best example was George Lansbury's campaign for women's votes in Bow and Bromley in 1912 against the Conservative Reginald Blair, who ran on the slogan "Vote for Blair and make everybody happy". Blair took the seat. Lansbury lost, but it was a dignified defeat. Farage had no purpose in Clacton beyond interrupting a legitimate inquiry into how he is funded.

This was a pointless and costly byelection in which the losers were the winners. Count Binface won the highest vote for a novelty candidate in the history of British politics, beating Screaming Lord Sutch's 4% in Rotherham in 1994. More candidates lost their deposits than at any previous byelection.

Now reduced to the status of a mere politician, Farage will return to parliament to face the music, and it will not be by the Pet Shop Boys. It couldn't happen here, thought Farage. But it has.

Andrew Raunsey is away


28 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Forum

From CCTV to digital data, states are policing problems that need political fixes Kenan Malik

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Two parallel 20ft-high steel fences surround the town. A road in between allows for armed patrols. Video and thermal cameras festoon the barrier. Noise detectors lurk beneath the ground. Drones fly overhead. All are linked to AI systems such as Foldout, which allows for 'through-foliage detection', and Roborder (a so-called 'autonomous swarm of heterogeneous robots for border surveillance'). Dozens of boats patrol the coast. Welcome to Ceuta, one of two Spanish enclaves in Morocco, its border bolted against migrants desperate to enter Europe. 'Every inch is blocked, every conceivable technology deployed,' says the anthropologist Ruben Andersson.

Yet, at the end of last month, more than 60,000 migrants breached the border, though most returned within a day. At least 100 people died. How was such an impenetrable border penetrated? Because however sophisticated the technology, it can only function within particular social and political contexts.

The mass crossing, observes Lorenzo Gabrielli, a researcher of migration in Ceuta, would have been 'impossible... without Morocco having a hand in it'. Morocco may have enabled the breach out of anger at closer ties between Spain and Algeria, with which Morocco has a tense relationship. It would not be the first time Rabat used migration as political leverage. In 2021, around 8,000 migrants entered Ceuta over several days after Rabat loosened border controls during a diplomatic row about Madrid's decision to

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The scene at Ceuta last month. Jorge Guerrero/AFP via Getty Images

allow Brahim Ghali, leader of the Polisario Front, which fights for the independence of Western Sahara from Morocco, to receive hospital treatment in Spain. Madrid eventually reversed longstanding policy and backed Morocco's hold over the African territory.

In a new book, Age of Security: The Rise of a Global Obsession, Andersson observes that Ceuta is emblematic of a wider problem: the way that political issues have become reframed as matters of security, to create 'a world in which fellow civilians are the principal threat, and where military and surveillance technologies are deployed to 'fight' them'. Debates about migration have been reduced largely to issues of border control. But no wall is high enough to exclude the human and political factors that underlie the movement of people.

The degradation of politics,

Andersson argues, and the waning of the possibilities for a better future, has led to a yearning for more safety and protection. Government policies have undermined social bonds leaving 'a

Marginalised groups are used as Trojan horses for surveillance techniques

gaping hole where a shared society used to be'. As trust has eroded, so security has become a kind of social glue. From the war on drugs to the decline of the high street, social issues are increasingly viewed through the lens of security.

Yet, securitisation necessarily fails because social and political problems cannot be solved through more intensive policing. The very failure of the security approach leads, though, to greater paranoia,

which 'feeds demand for even more securitisation': a 'doom loop', as Andersson puts it.

The desire for protection has been turned into a call for more intrusive surveillance, from CCTV to digital data. As tech corporations build ever more intimate relations with the state, not only has policy become more securitised but security has become more militarised. The description of immigration as 'invasion', and the use of military technology to combat it, is one example. The work of a corporation such as Palantir is another.

Named after the indestructible magical orbs in The Lord of the Rings that could see into any part of the world, Palantir produces software for the military, immigration enforcement, police departments, corporations and public services, including the NHS. It parses and connects vast amounts of data to help launch airstrikes, decide who should be deported and organise vaccine distribution. Alex Karp, one of Palantir's founders, describes its work as 'the finding of hidden things', including 'patterns of suspicious or aberrant behaviour'. Little wonder that many are worried about its latest project - building for the American government a mega database of US citizens.

Technology, Andersson worries, 'is slipping beyond democratic control'. Yet, he also observes that 'we have all collaborated' in making surveillance 'banal'. We willingly offer up our data, whether for a sense of extra protection or to make shopping more frictionless. We conspire in our own surveillance.

At the same time, the authorities

use marginalised groups as Trojan horses for surveillance techniques later deployed on citizens more broadly, from facial recognition to drone technology. When Keir Starmer first introduced his later abandoned proposals for national ID cards, he justified it as a means to 'curb the prospect of work for illegal migrants'. 'The securitisation of others,' Andersson observes, 'justifies the surveillance of all.'

Alongside 'hard security' has developed 'soft security', promoted not by the right but by the left. 'After radicals lost ideological bearings in the 1990s,' Andersson argues, 'they found new purpose in combating harm', shifting their attention from 'economic justice to harmful speech' and the need for 'safe spaces'. Universities became 'laboratories for soft security'. 'Harm,' though, is an elastic concept, and has come increasingly to encompass criticism or disagreement. It has become a weapon, too, for the right to clamp down on dissent it opposes, such as support for Palestine.

Both right and left, Andersson acknowledges, might object to the bundling of migration policy with opposition to hate speech. Yet, 'hard and soft security have much in common', not least the replacement of politics with protection. We live in an age in which we seek less to solve problems than to contain them, generating a sense of both 'paranoia and hubris' - 'a deadly brew', as Andersson puts it. Breaking out of the container of containment, and restoring politics to its rightful place in human life, is perhaps our most urgent task.

Lyrical nature nonsense? I won't soil my hands with it

Bacolic writing too often favours purple prose over brutal reality, writes Melanie Reid, Blame Wordsworth

Without fail, the words 'palimpsest' and 'liminal' trigger me. Encounter the first, in a description of the countryside, and an alert sounds in my brain. Reach the second and a full-scale BS alarm goes off. My engagement stalls, my judgments form.

All it takes is the appearance of 'penumbral' in the following chapter and I'm gone. Then a book just becomes amusing, which is cruel, because those who write about nature are achingly earnest. All that emoting over soil and stone,

humans and wild places, history and deep time, is deadly serious work.

In fairness to Maggie O'Farrell, I don't remember a penumbral. But at the second 'palimpsest', her new novel, Land, lost me. Beautifully crafted as it may be, once my sense of disbelief was no longer suspended, once the worm of cynicism stuck its head out of those bogs and mystical pagan springs, the writing was reduced to aesthetic cliché.

Which is a shame. Writing books is hard, criticism easy. O'Farrell's army of fans will endure, whatever I say. But the nature genre is burdened by prose that, if not quite purple, is pretty damn mauve. Why do writers feel bound to do it? Why do we indulge it?

Robert Macfarlane has written some lyrical stuff. I have on my office wall a lugubrious quote from

The Wild Places about how the mountains watched us come and one day they'll watch us go. But he's now in a trap of his own making; the only way forward for him and less talented acolytes is to go deeper, more mystical.

Pansychism, it's been called. Or psychogeography, this romantic gush about the soul of the soil, the imprint of our ancestors and spiritual wellsprings. Thus for Macfarlane old paths are weird time-travelling rifts and a river is a sentient being.

Some glorious critical essays - read Richard Smyth in the Fence magazine, Steven Poole in the Guardian - skewer the genre as

Our peasant ancestors gladly fled starvation for a roof and wage in the cities

overwritten bourgeois escapism. O'Farrell has woven a family saga around hers, but it's the same theme: the sentimental yearning for a pastoral idyll destined to be read by people sitting at luxury kitchen islands.

Since William Wordsworth's original mission statement - 'These beauteous forms,' 'Through a long absence, have not been to me/ As is a landscape to a blind man's eye/ But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din/ Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,/ In hours of weariness, sensations sweet' - we've been wanging on about our tragic divorce from the soil.

But really? Our peasant ancestors gladly fled starvation in the 19th century for plumbing, a roof and a wage in the cities. Only at a point where civilisation is about to eat itself have we gone truly woo-woo

about the dirt they shook from their boots.

Rewilding, wild swimming, nature tourism. Even looking at trees is organised: the National Trust has commercialised the metaphor of retreat into the forest with sites for group tree bathing, where you lower your stress lying on sloping benches under the branches. My local council has just sent a survey on 'tree equity' - how to give communities access to the benefits of trees.

Meanwhile, at my front door, nature in the raw hums with the smell of rotting swallow chicks - a second brood that died in the nest during two days of rain. Survival is no romance. A far more accurate literary portrayal of land, I contend, remains Magnus Mills's sparse allegory The Restraint of Beasts. It contains no palimpsests.

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Beware the demise of public companies Will Hutton

We are living through a revolution as profound as the emergence of artificial intelligence or the disintegration of the international order. It is the privatisation of capitalism. Readers will shake their heads. Isn't capitalism already the quintessential preserve of the private?

Apologies – but no. One of the important reasons the dark predictions of Marx never came to pass was the emergence of the concept of the public company whose shares were traded on public stock markets. To avoid fraud and malfeasance, listed companies thus had to surrender to demands for common standards of commercial decency and accountability. The first Companies Act in 1862 created new basic accountabilities. Capitalism was one step ahead of the great revolutionary who published Das Kapital five years later. Successive amendments to the act would create accountabilities and transparencies that would channel its destructive dynamics into something better.

Today's familiar landscape – a public stock market listing Britain's leading companies, all conforming to high regulatory, auditing, environmental and behavioural

standards in which you, I and our savings institutions can safely invest – is a great progressive achievement. Quoted companies disclose an astonishing range of information, from their approach to environmental standards to gender pay. They offer careers and opportunity, and anchor economic activity in our towns and cities. They are business citizens.

I admire Feargal Sharkey and his effective campaign against the disaster of our water. But it is not privatisation that is the root of the problem; rather, it is the behaviour of privatised capitalism driven by the emergency of extraordinary private wealth; the world of private equity, private credit, private banks, private family offices and private foundations that some predict could constitute nearly half of world gross domestic product within a decade.

In the water industry, this reached its apogee in Thames Water when owned by the private consortium led by the Australian investment bank Macquarie, and the self-interested orgy of underinvestment, tax avoidance and disregard for the environment that followed. Instead, it is the publicly quoted companies, accountable to their shareholders, stakeholders and the regulator, that have been the best performers on the key financial, customer

satisfaction and environmental metrics. Nationalisation is a simpler battle cry. But it is not the solution.

Yet if Britain's docile compliance with privatised capitalism continues – spearheaded by the US and its political right – it may be all that is left. British public companies have increasingly been at the wrong end of a feeding frenzy led by US private interests. This year alone, five FTSE 100 companies have been or are in the process of being taken over.

Since 2023, Charles Hall, research director of the British investment bank Peel Hunt, calculates that 156 middle-sized quoted companies worth £169bn have been swallowed up – and others worth £126bn have upped sticks seeking quotations in New York. Forget the fertile interdependence of public and private that has driven our capitalism; private is now set to rule the roost, with avaricious short-term shareholders, the majority of whom are foreign, delighted to be offered a profitable exit.

Less so is anyone with British interests at heart. Peel Hunt has been sounding the tocsin for years, while Richard Marwood, head of UK equities at the Royal London Asset management, warns that the gadarene rush to accept bids "is almost like we're sawing through

the branch we [asset managers] are sitting on".

I'll say. Twenty years ago, Britain boasted 1,700 publicly quoted companies; now there are 909, estimates Hall – and the downward trend is accelerating. Unless something changes by 2040, public companies will become extinct. Part of the problem is that too few new public companies are coming forward to fill the hopper: there have only been 11 initial public offerings in the UK of businesses with market caps of more than £100m since 2023. This matters.

A precondition for growth is a critical mass of consequential

British PLC's have been at the wrong end of a feeding frenzy by US private firms

British companies that are constantly being replenished in a vibrant stock market that values them highly – a far cry from where we are.

The heart of the problem is that British institutional savers, notably our pension funds, shun investing in UK public and private companies to an extent unparalleled globally. Britain's growth in the first half of this year was the fastest in the G7, while foreign buyers may think our

companies are so dirt cheap that they scramble to take them private – neither of which entice our pension funds. Indeed, it's because they don't that they are so cheap. Yet the tax relief on pension fund contributions totalled almost £60bn in the last financial year. We are paying these funds to desert us.

There is no doubt, as a coalition including former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane and Tory peer and pensions expert Ros Altmann argues, that pension fund tax relief should be made conditional on a promise to invest more in UK equities – say, at least 15% of their total equity portfolio. British companies need and deserve to be valued more highly by UK investors. On top, stamp duty must be lowered to encourage more transactions, and a capital gains tax cordon sanitaire thrown around company founders and innovators. The alternative is a barren land.

The paradox is that it falls to a Labour prime minister and chancellor to make the case for a buoyant stock market and for public limited companies. But this isn't just about growth; it is about challenging the privatisation of capitalism and its associated barbarism that will finally prove Marx right. It has become the most important progressive cause in town.


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The politics of white grievance will always be suspicious of Black achievement Seun Matiluko

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The media frenzy around Jason Arday, who died last week, betrays a dark obsession with clicks, views and the culture wars

Late Friday night, it was an academic who put it best: "Two weeks ago Jason Arday was a Cambridge professor and now he is gone." It can sometimes seem facile to remind people to be kind and remember, before they pile on, that there is another person at the end of their tweet, blog post or headline. But in this case, I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that the press failed Jason Arday.

A man calling himself a "race realist" who believes that, in a meritocracy, Black people would "disappear from almost all high-profile positions outside of sports and entertainment" – many would call that simply "racist" – unearths some suspected plagiarism in Arday's PhD thesis and writes about it on Substack.

Newspapers look into the claims and find them credible. That could have been the end of it. If it was, the coverage might have been on a par with that of Cambridge professor William O'Reilly, who copied 4,000 words from students' essays, republished them as his own in academic journals, and said that he was a victim of "homophobic bullying" when he was found out. But the coverage of Arday didn't stop at his academic work – the work that, though it was sufficient

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Jason Arday at a Times Higher Education conference in 2024. David J. Colbran/Alamy

to pass a Liverpool John Moores PhD, critics said pulled Cambridge into disrepute.

Journalists teased at every aspect of Arday's life to try to get clicks and views (and money). There were 249 articles published about him over 22 days.

For hours after the announcement of his death, The Times was running a sponsored ad on X for a piece written by a disgruntled former student who was unhappy with Arday's teaching.

Much of the relentless media coverage in the lead-up to the tragic events on Friday inevitably became about the culture wars. Arday was compared to Meghan Markle (because of course) and journalists – very keen to let others know that they went to Cambridge – said that

Arday's existence was evidence Black people get an easier ride in academia (only 1% of UK professors are Black).

Social media was awash with fantastical claims that Oxbridge lets

The relentless campaign against him was out of proportion to his mis-steps

in Black students with lower grades, purely because they're Black.

In reality, the only form of affirmative action or DEI (diversity, equality, inclusion), or whatever you want to call it, with respect to UK university admissions happens on the basis of class, not race: people who went to struggling schools or live in deprived areas sometimes

get what's called a "contextual offer", in recognition of how hard they've worked under difficult circumstances. Many of the people who benefit from contextual offers are white working-class students, who, ordinarily, those on the "anti-DEI" side of the culture war pretend to care about.

It is right to apply scrutiny to people in power. People who lie should be called out. And it does appear that many parts of Arday's life story were questionable. He was clearly a fallible man. Questions remain for him to answer that he never will.

But the relentless media campaign against him was out of proportion to his mis-steps. Arday was not a murderer, he was not a rapist and he was not one of the Cambridge academics mentioned in the Epstein files. So why was there wall-to-wall coverage about him? Why did so many outlets make him the near-constant face of their website splash for the past few weeks – the most noticeable exception being the day after he died?

Part of it might be because it's "silly season": part, our country's obsession with Oxbridge. If Arday were a professor at Leeds, Durham or King's College London, I doubt the story would have had such traction.

However, I think much of the media firestorm was tied to Arday's race.

I know some will roll their eyes at this and say it was Cambridge that emphasised his Blackness in the first place. I agree that in the press

coverage following Arday's meteoric rise to professorship in 2023, his race was brought up a lot.

However, headlines such as the ones we've seen in the past few weeks – eg How Black Lives Matter created Jason Arday, or Students told Cambridge to 'decolonise' before Jason Arday was hired or Cambridge's diversity poster boy in plagiarism row – go beyond just recognising Arday's racial background. They betray a politics of white grievance that is instantly suspicious of Black achievement as somehow coming at the expense of white people.

If the level of scrutiny applied to Arday over these past few weeks were applied to his most fervent critics, few would come out unscathed. Arday is not the first person, nor will he be the last, to have allegedly plagiarised work or shared a life story that contains questionable facts. He is also not the first person to be accused of being a poor academic (most university graduates I know have a story about academics they thought weren't up to the job).

Yet Arday is now dead and his children will grow up without a father. In a year, some of his critics may not even remember his name.

Perhaps it is naive to expect all journalists to act ethically. But I seem to remember many claiming to have learned lessons after Caroline Flack's suicide. Sadly, six years on, the lessons appear to have been to relentlessly hound a public figure and then, when they die, say "rest in peace", "thoughts and prayers" and pass the blame on to someone else.

Notebook

Journeys in space and time – courtesy of a cardboard box and a colander Erica Wagner

Last Wednesday I was listening to Matthew Syed on Radio 4's Sideways as he told the story of Min Kym, whose 300-year-old Stradivarius violin was stolen in Euston Station in 2010. Kym has recounted the story in a beautiful memoir, Gone: A Girl, A Violin, A Life Unsprung – but Syed explores the larger question of how we ascribe value to objects. I listened closely as I unpacked six dusty cardboard boxes I'd retrieved from storage more than 15 years after I'd last seen them, when I'd packed them up in the aftermath of my mother's death. (I say "I retrieved": this is a perfidious untruth. My son drove across the country and back to get them. No, I can never be cross

at him about anything ever, ever again.) Much of what was collected was antique media, for want of a better term: carousels of 35mm slides, a hundred reels of Super 8 film, Sin spools of audiotape – which all must be digitised if I want to decode this archive of my past. I am an archaeologist, investing in a dig to see whether what I discover is worthwhile. As to my mother's battered copies of the diaries of James Lees-Milne – her love of these books offer one explanation of how a native New Yorker like me ended up in England. Priceless.

Tally recommendation: Carmen Carlers, which I have just discovered on Channel 4's Walter

Presents. "Stylish Danish period drama inspired by real events. In 1963, businessman Axel Byvang invests in an obscure invention. Will it spark to life or curl up into nothing?" There are many reasons to love this series: all the mid-century modern you can eat, charming and heartfelt performances, an unusual exploration of feminism and sexuality in a setting which – if you don't live in Copenhagen – you're unlikely to have seen or thought about. But one of the best things about it is the way in which it takes its time. For the first four episodes you're really

kept wondering how the central characters will come together: the viewer gets to do some work, considering the boundaries between the urban and the rural, between men and women, between ambition and stasis. Robert Penn Warren: "The name of the story will be Time, / But you must not pronounce its name. / Tell me a story of deep delight."

Speaking of time and deep delight: we repaired to the upstairs bedroom, where I taped a big piece of white

cardboard to a ladder and held up our trusty colander. By golly, right? Where were you? Up on a high hill, in a field, in a top room as we were? First the dots of light on the card, perfect round disks: gradually, gradually, a crescent bite creeping across each fragment of the pattern to show the moon passing across the face of the sun. Even in our urban street: the bluing twilight, the sudden hush. And then dinner time. Rinse the sun from the colander and drain the spaghetti. You will have read a fair amount in the last couple of weeks, in this newspaper, about efforts to save Jodrell Bank, the great radio telescope in the heart of Cheshire. And this is why: a small demonstration of the wonder of the universe available to us all in one moment in the solar system's great whirl. Swamped by high tech – the tyranny of my phone, a washing machine that wants to talk to me – the white enamel bowl I scooped from a kitchen drawer connected me to the magnificent instrument hard by Alderley Edge. I'll say it again: priceless.

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Letters

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The public is best served by a prison system that rehabilitates

Rachel Sylvester's article on the new "Scandi wings" at HMP Wandsworth offers a timely and hopeful reminder that prison reform isn't being soft on crime. It's being smart on crime. ("Scandi wings" offering pianos, pool and tea parties could help solve prison crisis", News, last week).

At a time when our prisons face unprecedented pressures and unparalleled scrutiny, with overcrowding, high levels of violence, self-harm and staff shortages, it is encouraging to see evidence that a more constructive approach can deliver tangible results.

The reported reductions in assaults, self-harm and staff absence on the units at Wandsworth and Pentonville should make policymakers of all political persuasions take notice.

For too long, the debate about prisons has been trapped in a false choice between punishment and rehabilitation. In reality, the two are not mutually exclusive.

Prison is the punishment. What matters next is whether people leave custody more likely, or less likely, to commit further crime. A system that simply warehouses people in unsafe, overcrowded conditions is failing not only those inside but also the communities to which most prisoners will eventually return.

The Prison Reform Trust has long argued that dignity, purpose and positive relationships are not luxuries in prison. They are foundations for safety and change. The principles underpinning the Scandinavian model, including greater staff-prisoner interaction, an emphasis on respect, and more opportunities to develop responsibility and skills, are grounded in evidence about what contributes to effective rehabilitation. They recognise the truth that people are more likely to change when treated as human beings with the capacity to do so.

What is particularly striking about the Wandsworth project is that its apparent success has been achieved not in a purpose-built Nordic prison, but within one of England's most challenging prison environments. Making these wings work takes concerted effort and talented leadership.

Of course, no single initiative can solve the problems facing our prisons. We urgently need action to reduce overcrowding, improve mental health support, expand opportunities for education and employment, and strengthen support for people leaving custody. Innovations such as these demonstrate change is achievable when prison leaders are given the freedom and support to focus on rehabilitation rather than mere containment.

The public wants a justice system that protects communities, supports victims and reduces future harm. Those objectives are best served by helping people build law-abiding lives.

The question now is not whether we can afford to learn from these innovations, but whether we can afford not to.

Pia Sinha Chief Executive of Prison Reform Trust

British idea, revived

Rachel Sylvester praises the Scandi model being pioneered on wings in two troubled London prisons – but this is not a Scandinavian invention. It was pioneered 40 years ago by an English prison governor, Ian Dunbar, in a concept he called "dynamic security". Its three pillars were physical security, staff-prisoner relationships and purposeful activity. The Norwegian prison service has cited Dunbar's work as the basis for its own approach. So, unlike football, it is just coming home.

In fact, it never left – but it has been overwhelmed and undermined in our overcrowded and crisis-ridden prison system. Prisons are part of an ecosystem, which include an overstretched probation service and underfunded community mental health and support services. Prisons will continue to be over-used and under-performing unless we also find a way to invest properly in "not prison".

Dame Anne Owers Former Chief Inspector of Prisons

Matter of choice

I write as an 82-year-old humanist, generally fit but finding the list of things I can no longer do is growing. From that perspective, I found Baroness Fox's letter ("Better palliative care should come before assisted dying", Letters, last week) truly shocking. It was those who find assisted dying entirely unacceptable who created the connection between assisted dying and palliative care. The two are distinct.

My idea of hell on Earth is having the best possible palliative care, but without many of my faculties and in pain, while others decide how much of that pain I must tolerate – leaving me entirely without free will.

Baroness Fox sets out an argument about what is acceptable from her humanist point of view, which denies the very purpose of assisted dying: to alleviate suffering.

Bob Owen Chetnole, Dorset

My husband died from bulbar onset motor neurone disease (MND), aged 62. The hospice were wonderful but there is no palliative care or support that can alleviate the symptoms of MND. Offering the option of an assisted death to people with a terminal illness such as Bob had does not pose a threat to other vulnerable people. It offers a dignified and peaceful end to an intolerable, anguishing and incurable illness.

Decent education for all

Philip Collins opines that the pupils in the 1960s who passed the 11-plus and therefore gained a grammar school education were the "brightest" 20% of their cohort ("Serious vocational education is the best way to help failed pupils", Forum, last week). I came in the top 10 of the 90 pupils in my class every year in junior school. I failed the 11-plus. At that time, the exam had a lower pass mark for boys than for girls. A disproportionate number of middle-class children passed the exam. I also lived in a council house.

After leaving school at 16, I gained a first-class honours degree with the Open University while working full time. Not bad for one of the 80% packed off to a non-grammar school at 11, while the "brightest" (but not the brightest working-class girls) went to a far better school. A decent education is a fundamental right. Let's work on that for the benefit of all children.

Debbie Cameron Formby, Merseyside

Abandoning Hong Kong

Britain reached agreement with China on a 50-year arrangement under which Hong Kong's existing system was to remain unchanged, but it is clear that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has no intention of fulfilling its side of the bargain. ("After six years in solitary, Jimmy Lai's prison letters foretell a martyr's end", World, last week)

We live in an era of moral chaos, where the excuse for increasingly dictatorial governments in many parts of the world is that "circumstances change". This is the approach taken by successive British governments to keep the increasingly hardline CCP happy, over any moral responsibility for the future stability and security of people who were recently subjects of the British crown.

Don't blame humanity

Erica Wagner writes on war in "What's On My Mind" (Magazine, last week) about the "quagmire in Iran" becoming "even more deadly, here we go again". She concludes that "this is what we humans do".

I beg to differ. It's what men do. I'm willing to bet that practically every woman is heartily sick of it.

Mary-Anne Morel Teddington, London

A strong foundation

One of the challenges facing contemporary architecture in Iran is how to retain identity and meaning

SAF

without becoming tied to a passing visual style ("How Iran became the frontline of modern architecture", New Review, last week).

Architectural fashions come and go, and buildings can often be dated almost immediately. For me, continuity in architecture does not come from repeating historic forms. It comes from understanding why those forms existed and translating their underlying qualities into the conditions of the present.

Alireza Modarresi Co-Founder & Principal Architect Barsav Office, Mashhad, Iran

Keep on running

I, too, am a nonagenarian and will also be competing in the World Masters Athletics competition in South Korea ("Meet Britain's fastest nonagenarian", Sport, last week). At 90 years old, I'm racing the 100m, 200m and 400m, so shall be competing against him only in the 400m. I look forward to meeting Colin before we run. For the record, I look up springing at the age of 87.

Hamish McKenzie Edinburgh

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For the record

  • As the result of a picture agency error, the photograph on our front page last week was not, as our headline had suggested, of Broad Peak, a mountain in the Karakoram range. The image in fact depicted the west face of Gasherbrunn IV, which stands in the same range.
  • An investigative feature ("Postcard from the edge of politics", New Review, 2 August, page 12), wrongly stated that Norwich County Council is controlled by Reform. This should have said Norfolk County Council. Norwich City Council is run by the Green party.

Observers needed

Write to us Letters, which may be edited, should include a full name, telephone number and postal address.

Send to: Email letters@observer.co.uk (please insert Letters to the Editor in the subject field). Or write to: Letters to the Editor The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W1T 3LP To be received by noon on Thursday. - To request a correction or make a complaint please write to readers@observer.co.uk


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Education and jobs

Andy Burnham’s plan for technical education is no quick fix Alun Francis

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Andy Burnham wants a new technical education route at 14, parity with academic pathways, links to local job opportunities, schools judged on career outcomes, employer involvement and mayors coordinating planning.

The ambition is laudable. Alternatives to university have been neglected and technical options have changed. Young people know little about what jobs actually involve. So making routes more transparent and creating workplace experience are important.

However, the framing is flawed. It conflates technical learning with solutions for disengaged young people – and this has the potential to get messy.

The distinction between technical and academic learning is often made on the basis that the former needs less “knowledge”. Britain has a history of treating technical options like this, reducing cognitive content and lowering the bar in assessment. In the 1990s, NVQs deliberately separated “competencies” from knowledge. As late as the 2010s, information technology level 3 qualifications made the difficult maths module “optional”.

This happens because we associate “skills” with “something you do with your hands”, and combine this with a desire to find qualifications that are easier to pass for students with lower academic outcomes. This achieves little because technical jobs require substantial cognitive as well as practical skill, and qualifications are pointless unless they reflect this. Reforms to apprenticeships and T-levels have restored knowledge to a central role in technical learning. We need to maintain this.

We also need to acknowledge that academic and technical learning are not alternatives. They are complementary. Almost everyone does both. We all start with an academic general education, and most then move into technical training. The difference is the stage at which the transition happens and what form it takes.

Professions such as law,

UK higher education enrolments

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Source: Higher Education Statistics Agency

accountancy or teaching have a training process, based on degree entry followed by vocational qualifications, backed by occupational regulation. Others have started the transition at 16, such as construction craft trades or hairdressing. The latter are much less likely to be regulated in the UK. Others, such as journalism or local government, sit in the middle: less regulated but often degree-dependent.

This landscape is complicated and changing rapidly. There are new technical occupations such as cybersecurity and project management. Higher and degree apprenticeships also allow entry to an occupational pathway at 18, pre-degree rather than post-degree.

Is there a case for adding to this by creating a transition point at 14? There are European examples that work well, but applying them in the UK would be complex. They involve forms of selection, different institutional arrangements and more regulated labour markets. They are different systems.

Our history suggests we should be cautious about UK schools delivering technical subjects. Between 2004 and 2010 technical qualifications in schools rose from 15,000 to 575,000 a year. They were easier to pass than traditional GCSEs, but many were worthless. Sixteen-year-olds found they were nowhere near ready for work, nor had the skills to progress.

Should health and social care be taught from a book by the biology teacher? European models deliver a distinctive technical learning experience, not simply a licence for schools to offer a few “technical options”. Technical teachers need industry experience, employers need involvement in curriculum design, and learning environments need to simulate the workplace. Colleges have this. Schools do not.

One option, recommended by the Wolf Review, would be for colleges to deliver 14-16 options. Many colleges offer this, including my own. Students choose a vocational course alongside GCSEs and attend college one day a week. The Baker Dearing Trust has a similar model, based on University Technical Colleges. But this needs external funding and clear rules. Mayors could broker this across groups of schools. But choices must be of high quality, delivered by specialists and targeted at those who want them. They should never be primarily focused on disengaged pupils or replace academic achievement.

Colleges are full of young people whose general education has been poor. Vast numbers are resitting English and Maths GCSEs. And 25% of 19-year-olds still have limited literacy and numeracy. For most of this group, a technical course will not solve their issues or magically usher in better outcomes. Without English, maths and a reasonable general education, their prospects of engaging with work and progressing further are circumscribed.

We cannot sidestep the fact that most higher level jobs involve cognitive and practical skills, and those without both will struggle. We do need to make occupational pathways clear for all young people. It can be inspiring and motivating to see the join between academic study and technical outcomes. There is evidence that the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate (MBacc) has achieved this. But it has not – it should be noted – required major changes to the school curriculum.

Alun Francis is chief executive of the Blackpool and the Fylde College Group and chair of the Social Mobility Commission

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Learning to prepare for

Many graduates find good grades are not leading to good jobs, Shuab Gamote writes

A-level results day feels like the moment adulthood begins: a few letters on a screen can determine where you live, who you meet and what the next few years look like. In the clamour to rebuild technical education – badly needed – we should not start knocking university. But universities need to do far more to give students the experience, confidence and employability they need for what comes next.

For many young people, particularly the first in their family to go, university remains a passport to opportunity. I know that from experience – my parents didn’t go to university. But the value was not

simply the degree I left with. It was the people I met, the confidence I built, the careers I was exposed to and the sense that there were places I could now imagine myself belonging. That is why “student experience” is so important.

Malcolm Press, president of Universities UK and vice-chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan University, which has one of the country’s largest first-generation student populations, put it simply: “University gives those students social capital and confidence.”

Manchester Met offers one glimpse of what this can look like in practice. Press talks about listening closely to the student voice, putting in academic and pastoral support, giving teaching proper status within academic careers and bringing employers into the curriculum.

Through the Milburn Review, Peter Hyman and I have spoken to hundreds of young people across

A school leavers report

In year 12, we were invited to a private school in Hampstead to attend an Oxbridge admissions event for state school students. We were amazed by the school’s facilities. I felt a seed of inferiority begin to grow: I originally refused to even apply to Oxford, as I felt I didn’t belong there, that I wasn’t smart, rich or interesting enough. Without my teachers’ encouragement, I would never have taken that step.

However, I also did not realise how lucky I was. I went to a performing arts school, so emphasis on the arts and music was never lacking – this is not afforded to everyone. From the

perspective of a white, middle-class woman who is not neurodiverse, I also did not have to grow up chafing against barriers such as institutional racism, language challenges and lack of SEN support.

I found myself asking what “being clever” actually means. Ironically, this more creative mindset is what I was told Oxford prioritised during the admissions process. The trouble is, it’s what we were encouraged to avoid in school. But just because somebody isn’t academically inclined, it doesn’t make them unintelligent. No child should be made to feel stupid as a result.


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Apprentice hairdressers train with practice heads. Jean-François Fort, Hans Lucas/AFP, Getty

what comes next

the UK. What surprised me most is how many struggle with the move from education into adult life. This is not simply a problem affecting those who leave education early: about 15% of young people who are not in education, employment or training have a degree.

One young graduate put it bluntly: 'You are told this simple

'It has been almost a year... and I am still struggling to secure a role'

story: go to college, go to uni and get a job. But that is not the case at all. I feel like I did what I was told. But it has been almost a year... and I am still struggling to secure a role.'

Another described discovering too late how much else mattered: 'There's a big emphasis now on experience and gaining internships before you graduate. I just didn't

My year 10 biology class agreed that the only way to succeed was to memorise the mark scheme, which proved that GCSEs were essentially rote memorisation. This kind of rote learning doesn't feel like it has much connection to the world we're moving into. Another issue is the lack of information about money.

Looking back, I'm glad to say that my feelings about my time at school are largely positive. The increasing emphasis on mental health meant that stigmatised subjects, such as anxiety, became much easier to talk about. Yet in the state system, large classes and overwhelmed

know that was a thing... Go to uni, get good grades, get a job - that's the simplified mindset. There's a lot of information that I didn't know.'

Universities need to provide excellent teaching, meaningful contact with employers, careers support, opportunities to build the networks that more privileged students can take for granted, and serious preparation for what comes next. But we have to acknowledge that universities are in a precarious financial position, and some will struggle to equip students with what they need. Manchester Met has been able to make progress because of years of sound financial management and less reliance on international student income.

The wider challenge is how to make the required level of support the norm rather than the exception.

Shua Gamote is a strategic adviser to the Milburn Review

teachers were common, and that could be tough. In year 8, I was put in bottom-set maths because I was near-silent in my 30-strong classes the year before. I became even more insecure in a subject I hated. But my teachers went the extra mile to support me. Their passion is the force keeping these state institutions alive despite the lack of respect (and salary) they receive, and I owe them almost everything.

Romilly Cox attended Marylebone Church of England School in London, and will study history and Spanish at the University of Oxford

Both mortar boards and hard hats can lead to work security Graham Watts

After achieving decent grades at GCSE, Kristian Tomas didn't want a desk job or to get into student loan debt. 'I wanted a job that was practical, where I could progress and earn well if I put in the work.' Aged 16, he started a level 1 bricklaying course, and an early piece of great advice encouraged him to combine college learning with work on site.

Just six years later, and now a supervisor for GSQ Brickwork, Tomas is already leading a team building an estate of 50 houses. 'I love the variety and the challenges of running a busy job, but I get my trowel in my hand as often as I can.' He's even turned his trade into a sport, competing in the UK's largest bricklaying competition. 'I'm officially the sixth fastest bricklayer in the UK. Not bad from 42,000 in the trade!'

More than 25 years ago, Tony Blair set out the ambition for half of all young adults to go to university, a target that was finally achieved in 2019. Last Thursday, the Ucas chief executive, Jo Saxton, announced that a record quarter of a million school leavers (262,820) had achieved a place at university this year - 3% up on 2025.

However, on the same day, the skills minister, Jacqui Smith, told BBC Radio's Today programme that the government would take action to stop the expansion of university courses that were not a good investment. This is in line with Andy Burnham's recent announcement of a major overhaul of England's education system, allowing 14-year-olds to choose technical and vocational pathways alongside core academic subjects from September 2028. This would have enabled Tomas to get a two-year head start on his ambition to work with bricks.

So the pendulum swings, from one Labour prime minister's reliance on academia to another's focus on technical education. The simple fact is that nothing has changed since CP Snow's influential Rede Lecture in 1959. Snow identified 'The Two Cultures' as science and the humanities, but it is reasonable to broaden his

Apprenticeships in England

By academic year-ending and level (thousands)

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Sources: Department for Education and Department for Work and Pensions

thesis into a segregation between academic and technical education, and those whose work is either desk-based or out in the open air.

The key must be to channel young people's education and career pathways at an early age, and Burnham's ambition to bring the focus forward to year 10 is sensible. At the moment the system is clearly not working. The labour market is saturated with graduates, and a report from The Centre for Social Justice earlier this year noted that 700,000 graduates were jobless. On the other hand, many young people learning a construction trade don't progress into working in that

The key must be to channel young people's career pathways at an early age

sector. The Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering has recently noted that completion rates for plumbing apprenticeships are less than 27%.

I agreed with Aled Williams of the University of the Built Environment when he told me: 'Putting technical education on an equal footing with academic learning is the right ambition. But this cannot become a binary choice between the hard hat and the graduation cap. The built environment needs people across a spectrum of technical and professional roles, with those boundaries increasingly blurring.

The real challenge is ensuring our skills system prepares people not just for today's vacancies, but for the capabilities we will need... as AI, digitalisation and new methods of delivery reshape our industry.'

Mark Farmer, skills lead of the Construction Leadership Council and chair of the Built Environment Futures Assembly, reinforces this view: 'The advent of AI is already creating a perception of reduced future job security for some professional roles.'

'The prospect of undertaking full-time degree study, incurring a student loan burden with potentially no job at the end of it, is unattractive. There is a real chance that the next generation of talent and their key influencers are already going to actively pivot towards what they perceive to be 'AI-proof' jobs, including trade and technician roles, irrespective of any prevailing government message.'

However, Farmer feels there is a risk that the pendulum may go too far the other way, making apprenticeships even more oversubscribed than they already are with insufficient jobs available for young entrants wanting employment-led training pathways. 'This implies that much better support, incentives and economic conditions might be needed by employers to increase their demand for post-16 trainees. This is less of an education and skills challenge as it is a fundamental employment market challenge. If this is not resolved, we risk a growing Neet backlog for both hard hats and graduation caps.'

Tomas is someone who successfully made an early choice to pursue technical education in tandem with real work experience. He concluded our chat by saying: 'I totally support construction as a career choice. There's the opportunity to earn, learn and build a career, and so long as you're willing to work hard, the rewards are available to all.'

Graham Watts has been chief executive of the Construction Industry Council since 1991 and a member of the Construction Leadership Council since 2020


34 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Forum

Obituary

Norma Fox

Danish trapeze artist with the 'courage of lions' who cheated death to captivate audiences around the world

There was only one thing that made La Norma nervous about swinging on a trapeze 60ft above the ground and that was when they gave her a safety net.

While she 'never left my bar willingly', Norma Fox's routine over 35 years in the circus involved her remaining in the barest contact with it. A curled knee, a hooked ankle, the grip of one hand or even the use of her teeth was the only insurance she needed. When one town insisted on placing firefighters holding a blanket beneath her, she resisted. 'It scared me to death,' she said. 'What happens if they don't catch me?'

La Norma – her stage name since she was 16 – performed in big tops worldwide from her native Denmark to Tokyo and Hawaii, including for three years with the Ringling Iros and Barnum & Bailey Circus. She swung on a trapeze attached to the Eiffel Tower in the presence of France's prime minister and was Betty Hutton's stunt double in Cecil B DeMille's Oscar-winning 1952 film The Greatest Show on Earth. One reporter wrote that 'she possesses the courage of half a dozen lions'.

There were, of course, setbacks. In 1962, the rope holding her ring slipped and she fell to the floor, shattering an ankle and damaging the left side of her pelvis. Seven years later, still performing in her mid-40s, Fox was doing a routine in South Carolina related to the moon landing, in which she swung on a trapeze hanging from a rotating space satellite attached to a rocket.

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Norma Fox, whose aerial gymnastics were caught on film in Cecil B DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth in 1952.

As she landed on the sand, the set collapsed on top of her.

'They had to revive me,' she said in 2013. Fox was out for seven months, but returned to the air in Puerto Rico. 'I had to prove that it wasn't my fault,' she said.

She finally retired aged 48 and lived in a community of circus folk in Sarasota, Florida, where she taught the next generation on bars suspended 30ft off the ground from trees in her garden. Tony Hernandez, author of the book Circus Legends, called her a 'tiny, pint-sized powerhouse who somehow seemed larger than life.

One of the great aerialists of her generation.'

Norma Inga Nielsen was born in Randers, Jutland, in 1926, the daughter of a cinema operator. She and her 11 siblings spent summers on their grandparents' farm, but she claimed to be too scared of cows to do any work. She was at ballet school with four of her sisters, one of whom would dance for the Royal Danish Ballet, when she was noticed by Emilie Altenburg, who had a circus act with her daughter called the Florita Sisters. Altenburg's daughter was leaving to get married and she needed a new partner.

Nielsen's parents agreed to let her take their 14-year-old daughter.

It was a hard schooling, beginning with a balancing ladder act and graduating to the trapeze, and she would be beaten if she made mistakes. During the German occupation of Denmark, they toured Norway and Sweden. In 1946, when working with the Circus Belli, she met André Fox, a performer with a French riding troupe, who encouraged her to leave Altenburg. They married and worked in England for eight months, performing at the Blackpool Tower, and had a son, Gilbert.

In 1949, the couple moved to the US to join the Ringling Iros and Barnum & Bailey Circus, travelling from town to town for seven months of the year and performing two or three times a day, seven days a week.

One of those she captivated was a boy in Boston who would run off to the circus at 15 and became one of the US's greatest trapeze acrobats. In 2016, Tony Steele recalled: 'La Norma was very beautiful and she'd flirt with the audience. She had a special talent for that. She'd have an auditorium with 3,000 people in it and flirt with every one of them with just the way she looked at them.'

Fox retired from the arena in 1974. As well as training young performers, she made ceramic models of circus acts. 'She was one of those people who seemed to carry a little bit of the circus with her wherever she went,' Hernandez said.

A few years ago, she told him she had a recurring dream in which she was back on her trapeze. 'They keep telling her not to swing so high but Norma never listens,' he said. 'She pumps the trapeze higher until her feet smack the top of the tent. She told me that in those dreams she feels completely alive and wakes up smiling. If there is an afterlife, you can bet that's where Norma is now.'

Patrick Kidd

Norma Fox, trapeze artist, born 9 February 1926, died 8 August 2026, aged 100

My week

Swallow-tailed hummingbird

The middle way is no way. Life is about balancing extremes: perfect speed and perfect stillness. Awake, I live at a speed on the far limits of physiological possibility: asleep, I go as near to death as I dare. I have no room at all for moderation.

Monday

I need the most potent food in the universe to fuel my high-speed life; without my high-speed life, I would have no way of reaching the fuel. That is the closed loop that defines me: more speed, more nectar; more nectar, more speed.

Tuesday

I'm big for a hummingbird: six inches long, though half of that's

tail. I'm also ferocious. I'll attack anything that comes near one of my flowers, and I mean anything. Hunger makes me savage and I live in a world of perpetual hunger. My sort of speed makes me near as damn it invulnerable. I'll dive-bomb anything that threatens my lovely flowers: no hummingbird – no matter what species – is allowed here. Today a curl-crested joy showed up, twice my size, but was soon in full retreat.

Wednesday

Speed peaks in motionlessness. It takes all the running you can do to stay in the same place. Every minute I hover before a flower and drink my fill, I'm beating my wings 4,000 times, my heart is beating 1,200 times and I'm taking 250 breaths.

The rest of the world is in slow motion: I've solved the problem and moved on to the next while everyone else is still reading the question.

Thursday

The long day ends. I take my last drink at dusk and it's time to rest. Not the small perching daytime rests I go in for inbetween my bouts of speed, but the real thing, I don't sleep: sleep requires far too much energy. What some creatures do to miss out the winter I do to miss out the night: I enter torpor. Everything slows down to one-fifteenth of its normal rate: heart rate, breathing

Hunger makes me savage and I live in a world of perpetual hunger

and everything else as close to zero as it's possible to be without actually dying.

Friday

For me, flight is about explosive power. Sure, I admire my cousins the swifts as they spend all day and all night in the air, but flight has more meaning in short and extremely sharp bursts. Look at the birds of the sky: can they hover? None as well as I can, that's for sure. Can they fly backwards? No, none at all. Can they change direction as sharply as I can? Not a prayer.

Saturday

Ah, but I don't chase every bird

away. There are times when I let myself be chased: not to escape but to test. If he can fly well enough to stay close to me – well, then I might just stay around for a while. I might even join him in a zigzag flight, that thing of perfect joy. But right now, it's time for a drink; when my wings are invisible you'll know I'm really flying.

Swallow-tailed hummingbird CV

Lifespan five years or so Eating habits the odd insect in between gulps of nectar Hobbies speed Sexual preferences an aerial master

As told to Simon Barnes


Forum

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

35

Profile

Jon Ossoff

Is the Democrats' young, savvy star of the South their next political hope, asks Edward Helmore

While US political debate was focused on Democratic party turmoil last weekend, Senator Jon Ossoff was in the pulpit at Divine Faith Ministries International in Jonesboro, Georgia, drawing parallels between King Ahab of the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible and Donald Trump.

"Accountability is coming," Ossoff said. "Scripture is full of wicked kings brought low by their own arrogance." The parallels raised applause from the congregation in the Black, non-denominational megachurch.

Ossoff is a special animal in the Democratic habitat, as the only US senator up for re-election in a state Trump won in 2024. He looks to be heading for a win over the Trump-backed candidate Mike Collins.

At 39, Ossoff is young. He's Jewish and has noted that his ancestors were "exterminated in Nazi death camps". He professes "ironclad" support for Israel but is also a critic of the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has supported the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders in his efforts to curb US munition sales to Israel. And he speaks in the code of the wealth divide, talking of "the Epstein class... ruling our country".

Ossoff received plaudits last month for the confirmation-hearing grilling he gave Jay Clayton, the nominee for post of director of national intelligence, pressing him on why the former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández had been pardoned by Trump some 18 months after being convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He also played Democrats' rhetorical loyalty test game, asking Clayton who won the 2020 election.

Clayton squirmed. "Isn't it humiliating to be unable to answer this question?" Ossoff asked. "To have to indulge the president's

delusions? We know, you know, everybody in this room knows the truthful answer to that question. Why can you not give it?"

Ossoff has largely avoided being caught in the Democrats' progressive-centrist political traps. In 2017, Sanders said he "didn't know" if Ossoff, who has distanced himself from universal healthcare and Green New Deal platforms, was progressive. But YouTube pundit Hasan Piker has called Ossoff his "dark-horse pick" for 2028.

When the midterms are resolved, attention will inevitably turn to political presidential candidates. The Democratic field is wide open, less

'He's acceptable to people who live in suburbs, rural and urban areas'

so with the Republicans, who must wrestle with projecting a post-Trump identity. Ossoff's name has been coming up in recent weeks.

There are more prominent names – the former vice-president Kamala Harris, California governor Gavin Newsom – but each bears political scars and can be easily tarred as a member of a coastal elite.

Ossoff, says Democrat strategist Hank Sheinkopf, is well positioned to bridge the rift in his party. "He comes from the South, so people see him as more conservative. But he's sounded a less conservative ideology."

"He's acceptable to people who live in suburbs, rural and urban areas. He's not all the way left or right. He's somewhere centre-left depending on the issue. People are looking for the middle. They're offended by the deep left, which the Democratic Socialists of America represents, and they're offended by the deep right, which Trump represents."

Ossoff also resolves Democrats' age problem. "He's generationally correct," says Sheinkopf, but he will have "to dance left, right and middle". Ossoff's Jewish faith is not an issue because he's perceived as Southern before Jewish: "It doesn't apply here because he's accepted in Georgia... it means he can play in most places."

Jon Ossoff Born Atlanta, Georgia Alma mater Georgetown University, London School of Economics Work US senator Family Married, with two children

Illustration by Andy Bunday

Ossoff himself has said he has "zero interest" in running for president in 2028. Polymarket odds place him narrowly behind Newsom for his party's nomination.

"Is Ossoff turning out to be the star of this political cycle? I think that's fair," says the Democratic strategist James Carville, who helped steer the last Southern Democrat, Bill Clinton, to the presidency. "He's not only skilled, he's getting better," he says.

But, Carville cautions, "there are other talented people out there. What about [Kentucky governor] Andy Beshear? Or [Pennsylvania governor] Josh Shapiro?" Carville also discounts the question of Ossoff's faith, saying "the only people who say to me a

Jew can't get elected are Jews. It's like when Democrats say a Black woman will never be elected as president. It's a crutch for Democrats. I'm not a buyer in that market."

Michael Morris, publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, described Ossoff's commitment to Israel as "smoke and mirrors". "Stop lying to me and your constituents," he wrote. "When a bill offers Israel tangible strategic support – munitions, rifles, bombs, military and financial assistance – your record is abysmal, and you throw Israel under the bus."

In Georgia, Ossoff has the support of churchgoing, homeowning Black voters that progressives in northern states typically lack. He's adept at social media, racking up millions of views for his fast takes. And he's a prodigious fundraiser, raising more than $81m in this political cycle. Ossoff criticised Trump's decision to attack Iran, building support among progressives. Trump called Ossoff "terrible" likening him to Peewee Herman, though he said "Pinky Herman" before correcting himself. The White House calls him "a total phony pretending to be a moderate", citing his support of trans rights.

Ossoff does not come from a political dynasty. He grew up in Georgia – his father, Richard, ran an Atlanta publishing company; his mother, Heather was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. Ossoff studied at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and the London School of Economics.

An internship under the late civil rights leader-turned congressman John Lewis was followed by a period working for the Georgia congressman Hank Johnson. He then became a documentary maker, producing films for the BBC and others on international corruption, war crimes and human rights abuses in Africa.

He is married to Dr Alisha Kramer, an obstetrician-gynaecologist in Georgia. The couple dated in high school and married in 2017. They live in Atlanta with their two daughters, Eva and Lila.

One of Ossoff's political virtues, says Pete Fuller, Democratic chair of Jackson County, Georgia, is that he has been relatively quiet. "He hasn't been giving speeches and going on TV every chance he gets. He's actually just been doing the work."

Compared with Newsom, he adds, "there's authenticity to him" and he comes across as "a nice, good guy from the South who can get votes from both sides." That is a rare asset that may take him further than he says, for now, he intends to go.


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Economics, work and money

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

37

'Many wise people pointed out before the 1989 water company sale that this privatisation was doomed to fail'

→ Matthew Bishop, page 37

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Businesses across the world are expecting an increase in attacks from Russian-speaking hackers. S& Doherty/Getty

US borrowing costs at 25-year high as bond market falters

Ben Zaranko Economics editor

The US is having to offer higher interest rates to persuade investors to buy its debt amid mounting concerns over inflationary pressures and government largesse in the world's largest economy.

An auction of $25bn of 30-year US Treasury bonds last Thursday resulted in the highest yields since 2001 (5.22%). A day earlier, a sale of $42bn of 10-year bonds resulted in the highest yields since 2007 (4.68%). A higher yield means higher borrowing costs for the government, and makes it more expensive to service its growing debt pile.

US inflation fell slightly in July to 3.4%, down from 4.2% in May. But this is still above the Federal Reserve's 2% target, and a re-escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, combined with the inflationary impacts of tariffs, could push that figure higher in the months ahead.

Some investors question whether a Federal Reserve led by Kevin Warsh, the appointee of a president who has made no secret of his desire for lower interest rates, would be willing to raise rates by enough to squeeze out a stubborn bout of inflationary pressure. The surprising news that the US economy shed 23,000 jobs in July has eased pressure for near-term rate hikes, but concerns over the medium-term inflation outlook remain.

Meanwhile, US government borrowing is still elevated, despite the economy being in relatively good health. The Congressional Budget Office now expects a budget deficit this financial year of $2.1m, up from a $1.9m estimate in February, due to a $250bn shortfall in tariff revenues. That equates to an expected deficit of close to 6.5% of GDP this financial year, compared with 3.6% of GDP in the UK.

One factor behind the American government's recent intervention to support the value of the yen was a fear that the Japanese authorities might otherwise have sold US Treasuries to finance their own intervention. That would have pushed down US bond prices and, because the two move in opposite directions, pushed yields even higher - something the administration knows it cannot afford.

Trump gives private firms green light for cyberattacks

US president goes on the offensive with policy decision aimed at criminal gangs across the globe as Russian-speaking group targets UK companies. Barney Macintyre reports

Donald Trump has signed a presidential memo that permits private US companies to carry out offensive cyberattacks on foreign criminal organisations.

The major policy shift directs federal agencies to unleash 'the ingenuity of the private sector' and arrives as experts are warning of an escalation in attacks by cybercrime gangs linked to Russia. 'Depurised' companies would be given permission to destroy hostile cyber networks and asked to post a $1m bond that would be forfeited if they went rogue.

'The US government is basically saying that there's a protest outside the warehouse and it's going to formally approve warehouse guards to act on behalf of the state to stop

criminals and go after them in the street and attack them,' says Joseph Jarnecki, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute.

One Russian-speaking gang known as 'Clop' claimed this week to have stolen large quantities of data from 50 multinational companies, including Shell and Philips. Both companies confirmed that they were investigating incidents, but played down the threat of large data theft.

A British defence and aerospace manufacturer that recently won a $62m (£46m) contract with Elon Musk's SpaceX was also targeted by Russian cybercriminals.

Filtronic, a Sedgefield-based firm listed on London's Aim index, was hit just over a week ago by hacker group Qilin. The group has previously claimed responsibility for an attack on the medical services provider Synnovis, leading to widespread disruption at NHS hospitals in June 2024.

A spokesperson for Filtronic confirmed the breach but said: 'To date, no evidence has been identified that company, third party

or employee data has been accessed, compromised or exfiltrated, and the business remains fully operational.'

On Friday shares in the company were up 43% year-to-date, buoyed by a renewed partnership with SpaceX and contracts with Airbus and Leonardo. Its latest earnings showed operating profit of £4m (down from £13.4m in the previous period).

After attacks last year on major UK companies, including the Co-op Group and Jaguar Land Rover, firms are bolstering cyber defences. Providers are benefiting handsomely; one basket of cybersecurity stocks has beaten the S&P 500 by roughly double since February. Trump's memo could be a further boon, while also easing

'We can't know how many companies out there have just paid the ransom and not been listed'

Aiden Sinnott, researcher

the capacity of federal agencies to neutralise threats. But it also comes with significant risks.

A recent report from security thinkthank the Royal United Services Institute that weighs the possibility of copying this 'privateering' approach in the UK notes that 'a clear distinction between organised cybercriminals and state actors does not always exist. This means that if a UK firm is deputised, there is a non-zero risk it could inadvertently impact a foreign state's interests and become embroiled in geopolitical tension.'

As boards and executives at larger firms tool up, hacker groups are targeting smaller firms in their supply chains. Manufacturers such as Filtronic are attractive targets due to the 'downtime' caused by an attack.

'As soon as that production line stops, so does the revenue,' explains Matt Hull, vice-president of Cyber Intelligence and Response at NCC Group. 'It's useful for these threat actors to target that type of physical industry because they can leverage that quite powerfully.'

Last week a report from Make UK, the manufacturing trade body, found 30% of members had experienced a cyber incident in the past 12 months.

Qilin has emerged this year as the most prolific 'ransomware as a service' (RaaS) group on the dark web, claiming 1,454 attacks since July last year, double that of any other group. Fifty-five were in the UK.


38

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

The minutes

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Deals & earnings

AI giants' revenues out before public offering

OpenAI and Anthropic have started disclosing revenue figures as both companies race towards initial public offerings. Backers of Anthropic told the FT they expect the frontier lab's yearly annualised revenue to reach between $100bn and $120bn by the end of 2026, implying a value of $2trn or more when it floats in October. Sources close to OpenAI told Bloomberg it expects to generate annualised revenue of $40bn, although comparisons are inexact and neither company discloses numbers publicly. Both labs have started releasing cut-price models in the face of cheaper Chinese competition. OpenAI, however, appears to have a personnel problem. The company's chief revenue officer stood down this week after only nine months in the role, while longtime executive Brad Lightcap has also departed to "start something new".

Risk radar

US intervention fails to solve yen issue

What's happening with the yen? Japanese authorities are struggling to prop up the value of the yen, despite the dramatic joint currency intervention staged with the US in late July. The Bank of Japan keeps interest rates low, to hold down the cost of servicing Japan's large national debt pile. This weakens the yen, as money flows abroad to seek higher returns, raising the cost of imports and pushing up domestic inflation. Raising interest rates and allowing government bond yields to rise would support the yen, but could trigger a debt crisis. Traders are on standby for further interventions in coming weeks.

Oil stockpiles down as analysts get jitters

The International Energy Agency warned last week that oil stockpiles had fallen to below 7.9bn barrels, their lowest level since April 2025, down from around 8.3bn barrels at the start of the US-iran war. Analysts at JP Morgan estimate the oil storage system will come under "operational stress" if global stockpiles drop below 7.6bn barrels, and describe 6.7bn barrels as the "operational float" the system requires to function. Crude oil prices edged higher this week, towards $90 a barrel, amid fears of a re-escalation

The Observer business matrix

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The coming week...

  • Company earnings: Klarna; BHP Group; Walmart; Hays plc.
  • Economic data/reports: Japan Q2 GDP; Cornwall Insight energy price cap forecast for October; ONS labour market, inflation, and public finance data releases; retail sales data for July.

of conflict in the Gulf. But overall, the global economy has handled the fallout from the war better than first feared, and the worst case scenarios of acute energy shortages have not come to pass. The IEA expects global oil supply to rebound next year, which should allow stockpiles to be replenished. As ever, the unknown is what happens next in the Middle East.

Governance

Call for pay hike for non-exec directors

Cevian, Europe's largest activist investor, released a report calling for pay for UK non-executive directors (NEDs) on the FTSE 100 to better align with international competitors. It found that median total remuneration for S&P 500

NEDs is almost three times that of the FTSE 100, and urged UK companies to raise total annual compensation to around £160,000. Cevian holds a large and growing stake (14%) in Smith & Nephew, and has pushed for a £15m pay packet for Deepak Nath, the American chief executive of the London-listed medical device maker.

Movers & shakers

Shafik leaves No 10 but others stay on

Minouche Shafik, below, chief economic adviser to Keir Starmer, has left government, according to a Bloomberg report. The departure of the former Bank of England deputy governor and Columbia University president comes as Andy Burnham's economics operation

img-87.jpeg

begins to take shape. Economists Andy Haldane, Jim O'Neill and Richard Hughes all provided informal advice to Burnham during his preparations for power, but none has (yet) been offered a formal role in the administration. Meanwhile, two of Rachel Reeves's former advisers have been kept on, with Neil Amin-Smith joining No 10 and Spencer Thompson staying on in the Treasury, according to reports.

  • Dennis Whyte, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and one of the world's foremost pioneers in fusion science and engineering, has been appointed as chief executive of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority Group.
  • In retail, Peter Ruis will step down as managing director of John Lewis in September after less than three years in the role. He will be replaced by Will Kernan, former boss of River Island and the White Company.

Hot commodity

Low-calorie ices scoop heatwave's top spot

Soaring temperatures – and a surge of GLP-1 users – are driving consumers to low-calorie ice cream. Makers face a major hurdle, as weight loss drug users cut consumption by at least 10% in the last year, according to BCG. The winners in the market are the likes of Halo Top tubs and Wall's-owned lollies (such as Twister and Calippo), loudly promoting their calorie-light, high protein contents. Ice cream giant Magnum told Reuters it nonetheless looks to retain taste alongside the health conscious shift: "We still want to indulge, but do it with a little bit of a halo of a wellness play."

Entrepreneurs

Blair junior looks for defence startup cash

A defence startup run by Nick Blair, son of Tony, is seeking $200m in its first raise, ahead of a 2026 launch. Few details are available online about Pyra, the 40-year old's second tech company, but according to the FT, it is developing technology allowing users to integrate different systems into a single source. Blair began his working life as a football agent, but is now betting on global defence at a lucrative time for the sector. Defence tech companies raised $12.3bn from venture capital funds in the first half of this year.

Vital statistics

0.4%

The amount the UK economy grew in the second quarter of 2026, beating expectations as household and business spending proved unexpectedly resilient to the war in the Middle East. Following on from 0.6% in the previous quarter, this means that the economy grew at an annualised rate of 2% over the first six months of the year. This is the fastest of any G7 country (with the caveat that Japan's figures for the second quarter are yet to be published).

-0.3%

In 2024 and 2025, the UK economy grew quickly at the start of the year, then slowed down. In both cases, average growth was 0.3% lower in the final two quarters than in the first two. Some analysts put this at the door of the Office for National Statistics, whose method for making seasonal adjustments has come under scrutiny. Others have suggested that budget-induced policy uncertainty each autumn has put business hiring and investment decisions on hold. Either way, the UK economy's strong start to the year could yet fizzle out.

1.7%

The UK's economy's unexpectedly strong performance was driven in part by growing levels of business investment in hardware. Economy-wide investment increased by 1.2% in the second quarter of 2026, and business investment by 1.7%, as firms spent big on information and communication technology. It's early days, but this could be an early sign of AI-related investment providing a tailwind to the economy, as has been seen in the US. Pensions minister Torsten Bell said this was "particularly good to see" because "lack of investment is the UK disease".


Business

The Observer 16.08.26

39

“ What do universities and house builders have in common? Neither can cut headline prices

OPINION

Ben Zaranko Economics editor

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Sweeteners for buyers of new-build homes rarely include a drop in the asking price as developers seek ways to shift empty stock that won't have a wider impact on the market

On A-level results day last Thursday, universities scrambled to attract undecided students through the clearing system by offering sweeteners. Some offered free laptops; others, free gym memberships; one dangled a £6,000 cost of living allowance.

The one thing that was not on offer was a discount on their £9,790 a year tuition fees. Here, there are strong parallels with another market where buyers have the upper hand, but where prices remain surprisingly sticky – newly built houses and flats.

Developers have long offered sweeteners to entice would-be buyers, from contributions towards stamp duty, to free upgrades on flooring. Now they are getting more inventive. A few weeks ago, Housing Today reported that a major housing developer was offering to pay two years of private school

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fees for buyers of homes in a north London development.

Yet house builders – like universities – are loath to drop the headline price. The reasons why reveal the fragility of the sector.

Housing transactions appear on the land registry. Mortgage lenders use the most recent transactions when determining what the properties on a particular site are worth, and therefore how much

‘What you can sell a London flat for has not increased in 10 years. What it costs to build has gone up 30% in the last five’ Tim Craine, director, Molior

they’re willing to lend to a would-be buyer. So if a developer cuts the headline price to sell a home, that becomes the benchmark for the entire development. It then becomes difficult to raise headline prices again, even if market conditions improve: if a bank can see that similar homes have recently been selling for £270,000, why would they lend against a value of £300,000?

The upshot is that the initial cut in the headline price reduces the market value not just of the home in question, but of all other unsold homes on the development. In some cases, that would lead to developers breaching the terms of their debt covenants, forcing them to stump up more cash to whoever they borrowed from.

This is made more difficult by the general squeeze on profitability in the sector, especially for urban

developments in the capital. “What you can sell a flat for has not increased in 10 years in London. What it costs to build has gone up 30% in the last five years”, says Tim Craine, a director at Molior, a property research firm. “As a result, there isn’t a lot of profit in these developments any more. There isn’t that much margin you can reduce in a way that protects your banking covenants.”

So, developers prefer to rely on other types of incentive to attract buyers. But what happens if that’s not enough?

Vistry Group, one of Britain’s largest housebuilders, has started cutting prices. The firm announced in July that the average discount it offered to private buyers over the first half of 2026 was 7.1%, up from 1.4% over the first half of 2025. Other house builders have been

selling at a discount to institutional investors, but doing so in bulk. The advantage of taking this route, according to Neal Hudson, market analyst for Built Place, is that “those transactions won’t be appearing on the land registry in the same way that if you or I bought a home from them. It doesn’t feed through to affect the valuation [of other units] because it’s effectively classified as one large corporate transaction.”

Even with such discounts, there are simply fewer buyers out there in a world of higher interest rates. In those circumstances, the most sensible thing for many house builders is to “sit tight” and “cut back on activity”, according to Hudson.

“We’ve seen fewer planning applications going in. We’ve seen a slowdown in activity and a slowdown in the number of homes actually completed. It’s exactly what you’d expect to happen in this kind of economic environment,” he said.

For a government with an ambitious housebuilding agenda, this is a problem.

One option would be to bring forward some of the funding available under the government’s affordable homes programme, which has been backloaded to be more generous in the next parliament. That would allow councils and housing associations to step into the breach, provide guaranteed demand for affordable housing, and potentially absorb some of the excess stock sitting on the market. It would make John Healey’s budget balancing act a few billion more difficult, but it would give the housing market a helpful nudge.

Retailers warn zero-hours reform could cost them up to £3bn

Emma Haslett

Retailers have hit out at government proposals to “crack down” on zero-hours contracts that could cost businesses up to £3bn, saying they rely on temporary workers to keep their businesses running during seasonal periods of high demand.

Under the proposals, outlined in a government consultation launched in June, businesses using zero-hours contracts would be forced to offer workers a guaranteed number of hours each week, pay for shifts cancelled at the last minute, and give workers “reasonable notice” of shifts.

Figures released by the government on Wednesday revealed that the direct cost of the proposals to employers could be between £350m and £2.9bn a year.

“These costs could not have come at a worse time,” said Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, who pointed out that younger workers would be the biggest casualties of the reforms.

“Adding further costs when youth unemployment is soaring risks being a hammer blow to young people’s job prospects, at precisely the time businesses across the country need to be creating more opportunities.”

The figures came in the same week the government outlined plans aimed at easing conditions for the high street, which is suffering as shoppers’ disposable incomes are squeezed.

Andy Burnham last Monday announced a “crackdown” on unwanted businesses, including vaping and betting shops, which it is hoped will rejuvenate “hollowed out” high streets. That was followed two

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days later by a hint that he will use the autumn statement to make further changes to business rates.

Retailers cautiously welcomed the announcements. “Retailers need the right conditions to invest and grow,” a Primark spokesperson said. “This includes a fair and sustainable business rates system and continued

action to tackle challenges such as retail crime,” they added.

Alan Spencer, head of UK retail at Savills, welcomed the plans, saying that retailers were fighting a “constant battle” to find the right price point, in the face of high costs and squeezed consumer budgets. “In order to survive, you’re having to put

up your prices against the backdrop of the consumer not really wanting to pay more,” he said. “Trying to find the balance is really difficult now. As a retailer, you’re on a knife edge.”

Jonathan De Mello, a retail analyst and the founder of JDM Retail, added that those high street retailers that are surviving were making radical changes to their strategies.

He pointed to Next, which this month published second-quarter results showing earnings had beaten its own forecasts by £70m, and to Sports Direct owner Frasers Group, which on Friday announced it had bought the department store Harvey Nichols, as examples of stores that had implemented a “marketplace” model, stocking additional brands to entice shoppers. “Retailers are looking to gain sales from whatever source they can imagine,” he said.

An empty retail unit in Shropshire. Andy Burnham has announced plans to rejuvenate ‘hollowed out’ high streets. Getty


Why Animal Farming is a Planetary Catastrophe

In 1950, when I was one year old, the world's population was about 2.5 billion. Today it exceeds 8.5 billion. As heatwaves, droughts and floods become increasingly severe, concern about food security and the future of our planet has never been greater. Yet few people realise that animal agriculture lies at the heart of many of today's environmental crises.

Animal farming occupies around 87% of the land used to produce food while providing only 18% of global calories. It is the leading cause of Amazon deforestation, with cattle ranching responsible for roughly 80% of current forest loss. Every hectare destroyed weakens one of Earth's greatest carbon sinks and one of its richest reservoirs of biodiversity.

Animal agriculture is also extraordinarily water intensive. Agriculture accounts for around 70% of global freshwater use, and farm animals consume a disproportionate share of it. Producing one tonne of beef requires approximately 15,400 cubic metres of water, much of it used simply to grow feed crops that could otherwise nourish people directly.

The industry is also a major source of water pollution. Manure and fertiliser runoff overload rivers and coastal waters with nitrogen and phosphorus, creating oxygen-starved 'dead zones' where marine life cannot survive. More than 400 such dead zones have now been identified worldwide.

The impact on wildlife is equally profound. Forests, grasslands and wetlands continue to disappear to make way for grazing and feed crops, while vast monocultures replace complex ecosystems. As farm animal numbers have expanded, wildlife populations have collapsed, leaving only a tiny fraction of Earth's mammals living in the wild.

Industrial farming also threatens human health. The routine use of antibiotics in farm animal production contributes to antimicrobial resistance, which was associated with over one million deaths globally in 2019. Pollutants and toxins also accumulate through the food chain into animal products.

According to the research of Dr Sailesh Rao, when the lost carbon-storage capacity of land devoted to farm animals is included, farm animal agriculture becomes the dominant driver of climate change. His systems analysis concludes that transforming our food system is essential if we are to address global warming, biodiversity loss, deforestation, water scarcity and many of the environmental tipping points humanity now faces.

The vast majority of farmed animals spend their lives in factory farms. In the United States alone, almost all chickens, pigs and turkeys, together with all farmed fish and most egg-laying hens, are raised in intensive confinement systems. Worldwide, around 75% of farmed animals are factory farmed.

Statistics can seem overwhelming, but every number represents an individual life capable of suffering.

If we are serious about protecting the climate, restoring nature and safeguarding the future, we must also be serious about changing what we eat. A transition towards plant-based food systems offers one of the greatest opportunities to reduce environmental damage while sparing billions of animals from lives of unnecessary suffering.

This article is a précis of research by Dr Sailesh Rao, systems engineer and founder of Climate Healers. Further information is available at www.climatehealers.org.

Geoff Francis (Long-time Hillside supporter and volunteer)

Hillside Animal Sanctuary

was founded in 1995 to help and campaign for animals in need, particularly those suffering every day in the intensive factory farming industry.

We are home to 2500 rescued horses, ponies and donkeys, 750 cows, 300 pigs, 850 sheep and goats, and lots of other animals including dogs and deer...

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Business

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

41

Why latest US tariffs could help workers – just not the ones at home

Donald Trump's motives may be dubious, but levies said to be imposed to tackle forced labour are having an unexpected effect on working conditions abroad. Matthew Bishop reports

Of all the guises that Donald Trump has tried on, champion of exploited workers in distant factories may be the least plausible. Yet he says it's the reason for his latest round of tariffs.

On 24 July, goods from 60 economies, covering at least 99% of US imports, were hit at a rate of 10% to 12.5%, apparently for forced labour violations. Surprisingly, some leading modern slavery activists think the tariffs might actually help.

The notion that Trump cares even slightly about workers in places he likes to call 'shit-hole countries' has been met mostly with incredulity at home and abroad. The more plausible view is that the president has taken up the cause of ending forced labour as a ruse to reinstate tariffs that he has long believed to be one of the finest policies available to boost the US economy (despite mainstream economists mostly arguing the opposite).

This is a third attempt at imposing a broad tariff policy since his re-election. In February the Supreme Court struck down his April 2025 'Liberation Day' tariffs and a temporary 'emergency'

measure that he deployed after that. The ruling forced the government to refund an estimated $100bn (£78bn) it had collected from importers.

This month 25 Democrat-led states sued the government to have the 24 July tariffs ruled illegal, too. Officials are now reportedly looking into examples of countries with 'excessive' industrial capacity – shorthand for subsidised production. This may be the basis for a fourth round of tariffs.

So far, the main economic impact of tariffs has been to raise prices for consumers in the middle of what was already an 'affordability crisis'. The latest estimates are that tariffs have imposed additional costs on the average US family of up to $1,900 – less than the estimated $4,700 per family had the original Liberation Day tariffs remained in force, but still significant. The US trade deficit, which the tariffs were supposed to reduce, remains essentially unchanged. In terms of shifting to America the manufacture of things it currently imports, there's little sign of that so far.

How ironic, then, if tariffs end up improving the lives of exploited foreign workers. While there are plenty of grounds for scepticism, it could happen. The US has banned imports made with forced labour since 1930. True, this ban was tooknastic for much of that time, due to an exemption for goods that America could not source at home. Congress repealed that exemption in 2015, after which enforcement began in earnest: the first Trump administration started blocking imports from named producers, an action it saw as part of its America – First economic armoury. Joe Biden followed up with the Uyghur Forced

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Labor Prevention Act, a useful stick for restricting imports from China.

This strategy has worked, to a degree. US Customs and Border Protection has recovered $85m in withheld wages and recruitment fees for workers at blocked firms. Since 2018, 16 companies whose products were initially blocked have seen their prohibitions lifted after fixing what was wrong. In April last year, after a petition from South Korean lawyers, customs blocked salt imports from a farm in Sinan county, where people were forced to work to repay loans extended by their employer (so-called 'debt bondage').

The Trump administration is also right to argue, in a rare embrace of a global approach, that this problem cannot be solved by America alone. It has been all too easy for goods made with exploited labour to be moved along supply chains through other, seemingly respectable

'An import ban is one of the very few tools that will actually hit the bottom line of companies'

Nick Grono, Freedom Fund

countries that did not block such imports, and then on to the US.

Australia, for example, has become notorious for this. In a recent article, Martina Vandenberg of the Human Trafficking Legal Center notes that, as the Trump administration started to show that its investigations into trading partners' lack of forced labour laws were serious, 'something interesting happened... Countries started adopting forced labour import bans in droves'. So far, she reckons, at least 20 of the 60 countries now subjected to the new tariff have begun the process of adopting a forced labour import ban (13 have new laws on the books, including Australia, up from three a year ago).

'From an advocate's perspective, an import ban is one of the very few tools with accountability that will actually hit the bottom line of companies. A lot of the rest lack real bite,' says Nick Grono, CEO of the Freedom Fund, which in 2024 co-founded a coalition to spread import bans that got nowhere until Trump's threat turned serious.

The big question is whether the tariff is simply about revenue generation for Trump. Will there be a genuine off-ramp from the tariff for countries that adopt new laws and are serious about enforcing

them? There is no evidence that governments taking action will be rewarded for it. 'If the new tariff is fundamentally about revenue, the administration has every interest in never recognising improvement, since each concession is money forgone,' says Dan Viederman from the Working Capital Fund, a veteran of efforts to promote human rights in supply chains. 'It's an interesting and useful step. If it's backed up by a pathway to success, a clear set of steps for business and a focus on the welfare of workers, I'd be happy to give three cheers down the road.'

Sceptics note that in March 2025 the Trump administration cancelled $57m of Labor Department grants across 69 programmes in more than 40 countries, every one of them fighting forced and child labour. They have not been restored. A true champion would understand this is retrograde.

Grono reads the incentive the other way. Publishing criteria for tariff relief 'probably wouldn't affect their tariff income for years. But it would answer critics who say this isn't a credible anti-slavery intervention.' That sounds like the sort of deal Trump might like, costing him nothing but getting him credit for caring about modern slavery and a rebuttal to everyone calling the whole thing a fig leaf.

The conditions of cotton workers in China have been the subject of several human rights reports. Chain-mix Ching/Getty

Robots set to guzzle more energy than the UK generates in a year

Jeevan Vasagar Climate editor

Within a decade, both industrial and humanoid robots could consume more power than the UK generated last year, according to research published this week.

The analysis comes as data centres face a mounting backlash over their power use and the robotics industry scrambles to agree on an energy efficiency standard for its machines.

Wood Mackenzie, an energy consultancy, forecasts global robotics power consumption at 363 terawatt-

hours by 2035, with industrial robots accounting for the majority of this. The UK generated 292 terawatt-hours of electricity last year.

Asia is experiencing the biggest boom in robot deployment, and China is the biggest market, with 43% of all operational stock of industrial robots in 2024. Since 2019, industrial robot numbers worldwide have been growing by 11% on average each year.

Chinese robot maker Uniree-famous for its dancing and boxing humanoid robots – is preparing for an initial public offering in Shanghai this month. The IPO is already heavily

oversubscribed by retail investors, an indication that it may become the next market obsession after AI.

An initiative to develop the first standardised measure of industrial robots' energy consumption is being led by ABB Robotics and is due to be published soon.

Susanne Bieller, general secretary of the International Federation of Robotics, said: 'Energy consumption depends on what the robot is doing – its idle time, when it's moving, and which way it's moving.'

'It's difficult to label but customers want a comparison to make a buying

decision, and we hear from our members that different end users have different schemes for measuring energy consumption.'

It can be tricky to separate out the energy consumption of industrial robots from that of energy-intensive factories around them, she said. Processes such as welding, for example, could use more energy than the movement of a robotic welder.

There's little evidence so far that energy prices have slowed adoption, which appears to be driven mainly by concentrations of manufacturing industry – the big four markets after

China are Japan, the US, Korea and Germany – and labour costs.

Robots can also be more efficient, reducing waste. 'There are better yields on production and less scrap,' Bieller said. Fully automated workplaces can also run at lower temperatures and with dimmer lighting than needed for humans, significantly reducing energy consumption. But widespread adoption of humanoid robots will probably increase energy demand, as more autonomous machines will rely heavily on AI. 'If we use more AI then energy consumption will rise again,' Bieller added.


42 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

Business

Any Other Business

Rescue doesn't come cheap for Thames Water

The optics of Thames Water handing large sums to its management, including a £1m signing fee to finance chief Steve Buck, are undeniably bad.

As a government spokesperson put it last week, "It is unacceptable that one of the worst-performing water companies is handing out huge payments to its executives when it should be focusing on improving performance and rebuilding public trust."

Yet those now running Thames Water are caught between a rock and a hard place. A top job at a company that is a public relations and actual shit show, a financial mess under assault from its creditors and perhaps about to be nationalised, is a tough sell to the sort of highly competent talent that could actually save the company – executives who may reasonably feel they need to be well paid to take on such a potential career disaster.

In that sense, recruitment and retention payments may well make sense from the perspective of the business, even if they risk falling foul of the ban on executive bonuses imposed on several of Britain's water companies. Nor are the large sums being paid by Thames Water wildly out of line for the industry or other similarly sized companies.

Ultimately, this is the latest symptom of a far deeper problem: the water utilities should never have been privatised. Many wise people, not all anti-privatisation, pointed out before the 1989 sale that this particular privatisation was doomed to fail given the impossibility of setting a regulatory framework that produced both a politically acceptable price for water and incentivised companies to make the huge investment needed to modernise the water and sewage infrastructure. The sooner that dreadful decision is reversed, the better.

By Matthew Bishop

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Thames Water's sewage works at Beddington Lane, London. Bloomberg

ATG sale bets $6bn on live events

The Surrey commuter town of Woking is not known as a hotbed of entrepreneurship or home to multibillion-dollar corporations. Perhaps it will be after last week's $6bn acquisition of the locally based ATG Entertainment by Hollywood legend Ari Emanuel's Mari Group.

The Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) was co-founded by Howard Panter and his wife, Rosemary Squire, in 1994. It now owns about 70 of the world's top theatres as well as thriving production and ticket arms.

In 2013 the couple sold a controlling stake to Providence, a US private-equity firm specialising in media and entertainment, which said it was betting on a

healthy future for live events. The new owner, Emanuel, said much the same, having once argued that live events would flourish as new technology, such as artificial intelligence, meant that people would have more time and money to "go out and do stuff".

This is not a one-way bet. Andrew Lloyd Webber recently highlighted the lousy economics of staging a Broadway show and the latest wave of technology may not be the time saver and money creator Emanuel predicts. But there are signs serious investors believe there's a future for businesses based on real people using their talents live to lift the spirits of other humans.

Moving chairs in the house of Tata after shock departure

A decisive battle may have been won in the war to control Tata Sons, India's biggest conglomerate and owner of several notable British businesses, including Jaguar Land Rover, Terley, British Salt and Tata Steel.

Chief executive Natarajan Chandrasekaran last Wednesday unexpectedly announced he would not seek reappointment when his term ends in February – an apparent victory for the wing of the family headed by 69-year-old Noel Tata over those loyal to his late, great, half-brother, Ratan Tata, who died in 2024.

Ratan led the group, now worth an estimated $280bn, through its best days since first thriving in imperial times after its creation in 1868. His first successor, Cyrus Mistry, appointed in 2012, struggled amid deep disagreements inside a complex group of companies full of baronies and family feuds.

In 2017, he was replaced by Chandrasekaran, whose personable and diplomatic style seemed to restore a sense of calm progress. That changed after Ratan's death, amid problems at Air India, Jaguar Land Rover, Tata Steel and Tata Consultancy Services, and

rumours, strongly denied, that Chandrasekaran wanted to take the group holding company public over the opposition of Noel, who heads the family charitable trusts that govern the empire.

Many Tata insiders fear a successor handpicked by Noel will bring instability and score-settling when some high-profile business problems are still to be resolved. (The firm will miss Chandrasekaran's relationships in Westminster, which have helped win government financial support for its steel and car businesses.)

At the very least, the group's leadership is now likely to be focused inwards at a time when there are huge business opportunities to fight for, especially as India enters its AI, energy and green transitions.

Burnham can't put too much faith in cost of living cuts

William Keegan

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When Margaret Thatcher bowed to the demands of the monetarists, led by Milton Friedman, in her first term, Bank of England governor Gordon Richardson told me that she had created "a rod for her own back". And for many others, too.

The fruitless attempts to control the money supply led to higher and higher interest rates, which crippled manufacturing. It didn't matter that in 2003 Friedman disowned the doctrine he had preached. The damage was done. Manufacturing has still not fully recovered.

The moral of that episode is that governments should be wary of pinning their faith on the latest putative panacea – all the more so if they proclaim their intention to be judged by success in achieving an

objective that's beyond their control. Which brings us to Andy Burnham's obsession with the cost of living. Before I go further, I should emphasise that I want Burnham to succeed, and approve of his cheerful efforts to raise the animal spirits of business and what economists call "consumers" – ie, us. The problem is that, although certain "micro" announcements he has made will slightly ease price pressures, the broader cost of living is a "macro" issue beyond his control. It will be shaped by the global prices of oil, energy, fertiliser and food.

But Burnham is sticking to those "red lines" which rule out a return to the European customs union and single market – something which could move the dial. The good news is that Hamish Falconer, the new cabinet minister in charge of EU relations, is determined to forge deeper ties. He told the Guardian

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Margaret Thatcher bowed to the demands of the monetarists. Getty

The broader cost of living will be shaped by the global prices of oil, energy, fertiliser and fuel

there was room to be ambitious within the red lines, and he would look at "the art of the possible".

Unfortunately, those red lines constitute serious restrictions on what is possible. Burnham has expressed the wish for us to rejoin the EU during his lifetime. I hope he also means during the lifetime of his premiership. I can understand the apprehensiveness of those who do not wish to undergo another referendum. But there is mounting evidence that most of the electorate recognise that Brexit was, and continues to be, a catastrophe.

If the "Burnham bounce" represents a genuine boost to the public's respect for our new prime minister, he should think seriously about the way Ted Heath took us into what was then known as the European Economic Community without a referendum. That was leadership and statesmanship.


Weather

observer.co.uk

16.09.26

43

UK and Ireland

Today Monday Tuesday
Low High Low High Low High
Belfast 12 17 14 18 14 18
Birmingham 12 23 15 24 16 24
Bristol 12 24 15 23 16 21
Dover 16 23 16 24 17 24
Edinburgh 11 18 13 17 14 19
Glasgow 11 17 13 17 14 17
Inverness 11 17 11 17 13 19
Leeds 14 20 15 19 16 20
Leicester 13 23 16 23 17 22
Liverpool 13 22 14 20 16 20
London 18 28 17 27 18 26
Manchester 12 21 15 19 16 20
Newcastle 11 19 12 18 14 20
Norwich 12 23 14 23 16 24
Plymouth 14 25 16 25 17 22
Swansea 12 22 16 22 17 22
Dublin 12 20 14 22 15 20

Europe today

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We Save Lives Set the AccuWeather app

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Temperatures °C (shown are highs for today)

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Precipitation today

Showers Storms Rain Flames Snow Ice

Lighting up

Today Monday
Belfast 2055 to 0604 2053 to 0606
Birmingham 2030 to 0553 2028 to 0555
Bristol 2031 to 0600 2029 to 0601
Dover 2014 to 0544 2012 to 0546
Edinburgh 2048 to 0548 2045 to 0550
Glasgow 2052 to 0553 2050 to 0555
Inverness 2056 to 0545 2054 to 0548
Leeds 2033 to 0548 2031 to 0550
London 2022 to 0551 2020 to 0552
Manchester 2035 to 0552 2033 to 0554
Newcastle 2038 to 0545 2036 to 0547
Plymouth 2034 to 0608 2032 to 0610
Swansea 2037 to 0605 2035 to 0606

High tides

Source: © Crown copyright and/or database rights. All rights reserved.

Today Monday Tuesday
Aberdeen 04:16 4.5m 16:51 4.1m 04:56 4.3m 17:30 3.9m 05:38 4.1m 18:10 3.7m
Belfast 02:03 3.7m 14:35 3.2m 02:46 3.7m 15:17 3.1m 03:29 3.5m 15:58 3.1m
Dover 02:10 6.6m 14:24 6.9m 02:46 6.5m 15:02 6.7m 03:23 6.3m 15:40 6.5m
Galway 08:21 5.1m 20:36 5.2m 09:00 4.9m 21:15 4.8m 09:39 4.6m 21:57 4.5m
Harwich 02:49 4.1m 15:01 4.1m 03:28 4.0m 15:37 4.0m 04:05 3.8m 16:13 3.9m
Hollywood 01:11 5.9m 13:36 5.4m 01:51 5.7m 14:14 5.2m 02:30 5.3m 14:53 4.9m
Hull 09:19 8.0m 21:53 7.3m 09:56 7.7m 22:25 7.0m 10:32 7.3m 22:57 6.6m
Leith 05:38 5.8m 18:04 5.4m 06:20 5.6m 18:45 5.2m 07:03 5.3m 19:26 4.9m
Liverpool 02:02 9.7m 14:25 9.2m 02:39 9.4m 15:00 8.9m 03:15 9.0m 15:35 8.5m
London 05:03 7.3m 17:17 7.2m 05:41 7.1m 17:53 7.1m 06:17 6.8m 18:28 6.8m
North Shields 06:22 5.3m 18:56 4.9m 07:02 5.2m 19:35 4.7m 07:43 4.9m 20:14 4.4m
Penance 07:49 5.4m 20:06 5.5m 08:24 5.2m 20:41 5.3m 09:00 5.0m 21:16 5.0m
Plymouth 09:11 5.4m 21:18 5.5m 09:42 5.2m 21:47 5.3m 10:09 5.0m 22:13 5.0m
Portsmouth 02:16 4.6m 15:07 4.7m 03:03 4.5m 15:47 4.6m 03:49 4.4m 16:21 4.5m
Southport 01:29 9.4m 13:52 8.9m 02:06 9.1m 14:20 8.6m 02:35 8.7m 14:55 8.2m
Weymouth 10:20 2.1m 22:22 2.2m 10:44 2.0m 22:48 2.0m 11:03 1.8m 23:10 1.8m
Wick 02:14 3.7m 14:44 3.3m 02:53 3.5m 15:20 3.1m 03:32 3.3m 15:57 3.0m

Around the world

Today Monday Today Monday
Low High Weather Low High Weather Low High Weather Low High Weather
Amsterdam 15 22 cloudy 15 21 showers 16 22 showers 14 19 showers
Athens 23 31 sunny 20 31 sunny 18 33 storms 28 33 storms
Auckland 12 15 rain 7 12 sunny 21 28 cloudy 21 29 sunny
Baghdad 32 47 sunny 33 46 sunny 28 30 showers 21 29 sunny
Beijing 22 30 fair 21 33 fair 28 35 showers 29 34 storms
Belgrade 19 34 sunny 19 36 fair 26 31 rain 26 31 rain
Berlin 17 25 showers 15 22 fair 16 31 sunny 19 32 sunny
Brussels 16 25 fair 14 23 cloudy 19 29 fair 20 29 fair
Budapest 16 35 sunny 18 29 storms 18 34 sunny 20 37 sunny
Buenos Aires 13 18 cloudy 10 13 cloudy 6 15 fair 6 17 fair
Cairo 25 36 haze 25 34 haze 15 25 rain 13 26 rain
Cape Town 10 19 cloudy 11 20 cloudy 27 34 fair 26 35 storms
Copenhagen 13 21 fair 13 20 fair 12 24 cloudy 16 24 fair
Dublin 12 20 cloudy 14 22 fair 15 23 rain 14 24 cloudy
Geneva 19 31 storms 18 28 storms 27 33 haze 26 33 haze
Gibraltar 23 29 storms 24 29 storms 21 27 storms 20 28 cloudy
Today Monday
Low High Weather Low High Weather
Oslo 13 23 showers 12 21 fair
Ottawa 12 23 storms 16 24 fair
Paris 21 31 sunny 19 30 haze
Prague 16 27 cloudy 16 20 storms
Riga 18 24 fair 13 21 showers
Rio de Janeiro 20 26 fair 20 27 sunny
Rome 22 33 sunny 23 32 fair
Seoul 24 28 showers 23 32 storms
Singapore 27 31 showers 26 33 storms
Sydney 11 17 rain 11 17 showers
Tokyo 23 30 showers 23 31 fair
Toronto 18 25 storms 19 27 fair
Vancouver 15 23 fair 15 22 cloudy
Vienna 18 36 cloudy 21 26 showers
Warsaw 17 30 cloudy 15 22 cloudy
Washington 24 26 storms 24 33 cloudy

Speedy crossword No. 1,610

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Across

1 Not custom-made (3-3-3) 8 Explosively volatile (8) 9 Religious image (4) 10 Piscine breathing organ (4) 11 Container for cigarette detritus (7) 13 Breathing apparatus (6,5) 15 Ceremony for joining the Christian church (7) 17 Inter (4) 20 Ballet garment (4) 21 Tennis match retrievers (4,4) 22 Inactive (9)

Down

2 Natural inherent ability (7) 3 Prong of a fork (4) 4 Dance allowing a cut-in of partners (6,2) 5 Official order or proclamation (5) 6 Musical poem (4) 7 Marshy or swampy ground (6) 12 Realistic and achievable (8) 13 Impenetrable to light (6) 14 Light, peaceful sleep (7) 16 Temporary halt to hostilities (5) 18 Old-fashioned child's stringed toy (2-2) 19 Overabundance, surfeit (4)

SOLUTION No.1,609

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Been loyal to your bank?

With them for years?

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Call them up, ask for 4% interest on your savings.

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HARGREAVES LANSDOWN


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Fun & games for all the family

Observer's

needed

Destination unknown

Whose ticket matches the four luggage tags below? Answer is on the back page

A

WEIGHT 21kg SEAT 08 GATE A

DESTINATION - LONDON

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17-08-26 FLIGHT 42368

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LDN

B

22-08-26 FLIGHT 843019

DESTINATION - DUBLIN

WEIGHT 100kg SEAT 22 GATE B

DUB

C

WEIGHT 54kg SEAT 137 GATE C

DESTINATION - PARIS

16-08-26 FLIGHT 137376

PAR

D

19-08-26 FLIGHT 121054

DESTINATION - PALMA DE MALLORICA

WEIGHT 32kg SEAT 100 GATE D

PMI

BOARDING PASS

18-08-26 FLIGHT 137376

NAME: Lucy S SEAT: 137 GATE: C

DUB TO PAR

BOARDING PASS

FLIGHT 42368 17-08-26

NAME: Oscar I SEAT: 08 GATE: A

PMI TO LDN

BOARDING PASS 19-08-26

FLIGHT 137376

NAME: Miles E SEAT: 100 GATE: D

PAR TO PMI

BOARDING PASS

16-08-26 FLIGHT 137376

NAME: Niesi W SEAT: 07 GATE: C

LDN TO PAR

BOARDING PASS

17-08-26 FLIGHT 156273

NAME: Chris N SEAT: 08 GATE: A

PMI TO LDN

BOARDING PASS 19-08-26

FLIGHT 121054

NAME: Lola W SEAT: 202 GATE: D

PAR TO PMI

BOARDING PASS 22-08-26

FLIGHT 42368 WEIGHT 100kg

NAME: Jon H SEAT: 22 GATE: B

AMS TO DUB

BOARDING PASS 22-08-26

FLIGHT 843019

NAME: Rob T SEAT: 22 GATE: B

PAR TO DUB

BOARDING PASS 16-08-26

FLIGHT 843019

NAME: Emma D SEAT: 22 GATE: B

DEN TO DUB

BOARDING PASS 16-08-26

FLIGHT 42368

NAME: Phillip L SEAT: 08 GATE: B

AMS TO LDN

BOARDING PASS

16-08-26 FLIGHT 137376

NAME: Tom S SEAT: 137 GATE: B

LDN TO PAR

BOARDING PASS 19-08-26

FLIGHT 121054

NAME: Polly S SEAT: 100 GATE: D

PAR TO PMI

BOARDING PASS

16-08-26 FLIGHT 137376

NAME: Sarah M SEAT: 137 GATE: C

LDN TO PAR

BOARDING PASS 16-08-26

FLIGHT 121054 WEIGHT 32kg

NAME: Pete G SEAT: 100 GATE: D

PAR TO PMI

BOARDING PASS 22-08-26

FLIGHT 843119

NAME: Jess H SEAT: 28 GATE: B

ALC TO DUB

BOARDING PASS 17-08-26

WEIGHT 21kg FLIGHT 42368

NAME: Ted W SEAT: 137 GATE: A

AMS TO LDN


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PASSPORT


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Observers needed

All packed up

With the summer holidays definitely here, many lucky beach-bound people are working out exactly what their suitcase will hold. Can you find

A pair of sunglasses A passport A sunbather A beach ball A silver A tube of sumercam A pair of flip flops A bucket and spade A snorkel Aot of beans playing card

Illustration by Paromate Knapin


Your weekly logic page featuring two puzzles compiled exclusively for The Observer

Obliks by Godefridus

No 129

1 3 2
4 2 4 3
3
1 2
3 4 4
2
1 1
1 2 3
3 1
1 2
2 2
3
3 1

Quick example Here's a small 6–6 grid to show how it works. The goal is to separate each set of the same number into different regions using diagonal slashes

1 2 3
1 2 3 1
2 2
2
3 3 1

The two 3s at the top can't be in the same region, so you draw a slash between them. Slashes must always cross the entire square – ie, from point to point

No 130

1 2 1
1
2 2 2
1
2 1 2
2
1 1

The 1s and 2s on the left also need to be in a separate region. Add more slashes to make sure they are isolated in their own area

1 2 3
1 2 3 1
2 2
2
3 3 2

Continue adding slashes logically to separate matching numbers while keeping all numbers connected within their own regions

Mindset by Etruscan

How to play

Identify one trait for each circle. Sort objects accordingly.

  • Each circle = one single trait (for example 'red' not 'red-filled')
  • The trait must apply to every object in that circle
  • No objects outside that circle can have that trait
  • Numbers show how many objects belong in each section

Think you've found another solution? Email us – valid ones will be printed in the paper and featured in The Puzzle Edit newsletter

No 73

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No 74

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Scan to play more Mindset

Copyright © Magicave Holdings Limited 2025. Mindset is a registered trademark of Magicave Holdings Limited.

Solutions to the above, plus crosswords, Sudoku, Cinema Connect and Guess the Picture can be found on pages 30-32 of New Review

Found a bug? Have a favourite? Got a suggestion?

We'd love to hear from you, email us at puzzles@observer.co.uk

Solution to front page puzzle: Oscar I (LDS), Rob T (DUB), Sarah M (PAR), Polly S (PMI)

img-114.jpeg

Beyond the print edition: scan to subscribe to The Puzzle Edit – exclusive columns, setter insights and a weekly clue breakdown from puzzles editor Caitlin O'Kane


THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE

16.08.26

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Carmen Zander kept nine tigers on an industrial estate in suburban Germany. What happened when one escaped?

By Imogen West-Knights


Spot

When festival glam meets surprise sun Be ready for the beauty of British summer

Selected stores. Subject to availability


16.08.26

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Welcome

A few months ago, news reached this magazine's editorial desk that a tiger had escaped from an industrial estate in Dölzig, eastern Germany, and was very briefly on the loose. As you can imagine, many questions followed, including "What was it doing there?" "How did it escape?" and, more plainly, "A tiger?" The animal was owned by Carmen Zander, a 50-something woman who is known in circus circles as The Tiger Queen and who has appeared in more than one tiger-related documentary. Zander in fact owned nine tigers. For years she kept them in trailers parked close enough to a petrol station that customers could hear the animals roar. One day in May, people using the petrol station heard human screams coming from the tigers' direction. The police were called. So too were the fire service. When they arrived, Sandokan, a 900kg male, was gone.

Later that month, I sent the writer Imogen West-Knights to Dölzig to find out what happened: How did Sandokan escape exactly? What happened to him? And what were tigers doing in suburban Germany in the first place? She spent three days in the town – retracing the tiger's steps, searching for the spot where he was eventually shot dead, walking through the busy allotments the animal was heading towards before that fatal decision was made – and she reports on the events of the day in this week's cover story. But what really fascinated West-Knights was the story beyond Sandokan: Who is Carmen Zander? Why was she allowed to keep so many tigers in such a small space for so long? And why do so many people living in Dölzig support her? It's a fascinating tale. Please enjoy.

Alex Moshakis Editor

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Contributors

Sophie Wyburd (Chef at large, p40) Sophie is a cook, recipe writer and content creator from London. Her recipes can be found in her cookbook Tucking In and in her newsletter Feeder. What animal would you most like to see in the wild? "I'd love to see a polar bear – from a safe distance away."

Miles Ellingham (Chris Chung, p18) Miles is a senior writer at The Observer. In the last nine months he's been dispatched to war-torn Ukraine, a dog show, an Icelandic glacier, the Venice Biennale and the amusement park at Great Yarmouth. He's also contributing editor and head of falconry for Dispatch Media.

What animal would you most like to see in the wild? "Obviously the 'Gentoo 15'. I feel very strongly about this. Also possibly Remy from Ratatouille."

Imogen West-Knights (Tigers in suburbia, p12) Imogen is a journalist, author and video-games writer based in London. What animal would you most like to see in the wild? "I'd most like to see a possum, one of nature's most charming little freaks."

Daniel Civetta (Homes, p30) Daniel is an Italian photographer primarily focused on interiors and architecture. He currently resides in Florence.

What animal would you most like to see in the wild? "I would love to see an elephant."

Laura May Todd (Homes, p30) Laura is a Milan-based journalist and author with a focus on design, architecture and interiors. Her book, Italian Interiors, was released by Phaidon Press in 2014. What animal would you most like to see in the wild? "My cat, Gigi. Poor thing has been cooped up in a Milan apartment his whole life. I'm sure he'd love a visit to the forest!"

Cover image: Pablo Delcan. The Observer Magazine • 22 Berners Street, London W1T 3LP • magazine@observer.co.uk Printed at Walstead Bicester Ltd, Chaucer Business Park, Launton Road, Bicester, OX26 4QZ

16.08.26 THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE

3


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Observations

p6 An hour with actor Allan Mustafa

RESERVATIONS

It's glam

up north

A new hotel on Norway's remote Træna has nature at its heart

Reaching Ytri is part of the point. Guests cross open water to Træna, Norway's most remote inhabited archipelago, before arriving at this newly opened 15-room retreat. "We hope guests feel an imme- diate physical and mental exhale," says manager Kine Willumsen. "Arriving this way creates a natural boundary." The hotel is the result of a decade-long collaboration with the islanders - many of whom helped build the mini village of traditional-style barns. Panoramic windows framed in raw timber and local stone act as "a quiet lens" on to the Atlantic, while the hotel embraces what Willumsen describes as "elemental exposure paired with absolute shelter". Here, the rhythm is dictated by "the sea and the shifting northern light, the chang- ing wind and the midnight sun", reflecting Træna's 6,000 years of fishing history, where people depended on one another for survival.

From late September until early April, the hotel's Northern Lights Lounge offers one of the best chances to see the aurora. Else- where, freshly roasted coffee from neighbour- ing Lovund accompanies yoga, sauna sessions and walks around Hussy, while boat trips and a 12-course chef's table show off the surround- ing coastline. Evenings end beside the fire as the mountains and sea disappear into the Arctic twilight. "Ytri doesn't shield you from northern nature," says Willumsen. "Nature is the main character." ● TABITHA JOYCE

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GOING VIRAL

St Michael

is back

If you went to school in the 90s, your uniform may well have had not only your name sewn into the collar but also that of St Michael, patron saint of grey V-necks and pleated skirts. Now the subject of many Vinted and eBay searches, original M&S St Michael pieces are in high demand. Happily the fashion gods have chosen to bless us with a collaboration of dreams: cult streetwear brand Aries has created a 26-piece edit, drawing on some of M&S's most recognisable symbols with logo T-shirts, a cardigan and briefs set, and a leather version of the classic green carrier bag, launches on 20 August.

● HELEN SEAMONS

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THE CASE FOR...

Zoom calls

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I have a pleasingly name-droppy story that captures the duality of video- calls perfectly. I once had the joy of interviewing Werner Herzog for an American magazine. For half an hour, he was everything you could have dreamed - urbane, cryptic, warm and obscure. Unfortunately, as I was conducting the call from Dublin and he was in LA, there was an interminable gap between everything I said and his response, which added a nerve-shredding tension to every statement. You have not tested your ego, until you have asked a question and had Herzog stare at you in stony silence for five seconds afterwards.

Some aspects of video-calling are less than wonderful, of course. They're impersonal in a way that face-to-face communication simply isn't, and few of us get to escape the buffering, the lags, or that odd, half- moment of stiff mortification that lives between saying goodbye and hitting the exit button. But Zoom calls, for good or ill, lie within the substrate between high and low effort, where just about anyone might give you an audience if all that's required is 31 minutes of their time and the opening of a laptop.

To centre video-conferencing's true benefits for a moment, the

accessibility they have granted to the world's population for home working has provided one of the most seismic shifts in disability rights for a century, while also allowing millions a healthier work-life balance, and greater flexibility with childcare and travel. But even on the most base level, their true boon is in their convenience for all. There are certain meetings which could have been an email, and Zoom calls at least afford you the option to conduct these while wearing shorts. With such a benefit, what's five seconds of lag between me and my dear close personal friend Werner Herzog? ● SEAMAS O'REILLY

MIGUEL FORLAN

5


Observations

AN

Describe your perfect hour

Getting out of the water after a really nice swim in Thailand. It's the end of the day, I get some spicy noodles, then ride off on a moped into the sunset with no idea what awaits me. Maybe I speak a little of the Thai I'm learning as well, so I feel proud of myself. It's a mini achievement.

If you could live in any era, which would it be?

New York in the 1970s – the early days of hip-hop and graffiti. The OG era, when those things were being born, would have been such a special, creative time, full of griminess and beautiful art.

If you could spend an hour with anyone famous, who would it be?

Anthony Bourdain is a massive inspiration. He was a moral compass for what you should and shouldn't put out into the world.

Which part of your life do you daydream about the most?

Daydreaming about the past can be negative. But when I'm feeling down or anxious, I think back to pottering around Scopello in Sicily, with nothing much to do but eat good pasta in the sun. I've been there three times, and I'm going to get married there, so it's a special place for me.

What is the last thing you ate that you regretted?

There's nothing that I regret eating. I only get annoyed when I'm trying to lose weight and something I've eaten isn't really delicious, because then I've wasted my stomach on it.

When was the last time you stole something?

Stealing was a part of my culture growing up. I was

HOUR

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WITH

into graffiti, so it was mostly stealing from bigger corporations, let's say.

When was the last time you cried?

I cry pretty easily, man. I watched The Invite at the cinema the other night and cried at the end. I mean, it's a comedy, but it's also a drama about relationships.

When was the last time you had sex?

With another person?

When was the last time you checked social media?

I deleted Instagram this morning, then downloaded it in a cab shortly afterwards, because I was bored. It's an addiction.

What's the last thing you Shazammed?

Embarrassingly, a song by the Streets – Geezers Need Excitement – that I should have known the name of.

What do you never have enough time for?

Reading. I wish I read more books, man. My excuse is that I read scripts for work, so my eyes need a break – and I need to go on Instagram.

When did someone last mistake you for someone else?

Someone once came up to me in a club who might have been on some sort of "mood enhancer". He went: "Bruv, yes, Chabuds." He thought I was Chabuddy G [from Kurupt FM, played by Asim Chaudhry]. It's an easy mistake. It's the same show, and Asim's my boy, so I'll take it on the chin.

What advice would you give your younger self?

Try not to worry about what other people think of you, especially the ones you don't care about. ●

ALLAN 'SEAPA' MUSTAFA

The British actor, comedian and writer, 40, is best known for playing MC Grindah in People Just Do Nothing, the BBC mockumentary about fictional UK garage act Kurupt FM. Their new EP, Grindah's Decided We're Doing Music Again (GDWDMA), will be released on 21 August.

6

As told to RICH PELLEY • Portrait JOSHUA TARN


Observations

EVA WISEMAN

BODY POLITICS

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‘Anyone who insists on wearing Meta glasses should also be cloaked in shame and stigma’

Do you know who I feel sorry for? The 50 or so people wearing the Meta AI-enhanced camera glasses who are neither pervert nor creep. Can you imagine? You’re just a gentle guy looking to, I don’t know, film yourself cooking paella for your burgeoning social media channel Rice To Meet You, or want a hands-free map to guide you through a walking holiday in Portugal (while filming it for your travel blog, You Don’t Have To Be Madeira To Walk Here), but when you put the glasses on, boom, scorned – people think you’re weird. You! It’s instant. You’re trying to document the normal hubbub of a sweet Portuguese café. But the second those around you notice your glasses and their tiny little “I’m watching you” light, they go silent. They start awkwardly exiting, or else lightly performing for the camera, and there’s no chance of normal life continuing at all.

I feel for these smart-glasses owners, who have probably never even thought about wearing theirs while performing a bikini wax on a client (happened in New York), or filming themselves harassing women in the street (undoubtedly happening right now, and being turned into content by manosphere influencers online), or using them to film sex without the other person’s consent (man fined £800 at Warrington Magistrates’ Court in January), or filming strangers in the toilets of an LGBTQ+ event in an attempt to “document grooming” (happened at Naples Pridefest in May), or using them to surveil immigrant communities and peaceful activists (ICE agents across the US). And yet, non-creep, when you put the glasses on, these are your people.

The pushback to these glasses has been fast, witty and regularly livid. A new app, called Nearby Glasses, uses Bluetooth to locate people wearing them. On bus stops in London posters appeared featuring the face of Jeffrey Epstein in Meta glasses, and the line “Glasses for people who don’t do consent.” Another advert saw Kylie Jenner in her Meta glasses tagged, “We’re always watching.” Advice follows. On Instagram, videos

alert women to play Disney songs if they suspect somebody is surreptitiously filming them, the idea being that Disney’s copyright detection algorithms will block any video captured without consent.

With every new story it becomes more and more clear how voyeurism is baked into the business model. In February, it was reported that Kenyan contractors, hired to train AI systems and check the glasses’ visual-query feature, were forced to review footage of nudity, sex, personal financial details and people on the toilet. Meta addressed this by simply ending the contract.

Much of the pushback to these glasses comes from Gen Z, who, having grown up fluent in ideas about consent and privacy, see in them overt opportunities for abuse, extortion and government surveillance. And yet, they’re still buying them! After debuting a design from the company behind Ray-Bans, and a huge push via influencers like Jenner, last year alone over 7m were sold. Which means the news of their rottenness, the sticky mess of it, this thing that wants to capture our time, money, desires, to watch as we crawl unaided through the rubble of a once private life, is not cutting through. The answer is to impose stigma. The answer, and I say this with love, is to judge.

Until legislation catches up with technology and bans these glasses in public places, children should be taught to recognise what are now widely being called “pervert glasses”, and to walk away, or loudly tell a grown-up that guy over there is filming them. Adults have the added responsibility of laughing at or shunning the wearer, or (if they’re one of those aforementioned non-creeps) actively explaining their concerns. I love the idea of fashion as resistance, too, promoted by designers who work with “adversarial patterns” intended to exploit weaknesses in computer vision systems. Imagine if Kylie Jenner wore one of these garments instead of a pair of pervert glasses. Imagine how the sands could shift. We need to start laying pins like this in Meta’s path. There’s no shame in shaming the wearers of smart glasses, not while women are using Disney songs like rape alarms. ●

Eva Wiseman is an Observer writer

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ALAMY

7


Observations

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A swimsuit that doubles as a top streamlines your packing and outfit – no need to pack lots of vest tops (the line is smoother, too, under your trousers – no more trying to surreptitiously tuck your vest in when it rides up). Choose a block colour or one with a simple contrast trim for maximum multi-use mileage.

A monochrome one-piece can be worn as a bodysuit with shorts or a slip skirt with flip-flops. Swap in loose trousers for evening or opt for a slip skirt with a lace trim and a statement earring. Whistles has a good selection of one-pieces that wash well (rinse them after a pool

dip to protect the fabric from chlorine; avoid wringing them and dry in the shade out of direct sun). M&S are this year's high-street winner with countless options under £40, including a high-neck style in size 6-24 in regular and long fit and soft sculpt both £36. Seafolly's chocolate with white trim is currently on sale at John Lewis (£84).

Hunza G's signature crinkle fabric comes in a variety of shades including a cheerful emerald green or zesty lime with a contrast trim or a range of bright colours and black in a flattering square-cut neck that looks great with jeans. If

you plan to swim a lot rather than lounge, look for sportswear brands or something with added support – Skims racerback comes in sizes XS to 4X and keeps everything in place.

With bikinis the same logic applies: plain sets are more versatile than prints. A bikini top under a plunging kaftan strikes the right relaxed holiday mood that an underwire bra can kill instantly. A final word on cover-ups: an oversized shirt is chic for the beach and great for putting on a when you're sight-seeing in strong sun. Tie it round your waist or roll it up in your bag with your towel and beach read. ● HELEN SEAMONS

8


Observations

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A contrast trim adds a sporty vibe and works with everything from running shorts and denim during the day to wide-leg trousers or a skirt for evening

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Add a pop of colour to a monochrome swimsuit with bold accessories. Choose leather flipflops to wear beyond the beach

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Wear a swimsuit as a bodysuit with a slip skirt; a one-piece stays smooth without bunching or requiring a re-tuck, giving you a polished look

1) Black swimsuit, £175, Toteme (Mytheresa) 2) Snake-print sandals, £90, Fitflop 3) Emerald swimsuit, £175, Hunza G 4) Basket bag, £38, M&S 5) Claret swimsuit, £75, Cos 6) Woven bag, £55, Topshop (Asos) 7) Brown swimsuit, £36, M&S 8) Green flipflops, £148, Reformation 9) White swimsuit, £27.99, H&M 10) Blue flipflops, £35, Archies 11) Navy swimsuit, £99, Whistles 12) Beaded bag, £510, JW Anderson

9


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The Tiger who came to Suburbia

When a privately owned 900kg tiger mauled one of its keepers before escaping to a sleepy German town, police had no option but to shoot it dead. But that was just the start of the story...

By IMOGEN WEST-KNIGHTS

12


This is Dölzig,

Germany

POPULATION

1,800

people

9

tigers

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Photographs

MÄRZENA SKUBATZ


On a warm Sunday in May, police officers in Dölzig, a small town in east Germany, received some very unusual calls. Dölzig sits at the edge of a busy motorway, the Bundesautobahn 9, which connects Berlin to Munich. When the police take calls about accidents, they are usually related to traffic. This time, the call was about a tiger.

On the south side of Dölzig there is an industrial estate surrounded by a 2m-high, 40-year-old chain-link fence. And within that estate, alongside furniture outlet stores and heavy goods company warehouses and a petrol station, is a smaller fenced enclosure that houses a nine-year-old, 300kg Siberian-Bengal cross tiger named Sandokan. There is a petrol station directly next to Sandokan's enclosure, from which customers had heard screaming and alerted the police, but the tiger had made off in the opposite direction. Now he was bounding through long grass at the edges of the industrial estate with nothing but that old fence standing between him and true freedom.

The police, and the fire department, who were also called in to help, were faced with two extremely urgent situations. The first was capturing the loose tiger. The second was tending to a man the tiger had mauled – it was his screams that the people in the petrol station had heard. When firefighters arrived at the scene, they could see the man lying on the ground inside the tiger enclosure, covered with bite wounds and lacerations, bleeding profusely. But because the tiger was still loose, they were ordered to stay in their cars. Authorities had a difficult decision to make. The man needed immediate medical assistance. But they had no way of knowing if and where other dangers lurked.

Meanwhile, the police had Sandokan to deal with. They called for veterinary assistance, believing that the ideal solution would be for the tiger to be tranquillised and rehoused; unlike the local police, vets have the tools necessary to do that. But there was a problem. Directly behind the industrial site, over a modest set of fences, was a public allotment, which on this sunny Sunday afternoon was busy with people tending to their plots. And Sandokan was heading in their direction.

The tiger had been loose for half an hour.

So far it hadn't left the industrial site, but the risk to human life if the animal decided to roam further was considered by authorities to be too great. Standing on the roof of one of the squad cars, a police officer took aim at the tiger with a semi-automatic rifle, and fired. Sandokan was killed instantly.

The gardeners on the allotment were already aware that something was wrong – a helicopter was flying low overhead. After the shot, officers rushed into the allotment and ordered everyone to shelter within their sheds. Because now they had a third problem. Sandokan wasn't the only tiger living on this industrial estate. There were eight others. "It was totally surreal," a woman who was out in the allotments with her five-year-old son told local news.

Using drones, the police were eventually able to do a count. All eight remaining tigers were still inside the enclosure. The crisis was over. The attacked man was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery – and Sandokan was dead. But that wasn't the end of the story.

Dölzig is a tidy, polite little town on the other side of two small rivers and a motorway from Schkeuditz, a slightly bigger town, which lies approximately 20 minutes by train northwest of central Leipzig. In Schkeuditz there is a hairdresser, a bakery, a Chinese restaurant and a grand, gabled town hall whose bell clangs every quarter hour. Dölzig is mostly just neat suburban houses and the industrial estate. It is quiet and sleepy, except for the sound of dogs barking from behind "Vorsicht vor dem Hund!" (Beware of the dog!) signs on fences. The industrial estate is on the south side of town, which then gives out to wide, flat and still-green fields.

The tiger enclosure consists of metal fencing, slightly taller than an HGV lorry cab, through which a collection of old trailers and

makeshift shelters are visible. There is a small patch of scrubby grass and concrete within the fencing that comprises the tigers' outside area. While I was there, a young Polish couple, just driving through, pulled into the side road that leads up to the allotment gardens to have a peek over at the enclosure. The tigers were all inside their trailers, hidden from view, and the couple quickly lost interest and drove on.

The tigers belong to a woman in her early 50s named Carmen Zander. Zander did not respond to my requests to comment for this article, but it is not difficult to find information about her. She was born in 1973 in Chemnitz, a city in Saxony. As a child, she remembers visiting the predators' enclosure at Leipzig 200 as often as she could, dazzled by the majesty of big cats even then. She began her working life as an acrobat, a dancer and juggler in variety shows and circuses, and at 19 was offered her first opportunity to dance in a cage during a big cat show.

"Getting up close to big cats for the very first time was an incredible feeling," she told a local newspaper recently. In 2006, Zander bought five tiger cubs from a safari park in North Rhine-Westphalia, in west Germany, having spent 12 years qualifying as an animal trainer. She bought further adult tigers in 2014 and 2017, and established her own travelling circus show, which became celebrated in the field of circus performance. In 2018, she won several prizes at the Monte-Carlo Circus Festival, where she was given the moniker "Tiger Queen", which stuck. At the Dölzig enclosure, there are signs on the fences that read, in German, "We support tigers living in human care," with photographs of tigers on them. "Tigers on tour!" is written in cursive, sun-bleached letters on the side of one of the trailers. There are pictures, too, of Zander in full circus glam with one of her tigers, as well as text announcing her Tiger Queen moniker and the Monte-Carlo prizes.

A still from police footage showing Sandokan the tiger on the loose

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16.08.06 THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE


Tigers in suburbia

But the atmosphere of the Dölzig enclosure is one of long-faded glory. Zander's industry is on the wane. There is no ban of any kind on circuses featuring wild animals in Germany, unlike every other member of the European Union. But public appetite for performing animals has diminished considerably in the past few decades. The Dölzig industrial park has served as the winter quarters for her tigers since 2016; they would spend the summer months touring as part of her circus show. But in part because of the pandemic, Zander has struggled to demonstrate the ongoing bookings required for her to qualify for a permit to earn money as a circus-adjacent professional, and in 2022, when it came time to renew her licence, she was denied.

Since then, Zander has been forced to keep her animals in Dölzig year-round, but this too has come with issues. She is now subject to the same rules that apply to zoos and was required to provide 20 square metres of indoor space per tiger. The Dölzig enclosure is 65 sq metres total, for all the tigers, which means that since 2022 she had been keeping the tigers against regulations. And because she can no longer make money exhibiting the tigers, Zander is in dire financial straits. It costs her €6,000-€8,000 a month to keep her tigers, for which she has been taking out lines of credit as well as soliciting donations from supporters. She also has a small group of volunteers who help her with some of the upkeep. It was one of these volunteers, a man in his 70s, who was mauled by Sandokan.

In recent years, Zander has had various run-ins with the local police. She has never had a permit to breed tigers, but a litter of tiger cubs was born in the enclosure in 2024. Bemused passers-by saw her walking one of the cubs, named Imana, on a leash in the suburban area of Leipzig city, where Zander lives. Last year, she advertised a tiger show at the Dölzig compound despite lacking the necessary permit. She was fined €1,000 by the Eilenburg district court, but she escaped prison time.

And then there is the issue of the manner in which her animals are now being kept. Peta Germany has received several whistleblower accounts over the years about Zander's animal husbandry. One, from June of last year, reports that the tigers "are being kept in tiny cages in lorry trailers, crammed into a very small space. You can hear the animals howling and panting, as they have no way of escaping from the trailers, even in the summer heat."

I spoke to Gabi Salbach, a woman who lives nearby, and who was once herself involved in supporting Zander in her tiger keeping. She stopped the work in 2018, because she "could no longer bear to witness the way the animals

were being kept and housed." She claimed that even in 35C heat, the tigers were confined to cages, had no exercise area, no fresh water and could not bathe. As she put it to me: "It was only a matter of time before something happened on the premises."

Zander herself disputes these characterisations of her animal husbandry strongly. In the weeks after Sandokan's death, she appeared on a debate programme aired on Germany's ARD television network, where the keeping of exotic animals was being discussed. The host suggested that the space she has is insufficient and too barren. "My animals have everything they need and require," she replied. "They have large facilities and play areas, swimming opportunities and hiding places. There are different ground coverings – grass, soil and wood chips – there are modern well-equipped vehicles and scratching posts and litter and sawdust, and there are heat lamps there, bedding."

As I wandered around Dölzig, what I heard from local people surprised me. If a tiger escaped from a private enclosure and mauled someone where I live, in London, I might be in favour of the tigers living somewhere else. Not so for many here. Jacqueline, a woman who works in a farm shop on the north side of town, sighed when I asked her about Zander. "It's a great problem for her," she said. "Coronavirus came, she had no income. But I'm not scared. They are lovely tigers. They have been trained since birth." She pointed to a tattoo on her arm of a line drawing of a cat's face. "I'm a cat mum, too," she said. At a nearby headstone mason, a woman called Mandy told me with a shrug that it was only dangerous for the people in the allotments. "It was one tiger," she told me, "and they shot it." At the Esso petrol station on the industrial estate, the woman behind the counter said that the company had told them not to talk to the press about the incident, which no doubt has something to do with the fact that Esso's historic branding in Germany famously features a tiger. "But I'm still not afraid," she told me.

I ran into Helena, 14, who lives a few hundred metres away from the industrial park, on her way home from school. She was having lunch in her garden with her parents when she received texts from a friend about Sandokan's escape. "I was like, what?" she said. But because the tigers have been there for most of her life, she hasn't really been bothered by their presence until now. "But we all know they are not happy," she said. "They live so close together."

As I got nearer to the enclosure, the more tight-lipped people I spoke to became about

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'When firefighters arrived at the scene, they could see the man lying inside the tiger enclosure, covered with bite wounds bleeding profusely'

the animals. A young man in the furniture outlet store right next to the tiger enclosure said he doesn't speak to any newspapers because Zander is a direct neighbour. At the horse stables over the road, and at the allotments, the story was similar. In small towns, communities keep things close.

Local opinion does vary, though. On the day of the escape, the mayors of both Schkeuditz and Dölzig made statements that the tigers had to go. Predictably enough, the allotment users who were present on the day of the tiger attack felt rattled. "Our paradise was shattered," one woman, 68, told local media. Interviews with locals on the day after the attack conducted by the television channel, MDR Fernsehen, featured a woman who said it was inevitable that something like this would happen eventually. You can still go on Zander's website and read her own account of Sandokan's personality, which makes for a disquieting reading now. "This large, majestic Siberian is a scaredy cat," it reads. "If he misjudges something, which unfortunately happens even with small things, he quickly becomes overwhelmed and insecure. Insecurity in unneutered male tigers is not without its dangers. An attack can therefore be triggered more quickly and unexpectedly."

Another Peta report from May 2025 from a local resident describes feeling →

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uncomfortable about having to live so close to these wild animals. “If you’re out in the garden there, having a barbecue or eating a slice of cake,” they wrote, “you can hear them roaring time and again,” which is “very frightening”. When I stood outside the Dölzig enclosure, I too could hear the unmistakable roar of tigers coming from within the trailers.

Much of my reconstruction of the events of the day on which Sandokan was shot comes from detailed reporting done by the local newspaper, Leipziger Volkszeitung (LVZ). But there is a frustrating gap in the understanding of exactly what happened in Sandokan’s enclosure that Sunday afternoon. The only person present at the time of the attack was the volunteer who was mauled and he was taken to hospital in such a critical state that he was unable to be questioned by police. While I was in Dölzig, locals gossiped that the man was in a coma, though this hadn’t been confirmed to them. Nobody knows what tasks he was carrying out within the enclosure. Zander claims that only she is allowed to feed the tigers. In interviews with the German press, Zander has denied all responsibility. “I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said in the days after the attack. “My volunteers are 100% trained. I don’t understand what happened here.”

But while I was in Dölzig, I became interested less in what had happened and more why it happened in this town, specifically. In Germany, anyone is allowed to keep any wild animal they like, provided that each animal is housed “appropriately according to its species and needs”, in the wording of the German Animal Welfare Act. But the law does not define what those needs are. Something called the Mammal Expert Opinion, drawn up by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture, is often used as a guideline, but it is only ever that: a guideline. And because of this, it is very difficult to prove that it is necessary to confiscate exotic animals from their owners. Zander has failed to meet the minimum suggested standard of care for her tigers since 2022, but that doesn’t automatically mean the authorities can remove.

I spoke to Patrick Mueller, who appeared on the same ARD debate programme that Zander did. His organisation, Animal Advocacy and Protection (AAP), has previously offered to home all of Zander’s tigers at their sanctuary, Primadomus, in Spain. When I asked why Germany lags so far behind other European countries in its laws on allowing circus animals to perform, he seemed frustrated. “I asked this question last year to the German Agricultural Ministry,” he told me. “They are in charge of

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The tigers were all housed in a collection of old trailers and makeshift shelters, which overlooked some local allotments

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this and they said: ‘Well, maybe those other countries don’t have as nice a circus tradition as we do.’ It’s like, what?! This is your scientific answer to this?” He reckons, though he can’t prove, that it might be down to clever lobbying by Germany’s remaining influential circuses, one of which, Circus Krone, also owns a lot of real estate, including buildings in Munich that German political parties use for big events. “But if we look at wild animal pet keeping in Germany, we’re also so bad,” he added. “Germany has become the market and transit state for wild animals that are distributed throughout Europe, because we’re so central and because our legislation is so weak.”

The regulations are particularly lax in Saxony, where Dölzig is. Laws on animal-keeping are decided at a state rather than a national level, and Saxony is one of five German states that has no legislation against the private keeping of any kind of wild animal. Those

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Tigers in suburbia

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animals do, inevitably, sometimes get out. A few days after Sandokan's escape, a woman hiking in Saxony's Harz Mountains came across a boa constrictor snake that had escaped or been released from private care. A couple of weeks later, a non-native scorpion was found by walkers in Leipzig. Because keeping wild animals is legal, there are no definitive records of how many of these animals are in private hands. "People ask, how many tigers are kept in Germany? And the answer is: we don't know," Mueller told me. "Which is not a good answer if someone asks how many tigers are there somewhere."

I thought back to those "Beware of the dog" signs I saw in Dölzig. Perhaps a certain amount of the blasé attitude of people I spoke to there about the tigers living near their homes is about this unusual grey area around ownership. If an aggressive dog is an acceptable pet, why not a tiger? "In this case, I don't know the

neighbours, but in other cases, it's also a bit of an identification landmark," said Mueller. "Like: my neighbour owns a monkey, my neighbour owns a lion. It's something that is providing remote villages with something unique, particular, interesting..."

A lot of the conversation in Dölzig since Sandokan's escape has centred on what can or should happen to Zander's remaining tigers. They can't be returned to the wild, not least because the "wild" for Zander's tigers doesn't exist. They're Bengal-Siberian mixes, which is not a naturally occurring combination. But they are still wild animals. Yvonne Würz, at Peta Germany, told me that, though many keepers of these sorts of animals argue they are domesticated because they've appeared in circus acts, that's not enough. "That's just a lie," she said, "because biologically it's still a wild animal, even when you've held them in captivity for a few years. That's not a domestication process." Unlike cats or dogs, tigers have not been bred to live with humans over hundreds of generations.

Only the North Saxony Veterinary Office holds the power necessary to remove Zander's tigers from her care and even that is not much power to speak of. AAP's offer to house them at their sanctuary included covering all travel costs, but Zander herself is not in favour of this solution. She has said her tigers wouldn't enjoy the heat and that the dust would be harmful to their respiratory system. Her dream is to open her own tiger park. She told LVZ that she already has a site in mind, on a former farm 40km away from Dölzig, but getting set up there would cost a lot of money that she does not currently have. Gabi Salbach told me that Zander would not be parted from her tigers and "would never give them up voluntarily". In fact, just a couple of weeks before Sandokan's attack, Zander began legal action against the district administration to regain permission to publicly exhibit them.

A couple of months after I got back from Leipzig, however, the decision was taken out

'In Germany, anyone is allowed to keep any wild animal they like, provided each is housed appropriately according to its species'

of Zander's hands. Early one morning, a large group of vets and police officers arrived at the industrial park and used blowpipes to tranquilise six of the eight tigers, a family group consisting of a mother named Daphira and her five cubs, in order to take them to the sanctuary in Spain. It was the largest tiger rescue ever carried out in Germany and was made possible because of public pressure on the North Saxony Veterinary Office to finally take action after Sandokan's killing. Two tigers remain, for now, with Zander, as there is arguably enough space for them with the other tigers gone. The six tigers remain in quarantine in Spain, but a representative from AAP said that they are in good health, and will be ready to be released into their new outdoor enclosures within a couple of weeks.

Perhaps the most intractable problem, beyond the legal issues and the dubious ethics of keeping wild animals, is the fact that human beings tend to start to love animals that fall into their care. Zander loves her tigers. She calls them her "little mice", cuddles them in their enclosure and refers to them as her children. (She has indeed raised many of them since birth.) But the question then becomes one about the way we demonstrate that love and who it serves. Anyone who has had to put down a beloved pet is familiar with this ache. We want them to stay with us, but it is our responsibility to understand when their suffering outweighs our desire for their company. "Because she loves the animals, she can't see what would be best for them," said Würz at Peta. It does seem like a sanctuary is better placed to give the animals what they need. The fact that Zander can not see that, even after one of her tigers had to be killed for harming a person looking after them, suggests that perhaps she never will. And without her tigers, who would she be? "She was the German Tiger Queen and if the tigers are gone, she's not going to become the German queen," as Mueller told me. "She's just a person."

A more serious and tragic development came just a week after the tigers were taken to Spain. After spending two months in hospital, the 72-year-old man who was mauled by Sandokan finally succumbed to his injuries. He died in hospital on 10 July. Zander's protestations of innocence about the events that took place in her tiger enclosure will now come under much more intense scrutiny. According to local press reports, police are now investigating whether she will face criminal charges. And yet Zander still states on her website that it will soon be possible again to book her private tiger petting events. In large text, it adds: "All liability is excluded." ●

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'PEOPLE ARE

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Chris Chung wears vest, track pants and trainers all by Dolce & Gabbana. Astroturf from IKEA

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ASTOUNDED

I'M NOT

Slow Horses made Chris Chung famous as Roddy Ho. But behind the swagger is a story of body image, typecasting and almost walking away

By MILES ELLINGHAM

OBNOXIOUS'

Photographs BRIAN DALY

Fashion editor HELEN SEAMONS

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Chris Chung

It's as if British secrecy has contracted. James Bond was sold to real-life Bond villain Jeff Bezos. Both Sean Connery and Roger Moore have passed away, carrying with them a chunk of the chauvinism and post-imperial hallucinations of their age. Today, the ascendant London spy is underdressed and spends more time in Peckham Rye than extinct volcanoes. The "spooks" of MI5 have come for the globe-trotting agents of MI6. And the spooks eat crisps. They even sort the bins.

This is the prevailing feeling of the hit TV show Slow Horses, now in its sixth season. Adapted from a book series by Mick Herron, it follows the comings and goings of Slough House, a fictional, grotty holding bay for intelligence operatives who've been downgraded from MI5 proper. There are vestiges of the Cold War thriller present, but only vestiges. Slough House is overseen by the crapulous Jackson Lamb, who mostly sits about farting, swearing and problem drinking. Lamb used to be a le Carré-style spy, hardcore, but he had too many run-ins with the Stasi and, like Britain itself, has deteriorated into cynical weariness. Lamb is brought to life expertly by Gary Oldman, who's still got it. But alongside Oldman, a relatively unknown entity has used his newfound Apple TV credentials to catapult his career into the mainstream: Chris Chung, 38, who plays the show's peculiar computer whiz, Roddy Ho.

"He lives in my head now in a way I didn't think he would..." Chung says of his character. "Whenever I'm walking around and I see something in a shop window, I'm like, 'He'd absolutely have that in his house, or a T-shirt that he would wear. Something really horrendous... 'Female Body Inspector', or something along those lines."

How to explain Roddy Ho to the uninitiated? He's debatably a sociopath, largely devoid of empathy, a chronic fantasist, capable of placing a man on the sex offenders register for stealing his seat on the bus. Ho refers to himself interchangeably as "the Dragon", "the Rodster", "the Ramrod" and "the human tripod". Despite this, Chung somehow manages to portray him as likeable, which takes finesse. And the two of them – Chung and, consequently, Ho – share one last profound characteristic: they are both

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After his Australian Idol audition Mel B told him he had 'a nice body, but that's about it'

distractingly ripped. Interviewing an actor can often feel like talking to a shire horse. Chung is the first actor I've spoken to whose body somewhat mimics the tonal slopes and bulges of an actual horse. I'm encountering his biceps outside his favourite café in leafy Hampstead, where he lives with his wife, the actress Frances Mayli McCann.

Chung moved to London from Melbourne in 2012 for career opportunities, culminating in a breakout role as Archie on BBC One's Waterloo Road. He met McCann in 2014, working on a show at the National Theatre. The couple marked their commitment to each other first by getting married, then, a few years later, by acquiring an aloof Shiba Inu named Keiko. Because this is Hampstead, land of pedigree, Chung has brought Keiko along and she sits under the table looking a bit bored as I order the obligatory Hampstead breakfast of avocado toast and a soft drink I've never seen before.

Chung's body is important to him. He's the only actor in Slough House who has a side gig; he also works as a real-life personal trainer, advising people on how to look more like him. He's hesitant to give up this profession because he believes

it keeps him grounded. Tending to his body has taught him discipline. He typically wakes at around 6am, drinks coffee, then goes to the gym, where he'll spend an hour on a full-body workout, usually with rest days on Wednesdays and Fridays. He also employs his own personal trainer, to stop him getting complacent.

Chung recently returned from shooting the upcoming Netflix series, My Brilliant Career, in Australia, where he plays the beefcake heart-throb. As far as I can see, this is the second broadsheet feature to describe him as "ripped", after the New York Times. You can find his PT profile on the website of his gym, Fred's. "My main goal," it reads, "is to have you feel confident and capable in your body", which makes you wonder if Chung has always felt confident and capable in his own body.

"So I went to New York when I was 21 to train as an actor..." he recalls, when I ask him to tell me when and why he became ripped, and "when I came back to Australia, I had an agent at the time out there, and I remember going into the office to talk to him about what I could do now..." Chung's fitness story began in that →

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Jacket, shorts and bag all by Versace, vest by Lemaire (all from Mytheresa); socks by Zara; and trainers by Camper. Facing page: cardigans both by JW Anderson; shorts by Geordie Campbell; socks by Uniqlo; and trainers by JW Anderson x Diadora

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Chris Chung

office with 11 distinct words: “We just need to make you a little bit more commercial.”

Back then, as now, the male Hollywood Aussie tended to be big and/or strong: Chris Hemsworth, Liam Hemsworth, Luke Hemsworth, Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Sam Worthington, Joel Edgerton. Before that it was Mel Gibson vaulting over the highland bracken and Paul Hogan telling people what a knife is. There were a few actors who bucked the trend: the entrancing late-career weirdness of Heath Ledger for instance, or the sage-like quality of Geoffrey Rush. But as far as Chung’s agent was concerned these were lucky anomalies. Chung recalls him reaching across the desk and grabbing his jaw. “Yeah, we’ll have to fix your teeth as well.” That meeting would become a defining moment. It’s when Chung learned that he was a product, a product he’d have to improve through hard work. But there’s another reason this advice stuck with him, and it had something to do with his aunties.

Chung is half Malaysian Cantonese on his father’s side. He wears a jade necklace he was given as a wedding present. According to tradition, if a jade necklace breaks, the wearer has avoided catastrophe. (His remains intact.) Chung says he was probably the only East Asian man on his agent’s books when he started out.

In his father’s culture, Chung explains, it’s very normal to comment on someone’s appearance. Chung was overweight as a young teen – around 5ft 5in and 8kg at one point. He doesn’t speak Cantonese, but he never forgot the phrase “fei zai” (“fat boy”). Chung still remembers being 12 and his mum hiding the good treats in tubs of rice so he couldn’t find them. When his aunts came to visit, he’d hear “fei zai” batted around the lunch table with painful matter-of-factness. Then he started high school, where he was one of the few East Asian kids, and he was overweight, and he wanted to be a performer. Shènghuo hao nán. “Life is tough.”

I ask if, buried beneath his agent’s comment, were distant echoes of the family table. “I think probably not in that specific vein,” he says, “but more in the general vein. It’s a commentary on my body.” Chung agrees that, somewhere faraway, there’s always been that memory of the eating disorder he never recognised he had.

By the end of school, Chung had lost weight. To do so he had to cut rice from his diet, which was a big deal in his household. He also started singing, which he loved. While researching this article, I dug up an obscure episode of Australian Idol – Season four – from 20 years ago, on which you can see a certain fedora-clad teenager

singing Stevie Wonder’s Signed, Sealed, Delivered in a very cute, Justin Bieber-style falsetto.

“I fucking love that!” he shouts. “You’re the first person to bring that up!”

He got into the top 100 contestants, but didn’t win. Following Australian Idol, forever banging on the door, he auditioned for X Factor, where he got to perform in front of Mel B. “She wasn’t that great,” he says. At the end of his audition, she told him he had “a nice body, but that’s about it”. “You’re one to talk,” Chung responds retrospectively.

Today, Chung is proud that he’s pushing the boundaries of the roles an East Asian actor is expected to take. He’s had his fair share of typecasting in the industry. Chung often found himself auditioning for doctors and takeaway chefs. He’s also been asked to speak with an accent for roles that don’t necessarily demand it. He sees this as the writers room attempting to “other” their character briefs because, to them, that’s what an East Asian character is – someone who sounds different.

When Chung was filming Waterloo Road, in Scotland, he was a 25-year-old playing a 15-year-old alongside other 15-year-olds. He had to live with two of his castmates. “I had to teach them how to do their shopping, their laundry. I was basically their chaperone,” he recalls. “This is not what I came to the UK to do, to wake up, go into the living room and find a prawn on the floor, because they’d be having a food fight the night before.” But Chung gradually found himself being eclipsed by his co-stars, his part whittled down to nothing as the focus shifted to the white characters.

Chung first auditioned for Slow Horses in 2021. He had almost thrown in the towel by the time he sent his audition tape. After he got the call, he was terrified that he’d be too buff to play Roddy Ho, who he assumed would be a scrawny brainiac. Mick Herron initially wrote Ho as someone who wears glasses and imagines himself as buff. But Chung was buff. It didn’t matter in the end. The screenwriters liked Ho’s body and wrote it into the script.

Six seasons later, Ho has driven a bus into a house, smited a masked intruder with a two-handed sword and been honeytrapped by a Libyan secret agent. His Dick Van Dyke cockney accent has improved, slightly.

During one of Slow Horses’ many Bafta nominations, Herron was sitting next to Jay Hunt, the Apple TV producer. Both were across from Chung, who had removed his shirt, revealing a vest beneath. They were both taken by how “fit-looking” he was.

“Is that how you imagined Roddy Ho?” Hunt whispered to Herron.

“No,” he replied. “That’s how Roddy Ho imagines Roddy Ho.”

I ask Chung if he likes the show.

“Yeah,” he says.

“Why?” I ask.

“It’s brilliantly written,” he says, “Prestigious cast. Incredible visibility from a huge international streamer. It’s all the things that you could want in a job, and it’s consistent.”

He tells me how well Slow Horses has done in Europe, which strikes me as odd, because it’s so hyperlocal to London. “I think that’s why people love it,” he says. “They see real London and it’s gritty and it’s grimy. It’s not aspirational in its espionage, it’s not James Bond wearing a Tom Ford suit and drinking a martini. It’s Jackson Lamb wearing literally the same coat he does in season one.”

‘People love Slow Horses. They see real London. It’s gritty and grimy. It’s not aspirational’

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Chung as Roddy Ho with co-star Ruth Bradley in season five of Slow Horses; and as Harry in My Brilliant Career

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GROOMING BY CARLOS PERRAZ AT CAROL HAYES MOMY USING HUMBLE AND HUMBLE AND DR DAVID JACK, FASHION ASSISTANT FREYA GOODCHILD-SHIDOE, PHOTOGRAPHER'S ASSISTANT JOHN CHONIN, IMAGES ALAMY, NETFLIX

I ask what it was like working with Oldman, a three-time Oscar nominee. Chung says he was so anxious that he didn't sleep properly for three days before he first went on set. But "he was such a leader," he says. "Everyone that works on the set had a theatre background, so he treated us like a company of actors... always really collaborative." Oldman will often invite his co-stars to discuss, at length, the structure of a scene and how his character should behave.

The thing about Gary Oldman is that he's famous enough to just be Gary Oldman. For now, Chung is famous as Roddy Ho, who tends to be disliked. "People who listen to my live interviews," he explains, "are always astounded that one, I'm Australian, and two, I'm not an obnoxious prick." He still encounters people who march up to him on the street and say something along the lines of, "You're a dick, aren't you."

Chung is not, as far as I can tell, a dick. Whether Roddy Ho is a dick is more nuanced. The short answer is yes. But Chung has been prudent in his portrayal, bringing us a character that strains towards likeability without ever fully reaching it.

"Why do people like him?" I ask.

"He's endearing in some way, in a dysfunctional way," he says. "I like to give moments within each season that shows his humanity - that he's a real person. You see that when he gets told that his girlfriend online is a bot, and you see his whole world explode. There's moments of empathy that the audience can take from him... He's layered."

"What does it feel like to act?" I ask.

"That's a huge question," he replies. "Since I was a kid, I'd go and perform and I'd have so much anxiety. But as soon as you step into that spotlight it just switches off... And you come out of it and you're like, 'Oh, I fucking did that.'"

I'm drawn to this, the pull that keeps actors chasing an industry that treats them like shit and a dream that most of them will never reach. Once, working for a local paper, I was sent to interview people in the queue for a West End open-casting call. Hundreds of aspiring actors had turned up in the early hours, camping on the pavement in the cold. Some had travelled from other cities, barely able to afford the bus ticket. Others had flown in from the US. After 12 hours of queuing a casting officer walked out and cheerfully told the crowd that most of

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He still encounters people who march up to him on the street and say, 'You're a dick, aren't you'

them wouldn't get to audition at all. I remember everyone deflating all at once as even rejection became a privilege. It was one of the bleakest things I've ever seen, and I've been to Ukraine.

But Chung has made it, and he's sympathetic to the people who haven't, because he used to be one of them. (But also: "Showbiz, bitch.") Chung almost abandoned acting a number of times. The most intense wobble came eight years ago, after he'd starred in Heathers: The Musical. Chung loves musicals; he considers musical theatre actors as athletes. Heathers took a lot out of him but was successful. Then the work dried up. Then the pandemic hit. "I was unwell, I couldn't work," he says, "and things were coming in and I didn't have the confidence, or ability, or headspace to be able to engage with

them. I was like, I'm gonna step out for a while because I just I don't think I can do this."

"Did you?" I ask.

"No," he says. "Because I sent that tape for Slow Horses."

Things have a funny way of working out, don't they? Chung nods. He's also cautious not to take his success for granted. "It owes you nothing," he says. "The career owes you nothing. You finish a job, you start from scratch again. I think that is the best mentality." This strikes me as a very workout-style mentality. You can take the actor out of the gym... ●

My Brilliant Career is on Netflix now. Slow Horses, Season Six, starts streaming on 16 September on Apple TV

23


'I really love you, mate'

We all let out a heartfelt ahhhh when Jude and Erling embraced at the end of Norway and England's World Cup match. From headlocks and hugs to declarations of undying love, the bromance is definitely back. But if male friendships are so important, so profound, why are they so lightly worn?

By JOEL GOLBY

Illustration JHON BOY

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    1. 20 THE OBSERVER MAGAZINE

25


On the whole, there will be little to really fondly remember about this summer's World Cup. Enzo Fernández was evil and Tom Cruise was intense and weird and the Cape Verde goalkeeper was good, is honestly about all I've got. But for the bromantic overtones of the Norway-England quarter-final, in which Real Madrid's handsome-like-a-really-shiny-horse midfield dynamo Jude Bellingham went up against Manchester City's undead- Viking-warrior-raised-from-the-mud-in-a-blood-ritual behemothic striker Erling Haaland, and they sort of hugged in the centre circle when England won at the end. I like Jude Bellingham. He seems switched on and sound and erudite, and he really listens to his mum. And I like Erling Haaland, who seems like he's really quite off-kilter weird-funny, and like he would play the absolute worst music possible if you gave him the aux cord in the Uber. And I like that they are friends from their time being teenage wunderkinder in an incredible Borussia Dortmund team from a few seasons ago, hugging and grappling and publicly bantering with each other in a way that feels true and bone-deep and fond.

Male friendship, then. Peculiar thing, I'm afraid. It feels like, as a worldwide pattern, it goes in great strange arcing curves. I think my dad had about one friend, maybe two. And how often was your dad's only mate just a strangely nicknamed man who was essentially his enabler? Much has been made in recent years about the male loneliness epidemic, and the recurring meme that men can go to the pub together, spend hours in each other's company, and then not really know that, for instance, one of them just got engaged, or is expecting their first child, or even what their job is. (I have a friend, Australian Tom, who I have expressly forbidden from ever telling me what his job is: I already like you Tom! Talking about what you do at the office, or oil field, or wherever it is, will not enhance our hangouts!)

It can be hard for adult men to even make friends, and the deeper men get into their adulthood, the further those bonds made at school or college or university start to grow distant and frayed and diluted, until, boom, suddenly you're on Facebook and you realise a man you used to put into an affectionate headlock every weekend back when you both had full heads of hair has, like, moved to Belgium, never to be seen ever again. Men seem to fundamentally lack a certain friendship-making and-maintaining toolkit, and often fill the void

that leaves with something weird, like model trains or homebrew. This is why Fantasy Football exists, to give men something to talk about: an arcane points-based system focused on which Premier League right-back is slightly more in-form than the others, which can wile away 45 minutes of conversation that might otherwise be wasted on forging a true emotional connection.

Until now! Loving your mates is back, and business is a-booming. Bromance – a term coined in the late 90s by Big Brother editor Dave Carnie to describe and define the unusually close friendships between the male skaters his magazine deified – put into words a concept that had been around since the Ancient Greeks were writing about Achilles and Patroclus or the intense male friendships of Grand Tour-era romantics. In the 1980s, every second film was about two men – who were so muscle-bound they couldn't really fit their arms in T-shirts – spotting something profound and deep within one another – a wary tiptoe along the lines of respect and fear – before teaming up to do complicated handshakes, then defeat a wave or an alien or Clubber Lang in Rocky III. In the early aughts, bromance boomed – the solemn nods between cars of the Fast & Furious lot, every Judd Apatow movie, saying "no homo" and watching Jackass – and then, in recent years, a certain irony-poisoning sort of got in the way. Male friendship became a little cool, a little removed, a little detached. But all that's going away.

Is it a psychosexual thing? Sometimes yes (I mean... Ancient Greece; and "He died a lifelong bachelor and left behind only his best companion, with whom for 30 years he shared a bed"), but mostly no. The Heated Rivalry cultural explosion of early 2026 involved quite a lot of brooding bromance before the penetration began, but sometimes it's just the quiet muttering familiar companionship of, say, Bob Mortimer really carefully cooking a heart-healthy dinner for Paul Whitehouse while he solemnly fishes for nothing. The bromance resurgence is also, I think, a long-tail effect of the "talk to your mates, mate"-coded male mental health conversations of recent years, which can sometimes be a little bit blunt – it was quite often just Tyson Fury blinking too many times while trying to fight off concussion in a ring, roaring "MENTAL HEALTH IS IMPORTANT!" into a fuzzy microphone, or a betting advert reminding you to go outside sometimes. But now the message is well and truly lodged it feels like exactly expressing overt, out-loud love for your friends is one

TRUE BROMANTICS: A SPOTTER'S GUIDE

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Erling Haaland and Jude Bellingham

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Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer

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David Tennant and Michael Sheen

GETTY IMAGES, BBC, NETFLIX, ALAMY

26


Bromance

‘The intensity of bromance is built not just on love but true care, and it’s good that we’ve all jigged something free to make that cool and normal now’

of its lasting positive effects. The boom of men’s-only therapeutic talking groups – like Men’s Circle (kombucha and yoga poses and saying your problems aloud to other sympathetic men) or Andy’s Man Club (Monday night church-halls-and-plastic-chairs-and-biscuits talking) or Tom Skinner’s a-bit-maligned-but-ultimately-a-good-thing Sunday morning mental health walks – all have made it good and normal and ordinary to express things. Saying “I love you, mate” to a mate is a natural side-effect of that.

I am speaking, of course, as one of the UK’s premier Lover Of His Mates. On a recent annual trip to Barcelona with the boys, it became a recurring joke that my mate Dan would honk gravely on a vape, emit approximately a cubic tonne of triple-mango-flavoured haze, then say, “I love you, boys – and we should say this more” before being reminded he’s already said it 50 times that day. Every stag do I’ve been on in the last five years has at some point ended with my arms around a guy who was sort of in the army once who I met 36 hours ago declaring our adoration for one another (“as a bloke, you know?”). We hug, we nuzzle, we kiss necks, we send each other ambient music mixes on YouTube, we text to check up on each other when we’ve noticed one of us has been quiet, we have side group-chats where we talk about the one person who isn’t in there to make sure we’ve all been checking they’re OK. The intensity of bromance is built not just on love but

true care, and it’s good that we’ve all jigged something free to make that cool and normal now.

Goes both ways, of course. I have a friend with whom during my late 20s and early 30s I was intensely, almost fanatically bromantic, but some underlying fang of competitiveness – another male trait – eventually got in the way. We fell out as hard as we’d fallen in love, absolutely and violently, over a few bad hang-outs in a row and a misinterpreted text message and a too-close closeness that was hard to maintain over the distance of Covid, and ended up not speaking for three years, and yes for the record it was mainly my fault. He went away and matured and got really tasteful Invisalign. I went away and broadly stayed the same and actually maybe profoundly got worse in every way.

We reunited by chance at a mutual friends’ party three years later, and shared a pint under the twinkling lights of a south London pub garden, and the old familiarity and fondness and reason-to-be-mates was there, again – still, always – and we’re great friends again now, but it’s different, a wiser and more grown-up close friendship, without those hard burned edges of jealousy or rivalry. I’m going to his engagement drinks in literally four hours, you know? I’m planning a really nice, thoughtful present for them both that’s going to take ages to come in the post and by the time it arrives it will feel a bit too late to feel related to the engagement thing. Our friendship is one of the great warm foundational connections of my life.

Haaland and Bellingham feel like strange outliers in even this modern era of loving your mates out loud – professional athletes after the “let them tweet what they want!” personality boom of early Twitter, have recently been so clean and media-smoothed and Ken-dolled that it feels like any flash of real humanity underneath their ability to get ahead of a defender for a header is a surprise.

But not for “Jerling”: they joke around, they are drawn towards one another at corner routines, they jump on each others’ backs, they tease each other in their Instagram comments, they burst into each others’ press conferences. It’s healthy and it’s earnestly good and it’s the kind of role-modelism we often vaunt athletes for without them really ever doing much to earn it. I’m inspired, is what I’m saying. I’m off to watch The Odyssey with my friend Jon, and after I’m going to grapple him into a headlock and tell him how much I love him. ●

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Matt Damon and Ben Affleck

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Romesh Ranganathan and Rob Beckett

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Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr

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Find out more and book your tickets here

THE OBSERVER Book Club

Subscribe to The Observer for £1 for free access to our Book Club

Join us in the Observer newsroom or online for monthly conversations with leading authors

Coming up:

1 September 6:30 - 7:30PM Simon Seabag Montefiore

23 September 6:30 - 7:30PM William Boyd

Live

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In partnership with:

FORA


Home & Away

p40 Chicken salads with a difference

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Fashion and homeware designer HENRY HOLLAND and his pug, Larry, on early mornings and manifesting in London's Victoria Park

Victoria Park is Larry's happy place. When he was a puppy he'd wake up at 5am and be desperate to get here for his walk. It would be us and joggers waiting for the warden to open the gates. Responsibility and routine are not words I usually gravitate towards, but it's great to have a reason to be up early and spend time in the quiet of nature. — When my husband and I moved close to Victoria Park 15 years ago, we knew it was a magical space. The skyline of Canary Wharf on the horizon makes you feel like you're both in the centre of the universe and a place of peace. It feels special to watch the seasons change as we walk Larry around the same circuit throughout the year. — There's a spot with two trees where we stop to manifest. My mum was into books about positive thinking, so it's a belief system I was brought up around. We'll pause and take a moment to say what we'd like to see, like a project we want to get over the line, or something for someone else. Setting an intention is a good way to start the day. — Being an entrepreneur, there's a million and one things to do all the time. It suits my busy brain, but it can also be exhausting. When I'm here, I don't check my emails or wear headphones. Instead, I listen to the sounds of the park, and give myself space to think before everything gets manic. •

As told to HAYLEY MYERS • Portrait SAM DEARDEN

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HOME & AWAY

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On Elba, a shepherd’s hut becomes an artistic retreat

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HOME & AWAY

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Every summer as a child, the textile artist Isabel Farchy would visit her Milanese grandmother on the island of Elba. On each trip, she and her two older siblings stuck to a rigorously observed routine: “We had to wake up early to go down to the beach,” says Farchy, now 40. The three would then remain in the water, throwing stones into the deep and racing each other to retrieve them, until noon, when it was deemed too hot to continue under the Mediterranean sun. Once the sand had been rinsed from their feet, their grandmother, Luciana, would serve a simple lunch of rice salad, or prosciutto and melon, on the terrace, then everyone would retire for a mandatory nap in one of the garden hammocks. →

Words LAURA MAY TODD • Photographs DANIEL CIVETTA

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HOME & AWAY

‘Rather than becoming another jet-set playground, the island has evolved into a beloved summer retreat’

This routine has been in place since before her memories began. Elba, which is an hour’s ferry ride from the Tuscan mainland, is perhaps best known as the outpost that sheltered the exiled Napoleon for 300 days, from 1814 to 1815. Apart from this historical intrigue, it has remained something of a secret. Its 224 sq km (86 sq miles) are scattered with vineyards, olive groves and modernist seaside resorts built in the 1960s, when developers hoped to fashion a northern counterpart to Capri, in the Bay of Naples, or the Costa Smeralda in Sardinia. But rather than becoming another jet-set playground, the island evolved into a beloved summer retreat, drawing generations of families who return year in year out for its rugged landscape and deliciously slow pace of life.

When she’s not on Elba, Farchy lives in London with her husband, Anthony Wilcox, 49, a TV producer, and their two children, Elio, six, and Margot, four. Since 2022, she has been developing a handcrafted-textile practice, creating private commissions and exhibiting works in London and at the Danish design festival 3day-sofdesign, in Copenhagen. Employing found fabrics and natural dyes, Farchy makes gossamer-light patchwork wall hangings and window panels in a palette that recalls Elba’s earthy, sun-scorched terrain. She often uses plants and minerals foraged from the island’s coastline to infuse her compositions with colour. “Elba has been a mining island since Etruscan times,” she says. “So there’s lots of naturally occurring, iron-rich earth that you can use for mud-dyeing.”

The house itself – a two-bedroom, single-storey former shepherd’s hut – has been in Farchy’s family for four generations. “My great-grandfather used to come here on holiday. When he saw that this patch of land was for sale, he immediately got the ferry over to buy it,” she says. Like Farchy, her grandmother Luciana spent her entire life visiting this hilltop

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Paintings by Farchy’s grandmother, Luciana, and her artist friends are tacked to one of the bedroom walls. In the living room, Oasi 85 safari chairs by Gian Franco Legler are adorned with graphic cushions created by Luciana

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HOME & AWAY

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refuge, just a 10-minute walk from the beach.

Luciana was born in Milan in 1919, but fled to London to escape the persecution of Jews during the Second World War. There she studied bookbinding at the London College of Printing. “She would make these beautiful leather-bound books,” Farchy says. Eventually returning to Milan in the 1960s, she fell into the creative milieu that included the architect Luigi Caccia Dominioni and the influential female architect and designer Gae Aulenti. “At the time, it was difficult for women to be artists,” Farchy says, “so a lot of my grandmother’s creations existed inside the home”. Elba was her constant wellspring. “She would come with her creative friends, treating it almost like an artists’ residency,” she says. “They would stay here for weeks, just painting and making things.”

More than a decade after Luciana’s death, the Elba house is still filled with those →

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HOME & AWAY

‘It’s quite an ascetic house. There’s no fancy decoration. The beds are camp beds, the shower is a garden hose’

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treasures. “It’s quite an ascetic house. There’s no fancy decoration. The beds are camp beds, the shower is a garden hose, the water comes from a well. Most of the objects are made from things she found,” says Farchy, gesturing to a row of terracotta-toned stones gathered from the beach. Above the fireplace’s gnarled wooden mantle is a bouquet of dried grasses, including olive leaves and wild fennel, hung up like a shield displaying a family crest. Nearby, an eggshell-coloured sofa is crowned by a bent arm of knotted driftwood collected along the shore, which seems to sprout from the wall.

“What my grandmother created was a little sanctuary,” she says. Two small doorways lead from the main living space – one into the kitchen, the other into the two sleeping areas. The latter is ornamented with one of Farchy’s early designs: a gauzy, colour-blocked textile panel that gently flutters when a breeze drifts up from the sea. “It used to hang with a big hessian curtain. That was the piece that helped to inspire my move into textiles,” she says. Behind its veil are what she calls “very rudimentary” bedrooms, whose plain white walls are tacked with unframed landscape paintings by Luciana and her friends.

In Elba, the interior of one’s home is secondary to the island’s open-air charms. In the summer months, life is enacted out of doors, and Farchy’s house – which now belongs to her father, Joseph – is no exception. There’s rarely a moment when the double glass doors

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in the living room aren’t open to the surrounding habitat, where olive trees, giant aloe vera plants and pink-blooming oleanders crowd in front of the view sloping down to the sea. Yet even the landscape that encases the house failed to escape Luciana’s creative attention. Embedded into the concrete terrace are small patterns of sunbursts and smiling faces rendered in beachcombed stones, which appear like tiny archaeological reminders of her presence. Despite the intervening years, the summertime rituals set by Luciana – early-morning swims, terrace lunches, hammock naps – remain in place. “We still follow almost exactly the same patterns,” says Farchy. “It’s a way of connecting with the past.” ●

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The former shepherd’s hut has remained largely unchanged through four generations of the Farchy family – as has the view down to the nearby beach

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KITCHEN STORIES

This tiny local restaurant is open from Thursday to Saturday night, dishing up plates such as Irish squid stew with aioli and focaccia, or charred cauliflower and courgette with a feta and red-pepper dip.

CHESTNUT

This little restaurant in a former pub won a Michelin star within six months of opening back in 2018, and while it is closing at the end of October, it's worth watching out for chef Rob Krawczyk's next move. A menu rooted in the landscape that is serious without being fussy.

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WORKING ARTISTS STUDIOS

During the day, there's an open-door policy at this independent gallery run by artists that also functions as a working studio. In the evenings there are music nights and artist talks. You might even catch Jamie Budd, owner and chef at Budds, reading his poems.

In the Neighbourhood

BALLYDEHOB

West Cork

West Cork may kick off the Wild Atlantic Way, but stick around for Ballydehob, a colourful village that punches well above its weight. From here you're en route to Mizen Head, the southernmost point of mainland Ireland, and every summer the region comes alive with theatre, literary and arts festivals. Ballydehob's bohemian counterculture history still attracts artists and makers, including Didi and Simon Ronan of Native, Ireland's coolest eco hideaway. This year they welcome chefs such as Clare Geraghty, formerly of Café Cecilia in London, for a Monday supper series. • TABITHA JOYCE

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AUDLEY COVE

This shingle beach, a 10-minute drive from the village, is the locals' go-to for an icy morning swim. Slightly further afield, Ballyrisode beach is also lovely and the wood-fired West Cork Sauna on wheels appears at Dereenatra Pier on Friday afternoons.

LEVIS CORNER HOUSE

With the atmosphere of a traditional Irish bar, this pub hosts emerging musicians from all over the world. This month, a Mexican supper club run by chef Caitlin Ruth, a champion of sustainable Irish food, is popping up in the beer garden.

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HOME & AWAY

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NATIVE CABINS

Just off the high street, this design bolthole was created to spotlight Irish makers. The former farmhouse now has six bedrooms - three in the garden along with a sauna on wheels and a cold plunge - and invests 20% of profits into rewilding.

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BUDDS

Bright blue Budds is a community hub serving home-baked chunks of white chocolate and peanut butter brownie. There's also a changing lunch menu that might include a petal-topped lamb shish kebab or gourmet spice bag.

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THIS ITALIAN TIRAMISU GELATO WITH CREAMY MASCARPONE

HITS

DIFFERENT

Tiramisu Gelato, 480ml

£2.49

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SPECIALLY SELECTED

Specially Selected Tiramisu Gelato tablets, 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 and more. Subject to availability. Product and price may vary in store. Scotland, Wales, Old Local and online. Photography shows sterling suggestion.


Cravings

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‘Sweltering days call for something spicy, sour and refreshing, with a backnote of chilli’

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Some like it hot

KITCHEN DIARY NIGEL SLATER

You know summer has reached its peak when you see me eating a green curry. Sweltering hot days, of which there have been a few more than I can handle this summer, call for something spicy, sour, refreshing, possibly with a backnote of citrus and chilli. A coconut-scented green curry hits the spot and although there is a long list of ingredients, most go into the spice paste, whizzed to a thick purée in seconds in a food processor. Such recipes take longer to shop for than to cook. →

Portrait CHARLIE CLIFT

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CRAVINGS

‘I find two or three small hot chillies give just the right heat, how many more you add is up to you’

This version has sweetcorn at its heart and soul. The final seasoning of such recipes is very much up to the cook, who can adjust the amount of lime or fish sauce, lower the heat with more coconut milk or thicken the sauce with more sweetcorn or an extra handful of coriander leaves. The perfect texture for me is somewhere between soup and sauce, liquid enough to require a spoon, but thick enough to coat the vegetables.

I keep my herbs – parsley, basil, dill and coriander – wrapped in wet kitchen roll in a plastic box in the fridge. It keeps them in fine fettle for several days. (Sometimes they come out in better condition than when they went in.) The mixed bags of lettuces – radicchio, mizuna, oakleaf and the like – are best stored like this, too, tightly sealed in the lowest part of the fridge. The tricky one this summer has been watercress, possibly my favourite addition to a summer sandwich. I feast on it the moment I get it home, dunking the bunches in ice-cubes and water until the stems crisp up. The pepperiness is especially welcome when matched to soft-leaved, buttery lettuces.

Once again, every lunch or dinner seems to have finished with fruit. No bad thing. It is that time of year and I have to remind myself that the soft fruit season will be over in a heartbeat. The first plums of the year were on the table with a glass of chilled muscat; strawberries – small ones to dip into a crème fraîche with a dash of rosewater; apricots stuffed with labne and toasted almonds. We trickled a little honey over them just before we ate.

There was a dessert on the table, too, a white chocolate mousse that I flavoured with bay leaves and left to set in wine glasses. Just before bringing it to the table, I spooned warm blackberries over the surface. As we dipped our spoons into the mousse, dark, wine-red juices ran down into the sweet, creamy depths.

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Summer vegetable green curry

This is a version of the green curry I make regularly, this time with summer veg. There is plenty of leeway here for introducing other vegetables, according to what you have around. Peas, broad beans, runner beans and summer squashes – the green-fleshed varieties – are all admiral introductions. The number of chillies you include is very much a personal choice. I find two or three small, hot chillies gives a moderate heat, but how many more you add is, of course, up to you.

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Photographs JONATHAN LOVEKIN


CRAVINGS

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Serves 4. Ready in 45 minutes garlic 3 cloves small, hot green chillies 2-3 ginger 35g limes 2 lemongrass 2 plump stems coriander 75g, plus extra to finish caster sugar 1 tsp fish sauce 1 tbsp vegetable or groundnut oil 2 tbsp sweetcorn 2 cobs or 1 x 400g tin coconut milk 1 x 400ml tin lime leaves 3 green beans 75g broccoli 150g courgettes 2 (200g) olive oil 2 tbsp Thai basil a handful

Peel the garlic and drop the cloves into the bowl of a food processor. Remove the stems and seeds from the chillies. Peel and chop the ginger and add to the bowl together with the chillies.

Finely grate the limes and squeeze the juice into the food processor bowl with the zest. Discard the tough end of the lemongrass stalks and peel away the papery outer leaves then finely chop the inner heart and add it to the bowl together with the coriander leaves and stems and the caster sugar and fish sauce. Pour in the vegetable or groundnut oil and process to a thick vibrant paste.

In a wide saucepan over a high heat, stir half of the paste for a minute or two until it darkens slightly in colour and turns spicyly fragrant.

If you are using canned sweetcorn, drain it and add to the paste together with the coconut milk. If using fresh corn, peel the cobs and slice the kernels off. Cook them in boiling water for 8-10 minutes, then drain and add to the pan. Scrunch the lime leaves in the palm of your hand and drop them into the pan. Bring almost to the boil then lower the heat and simmer for 7-8 minutes, then remove from the heat. Leave the lime leaves in place to infuse.

Bring a small pan of water to the boil and salt it. Trim the stems and tips from the green beans and then cut them into short lengths – nothing bigger than you would want on your spoon. Add them to the boiling water, leave for 4-5 minutes until they are tender, then lift them out with a draining spoon. Cut the broccoli into small pieces and cook briefly in the boiling water, then drain.

Halve the courgettes lengthways, then into short lengths. Warm the olive oil in a shallow pan, then fry the courgettes till tender and golden. Set aside.

Lift the lime leaves from the mixture. Remove half of the sweetcorn and coconut mixture and put it in a blender and process to thick cream, then stir it back into the mixture. Stir in the courgettes, broccoli and beans. Ladle into bowls and add lime wedges, freshly chopped coriander and Thai basil leaves as you wish.

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White chocolate mousse, warm blackberries

Serves 6. Ready in 2 hours milk 100ml bay leaves 3 white chocolate 250g double cream 300ml egg whites 3 blackberries 150g

Pour the milk into a small, deep pan set over a moderate heat. Crumple the bay leaves in your hand and drop them into the milk, then bring it almost to the boil. Just before the milk rises up the sides of the pan, remove it from the heat and set it aside to infuse.

Pour enough water into a medium-sized saucepan to come approximately a third of the way up the sides. Find a heatproof glass or china bowl that will sit neatly in the top of the saucepan, with the base sitting slightly above the surface of the water.

Place the pan over a moderate heat.

Break the chocolate into small pieces, add to the bowl over the simmering water, then let it melt, without stirring (if you stir it, the chocolate will “seize”, becoming grainy or clumpy).

Pour the infused milk through a sieve into the melted chocolate and stir gently until well mixed. Take care not to overwork the chocolate.

Whisk the cream until thick enough to hold a shape, then fold gently into the chocolate mixture. Wash and dry the whisk and bowl thoroughly, then beat the egg whites until thick and fluffy, and fold into the chocolate mixture.

Pour into 6 glasses or small pots and leave in the fridge to set for a couple of hours.

When you are ready to eat, put the blackberries in a saucepan with the sugar and bring to the boil. Pour into a jug, then spoon over the surface of each mousse just before you eat. ●

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CRAVINGS

SOPHIE WYBURD**

At this point, I think we're all in agreement that chicken thighs are superior to breasts. Not only are they juicier, thanks to their higher fat content, they are also much more forgiving to cook. A dry thigh is a harder thing to achieve than a cotton-woolly breast. The downside is that a bone-in thigh takes a while longer to yield and tenderise, but removing the bone makes things much speedier. A bone-less chicken thigh with the skin still on isn't readily found in supermarkets, but removing the bone is an easy task, and the resulting thigh fillet can be cooked in much less time. You could, of course, achieve this with skinless fillets, but where's the fun in that?

Frying skin-on chicken thigh fillets weighed down in a hot pan is my favourite way to eat chicken midweek. The crisp skins and succulent middles provide a perfect antidote to a Monday of back-to-back-meetings, or train delays on a Tuesday. There are many ways you can use chicken cooked like this, but for the sake of seasonality, here are a couple of mega salads. I am normally of the opinion that a salad is not a real dinner, but I promise that these feel bulky and substantial enough that even I am satisfied by them.

The thigh's the limit

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Photographs LAURA EDWARDS


CRAVINGS

Crisp chicken thighs

Serves 2. Ready in 20 minutes skin-on chicken thighs 4 vegetable oil 1 tbsp

Place the chicken skin-side down on a chopping board. Cut incisions on either side of the bone with a paring knife. Use the point of the knife to slip under the bone and release it from the flesh underneath, then use your fingers to loosen it further. Cut around the top of the bone to release it, then scrape the flesh down the bone with your knife to reveal the bone. Cut around the base of the bone to remove it from the flesh, and discard the bone. Season the chicken thighs all over with salt.

Heat the oil in a large frying pan over a medium heat and place the chicken thighs skin side down. Place a square of baking parchment on top, then weigh down the chicken with a heavy bottomed pan (I use a casserole dish). Cook for 7 minutes like this.

Remove the pan and parchment and turn up the heat to medium-high. Continue cooking the chicken for 3-4 minutes, or until the skin is crisp and golden, then flip them over and cook on the other side for 4 minutes. Take the chicken out of the pan, and leave to rest for 5 minutes before using.

Chicken green goddess salad

Green goddess dressings vary in their ingredients, but the theme is that they are made up of a mixture of herbs and something creamy, whether that's mayonnaise or yoghurt, to give you a vibrant dressing. Most of the creaminess here comes from buttermilk to prevent it from getting too stodgy, and the addition of basil keeps it bright. Using it to dress crunchy veg feels in keeping with its Californian origins.

Serves 2. Ready in 30 minutes sourdough bread 100g olive oil 2 tbsp salt and pepper to taste fresh chives 15g parmesan 40g fresh parsley 20g fresh basil 25g

small garlic clove 1 red wine vinegar 1 tbsp buttermilk 120g mayonnaise 50g baby gem lettuce 1 ripe avocado 1 radishes 100g cooked skin-on chicken thigh fillets 4

Heat the oven to 200C/gas mark 6. Cut your sourdough into inch-thick slices, then tear them into bite-sized pieces. Pop them on a baking tray, drizzle with the olive oil and a good pinch of salt, then mix with your hands so all the chunks of bread are coated. Cook for 15-20 minutes, tossing halfway.

Finely chop 1 tbsp chives and set them aside. Cut the parmesan into chunks, then add these to a blender and whizz to grate it. Add the rest of the chives, the parsley and basil. Peel the garlic and add this, then add the vinegar and buttermilk. Blend until smooth.

Add the mayonnaise and give it a mix, then season with salt and pepper to taste. Cut the end of the baby gem lettuce to separate the leaves, and dice the flesh of the avocado. Finely slice the radishes, and slice up the chicken.

Arrange the lettuce, avocado and radishes on a platter. Drizzle over some of the dressing, then arrange the croutons and chicken on top. Drizzle over more sauce, sprinkle over the reserved chives, and serve.

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Crunchy rice and mango salad

The chew/crisp dynamic you get from crispy rice is other-worldly, and perhaps explains why naem khao is beloved in Laos and why other recipes have proliferated in the last few years. Here is my contribution, a version of naem khao with mango, coconut, lime and herbs helping to keep things zesty and fresh. The crisp-skinned chicken is sensational here, though fried tofu cubes would work well in its place.

Serves 2. Ready in 45 minutes cooked jasmine rice 400g vegetable oil 1 tbsp ripe mango 1 (about 350g) red chillies 2 garlic 1 clove full-fat coconut milk 100ml fish sauce 2 tbsp limes 2 banana shallot 1 roasted unsalted peanuts 60g fresh coriander leaves 15g fresh mint leaves 15g cooked skin-on chicken thigh fillets 4 salt to taste

Heat the oven to 220C/gas mark 7. Line a large baking sheet with baking parchment, and pour your cooked rice on to it. Drizzle with the oil and mix until the rice all feels coated. Bake for 30 minutes, mixing halfway through so that it cooks evenly. The rice should be crisp and golden.

Scoop the flesh out of the mango with a spoon and dice it into chunks. Finely slice your chillies, and remove the skin from the garlic.

Add 70g of the mango, half of the chilli and all the garlic to a blender, along with the coconut milk, fish sauce and the juice of a lime. Blend until smooth, then season with salt.

Peel your shallot and slice into thin rounds. Crush the peanuts in a pestle and mortar, and then slice your chicken. Add the rice, chicken, mango, shallots, coriander, mint, the remaining sliced chilli and all but 1 tbsp of the peanuts to a mixing bowl. Add the dressing, and toss thoroughly to coat.

Divide the salad between plates and finish with the remaining peanuts. Serve it up with extra wedges of lime. ●

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CRAVINGS

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We had booked into Kismet, the new Turkish-Cypriot meyhane (restaurant-tavern) that had taken up residence in Bridget Jones’s old flat in London’s Borough Market, a week before. But on the day of our reservation, the enthusiastically posh foodfluencer channel Topjaw dropped a Kismet video...

RESTAURANTS REBECCA NICHOLSON

Kismet

Upstairs at the Globe Tavern, 8 Bedale Street, SE1 9AL (kismet.london). Meze £6-14, grill £18-30, desserts £4-13, wine from £38, cocktails £11

We thought we were chancing a buzzy opening from former Harwood Arms and BiBi chef Keiran Mustafa and Bistro Freddie restaurateur Dom Hamdy, but suddenly it was as if we were about to watch Taylor Swift at an open-mic night. When we arrived, the place was already filled with wealthy-looking young couples in oversized white T-shirts and baseball caps. The room crackled with a certain energy, with a cool thrill at being there, with a palpable sense of expectation.

This was a busy summer Saturday lunch-time. Borough Market was attempting to feed every single tourist in London. We pushed through crowd control and cheese toastie queues to get to the Globe Tavern, a pub that has hosted various pop-ups – such as Barang and Khao Bird – in its upstairs room, and will now host Kismet through what is planned to be a year-long residency. If you breathe out, you may end up on your neighbour’s knee, so given current demand it remains to be seen if this tightly packed space can hold Kismet for that long.

A meyhane is supposed to be convivial, fuelled by raki, meze, and good conversation. Within minutes, I was swept up in its lively mood, revived from a festival the day before by bread and cold meze and the admittedly cocky choice of fermented turnip juice – a funky, spicy, garlicky, savoury liquid the colour of blood and the texture of water. “Not many people like it, to be honest,” said the waiter with a pleasing frankness. After a sniff and a swig, I understood why, but then I thought of everything I’d read about probiotics and hoped, at least, that it was good for me.

All around us, conversations had begun to bubble excitedly. We tackled the cold meze with fluffy yet crisp bread, thickly coated in salt and oregano. The hummus was a smooth creamy basin for a lake of complex olive oil, the cacik a dense clag of strained yoghurt, fresh with lemon, mint and cucumber – both simple but mindblowingly fresh. The girit ezme involves lumps of tart white cheese from Crete, given texture by boulders of walnut, flecked with dill and mint. I am usually a dill denier, and object to its liquorice tang on principle, but in this case, it managed to conjure up fields and fresh air.

Best of all was the zeytinyagli sebzeler, thin strips of runner bean in an irresistible coating of tomatoes, soft onions and olive oil. Stick that in

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Photograph LORNA ROACH


CRAVINGS

WINE

DAVID WILLIAMS

jars and it would sell by the crate-load. We had been warned not to fill up on bread so rather than order more, we used the sigara boregi – flaky cigars filled with spring onion, feta and stretchy kasar cheese – to mop up the few leftover blobs.

When I worked as a waitress, my pub served fish and chips with a comically massive piece of haddock. At least twice a shift, a customer would say: “That’s not a fish, it’s a shark,” and I would smile like I’d never heard it before. As I rambled on to our lovely waiter about how full I was, I realised that fullness might be his shark. He humoured us, congratulated us on getting to this point and admitted that so far, a number of people had gone so hard on the meze that they had tried to cancel their mains.

This would have been a terrible idea. The mangal consists of a single skewer, grilled over charcoal. At £20 for the tavuk şiş chicken thigh, and £30 for the monkfish, it is a sobering reminder that this is exceptional food, and not the BYO Turkish of my east-London youth. It may look casual, with its paper tablecloths and metal napkin dispensers, but don’t let that fool you. This is uncommonly good cooking and it knows its worth.

The chicken thighs were smoky-crisp on the outside, tender within, the juices soaking down into a ruler’s length of bread underneath. The monkfish was swaggering, meaty, and came on a base of yoghurt and chilli butter, which I had noticed on the meze menu, too. That chilli butter is a slyly astonishing thing, with an earthy funk and a hug of spice. With apologies to the chef’s expertise, I also slopped the chicken in it.

The patates kizartmasi were fried chips seasoned with oregano and a lot of salt. They were delicious and floppy, a vessel for ensuring there was no remaining chilli butter, which saved me the indignity of attacking it with a spoon. Of the three desserts on offer, we had a piece of sweet, chewy baklava and a scoop of addictive and substantial pistachio ice-cream topped with salt and olive oil, followed by Turkish tea, brought over on a hanging tray as soon as the plates had been cleared.

Kismet has not been open for long, but already it feels like a long-established institution, like a wise old-timer telling tales at the bar. I was, I repeated to the waiter, very, very full. He smiled beatifically, already accustomed to what will no doubt become a familiar sight. Let’s call it the happy Kismet haze. ●

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ROBERT SAMUEL HANSON

The Cape crusader

It’s taken the British a long time to get to grips with chenin blanc. Which is not to say that this white grape variety hasn’t always had its devotees: certainly those who were familiar with the output of Domaine Huet, the celebrated producer in chenin blanc’s ancestral home in Vouvray in the Loire Valley, knew all about these white wines’ ability to age gracefully for decades without losing any of their nerve and vigour.

There was always a sense that British wine-drinkers didn’t know what to expect from Vouvray and other Loire chenins from lesser-known appellations, such as Savennières, Montlouis or Saumur, or when exactly to drink them. So much of it was made in an off-dry, “demi-sec” style, too sweet for aperitif or dinner, but not sweet enough for pudding. Its versatility also seemed to confuse people. Among white grape varieties, only riesling has anything like chenin’s range, which runs from tautly mineral, dry sparkling wines to toffee apple-like sweet wines.

Compared to sauvignon blanc, chenin is still more cult favourite than bestseller. In fact, when you look at the league table of global grape varieties, it’s only getting more obscure: while plantings of sauvignon have more than doubled around the world since the turn of the millennium, making it the world’s 10th most widely planted grape variety, chenin has lost more than a third of its global total and has sunk to number 30 in the charts.

However, chenin may be playing a lesser role

in bulk wine these days, but it is arguably more widely known among wine lovers than ever before. That’s down to the work of a generation of creative winemakers in the Loire. But a big part of the credit must go to their peers in the country that accounts for over half the world’s total chenin vineyard: South Africa.

There’s a long tradition of chenin in South Africa: the first cuttings of the grape, traditionally known in the Cape as steen, arrived in 1655. But it’s only since the turn of the millennium that Cape chenin has made its bid for greatness, notably in the rich but vibrant dry wines made from the country’s stock of old chenin bush vines. Cape winemakers have also perfected a bright, tangy uncoated style, filled with tropical fruit that is the best place to begin an adventure through a grape variety that is always recognisable: no matter the origin, winemaking, level of sweetness, effervescence or richness, it always comes with a silvery swish of mouthwatering, tangy acidity – a quality that also makes for a versatile food partner.

For a full chenin experience, I might start with the green-apple ping and Danish pastry richness of Domaine Catherine and Pierre Breton Vouvray Brut NV (£26.30, SipWines). Next, a bargain example of the tropical vibrancy of the uncoated South African style, from an original master of Chenin: Ken Forrester Petit Chenin Blanc 2025 from Stellenbosch (£14, or £10 as part of a mixed case of six bottles, Majestic), which is a superb summer-evening cleanser. The Loire’s Domaine Alexandre Cady Anjou Blanc 2024 (£15.60, Haynes Hanson & Clark) is a pristine dry, uncoated style with tingling acidity and classic Loire chenin apple-store tones. For a classic off-dry style to have with a fresh and tangy cheese, or with chilli-spiced noodles: Waitrose No 1 Vouvray 2025 (£13, Waitrose) hits the spot, while for roast chicken I’m going for the pithy energy of Mullineux Kloof Street Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2025 from Swartland (£16.50, London End Wines) – a wine that will help anyone to get to grips with the wonders of chenin. ●

Wine of the Week Mullineux Kloof Street Old Vine Chenin Blanc 2025, £16.50, London End Wines

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CRAVINGS

Cool as a cucumber

The unassuming fruit that's made a lasting and powerful culinary impact

Is there a food more heatwave-coded than the cucumber? Crisp, fresh and cooling, the thirsty plants thrive on humidity under a beating sun, like sponges in a sauna. In constant motion, their tendrils sprawl and stalks bristle as heart-shaped leaves conceal pendulous, blimp-like fruits which, at 90% water, are a drink in berry form. The cucumber serves to soothe. Its purpose: refreshment.

We reward this benevolence with obsession. From the Ancient Roman Emperor Tiberius (whose voracious appetite for cucumbers led to the invention of the greenhouse), to the egotistical Victorians (who loved an expensive hobby) and the spa-aesthetic "cucumber eyes" TV trope of the 1990s, this fruit has a knack for swooping into fashion. We've gone wild for the burger-adjacent frickles (fried pickles), enthusiastically adopted Chinese smacked cucumbers into our repertoires and, most recently, developed a penchant for eating them whole.

In 2024, American content creator Logan Moffitt posted a video on TikTok, saying "Sometimes you need to eat an entire cucumber" in a whimsical, Gen-Z lilt. He mandoline-sliced the cucumber into a tall, round plastic container, added dressing ingredients, put the lid on and shook the tub vigorously. That video has had 16.5m views. Logan has now repeated the format with different dressings and has more than 7m followers. His videos had such an impact on levels of cucumber devotion that they sparked a shortage in Iceland (the country, not the supermarket chain). In June, M&S began selling "Shake-a-Cucumber" pots – sliced cucumber with a packet of add-it-yourself dressing in – yep – a tall, round, plastic container. It cost £2.90 for the equivalent of half a cucumber (185g) and went viral on launch.

While Moffitt is a self-styled "cucumber guy", food writer and cook Melek Erdal has become

London's unintentional cucumber influencer. Cucumbers are part of Erdal's culinary history (she has Kurdish heritage) particularly served with yoghurt. Erdal favours the small variety often sold as "Persian cucumbers" over the longer English ones. "I find them crunchier, with less water content," she says. She'll slice them lengthways, adding salt and sumac or a sprinkle of the Mexican chilli-lime seasoning Tajin.

The flavour of a cucumber is hard to describe. "It's not comparable to anything," says Erdal. Words that come to mind are for feelings rather than flavours: fresh, cool, clean. Grassy? Green? Erdal says there's "an earthiness" albeit a subtle one, which she thinks resides in the skin. But, she claims, that hard-to-pin-down quality is a fundamental part of the cucumber's refreshing properties. "You know how oysters taste like the ocean because they've been in it? It's like the cucumber has absorbed the flavour of where it's been grown, because of that water content."

Do cucumbers express terroir?

With at least 100 varieties of cucumber worldwide, that's an interesting prospect. Speciality wholesaler Natoora, supplier to restaurants across the UK as well as Ocado, sells two Italian varieties: Barattiere (round, yellow-green skin, can grow to cantaloupe size) and Carosello (small, stout, dark-green stripes), which are, botanically speaking, melons. "The red clay coastal soil results in a sweet, concentrated flavour and a much lower water content than many commercial cucumbers," says Natoora's Bex Blundy.

With the Carosello in Natoora's inventory, 2025 saw a surge in popularity across restaurant menus. It's served with salted ricotta at Chingford's Gina, in silky ajo blanco at Noble Rot, and as heat-busting gazpacho at Manchester supper club Thirds. At Jackson Boxer's Vesper, cured wedges come with Galia melon, cashew cream and smoked chilli oil. Boxer describes the Carosello as a "contemporary cucumber" prized for its lack of "bitterness or astringency".

The cucumber is, ultimately, a contradictory fruit. It welcomes strong companions yet isn't overwhelmed. It's ubiquitous and accessible, but has the power to drive fanatical appreciation, with Moffitt's followers urging people to "join the cucumber community" and Erdal's fans sending her photos of cucumbers they have spotted "in the wild".

In English Food: A People's History, Diane Purkiss rounds up a paragraph about cucumber sandwiches and afternoon tea by describing the practice as "a subtle and unnecessary pleasure." Perhaps that's it. The cucumber feels like a small luxury – a long, cool drink of water for a sweltering summer. It's always the quiet ones. ●

TREND HELEN GRAVES

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Photograph PATRICE DE VILLIERS


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1


What's On My Mind

ANDRÉ ACIMAN

The American writer is the author of Call Me by Your Name, now a graphic novel, Eight White Nights and Out of Egypt. He is also the Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature at the City University of New York

Putting the accent in the right place: 20%

I've recently been writing about Saint Francis and realised that in Giovanni Bellini's painting of him, the saint has very faint hand wounds, called stigmata, bodily wounds corresponding to those on Christ's hands and feet. Almost everyone pronounces the word as though it had an accent on the second syllable – stig-matə – when, as in Ancient Greek, it should only be pronounced with an accent on the first syllable, stig-matə. Am I going to go against the rest of the world by being fussy? No. Will I cringe whenever someone mispronounces the word? Yes, but only if they're trying to pass for learned. Do I correct people when they say the names of composer Henry Purcell or the poet Andrew Marvell with an accent on the second syllable? No. The poet Thomas Carew is pronounced Carey, not as rhyming with kangaroo! Do I say anything? No. Why? Because I am a foreigner and frequently mispronounce words myself.

Words to avoid: 8%

I've come to deplore these Gallic borrowings: jouissance, interstices, quotidian, inclement. English has far simpler words. Use those instead. Don't bother with these words that make you sound intellectual but only to those who don't know no better! But burglariously is still wonderful in Byron.

My bicycle rides: 12%

Twice a day I like to take my bicycle and ride all the way around Central Park in Manhattan. I do this in all seasons, once in the morning, and once in the evening. In the winter, I wear several heavy layers, and only when it's very, very cold do I avoid going out. In the summer, I love putting on just a T-shirt and a pair of very light shorts and sandals. It is how I like to spend my play time. Usually it takes me 40 to 45 minutes per ride, so I'm not fast. Sometimes I go to the supermarket and use my handle bars to carry things home. But I like to listen to novels and have listened to numberless long books that way: Moby Dick, The Leopard, David Copperfield, Crime and Punishment, Herodotus and now Tacitus. I still can't tell whether I ride my bike to listen to books, or whether I listen to books in order to bike. Occasionally, I'll exercise with kettlebells. I should join a gym, but I lack the willpower, and let's face it, I am catastrophically lazy.

My birthday: 27%

A few weeks ago a friend contradicted me and said that birthdays were important and that I really should stop being difficult and celebrate my own. I told him that as a child I liked to gather my own party favours and play alone in my bedroom, far from everybody. I didn't like the guests, I didn't like my so-called friends, I didn't like their parents, who'd always attend, I didn't even like cakes. Birthday parties were for other people. Over the years, I always managed to avoid mine. I've even passed this on to my children: no birthday parties, no birthday presents, nothing. I gave them plenty of presents, just never on their birthday. And then, suddenly, at my age, five of my very best friends got together and invited me to a restaurant. I love each one and what I love most is that they love one another as well. I am indeed lucky.

The vanishing pool: 3%

I've been told by friends that we should build a pool. We have enough space for a nice pool, but who'll use the pool to justify having one? Plus, I don't want to ask around for who are trusted builders of pools. Just thinking of the work and the digging and the workmen and the alcove and the fence around the pool for toddlers is enough to make me want to put off thinking of the pool to another year. I prefer my bike and the books I listen to.

My colon: 8%

The worst part of a colonoscopy is not the actual colonoscopy. It's the before. More humbling than being frisked at the airport, or being told to remove your shoes in someone's home and finding that one of your socks has a very visible hole. You shut your door to the world, but you're mortified vis-à-vis yourself. You want to be rid of the shame. So, thank goodness that you'll be asleep and

won't know anything about anything. Unless – and this happened to me this time – you're told that your prep wasn't as thorough as it should have been. Oh, double, quadruple shame!

My son is coming to New York: 22%

He said he's arriving late at night from San Francisco. I haven't seen him in two months, but he's the designated person who'll pick me up when I wake up from the colonoscopy. What a shameful thing to witness his father's shame. "Think nothing of it," he said, producing a banana cake, which I gulped right away. ●

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Illustration ALMA HASER


4:41pm Saturday

They only really came for the fashion.

Jon had spent weeks searching

for the perfect houndstooth jacket.

But when a Ford GT40 roaring by at 150mph

made him spill his drink all over himself,

he was surprised to find he didn't mind at all.

There's nothing like

Goodwood Revival

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pooky

Have you seen the light?

www.pooky.com


The Observer Sport

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A week in Birmingham

George Simms at the European athletics

THE OBSERVER 16.08.26


2

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

This week

Reporting by Jeremy Whittle and Jessy Parker Humphreys

Welsh cyclist Finlay Tarling killed in race

Less than 24 hours after Finlay Tarling was killed during the Tour of Portugal, the race continued on Saturday, with its penultimate stage, from Parades to Mondim de Basto, covering 141 kilometres and including almost 3,500 metres of climbing.

Although Tarling's NSN Development team withdrew from the race, there was barely a backward glance.

The peloton lined up as usual, there were a few posts on social media, a 'tribute' at the stage start and some thoughts and prayers.

But the show it seems, and of course, the lucrative television coverage, must go on.

There were no cameras around to capture the moment on Friday when the 19-year-old Welsh rider, younger brother of British Olympian Josh Tarling, collided at speed with a van that had somehow been allowed to drive onto the race course against the flow of the peloton. All that was left was a shattered bike and a crumpled windscreen.

Stephen Park, Performance Director for the GB Cycling Team said: 'Fin was a talented rider with a fantastic future ahead of him, a loyal teammate and an all-round brilliant young man. Our deepest sympathies are with his parents and brother Josh at this tragic time.'

The circumstances surrounding the collision are unclear and are subject to a police investigation. Tarling was apparently racing at the rear of the convoy when the collision happened. Did the driver disobey police and race marshalling? Was he told the race had already passed and that the road was once again open to the public?

An eyewitness living at the scene of the crash, a sharp left-hand bend on a downhill section of the road, was interviewed by RTP television.

'The race passed, then the police escort went by, the police motorcycle officers were diverting traffic. My house is only about a metre from the road. They all

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Tragedy: Finlay Tarling (white helmet) in the Tour of Portugal on Friday, shortly before the accident which claimed his life. Miguel Lemos/NorPhoto via Getty

passed by and we went back inside, thinking it was over.

'Then, a moment later, there was a huge bang right by the door. We all came out, my neighbours went to look, and he was already there. He was already dead.'

Aside from the three European Grand Tours, many lesser races, struggling to find the funds to cover spiralling costs, constantly flirt with disaster.

Luckily, much of the time they get away with it, but there's no doubt that on multiple occasions in-race security is poor at best. It's largely down to the skills of the riders that there aren't more fatalities.

Footage circulated on social media of chaotic marshalling elsewhere on the Portuguese race. This is nothing new to many of the riders, who have become accustomed to breaches in security while competing in Europe's smaller events.

The death toll in cycling is rising, yet very little seems to change.

In 2024, another teenager, Muriel Furrer, died at the UCI World

Championships in Switzerland. The circumstances of her death led to recommendations that GPS tracking be introduced to enable emergency services to locate stricken riders. But this has yet to be fully implemented.

The world governing body has introduced new disciplinary measures targeting rider behaviour while tightening policies to enhance risk assessments, but smaller races are too often self-regulating and lack the resources to implement them.

There is plenty of talk around finish line barriers, handlebar width, wheel design and gearing, but precious little on the duty of care of race organisers to ensure the safety of the riders. The reality is that some races remain unsafe for elite competition.

Like Furrer, Tarling's name will now be added to the growing list of young riders who could have been saved if greater resource was allocated to the security of those who risk their lives every time they pin on a race number.

The week in brief

Raul returns to Wolves to grab point with penalty

Raul Jimenez marked his return to Wolverhampton Wanderers by scoring a 93rd-minute penalty to grab his team a point against Blackburn Rovers. Prior to the match, Jimenez had given every home fan a scarf to celebrate him rejoining the club he first left in 2023, and he stepped up to save their blushes when they were trailing 2-1 heading into injury time on Friday night. Elsewhere in the Championship, Will Lankshear ended Lincoln City's hopes of taking a point from Middlesbrough in their first match in the second division since 1961. The 21-year-old striker, who joined from Tottenham for £20million last week, had already equalised earlier in the game before scoring again in the 91st minute. In League One, a dramatic encounter between Luton and Reading saw Jack Wilshere's side come from 3-1 down to win 4-3.

PSG sign World Cup winning striker Torres

World Cup-winning goalscorer Ferran Torres has joined Paris Saint-Germain in a £50million deal, leaving Barcelona after four years. The 26-year-old made his Spain debut under PSG coach Luis Enrique, and joins off the back of a season where he scored 21 goals in 49 appearances for Barcelona, before scoring the winner in the World Cup final. Cristian Romero, who started that final for Argentina, has joined Atletico Madrid for £34m from Tottenham with his former centre-back partner Micky van de Ven set to become Tottenham captain after signing a new deal with the club.

Struggling Ramsay-Peaty fails to qualify for semis

Adam Ramsay-Peaty has continued his poor run of form at the European Aquatics Championships

after he failed even to qualify for the 50m breaststroke semi-finals. Ramsay-Peaty came eighth in his heat, 20th overall, after earlier in the week finishing fifth in the 100m breaststroke final and fourth in the mixed medley relay. The British swimmer said his performances were 'so bad that I'm confused'.

Notts fight back to reach One Day Cup semi-final

Nottinghamshire will face Leicestershire in the One Day Cup semi-finals after coming back from being 1-3 down whilst chasing 273 in their match against Yorkshire. Centuries from Jack Haynes (116*) and Kyle Verreynne (105) secured a three-wicket win with eight balls to spare. In the other semi-final Middlesex will play Durham after Ben Stokes's side beat Lancashire by 162 runs. The One Day Cup has been particularly popular this summer, drawing far larger crowds than The Hundred which has also been ongoing. The final will take place at Trent Bridge on 20 September.

Contents

Jessy Parker Humphreys on the first victims of Uefa's boycott

page 6

Does data make the Premier League boring? By Rory Smith

George Smith on a busy week in Birmingham

page 10

On the cover

Main image: Amy Hunt celebrates another sprint gold medal; from the top: Romell Glave wins the 100m; Room for more at the Alexander Stadium; Jakob Ingebrigtsen in the 5000m; a silver for Keely Hodgkinson

Morgan Harlow/AF/Sam Barnes/Sportziller/Sona Maleterrea/Miss Lindsay/Julian Finney/Getty

Said & done by Andrew Butler

Over-confident men alert

In some of the least surprising, but never-not-daft polling news, a new study has found that 38% of British men believe that if they started training today with professional coaching, they would be able to represent Team GB at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. In a study of 2,000 adults, 12% of men also claimed they could run 100 metres

in less than 15 seconds, despite 20% never actually attempting it, while 45% of all adults said the toughest sport to excel in would be gymnastics. If that wasn't quite enough male confidence for one study, 38% per cent of men thought they were better than the average person when it comes to general sporting ability, whereas 49% of women believed they were worse.

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Amazing amateur ace

Amateur golfer Matthew Vigurs has hit what golfing authorities believe could be an English record for the longest hole-in-one. The 32-year-old struck a 411-yard drive on the par-four third hole at Great Barr Golf Club in Walsall. The hot, dry conditions have meant many golfers are striking the ball much further than usual this summer.

A simples rebrand

149-year-old football club Crewe Alexandra have temporarily rebranded as 'Crewe Alexander' thanks to an EFL partnership with the meerkat-fronted Compare the Market. The rebrand will last for the opening week of their League Two season, and saw the character of 'Alexsandr' the meerkat fit a new sign at the club's stadium.


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

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Paul Hayward

Jeff Bezos’s Liverpool bid is antithetical to egalitarian spirit still alive in stands

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The fourth-richest man in the world wants a minority stake in the Anfield club. It flies in the face of Shankly-ite socialism, but US billionaires increasingly see Premier League clubs as a sure bet

During Liverpool’s first encounter with American ownership, a director who went on to lead Donald Trump’s re-election campaign clashed by email with one of the club’s fans.

Back in 2010, Thomas O. Hicks Jr., son of the club’s joint-owner, was exasperated by the fan’s persistence and told him, immortally: “Blow me fuck face. Go to hell. I’m sick of you.” There wasn’t a PR firefighter on earth who could save him. Hicks Jr. resigned and seven years later became co-chair of the Republican National Committee, working to return Trump to the White House.

Liverpool fans will find Jeff Bezos much harder to email. The new part-owner of a club whose majority proprietor is the American Fenway Sports Group isn’t likely to engage in private exchanges about ticket prices or toilet facilities. But there is a Trump connection to maintain continuity with the turbulent ownership of Tom Hicks Sr. and George Gillett that ended in 2010.

Bezos, the world’s fourth-richest man – worth about £200bn – is part of a consortium with the Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin (£23bn) and former Queens Park Rangers co-owner Amit Bhatia that has bought 30% of a club once rooted in Bill Shankly’s socialism; a club still true, in the stands at least, to an egalitarian spirit no owner would mess with unless they fancied a long fight.

Like many of America’s tech bros, Bezos had liberal leanings before Trump returned to power. He supported Democrat nominees, backed same-sex marriage and donated $300m (£7km) to the Obama Foundation. Trump’s return, however, validated the New York Times’s description of Bezos as “a brilliant but mysterious and cold-blooded corporate Titan” who had been accused for years of underpaying his Amazon employees.

Merseyside prides itself on its

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Culture clash: Liverpool fans protest American ownership; Jeff Bezos (below) aims to buy a 30% stake with a consortium

If Bezos thinks he can disregard Liverpool’s fan culture, he’s in for a shock

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sense of humour. Anfield regulars therefore will like this one: in an interview with CNBC in May, Bezos argued that Trump, in his second term as president, was “more mature, more disciplined”.

What has this to do with whether new manager Andoni Iraola can get the best out of Florian Wirtz? Plenty, because we’ve all spent the last two weeks angry about Gianni Infantino’s plan to sell the World Cup to Trump-adjacent investors, while a Trump apologist buys into England’s most distinctive football club.

Liverpool are a private club. International football is public property. But we ought to be honest about what the Premier League is. Abu Dhabi’s royal family owns a club. Saudi Arabia’s sovereign

wealth fund owns a club. And now an oligarch who is the embodiment of unconscionable wealth, has seized a chunk of Liverpool (and one day, presumably, all of it).

The sequence from Hicks/Gillett to FSG/John Henry to the Amazon founder tells a story. In 2010, New England Sports Ventures (as FSG was then) saved Liverpool from financial chaos, paying £300m. It built a new training ground, increased Anfield’s capacity to 61,000 and won trophies.

Big American sports franchises are expensive and hard to buy. This week the LA Lakers were sold to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner (the would-be Fifa investors) in a deal that reportedly valued the Lakers at $12.5bn (£9.2bn) – that’s close to £4bn more than Liverpool. American investors buy cheaper British football clubs to “add value to the asset”. They own or part-own 11 of the Premier League’s 20 teams.

If the 30% of Liverpool that FSG sold to Bezos and co is worth £1.65bn, the club’s valuation is £5.5bn – for an initial outlay by FSG, in 2010, of £300m. This astronomical gain will be cited by multi-billionaires and private equity managers as the ultimate endorsement of an economic culture that has turned the Premier League into a dream destination for global capital.

For further evidence, see the £1.2bn the Glazers are estimated

to have taken out of Manchester United over 20 years in debt interest, repayment dividends and fees to the family (while raising commercial revenues five-fold) since 2005.

When new owners arrive, supporters start fantasising about transfer targets, but the combined billions belonging to Bezos, Saverin and Bhatia won’t bring Kylian Mbappé or Lamine Yamal to Anfield. The league’s squad cost ratio system limits spending to 85% of football-generated revenue and net profit-loss from player sales.

Bezos will have examined these numbers and seen a protected bet. None of these speculators know where the ceiling is for Premier League purchase price inflation, but they all seem to believe there’s more value to extract.

Liverpool’s first owner, in the 1890s, was John Houlding, a Conservative mayor, so it hasn’t all been Shankly-ite socialism. But this new hook-up with Trump enablers will prompt rumination much deeper than the doomed forced marriage with Hicks and Gillett. In football, as in society, Liverpool supporters will, like the rest of us, probably adopt a policy of trying to cling to their own ideals in the face of uncontrollable global forces.

But if Bezos thinks he can disregard a fan culture most other Premier League supporters regard with bafflement, but also admiration, he’s in for a shock.


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observer.co.uk 16.09.26

Ban on gambling sponsorship leaves some clubs struggling to plug the gap

Premier League clubs without long-term deals are left with around £80m shortfall, writes David Powell

Heading into this summer, almost half of the teams in the Premier League found themselves confronting the same commercial headache.

Back in April 2023, all 20 member clubs collectively agreed to end front-of-shirt sponsorship deals with gambling firms from summer 2026. It was a move prompted by the government's long-awaited white paper on gambling reform, and one that ultimately went further than ministers had expected.

The white paper had stopped short of recommending a blanket ban on gambling sponsorship across sport, mindful of the severe financial consequences such a step could have for clubs lower down the football pyramid.

But the Premier League, with the spectre of an Independent Football Regulator looming, saw an opportunity to demonstrate that it could govern itself without external intervention.

As the 2026-27 Premier League season comes into view, the consequences of that decision are fully visible. For years, gambling companies have underpinned the commercial reality of the league's middle and lower tier, offering inflated sponsorship fees that other industries simply could not, or would not, match. Their logos became ubiquitous, a defining visual feature of the Premier League's broadcast product.

With the voluntary ban now in effect, that prominence has sharply diminished.

Sleeve sponsorship remains permitted, but the most valuable real estate on a club's kit, the front of the shirt, is no longer available to gambling firms.

The impact has been felt most acutely by Aston Villa, Bournemouth, Brentford, Crystal Palace, Everton, Fulham and Nottingham Forest. All were faced with the prospect of finding new partners this summer.

The search for replacement sponsors has stretched deep

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Prime spot: João Gomes sports Aston Villa's front-of-shirt sponsor, Visit Rwanda, with whom the club signed with this summer. Neville Williams/Aston Villa FC/Getty Images

into the off-season. Some clubs are, remarkably, still searching. "Collectively, the gap these clubs had to plug, as we worked it out, was around £80m," said Mike Haywood, vice-president at Octagon, one of the world's largest sports sponsorship consultation firms. "There were between eight and 12 clubs that needed to plug that gap. Some of those clubs are still looking for long-term solutions, while some of them are waiting for the market to heat up.

"It isn't a great look to go into a season without a sponsor. Sunderland fans were praising their new kit without a sponsor, but the club were quick to state that there would be a sponsorship in place. These commercial teams need it to be sold."

For the Premier League's biggest

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clubs, the turbulence has barely registered. Their commercial ecosystems operate in a different stratosphere, populated by blue-chip global brands with long-term commitments. Arsenal remain tied to Emirates Airlines, Liverpool to Standard Chartered, Manchester City to Etihad Airways, Manchester United to Snapdragon, part of US tech giant Qualcomm, and Tottenham Hotspur to multinational insurance firm AIA.

But for the rest of the Premier League clubs, the challenge has been significant.

They were all heading into the market at the same time, competing for partners in a landscape that was never likely to replicate the record-breaking figures gambling firms had been willing to pay in recent seasons. The market

Ongoing deal: West Ham have continued their sponsorship with betting firm Boyle Sports since their relegation to the Championship. Rob Newell/CamersSport/Getty

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was crowded and the timing unfavourable.

"There is an element of tokenism with all of this," explained football finance expert and author of The Price of Football, Kieran Maguire. "When the Premier League were lobbying against the Independent Football Regulator this was seen as something they could do to show that they could self-govern appropriately. Now, in their eyes, they have the worst of both worlds with the IFR and no gambling income."

Maguire believes the impact to be uneven. "It is a move that only really impacts those beneath the big six or seven clubs," he added. "They were never going to have gambling sponsorships so had little to be concerned about.

"That said, we are talking about


observer.co.uk

16.08.26

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Blank space:

Jenson

Jones wears

Sunderland's

sponsorless shirt

as the club are

yet to secure a

deal ahead of

the new season.

Icon Sportswire/Getty

£2m to £3m on the downside for these deals. To put that into some context, that is the equivalent of what the Premier League annual legal bill stands at, around £2m per club."

Some relief has come through renegotiated central broadcast deals, which have put additional money into club coffers and helped soften the blow. But the gap left by gambling firms has still required urgent attention.

This summer has seen a flurry of activity. Aston Villa have partnered with Visit Rwanda. Bournemouth have signed with Vitality. Brentford have elevated sleeve sponsor Indeed Recruitment to the front of the shirt. Crystal Palace have brought in AI and software platform Temporal to replace NET88. Fulham have agreed a deal with ClickHouse, a technology and data firm. Everton have welcomed online financial trading platform CMC Markets to replace Stake.

"This has been a buyer's market," Haywood said. "The impact will be felt here for the next three or four years and we have seen some of the values drop dramatically. But it remains true that partnering with a Premier League club has a lot of appeal for brands.

"The Premier League has global reach and an audience that is only growing. That is something that attracts marketing dollars. Front-of-shirt sponsorship is a media asset and is treated as such. It has enormous visibility."

"It hasn't been a top-six problem, but I don't think that this is really a bad thing for the clubs long term. Diversification is a good thing across markets.

"The challenge has been that clubs like Brentford could not have afforded to go into this season without a shirt sponsor.

"Looking ahead, the football sponsorship industry has traditionally been something of a bellwether for upcoming industries. There are industries who I think could come into the space in the coming years in a big way, such as the pharmaceutical industry. This is just a moment of pain for some clubs, that's all."

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Hey small spenders! Bolton return with derby-day victory

2-1

Bolton Wanderers

S. Dalby (14)

T. Gale (25)

Preston NE

J. Erdis (86)

Venue: Toughsheet Community Stadium

Attendance: 26,262

Jessy

Parker Humphreys

As fans headed to the Toughsheet Community Stadium, the main grumble was that Northern Rail had not thought to put on a longer train. There were only four coaches to cram Bolton Wanderers and Preston North End fans attempting to make their opening match of the Championship season. The transport incompetence was a firm reminder that club football is back.

It was the first time the two teams had played each other since 2019; a Lancashire derby first played in 1885. It also marked the end of Bolton's exile from the Championship, returning to the second division of English football courtesy of a play-off final win at Wembley.

There had been concerns heading into the season about the lack of spending Bolton had done to upgrade their squad from League One. Prior to kick-off, the betting odds marked them out as second favourites to go down. Opts more optimistically had them as fifth favourites. Not a single player in the starting XI had ever scored in the Championship, although that was remedied within 14 minutes when Sam Dalby pounced on a shot spilled by Preston goalkeeper Daniel Iversen. Thierry Gale

joined the club 11 minutes later, finishing off a blistering counter-attack. Despite Preston pulling a goal back in the 86th minute, Bolton held on for their first Championship win since March 2019.

Bolton's summer expenditure has undeniably been frugal. Luca Stephenson joining for £700,000 from Liverpool along with Lewis Brunt coming from Wrexham for £500,000 being the key cash-splashes. Contrast that with Preston, who had spent a club-record fee of £6m to secure the services of former loanee Alfie Devine on a permanent basis.

The allure of spending significantly in the Championship might be greater than in any other league in football. Average losses in the division last season were £21.6m. Owners burn money in an attempt to reach the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow – Premier League football. The temptation has only increased this year where, for the first time, an eighth-placed finish will secure a play-off berth.

Bolton have hardly been frugal in getting to this point. Their most recent accounts for the 2024/25 season showed a loss of £13.9m. Only Charlton and Wrexham made larger losses that year, both of whom were promoted to the Championship at the end of that season. Notably, they both stayed up last season too. Yet Bolton's spending was the kind that made gaining promotion crucial, as the club's wage bill is 98.8% of their turnover.

This club knows better than most the risks when the financial scales tip against you. In 2019, they went into administration and players had not been paid for almost half a year. At the time, the training ground did not have hot water for showers. There was a suspended points deduction for being unable to fulfil fixtures.

Since taking over, Football Ventures have put more than £60m into the club but speaking when the results

Big points: Sam

Dalby celebrates

scoring Bolton's

first goal

back in the

Championship.

Matt McNulty/Getty

were released, chief executive David Ray told The Bolton News that they did not want to be "sustaining losses at that scale indefinitely".

The Championship has brought in new squad-cost rules this season to try to protect against the financial risks clubs are taking. These are now season-specific rules which tie squad spending to a club's revenue, with the figure set at 85% plus an additional allowance for equity top-ups from owners, capped at £33m over three years.

The hope is that this framework allows for better real-time monitoring throughout the season, as opposed to the previous profit and sustainability rules, which often led to punishments long after the fact.

Yet in being required to comply with these rules, clubs can end up going to great lengths to boost revenue. Bolton are unusual in the Championship for not being sponsored by a betting company. Instead, their shirts bear the logo of Victorian Plumbing, who have their headquarters in Leyland, around 15 miles from the ground. The ground is sponsored by Toughsheet, a local building products supplier. Increased attendances, such as their post-Premier League record of 26,262 on Saturday, will help boost the coffers too.

Premier League clubs have collectively chosen not to have betting companies as front-of-shirt sponsors, so these deals are looking even more lucrative lower down the divisions. Yet relying on oblique companies with odd financial products can come with significant risk, as Burnley have found out. The club ditched their front-of-shirt sponsor Finotive One, a self-described "trading ecosystem", on the same day the Championship season began, for unclear reasons.

The attempt to find a sustainable balance between spending and revenue is a tightrope that is only getting more difficult for clubs to walk.

The risks of getting it wrong can be seen throughout the football pyramid, not least in a game kicking off at the same time as Bolton's. The 2015/16 Premier League-winners Leicester City had to satisfy themselves with a point in their first match in League. One since 2009, as they were pegged back by Notts County, themselves just promoted from League Two. When teams financially overextend themselves, the fall can be swift enough to question whether the glimpse of success was worth it. For most ownerships in the Championship though, the risk is one they will keep taking.

Where to watch

Watford v Southampton Burnley v West Ham

Sky Sports Today, 1.30pm and 4pm


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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Waiting game: England Under-20 head coach Lydia Bedford keeps business as usual while her squad waits for Uefa's decision. Carlos Rodrigues/ The FA/Getty

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Under-20 women could be first victims of Uefa boycott

Ongoing dispute with Fifa leaves England players' World Cup plans in limbo, writes Jessy Parker Humphreys in Lisbon

When Layla Drury smashed home England's second goal against Portugal here on Thursday evening, the 17-year-old was entitled to dream that she had clinched a place in the squad for next month's Under-20 World Cup.

Even for the youngest player ever to score for Manchester United's women's team it was a special moment, taking her closer to the tournament that the England manager, Lydia Bedford believes to be the pinnacle of the youth game.

But although England won, Drury's and her team's chances of going to Poland for the World Cup still hang in the balance.

Bedford must reduce her squad from 36 to 21, but the FA expects to hear next week whether she

should even bother. The tournament may be the first casualty in Uefa's boycott of Fifa tournaments, part of its continuing conflict with football's world governing body, and in particular its controversial president, Gianni Infantino.

England are one of six European teams who have qualified for the tournament, but last month, Uefa warned all its teams would boycott Fifa tournaments until Infantino's proposal to take external investment in the World Cup was "abandoned in its entirety" with "binding assurances" that "Fifa will never again open its governance or competitions to private ownership".

Infantino's plan was indeed quickly abandoned, but Uefa has insisted that because no assurances have been given that this would not happen again, the threat of a boycott remains. It also made clear that it had lost confidence in Infantino's

leadership of the sport's global governing body.

All of this meant that before a handful of spectators at the Cidade do Futebol, on the outskirts of Lisbon, a small group of English and Portuguese teenagers were hoping to catch the eye of their respective managers while under a shadow of uncertainty.

England, as with the other European federations who have qualified for the tournament, are proceeding on the assumption that they will be participating and they beat Portugal 2-0 with goals from Ava Baker and Drury.

While the FA has had a conversation with the players about the situation, it has not proven to be a big discussion point in camp.

"Our message from the FA has been to continue as usual," said Bedford after the match. "So that's what we've done. If we didn't do

that, we're not making the most of this opportunity right now."

When asked whether Uefa teams would boycott the Under-20 World Cup and under what exact conditions the boycott would be lifted, a Uefa spokesperson would only refer to their most recent statement. This was a joint open letter written with Concacaf and the Asian Football Confederation. Both those governing bodies would have teams participating in the Under-20 World Cup, but neither has made the same commitment to a boycott.

In that open letter, the three governing bodies called for a review as to how Infantino's original plan had come into being, "conducted by a fully independent third party, not by Fifa itself, its staff, or by any stakeholder within football".

The importance of the Under- 20 World Cup is increased by the paucity of opportunities in the


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

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Women's Super League for young English players. As the league has grown more competitive, managers have been unwilling to risk results by fielding inexperienced players. International tournaments have become a crucial milestone in the development of young players.

England have not managed to qualify for the Under-20 World Cup since 2018, and their return to it is a specific reward for this age group as their qualification was based on their performances at last year's Under-19 European Championship.

"I've never been to a World Cup before, so it'd be absolutely massive and an amazing experience," said 19-year-old Manchester United defender Lucy Newell. "Obviously there's been a bit of uncertainty over it with the discussions of a boycott. For us, it's business as usual, and we'll deal with that if it happens."

"For most of [the players], it's the biggest experience of their football journey so far," said Bedford.

"This is the pinnacle for youth football. You are looking at nine players on average [from under-20 squads] eventually moving up to the seniors. So [there is] the carrot of that and the exposure that they're going to walk into in September. Everyone wants to be on that plane."

The prospect of a women's tournament being the first to be sacrificed in the boycott has divided opinion. Lisa Nandy, the culture secretary, told the BBC that she was not in favour of a boycott that "penalised" women and girls "when the women's game is going from strength to strength", adding that she was "not generally in favour of sporting boycotts full stop".

That was a shift in position from two weeks earlier when she had described the boycott as "a principled decision" that she "strongly" supported.

Lucy Bronze, who played for England at the 2010 Under-20 World Cup before becoming one of the stars of Chelsea and the Lionesses, took a different view. She

'The boycott is not just for me today and tomorrow, it's for all the little girls or boys who come after us'

Lucy Bronze. England player

said the boycott would be important "for the future of the game".

"[It's] not just for me today and tomorrow, it's for all the little girls or little boys who come after us to make sure that they're in a good place, when the game is moving forward in decades to come, not just tomorrow."

Bronze will be aware of the impact missing the tournament might have. She was speaking from Chelsea's pre-season tour and a number of young team-mates, including Lexi Potter and Chloe Sarwie, would both expect to be called up by Bedford.

Global women's football is run by Fifa. Plans that invite private investment are arguably more impactful on the women's game, where commercial greed can conflict with a need to grow the game at a pace that suits it, rather than that which is the most profitable. If Uefa's boycott takes place, a cohort will miss a big development opportunity.

Framing the boycott threat as a decision being made by men about the actions of men overlooks the fact that women within Uefa have been instrumental in crafting the organisation's response to Fifa's plans.

It was a woman, Laura McAllister, a Uefa vice-president, who first suggested the full boycott after all, while the other woman who is a member of Uefa's executive committee, Lise Klaveness, has long been an outspoken critic of Fifa in her role as president of the Norwegian Football Federation.

Final squads for the World Cup are due to be submitted to Fifa imminently, which potentially marks a point of no return. It would be an obvious statement of Uefa's seriousness if they were not to send their teams, particularly because the tournament is being hosted in Poland.

Yet the lack of clarity over whether the teams will go is the toughest element to square with what the players are surely hoping will happen – that a decision will be reached which allows them to play.

After Drury had run through on goal in the dying moments of the match against Portugal, smashing the ball beyond the goalkeeper, she celebrated in front of a photographer, holding out the crest on her shirt to the lens.

This was just a group of teenagers hoping to represent their country at a football tournament.

African nations' plight of mismanagement shakes up Women's World Cup order

Jessy Parker Humphreys

If there has been a trend at this year's Women's Africa Cup of Nations, it is about the perils of organisational mismanagement.

The traditional order of women's football in Africa has been upended over the past three weeks. All four semi-finalists would have been first time winners, while 10-time victors Nigeria were eliminated at the quarter-final stage.

They then went on to lose to South Africa in the World Cup qualifiers play-in tournament – an extra round of matches during the competition to decide which of the two losing quarter-finalists would contest the inter-confederation play-offs – meaning that for the first time ever they will not participate in a Women's World Cup. It is some fall from grace for a team who were only eliminated in 2023 on penalties against eventual finalists England.

Instead Malawi, Morocco, Algeria and Cameroon will be Africa's guaranteed representatives in Brazil next summer, with the possibility of Ghana and South Africa joining them through the inter-confederation play-offs. Malawi and Cameroon will both be World Cup debutants, and they will deservedly contest the Wafcon final after a string of outstanding performances.

The signs that this would be a topsy-turvy tournament were evident from the opening round of matches, when Malawi, ranked 153rd in the world, beat Nigeria 3-2. That alone was a significant upset given that Malawi had not even participated in qualification for the 2024 edition of the tournament, due to financial constraints. What happened next has been even more extraordinary, as they topped their group, then beat Ghana and Algeria to reach the final.

When it comes to Malawi's success, naturally focus gravitates to the incredible story of the Chawinga sisters. Born in the rural north of the country, Tabitha was the first women's footballer from Malawi to play in Europe after she signed for Swedish third-division club Krokom/Dvärsåtts IF.

After she moved to Kvarnsvedens IK, she told them to also sign her sister Temwa. With the club sceptical, Tabitha offered to pay for her sister's flight over on the basis she would be reimbursed if they signed her. She made her money back.

That was almost a decade ago and the sisters have gone on to shine across global club football. Tabitha is at Lyon, while Temwa has been the National Women's Soccer League's Most Valuable Player in back-to-back seasons with Kansas City Current.

Yet that also hides an arguably

more interesting story, which speaks to longer-term institutional development as opposed to a uniquely gifted sibling duo.

When Fleetwood Haiya took charge of the Malawi FA in 2023, he helped bring about a national women's league for the first time, as well as making sure fixtures were scheduled for the national team in every international break. Meanwhile, academies developing players sprang up across the country.

Rose Kadzere, who came through the Ascent Academy, became the first Malawian, man or woman, to ever directly transfer to one of Europe's top five leagues when she joined Montpellier in 2024. Kadzere's beautifully taken winner against Ghana helped Malawi make the semi-final, and guarantee them World Cup qualification, but she will miss the final after a rash challenge saw her sent off against Morocco.

Another Ascent Academy graduate, 19-year-old Faith Chinzimu set up Malawi's second goal in the semi-final against Algeria. Chinzimu trialled for a number of European clubs before signing for BK Häcken in Sweden last year.

This is a vast contrast to the way that the Nigerian Football Federation have supported their team. There have been long-term issues with players and staff being paid, which led to the squad threatening to boycott the 2023 Women's World Cup. There have also been questions over the preparation organised for the tournament, with sub-par friendlies being cited as leading them to being unready. As other countries have chosen to invest and organise their sides, Nigeria have eroded. The failure of their women's team to qualify for the 2027 Women's World Cup comes after the men's side missed out on this year's tournament.

It is not just Nigeria who have had issues with their federation. The Ghana squad released a statement the day before the World Cup qualifier play-in match, which they won, listing unpaid bonuses and calling for better support for their wellbeing.

Nigeria were knocked out of the tournament by a Cameroon side who only qualified for the tournament after it was expanded to 16 teams at short notice. They have been powered by goalkeeper Michaely Bihina, who has had a stunning tournament.

That was a significant shock, with Morocco considered favourites after Nigeria's exit, having lost the final to the Super Falcons at the last two Wafcon editions. Morocco looked underwhelming under Spain's World Cup winning manager Jorge Vilda and it is unclear whether the controversial coach will lead them into next year's World Cup.

Current star: Kansas City's Temwa Chiwinga represents Malawi, whose FA has developed more long-term support for the national side. Malawi FA

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observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Premier League unknowns for the season ahead

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If Alonso can make sense of Chelsea

Nobody has had more change than Chelsea. Again. But this time will be different, right? Alonso is bright, charismatic and has an impeccable playing resume; Chelsea have addressed the lack of experience in their squad by signing Jordan Henderson and Danny Welbeck, both of whom are old enough to feature in the book version of the Odyssey. Surely it's sixth time lucky for BlueCo.

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Where the floor is

The relegations of Wolves and West Ham last season proved, once again, that stasis is fatal in the Premier League. Are Fulham, Everton and even Crystal Palace at risk of suffering the same fate? Newcastle have said their two best players and lost their manager in a single summer. But are any of the newly-promoted three good enough to punish any of them?

Premier League's summer of goodbyes leaves post-Guardiola vacuum to fill

Who, if anyone, will be next big beast is not yet clear, writes Rory Smith

The last time we saw the Premier League, it felt like everyone was saying goodbye. Bernardo Silva and John Stones were granted guards of honour by their Manchester City teammates. Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson walked round Anfield, their eyes raw. James Milner and Seamus Coleman took their bows with suitable stoicism.

Given all that has happened since – a World Cup that lasted as long as the Permian period, the public explosion of Gianni Infantino's pyrotechnic hubris – it is easy to forget that the final day of last season had a distinctly valedictory air. With little genuine jeopardy, the Premier League's clubs instead devoted their energies to some competitive commemoration.

Everywhere you looked there were heartfelt mosaics, poignant tributes, tear-stained speeches. The most notable was delivered by Pep Guardiola, bidding farewell both to a stadium that now partly bears his name and to a league he had

transformed beyond recognition. "It has been so much fucking fun," he told a rapturous, devastated crowd.

The scene at the Etihad was both piercingly an courant – the game itself was basically filler content before we got to the main event of Guardiola's exit speech – and overwhelmingly fin de siècle. Something, that day, was ending.

One by one, over the last few years, many of the defining figures of the Premier League's last decade have been waved off into some form of sunset. Harry Kane and Sadio Mané left in the summer of 2023; Jürgen Klopp and Mauricio Pochettino went in 2024. Heung-min Son and Kevin De Bruyne followed a year later.

This summer, that trickle has turned into a stream. Salah, Silva, Stones and the others were to some extent the lucky ones: they at least had the chance to say goodbye. The Premier League has seemed unusually low-key for the last couple of months, overshadowed first by the World Cup and then Infantino's abortive attempt to hand over part of the game's crown jewels to a lesser kushner.

Almost every time it has intruded on the broader consciousness, though, it seems to have been to mark another departure. Arne Slot, Marco Silva and Eddie Howe have departed. Before the month is out, Rodri is likely to have joined the exodus, the lynchpin of Guardiola's great Manchester City side on the verge of decamping for Barcelona.

In one summer, the Premier League will have lost not just the most devastating player of its last 10 years in Salah, but the most

dominant, in Rodri. Only a handful of veterans of those imperial-phase City and Liverpool teams remain.

The dawn of a new season is, in theory, a fresh start for everyone. The table is reset. The slate is wiped clean. But in practice, that is not how it works. Perhaps it has never been, but certainly not now, when football categorically refuses to release its vice-like grip on our prefrontal cortexes at any point. One campaign rolls inexorably into another. What happened last is repurposed as a cliffhanger to set up what is to come.

Normally, anyway. Whether that applies when there has been so much change is a different matter. The absence of so many of those figures who have loomed so large in our imaginations for so long has shifted the league in some fundamental way: not so much a new series as a whole new show.

Nine clubs, for example, will go into the campaign with new managers. That makes Bournemouth's Marco Rose the 12th longest-serving boss in the league. He has never actually taken charge of a competitive game for his club.

All of this makes forecasting what shape this season will take something of a fool's errand. Maybe it will – as logic might suggest – be more open than usual, the calcified hierarchies of the recent past swept away in the switch from one generation to the next; maybe all of our presumptions about this season will be overturned.

Maybe Xabi Alonso can make sense of Chelsea's 46-man squad. Maybe Roberto De Zerbi's lavish spending will propel Tottenham up the table. Maybe Enzo Maresca will

work out but Andoni Iraola will not, or vice versa. Maybe Unai Emery's Aston Villa can take advantage of the uncertainty and lever their way further up the table still.

Or, maybe, the exact opposite will happen, and Arsenal – the one elite team that have not spent the summer in the throes of revolution and that do not appear to be trying to establish an entirely new identity – will secure a second straight title with a minimum of fuss and, most likely, a maximum of corners. Maybe the near future looks an awful lot like the recent past.

That would, at least, help to answer the other question that hovers over the coming campaign. Of all the goodbyes the Premier League has offered in the last few years, Guardiola's was by some distance the most significant; for a decade, he had not just been English football's dominant manager, but its headline act, its biggest draw and its brightest light.

To borrow from wrestling parlance, he could play the role of face or heel: he could be hero or villain, insurgent or tyrant, voice of reason or provocateur, depending on the circumstances and to some extent his mood. In whatever guise, everything he said or did or thought made news. He was the face of the franchise in a way that only a handful of managers had been before him; like Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, José Mourinho and to some extent Klopp, Guardiola had genuine cut-through.

For the first time in its history, the Premier League will start this week with none of those managers present. Mikel Arteta is the only

coach in the league to have won a Premier League title. All of a sudden, the league feels like it is missing a central character.

Quite who ends up taking that role will go some way to defining the tone and timbre of the Premier League as it moves, gingerly, into its post-Guardiola era. In a competition that has long defined itself by the calibre of its managers, Arteta would seem to be the likeliest candidate, the only one of the urbane Basques and Germans who now occupies the league's technical areas who could be said to have something approaching a public personality.

Or perhaps there is another shift to come; maybe the fine-margins version of the game that the Premier League has gestated will see the emphasis revert to those players who can make the difference. The World Cup proved that Erling Haaland is the Premier League's most prominent on-pitch star by some distance. He is sufficiently quirky to be entirely compelling.

Of course, it might be someone else, or several people, or nobody at all: maybe the idea of one dominant figure is anachronistic anyway. Perhaps Guardiola was the last of the big beasts. Something ended with his departure. Something new will arise in his absence. It might just take some time to figure out what, exactly, it is.

Where to watch

Arsenal v Manchester City TNT Sports 1 Today, 3pm


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

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Has data made the Premier League dull?

Rory Smith

Ten days before his final game in charge of Crystal Palace, Oliver Glasner sat down with his coaching staff and the club's analysis department. They were there to hatch a plan to win the Conference League final, Palace's shot at a third piece of silverware in a year, and Glasner's parting gift.

There was nothing inherently remarkable about that. Glasner, like basically every modern manager, holds a similar meeting before every game. This one stood out, though, in two ways. Firstly, it was early: Palace still had at least one Premier League game before they met Rayo Vallecano. And secondly, it ran late. Glasner and his colleagues talked, and talked, for more than five hours.

The purpose of the meeting was standard, too. The analysts would have watched hours of footage of Rayo, picking apart every face of their play. Once they had presented their findings, Glasner and his staff hatched a plan to nullify their strengths and exploit their weaknesses.

Most of Glasner's meetings, now that he is at Nottingham Forest, will not last quite so long. Even allowing for the fact Palace were overwhelming favourites, it was still a special occasion, a major-ish final. Still, it illustrates the (occasionally extreme) level of scrutiny modern coaching staffs devote to their opponents. Every club now possesses a well-staffed analysis department to study whoever they are playing next: watching their games, trawling through performance data, producing in-depth reports about what to expect. More and more teams now have in their ranks someone whose whole job it is to assess opposition set-pieces. By the time a game rolls around, a manager knows the team they are facing almost as well as their own.

Elite football is so awash with knowledge that analysts and coaches alike see the main challenge

as condensing it into a practical, digestible, usable form. Unai Emery, the Aston Villa manager, has a reputation as a great meeting enthusiast: he holds three a week, each running to about 90 minutes.

That is longer than most have traditionally been comfortable with – managers, generally, try to keep video sessions with players to no more than half an hour – but perhaps it is a harbinger. Some players who have grown up with video footage now employ their own analysts.

This is football's information era. The game is swirling in terabytes of statistics, billions of data points about physical output and individual ability and collective endeavour. It is deploying ever-more sophisticated technology and ever-more brilliant minds and ever-more innovative metrics to drive ever deeper into its unseen reality. It is smarter than ever.

Whether it is any better is a different matter.

As seems to be the case every year now, Chelsea have spent the summer burning through colossal sums of money. The most telling signing of their summer, though, was not a player. In June, Chelsea triggered the release fee contained in Austin MacPhee's contract at Aston Villa. MacPhee, having spent his summer working with Portugal, is the club's new first team set-piece coach.

With his distinctive long, blond hair, MacPhee has become a familiar sight in the last few years; television cameras have reliably cut to him whenever Villa have won a corner. His reputation, his prominence and, eventually, his transfer feel like a pretty good summary of the state of the Premier League in 2026.

The fact that the top flight turned into an artillery battle last season did not exactly go unnoticed. Set-pieces defined the campaign. Arsenal scored 29 goals from them on their way to the title, earning Nicolas Jover, their set-piece coach, his own semi-ironic mural near the Emirates Stadium. Across the league, more

than a quarter of all goals came from free-kicks.

There was less appetite for exploring the causes of the shift: a bit of discussion of the liberal refereeing of penalty-area melees; a few forays into whether it had been driven by the game's data-crunchers; a decent portion of traditionalist glee that at last English football had cast off the woke nonsense of the Guardiola era.

But it seems obvious the focus on set-pieces was a consequence, rather than a cause, a reaction more than a choice: the richest teams in the world were finding it more difficult to score goals from open play, to win games by outplaying their opponents. But the league itself was inching ever-closer to a sort of glittering stalemate. Set-pieces were one of the few edges left.

Coaches have been discouraging players from shooting from range for years, advice rooted both in data and Guardiola-infused aestheticism. Between 2004 and 2024, meanwhile, the number of (aerial) crosses from open play per game almost halved.

Perhaps, then, the style that came to define the Premier League last season – central defenders trundling forward for long throws, players crowding the goalkeeper, endless tussling at corners – is the natural next step, the equivalent of what happened to basketball as teams tried to copy Steph Curry's blizzard of three-pointers. As in so many other spheres of existence, we go where the data leads. This is the smartest way to play football. The computer says so.

Whether that is enjoyable is not strictly relevant. After the World Cup final, American sports provocateur Skip Bayless declared "Spain won with suffocating defense that rendered [Messi] just another player. Soccer turned back into what it mostly always has been: boring." Sam Anderson, writing in The New York Times, noted: "How is this game like this? How is it not different?"

This is the central tension within football. It does not have a duty to entertain. The people out on the pitch, the people sat in the meetings, the people poring over data: their job is not to find the best way to play, it is – in a sport of impossibly fine margins – to find the best way to win.

A longer version of this article is available online.

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What happens now for Arsenal

The last manager, other than Pep Guardiola, to retain the Premier League title was Sir Alex Ferguson, all the way back in 2009. Since then, Chelsea (three times), Liverpool (twice) and Leicester City (understandably) have had a fallow year immediately after claiming the championship. Mikel Arteta has a pattern to break.

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What will be allowed at corners

Last season the Premier League was basically a large shoving contest occasionally delayed by some football. The nature of this season, and quite possibly the destiny of the title, may well be decided by whether the league's referees decide that penalty areas shouldn't really be a free-for-all.

Who the contenders are

Other than Arsenal, every other member of the theoretical Big Six appointed their (permanent) manager within the last five months. Enzo Maresca may be a continuity appointment at Manchester City but he may well lose three of Guardiola's stalwarts before August ends.

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observer.co.uk^{}[] 16.08.26

Wish you were here? Athletic glory triumphs over apathy

The European Championships in Birmingham have been beset by problems, but George Simms saw greatness on the track

Thursday

It's the fourth day of the 2026 European Athletics Championships in Birmingham, and en route to Alexander Stadium my Uber driver asks whether "something is going on up there". It's hard to blame him. Wandering through the city centre for a bus I missed, there was little evidence that a miscellany of the world's most gifted athletes were competing four miles away.

After three days of justified criticism I arrive expecting empty seats and inconvenience, yet more than 20,000 of the stadium's 23,000 capacity is filled. This is a perfect setting, blue sky framing blue track, the evening warmth a relief from the excruciating afternoon sun. Athletics is a terrible spectator sport until it isn't, either too much or not enough going on at any given time, and so I set about waiting and trying to discern what is happening in the women's triple jump final.

I eventually give up, but in time the stars appear. Leo Neugebauer, a 6ft 7in German weighing a smidge under 110kg, crosses 19th of 20 in the 1500m finale of the men's decathlon, unable even to drag both legs over the finish line. And yet he holds such a lead from the first nine events that he wins gold nonetheless, a fact he acknowledges by pointing to the sky while still supine, draped in the Schwarz-Rot-Gold. Meanwhile the discus is won by a spectacled Slovenian giant, Kristjan Ceh, who looks like he's trying to skim a pebble, so perfectly proportioned you simply cannot imagine him doing anything else. Mark English, a 33-year-old Irish doctor with salt and pepper hair, wins the men's 800m. He's won European bronze twice before – in 2014 and 2022 – but here is a monument to the power of perseverance, a reminder that careers and lives are rarely linear.

And then it's time for the women's 200m, featuring three Brits in Amy Hunt, Dina Asher-Smith and Success Eduan. Hunt won the

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'I woke up this morning and I knew that it didn't matter what anyone else was going to run, that I was always going to win'

100m on Monday but the longer distance better suits her height and mechanics, and victory takes her halfway to a potential four golds across the six days, on course to become the first athlete to do so in one European Championships.

Apparently marketing execs love Hunt because she – a multiple Olympic, World and European medallist with a 2:1 in English literature from Cambridge once named by British Vogue as one of their "Faces Set to Define the 2020s" – is relatable, probably the one thing she really isn't. Even having just won the 200m in 22.19, she doesn't appear to sweat, parading around in a tiara, makeup perfect, teeth flawless and slick-back holding firm. Ultimately you have to put her in the Jude Bellingham class of people who are just Better Than You and try to get on with your middling life. Hunt is one of the most

interesting British athletes not because she provides much-needed representation for, erm, Oxbridge graduates, but because of what she calls "this radical, utter insane belief in myself". She has a uniquely Gen Z openness about her confidence and ambition which you suspect will jar with some as her fame grows, but equally seems to work for her, fuel her. After the 200m, she said: "I woke up this morning with such an utter feeling of calm, because, same as the 100m, I had such an overwhelming premonition that today was going to be my day. I knew it didn't matter what anyone else was going to run, that I was always going to win." She has that rare ability to grow into moments, into races, an image and identity already complete and coherent. She loves attention and isn't ashamed of it, raising her arms a la Russell Crowe in Gladiator and asking:

"Are you not entertained?" The crowd loves her, just as the world soon will. I take one look at the thousands queuing for buses back into Birmingham and load up Uber once more.

Friday

It's Keely day of what has been sold as Keely week – in as much as it has been sold at all – so let's start at the end. Keely Hodgkinson sits on the Alexander Stadium track staring into the middle distance and grimacing, anxiously shaking her right leg. It feels like something has shifted, perhaps permanently, a new world order emerging. Hodgkinson ran an 800m which would once have been good enough. She thought it was. She let Audrey Werro lead into the headwind, protected herself and waited, then went to kick on the outside. Except the gap never closed. Werro broke the 44-year-old


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Victory at last: Ireland's 33-year-old Mark English crosses the line in the 800m

Ben Stansall/ AFP via Getty

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Crowning glory: Amy Hunt celebrating after winning the 200 metres in Birmingham.

Daniela Porcelli/Getty

championship record by more than half a second (1:54.81) and claimed a title Hodgkinson had won in 2022 and 2024. It was neither's quickest time, but even in the wind both broke the top 30 fastest ever in front of a sold-out stadium.

The obvious question is how often Hodgkinson will be able to beat Werro again. Five inches taller and two years younger, Werro has twice breached 1:54.00 this year, the third and fourth fastest times ever (behind two from the 80s which are more suspect than Nigel Farage's donations) a mark Hodgkinson has never reached (her record is 1:54.33). After Werro won the Diamond League meeting in Stockholm, Hodgkinson said: "I won't let that happen again." Here she didn't have much choice, stressing she was as fit as she had ever been. "Sometimes I step back and just think you can want it so much, but it just cannot be enough," she said post-race. She talked about regrouping and going again, about giving it her all, but seemed to recognise that her brief golden age might already be over.

Not far behind Werro and Hodgkinson was Femke Broeders-Bol, a recent convert from 400m hurdles. Broeders-Bol has an astonishingly graceful running action, and off-track resembles a woodland sprite, with this airy positivity and Minnie Mouse voice. By her own admission she's still learning how to pace and feel 800m races, and yet still equalled the Dutch record of 1:55.54, knocking three and a half seconds off her first competitive 800m time from six months ago. It is impossible to spend too long here and not become punch-drunk on the relentless brilliance, feats that remind you of humanity's astonishing capabilities and variety, of its capacity for progress and invention. They're everywhere you look – Karsten Warholm breaking the championship record over 400m hurdles, Gianmarco Tamberi winning the high jump at 34 then conducting the stadium in "Happy Birthday" for his one-year-old

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daughter, Werro, even Hodgkinson. But as always athletics finds a way to hinder itself still, Owen Ansah winning the 200m despite an impending ban for missing a drugs test, one which has led the German team to not select him for the relay because the chances of suspension are so high.

Saturday

As a saccharine promotional video informed the Alexander Stadium crowd on Friday, "athletics is the pursuit of something greater than yesterday," but this always seemed unlikely. And yet Team GB found glory in the 4x100m relays, Hunt earning her third gold of the week alongside Asher-Smith, Eduan and Imani-Lara Lansiquot as both men's and women's squads thrashed out comfortable victories on a brisk Birmingham night. Earlier in the evening, Italian Andy Diaz Hernandez produced a world-leading 18.15m to win the triple jump, while Julian Weber of Germany and Andreas Almgren both broke championship records in the javelin and the men's 10,000m, Swede Almgren lapping all but three of his competitors. In the men's 1500m, British hopes collapsed on the home straight as Jakes Wightman and Heyward slipped from the lead out of medal contention. And now 33, Katarina Johnson-Thompson had competed just once in the past year - a single

Giant leap: 6ft Tin Leo Neugebauer lands in the long jump pit on his way to gold in the decathlon.

Ben Stansall/ AFP via Getty

shot put event in May - and finished 21st in the women's heptathlon, looking harrassed and heartbroken, likely the last days of a career defined by rivalry and near misses, sacrificing herself to compete at a first home Europeans.

For British Athletics, the biggest concern is that Birmingham's failings reflect poorly on London's bid to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships over Munich, Nairobi and Rome – this was somehow the first time England had hosted a Europeans.

For all the discussion of ticket prices – the top band cost £150 for big sessions – just as many cheaper tickets went unsold earlier in the week. "I do think there could have been a bit more advertising," Hodgkinson said on Friday, a slight understatement.

But there were more significant issues. Getting to Alexander Stadium required mental strength and physical stamina – if you missed one of the 650 daily park-and-ride tickets for £20 at Walsall's Bescot Stadium, your other options include a 25-minute walk from Perry Barr Station, buses from the city centre that could double as saunas or £17.50 to park a 45-minute walk away. Once you got in, a bottle of water cost £3.95 and a pork roll £18.50. These are petty logistical issues just as likely to push people away as ticket prices. Organisers have also endured bad luck: closures of key roads for repairs or accidents, trains repeatedly cancelled or delayed, the only station within walking distance of the stadium closed on Thursday evening by overhead wire issues, another chapter in the ceaseless story of British infrastructural decay.

And yet on Sunday Hunt will go for gold once more, in pursuit of something unique, of a stardom and achievement she has always believed she deserved, has always believed will come. For all the petty debates, she will almost certainly be this event's legacy.

What it takes to compete

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All this... to finish second: A BBC Sport film revealed Keely Hodgkinson's exhausting training for the European Championships


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Right to play: the Afghan Refugee cricket team play armed forces and Cambridge teams; Malala Yousafzai with Khalida Popal (below). Sophie Evans for The Observer; Kelly Defina/Getty Images

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Afghan sportswomen fight for right to represent their country

Footballers and cricketers who fled threat from the Taliban want recognition for refugee teams, writes Um-E-Aymen Babar

When Khalida Popal fled Afghanistan in 2011 to escape the Taliban, she believed she would return in a week. Fifteen years later she is still living in exile.

Five years ago, the Taliban regained power after the US pulled out of the country, and women have been forced into devastating restrictions – banned from education, sports, politics, laughing too loudly from within their own homes, speaking to other women in public, driving, using smartphones, going to parks and gyms, the list goes on.

One of the most harrowing laws recently introduced allows men to beat their wives, so long as they don't break any bones or leave visible wounds. If a husband is to assault his wife that severely, then the punishment is just 15 days imprisonment. The punishment for animal abuse is up to five months in prison.

Popal, 39, describes Afghanistan as an "open air prison". It's a radically different scene from when she lived there in 2007 and founded the country's first national football team before becoming captain. "Women are prevented from their

fundamental human right to live and are losing their futures," she said.

"We're trying to be the voice for our sisters. We want to do everything possible to not let the world forget about the women and girls of our country.

"They are desperately searching for some sort of freedom from that prison. We want to try everything possible to be the platform."

In 2014, Popal founded Girl Power, a non-profit organisation. In August 2021 it launched a campaign that in collaboration with other organisations led to the evacuation of over 600 women and girls.

"Whether it's football, cricket, music, or whatever power we have, we want to raise awareness. It's our way of advocacy and fighting," Popal added.

"This is what my foundation is for. We want to be the voice for the sisters who haven't had the opportunity to speak."

In April, Fifa announced a landmark ruling that gave permission for Afghan Women United, a squad composed of refugees, to represent Afghanistan as the country's official national team, without requiring the approval of the Taliban.

"It sounds simple, right? Women and girls should be able

to play football. But it's a lot more complicated," Popal explained.

"This is going to be a team without a home. We have to rely on the diaspora and exiled players.

"There was pushback because people questioned whether this decision would provoke other women's teams to separate from their federation.

"But Afghanistan is the only team where women have been completely erased from social life and these conversations challenged everyone's perspective about football and the systems."

The ruling means the team will be eligible for international competitions such as the 2028 Summer Olympics qualifiers, but victory for them is not defined by results.

"Every time we step on to the pitch, that's a win," Popal said.

"Playing at the highest level has a different meaning for us. It means being allowed on to the pitch, carrying our flag and singing our national anthem. I am hopeful this is the start of a beautiful journey.

"There are times where I get worried, I get warnings, but my purpose has always been so strong that no fear keeps me away.

"My purpose is to give back through football because that's how

my activism started. Football is my language and my tool.

"If I told you I'm not scared, that would be a lie."

Cricket has been slower to recognise Afghanistan's exiled sportswomen.

In June 2017, the Afghanistan Cricket Board (ACB) persuaded the International Cricket Council (ICC) to award it full-member status, allowing the men's team to participate in official Test matches. This happened despite the ACB failing to meet the criteria around women's cricket which states there needs to be "satisfactory women's pathway structures in place".

In 2020, 25 women were awarded central contracts but a year later, under Taliban rule, payments to the women's side were cut off while the men's team continued to play, featuring in multiple World Cups, Test matches and the Champions Trophy.

"We want the ICC to allow us to play under the Afghanistan flag and name," said Afghan pace bowler, Tooba Sarwari, who fled to Australia on a humanitarian visa in 2021.

"It's my right to represent my country. It's time for the ICC to take action, they need to recognise our team. We've faced a lot of challenges to get to this point."

Sarwari works as a teacher and cricket coach while studying international relations and politics.

"The situation is terrible in Afghanistan for women and that's why we work hard, we want to be a voice for the millions of women and girls who don't even have basic human rights," Sarwari added.

Last month, the ICC assigned a special taskforce the responsibility to develop a roadmap for the Afghan Refugee team to participate in ICC qualification events by 2030.

Many women on the team have female family members who continue to live under the Taliban's oppressive laws in Afghanistan. For Popal, the dream remains to return to Afghanistan one day.

"I want to go back and start a girls school, start a football academy and do all the work I'm doing [now] over there," she explained.

"Whenever I try to move in that direction, there is always a setback.

"But we have not lost hope, it's still alive and all I can do is continuously inspire, support and create opportunities so the younger generation can think of themselves as future ministers, presidents and leaders."

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Test of The Hundred's true value will be first venture into big, bad world of the free market

Competition's impact is yet to be revealed

Cameron Ponsonby

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) like the numbers. Broadcast viewership is up. Digital is too. And the demographics of those in attendance – read women and children – are “very positive”.

Cricket fans don’t like the numbers. They don’t like the way the scoreboard sits differently on the screen. They don’t like the fact a Compare the Market meerkat is there all the time. And that Mike Atherton and Nasser Hussain, the cricketing parents of the nation, are on TV with a T-shirt on rather than a button-down. Please protect these grade-one-listed cricket commentators.

But it is easy – and perhaps even boring – to be cynical about The Hundred. As a reminder, the genesis of all this was a survey the ECB conducted roughly a decade ago which asked 2,500 children to name 10 sports off the top of their head, and 60% didn’t mention cricket at all. Something had to be done.

The problem is that more than 10 years later, we are still debating whether the route taken is the right one. Column inches, including these

ones, and podcast minutes are taken up by discussions like: what is this competition? Who’s it for? What’s its impact going to be? As opposed to, you know, the actual cricket. Sam Billings, a semi-regular England player in the not-too-distant past, has captained a team to four finals in a row after winning the last three. He was binned off by the Oval Invincibles – now MI London – for this year’s tournament, joined Trent Rockets, and has repeated the feat at his new employers. It’s a good story.

But the apathy is largely because, as a fan, cricket lives as one of the great passive activities. Those waiting for the on-field action of The Hundred to “cut through” will keep on waiting ad infinitum. Because, whisper it, no one’s ever really cared about the cricket. That’s the beauty of it. The recent rise of the redball game in south London, where Surrey are boasting record County Championship attendances, is largely off the back of 25-year-old Dalstonites who have learnt that a day at the cricket, sipping on a drink and chatting to their friends is the best.

Dalstonites have learnt that a day at the cricket is the best... but cricket is rarely the show

And they’re correct. The cricket is the day, but it is rarely the show.

As a result, the pit that remains in the bottom of stomachs regarding The Hundred is that in selling the competition off to private investors, we’ve given away the keys to our summer holidays forever. Compare this to when Gianni Infantino attempted to sell the Fifa World Cup off for parts and the uproar that followed, and well, in cricket, we’ve already sold it.

Stadium crowds have felt sparse across much of the tournament this year. As a result, it was a surprise when the ECB reported ticket sales for this year’s competition were the third highest in the six years of the tournament’s history, and the highest when The Hundred hasn’t followed on from a blue-ticket Test series against Australia or India, a caveat which does make a difference.

An insight into the ecosystem cricket operates in came when ECB chief executive Richard Gould described the “great crowd of 9,500-10,000” that watched Welsh Fire against Southern Brave on a Monday night in Cardiff. Last season, football’s Stockport County averaged 9,440 a matchday through the gate in League One. They were the 56th best-attended team in England’s top four divisions.

The best-case scenario for The Hundred is that it is just nice. That established cricket fans like it as a distraction, and new cricket fans like it to the point of distraction.

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Tongues out: Seifert bats for Manchester Super Giants. Nathan Stirk/Getty Images

The format and structure of the matches, where the currency is in balls rather than overs, remains a point of irritation for existing fans and will remain in place until 2028 at least. At which point, the balance of whether to stick with it and keep the advantages that it brings, namely a shorter day and earlier bedtime for families going to the games, or scrap it, because, well, it’s a bit crap, will rear its head again.

So too will 2028 bring its first test of the true value of the competition. Currently, broadcast rights for The Hundred are bundled up with international cricket and county competitions. From 2028, if the investors and ECB wish to unbundle them and sell The Hundred separately, they can. Globally, the broadcast rights bubble has long popped, making the idea that The Hundred’s first venture into the big, bad world of the free market will see the line continuing to go up

and to the right unlikely.

A separate note to finish on. In the words of the ECB, the mission of The Hundred since day one has been to “throw cricket’s doors open to everyone”.

One month ago, the International Cricket Council, where ECB chair Richard Thompson sits on the board and Gould is part of the chief executives’ committee, voted to, in effect, reduce the ODI World Cup from 14 teams to 12. It was a last-minute decision that Cricket Scotland and the Netherlands have described as “weakening the credibility and integrity of international cricket”.

On Friday, Gould hinted he would prefer it to be even smaller: “I think in terms of competition and commercial value, the 10-team tournament is largely seen as the best.”

When God closes a door, he opens a window. Gould prefers it the other way round.

Is The Hundred any good?

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Andrew Butler Deputy sports editor

In my fleeting few idle moments over the summer months, and to prove I am a really good laugh, I like to consult my favourite Companies House accounts. Top currently for me is the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB), which this year has a line listing “Gain on sale of share assets” of £540.7m. That “gain” was the sale of its stake in the eight Hundred teams. When it comes to securing cricket’s future success in this country, that figure – essentially magnified out of thin air by the ECB over the course of five years – has got to be a significant factor in the game continuing to thrive, so long

as that money is used properly and wisely across the cricketing realm.

Yes, it has its problems – five-ball “sets” are still clunky, MI London is a bad name, and we had to endure Sunrisers Leeds’s rendition of “Marching On Together” before it got rightly deleted.

But the quality has been evident – the economical trinity of Adil Rashid, Moeen Ali and Jofra Archer at Southern Brave, Jos Butler playing for fun like he’s had a couple at a Sixes bar, Dewald Brevis’s no-look six, 18-year-old Tilly Corteen-Coleman bamboozling players twice her age – is all good entertainment in a competition that only takes up four weeks of the year. It’s not perfect, but it’s here to stay – and its long-term impact should benefit all of English cricket, and not just this version.

Keith Blackmore Sports editor

Major League Baseball breaks into its season with the Home Run Derby during which “sluggers” compete to hit the most homers off putball pitching. It’s fun but meaningless.

The Hundred is cricket’s equivalent. Except The Hundred sprawls across three weeks in high summer, not just a couple of days. The ASG has history, the Hundred does not but claims to be the future. What a terrible thought.

Yes it’s enjoyable watching Jos Butler or Harry Brook hit six after towering six over mid-on. But like anything else taken to excess, it soon palls. And as for praising a bowler

for delivering a dot ball just inside the wide line – that’s an offence against the cricketing gods.

These things are true of Twenty20 too but that form of the game respects the traditions it is built upon. The Hundred disdains them (sets, not overs etc). And it is possible to support a local T20 team, county or country – even if you live near one of The Hundred “franchises” can you really owe loyalty to one group of highly paid mercenaries over another?

Franchise cricket is harmless, lucrative, fun, you say. Well next year, the Ashes Tests – the Ashes Tests! – will be crammed into early summer to make room for The Hundred competition. It’s time England cricket’s administrators came to their senses: money really isn’t everything.


16 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

'I wouldn't swap places with Emma Raducanu'

Kirsty Gilmour, ranked higher in badminton than her counterpart is in tennis, won her first major at 32. Now, she wants a world medal

Self Squires

Kirsty Gilmour is a three-time Olympian who four months ago became Britain's first European women's singles badminton champion in 40 years. She is ranked higher globally in badminton than Emma Raducanu is in tennis.

There were, however, not too many double takes at the airport on Thursday when she flew out to compete at next week's World Championships in Delhi. Gilmour can quite easily do the weekly shop without being mobbed.

Badminton, with its back-garden, shuttlecock-over-the-washing-line image in this country, does not often command much airtime or column inches. Gilmour's achievements, racket in hand, deserve a higher profile and she would not say no to some of the endorsement deals that would come with that, but she recognises the upside to sporting anonymity.

'It maybe sounds crazy to most people, but I probably wouldn't swap

places with Emma Raducanu,' said Gilmour.

'I'm not a millionaire - I can confirm - but when you weigh up the money versus the attention, I'm leaning towards there being more negatives with the attention.

'When you're not having a great time, it's nice to not have scathing articles written about you. The online trolls tell me how bad I am quite often enough, thank you.

'I can't imagine doing this job and trying to practise self-kindness under such a spotlight. Trying to keep the blinkers on would be so, so difficult.

'I do really respect her for what she's managed to achieve with all the attention piled on. I have no concept of what that would do mentally.'

Gilmour's career trajectory has been very different to that of Raducanu's.

Having reached five European Championships finals only to come up short each time and suffered the same fate at the 2016 and 2018 Commonwealth Games, Gilmour was the perennial bridesmaid.

Then, in April, at the Carolina Marin Sports Palace in Spain, the glass ceiling finally shattered at the age of 32, with her victory over top seed Line Kjærsfeldt of Denmark. That elusive first major title was hers.

'I didn't make it to that final and think: 'Right, it has to be gold. Nothing else will do.' There had been so many silver medals that I knew exactly how silver felt and, after the fact, it doesn't feel so bad. So I really wasn't scared to get another silver and I think that just

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High flier: Kirsty Gilmour is targeting a medal place at the World Championships next week. Europa Press Sports/Getty Images, Cristina Quicier/AFP/Getty

freed me up.

'I think all of the ones that happened before had to happen for that one to happen. I had to learn a lot of lessons.

'Would I have liked a gold medal sooner? Sure. It would have saved a lot of tears, but I think the wait makes for a good story.'

Fittingly Marin, the retired former Olympic champion who had beaten Gilmour in four of those five finals, was the woman to hand her the medal at the sports complex that bears her name.

'Winning gold has not changed anything about me as a badminton player, but it has maybe changed the way I frame my whole career,' Gilmour said.

'I had won some tournaments

before, but no one knows or cares what the SaarLeurLux Open is. Now, I don't have to explain anything anymore. I don't have to say: 'I'm European silver medallist. I was really close to winning so many times, I promise you, man.'

'To just be able to say: 'Hello, nice to meet you, I'm Kirsty. I'm the European champion' is so nice.'

The gold medal is sitting, unattractively, on top of a cardboard box in the house she shares with her partner Robyn, just outside Glasgow. Gilmour is the only openly gay women's badminton player on the circuit.

'Going about my day-to-day life, I'm not shouting about it, but I don't hide it either,' she said.

'I definitely know of some other gay female players, but badminton

suffers from the same kind of culture as most sports. As a gay female you're seen as a bit more masculine, potentially, although not in all cases, while as a gay man you're seen as a bit more feminine, which is not what you want to portray in sport.

'But I have to say, in my experience, the badminton fans don't care as long as you're a good player and you have good morals and standards on the court.

'I've never had an ounce of bother - even in countries where it's criminalised or not seen as OK.'

Gilmour is a passionate advocate for her sport, citing both its inclusivity at grassroots level and fast-paced spectacle seen live at elite level.

She admits she was 'quite mad' when she discovered that it had been one of the sports dropped for the slammed-down Glasgow Commonwealth Games. It will be back, she predicts, in Ahmedabad in four years.

'India is a massive badminton nation so it can't not be on the curriculum. They would never leave badminton out of an Indian Commonwealth Games,' she said.

'Will I be around for that iteration? I don't think so. At this point, I can't really see past the LA Olympics in 2028. That would be my fourth Games and I think that will be enough for me.'

Her timeline leaves her two more cracks at the World Championships, so next week in India's capital is a big one. The deepest she has gone previously is the quarter-final and she has landed a tough draw, facing No 5 seed Han Yue, from China, in the first round, but 2026 has already been a year of firsts. 'It will be a hard task, but if I get her out of the way, the draw opens up,' said Gilmour. 'It would be very nice to add a world medal.'

Results

SKY BET CHAMPIONSHIP

Belfast 1 Preston 1
Bristol City 0 Midland 1
Charlton 2 Derby 1
Waldbermouth 2 Lincoln City 1
Norwich 1 West Brom 2
Portsmouth 1 QPR 3
Sheffield 1 Birmingham 1
Stoke 1 Swansea 2

SKY BET LEAGUE ONE

Burnaby 0 Beverley 1
Blackpool 1 Wycombe 1
Bradford 2 Peterborough 0
Burson Albion 1 Sovereign 1
Cambridge Old 1 Wigan 2
Heathrow 1 AFC Wimbledon 1
Leyson Orient 1 Sheffield 2
Manchester 2 Charlton 1
North County 1 Leicester 1
Oxford Utd 2 Mill Town 2
Plymouth 1 Stockport 3
Reading 3 Luton 4

SKY BET LEAGUE TWO

Accrington 2 Colchester 2
Barnet 1 Salford City 1
Chatherston 2 Anfieldham 1
Cheltenham 0 Fitzbeach Town 1
Crowley Town 0 Crown 0
Gillingham 0 Walsall 3
Gorough 1 Exeter 0
Newport County 1 Northampton 0
Northampton 0 Swindon 1
Oldham 2 Port Vale 0
Swansea 2 Shrewsbury 0
York 1 Bristol Rovers 2

SCOTTISH COMMUNITIES CUP

SECOND ROUND
Alberden (0) 3 Dundee (0)
Dundee (0) 1 Celtic (1)
Dunfermline (0) 1 Ilmo County (0)

SCOTTISH LEAGUE ONE

Alloa (2) 1 Montrose (0)
East Albion (0) 1 Coal Burgers (0)
Alstomans (1) 4 Archimedes (0)
Peterhead (0) 2 East Fife (0)

SCOTTISH LEAGUE TWO

Anson Athletic (1) 1 Clyde (1) 2
Dartlebury (0) 0 Edinburgh (2) 1
Elgin (1) 4 Kelty Hearts (0) 0
Forbe (2) 3 Stirling (0) 0
Stowson (0) 1 Spartans (0) 0

OTHER FOOTBALL

B'Migallbach (2) 2 Atton Villa (0) 0
Brentford (3) 7 Frankfurt (0) 0
Brighton (0) 1 Bologna (0) 0
Chelsea (1) 3 Hoyt Scotland (1) 1
Everton (1) 1 Lille (0) 1
Freiburg (0) 1 Crystal Palace (0) 0
Fulham (0) 1 Stuttgart (0) 0
Hull (0) 0 Nice (0) 0
Leeds (1) 4 Augsburg (0) 0
Maine (1) 2 Shamamouth (1) 0
Man Utd (1) 2 AC Milan (1) 4
Newcastle (1) 1 Birmingham (1) 2
Sunderland (0) 2 Rennes (1) 1
Tottenham (1) 3 Staffordshire (0) 0
Union Berlin (1) 2 Ipswich (3) 4

Other results

FOOTBALL

ENTERPRISE NATIONAL LEAGUE: Aldershot
0 Northport (2) Boston 1 Manchester 2, FC Dublin 3
0 Burnham West 1, Gateshead 2, Woking 6, Kidderminster 1, Eastleigh 5, Solihull 3, Watford 2, Eastleigh 1, Southend 1, Sutherland 1, Kilmarnock 1, Tamworth 1 2 Eastleigh 5, Solihull 3, Watford 2, Eastleigh 1, Solihull 1, Watford 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1
1 AFC Exile 2, Middlesbrough 1, Fife 1, Woking 1, Forest Union 2, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1 2 Eastleigh 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1
2 Darlington 1, Buckley 1, Helphins Town 1, Chester FC 2, King's Lynn Town 0, Hathrow 0, Solihull 0, Hathrow 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0, Solihull 0 2 Eastleigh 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1
3 Blythe 1, Southend 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1 2 Eastleigh 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1, Solihull 1

CYMRU PREMIER: Barry Town United 1 Cardiff Met Utd 6, Carnarfon Town 1, Colster Rist 1. BREEDON HIGHLAND (GB): Brice 4 Spots Olier 2, Clarkencothin 1, Keith 1, Bournemouth 3, Rothe 6.

Fraserburgh 2, Nairn County 0, Hanty 3, Wick Academy 0, Farrington 1, Farrington United 1, Leishmouth 2, Ferrols Mechanic 1, Strathpye Thistle 1, Imenore Leon Works 3, Tyrrell United 1, Bucks Thistle 2.

LOWLAND LEAGUE - East: Berwick 3 Stirling University 2, Musselburgh A10 0, Littlegrove Rose 2.

LOWLAND LEAGUE - West: Albion 2, Caledonian Brawn 0, Dalmartin Star 1, Celtic 8, 1, Gretna 2000, 3, Cumberland Cloth 3, Large Thistle 3, Aschimlock Talbot 0.

SPORTS DIRECT BUSH PREMIERSHIP: Bangor FC 0, Elthorndy 5, Coleraine 0, Limerick 0, Cunardine 3, Rabyneon Old 1, University 1, Carroll 2, Lothold 2, Gresham 1, Portadown 0, Grangamore Seafly 1.

CREDITING: Dundee 1, FMC 1, Ferland Dittard 1, Cambal 1, Umevich 1, A21 1, William II 1, NEC 4.

RUGBY LEAGUE

Betfred Super League: Bradford, Wigan 1, Teuton 1, Huddersfield 1, Mansfield 1, Woburn 1.

Betfred Women's Super League: Burnue Radars Women 14, Fullertonine Rovers Women 22, Langleauquille Women 0, Huddersfield Giants Women 34, St Helens Women 24, Leeds Rhires Women 34, Wigan Marines Women 44, York Valkyrie 0.

RUGBY UNION

International Match: Australia 56, Japan 17.

CRICKET

First Test

Australia's Bangladesh: Marlboro Stadium Day 3 of 5, Australia 100 (55 overs), 0/PO Smith 79, H'Mahmud 0-55) and 90+4 (53 overs), Bangladesh 426 (138 overs), 7H Tyson 105, 9H Shardo 84, M+4 Minu (55), J H Hashwood 0-89).

First Test

India's Sri Lanka: Galla International Stadium Day 1 of 5, India 2100 (2.75 overs), D/D Piyabhad U'mu 4, 1, Patra 77 net hurt, R/R Pant 2, 7nd, Sri Lanka yet to bat.

SWEDNES

WST China Open (Shao): Semi-finals: N Sarapahan (That is Y Zhao (One) 6-5), M Sathy (Eng) 9-3, Bingham (Eng) 0-2.

TENNIS

ATP & WTA Cincinnati Open (Ohio): 1st/1st Men's: H'Mahan (Pitt) 9-1, Uttarakhand 1, Jami 8-7 6-4, A Valdez (Pitt) 9-1, Szapá (Pitt) 9-2, 7-4, 5-4, G Halay (Pitt) 9-3, Kopino (Cai) 7-6 (7-5) 6-4, D Athaia (Gai) 9-2, Wong (Wig) 1-6 6-5 6-4, S Talsapa (Gai) 9-1, Royer (Pitt) 7-6.

(7-6) 7-5, 5 Booz (Aug) 9-2, Givitton (Bal) 1-6 6-3 6-4, Women's: S Rejini (Cai) 9-1, Pilsburg (Cai) 6-6 6-2, J Broom Women (Jani) 9-1, Ransal (Jani) 6-2 7-6 (7-5) 0-3, Sagar (Shi) 9-1, Yavuzhchana (Shi) 6-4 6-1, L Bofannin (Shi) 9-2, Coctavette (Shi) 3-3 6-6.

GOLF

Dumb Golf Championship: Hertsmobile, Furrer's 2nd/3rd (for 6-9) unless stated (For 72), 2nd 1st (Leopaspa (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Zou (Cho) 69 67 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, 2nd 1st (Fry) 69 68 67, **2nd 1st

VP Bank Swiss Ladies Open (Roch-Rothrouz): Final end (Gib & K) unless stated (For 72), 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gib) 68 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gib) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68 67, W Wilder (Aas) 66 67 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gari) 68 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gari) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gari) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gari) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gari) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68, 2nd 1st (Lewis (Gari) 68 68, A Farnterling (Gari) 68 68, **2nd 1st

Fixtures

Kick off 3.00 unless stated

TODAY

FA COMMUNITY SHIELD

Arsenic + Bar City (at Principality Stadium, Cardiff).

SKY BET CHAMPIONSHIP

Bourbon + Bournemouth (43), Watford + Southampton (1,30).

FREDDY MATCHES

Liverpool + Limerick (0,00), Newcastle + Strobburg (0,00), Notts Forest + Bristol (2,00), Tottenham Hotspur + Hoffenheim (Nairn).

Kick off 7.45 unless stated

CRICKET

Blue Day Day Semi-Final: Leicestershire + Nottinghamshire (Dulce Road), Middlesex + Durham (Dublin).

TOMORROW

SKY BET CHAMPIONSHIP

Cardiff + Broom (0,00).

ISTHMRAK LEAGUE DIVISION ONE NORTH

Redbridge + Broom & Pines.

TUESDAY 18 AUGUST

UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - PLAY OFF ROUND 1ST LEG

Limele Uxby + AIV Athens (0,00), Driane Zayed + Viking FB (0,00), Frenheim + Lyon (0,00).

VERTU TRIPHY - NORTHERN GROUP B

Wigan + Wace Villa (121 (7.00).

GROUP C

Stamford County + Everton (121 (7.00).

SOUTHERN GROUP E

Reading + Weycette (7.00).

GROUP F

Bourn's Arsenal (2), Leyton Orient + AFC Wimbledon (7.00).

GROUP G

Northampton + Brighton (121 (7.00).

RUGBY LEAGUE

Betfred Super League: Hull 6 6 + Barrington (0,00).

WEDNESDAY 19 AUGUST

Carter + LAM (0,00), Steven Breitabes + Old Gate (0,00), Haysel River Shea + Salad Baba (0,00), NEC + Body/Glind (0,00).

VERTU TRIPHY - NORTHERN GROUP D

Westfield + War City (121 (7.00).

CRICKET (UNTIL SUNDAY)

First Test Martin (Copper) + Pelican (Headleague).

THURSDAY 20 AUGUST

UEFA CHAMPIONS LEAGUE - PLAY OFF ROUND FIRST LEG

Solihull + Maverick (1,00), Hants + Right Hovey, Lincoln Red

Indy + Limerick (1,00), Motherwell + Froberg (7,30), Rangers +

Latham, Shamrock Rovers + M/A (0,00), Trenton + Brighton (0,00).

SKY BET LEAGUE ONE

Sheffield + Bradford (0,00).

RUGBY LEAGUE

Betfred Super League: Hull 6 6 + Toulouse (0,00).

FRIDAY 21 AUGUST

PREMIER LEAGUE

Arsenic + Carleton (0,00).

WILLIAM HILL SCOTTISH CHAMPIONSHIP Imeresca (7) + Partick (7,30).


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

15

img-263.jpeg

Mike Catt would happily roll the dice and do it all again

As he embarks on a new role in Fiji, the 2003 World Cup winner tells Ben Coles about staying in touch with his former team-mates, life in Australia and the gamble players take with brain injuries

The WhatsApp group containing each of England's Rugby World Cup winners from 2003 gets lively around birthdays. It can lie dormant for a while before springing into life, but it is always there for anyone who needs to talk. "It's little things, you know?" Mike Catt tells me from his home in Sydney. "Every now and again, there is no banter on it and then all of a sudden somebody has a birthday and you get 32 'Happy Birthday' messages. You can reach out, speak if you want to. We're still connected with it all."

There are times now where this collection of England's greatest players need each other more than ever. Catt read The Observer's recent interview with Phil Vickery, in which the former England captain discussed his struggles with probable CTE – the forgetfulness, anxiety. The fears for his future.

Catt himself is fortunately symptom-free. Watching those team-mates suffer – Steve Thompson, the England hooker, cannot even remember England's triumph – is difficult. "What I love about Phil Vickery especially is he's honest, you know? A proper honest person. And I love the way he speaks. How he brings it across, the emotion."

Catt was captained by Vickery at the 2007 World Cup in France. "We've had a few reunions where I've bumped into a few of the guys. Obviously Thomo can't even remember playing the final. It's not great," he says.

"It's sad. It happens to some and doesn't to a lot of others too. Maybe we're lucky. Maybe, we're just lucky. Unfortunately the dice is rolled the other way for certain individuals. And it's a shame."

The mere suggestion that Catt was simply lucky with concussion is alarming in itself. The dawn of

professionalism was a wild leap into the unknown, with Catt becoming rugby union's first full-time professional player in 1995 when he packed in his job in a newsagents earning £8,000 per year.

Malcolm Pierce, one of Bath's backers at the time, employed the club's players in various roles. Catt would be up at 2am in the morning to stack newspapers and then deliver them to the shops, before heading off to training.

The money he began making from sponsorships playing for England began to surpass his work salary. So he took a gamble and left the job.

"Then luckily a year later, [the game] went professional. From eight

New leaf: after two years in Sydney, Mike Catt is now senior assistant coach of the Super Rugby side Fijian Drua.

grand a year to stupid money a year was like, wow. For doing something you loved. I'd do it for free."

What professionalism actually meant, in terms of training loads and recovery, was another matter.

"We know what we're signing up for. Whether they looked after us or not is another thing," Catt admits.

"I don't think anybody knew what professionalism was meant to look like. Unfortunately with a contact sport, it just took time before coaches, administrators, all these guys understood what was right and what was wrong."

On the day of our call Catt is recovering from a knee operation and preparing for his next coaching adventure, the most exhilarating yet after stints at London Irish, England, Ireland,

and most recently with Sydney's Waratahs. Last week he was announced as the new senior assistant coach of the Fijian Drua, the Super Rugby Pacific side. "I've had two of the most amazing years down in Australia, my kids have loved every single second of it, we've

had a proper experience down here. And then I didn't particularly want to come back to the UK. I still felt I needed something here."

It gives Catt the chance to coach for the first time in a country where rugby is not only the clear number one sport, but an obsession. "I went across there last week for a recce, and we're driving along and the Drua are on all the billboards, everybody talks rugby," he says. "Like in South Africa, you know, with Rassie Erasmus there. It is not a game of rugby. It's bigger than rugby."

There are several topics left to touch on. What he makes of England currently after a disjointed season – "I still don't think we've seen the whole of what Lee [Blackett, England's attack coach] can bring to the party" – and memories of working with a young Steve Borthwick, when the England head coach first arrived at Bath as a teenager. Catt and the "skinny little fella" would spend hours after training running through restart drills, with Borthwick's appetite for detail immediately apparent. "He was a young kid and just wanted to do, do."

It is clear that Catt reveres Andy Farrell, the Ireland head coach who he worked alongside as assistants with England under Stuart Lancaster, before joining Farrell's Ireland setup in 2020 for five years.

Farrell is now signed up by the Irish Rugby Football Union until 2031, having won two Six Nations titles including a Grand Slam in 2023. Could he see Farrell as England head coach in the future?

"I think he'll do what's right for his family," Catt responds, noting that Farrell's teenage son, Gabriel, has impressed playing for Blackrock College in Dublin.

"You never say never with Faz, you know? Anything's possible, but also, he's very sound and understands where he needs to go and what he needs to do. The Irish people have been amazing, the players are incredible. The whole system, the setup they have is very good for the limited amount of players that actually play the game."

As for Catt, the next stop is an adventure in Fiji and beyond that, wherever the game will take him. He wants to remain involved in rugby for as long as possible, passing on the knowledge that has come from going to eight Rugby World Cups, including five as a player.

When he talks about the game there is an overwhelming sense of gratitude, that same feeling of belonging Vickery mentioned recently. Given the chance, Catt would happily roll the dice and do it all again. "What it has offered me and given my life has been exceptional. I've got a lot of knowledge I can impart on some of these young kids to start the journey," he explains.

"All I could say is I've had the most incredible journey. What the game has given me, would I go back now and do it again? 100%. I've just had the most incredible time."

Honestly. The world, the people, the experiences I've given to the family. It has just been amazing."


16

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Next week

Joe Marler opts for pugil sticks over I'm a Celebrity

The former England prop is to be the first 'celebrity Gladiator'. Just don't mention Sharron Davies...

Giles Smith

Transfer news on Joe Marler: he's gone to Gladiators. Having acquitted himself to acclaim last autumn on Celebrity Traitors among the likes of David Olusoga, Cat Burns and Alan Carr, the former Harlequins and England prop will now put his reputation on the line in 2027 among such wielders of the pugil stick as Nitro, Viper and Diamond.

As the BBC's press release puts it, this is Marler 'bringing his trademark physicality and competitive spirit to one of television's toughest arenas'. No hype there. Gladiators is the first word in copiously padded combat for light entertainment purposes, unless you count American football, which not many of us do.

However, no disrespect to the show and the timeless challenges represented by such tea-time favourites as 'The Wall', 'Hang Tough' etc, but

there are plenty who were expecting to have seen Marler's 'trademark physicality' and 'competitive spirit' brought to bear in other, shall we say more distinguished celebrity formats by now.

Indeed, such was the esteem around the country for his sharply analytical mindset and slightly alarming presence after that strong showing in the Traitors' castle, many assumed Marler would immediately kick on. Where were the limits, in fact? It seemed reasonable to believe that by this point he would routinely be going deep in the celebrity majors – your Strictly Come Dancings, your I'm A Celebrities. And it wasn't even beyond the bounds of possibility that he would right now be poised to get among the pans on Celebrity Masterchef, whose 21st iteration gets underway next week, and thereby completing celebrity challenge television's elusive 'calendar slam'.

But no. Instead, seemingly after a long period of reflection, Marler has signed up to do some unflattering clothing and spend his Saturdays knocking over a few people nobody has really heard of. Again, no disrespect. But he could have stayed in rugby and done that.

And yes, we hear the rumours that Marler will shortly be in the tent for the next stretch of The Great Celebrity

img-264.jpeg

High celebrity telly hope: Joe Marler was a hit on Celebrity Traitors but will now switch to a glorified soft-play area on Gladiators. Euan Cherry/BBC/ Studio Lambert

Bake-Off: Stand Up To Cancer. Good cause, obviously. But in the context of the hopes we had for him, that's thin gruel – perhaps literally if he gets the bake-time wrong for his showstopper.

No, we had him set fair for the ones that matter. We imagined him, last autumn, pulling on a coveted sleeping bag around the I'm a Celebrity campfire, winging in and giving the likes of Martin Kemp and YouTube's Angryging a lesson in how it's done. Nothing, though.

Same with Strictly. It will be 20 years this winter since Matt Dawson finished runner-up on that dancefloor – two decades of hurt for rugby at the pro-celebrity ballroom interface, with the likes of Chris Robshaw and Ugo Monye among those falling disappointingly short when push came to shove in the Latin segments. Many instinctively saw Marler as the union code's most likely dancer to stop the rot.

Again, no. Not in 2025, and no hint of him as yet among the glitterball candidates for 2026. Shaun Wright-Phillips? Oh, yes. Dame Sarah Storey? Certainly. Joe Marler? Nope. 'Can't dance', he has said. But Joe: that's the whole point. And meanwhile sport's greatest celebrity telly hope in years is reportedly in a studio going by the nickname 'Mauler' and chasing after prize-hungry members of the public in a glorified soft-play area.

Ah well. At least they're bending the format to accommodate him. We're to consider Marler 'the first celebrity Gladiator'. 'But what about Sharron Davies?' you'll cry. 'Did that great Olympian rupture her cruciate ligament on the show in 1995 for nothing?' Well, if I've got this right, the idea is that Davies subsumed her broader celebrity in the business of being a Gladiator, whereas Marler will be working alongside the Gladiators as a celebrity adjunct. It's a fine line, but upon such distinctions the rejuvenation of long-running TV formats depends.

So there's that. And we're promised 'special appearances, packed with power, personality and plenty of surprises'. It's not what we hoped for – not by a long chalk. But it's a platform – probably quite a high one if it's 'Duel' we're talking about. Perhaps he'll use it to spring, finally, to those longed-for greater things.

Curfew finally over for England's cricketers. Drinks all round?

Test series begins, with hockey World Cup and return of club football also on the agenda, writes Patrick Kidd

The England cricket team's midnight curfew is over. Captain Joe Root says he trusts his team to act like 'grown adults' during their Test series against Pakistan. Let's drink to that. Will they also make good decisions on the field, having developed a reputation for selling their wickets cheaply? Let us hope that England's top order can do more than just make it safely through to lunch (starts Wednesday, Sky Sports Cricket, 11am).

Pakistan are traditionally strong in hockey, having won the men's World Cup a record four times, though not

since 1994. They opened the latest tournament, held in Belgium and the Netherlands, against England last night. England, who are third in the world rankings, also play India (tomorrow, 2pm) and Wales (Wednesday, 11.30am, all matches on Channel 4's YouTube channel). In the women's World Cup, where the Netherlands seek a fourth straight title, England have drawn South Africa (today, 9am), China (Tuesday, 11.30am) and India (Thursday, 2pm).

But for an intern's inability to blend in against a tree, Southampton could have been opening their return

to the Premier League with a match against Manchester United. That reward falls to Hull City, who have the Premier League's early game on Saturday (TNT Sports 1, 12.30pm). Saints, on the other hand, open their Championship season away to Watford today knowing that even a win will leave them bottom after a four-point deduction for spying (Sky Sports Football, 1.30pm).

Arsenal open the Premier League season on Friday by hosting Coventry City, who are back in the top flight for the first time since 2001 (Sky Sports Main, 8pm). It was only eight years ago that the Sky Blues were down in League Two but under Frank Lampard's leadership they won promotion last season with three matches to spare. First, Arsenal have the Community Shield match against Manchester City, held at the

Principality Stadium since Wembley is hosting a concert by The Weeknd (Today, TNT Sports 1, 3pm).

South Africa against New Zealand may be 'Rugby's Greatest Rivalry', the rather needless branding given to the four-Test series that starts on Saturday, but this is the first time the All Blacks have made a full tour of their opponents in 30 years, when they beat the Springboks 2-1. It comes 50 years after their controversial Apartheid-era tour led to 29 nations boycotting the Olympics in protest. The top two teams in the world rankings both got maximum points from three matches against European opponents in this summer's Nations Championship but will surely find each other a tougher prospect (Saturday, Sky Sports Action, 4.10pm).


ANTHONY HOPKINS.

the new review

COMPOSER.

At 88, the actor has written his debut classical album.

He tells Fiona Maddocks about the life of discord and harmony that created it


2

Agenda

The sharpest writing every Sunday for arts, science, books and ideas

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Agenda 4-7

  • In Real Life Vanessa Thorpe sees Amanda Knox's controversial comedy show; Killian Fox tastes Irish wine; Fonie Mitsopoulou visits 'London's freakiest grindhouse cinema'; and Stephanie Merritt goes on a beaver safari in Sussex
  • The grid German biologist Ernst Haeckel's life drawings
  • Interview The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers on his solo album

Critics 16-23

  • K Biswas meets the directing duo transforming film-making
  • Vanessa Thorpe and Laura Cumming at the Edinburgh Festival
  • Kitty Empire reviews Phoebe Bridgers's expansive third album
  • Wendy Ide on the Anthony Bourdain biopic's recipe for success

Features 8-15

  • Cover story Fiona Maddocks talks to Anthony Hopkins about his new career as a composer
  • Theatre Andrew Hankinson speaks to writer Peter Flannery and director Jack McNamara about staging Our Friends in the North
  • Interview Basia Cummings asks investigative journalist Rachel Aviv about motherhood and Lucy Letby
  • John Naughton on the AI claims clogging employment tribunals

Books 24-29

  • Francisco Garcia meets Spanish provocateur Javier Cercas, author of Anatomy of a Moment
  • Megan Nolan rediscovers Ruth Rehmann's 1959 debut, Illusions
  • Fiona Noble rounds up the latest love-inspired young adult fiction
  • Jenni Fagan on adoption memoir So Many Ways to Belong by Carol Atherton

Puzzles & Television

30-40

  • Everyman crossword, sudokus, Gemelo, chess, guess the picture, cinema connect, Lexipedia quiz and Goldilocks crossword
  • The week's television and radio highlights
  • Barbara Ellen on Mourinho. Is the documentary a special one?

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Follow us on Instagram @ObsNewReview; email us at review@observer.co.uk

Contributors

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  • Fiona Maddocks (p8) is the classical music critic at The Observer. Her most recent book is Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile.

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  • K Biswas (p16) is a critic and the chair of Resonance FM, where he hosts a series on professor Stuart Hall and English culture.

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  • Andrew Hankinson (p11) lives in Newcastle. His stories for the Observer New Review include "Graham Linehan won't shut up".

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  • Jenni Fagan (p29) is a Scottish novelist and poet. Her memoir of growing up in care, Ootlin, won the Gordon Burn prize in 2025.

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  • Abhrajyoti Chakraborty (p34) writes essays and fiction. He was a fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and is based in New Delhi.

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The big picture

Scott Offen's picture of his wife surrounded by foliage offers a glimpse of the magical world that exists beyond

On the cover: Anthony Hopkins photographed for The Observer by Erik Carter at the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles. Grooming by Sonia Lee for Exclusive Artists using YSL Beauty.


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There's something quite mysterious and dreamlike – and slightly comical – about this photograph by Scott Offen, which shows a woman plunging face-first into a thicket of bamboo. Is she passing through the foliage into a secret space known only to her, a magical netherworld? Or is she burrowing into the profusion of leaves to encounter... yet more leaves?

The photograph was taken not in some deep, dark forest with

fairytale energies but at the Arnold Arboretum, a large public park in Boston affiliated with Harvard. The woman is Offen's wife, Grace, who he spent seven years photographing for his debut book, named after her. Offen, who studied photography after leaving a career in finance, was inspired by the likes of Emmet Gowin and Lee Friedlander, who also centred work around their wives. Here, as in those projects, it was clear that Grace would be more

than merely a subject for his camera. "It was very collaborative from the beginning," says Offen. Some of the images came to him in dreams and he spent long periods – up to five years in some cases – obsessively trying to get them right. Others were Grace's ideas and she would direct her husband to capture them exactly as she imagined. "We both tend towards perfectionism," he says.

The images in Grace, which was shortlisted for the 2026 Rencontres

d'Arles book award, reflect its subject's interests in nature and the outdoors, as well as her character, which Offen describes as "very self-sufficient and quite reserved" but also playful. Their shared love of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the Oz books seeps into many of the photographs, including this one.

Those stories are about little girls stumbling headlong into magical worlds. Here, the person having the adventures is an older woman. Offen

says the book is about "coming to terms with what it means to be old, and how older women are invisible in our culture". In Offen's photographs, Grace reveals herself to the camera in all her passions and idiosyncrasies even as she retreats from us, melting through the leaves into a private world of her own imagination. Killan Fox

Grace by Scott Offen is published by L'Artiere (€60)


4

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

In Real Life

Observations & scenes from the world beyond your phone screen

ON THE STAGE

Opportunity Knox

Long before Amanda turned up, the name Knox loomed pretty large in this city, as a byword for moral rectitude. A statue of the reforming 16th-century theologian John Knox stands on a plinth in a college quad high on Edinburgh's mighty Mound. What a slight figure this American in front of me cuts in comparison, at the centre of her own ethical revolt.

She is lean, but not frail, seemingly wrought in steel cable, and mobile too, even acrobatic, as she shifts from foot to foot, talking to strangers moments after performing Cartobel, her defiantly-titled solo show.

"Before I go on, my heart rate races," Knox tells me, "Then, afterwards, I get a real emotional hangover." Her nightly performances take their toll, she says, but are also offering her hope, despite the outcry that met her Fringe debut here, inside Gilded Balloon Teviot.

"I worked out the ideas as I wrote and it began to be about my concern for the safety of my daughter and all the bad things that are going to happen to her," she says, adding that she herself has lived for so long in other peoples' heads, many regard her as a fictional character.

"Mothers come along with daughters telling them it's hard for them to believe I'm real. That's why I like talking live to people in a room and hearing their responses," she says.

"I'm always so awkward," she laughingly tells a man who surprises her by moving to shake her hand after buying either her book or one of the £15 rubber wristbands on sale, relics of the campaign to release Knox and her Italian then-boyfriend Rafaelle Sollecito, after they were initially convicted of Meredith Kercher's murder in 2009.

Earlier, in the venue's Wine Bar auditorium, Knox introduced her sold-out show as the "most controversial in Edinburgh" and thanked the packed house for coming. She then compared herself to a haggis: loved by those who know her, hated by those who don't. It's typical of her efforts to prove herself both lovable and insightful. Just like every other Fringe performer then.

But Knox's show, criticised, boycotted and the target of a growing petition, is not like other acts. Watching her deal, gamely, with the nervous laughter of her audience and afterwards with a queue of excitable fans hoping for a selfie, it is easy to see why some believe that labelling her show a "comedy" was misguided - even a provocation. There are lots of confessional

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shows on the Fringe. Across the hallway, Australian Frankie McVair wells up nightly after sharing an upsetting story of abuse and recovery. Upstairs, festival veteran Jack Doherty exposes his fear of death with disarming honesty, and over the way at The Pleasance, Max Olesker relays the silly-yet-serious details of his conversion to orthodox Judaism. These shows are true and deliberately near the knuckle, but they are also engineered chiefly as entertainment.

What should Knox do then, when the world knows who she is, but often can't recall whether or not she murdered someone? Change her identity perhaps, or instead, take on the public, audience by audience, sharing what she calls her quirky personality - and her anger.

On stage, Knox offers a simple tribute to her lost friend, Meredith, whose family have decried her act as a grotesque sideshow. But the show is strongest when her rage is most evident. This is hard for Knox to acknowledge, she admits later, as so often she has been required to publicly demonstrate emotional authenticity. The infamous cartwheel Knox was supposed to have executed inside an Italian police station, she protests, never happened. She merely tried some yoga stretches in a corridor during a break in a lengthy interrogation.

What really infuriates her, though, is that Rudy Guede, who was convicted of Meredith Kercher's murder in 2008, released in 2021 and is now facing new assault charges, has never been reviled with such venom.

Should Knox shut up and change her name? No, she argues, because that would imply she did something wrong, as well as betray her family and the girl she once was.

Vanessa Thorpe

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FOOD AND DRINK

Dublin uncorked

It's a hot, cloudless day, the latest in a string of them, and I'm standing in a vineyard in north County Dublin admiring clusters of fruit half-hidden by vine leaves. In a couple of months, these grapes will be dark purple and bursting with juice. For now, they're emerald-green and hard as bullets. The fact that they're here at all, open to the vicissitudes of the Irish weather, is something of a miracle.

Lucca vineyard, the passion project of fruit grower David Llewellyn, is a six-acre plot 20 miles north of Ireland's capital city, much of it given over to fruit trees. Llewellyn built his reputation with excellent apple juices, ciders and vinegars, which he sells at shops and markets around the country, but now he's expending most of his energy on wine.

It's not as crazy as it sounds. As the planet heats up due to climate change, the zones in which vines can flourish are expanding towards the poles. In recent years I've tried really good wines from England, Belgium and Sweden, which are capitalising on milder winters and longer growing seasons, with help from hardy hybrid grapes. Even Norway and Canada are at it. But for some reason, despite living in Dublin and relishing Irish produce, I'd never taken Ireland seriously as a wine country.

Then, by chance, I got chatting with John Wilson, wine critic for the Irish Times, and he told me that there are now a few dozen winemakers operating in Ireland. Of those, he named three making properly good wine. One of them was Llewellyn. I decided to pay him a visit.

Llewellyn greets me in his pleasingly ramshackle farmyard, between bottling sheds and an old VW overgrown with brambles. Though he sounded a bit wary over the phone, perhaps not wanting to

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be presented as a novelty act, he is gregarious in person. We wander into a field of rondo grapes - a hybrid variety with Siberian origins that responds particularly well to the Irish climate - and perch on plastic chairs while he talks me through his wine journey.

It began with a work-experience trip to Germany in the late 1980s after completing a horticulture degree. The fruit farm where he worked also had vineyards, and Llewellyn, who had never tried wine before, developed a taste for making as well as drinking it. He came back and planted a trial plot of vines in his parents' garden in County Laois.

Llewellyn tinkered away for years in different locations, but it was only when he bought this plot of land in 2002 that he was able to focus his efforts. "It's great soil here," he says. "I'm not too close to the coast to get sea wind and salt, and not too far inland to get frost problems. It's the driest part of Ireland."

Of course there are challenges. Even the driest part of Ireland is still pretty wet, it took Llewellyn a long time to find suitable grape varieties. But the biggest challenge right now is not the weather, he says darkly. "It's fake Irish wine."

By this he means wine that's grown in warmer countries, then shipped over and passed off as Irish. He's pretty certain that a winery not far from here has been doing exactly this. Aside from legality issues, it gives consumers unrealistic ideas of what Irish wine can be. "People are being conned," he says bitterly. "I mean, who even knows we have Irish wine? And already we have fake Irish wine!"

As for real, bona-fide Irish wine, now is my time to try it. We head for the bottling shed where Llewellyn lays out his range. I'm preparing myself to be polite. Surely, compared to wines I love from France and Italy, this will be a pale shadow - passable at best, vinegar at worst. Llewellyn watches me carefully as I sample.

To my immense relief, I like everything he pours. Some bottles, such as the fizzy red that Llewellyn has made in collaboration with Galway chef JP McMahon, using rondo and a blend of other grapes, are excellent. I couldn't say whether any of it is characteristically Irish, but I do appreciate the blackberry notes in the rondo red as brambles fruit all around us.

It doesn't come cheap. Due to the tiny size of the operation, you'll pay at least £60 a bottle. But when you consider the challenges Llewellyn has faced, and the quality he's achieved, it's hard to begrudge the price. (The retailer wineonline.ie ships to the UK.)

I tell him I can't quite believe that the raisin-sweet reserve red I'm drinking was produced just 20 miles from where I live. "I'm amazed myself," says Llewellyn, gazing out at his plot. "I pinch myself. Did I really make this in Dublin?" Killian Fox

"

What should Knox do when the world knows who she is, but often can't recall whether or not she murdered someone?


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AT THE MOVIES

Grindhouse nights

If you've ever felt compelled to watch something no one you know has ever heard of, Beavers of a Holy Whore, say, or the psychedelic creature-feature Shrine of Abominations, your prayers have been answered. "London's freakiest grindhouse cinema", The Nickel, offers all things risqué: bizarre anime, eroticism, forgotten Soviet realist films, dark underground cinema, martial arts.

The Nickel attracts dedicated movie-goers with eclectic taste – those who have grown weary of the chutes which play exclusively new releases – and the occasional conspicuous finance bro, as it is nestled in the purleas of the City of London, in Farringdon.

As you enter, you're greeted by a mass of film paraphernalia and tar. The grungy bar downstairs is dressed up in posters of women in various stages of undress. A bra hangs from the window in the bathroom.

Every Friday there's a mystery movie. The recent evening I visited, cinema-goers were treated to a rather inspired 1960s Indonesian take on The Terminator entitled Lady Terminator, featuring a snake which resides in the cervix of an ancient goddess. Obviously.

The Nickel doesn't do repeats – they operate on the assumption that they could be shut down at any moment, so they're trying to burn through as many movies as possible. The programming is curated by film-makers, musicians, or cognoscenti, most of whom start off as patrons. Their ethos: "This is the shit that we show, and we'll show it, even if it's to an empty room," owner Dom Hicks tells me.

The theatre, concealed behind a heavy curtain, seats only 37 people. Hicks wants it to feel a bit like a living room. There are no ads, instead, there is an introductory address by John Waters: actor, film-maker, and proprietor of a very distinct, campy pencil moustache. Christened the "Pope of trash" by the novelist William S Burroughs, he bears a five-year-old's princess-themed party wand, "blessing" the room and the "perverts" that occupy it.

Sometimes, when the more adult films are on, people take the "living room" vibe a bit too literally. "There's a lot of freaky-deaky weird shit in these '70s movies that feels quite tonally deaf," Hicks says of the more Rabelesian features. He mentions Water Power, a mafia-financed porno based on the real-life exploits of Illinois's 1960s and '70s "enema bandit", which even they "haven't quite had the nerve to show yet".

"These days, the state of modern film engenders despair," Hicks believes. It's become too "viable"

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Illustrations by Oscar Ingham

a career venture, the products too "business-cardy". Back in the day, the industry "attracted weirdos and maniacs" who "tended to have a more interesting perspective on things," he argues.

On the cusp of his 40s, Hicks has a castaway, beachy look to him. Before launching what's become one of the most talked-about independent cinemas in London, he did what he calls "quite nefarious work": infomercials. "It was the devil's business."

Hicks compares creating the cinema to being in a dark forest with a flashlight which illuminates only the few yards ahead. If he knew about all the work entailed, he wouldn't have started (or so he claims). When I ask about the cinema's origins, he says, "I just sort of did it". He overshot his £10,000 target while crowdfunding, raising £14,000 from strangers, so he says he had no choice. "There were many moments where I was like, 'This is gonna be like financial suicide' – probably this is gonna lead to a literal suicide. This is a terrible idea, but if I don't do it, I'd have to leave town and have a new name and start a new life." Good thing The Nickel has enjoyed immodest success.

Nickel regular John Hayes has visited about 20 times, he estimates, on account of it being a "nice, loose hangout". Attendees are an "eclectic batch", he says; those sporting "Hawaiian shirts, blue hair" – I spotted both at that screening – "but also, just normal, square-looking people." He's presumably referring to both himself and to me. Fanie Mitsopoulou

COUNTRY LIFE

Beaver patrol

Beavers can save the world!" our guide, Rina, tells us, clicking through PowerPoint slides of maps that document the changing landscape around the River Otter in Devon over the five years of England's first wild beaver reintroduction project (2015-20). She's not entirely exaggerating: year on year, the maps clearly show what was once a narrow and tightly-controlled channel expanding into a series of ponds and tributaries as the beavers go to work re-engineering a watercourse previously engineered by humans. I spent the previous night camping at the Knepp Estate in Sussex, perhaps the best-known rewilding project in England; the River Otter Beaver Trial is germane to the work here because its success paved the way for the government's decision last year to grant licences for wild beaver releases (subject to an arduous application process). Knepp has had beavers in a monitored two-hectare

(five-acre) enclosure for the past five years, though when its licence for wild release finally comes through, it will be largely symbolic: the beavers, being highly skilled at engineering, quickly copped on to the best escape routes from their enclosure and have been merrily coming and going from the wider estate for some time, breeding successfully every year (once they have kits, it's considered best for the animals' welfare not to try to recapture them).

A short ride in a bockety all-terrain vehicle takes us to the beavers' territory, and their labours are immediately evident, even if the creatures themselves are not; on a blistering day, in the midst of a parched landscape the colour of an old doormat, the area around the beavers' constructions remains a lush cool green, boggy in places, busy with insect life. One stretch of river is lined by rows of tree stumps honed to points, as in children's picture books, and is known by the volunteers as "pencil sharpener alley". The animals' enthusiasm for felling trees is one of the arguments used against them, but beavers are selective in their lumberjacking, and create the same effect as coppicing in woodland, clearing space for light and new growth, which encourages biodiversity.

The rewilding project at Knepp, pioneered by owners Charlie Burrell and Isabella Tree, has been going for more than 20 years. The concept has always attracted controversy. In the coverage of the devastating fires on Dunwich Heath in Suffolk this month, "rewilding" has been presented both as villain and potential saviour, depending on your political leanings. While the rightwing press rushed to blame the "green agenda" of organisations such as the RSPB for the fire's rapid spread (with no evidence: Dunwich is not a rewilded landscape), conservationists fought back with arguments that restoring habitats to a more natural state is the best way to combat the hazards of increased global heating; beavers in particular can play a significant part in creating wetlands that act as natural fire breaks.

I fell in love with beavers more than 10 years ago on a trip to Scotland, when I took my son, then aged 12, to a wildlife project where the animals had been reintroduced, and we watched them burying about in the loch from a shoreline hide. They seemed impossibly exotic at the time; now there's a good chance their dams and lodges could soon become familiar sights throughout the English countryside. The more widespread they become, the more the evidence stacks up in their favour and the easier it ought to be to allay the fears of farmers and landowners still resistant to their furry charms. In the meantime, if you can find a beaver safari near you, it's well worth going to admire their handiwork. We might be relying on them sooner than we think. Stephanie Merritt

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STILL SHOWING

Observer critics' takes on the events not to miss

Art

"Zurbarán's sense of faith seems to stand outside Spanish art of this era. It goes further and deeper into what it was like, what it looked like, what it felt like, than almost any other contemporary." Zurbarán is at the National Gallery, London, until 23 August. Laura Cumming

TV

"Right from the start, it pulsates with a quintessentially female wrath as well as chilly clinical purpose, with each of the lead female characters doggedly pursuing their own agenda." Furious, starring Emmy Rossum and Lola Petticrew, is still showing on Disney+. Barbara Ellen

Theatre

In Cyrano de Bergerac, at the Noël Coward theatre in London until 5 September, Adrian Lester "moves across the stage like a laser. He echoes the grace of a well-turned phrase by floating an arm as if balanced on an invisible wave". Susannah Clapp

NOW BOOKING

Classical

Colin Currie Group, the experts in Steve Reich's repertoire, will perform a diverse range of the minimalist composer's pieces, from the iconic Clapping Music (1972) to Radio Rewrite (2012). Part of the Edinburgh International Festival, at Usher Hall, on 28 August.

Pop

Sisin Festival, taking place in multiple venues across Cardiff from 15-17 October, already has a packed line-up of the best emerging acts, including Manchester-based alt-pop trio the Orielies, former Porridge Radio member Dana Margolin, and Irish folkie Dove Ellis. And there are plenty more still to be announced.

Theatre

The comedian Russell Kane will take to the stage of the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle, for his first serious theatre role as Romeo in Romeo & Juliet, from 17 September-10 October.


6

observer.co.uk

16.08.26

Agenda

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Ammontista. — Bumendiphan.

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Tracticidae. — Jantou.

The grid

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  1. Opegians: Athelina, No 2-3. Tympaniidae, 3.1.1. Imipepius, No 1.2.1. Imipepius, No 4-5.1. Imipepius, 3.1.1. Imipepius, No 2-3.1. Imipepius, No 4-5.1. Imipepius, No 2-3.1. Imipepius, No 4-5.1. Imipepius, No 2-3.1. Imipepius, No 4-5.1. Imipepius, No 2-3.

The intricate art of the 19th-century German artist and biologist Ernst Haeckel sought to catalogue Earth's dizzying diversity

At a time when the threat humans pose to the natural world feels increasingly stark, the work of 19th-century German artist-biologist Ernst Haeckel is a reminder of the marvels innate in forests, fields, mountaintops, even deep in the ocean. Comprising intricately realised geometric drawings, watercolours and sketches of myriad strangely beautiful living things – from corals and spiders to lichen – Haeckel's work sought to elucidate and explain the biodiversity of life on Earth.

A new edition of the book The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel presents his meticulous creations in almost encyclopedia-like form, with accompanying essays from Rainer Willmann and Julia Voss. For zoologist Willmann, part of the importance of Haeckel's work is in showing viewers organisms that are invisible to us but essential to the functioning of our environment. "Unicellular organisms belong to the fundament of the marine food web," he explains. "As [with] almost all elements of biodiversity, many of them are threatened by human activities in aquatic realms. So access to their uniqueness as provided by Haeckel's drawings may support the idea of not only protecting whales, corals and turtles etc, but the marine environment in its entirety."

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Some of Haeckel's attitudes are hard to defend in 2026: he was a social Darwinist and eugenicist. But these images remain a testament to a scientist who Willmann describes as "a late representative of enlightenment", fighting for science's freedom from the constraints of the Catholic church. Tara Joshi

The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel is published by Taschen (1150)

Haukel, Kunstforum der Natur.

Tabl. 42 — Ostracion.

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Ostraciontes. — Borkovskie.

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Borkovskie. — Borkovskie.

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Borkovskie. — Borkovskie.

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Borkovskie. — Borkovskie.

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Borkovskie. — Borkovskie.


Agenda

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

7

Brandon Flowers

Musician, 45

AND

The Killers frontman on being a father to three teenage sons, his Mormon youth and his country-tinged third solo album

Brandon Flowers is the frontman of the Killers. Since forming in Las Vegas in 2001, the band has released seven studio albums. Their 2003 song Mr Brightside is the longest-charting Top 100 single in British chart history, logging more than 500 weeks in the countdown. This week Flowers releases Thrasher, his country music-influenced third solo album. The youngest of six children and a practising Mormon, he lives in Park City, Utah, with his wife Tana and sons Ammon, Gunnar and Henry.

You've said that a love of the music your dad called 'country-western' was the secret of your upbringing. A guilty secret?

I did feel guilty about it. I felt I had to choose. I was getting New Order and the Smiths from my brother. Then my dad's playing Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash and Merle Haggard. I went with New Order, and I'm happy with my original choice. But as I've gotten older, I gravitate back towards that other stuff.

This is also your most personal collection of songs. In Miss America you sing: 'You used to call me Miss America before you got hooked on speed / Maybe I'll go and get me a Mormon boy / One that will treat me like a queen.' Whose story is that? My sister Shelly. She's 15 years older than me. I was a mistake! I like to say surprise... She got married young, when she was 16, 17, and she was in an abusive relationship. She [couldn't] leave for so long. So many beatings. So much stuff. But when my mom and dad moved to Utah when I was eight, it was far enough away to create an escape for her. These are the things that

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you don't think about until you're older. Now I can see it.

Paradise talks about your family and their history in Las Vegas. What do you make of the city now?

The golden age is gone. There was a sweet spot in the 2000s, when Elton [John] was doing his Red Piano residency. They're pushing people out. They started charging for parking. I wrote an op-ed about it in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Our culture is: you come and you tip the valet parkers. I was furious about it. My cousin is a valet parker, and he pinned my story up in the staff room.

How are you finding fatherhood to three teenage boys?

What makes it worse is they have my disposition. I'm not the most social guy. I'm in my own head a lot. So it's sometimes tough to read what's going on with them. But they're all really good.

We haven't had much rebellion, almost none.

Are they musical?

Ammon is a great piano player, but he loves classical – Rachmaninoff and Bach are his rock stars. With Gunnar, his thing was horror, and that was his gateway to grunge. Henry is a full-on rocker. I need to call Liam [Gallagher] to make sure he hasn't been around my wife. [He shows me a photo] He looks like a Gallagher! He's fully embraced soccer and Oasis. He learns their songs on guitar and I play along on piano. I'm learning all of Noel's tricks. So many great songs.

How was it performing with the Killers at the Champions League final in Budapest in May?

Like a fever dream. The fastest six minutes of my life. Literally 80 per cent of the stadium were Arsenal fans. You can hear them singing along. It was not Paris

My son looks like a Gallagher! I need to call Liam to make sure he hasn't been around my wife

Saint-Germain fans. We never broke through in France. You don't see it in the footage, but my back is to the French fans and I'm playing to my people. I ate it up.

The Killers broke through first in the UK. How do you feel about that two-decade love affair?

Fortunate. People don't realise how it was. We were turned down by every major label in America. Then [now defunct London-based indie label] Lizard King took a chance on us over here. Everything in my life has spawned from that. And I love it here. Here I am, choosing to be here on holiday – and saying holiday instead of vacation.

In an Observer interview 20 years ago, you said to me: 'Dylan said it best. You can't be Jewish and cool. You can't be Mormon and cool.' How has 25 years in glamorous indie rock'n'roll affected your faith?

Well, I have discovered you can be Mormon and cool. But it's been a real journey. I was so young when we started. I was indoctrinated into this church, I understand that. But at some point, you've got to decide if it's going to be your faith or not. That's where the rubber meets the road. And I deepened my faith once I really committed to that road. I don't find it as difficult now to decide what choices I'm going to make.

I imagine spending so much time early on in the London of 'indie sleaze' was a little challenging...

It was. That rock'n'roll thing was still alive and well. We would do gigs and Pete Doherty would show up, and it was like, 'What is going to happen tonight?' That's a tough thing on a young Mormon boy. I assumed that to be authentic I had to do some things. Anyway, I figured it out now.

What does the title Thrasher evoke?

When we moved to Utah, I learned that kids in the country are different than a kid from Henderson, Nevada [where Flowers's family previously lived]. Tougher. I got smacked around a bit, and my dad knew. He grew up fighting and one day he was trying to explain to me how to fight. I'm sitting there thinking, I'm not this guy... But it wasn't falling on deaf ears, because I use some of the things that he taught me in everyday life, or when I'm writing a song. And if you see me on stage, I'm constantly shadowboxing. And I do it on the album cover, and I realised: I'm still trying to show my dad that I can do what he does.

So a thrasher is a kind of fighter?

Yeah, who wins. You thrash somebody, you knock them out. So I'm a thrasher in the songwriting field. Craig McLean

Thrasher is released on Island Records on 21 August. Flowers's UK tour starts in Bournemouth on 14 October.

'Not a fighter': Brandon Flowers. Rob Loud/arcobloud


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Cover story

‘Writing music for me is transcendent. It’s a path to inner peace’

As he prepares to release an album of his own compositions spanning 60 years, the Welsh actor talks to Fiona Maddocks about his musical childhood, his devotion to his parents’ memory, alcoholism and God

F

For a split second the smile disconcerts. That familiar face, eyes heavy-lidded and piercing, forehead broad, jawline sharp, has filled our screens, head-on or in profile, in light and in shadow, going back more than half a century: the inscrutable Hannibal Lecter, villain of all villains, in The Silence of the Lambs; repressed, stoical Stevens the butler in The Remains of the Day; a credible pontiff in The Two Popes, in which he is seen playing the piano; a haunting elderly man with dementia in The Father. The list is long, many of his roles distinguished by cool intensity and a restraint so poised and implacable as to be compelling. He is, no need to say, not the characters he plays. Yet his own self-description, on many occasions, including in last year’s memoir, We Did OK, Kid, is “cold fish”, remote; by habit, a loner who lives by a tough “brace up, get on with it” attitude, protection against life’s pains and disappointments.

Now here is Anthony Hopkins, 88, prompt to the minute, grinning warmly into the camera, in joyfully noisy safari shirt – reds, oranges, yellows – with big orange wrist watch to match, chatting readily on a video link from Los Angeles. The actor’s Welsh inflections are unmissable, voice quiet but direct, laughter spontaneous. There is nothing of the night about him, as so often in the parts he plays. Is this the real Hopkins? Is he now, perhaps, quite mellow? He chuckles at the notion. “Sometimes my wife, Stella, says: ‘Who are you, really?’ I say: ‘I don’t know. I haven’t the faintest idea.’”

Work for Hopkins the actor continues: currently at least four projects are under way. But in these later years, as if with an urgent desire to record those aspects of his life that may otherwise be lost, he has turned to painting, and to music. On 21 August, Decca Classics will release an album of works that Hopkins has composed over more than six decades. Entitled Life Is a Dream, it’s performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra, Bach Choir and Winchester Cathedral choir, and conducted – no small coup – by the Grammy award-winning superstar Gustavo Dudamel.

Hopkins’s good friend Bradley Cooper (who directed and starred in the Leonard Bernstein biopic Maestro) introduced him to the conductor. Both Dudamel and the cellist on the album, Gregorio Nieto, are Venezuelan. Proceeds from the album’s sales will be donated to support relief efforts after the earthquakes that recently struck the country.

From brassy fanfare and march to lyrical romance and Welsh choral outburst, the style is eclectic and skilful – now an echo of Vaughan Williams, now popular song, now Russian majesty. The emotions throughout are immediate: a love song to his wife, a wordless ballad for his niece, a nostalgic recollection of a circus. Where did music begin in his life?

Hopkins, an only child, was born and grew up in Margam, a suburb of Port Talbot, south Wales. His parents, to whose memory he remains devoted, worked tirelessly to give their best to a son who spent most of his school years, by his own admission, hellbent on resistance. Music, though, was always a life force.

“I was six or seven when I started,” he says “My mother bought me a little cottage piano. I remember the date on it: 1827. It was a Welsh piano. A wooden frame. I started to take some music lessons. I was probably too young to cope. I learned to read music pretty quickly but I didn’t like the technical demands, the playing scales. So I wandered away and I got some manuscript paper. I’d write a little tune, but I didn’t have the theoretical technique to really make much sense of it. But I went on, and some years later, I started improvising on the piano more seriously.”

As a young actor working at the Liverpool Playhouse in 1964, Hopkins developed a habit of playing on an upright in the theatre green room while waiting to be called. This was when he wrote And the Waltz Goes On, made famous decades later by the violinist-conductor André Rieu after Hopkins’s wife secretly sent the tune to him. (That piece is included on Life Is a Dream. The major-minor shifts and quirky, catchy, carousel mood have the feel of one of Shostakovich’s jazz waltzes, written for cinema in the 1950s.)

Hopkins became fascinated by the way film composers worked, his interest first stirred as a schoolboy on hearing William Walton’s score for Hamlet (1948), starring Laurence Olivier, with whom Hopkins would later work. “So, as I began doing films, I would ask to go and sit in on the orchestrations,” he says. “I asked George Fenton, who was writing the music for Shadowlands, directed by Richard Attenborough [in which Hopkins played the writer CS Lewis]. So we went to a studio outside London. There was a full orchestra, and George started to conduct and let me have a little go. I was

Continued on page 10

Portrait by Erik Carter

Anthony Hopkins photographed for The Observer last week in the garden of the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles.

Grooming by Sonia Lee for Exclusive Artists using YSL Beauty


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fascinated. Eventually, in 1996, I did the music for my film August, a version of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya set in Wales. I did it only because George said he was too busy. And after, I thought: 'I'd like to do more of this.'

Hopkins returned to that same musical material in Margum, one of the most striking, and affecting, tracks on his Decca album. He calls it 'an ode to my mother and father, a recollection of my idyllic childhood, memories of gathering bluebells with my grandfather in spring'. His recollections of that time have been distilled into something more temperate and poetic than he describes in his memoir, where bullying, academic failure and his own tendency to what he calls 'dumb insolence' are constants.

Have all the repressed feelings from that time been liberated by abstract expression in music?

'Music for me is transcendent – a path to inner peace. The tracks on the album reflect themes of my childhood. They are related to my early memories in Wales, so often heard in the heartbreak of the solo cello. Life is one long goodbye. We say goodbye to childhood, to adolescence. We say goodbye to those things which are bitter. Then, finally, it's the end of it all. For me, there's a solace and a beauty in recording and creating – writing for the cello, in particular.

'CS Lewis says at the end of Shadowlands: 'Why love if losing hurts so much? ... The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.' Those lines keep coming back to me. 'I have no answers any more, except the life I've lived. Twice in that life, I've been given a choice. As a boy, and as a man. The boy chooses safety. The man suffering.'

A lover of dates, of facts, of the thousands of lines of poetry he has committed to memory, Hopkins goes back to his own schoolboy turning point. 'Easter 1955. Just before Good Friday. I was worried,' he recalls. 'I knew my school report would be bad, and my father would have to read it. It was abysmal. The remark was: 'Anthony is way below the standard of the school.' And I remember my father, a baker, who struggled to give me a good education in those postwar years, when people were struggling everywhere ... I remember him saying: 'I don't know what's going to happen to you.' We were standing in the kitchen behind the shop, the family bakery, in Port Talbot. And I said: 'One day, I'll show you.' And my father said: 'Well, I hope you do.' And my mother said: 'I'm sure you will.' And then we went off, the three of us, to the cinema.'

Soon after, seemingly with little direct encouragement from anyone, Hopkins got a scholarship to what is now the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama in Cardiff. Within a few years, he was a member of Olivier's company at the National Theatre (then based at the Old Vic in south London) and in his first feature film, The Lion in Winter (1968), starring Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn.

'I wasn't a bright kid at all. I was disregarded as a kind of dunce – Dennis the Dunce – yet for some strange, unaccountable reason, I've been given such gifts in life, such possibilities. So I think whatever power we have in us, call it God or whatever you want, the field of all being, the soul, whatever it is, I have no idea – except now, at this age, I'm more in touch with it than I've ever been. At that point, 70 years ago, that presence said: 'OK, get on with it, fasten your seatbelts.' Acting requires thought and craft to create. I saw that with Olivier, with Joan Plowright, with Maggie Smith. That discipline is what you need to survive. Otherwise, you sink into the swamp.'

What was the other turning point he refers to, when he quotes Lewis in Shadowlands about the man choosing suffering?

The answer concerns his much written-about struggle with alcohol. There's a sense in which, whereas other personal subjects are off limits, he discusses this experience willingly in the knowledge, or hope, that others with similar struggles may benefit.

'I go back to 1975, 27 December. I was driving my car, going to a party. I was in an alcoholic blackout. I knew about alcoholism but I didn't want to confront it. I realised I could have taken out a whole family by my

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Hopkins with conductor Gustavo Dudamel during the recording of Life is a Dream at London's Alexandra Palace and, right, at the age of three with his father. Charlie Gray, SAS Summit Books

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driving. And someone in New York had said: 'If you ever want to talk to anyone ... phone this number.' And on the Monday morning, I phoned the number. And it was AA. I said: 'I'll come and see you.' I didn't want anyone coming to me. I still had some sort of pride.

'And an elderly lady was there, was very kind. She said: 'How do you feel?', and I said: 'I know I'm in big trouble and I don't know what to do.' She said: 'Well, you don't ever have to drink again.' And she said – I knew she was going to do it – 'Why don't you just trust in God?' And I got down on the street, and an immensely powerful voice inside me said: 'Now it's all over. You can start living ... and it has all been for a purpose.' And that craving for drink left me. It's never come back. In 50 years.'

His idea of God embraces a power beyond, rather than the formalities of organised religion. Would it be right to say he 'believes' in God or is that to oversimplify?

'I'd never dream of trying to convert anyone. But I'm glad the windows were opened for me. Because to live with an atheistic philosophy – I may be wrong, I'm no intellectual giant – is to live with all the windows closed. Certainty is one of the greatest horrors of human experience. Stalin was certain. Hitler was certain. In this certainty, there is murder, mayhem, tragedy. So I think once we open our eyes and think: 'Well, maybe there is something, maybe there is a God,' the shutters are open. How am I here at 86? I should have been dead in 1975. And I say that with all humility because I can't understand it. I look over the whole of my life and I'm astonished by the things that have happened.'

His memoir may primarily be about his own life and career, his three marriages (to Petronella Barker, Jennifer Lynton and, now, to Stella Arroyave), his Hollywood

"I'd find it mind-bogglingly weird to rest my feet on a veranda rail for too long, gazing at nirvana or my belly button. I'd go nuts"

life, the agony of his estrangement from his grown-up daughter with Barker – about which he writes candidly but will not speak. Above all, however, the book, like so much of the music he has written, is a homage to his parents. Despite his desperate wish, growing up, to find a life far away from that small Welsh community, Hopkins's loyalty to them, and what they gave him, is steadfast and moving.

They were there at every Hollywood or New York premiere or awards ceremony, proudly introduced to the stars. They saw the Hollywood Walk of Fame, where, years later, their son would be awarded his own star, the 2,237th, on 24 September 2003 (I include that detail to satisfy Hopkins's own passion for dates and numbers).

'I was so pleased that my father lived long enough to see me become very successful. He got quite woezy. He said: 'How did you do it?' And that stirred in me love and compassion. He had no opportunities himself in life. He worked in the bakery from the age of 14, no education. He was a colossal worrier, and a pessimist, but he had a great spirit in him. My mother was the support, who kept things calm. When I was working, I'd always try to embody my father in a role.

'Because I understood something in him, and it's in my nature too. Work hard. Be grateful. Give of your best. Don't give up. I say that to young people. Life is hard. Life is tough. Don't give up! You have to face the calamities, the calamity of life: 'For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, / 'Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's community. / The pangs of dispriced love ... 'That's where it comes from: Hamlet. The human tragedy.'

Hopkins's description of his father's death leaves an indelible mark. 'He was dying of heart disease. He was a committed atheist. And I said: 'How are you, Dad?' And he said: 'Good God, look – that's my father and my mother over there ... Now where that came from I don't know. A hallucination, I suppose ... what do scientists know? Who can explain the Milky Way, the galaxies beyond? What do any of us know? The next day, after he died, I was walking down through the park in Newport. It was spring. March. All the blossom coming out in the park. And I thought: 'There it is. Life, bristling with buds. Birds singing. Dogs barking. Kids playing. The knife goes in deep. Why love, if losing hurts so much...'

Again, that refrain. He is anxious to state that, in all this tendency to melancholy, he is not depressed, only mystified, endlessly fascinated. 'I look at my life. I'm happy. Childhood, manhood, adolescence. You have success. You make money. Then suddenly you see, on the distant hill, death. And there's a great eloquence, beauty in that. It focuses our attention on what is important. I sound like a bit of a preacher, don't I?'

In 2025, Hopkins and his wife lost their house in the Palisades fire in Los Angeles. With his sister-in-law and niece, they are living in temporary accommodation until a new house is ready. He doesn't dwell on the loss, posting on Instagram at the time: 'The only thing we take with us is the love we give.' He is still busy. As he says in his memoir, he would 'find it mind-bogglingly weird to rest my feet on a veranda rail for too long, gazing at nirvana or my belly button. I'd go nuts'. Films with Richard Eyre and Guy Ritchie are forthcoming, with a third based on Dylan Thomas and another in the pipeline. He hopes to work with Dudamel and young musicians in Venezuela later this year. 'I'd like to write a big, Berlioz-style epic work, maybe for two orchestras and choruses!' Is he anxious about the reaction to his album? There will be those ready to sneer at so late a career shift. 'Worry? I don't give a hoot. If they don't like it, tough.'

Hopkins, a knight of the realm, winner of two Oscars, four Baffas, two Emmys, countless lifetime achievements, has found some equilibrium. 'I'm surrounded by trees and hummingbirds and cats. And I think: 'What on earth is all this about?' I look at my cat. He doesn't worry about it. He has no ambitions in life. But he's such a beautiful creature. Such ignorance and innocence. What a wonderful, terrible magnificence life is. And I think: 'I'm still here. Just enjoy the day, look to this life.'

Life Is a Dream is released on Decca Classics on 21 August


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Peter Flannery's Bafta-winning drama was one of the great TV series of the 1990s, writes Andrew Hankinson, as a new stage version returns to an even more divided Britain

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OUR FRIENDS IN THE NORTH THE NEXT GENERATION

It's not that I wanted Andy Burnham to become prime minister. He'll be another disaster, obviously. But the reaction to the first northern prime minister in my lifetime (I was born in 1980) was helpful. It was like a stone was lifted and out scurried people's true feelings about us. We'll have to pay more tax to pay for lazy northerners. They're net takers. Good money after bad. Not worth levelling oop.

Days before Burnham was appointed, I speak to Peter Flannery, creator of the television series Our Friends in the North, an epic tale of working-class people being let down by politicians. The interview is about his new stage adaptation of that story, but I ask how he thinks having a former Greater Manchester mayor from Liverpool as leader might change things for the north.

"Well, you know, [I'm speaking] as a southerner now, because I've lived down here for nearly 30 years," he tells me from his home in Wallingford, a market town in Oxfordshire. "Burnham says he's going to return power to the north. As long as it's not the northern powerhouse bullshit again, because that was just rubbish. Coming from

those two, [David] Cameron and [George] Osborne, it was bound to be rubbish; they have no idea what the rest of the country is like. I didn't expect anything from them.

"I do expect something from Burnham. I don't quite know what, but he's saying – and I still try to believe what politicians say, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and despite having written about corruption and lies for a lot of my life – that he will revitalise. [But] it's not just giving some power to the north; it's about reducing the power of London and the south.

"If he tries to do it, he'll be absolutely blasted by the media, which is southern-based, London, metropolitan, and I do fear that he might get the same treatment as [Jeremy] Corbyn, and he's unlikely to have a string of successes.

"I have to be hopeful because I can't live any other way. I'm cynical enough without gently turning away from it all and saying: 'Nothing will ever change.' My characters often say that, but I don't say that. I think, down here, nobody cares about the north [...] It's only seen as an issue by people who live in the north and

Continued on page 12

Above left, Christopher Eccleston, Gina McKee, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig in 1996. Their roles are reprised by Ryan Nolan, Sam Neale, Jack Robertson and Scott Turnbull in the new stage version. BBC/Chris Bishop


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realise they're being stuffed, denied resources over and over again, denied access to power over and over again."

"I dream of being able to put things right. Get houses built. And hospitals and schools. And look after the poor and the old people. Take away from the rich people all the money they've robbed us of."

Nicky in Flannery's original 1982 stage play of Our Friends in the North

The north overflows with idealists. It stops us getting things done. Jack McNamara is not from the north. He grew up in Switzerland and moved to Tyneside in 2021 to become the artistic director at Newcastle's Live theatre. Since then, he has looked for stories to tell and, 30 years after it was originally broadcast, he's the reason Our Friends in the North is returning to the stage.

"When I got the job, people who didn't know the north-east were like: 'Oh, well, Our Friends in the North,'" McNamara says. "You just have an awareness of it in cultural conversations," he adds. "You have an awareness of those four actors and what they've become now. It's like a Shakespeare in that sense."

The television series was broadcast on BBC Two in 1996; nine episodes about four working-class people - Geordie (Daniel Craig), Mary (Gina McKee), Nicky (Christopher Eccleston) and Tosker (Mark Strong) - as their lives were buffeted by power and corruption in Newcastle and London from 1964 to 1995. It won Baltas and is regarded as one of Britain's great television dramas.

Watching it again, it wasn't perfect. Implausible coincidences. Makeup that stretched the imagination. For geordie viewers, a stony beach masquerading as sandy Whitley Bay broke the spell - like a London drama with yellow buses. But it gripped the nation, a damning tale of the north's recent past, watched at a time of economic, cultural and political optimism: Cool Britannia. A happy ending was assured.

Then it wasn't. Three decades later, the country we thought was stable and prosperous is skint and crumbling, and angry, and the two main parties that once acted as tethers have frayed to breaking point. It's into that atmosphere that McNamara's new production will open.

He had his breakthrough with this project in 2024, when he was directing The Bounds at the Royal Court in London and was introduced to Flannery's agent. A Zoom meeting was arranged.

Recalling their chat, Flannery says McNamara asked whether he might like to write an extension to the original. "I said: 'No, I wouldn't - I'm done with it,'" says Flannery,

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who mooted adapting the final four episodes instead (written after his original play so never staged) and performing them over two nights. "Jack said: 'We can't do that,' and I said: 'Well, you know, thanks for the call, but ...'"

McNamara persisted. What about adapting just episodes six and seven, 1979 and 1984, including the miners' strike? "I still think that's a story that needs to be told again and again," Flannery tells me. "It's basically the end of the union movement and a massive change in what democracy has to offer people." He was tempted.

"I said to Jack: 'Well, I don't want to write it,' and he said: 'Well, what if I wrote it?'" McNamara produced a script, but Flannery felt his voice from the original had been lost. Then he talked to his siblings, who still live in the north-east. "They said: 'Hang on a minute, it's got to be by you, otherwise people will feel cheated.'"

Flannery agreed. "So I said to Jack: 'Let me have a go now.' I wrote a first draft, abandoning what Jack had written and going back to the original scripts and my original voice." McNamara focused on his role of director, turning 30-year-old television into contemporary theatre. Flannery was writing a new play.

"It just felt like a country that had no real vitality, you know - like in decline. People seemed confused. Nobody to look up to. Nothing to work for, you know, 'Why work when you can get the dole?' sort of thing. Blokes my age, you know. It made me feel sad, actually. I was glad to leave."

Lance after returning to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) from England in Flannery's 1982 play

The north-east doesn't produce people such as Flannery any more - that's my view. He grew up in Jarrow (his grandad was on the Jarrow march) and went to a Catholic grammar technical school. It's always obvious when someone from up here went to a grammar:

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sharp, deeply educated, assured. We don't have grammars in the north-east these days. Now our successes tend to come from religious or private schools.

He did youth theatre in South Shields, then left to study drama at Manchester University. "It felt bigger and more cosmopolitan," says Flannery. "There was more what we now call diversity; it wasn't hard to be more diverse than Newcastle was in the 60s. It felt sort of exciting."

Being away from home was tough, though. "Jarrow is a very working-class town and it wasn't until I went to university that I realised there were people who didn't live in council houses." Suddenly, he was among people "who had different expectations, who had plans" for their degrees. "I still gobbed on the street - much to the surprise of people I was at university with."

He didn't love the course, but he finished it. He did a postgraduate year and picked up small writing

Eccleston with Craig, left, and Strong with McKee, below, in the original TV series. BBC

Neale leads an all-north-east cast in the new stage production written by Peter Flannery, right. Chris Bishop, Gary Calton for The Observer

jobs. He won an award for best new play. In 1979 he became resident writer at the Royal Shakespeare Company. "They were doing all of the history plays that year, so I watched rehearsals and shows, mixed with actors and directors. The only thing I had to do was write them a play during that year."

"I thought: 'Well, I'm looking at all the Richards and the Henrys, and the way Shakespeare crams the stage with a cross-section of society. He's not just writing about kings and powerful people. He's writing about the high and the low. It's what happens on the ground to poor people when kings start to fall out with princes, and queens start to fall out with princesses.'"

He was also influenced by his parents. "They were absolute solid, working-class people who'd grown up in hard lives, hard times, interrupted by the war, poverty, the Jarrow march, all of that - unemployment, hardship. But they sneered at politics. They

absolutely sneered at it in a way that I then didn't, which seemed the wrong way around."

He thought: "Why aren't they proud of their political heritage and what's been done? Their lives had changed for the better, and look at me, a baby boomer; I was given free education, I walked into a job, things are better, surely. The word 'corruption' kept coming up. I wasn't really convinced about this, but I thought: 'Well, they know more than I do about life, and they've learned it the hard way, not the easy way, not through books, but through their lives.' So I spent a year looking at possible corruption in British public life."

He wrote to Tony Benn (who wouldn't talk to him) and Harold Wilson (who said he would but fell ill). In the phone book, he looked up T Dan Smith, the former leader of Newcastle City Council, who went to prison for corruption (over irregular payments for construction schemes). "He said: 'There is a play here of Shakespearean proportions.' That encouraged me, and I thought: 'What is he on about?' I spent a lot of time talking to Dan, who was greedy, but helpful."

Greedy how?

"He wanted to be paid but I said: 'Forget it, Dan, I've got no money.'"

Flannery researched government scandals and spoke to Eddie Milne, the MP for Blyth, who campaigned against corruption in north-east local government. Flannery met Private Eye reporters in the pub. He read Martin Bailey's book Oligate, about oil companies violating sanctions against the former Rhodesia while British officials turned a blind eye. One line in the book said: "Confidential oil company papers would talk coyly about 'Our Friends to the North.'"

He tweaked that for his title. (Our Friends in the North-east would be more precise, but nobody would have watched.) He set his play in Newcastle, London and Rhodesia (the Africa plotline was mostly cut from the television series). It told the story of Geordie, Mary, Nicky and Tosker from 1964 to 1979. An epic. "The play is approximately 3 hours and 20 minutes in length," according to a 1982 play text.

It was performed at the RSC's Other Place in Stratford-upon-Avon first, then at Newcastle's Gulbenkian studio. "I told the RSC that this was essentially a play for Stratford and Newcastle rather than London - in the first instance, anyway," Flannery told Newcastle's the Journal in 1982. Next, it went to London, at the Barbican's Pit. (My secondhand play text had two tickets inside from one of the Pit shows; they were misprinted "Our Friends from the North".) "Spotlight on Labour's worst excesses," said a Daily Express news article about it.

"It was complicated," says Flannery. "For everyone who said: 'This is an eye-opener and I love it,' there were other people who said: 'This is just far too fucking long and it should be on TV.'" The BBC's then head of regional drama, Michael Wearing, was tipped off by Flannery's agent


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and went to see it at the Gulbenkian. He tried to persuade Flannery to adapt it for television, even turning up at his home in Langley, near Macclesfield in Cheshire.

"It took a long time for Michael to persuade me that this could be something really significant," Flannery recalls. "You know: 'You'd be telling people something they need to know. Only 10,000 people are ever going to see it on the stage – you've got a chance to tell it in front of millions.' I actually loved Michael; I thought he was just such a maverick."

Wearing, who died in 2017, had already produced Alan Bleasdale's Boys From the Blackstuff, about unemployed tarmac layers in Liverpool. "I met Alan Bleasdale around that time," Flannery recalls. "We were cut from the same cloth and I thought: 'Well, there is a route here – it is possible to do it.' But at that point, I didn't realise I was going to have to wait 13 years."

Executives moved jobs. Lawyers balked. The budget rose. By the mid-1990s, the country was on the up: who even wanted to hear about housing and corruption and the failure of politics? Then came a meeting in London in 1994 at the Ivy, where Flannery dined with Michael Jackson, then the new controller of BBC Two.

"That meeting was set up as a gift to me," Flannery says. "For Michael Jackson to say: 'I'm commissioning this for production in nine episodes.' I was supposed to roll over and get my tummy tickled." Instead, when Jackson said the episodes would be 60 minutes long, Flannery suggested he'd "fucked it up" – that each episode needed to be "as long as they need to be". Which wasn't how BBC television worked.

I have to rely on Flannery's telling here as I couldn't contact anyone at the dinner, but he says: "We had a big white tablecloth, so I asked the waiter for a Sharpie and I wrote one to nine on the tablecloth and I said: 'This figure I'm gonna put next to them is how long each one needs to be. You need to agree to this or we're wasting our time here.' And [Jackson] got up and left."

Flannery bet that Jackson would acquiesce. And he did. The lad from Jarrow got his way.

"You have to be prepared to lose it all," he says.

"It's nothing to do with leaders. It's to do with power. Leaders are just shortcuts. They get you nowhere in the end. The job is to get people to take the long way round, to seek a little bit of power over their own lives – not hand it over to somebody else and hope for the best"

Eddie, a local councillor in Flannery's original play

"Now this is a barm and no one can tell me otherwise. Apparently, there are some people who might call it a cob or a bap or a batch, a stottie.

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What makes sense in one place clearly doesn't always necessarily make sense in another."

The words of Burnham on social media this month while holding a bread bun – not a stottie. That's the problem with someone from Liverpool or Manchester being labelled the "king of the north": they may not know all their kingdom very well. Hence the north-east needs to speak up for itself.

Two stories about geordies trying to do that.

Jamie Eastlake grew up in Blyth in Northumberland. He used to put on shows at school (Dan Burn, who played for England in the World Cup, took the role of Emperor Palpatine in one Star Wars-inspired show). Then Eastlake went to London to be an actor, because that's what you have to do, isn't it: go where the work is. "I ended up working at Wetherspoons in Trafalgar Square for a year with no money," he says.

He got a programming job

"Shakespeare crams the stage with a cross-section of society. He's writing about the high and the low

at a London theatre, thanks to Edinburgh shows he had produced. He used the £4,000 he received as compensation after an Uber crash to create a theatre company, putting on shows in London, but his business partner died and they lost their venue. In 2019 he retreated to Blyth, and his company Eastlake Productions won an Olivier award for producing the play Flesh and Bone alongside the Unpolished Theatre company.

He sold boilers, painted houses, and in 2021 opened a 60-seat theatre in Whitley Bay in a former Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes club. He adapted Jonathan Tulloch's book The Season Ticket as Gerry & Sewell. It sold out, went to Live theatre, then to Newcastle's Theatre Royal, and was staged at the Aldwych theatre in London this year.

We speak in his office at the Theatre Royal, which he now partners with. "They finally let me in," he says. Eastlake Productions is co-producing Our Friends in the

North with Live and the Theatre Royal. "Getting this region on stage – this region's talent – has been at the forefront of my mind for most of my adult life," Eastlake says. "We want it to be made here then go around the country and push for London."

That's what it takes for someone from Blyth to make it in the arts. Another geordie story.

Sam Neale started life in a council house in Bensham in Gateshead. She played the cello at school. Did youth theatre at Live. Left school at 16 and did a drama course at Newcastle College. Got a job at the Cluny pub in Newcastle, got an agent and got on television. It seemed easy. "I was, like, young and pretty, and I could play the female lead," she says. "Sorry, not the female lead – I mean the female victim."

She was killed in the first episode of the ITV detective series Vera. (North Shields-born Sam Fender was killed in that episode too; his onscreen mum was played by McKee, who was Mary in Our Friends in the North the television series.) But work became sporadic, then "dropped off a cliff" when Neale had children. She did writing and theatre work, but was on an "unscheduled break" when auditions were announced for the return of Our Friends in the North. "Tell me you're going for this," her mother said.

Neale had missed the deadline, but her agent got her an audition at the Theatre Royal. She read the lines, felt self-conscious, but got the part: she's Mary, joining an all-north-east cast, unlike the TV show, when McKee was the region's only representative among the leads. "This is huge," she says. "There's going to be an audience expectation, but that feels good because it feels like it's inviting a geordie audience in."

That geordie audience is very different from 1996. Last month, Chi Onwurah, the Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne Central and West, visited the Theatre Royal and tweeted she was looking forward to the new adaptation: "A play about the North East by the North East!"

Labour lost the city council in May, wiped out by the Liberal Democrats, Reform UK and the Greens. Over the river, Labour lost Gateshead Council for the first time in 52 years, beaten by Reform. Tosker, Mary, Geordie and Nicky are returning to a much more divided Tyneside.

Many of the problems haven't changed though. In London, more than 27% of schools were rated outstanding in 2024, compared with less than 9% in the north-east, according to the Health Foundation charity. Likewise, 70% of pupils in London reach expected standards by age 11; in the north east, it's 63%. Londoners live on average three years longer than people in the north-east.

The north-east has a story to tell, and it needs to be heard in London and across the Pennines.

Our Friends in the North is at Newcastle's Theatre Royal from 15-24 October


14 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

Interview

‘Lucy Letby’s story was like a myth playing out in real time’

Rachel Aviv made headlines by casting doubt on the nurse’s murder conviction. She tells Basia Cummings about her new book on mothers and daughters – and why she never stops asking questions

When the New Yorker writer Rachel Aviv joins our call to speak about her new book, You Won’t Get Free of It, I have a literal manifestation of its themes playing out behind me: pawing at the closed door and shouting “Mama” is my toddler, annoyed that I am somewhere close, audible but unreachable. “I experience that on a daily basis,” Aviv tells me, warmly. It was the transition to motherhood that prompted Aviv, an award-winning investigative journalist, to revisit earlier stories and assemble this new collection about mothers and daughters. But at first, she says, the “mom framing” of the book made her uncomfortable. And it’s true that this is not a book about the faultlines of modern motherhood we have become accustomed to: there is no mention of the trad-wife or Donald Trump or Roe v Wade, or an explicit deconstruction of the ideals of maternal self-sacrifice. Instead, Aviv’s focus is the mother-daughter dyad “that doesn’t often get written about as a parallel”. These are stories about women shaping each other’s lives, “terminally stuck with each other”, often approaching the same events from radically different realities.

Aviv revisits a piece from 2011, when she was 28, about Linda Bishop, a mother with bipolar disorder who is found starved to death in an abandoned farmhouse having survived for months on only apples and rainwater. She retells the story of Hannah Upp, who experiences dissociative fugues and repeatedly goes missing. Here too is Aviv’s remarkable investigation into the accusations against the short-story writer Alice Munro, who was accused by her daughter of ignoring the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Munro’s second husband, Gerald Fremlin.

The stories are intimate and layered; a strong current of empathy carries her through reams of court documents, medical records and journals, investigating not motherhood as an identity, as has been popularised in recent years, but as a closed system: intimate and wholly resistant to a single perspective. Where other reporters use investigative skills to uncover corruption or organised crime, Aviv stays closer to the home, and the heart. “I loved the line that I quote in the preface,” she tells me, “where [the writer Yiyun Li] says that the relationship between parent and child is like hide and seek. When I read that, it crystallised a dynamic that I realised I’d been writing about: daughters who are out of reach, whose mothers devote their lives to trying to understand them, or daughters trying to figure out what happened to their mothers.” Some degree of failure is built into this relationship, Aviv says. “When you enter into a romantic relationship, there’s always the possibility that the level of intimacy will remain. But in the parent-child

Portrait by Maria Spann

In the parent-child relationship, there can be this honeymoon feel to it, but it will end. There is a sense of impending loss

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relationship, there can be this honeymoon feel to it, but it will end. There is a sense of impending loss.”

Nowhere is this loss clearer than in the story of Emma, who leaves behind her nine daughters in the Philippines to care for the children of others in New York. It is an investigation into the exchanges of love, money and power in the economy of outsourced motherhood. Emma tells Aviv: “I took my love for my own children and I put it on these girls, I treated them as if they were my daughters.” Meanwhile, Emma’s own children grow resentful of their mother’s absence. One daughter writes to Emma, whom she hasn’t seen for years: “Someday, when I have my own family, I will bring this pain with me.” You won’t get free of it.

I ask Aviv about the complexity of her undertaking. She is writing not just in the terrain of facts – dates, records, medical notes – but in a psychological terrain that is often warped, and, even to her subjects, somehow unknowable. In a memorable line, Hannah Upp’s mother, Barbara, searching for her daughter, tells Aviv: “I have to realise that no matter how much I know about her, no matter how much more I learn, there’s still a mystery.”

Aviv says she tries to describe “the contours of the mystery”, rather than solve it. “Sometimes the most fruitful conversations are the ones that happen when I am already writing,” she tells me. “If I don’t understand something, I share that with whoever I’m writing about. It can sharpen the space of non-understanding.” Upp went missing for the final time in 2017. Her body was never recovered. Aviv does not try to find it. But along the way, in writing about her, she peels away the layers of psychiatric dogma and family history that seem to have shaped these journeys of Upp’s into the unknown.

Becoming a mother herself, and getting older, did not only reignite an interest in these earlier pieces of reporting: Aviv has added to them, writing in details left out of the originals. “I had somehow thought I was writing from the daughter’s perspective,” she writes. She has now revised them to “redress what I saw as a kind of imbalance, a deficit of curiosity about the mother half of the couple”.

In the original essay about Linda Bishop, who denied to her daughter and to her family that she was mentally unwell, Aviv later discovers she had glossed over a detail: Bishop had been forced to give up a baby when she was young. With a degree of sharpness, Aviv writes of her 28-year-old self: “Apparently, at the time, I did not think losing a child was a biographical fact relevant enough to mention.” In Upp’s story, Aviv omitted another lost baby: an infant born to Upp’s mother who died soon after birth, at precisely the time of year when Upp’s fugues seemed to descend. These details have now been written in.


Science & Tech

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It is a bold admission, particularly given an unwritten rule in journalism, perhaps a hangover from when newspapers were “of record”, in which a published piece carries a sense of finality. Changes are resisted, and usually carry a stern disclaimer beneath the article. I ask Aviv how she sees these earlier omissions – as errors? Inaccuracies? “I think [the pieces] were just focused on different things,” she says. “I feel like I’m a different writer now. Not totally, but to some degree.”

Though Aviv is a well-known writer in the US, she is better known in this country for her remarkable intervention in the story of Lucy Letby, the neonatal nurse convicted of killing seven babies and attempting to murder seven others at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016. Her essay on Letby does not feature in this collection, but haunts it. “Ah,” Aviv says. “I was starting to think you weren’t going to mention that.” I explain that the piece went off like a bomb here when it was published, unpicking the prosecution case and casting doubt on the statistical analysis that had convicted Letby, both in the courtroom and outside it, among the British public.

Aviv says she had originally become interested in Letby’s story after learning about the case of Kathleen Folbigg, an Australian woman whose conviction for the murder of her own children was overturned by advances in genetic testing. Like Letby, Folbigg’s prosecution had heavily relied on diary entries in which she expressed ambivalence about motherhood. “I thought it was interesting that the ambiguity was not tolerated,” says Aviv. “It was seen as evidence that not only did [Folbigg] have mixed feelings about motherhood, she must have killed [her children]. I felt with Lucy Letby, it was really astonishing that even the police officers were like: ‘Yep, there’s nothing about her that would suggest a reason she’d go around killing babies.’” Letby’s story felt like a myth playing out in real time, Aviv says, “an incredibly resonant myth.”

Aviv and the New Yorker, both based in the US, had decided to publish while reporting restrictions were still in place in England, which led to an absurd situation in which the essay was going viral, blocked in the UK, but still available to buyers of the print magazine and online to those using a VPN. Though the trial had concluded and Letby had been sentenced, her case was still subject to an appeal. Why publish at that time, I ask. “I felt that the blockade against media publishing was not effective,” Aviv says. “There was an enormous amount that had been published about Letby, but all proliferated the prosecution story. My hope was that we would publish before the appeal, because I hoped that it would have influence, and prompt a more reasoned discussion.”

Reporting restrictions are rationalised in this country by the argument that they help protect a fair trial, and keep the jury from becoming biased. “But it was all over the Daily Mail, every day,” Aviv says. “So it was restricted only in the sense of offering a different perspective to the prosecution narrative. I understand that privacy is important, but in terms of serving justice, it’s hard to argue with transparency not being a step towards that goal.”

Letby remains in prison – her direct appeals have been exhausted and the case is now being reviewed by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). “It’s crazy that we’re talking about this. She’s still in prison. It’s as if we’re talking about her after the case has been overturned, but nothing has changed.”

Aviv was right to resist the “mom framing” of this book. Her work is at its most powerful when it reaches into the deeper layers of intimacy and uncertainty. She quotes the philosopher LA Paul in her preface, who describes the decision to have a child as a “special sort of epistemic situation”. Aviv applies the condition of transformation to herself as much as to her subjects. Her writing is not fixed; it changes as she does. Perhaps she will always be in some kind of dialogue with her own reporting. Perhaps all journalists are. Meanwhile, my own epistemic situation is scratching at the door. Aviv laughs. Bedtime calls. You won’t get free of it.

You Won’t Get Free of It is published by Vintage (£20). Order a copy from observershop.co.uk for £18 (10% off RRP). Delivery charges may apply

The networker

John Naughton

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Employment tribunals are becoming overworked by a surge in AI-aided claims

“How AI is breaking the British state” screamed a recent headline in the Economist, a magazine that traditionally prides itself on its sobriety. Citizens, it reports, are “turning to artificial intelligence to file objections and appeals, and claim their dues. The resulting deluge of complaints, and demands, will overwhelm bureaucracies built for the age of the post and the telephone. Too little is being done to prevent the state from drowning.” So which part of the British state is grievously imperilled by this technology? Nothing less than the nationwide system of employment tribunals, the local courts that rule on disputes between employees and their employers. These courts are now apparently clogged with AI-generated cases. According to the magazine, the number of people filing claims against their employer rose by 39% in the year to March 2026, compared with the previous year, to 50,000, while the rate of cases being resolved or rejected fell.

The surge in cases has two obvious explanations. One is the vast scope of UK employment law. Until recently there were more than 100 grounds on which an employer could be sued, to which the new Employment Rights Act has now added about 25 more. From January next year, claims for unfair dismissal can be brought after six months’ employment rather than the two years that applied before. And, crucially, employment tribunals are more open to the public than other courts because anyone can lodge a complaint.

The other factor is the easy availability of AIs such as ChatGPT, Claude et al that can be employed to transform a complaint into a superficially impressive document. After all, these machines have “read” (that is, ingested) all the relevant legislation and are perfectly capable of covering drivel in three coats of prime legal verbiage. When the Economist’s researchers were experimenting with a fictional claimant who said they had been bullied for liking horoscopes, the machine pointed out that this is not yet a protected

What I’m reading

John Naughton’s recommendations

Written off Harvard College Lays Off Writing Centre Director, Consolidates Centre is an interesting report from the Harvard Crimson student magazine.

Foot note A lovely memoir by Mumbai-based Dilip D’Souza on overcoming a childhood impediment is Three Away the Boot.

No bots Why Normal People Aren’t Using AI Agents is admirable common sense dispensed by Maxwell Zeff in Wired.

belief under discrimination law, but that veganism is!

This idea of using technology to deal with state or corporate bureaucracy is older than the Economist seems to realise. In 2015, Joshua Browder, a British lad studying at Stanford University, created DoNotPay, a free chatbot for contesting parking tickets by guiding users through a Q&A process to find loopholes or technicalities in them. The app was initially launched in London and then expanded to New York and Seattle. In 2016, Browder claimed that the DoNotPay had challenged more than 250,000 parking tickets in London and New York and won 160,000 of them, though that claim doesn’t seem to have been independently verified.

DoNotPay has had its ups and downs with US regulators over the years, but it’s still up and running, billing itself as an organisation that “utilises artificial intelligence to help consumers fight against large corporations and solve their problems, like beating parking tickets, appealing bank fees, and stopping robocallers”.

Employment tribunals were a radical innovation when they were introduced in the 1960s as a kind of “people’s court” to resolve disputes quickly and economically, with none of the procedural stuffiness of a normal court of law. There’s no fee to bring a case, no requirement to have legal representation and – unlike most civil cases – no obligation in the majority of cases to pay the opponent’s costs.

The Employment Rights Act was an admirable piece of legislation aimed at reducing insecure work, outlawing zero-hours contracts and other unscrupulous employment practices; in other words, redressing the chronic imbalances implicit in contemporary capitalism. What the drafters of the act clearly did not envisage, though, was that one of its unintended consequences might be the paralysis of the employment tribunal system – even though ChatGPT was already old hat when the bill became law.

And the key takeaways? Think systemically, and be careful what you wish for.

Rachel Aviv at her home in New York


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Critics

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Interview

‘If you step outside with us in the streets, you’ll see some wild stuff’

Burnermunde are transforming shoestring film-making for the YouTube age, from phone-shot surrealist shorts to a Nike ad starring Wayne Rooney in a ruff. The directing duo talk to K Biswas about casting on Craigslist, the legacy of Four Lions, and why they have no interest in being future Christopher Nolans

Portraits by Cian Oba-Smith

Late at night, two South Asian youths are captured on camera exiting a vape shop. A middle-aged white man locks eyes on them and confidently introduces himself. Dubbing the pair the “chicken tikka twins”, he goads these “vape virgins” into buying from him a state-of-the-art e-cigarette, the HufflePuff. Dazzled by its glowing touchscreen, like that of a basic iPhone, they scroll through its additional features: a calculator, a weather and messaging app, Tetris. Its wallpaper shows the face of former prime minister Rishi Sunak, Britain’s first leader of Indian heritage. Asking for “11 rupees”, the salesman walks away delighted after the pair hand over a crisp tenner. “Laters, Bombay Potaters!” he shouts at a distance, cackling maniacally. Desperate to try out their new purchase, one of them takes a long, ecstatic drag. Through the cloud of exhaled vapesmoke we see Sunak’s face disappear from the screen as the gadget pings with a text message: “Garry: stop the boats!” The device detonates.

The team responsible for this surrealist short, evocative of work by the country’s finest satirist Chris Morris, are the directorial duo Burnermunde. Arran Ashan and Mustafa “Musti” Mohamoud, both in their mid-20s, summon me to a bejeweled Middle Eastern restaurant, Shishawi, on the Edgware Road. “If we can’t get into a club, we come here,” Onigur Rahman, the pair’s manager, informs me. Over shawarma and fruit juice, they explain that their moniker derives from splicing together two terms. “It’s like a burner Instagram,” Ashan says. “Someone has a main Instagram, and they have a second one for shitposting” – playfully trashing people on social media, which his collaborator Mohamoud believes to be their “common ground”. “And munde,” Ashan continues, “means boys in Punjabi, so it’s ‘burner boys’. It rolls off the tongue.”

Ashan, the son of second-generation British Punjabis, grew up in Leicester. “It’s like a little London. Super diverse, big South Asian community,” he says, sizeable enough for Punjabi pop megastar Jay Sean to tour the area, once performing at Ashan’s school. Fascinated by audio-visual culture from a young age, Ashan would search for his favourite musicians all day on YouTube. “That’s all we watched. Our friends used to come round mine and just watch music videos.”

“We were really into the grime thing back then,” Ashan remembers, with Mobo and Mercury prize-winning songwriter Skepta “obviously the best”: “I think he single-handedly made the UK shake


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Edinburgh festival Vanessa Thorpe and Laura Cumming on the highlights beyond the Fringe

observer.co.uk 16.09.26

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after 2015." Ashan currently lives with the rapper Sainte – a friend from back home – in Beckton, east London, a neighbourhood steeped in film-making heritage. Its dystopian gasworks feature in the 1984 adaptation of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, starring John Hurt, and a few years later these industrial buildings were selectively blown up by Stanley Kubrick, shooting the combat scenes for his Vietnam War epic Full Metal Jacket.

Mohamoud, the younger of the two, hails from that same London borough, Newham, where his parents settled having fled the Somali civil war in the late 20th century. Born in 2001, as a child he would peer at the city from his Stratford estate, watching new buildings emerge in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics. Saturated in media culture from an early age – he confesses to having hoarded free copies of the Evening Standard – Mohamoud "always knew what was going on in the world", in large part because rolling news was endlessly on the television. "We all used it as a clock," he says. "When I was younger, everyone's goal was to be on TV." Making the most of advances in cameraphone technology, both found themselves recording absolutely everything. Ashan made skateboarding videos ("All my friends skated, I didn't skate") and occasional comic sketches with classmates.

Both men hoped to shore up their self-taught skills by studying film at university, but their courses coincided with Covid pandemic restrictions, and they left unfulfilled. Ashan instead chose to channel his energies into filming and managing musicians. "I was doing music-related stuff. I had friends who were artists and I was helping them out." With Mohamoud promoting his own clothing label as a side hustle (financially, it remains his "main hustle"), they first met up four years ago to jointly work on a music video, having become aware of each other on Instagram.

"You just edited random clips that you filmed of your boys," Ashan reminds Mohamoud. "And Arran used to do the same," Mohamoud responds. "I bet that was the thing that brought us together." Ashan notes that in their early 20s "we were not happy with where we were." Frustrated by commercial work, Mohamoud recalls thinking: "I actually can't do this. I'm realising this is just not worth it. And at that time, randomly – it's a spiritual thing, it's crazy – I get a call from Ashan, who says, 'Let's actually make some films, man'."

"We did the Skepta 2015 thing – we just took it back to basics," Ashan explains. "We started off with British films. We love Chris Morris, and Four Lions is my personal

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favourite film ever." Mohamoud, meanwhile, became engrossed in British social realism, citing Andrea Arnold's early shorts, and Mike Leigh's 1996 feature Secrets & Lies. "I've been fascinated with a dark ending, always." Their commitment to considering the cinematic canon and wishing to emulate it is striking.

Bored documenting their private lives, they set their sights on the public realm. "Musti and I, we have a weird magnet," Ashan says. "Shit magnet! I call it. If you step outside with us in the streets, something will happen. You'll see some wild stuff." Burnermunde's early documentaries, 6Till6 (2024) and State (2025), verify this. 6Till6 chronicles a 24-hour jaunt around their neighbourhood, starting at 6am, during which they meet sprightly joggers, rough sleepers, drunken revellers, low-level criminals, black and brown east London natives and white gentrifiers.

State, meanwhile, is a five-minute assault on the senses cropped from four years of their combined cameraphone reels, like Adam Curtis B-roll set against ambient electronics. The pair of guerrilla film-makers capture in cold light footage from everyday urban landscapes: delivery drivers and drug dealers, policing procedures and pathetic patriotic protests, financiers, fare-dodgers, flag-wavers and fist-fighters. According to Ashan: "Our documentaries are real life. They're literally what stories we've got told, what characters we've met."

This year, Burnermunde's talents have attracted interest not only from online audiences but also

more established sources. Offered opportunities to showcase their directing skills, they picked up gigs including the opening credits of Sky's UK import of American sketch show Saturday Night Live, and a Nike and Palace Skateboards ad for the World Cup, in which Wayne Rooney, wearing an Elizabethan ruff and carrying a skull painted with the St George's Cross, takes centre stage. The former England football captain delivers a soliloquy from Shakespeare's Richard II, while viewers travel through time from the construction of Stonehenge towards modern-day moments of multicultural pride. The promise of a follow-up, contingent on England reaching the final, fell through when the final whistle blew in the match against Argentina.

In April, Burnermunde released three short films on YouTube – Hufflepuff, Winker and Beg – each dark satire just a few minutes long. They say that HufflePuff only cost £60 to make, half of which was spent on the e-cigarette. "It's an actual vape that has apps and screensavers," Ashan explains. "So I saw that, and I bought it for £30." The other half went on casting sinister salesman Garry/"Peter Paneer", discovered while scouring Craigslist. "He's so good and he came really cheap."

They direct their mates and amateur extras, including those who play commuters witnessing a woman's excruciating interaction with a homeless man on the Overground in Beg. They also perform in front of the camera themselves. Ashan roped in a childhood friend to act alongside him as HufflePuff's hapless vape-seekers, while Mohamoud is masterful as the central character in Winker. How does a person who, in their own words, only really "did drama in school for GCSEs", deliver such a compelling tragicomic performance of a man disoriented after being punched in the face outside his home by a public masturbator on Boxing Day?

"It's a true story, and it happened to him," Ashan chuckles, gesturing towards Mohamoud. "He's the only person who could play that role." Keeping overheads low is important, but on-screen representation is also a factor. "I think people seeing our faces is to some extent important,"

Ashan says, for the kids that are Somali or South Asian – they need to see it. We never really saw anyone growing up like that. In pop culture, we're just not seen enough." They recently completed their

"We did the Skepta 2015 thing – we just took it back to basics": Mustafa 'Musti' Mohamoud (top left) and Arran Ashan (bottom left). Below, Wayne Rooney reads a soliloquy from Richard II in the This England Nike World Cup advert. Burnermunde

"HufflePuff only cost £60 to make, half of which went on the vape, the other half on casting Garry, discovered while scouring Craigslist. 'He's so good and he came really cheap,' Ashan says

most ambitious project to date. The documentary Injection is a 30-minute character study of Sikh hardman Jaspal Singh Sandhu, nicknamed "Injection", a fast-talking social media influencer and self-proclaimed community leader from Southall, who tells fantastical stories and hints at a dark past. Burnermunde interviews the protagonist as he sits at a park gym with a muzzled XL bully on a leash, and accompanies him on late-night vigilante raids or daytime trips to the Gurdwara. As one adolescent even-handedly says in the film: "Injection is a gangster but also a good guy." At the premiere at Curzon Mayfair last month – a screening that cost more than the documentary's entire production fund – the young audience was exposed to a dizzying array of movie styles, from shaky handheld footage to rich cinematic camera pans, clips ripped from CCTV and 4k Instagram video, grainy newsreel and big budget blockbusters.

Conversation shifts towards Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, shot on IMAX 70mm for a quarter of a billion dollars, and released the same week as their premiere. Do they have their sights set on one day directing a Hollywood epic of their own? Mohamoud, born when "the internet was still new", who grew up on "indie, super-low budget things" he'd seen on TV, becomes animated. "Why, right now, when there's a fucking cost of living crisis and everything's gone to shit, are we not instead going back to basics, using our phones, using our, I don't know, GoPros or webcams to make films? That's what we should be doing right now."

"There's a lot of these film-makers who spend three years begging a fucking corporation for money and it's just like, well, you could do that next week if you really wanted to. That's why I love grime, which was all like, 'Look, this is what we have,' right? 'We're going to use it.' And I think it's so sick that a bunch of youths who grew up on council estates and didn't have anything can make sounds that defined an entire generation."

Ashan agrees: "If you listen to grime, it sounds industrial. It has luring sounds. It became a little bit mainstream, then it became the norm." He contemplates for a second. "So we're just waiting to become the norm."

Injection is released on YouTube on 19 August

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Critics

Edinburgh festivals

Classical

Missy Mazzoli's spectacularly scarring new work explores the devastating impact of addiction in the US through the allegory of a hallucinogenic fairground ride

Vanessa Thorpe

The Galloping Cure Festival Theatre, Edinburgh International Festival

The spectacular opera premiere at Edinburgh this year is a whirling funfair ride that relays the seductive appeal of the opioid prescription drugs laying waste to whole strata of the American population.

Here, the powerful pain relief being sold in bulk to deprived, depressed communities is represented, surreally, by the arrival of a merry-go-round attraction offering ecstatic distraction from the daily grind. Alluring, gleaming stallions with "scarlet bridles and sea-glass eyes" swirl on to an

The opioid crisis opera

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instantly electrified set, created with startling effect by Rebecca Ringst and lighting director Lucy Carter.

Composed for Scottish Opera and Opera Ventures Productions by one of New York's musical darlings, Missy Mazzoli, The Galloping Cure is a scarring, visceral tale in grim

ways that turn out to be more than just neat metaphors. Director Tom Morris already has his own stellar equine track record, as co-creator of War Horse. This one is not for families though.

Mazzoli was inspired indirectly by the Franz Kafka story A

Country Doctor, but the clearest cultural counterpoint to her bleak extravaganza, with its searing libretto by Royce Vavrek, is surely Rodgers and Hammerstein's beloved Carousel. A slick hustler called Lucky is the opera's fairground "barker", custodian of the hallucinogenic

horse ride, and standing beside him Carousel's wayward Billy Bigelow would look quite a homely soul. Baritone Justin Austin's Lucky is pure menace, ruthlessly pushing a cure that makes the townsfolk's faces "split with smiles". An ominous hint of the gore to come.

Theatre

In A Trial, Brazilian star Wagner Moura

holds court as Ibsen's antihero

A Trial: After An Enemy of the People

The Lyceum, Edinburgh International Festival

Whether it's a stand-up routine or a pop-up musical you are watching, the boundary between stage and stalls is routinely blurred throughout Edinburgh's festival season. Audiences are constantly vulnerable to bouts of interaction.

This summer, the same pressure to participate is being applied to those attending the international

festival – that salubrious programme of higher brow arts events that the huge, unruly fringe annually spins around. That means any anonymous theatregoer, settling quietly into their seat as the house lights dim at the Lyceum, could find themselves summoned to take the role of a jury member, called upon to cast judgment on Dr Thomas Stockmann, the hero – or antihero – of Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. On the upside, they would then find themselves on stage with Wagner Moura (right), one of the world's most admired screen actors. The magnetic Moura is the

compelling element in this Brazilian retelling of a production set after the events of Ibsen's play at a public trial, apparently convened, somewhat inexplicably, by the sheriffs of Midlothian. Now the fiery Stockmann stands alone, accused of ripping his small town apart by precipitously publicising claims that its spa waters are contaminated, putting many dependent businesses and livelihoods at risk. In his defence speaks Petra, his loyal daughter. For the prosecution is the town mayor, also Stockmann's brother.

Drama needs jeopardy, or at

least a riveting point of focus, and this one puts Moura – best known for last year's The Secret Agent, for which he was Oscar-nominated, and as the drug lord Pablo Escobar in Netflix's Narcos – in the dock. In fact the show, adapted and directed by Christiane Jatahy, really benefits from two Mouras: one who is playing the good, or not-so-good, doctor and the other, a playful narrator who steps out of character to frame and interpret the action. The Brazilian star is a joy to behold as the narrator, and knows it, talking easily to the audience, and emerging finally as a kind of smiling, samba- sing George Clooney or Cary Grant figure.

As the intense doctor, however, he mostly speaks in Portuguese – odd for a man called Stockmann, as his narrator persona smirkingly points out in English early on. Tracts of court dialogue between Stockmann, Petra and the mayor are conveyed to the audience in surtitles on a large

screen, which later become a feature of the plot itself. The inevitable time lag this causes sets up a tense three- way dynamic between audience, cast and the ad hoc selected jury members. Attention is strangely divided, and the drama – there is no interval – begins to feel like a moral test for the audience as much as for Stockmann. In contrast, the electronic delivery of the verdict at the end smacks more of a brash television gameshow.

Ibsen's story gets under the skin and so has spawned many versions, including Thomas Ostermeier's recent West End endeavour, which also had an immersive, participatory phase. Each retelling tracks a self-destructive attempt to stand up to vested interests. Most famous is Steven Spielberg's Jaws, where the lurking jeopardy is accompanied by one of cinema's best-known theme tunes. Moura even makes reference to the film, in one of this play's many


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19

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Baritone Justin Austin, centre, as the slick hustler Lucky in The Galloping Cure. Andrew Perry/Edinburgh International Festival

Justin Austin's Lucky is pure menace, ruthlessly pushing a cure that makes the townsfolk's faces 'split with smiles' – an ominous hint of the gore to come

The doctor and single mother in the eye of the town's storm – sung with affecting sensitivity by Daniela Mack – is quickly drawn into its vortex by her persistent migraines and her inability to cope with a disaffected daughter. The relationship between these two is the heart of the plot, but British soprano Susan Bullock gives a standout performance as grumpy old Ivona, a patient briefly transported by the cure into a kind of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

Mazzoli's jangling score conjures chronic pain with unnerving precision, although towards the close insistent apocalyptic dance beats are in danger of drowning out the raw emotions so melodically expressed. Fittingly here, as with many fairground rides, the aftermath for the town's grief-stricken survivors is nauseated regret.

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metatheatrical moments, as well as to the Julia Roberts-starring biopic Erin Brockovich, in which the pollution of a real US town's water supply was also the key factor.

But what this follow-up to the original 1882 play gains in amusing cultural allusiveness and technical wizardry, it ultimately loses in live human storytelling. By picking up Ibsen's tale in the wake of all the big betrayals, the shock value is diminished. If the security of Stockmann's world is not witnessed in real time, its loss is not so deeply felt.

Admittedly, the screenplay for Jaws did not feature a high degree of personal treachery either, but it did compensate with a sinister shark – even in Jaws 2. The Lyceum's sequel to An Enemy of the People does not run to a circling great white. Luckily, it can deploy an apex predator such as Moura – with his beguiling smile. Vanessa Thorpe

Art

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All the twists and turns

The UK's largest visual arts festival is a loose and unpredictable collection of events – this year held together by eminent female artists making riveting work in every medium

Laura Cumming

Edinburgh Art Festival Various dates and venues; runs until 30 August

In Edinburgh now, light sifts through the window of Owen John's best-loved painting of that Paris attic where her wicker chair sits waiting for ever. Henry Raehnert's famous Rev Walker glides next to a fellow skater flying high above the ice in Wendy McMurdo's brilliant shot of the rink.

A rope of twisted hoodies rises to the ceiling (or does it descend?) in Eva Rothschild's ingenious sculpture Houdini. The American artist John Baldessari appears against dark velvet, like a Holbein, in Catherine Opie's show of portrait photographs and autumn begins to settle over Orkney in Wilhelmina Barns-Graham's marvellous painting, refined almost to abstraction, in the living landscape of the Royal Botanic Gardens.

Women lead this year's Edinburgh Art Festival (EAF) in every medium. A trio of mid-career sculptors fill the big contemporary galleries. Rothschild, at Fruitmarket, is all spry

wit and inquiry, asking what would happen if she put this old football with that broken china, these lovers' padlocks with that ring of steel.

Rothschild has a tower of brightly coloured mattresses balanced in a ziggurat above a stone, a wonderful retort to The Princes and the Pousince nobody, let alone the supposedly oversensitive girl, could ever reach the top. Her column of footballs is endless, like a Brâncuși, yet deflated. An illegible mass of rubber lines, weaving in and out of a grid, is wittily titled Shorthand.

Best of all is the tangle of curving rebar rods, dangling like a huge net from a hook by the entrance. Threaded among them are brightly painted cast cylinders – a characteristic marriage of industrial materials and old-fashioned craft. Follow the cylinders and you soon start to see a fishing net teeming with shining salmon. This is Rothschild's best exhibition yet.

Anne Hardy, at Talbot Rice, has used the entirety of the Georgian galleries of Edinburgh University to create a pre- and post-apocalyptic landscape. Neon lights come and go in the irregular patterns that give the show its open-hearted title, Feelings. Hooded figures kneel on the ground in attitudes of supplication. Distortion crackles and burns.

Here and there, Hardy has a condensed sonnet of a work: two sticks gently laid together on the ground, entitled Lovers; two feet – one rusting, the other shackled – on top of a broken column, invoking more than one historic past. But the effort to create a single unified atmosphere eventually falters, with too many nameless objects dispersed around this large and unconvincing dystopia.

At the Collective Gallery on Calton Hill, Edinburgh spreading below you as far as Arthur's Seat to the east and away to the sea, the eminent Scottish artist Katie Paterson has conjured both in an enthralling installation, Afterlife. Sweeps of seashore, immaculately created out of pale sanded wood, undulate across

'Spry wit and inquiry': Eva Rothschild's Shorthand, left. Inset below, Wendy McMurdo's Avatar. Keith Hunter

the gallery. Here and there, tiny amulets call the eye like starfish in rockpools. Two kissing birds' beaks, an ear of Olmec maize, a boggle-eyed demon or the entire solar system encapsulated in a miniature bronze ring – these talismans are made to be held in the hand, like prayers, or to carry in a pocket for survival.

Almost 200, representing every civilisation, from Mesopotamian to Viking, pre-Columbian, Indian and ancient Greek, have been recreated by Paterson in newly endangered materials. A little piece of old coral, the rock strata beneath a melting glacier, carbon particles from industrial manufacturing, producing a dense, black amulet of Nephthys, Egyptian goddess of the night: each has its own additional significance. This is not just a display of objects, as they might be shown in a museum, but a whole new form of prayer in which every riveting object now acquires a double meaning.

McMurdo works by subtraction. Her photographs at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery show figures without their props: the skater without the partner who holds her aloft, the child before an invisible computer, hands poised over the keyboard McMurdo has digitally removed.

These images are especially poignant when the scene looks quite normal: children in the local museum, lying before vitrines of stuffed creatures, minus their iPads. Most touching of all are the schoolchildren got up as robots in tinfoil and painted boxes: the innocent age before an AI world.

In festival terminology, these exhibitions are all known as partner shows. And where would EAF be without them? It is still hard to discern what this loose confederation of ephemeral events – block parties

in Craigmilla, queer images in graveyards – and partner exhibitions is for, still less for whom: citizens or passing visitors? This year's main museum exhibitions include three transferring from down south – John and Opie at Modern One and Two.

The Edvardians: Age of Elegance transferring from the King's Gallery in London to Holyrood.

But this year has one last heroine: Jean Watson (1877-1974), who helped buy so much Scottish art for Edinburgh. Part of the magnificent collection acquired through her generosity is on show at the City Art Centre: JD Fergusson, Joan Eardley, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Alison Watt, and – full disclosure, to my joy and grief – a large painting by my own father, James Cumming; the miniature landscapes of his mind and eye all united in a Hebridean tabletop.

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Critics

Pop

Artist of the week

Celestial confessional

The internet will pore over Phoebe Bridgers's tales of heartbreak, grief and bad men – but the real interest here lies in her bold creative expansion

Kitty Empire

Lost Weekend Phoebe Bridgers (Dead Oceans)

"What if I made something that doesn't sound like something I've done, but it's still me?" wondered indie phenomenon Phoebe Bridgers in 2022. A few fond parodies of her songs had been doing the rounds at the time, often built around well-turned, sad-girl observations or melodic guitar dynamics.

Her 2017 debut, Stranger in the Alps, had segued skilfully into its hit follow-up, Punisher (2020), with the singer-songwriter's core signatures intact. In the same way as a superhero is identifiable by their silhouette, Bridgers's soft-focus rock had an indelible maker's mark that helped to establish her as one of the more compelling musicians of her generation, making the leap

from niche obsession to mainstream concern. She is now, in effect, a pop star, but earned her mass appeal by playing thoughtful guitar music – and without any discernible artistic compromise. If anything, larger audiences have shifted towards her sound, a movement that also saw Taylor Swift recording gauzier, indie-leaning albums during the pandemic.

Since then, Bridgers has won Grammys with the all-female supergroup trio Boygenius, subsuming her own idiosyncracies into a greater whole. After three years away, her solo return earlier this year came in the form of a new track, Lost Boys, that marvelled at how the singer seemed to attract immature men ("Lost boys, find me"). Its bittersweet rollick felt instantly identifiable. Yet it was different; beaming in like a scrambled signal, with a distant trumpet sigh nodding to Sufjan Stevens. It was woozier.

Her third album, Lost Weekend, doubles down on this creative expansion. It's Bridgers, but more atmospheric. Most artists have to solve the mathematical puzzle of refreshing their offering while remaining consistent; of keeping creativity alive alongside product management. She navigates this here with aplomb, adding a haze of synths, found sounds, banjo, whistling, the south Asian bowed sarangi and even vocoders to her palette. There are bleeps and bloops, suggesting space travel or callopes, oscillations and weeping lap steel;

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a voicemail from her late father fits right into the sound collage.

A mist flows around everything, not unlike the lacy fug Aaron Dessner applied to Swift's Folklore and Evermore, but more complex – a thrum with left turns. The playing and production credits are vast, involving super-producer Jack Antonoff, indie troubadour Alex G, backing vocals from Boygenius and someone called Son-John Johnson –

AKA Cameron Winter of Geese – on I Can't Wait and Kill Me.

The vocoder hits you first, then the undimmed quality of Bridgers's writing. On The Outside, her voice is heavily treated, recalling both Bon Iver's vocal experiments and, somehow, Daft Punk; the dislocation underlines the feeling that Bridgers is hovering above her own life, narrating, "Crying in a suit and tie / But you should see the other guy,"

she intones, recalling Boygenius's appearances in suits.

Lost Weekend almost feels like the thematic inverse of Bridgers's previous outing. If Boygenius's The Record was an album that emphatically foregrounded the presence of women in a sexist industry, Lost Weekend is often concerned with the absence of men. Bridgers's father Tony died in 2022, and the singer split from the

Other albums

Lost In Another World

James Ellis Ford (Domino)

Being seriously ill can often feel like

crossing the veil to another world, one tinged with the uncertainty of prognosis, and the stillness, fear and boredom of hospital rhythms. James Ellis Ford, an 8-list producer for Arctic Monkeys, Blur and Fontaines DC, underwent leukaemia treatment in 2025, describing the isolating, parallel world of hospital as an "uncanny valley".

Ford's second solo album is a missive from that place, a bedroom pop record made on portable gear and a laptop. It's the sound of Ford reeling; bittersweet songs such as Homesick for Another World reinforce

the prevailing sense of culture shock; his immune-suppressed bubble finds reference in space travel (Parallel Dimension). Throughout, Ford was also assembling the Help(2) compilation album, shortlisted for the Mercury prize. Ford's voice and the minimal set-up sometimes recall Damon Albarn's solo work; by contrast, This too Shall Pass boasts a motorik swing. And while the indignities of chemo are noted, despair remains at arm's length on this record, which gives thanks for small mercies with disarming sincerity and verve. Kitty Empire

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Sunshine Jungle (Catola)

It must be somewhat galling for this most

summery of bands to have missed much of the longest, hottest season in decades by releasing their fifth album so far into it. But optimism runs through Jungle's music and the global success of previous album Volcano might mean the band never has to endure a British winter again.

Longtime collaborator Lydia Kitto is now a permanent member alongside founding duo J Lloyd and Tom McFarland, but her presence brings no notable changes to Jungle's sound. In fact, Sunshine is little more than a consolidation of the smooth funk the band has steadfastly stuck to over the last decade. Songs such as Where Are You Now? and More Like You Do rely too heavily on chopped-up vocal samples and the repetition of their titles over generic mid-tempo grooves.

Far better is the Kitto-fronted

single Carry On, with its serene acoustic guitars, falsetto harmonies and a focus on songcraft over mood. The combination of The Wave, which recalls the more potent cuts on their second record For Ever, and Someday, Somewhere provides a mid-album bump. Overall, though, Sunshine is musical ice cream: it offers fleeting pleasure but precious little nourishment. Lewis Huxley

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Fata Morgana L'Rain (Mexican Summer)

Taja Cheek has made a virtue of refusing musical

boundaries ever since her self-titled debut. On her fourth album as L'Rain, she draws inspiration from "societal malaise", the

resurrection of the Rose of Jericho and the bioluminescence of deep-sea creatures. The result is an assured, shapeshifting yet cohesive collection of pop, R&B, rock and gospel.

Lead single Soutless Cycle pushes its exhausting repetition of self-doubt ("I'm a psycho cycle / I'm a psycho cycle") towards a heavy metal crescendo of distorted guitars and drums. Joly Sth starts with fuzzy vocals shimmering through finger-picked guitars and synths before everything clears like drifting mist. When veteran dancehall artist Screechy Dan cuts through, you're swiftly reminded that nothing in L'Rain's universe stays still.

Fata Morgana finds beauty in impermanence, suggesting hope is not in outrunning darkness but by learning to exist alongside it.


Critics

Theatre

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'A mist flows

around

everything': the

indie phenomenon

Phoebe Bridgers.

Olaf Grind

As she sings on Blue: "Shadows can only be made from the light." Georgia Evans

Beneath Lifted Skies

Linda May Han

Oh & Melissa

Aldana

(Hopkilla)

Bassist Linda May Han Oh and saxophonist Melissa Aldana are two of the most versatile jazz instrumentalists currently working in New York. Oh has been featured alongside pianist Vijay Iyer and guitarist Pat Metheny, while Aldana fronts her own quartet as well as performing with saxophonists Joe Lovano and Joshua Redman. On this debut collaborative album the

actor Paul Mescal in December that same year. Still Standing is a song about the former, whom her mother divorced when Bridgers was 19; the singer has previously described a complicated childhood punctuated by witnessing spousal abuse.

Another aching track, Lost Weekend (Reprise), later returns to Bridgers St and, perhaps, his record collection: "I am my old man's oldest son," seethes Bridgers. "I fought the wall, and the wall won." Some of the most moving details on Lost Weekend spotlight the artist's mother, bleeding at the sink or driving herself to the hospital.

How much of the romantic pain on Lost Weekend relates to Mescal is a moot point for the internet to pore over; the cutting understatements on songs such as The Governor's Waltz provide ample fuel. Similarly, references to "Bobby" may or may not mean the comedian Bo Burnham, with whom Bridgers has since been linked. Bobby, another big indie rock outing, implies Bridgers has retired "a thing in a box I don't fuck any more". The life of a touring musician provides more background colour: crowd-surfing, planes, hotel rooms, trouble sleeping.

But Lost Weekend is not a fame album. The downsides of Bridgers's status are hinted at as bleak asides; on Other Plans, she sings of "Surviving my gift until I get shot". Her succinct, brushstroke lyrics remain arresting throughout. But there is a leisurely confidence, too, in the sound experiments here, on interstitial tracks such as Panorama.

There are other instances when the sound design takes over completely, as on the second half of the title track. Gasps alternate with galloping electronics, while cross-fades mash up other music like spinning a radio dial. Many other great lyricists allow their instrumentation and arrangements to do a great deal of the talking – Bill Callahan springs to mind. Bridgers's increased assurance in her musical storytelling is Lost Weekend's greatest find.

duo now channel the free-flowing energy of an intimate club set into imaginative takes on jazz standards.

The Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie tune Anthropology sets a sprightly tone, weaving flashes of the original's melody with muscular question-and-answer exchanges. Other up-tempo highlights include the fluid harmonics of John Coltrane's 26-2 and the swirling patterns of Sam Rivers's Cyclic Episode.

The pair draw from a deep well of improvisatory inspiration, with Oh veering between high and low registers on Herbie Hancock's The Sorcerer and Aldana producing a stunning solo over Wayne Shorter's Dance Cadaverous. These are virtuosic dialogues between a duo that could rival any larger ensemble. Ammar Kalla

Theatre

Much Ado About

Love's Labours

Tom Littler's open-air double bill ingeniously merges Shakespeare's comedies either side of wartime, drawing out the joys of wordplay and variety. Plus, the Globe's light-footed flamenco staging

'Exact playing all round': James Sheldon as Benedick and Phoebe Pryce as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing.

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Susannah Clapp

Love's Labours Lost: Much Ado About Nothing

Thomas's College, Richmond; until 22 August

Love's Labours Lost

Globe theatre, London SE1; until 13 September

What a radiant day. Open-air theatre is rarely so breezily triumphant: double bills seldom so fleet and coherent. Tom Littler, bringing together Love's Labours Lost and Much Ado About Nothing, and blessed with the sun, has dodged the peril of inaudibility – his actors, without mics, are utterly clear – and of being swamped by surroundings. On the hoof while his Orange Tree theatre is being renovated, Littler's stagings, co-produced with the Guildford Shakespeare Company, take place in the grounds of Thomas's College: the turrets and pale stone a suitable courtly background, a massive wide-spreading fir a handy hiding place for crucial eavesdropping. Long shadows behind the stage suggest an uncertain past and future.

The chimes of church bells, announcements from the "BBC Home Service", the boom of a bomber transplant the action to the 1930s, with Matthew Floyd Jones's precise score offering hints of swoony Al Bowly, dance music, and, to accompany a bungling plod, comic piano notes. Neil Irish makes his spare set luscious with telling costumes: boaters, waistcoats with bright silk linings, slinky dresses cut on the bias, nurses' crisp uniforms topped with origami caps, two-tone flatties and T-bar sandals.

The triumph is to plait together the two plays, their characters merged, their histories interrupted by the Second World War. Love's Labours Lost's Berowne is welded, completely convincingly, to Much Ado About Nothing's Benedick, becoming Benedick Berowne. Some lines from Henry V are cleverly imported to indicate (along with some lines from Littler) how a benign character in one play "has to malice turned" in the next: the memory of "legs and arms and heads, chopped off" has traumatised him. The high-velocity word-spinning of Love's Labours Lost – an "almo-basket of words" – develops into the honed dialogue of Much Ado About Nothing.

Steadied by age, soured by war, couples and clowns settle into existences more purposeful, less

self-intoxicated. James Sheldon's spot-on bluff Benedick is flattered into love, registering his feelings with comical surprise. Phoebe Pryce's Beatrice is shocked into affection; the episode in which she overhears her companions talking about her is, unusually, not jocular but an occasion of painful self-awareness, epitomising her subtle performance of tear-haunted sharpness. There is exact playing all round: Sarah Gohran in particular is authoritatively elegant as "an aristocrat", her voice sounding as if it is pinging off a chandelier.

It is easy for Love's Labours Lost to be clobbered by its own wise words: "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it." Most things are said twice: in synonyms, repetitions, rephrasings, doublings up; many things are done twice. The romance is not with a person but with wordplay. It is hard to achieve both drive and intelligibility but Littler's production beautifully makes clear the way the plot spins on variations, laid out like an Elizabethan knot garden.

The play's difficulties and allures ring out in a flamenco staging at the Globe. Spanglishing the action, mixing professional dancers with actors newly trained in flamenco – the choreography is by Carmen Igarza – Indiana Lown-Collins has produced a giddy evening, coherent on its own terms, with crackle between Philip Arditti's particularly good Berowne and Itea Segura's Rosaline, and a commanding princess in Norah Lopez Holden. Reinvention is matched by gusto. A deer hunt becomes a bull fight: visually mesmerising, evoking a different life of the heart. Jokes about tricky vocabulary are adapted: "remuneration" becomes "remuneration".

Even a pageant of the Worthies has impact. I rarely long for a Shakespearean play within a play, stuffed with effortful archaic jokes and gratuitous mockery of humble performers. Yet here the giant heads of Gloriana and Hercules wobble on with carnival zest. There is plenty of larky innuendo. Paper fans are wafted at fannies, and wagged as penises.

Most impressively, Lown-Collins finds a match to the twist and thrust of the verse in flamenco. Each stamp of the foot (apparently some male actors resisted wearing heeled boots but are now devotees), each turn of the hand and roll of the shoulder becomes a debating point or a beckoning. The result is a vivid visual and sonic map. Yet Love's Labours Lost exults in and satirises "taffeta phrases". Capturing the dynamic and attitude is not enough. Particularities of vocabulary are always essential in Shakespeare; they smuggle their way into audiences' lives. Thanks to Littler, whose labours look like love, I now consider the afternoon as "the posterior of the day".

Observer subscribers can get 10% off tickets to Love's Labours Lost at the Globe. Visit theobserver.tixculture.com


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Critics Film

Film of the week

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Dominic Sessa, playing the young Anthony Bourdain, 'seems to have cornered the market in gauche, angular know-it-alls'. A24/Saacia Paxas

with the bar staff, he is forcibly evicted from an unassuming seafood shack. Finding him passed out in the gutter several hours later, the chef-proprietor (a soulful Antonio Banderas) takes pity on him. The following day Tony wakes, awash in a tide of morning-after shame, in a hammock hanging on the porch of the chef's modest beach house. Tony's wallet is empty, and he has no way of getting home. So he throws himself on the mercy of the chef, bartering kitchen grunt work for a few more nights in the hammock.

The combustible kitchen atmosphere, with its machismo and slicing banter between outlaw sous chef Sal (Leo Woodall, excellent) and kitchen hand Stavros (Stavros Halkias), is a revelation. All dangerous naked flames and sick burns, it is catnip to the kind of teenager who thinks it's cool to walk around with nunchucks tucked into the waistband of his jeans. There is plenty of biting dialogue, but the real nourishment of the screenplay comes from the positioning of the young Tony between the duelling influences of bad boy Sal and idealistic chef – both of whom, the film suggests, leave their mark on the man he will become.

This is an audaciously entertaining picture – crisply edited, nostalgic without toppling into sentimentality. It marks a departure for the idiosyncratic Canadian indie director Matt Johnson, whose previous work includes Blackberry and the recent lo-fi time-travel flick Nirvanna the Band the Show the Movie. His regular collaborator Jay McCarrol provides the rich score that ties the film together, with a sprinkle of punchy, period- appropriate needle drops – Eric Burdon, the Stooges, Richard & Linda Thompson – providing an appetising garnish.

This is Johnson's first Hollywood production and perhaps his most conventional picture to date. But while Tony may lack the cult potential of the director's previous work, he injects enough of his off- kilter perspective to avoid turning the origin story of this complex culinary maverick into a cliche.

The boy who became Bourdain

An audacious biopic captures a complex character in the making as it charts one frenzied, formative year in the life of the American celebrity chef

Wendy Ide

Tony (106 mins, 15) Directed by Matt Johnson; starring Dominic Sessa, Antonio Banderas, Emilia Jones

The key to a great biopic? Economy. Too many biographical dramas cram in every conceivable fact and every significant event so that the resulting endurance-testing slog extinguishes any spark of spirit and personality from the story. Tony takes the opposite approach, tackling just the prologue rather than the main chapters of a life. It's a compelling snapshot of an abrasive, intriguing character in the making.

The film captures a single formative year in the life of the chef- turned-writer-turned-television presenter Anthony Bourdain, who died in 2018 aged 61. The year is 1975. Tony, played by The Holdovers star Dominic Sessa, is 19 years old. Fuelled by booze, bullshit and self- belief, he rocks up in Provincetown, Cape Cod in pursuit of a girl. He hopes to dazzle her with his literary ambitions. Instead, he ends up washing dishes in a restaurant kitchen, an experience that will change the course of his life.

Equal parts insolence and innocence, teenage Tony is unapologetically obnoxious. A disarming opening quote from Bourdain's celebrated book Kitchen Confidential sets the scene: "I was,

to be frank, a spoiled, miserable, narcissistic, self-destructive and thoughtless young lout, and badly in need of a good ass-kicking." We can't say we weren't warned. Sessa's Tony, glowering through his dishevelled, deep-fried mop of hair, is so earnest about his intellectual pretensions that you almost squirm out of your seat. He's a galloping pillock, an effortless and thoughtless liar, a sexual harassment case waiting to happen. But despite his carefully cultivated man-of-the-world persona, he is deeply impressionable.

Sessa builds on the promise of his star-making Holdovers performance as an obstreperous high-school student abandoned by his family over the winter break. With these two lead roles, plus a jerk-for-hire supporting turn in Now You See Me: Now You Don't, Sessa seems to have cornered the market in gauche, angular know-it-alls. As Tony, he once again puts to good use his pasted-on superior sneer, but it would be interesting to see him play another type entirely.

The turning point in Tony's life is that first night in Provincetown. Sloppy drunk and overly handsy

"Tony, glowering through his dishevelled, deep-fried mop of hair, is so earnest about his intellectual pretensions that you almost squirm out of your seat


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Architecture

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'Preposterous dino carnage': the suburban sci-fi thriller The End of Oak Street. Below, Sian Clifford in Lady.

And the rest... by Wendy Ide

The End of Oak Street

(99 mins, 12A) Directed by David Robert Mitchell; starring Anne Hathaway, Ewan McGregor, Maisy Stella

The thing about science fiction is that, for the fiction to work, there needs to be a kernel of credibility in the science. David Robert Mitchell's new film, which posits that a chunk of early 1980s American suburbia could swap places with a piece of prehistoric landscape, complete with rampaging dinosaurs, seems to believe that namechecking Carl Sagan a couple of times will suffice as an explanation. It really doesn't. But that's only one of the potential problems with this high-concept family adventure starring Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor.

The Spielbergian adventure unfolds against a backdrop of picket fence-perfect Americana, accompanied by a breezy, John Williams-style score punctuated by shots of neighbours getting their guts pecked out by prehistoric carrion eaters. It shouldn't work at all. And yet the fact that I didn't believe a moment in no way stopped me from immensely enjoying the preposterous dino carnage.

Lady

(95 mins, 15) Directed by Samuel Abrahams; starring Sian Clifford, Laurie Kynaston, Olisa Odele

"I was the face of Royal Ascot, not once but twice," brays aspiring influencer Lady Isabella (a gloriously flamboyant Sian Clifford). She manoeuvres her magenta lips into a come-hither pout and thrusts a drink into the hands of hapless TV director Sam (Laurie Kynaston), hired to shoot a Netflix reality show about her creative endeavours. Except Netflix knows nothing about the show, and Isabella, rattling around her stately home with only her endangered species taxidermy for company, is clearly deluded.

Although this offbeat mockumentary by Samuel Abrahams starts out skewering an all too familiar stereotype – the talent-free, fame-bungry egotist who believes that celebrity and

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adoration is their right – what makes the picture intriguing is how far it diverges from the satirical mock-doc formula. A surreal narrative swerve brings a touch of absurdity to the story while at the same time bolstering our sympathy for this lonely, eccentric woman who just wants to be seen. Not everything works – I remain unconvinced that magic mushrooms can ever be fully justified as a plot device – but Clifford is a hoot.

Sunny Dancer

(106 mins, 15) Directed by George Jaques; starring Bella Ramsey, Ruby Stokes, Neil Patrick Harris

The Last of Us actor Bella Ramsey elevates this likable but formulaic British coming-of-age feature with a performance so emotionally forceful that we barely notice the lingering question marks surrounding an unexpected third-act reveal.

Ramsey plays 17-year-old cancer survivor Ivy, who reluctantly attends what she dismissively describes as "chemo camp" – a four-week-long residential in Scotland for teenagers who share her diagnosis. Ivy is still consumed by a simmering anger about the arbitrary unfairness of cancer; she meets the happy-clappy optimism of the camp with a hostility so intense that it probably registers on the Richter scale.

But, mirroring the striking backdrop, Ivy's horizons broaden as she bonds with a core group of friends and starts a romance with a sweet, gentle boy named Jake (Daniel Quinn Toye). There's an erratic messiness to the story that feels authentically adolescent in approach, yet beneath the generic summer camp shenanigans, there's an earnest exploration of the way that coming close to death can fundamentally shift the way you live.

A voyage of rediscovery

Six years and £20m later, Hull's revamped nautical museum reopens carrying an emotional charge along with its history of life on the docks and at sea

Rowan Moore

Hull Maritime Museum Queen Victoria Square, Hull

Hull was built on water. It wasn't Venice, exactly, but a chain of large industrious docks ran through its centre from one of the city's two rivers, the Humber, to the other, the Hull. The dock offices were at a crucial junction of two of these docks with the land. The top-heavy, three-domed pavilion, which was completed in 1871, is thickly laden with pilasters and arches in an eclectic, Italianate, mannerist-horoque style and nautically themed bas reliefs.

The docks are now partly filled in, but the offices' location still makes it a fitting home for the Hull Maritime Museum, here since 1975, given how intertwined the city's life has always been with the wealth, wonders, dangers and hardship of the sea. It has now reopened after a six-year closure for a £20.6m refurbishment, with its public spaces doubled and 50% more exhibits on display.

The museum's interior, like its elevations, bursts with stuff: with scrimshaw, model ships of stunning precision, a stuffed polar bear, whale skeletons, Arctic outfits, medicines, pistols, harpoons, a wooden dog figurehead, repurposed narwhal horns, and keepsakes given by mariners to their families.

The objects communicate something of the ingenuity, poetry, fear, courage, boredom, longing and camaraderie of whaling and fishing. The museum also tells the stories of life and work on land, with exhibits on the orphanages made tragically necessary by losses – an estimated 6,000 deaths over about 150 years – in the fishing fleets. It honours Lillian Bilocca and her band of "headscarf revolutionaries", who, after the deaths of 58 men and the destruction of three trawlers off Iceland in 1968, successfully campaigned for higher safety standards.

The place carries an emotional charge and a significance that you don't always find in museums, embodied by a room dedicated to a written ledger of those who died, now augmented by a digital version. The renovation, by the architects Purcell and the contractors Simpson of York, is about making the building work better and bringing out its character. They opened up the second floor, formerly offices and storage, as new galleries, and added

ramps and lifts. They turned an old light well into an atrium. They've repaired metalwork and plaster. They've installed a staircase up which the public can access one of the domes, giving views of the city. They commissioned Angus Ross, a sustainable furniture maker from Perth and Kinross, to create benches in the shape of waves and twisting balusters on the stairs. The exhibition designers Haley Sharpe Design have come up with multilayered displays made up of objects and of still and moving images.

It makes for a busy, crowded experience, the more so because some of the old building's spaces are tight. This is definitely better; more in the spirit of the collections and the architecture than being airy and minimal, though, at times, it seems as if the new work is trying too hard to get noticed – for example, with the wavy benches, and steelwork that looks like ribs and vertebrae. At other times, perhaps due to budget constraints, some of the finishes and details – of, for instance, the new ramps – look crude and basic.

The museum's interior bursts with stuff: scrimshaw, model ships of stunning precision, a stuffed polar bear, whale skeletons and harpoons

Meanwhile, the renovated museum is part of a wider £70m programme called Maritime Hull, funded by Hull City Council, the National Heritage Lottery Fund and charitable trusts, that connects it with other public places and heritage sites, such as the Spurn lightships, which has been open to the public since March, and the restoration on the Arctic Corsair trawler, which is still a work in progress.

Collectively, these projects are a legacy of Hull's reign as city of culture in 2017. The programme feels like a meaningful and valuable investment, because it is rooted in the history of a unique and extraordinary place.

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'It makes for a busy, crowded experience': the Age of Sail gallery at the reopened Hull Maritime Museum. Huffson+Crow


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Books

Interview

'The only rule is that there are no rules'

Spanish author Javier Cercas broke literary convention for his acclaimed book about the 1981 failed military coup that rocked his country, as he tells Francisco Garcia

Javier Cercas greets me at the front gate to his house in Verges, the small town in Catalonia that the author, one of Spain's most famous and provocative living writers, calls home. We make for his office; a room lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases containing volumes in Spanish, English and French. Cercas – an avuncular, slightly impish figure in his mid-60s – eases into the black leather chair behind his paper-strewn desk. The reason for our meeting is the new English language edition (in a translation by Anne McLean) of Anatomy of a Moment, Cercas's epic and remorselessly detailed retelling of Spain's thwarted 1981 coup d'état. At 6.23pm on 23 February that year, a disgruntled colonel, Antonio Tejero, burst into the Spanish parliament in Madrid, accompanied by 200 rogue civil guards. Their mission was clear, its logic unwavering.

General Franco had finally died in 1975 after a prolonged illness. Six years later, the nation's fledgling post-dictatorship experiment with democracy had proved, in the eyes of the plotters, an ugly aberration. They demanded a return to authoritarian rule, ideally under a military junta. As the soldiers began firing, the assembled politicians took cover. Three men refused to be cowed: Adolfo Suárez, the outgoing prime minister, who had done much to guide Spain deftly out of authoritarianism; Gutiérrez Mellado, a right-leaning general, who courageously advanced on Tejero; and Santiago Carrillo, long-standing head of the Communist party, which had been freshly legalised after 40 years of state repression.

The attempted coup was broadcast live on radio and filmed by operators from national television, though it was broadcast only after the parliament's

liberation the next day. Few of modern Spain's foundational moments are as potent. If now generally understood as the triumph of democracy over the far right, this conclusion was by no means preordained. 'All Spaniards have a theory on the coup d'état,' Cercas says. 'If you were alive at the time,' he continues, 'you almost certainly remembered where you were.' But memories are often unreliable: many recalled watching it unfold in real time on television, even though no such transmission occurred. 'After all,' Cercas writes in his book's preface, 'there are reasons to interpret the coup as the fruit of a collective neurosis. Or of collective paranoia. Or, more precisely, of a collective novel.'

In the mid-2000s, Cercas set to work rendering the coup into fiction. His 400-page first draft was 'a strange experimental version of The Three Musketeers'. It was one of the great creative crises of his life. 'If I show you my [research] on 23 February, it's like that,' he tells me, making a comically large gap with his hands. 'I talked to many people and reread everything. And I realised that what I had didn't work. I remember very well the feeling that I had made a mistake... that it had no tension. The [coup] was like JFK's assassination. It was, in itself, a fiction.'

There was only one way for Cercas to render the event and its profound aftershocks, as well as its revolving cast of sometimes heroic, sometimes maddeningly cynical characters. Their mysteries did not require much in the way of further embellishment. He would stick purely to the facts, shredding the baggy first draft and beginning afresh. If it felt like 'reality was demanding a novel on the coup', he later wrote, he could 'try to understand it without the powers and liberty of fiction, [which] is the

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challenge this book sets itself'. The result is a strange, often propulsive book that resists easy categorisation. It is factual and minutely researched, and Fitzcarraldo Editions will publish it with a white cover, as it does with all its nonfiction books. But the form is recognisably novelistic, with frequent shifts in perspective and bouts of repetition, connoting the psychological state of its protagonists. Cercas, a sly, just about omniscient narrator, hovers above the fray, qualifying and contextualising at regular intervals. 'A novel without fiction? What the hell is that?' Cercas says. 'Why not? Novels are the genre of absolute freedom.' That, Cercas says, is the gift that Cervantes, the first and greatest Spanish novelist passed

down with Don Quixote. 'The only rule is that there are no rules. You can do whatever you want. And I only obey my mum or Cervantes. So I said: 'What the hell, let's go for it.'

Readers should always take such writerly proclamations with a pinch of salt. This is doubly true when it comes to Cercas. For the past three and a half decades, few other European authors have written with such alacrity about collective historical memory and its limitations.

Born in 1962 in Ibahernando, a village in a province of Extremadura, Cercas moved to Catalonia as a child. Today he splits his time between Barcelona

and Verges. By his own account, he lives quietly, mostly eschewing literary high society. But a private man can also be an intensely public figure. Over the past decade, Cercas has used his column in El País to rail against the rising tide of 'national populism' in Spain and beyond. Pro-Europe and anti-Catalan independence in his outlook, Cercas jokingly takes me to task for the toxic legacy of Brexit, an event he sees as a peerless act of national self-delusion.

'Separation [is not] independence. Spain is happily not independent. I'm so happy not to be independent. We depend on Europe. We have a common coin [and] common justice. We are a confederation.' Independence of the Brexit kind, he adds, is an impossibility or 'an


This week

Rereading Illusions Megan Nolan on the 1959 debut from the 'singular and neglected' German author Ruth Rehmann

Château Rouge Abhrajyoti Chakraborty reviews Amit Chaudhuri's novel about a writer on a fellowship to Paris

Books

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

25

'My little boy' Jenni Fagan on So Many Ways to Belong, Carol Atherton's touching memoir of adopting a child

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'Novels are the genre of absolute freedom': Javier Cercas.

Berta Vicente Salas for The Observer

'The coup was like JFK's assassination. It was, in itself, a fiction'

enormous romantic lie'. This is one of the central arguments of his work: that private and collective reckonings with history are often built on comforting, destructive falsehoods.

Cercas is often compared to the French author Emmanuel Carrère, who is also renowned for his audacious genre blurring. It's a comparison Cercas doesn't seem to mind. '[Carrère] once told me, 'When French writers imitate me, they say they're imitating you. And when Spanish writers imitate you, they say they're imitating me.'

Cercas's 2001 book Soldiers of Salamis charted a forgotten incident from the Spanish Civil War. In 1939, Rafael Sánchez Mazas, a writer and founder of Spain's fascist party, the Falange, faced a republican firing squad in a village north of Barcelona. Mazas fled into the nearby woods after the bullets had miraculously failed to kill him. A republican soldier found him hiding in a ditch but allowed him to escape. The book's narrator is a hard-up novelist called Javier Cercas, who becomes obsessed with finding the forgotten republican. It's a redemptive, quixotic project, both personal and collective. 'Three things had just happened,' our narrator tells us. 'First my father had died; then my wife had left me; finally, I'd given up my literary career.'

The fictional Cercas eventually finds the forgotten soldier in a French nursing home, with the help of supporting characters including the Chilean novelist Roberto Bolario. But is the elderly soldier named Antoni Miralles the right man? The question is never resolved. Soldiers of Salamis welded together fact and fiction. The 'real' Cercas was happily married, his father was still alive, and his literary career was in a healthy condition. And while Sánchez Mazas was a well-known historical figure, Antoni Miralles, the gruff republican saviour, is mostly invented. The novel has sold more than a million copies around the world. 'It was a book that presented itself as a nonfiction, a true tale, but it was false. And I am completely sure that [some] readers wanted to believe that it was a true story,' Cercas says, with a wry smile.

Soldiers of Salamis catapulted Cercas to literary celebrity. Such transfigurations are rarely easy to predict but the novel arrived at a propitious time, as long-simmering tensions in Spanish society bubbled up to a reckoning. In the early 2000s, the descendants of the more than 100,000 people 'disappeared' during the Spanish Civil War and subsequent four decades of dictatorship began calling for a more robust engagement with that past, including the exhumation of mass graves across Spain. It became known as the 'historical memory movement'.

Anatomy of a Moment was published in Spanish in 2009, not long after the 2007 Law of Historical Memory had been introduced, providing overdue relief to the many thousands attempting to trace the remains of family members murdered by the Francoist state. This was important, Cercas explains, even if the full range of its consequences was not immediately apparent. The movement's appropriation by the nation's political class had a chilling effect. Overnight, it was difficult to find anyone willing to admit that they or their descendants had been anything other than enthusiastic anti-fascists. The resultant sanctimony unnerved Cercas, not least the new fangled desire for stories of easily digestible republican valour – or 'toxic sentimental fodder seasoned with historical good conscience', as Cercas put it in a later book.

Lask Cercas if he still feels ambivalent about what has become known pejoratively as the historical memory industry. No, he replies, there is nothing qualified about it. 'I'm completely against it. It's exactly contrary to real memory and real history... I'm not saying don't look back. Look back rightly and honestly. [But] don't cheat yourself.' In his 2014 book The Impostor, Cercas documented the rich fantasy life of Enric Marco, a Catalan mechanic who claimed to have been imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Marco's patchwork of lies was eventually exposed in 2005. The question, as Cercas put it, was not just how Marco – a resolutely implausible character – had got away with such exotic falsehoods, but why so many had chosen to believe them as comforting political fairytales.

The gestures of resistance to the 1981 coup offered another perfectly formed case study. 'It's a moment full of meaning. It's the moment [when] the civil war, Francoism and three centuries of coup d'états – constant coup d'états – end in Spanish history,' Cercas says.

But anyone reading Anatomy of a Moment expecting to encounter clearly defined heroes either doesn't know Cercas or is expecting too much from human nature. Suárez, Mellado and Carrillo were complex, sometimes inadequate men, who showed colossal bravery when it mattered most. The bitter truth is that not everyone could say the same.

'[The rest] dived for cover. And the rest of Spain stayed at home. That's terrible. That's the hardest thing this book tells. [And] it's the most obvious thing at the same time.'

Anatomy of a Moment by Javier Cercas is published on 27 August by Fitzcarraldo Editions (£16.99). Order a copy from observeershop.co.uk for £15.29 (10% off RRP)

The Sunday Poem

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Lannion

Suzannah V Evans

Four fish line a plastic blue crate – 'Bar Sauvage, 27,906' – one elongated form pointing down and the others away, bright silvery bodies catching white packed ice, so still and pale amidst the market bustle, so white and silent against the repeated cries of the child who noticed the whiskered and unsmiling head of the DARNE CABILLAUD, who sobbed until his parents lifted him closer so that he could peer right down into the glassy eyes . . .

. . . 'Akaignée 12,50kg' – red legs orgiastically tumble together, seared scarlet with white undersides, brittle bubbles texturing the surface like those trembling forms which emerge when oil is heated. The bobbed nodules are white-speckled-with-black, and they rhyme with the white flesh spilling out from the delicately cracked joints, and with the white-grey pincers, themselves like the pinching fingers of the lover who catapults you from bed in the morning . . .

Suzannah V Evans's debut Bloomsbury Poetry collection, Under the Blue, was shortlisted for the 2026 International Dylan Thomas prize. A new pamphlet, How Running Is, is forthcoming from Guillemot Press in September.

Illustration by Chris Riddell


26 observer.co.uk 16.09.26

Books

Rereading

Illusions of her making

With her allegorical 1959 debut novel, German author Ruth Rehmann ruminated on her country's fascist past while offering a prescient glimpse into a more individualistic future. By Megan Nolan

Inside a gleaming office building four workers gather their belongings and prepare to leave the self-contained kingdom to which they pledge fealty. One window cleaner, a circus worker on sabbatical, cavorts in the air as he performs his labour. He is uniquely capable of viewing these employees, whose dichotomous dual existences – the will to duty and the allure of individualism – battle against each other.

From 1947 until 1967, German authors began to gather annually to embark on the rearticulation of what literature might look like after the Second World War. Founded by Hans Werner Richter, Group 47 held discussions and readings of new work, voting for the best example. Although the group's influence was profound, producing Nobel winners Günter Grass and Peter Handke, its women writers were not accorded their due notice. As a result, Illusions, the debut novel by Ruth Rehmann (1922–2016), has been largely forgotten. Faber's choice to reissue this beguiling work is important not only to celebrate a singular and neglected author, but also because Illusions is brutally insightful on matters that haunt western society now as they did postwar. Here, Rehmann grapples on the most ambitious scale with what compels the human heart toward conformity, instruction, and ultimately fascism itself.

Our workers are three women and one man. Paul Westerman is young but seems much older, disillusioned by the wife and child he scarcely remembers having chosen at all, and preoccupied by the memory of

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A singular and neglected author: Ruth Rehmann. Brigitte Friedrich/Süddeutsche Zeitung Photo/Alamy

Illusions is brutally insightful on matters that haunt western society now as they did postwar

an adventurous friendship from his happier past. Frau Schramm is an accomplished secretary in her 60s whose scanty life is given meaning only through her dedication to the corporation. Therese is a distracted 19-year-old typist, her nascent identity already thrown off course by heartache. And Carmen Viola is an inscrutable, ageing beauty with an ever-changing appearance and the melodramatic beating of a torch singer. Each of the four leaves the office this Saturday on the precipice of some momentous disruption.

What is most remarkable on first reading is the book's cinematic gaze. Rehmann's cool eye orbits her subjects with the panoramic authority of that watchful window cleaner. The tight temporal form – a single weekend – frees her up to roam the comings and goings of the quartet with supreme confidence, moving boldly from their mundane grocery routines and bodily mechanisms to devastating flashes of unarticulated interiority. What we come away with are four portraits of loneliness and desperation in wildly

Fiction

A whimsical year in Vermont

Country People

John Murray, £20, pp320

The novelist and psychiatrist Daniel Mason, who made his name with serious works of historical fiction such as The Piano Tuner (2002) and The Winter Soldier (2018), has taken a lighter turn of late. His collection of stories A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth (2020) was experimental and eccentric, and his last novel North Woods (2023) offered a playful anthology of the residents of a house in Massachusetts over three centuries.

His new novel, Country People, is Mason's flightiest book yet – but it shows that even though the author

is having fun, it doesn't necessarily transfer to the reader. The setup is straightforward enough. Husband and wife Miles and Kate are moving from California to Vermont, so that Kate can take up a year's role at a prestigious college there. Miles will be a stay-at-home dad to their two kids (and dog), while carrying out long-delayed research into Russian folk tales.

The story follows the family as they settle in, and as Miles gets to know the unusual ways of the locals. The narrative is studded with exclamation marks that are both a reflection of the family's excitement at their new home ("Off they went to explore their new world") and, for the reader, an ironic marker of their

naivety. Things are a lot less easy than Miles expected, from their son's night terrors, to temptations into infidelity, to the apex of the place's oddness: a society dedicated to a local man, Jeremiah Wylkes, who in the 19th century claimed to have found in the woods a portal into the centre of the hollow earth.

There is a lot of entertainment in the book, to be sure. Mason lets no item or person catch a character's eye without riffing on it, from "energy drinks with fascist fonts" to Amazon reviews for dog collars: "in the case of MichiganMom! (Torrified dog now hides under couch), two stars, +1 for the colour". The tone throughout is lightly satirical and even whimsical. In

Miles's former workplace, the toilets have "urinals arranged in a rosette to foster creativity and communication". En route from California to their new home in Vermont, the couple drive through Indiana, "which had successfully replaced most living things with billboards". Every subsidiary character is a chance for Mason to show his quirky spirit: a rat-catcher who thinks he looks like Garfield the cat, or people with names such as Norbert Rumphius or Nausica's Torres-Lakeman – the latter a theatre director who wants to revive the erotic element in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream.

But there's a whiff of desperation to the breezy chumminess of the narrative voice. One section opens: "It has been some time since our mention of old Jeremiah, whom

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There's a whiff of desperation to the breezy chumminess of the narrative voice


Books

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

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varying iterations; we also have the sense of how all this teeming emotion is handily subsumed by the workings of the corporation. She gives us, too, a convincing idea of the perennial human impulses that were manipulated to strengthen the Nazi regime. Her concerns – the mental sickness that results from the war between an individual and a system – in this novel provide a prescient glimpse at how literature and culture would reconfigure in a post-1945 world.

Each of our characters can be understood through an absolute need to be told what to do. Most directly, there is Frau Schramm, who has a full-throated devotion to the corporation that becomes more and more unnerving. She is a master of anticipating the needs of her superiors, which in turn allows her own greatest need to be fulfilled: to be controlled, cosetched, approved of like a pet. Her respect for Herr Director bleeds into a soppy sentimentality, though she would never disgrace herself by allowing personal feelings into her professional life. At home, though, conversing with her elderly friend, she can allow herself to be moved. 'Softly, she says, 'He spoke so beautifully. So sincerely. Not like a boss, like a human, like a friend.' She clears her throat and turns away shamefully to wipe her tears.'

And yet what she desires is not a human, but rather a boss through and through. Even as her greatest conceivable disintegration – her dismissal from the company – is occurring, she is lost in reverent admiration for his innate leadership qualities, recalling her excitement on meeting him after his initial employment: 'There's no question he's a boss! He has that je ne suis quoi.' In her confluence of maternal and childlike impulses towards Herr Director, towards all bosses, we see the muddled erotic impulses that are sublimated for the good of the company, of the collective. The work is her punishment and her consolation for being an older woman who is alone.

Nicole Seifert, author of Some

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'His flightiest book yet': author Daniel Mason. Paul Stuart

the memorious reader may recall from his last appearance in these pages'; elsewhere, a footnote references one character as 'Yvette the vet (that's her name, I'm not making this up)' – to which the only reader response can be: Yes, you are. Chapters are given up to transcripts of larky exchanges between two local radio hosts. And Mason has a weakness for what

Gentlemen Said Something About It, a history of the forgotten women writers of Group 47, notes that although the group as a whole was positioned as anti-fascist, many of the women were more explicit in reference to recent horrors: 'The male founders of the group were soldiers in the Second World War and saw themselves as anti-fascist in its aftermath. But they also considered themselves blameless for the horrors, and didn't want to hear anything about the Holocaust; they wanted to think of themselves as victims ... Their writing shows that they understood how fascism and patriarchy worked together in postwar Germany.'

In Illusions, Rehmann reveals the conditions necessary for compelling collective submission, and that they are in partnership with the symbiotic social ill, misogynistic repression. The three women regard each other with ebbing revulsion. All operate in the artificial scarcity imposed on them that supposes they hold no individual or unique value, are only functional and tangible.

We may, correctly, now balk at the eventual dominance of individualism that characterised the later 20th century, and of course characterised the landscape of fiction. There is much to object to, not least the deadening of both compassion and beauty, to which true solipsism leads. But in Rehmann's case the unveiling of multiple warring individual experiences was the progressive and radical choice of its time. While Europe began to gingerly imagine its future, a generation distanced itself from culpability by decrying certain forces as inhuman and immutable. Here was a book that dared to ask the questions all great writers do in one way or another: what was it like to live then, and what kind of people were there?

This is an edited version of Megan Nolan's Introduction to Illusions by Ruth Rehmann and translated Rob Madole, published by Faber Editions on 27 August (£9.99). Order a copy from observershop.co.uk for £8.49 (10% off RRP)

JB Priestley called Kornic Kapitals in the epithets he likes to apply to Miles ('Hapless Scholar, Wounded Skier, White Liar, Courageous Taker of Old Country Roads').

All this lighthearted clutter is not just decoration but central to the weakness of the novel, which never sinks deep into anything or anyone when it can skitter off to the next distraction. I kept waiting for the story to settle down and find its focus, but it never did. The problem is too much author indulgence: all the whimsy, the asides and the idiosyncratic characters. The sense we get is that rather than killing his darlings, Mason has filled the book with them. And so what could have been a pleasure, more sparingly applied, becomes a chore. John Self

Order a copy for from observershop.co.uk for £18 (10% off RRP)

Three books on the female body

Chosen by Erin Maglaque

Happening by Annie Ernaux (2020) Ernaux recounts the story of her own clandestine abortion before

the procedure was legalised in France. Her descriptions of abortion as a physical ordeal are unforgettable. But Ernaux also evokes an entire history of oppression and shame, a time when 'people judged according to the law, they didn't judge the law'. If women's embodied lives have often been unwritten and unrecorded, Ernaux's book is a radical corrective. 'I believe that any experience, whatever its nature, has the inalienable right to be chronicled,' she writes. 'There is no such thing as a lesser truth.'

A Midwife's Tale by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich (1990) This is my favourite history book. Ulrich uses

a diary kept by a rural midwife in Maine at the turn of the 19th century to reconstruct her world; the births and deaths; the prayers and the snowstorms; the herbs she grew for medicines; the scandals of her small town, Martha calls herself a 'gadder', a woman who went about helping her neighbours, and her neighbours are all there. It is a vibrant record, both of a vanished world and of the ordeals women's bodies have always gone through.

The Undying by Anne Boyer (2019) This is a memoir of Boyer's treatment for breast cancer when she was

41 years old. She writes with astonishing elegance about pain, exhaustion and suffering. But she is also a furious, searching critic of what it means to both make art and fall sick in an unjust society. Boyer memorialises the writers who died too young, from Mary Wollstonecraft to Audre Lorde. And though she claims she would have rather written a book about anything else, I'm grateful that a writer as unyielding and lyrical as Boyer documented what illness means – and has meant for women in the past.

Presence: A Hidden History of the Female Body by Erin Maglaque is published by Jonathan Cape

Fiction

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Paris for beginners

Amit Chaudhuri's ninth novel finds him riffing on familiar themes of dislocation and disorientation, writes Abhrajyo'i Chakraborty

Château Rouge Amit Chaudhuri Faber, £14.99, pp208

Guy de Maupassant apparently had lunch every day at a restaurant inside the Eiffel Tower because that was the only place in Paris where he couldn't see the tower. The narrator of Amit Chaudhuri's ninth novel, Château Rouge, an Indian writer on a fellowship to Paris, would have loved to stay in an apartment with a view of the tower. He is stuck instead in a sublet in Château Rouge, located 'two stops from the Gare du Nord', as he keeps reminding his wife on the phone – a predominantly African area that isn't recognisably Paris. He rues not living in one of the more historical parts of the city: 'I felt deprived, singled out.'

Chaudhuri's novels could be described as slender improvisations on a mood. Not much happens – his characters seldom laugh together, or argue with each other, or fall in love – and yet you can't help thinking of his books as elegant disquisitions on joy (A Strange and Sublime Address), homesickness (Afternoon Road), and a belated sense of loss (The Immortals). A trademark Chaudhuri scene is uneventful but preoccupied with giving the mundane its graceful due, close in ethos to a remark that the American essayist Elizabeth Hardwick once made to an interviewer: 'If I want a plot I'll watch Dallas.'

In Château Rouge, the avuncular narrator goes on long walks along Rue Poulet, near Montmartre, befriends a couple of Bangladeshi peanut sellers (his parents, like Chaudhuri's, were born in undivided Bengal), and is transfixed at one point by the sight of a trans woman wielding a dildo in one hand: 'It was monumental, like something from a Rodin workshop.' On a visit from Oxford for a few days, his academic wife points out that if Hemingway were living in Paris today, he would have probably been staying

in an immigrant neighbourhood like Château Rouge. The narrator starts looking at the city afresh through her eyes. A few pages later, he reports that he 'had no intention of moving... the thought of another place had become a flirtation'.

In staccato diary entries, we encounter a Paris that is 'unsavoured, uncharted', comprising alleys and interstices between multiple Carrefour and Marks & Spencer outlets. Chaudhuri plays to his strengths as a connoisseur of stubbornly impressionistic pensées. He stumbles into a gilets jaunes protest near Montparnasse and observes that the protesters exhibit the 'purposefulness of historical actors'. A trip to a department store named Tati reminds him of the film-maker Jacques Tati. Moments after introducing us to his Senegalese cleaner, Oumarou, he is waxing eloquent on Derek Walcott's epic poem Omens. Midway through the novel he insists that it is impossible to be a filancor in modern-day Paris because the city has changed too much since Walter Benjamin and Hemingway walked its streets. To become Hemingway now, the narrator muses, one has to start from scratch.

Château Rouge and its predecessor Soissons (2022) strike me as twin variations on the disorientation of being neither native nor tourist. In both novels, a middle-aged Indian writer moves to a European city (Paris, Berlin) on a fellowship for a year and settles in a neighbourhood far from the bohemian haunts. Both narrators arrive in a city feeling lost, and continue feeling lost for the duration of their stay. The names of local streets and landmarks are obsessively recounted, as if they form a map of the narrator's inner world. The past, once a crutch of reassurance in Chaudhuri's fiction, is absent. The present is all there is. At one point, the narrator loses his wallet on a train. When he recovers it moments later, he finds some cash missing but the credit cards and other identifying documents intact. 'I feel chosen,' the narrator decides. 'In the secular world, close shaves count as miracles.'

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Books

Young adult books of the month

Love conquers all

Romeo and Juliet inspires romantasy titles by Lucy Strange and Kelly McCaughrain, and beloved graphic novel series Heartstopper comes to a close. By Fiona Noble

A new novel from the brilliantly eccentric imagination of Frances Hardinge is always cause for celebration. In the alternative medieval England of Traitors' Next (First Ink, £16.99, published 27 August), godlike Players move castles like pawns in the sinister Great Game. When Burr's rural life is upended by the arrival of a new castle, he finds himself tangled up in rebellion and adventure, aided by fellow villagers and a mysterious heiress. Unique world building and quirky, complex characters propel a thrilling story of power and morality.

In The Heirs (Usborne, £9.99), by Faridah Abliké-ḥimidé, a murder mystery serves as an intriguing exposé of wealth, privilege and the meaning of success. The Button heirs are the five children of an infamous billionaire, adopted and trained to be geniuses from birth, each considered a leader in their field – and all miserable. Their father is murdered at his annual Prodigy Ball, and each of the siblings had reason to want him dead. This is a twisty and addictive thriller elevated

by complex family dynamics.

In a sea of spicy romantasy, two wholesome romances stand out for younger teenage readers, weaving themes of self-discovery into their love stories. Wild Horse Summer (Faber, £8.99). By Lauren St John, sees American Morgan sent to stay on Exmore with her British family to recuperate from a terrible accident. A job at a stable yard and her connection with a local surfer offer solace and slowly allow her to unpick the trauma. It's a compulsive summer read with real soul thanks to St John's lyrical writing. Equally layered is Cut Him Out in Little Stars (Chicken House, £8.99), middle-grade author Lucy Strange's debut for teenagers. Taking its title from Romeo and Juliet, this Second World War adventure is set in a Kent coastal village where the threat of German invasion feels very real. Heartbroken by the death of her fighter pilot fiance, this Juliet becomes embroiled in the mystery of a local murder, getting a second chance at love along the way. This is a deeply atmospheric coming-of-age story with a touch of the gothic.

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Heartstopper has always remained true to its roots, and this last chapter is bittersweet, joyful and wholly satisfying

'A heartwarming love story with emotional depth and authenticity': Heartstopper: Volume 6. Alice Oseman

Romeo and Juliet also provides inspiration for Just Another Dead Boy (Walker, £8.99) by Kelly McCaughrain. In a world where everyone is born with the day of their death imprinted on their bodies, Regan works at a luxury end-of-life resort as a "Juliet". Her job is to pretend, for rich boys in their final days, that she and they have fallen in love – until her latest client, Jude, sees right through the facade. The dystopian backdrop and enemies-to-lovers trope make this an escapist holiday read, underpinned by weighty questions about love, death and the meaning of life.

Finally, Alice Oseman's celebrated graphic novel series reaches its conclusion in Heartstopper: Volume 6 (Hachette, £14.99). It's the final year of school: Charlie is busy with his bid to become head boy, Nick is preparing to leave for university, and their group of friends contemplate where life will take them next. It may be a worldwide phenomenon, but Heartstopper has always remained true to its roots, balancing a heartwarming love story with emotional depth and authenticity. This last chapter is by turns bittersweet, joyful and wholly satisfying.

Order any of these titles from observershop.co.uk to receive a 10% discount off RRP

Paperback of the week

By Chris Power

Kitty Mrosovsky's final novel is finally published 40 years after her death and provides a frank, idiosyncratic portrait of sexual desire

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Quake

Kitty Mrosovsky

McNally Editions, £13.99, pp288

Two-thirds into Quake, its narrator, Olivia, a thirtysomething English language teacher who is having an affair with a 22-year-old Sicilian called Rosario, reviews her body. Her breasts, "which at their best were never the proverbial melons", resemble "collapsed molehills". There are bits of flab at her hips that, when squashed, have a "scrambled-egg texture". But her legs are long and strong, her "pitted" face, in the right light, can be "dusky and seductive", and "my arse wasn't too bad". "All in all," she concludes, "I supposed this mixture of beauty and

ugliness was fairly provocative."

Perhaps Kitty Mrosovsky's second and final novel – she died of Aids-related illness in 1995, aged 48 – was thought too provocative in the mid-1980s when it failed to find a publisher. Only now, 40 years on, is it being brought into print. It gives us a brilliantly frank and idiosyncratic portrait of female desire, loneliness, depression and obsession in the London of that era.

Olivia wants Rosario's orgasm "so much, that it was like an explosion of longing. I didn't mind at all about my own". This imbalance will prove costly, but before things reach that point – and even afterwards – there is a lot of sex to be had. Mrosovsky writes about it very well, finding

the elusive sweet spot between the technical and the figurative, and making it seem so wholly a part of life ("a strand of my hair was matted where he'd come against my cheek") that it is unforced in a way that's rarely achieved in literature.

Quake, a London novel for much of its length, is bookended by Italian episodes. One of these is a work of fiction written by Olivia (reminiscent of Light Years-era James Salter), imagining her way into the life of Rosario, his girlfriend Jess, and a group of English chattering-class friends on holiday. The other, a kind of pilgrimage Olivia undertakes when she can no longer handle her situation in London, is utterly different: a solitary journey so hallucinatory that it, too, might be a fiction.

This second Italian section lifts the book, which becomes repetitious when describing Olivia's frustrations with Rosario, relations with a neighbourhood cat, and goings-on at the language school. Quake is undoubtedly overlong, its loose structure seeming at times like indulgence, but one's patience is almost always rewarded. In one

representative section, Mrosovsky devotes four interminable pages to a horoscope, then five to a bold and brilliant analysis of Velázquez's Rokeby Venus. Olivia submits it to an art magazine. Just like Quake, it's rejected.

The jacket copy puts the most positive possible spin on all this, calling the book "labyrinthine". Even the novelist Maggie Gee, in her introduction, admits the novel's collage-like construction "risks obscuring the emotional appeal of its core narrative". But there is enough in the book that's really good to make its flaws harmful rather than fatal. Like a chicken wing, getting all the succulence out requires effort, but the succulence is there: clouds in the Kent sky, "leaning like punched silk cushions":

Quake is undoubtedly overlong, but one's patience is almost always rewarded

the Umbrian town of Assisi "a stone prayer-book propped against the lectern of the hills"; a psychiatrist suggesting Olivia get a job in publishing being "a man's idea of a clever woman's place".

Mrosovsky was a gifted scholar, but doubts about the value of teaching led to her giving up her university lecturing job in favour of a freelance career. She had a long sexual relationship with Craig Raine, both before his marriage and during it. It's one of those annoying, diminishing details that clings to certain female writers' biographies, but I mention it here because after her death she was best known as the subject of some of his poems. From one we learn that she, unlike Olivia, did indeed have breasts like "melons". Gee, admirably and economically, acknowledges only that Mrosovsky inspired "bad poetry". With Quake out in the world, we can concentrate instead on her good prose.

Order a copy from observershop.co.uk for £12.59 (10% off RRP)


Books

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Memoir

The gift of parenthood

Carol Atherton relates her adoption journey and addresses the prejudices and fears that come with bringing someone else's child into the home. By Jenni Fagan

So Many Ways to Belong: A Personal History of Adoption

So Many Ways to Belong is a memoir that explores the journey English teacher Carol Atherton and her husband Matthew took to become parents of a little boy. We accompany them throughout this vulnerable time so that, as they stand on the doorstep of a house and meet the red-haired child who is to be their son, we understand the many stages they have had to go through to get to this special and nerve-racking moment. While the author's tone is deeply personal, the book also seamlessly explores wider societal and historical representations of adoption.

The couple's adoption story starts 20 years ago. Atherton generously describes her experience of realising that the infertility she and Matthew are experiencing will lead them to a deeper consideration of what truly makes a family. We move chronologically through Atherton's stages of motherhood with a son who is not biologically hers. Initially the child she pushes around, exhausted, having lost two stone in six weeks to stress and great doubt about her initial connection or lack thereof to this new role of mother, is described as 'the little boy'.

As Atherton writes, there can be deep concerns about a cuckoo in the nest. The child may often (though not always) have experienced great trauma. Atherton chooses not to tell her son's early life story out of respect for his privacy and an understanding that it is his alone to share or not. 'I also don't have the right to tell the story of his life since then,' she writes. 'This book stops, in one sense, when he was two-and-a-half years old, a toddler with bright red hair, bags of energy and an irrepressible giggle. But in another sense, it carries on. It draws on what I've learned over 20 years of adopting parenthood.'

In her introduction Atherton tells us that, as she waits nervously outside a foster parent's house to meet her child for the first time, she notices uPVC windows. We move on to a mention of carefully tended gardens, but it is this early detail that lets me know Atherton

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Adoption, when done safely and with the right intention, is always to be applauded and respected

probably doesn't live in a house with uPVC windows, which leads me to the dreaded c-word: class. While we would like to think adopting a child from another class, or with different DNA, will not be affected by internalised discriminations, no matter how decent someone is it can still seep into their sense of a child's unfolding personality, or worries about their future behaviour. This meeting of disparate origins undoubtedly impacts the world of adoption; internalised discrimination can leak into the

trust shown towards an infant who has come to live in your home.

I confess that I do not come to the subject of adoption without bias or experience. I have had two adoptions and my adopted parents had low expectations of intelligence or morality from an adoptive child. They presented as respectable, enlightened adopters but I experienced great harm emotionally and physically in both placements. Atherton describes how 'tabloid newspapers carry lurid articles about children who have been damaged beyond repair by drug-addicted birth parents and go on to tear their adoptive families apart'. Yet she also explains that adopted children 'don't know how to share, because they're only just working out that some things do actually belong to them. They grab for more biscuits when it's snack time, because in their past, food has been scarce and they've learned to eat as many biscuits as they can when they get the

What makes one adoption work and another fail?

chance.' I bristled at some of these generalised statements because all the adopted children I met were very different from each other, just as any biological child is also individual.

Atherton is not wrong when she explains that the dislocation of her child – who may not necessarily have attachment-bonded or been breast fed, or may have been abused or neglected – might mean he is not neurologically as settled as someone else his own age. Time should be given to this. However, we also see abysmal behaviour in those who attended the most prestigious boarding schools and appear to have had caring families. I have met so many kind children in the care system and witnessed utter horror shows in places of privilege. Bad behaviour is not just for troubled children.

It is also important to consider the very real concern that some adoptive and foster parents have gone on to abuse the children they have been

entrusted to raise. We must not simply see children in the system as potentially bad and adopters as always good. I met a great many children in homes or temporary placements who like myself had been returned to the care system after experiencing abuse in either adoptive or foster placements.

What makes one adoption work and another fail? In Lemn Sissay's extraordinary memoir My Name Is Why, his adoptive parents changed his name to Norman (while never telling him his original name) and exhibited a deep mistrust towards him. On the other side of the spectrum, Jackie Kay's Red Dust Road shows how beautiful a bond can be within a family who have come to each other not via genetics but love. Atherton's exploration brings another facet to these public stories of adoption, one that is measured and self-aware and that comes from the point of view of an adopter, someone whose voice is not often heard in such a clear manner. So Many Ways to Belong shows the great dedication and decency Atherton brings to her role as an adoptive mother who is willing to research everything to do with the process that brings her family together.

Adoption encompasses so many facets of the world's history. There is the mass removal of generations of children via colonialism, war, Irish Catholic mother's homes. I think often of ice facilities that separate families, or of a child taken from their mother's arms on a beach after surviving a dangerous journey on a boat across the sea, all because she is depicted as a 'migrant' before she is a parent. Mothers must be supported in every and all walks of life, even those who are unable to raise their own children and who make the great sacrifice of hoping someone else may provide what they cannot.

Towards the end of the book, Atherton describes her grown son as funny and intelligent, an independent young man. But when she says, 'he's partly our child, and partly someone else's', I felt a little sad – even if it was meant to indicate acceptance. I wondered if Atherton gives herself and her husband enough credit for the great act of generosity that all parenting entails. It is absolutely certain that a good adoptive family can save a child from substantial dislocation and risks within foster or residential care; it may even save their life. I do not say this lightly. Adoption, when done safely and with the right intention, is always to be supported, applauded and respected. It is a vital part of the global network of family. It is a great testimony to Atherton as a mother that she has worked to create more understanding of this process for all.

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Puzzles

Guess the picture by Laura Cumming

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This week's question: Name the artist (above)? Answer next Sunday.

Last week's detail came from the Belgian painter James Ensor's 1890 masterpiece The Intrigue. It shows a top-hatted gentleman in a fur coat and heavy scarf against the cold, next to a woman in green with blue hair. She is the artist's sister Mitche, and the gentleman is her Chinese fiancé. Their engagement outraged Ensor's home city of Ostend, hence the hubbub of gossiping masks. Ensor's mother sold masks and he grew up with these artificial faces, which he paints with such exuberant energy. His masks remain mysterious, a theatre of forceful personalities and wild scenarios. But Ensor spoke of them as opportunities for extravagant social gestures and "exquisite turbulence".

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Cinema Connect

Each week we show three stills. Guess the films in question and the director who connects them. (Bonus point if you can put them in chronological order.)

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Set by Killian Fox Answers on page 31

Everyman crossword No. 4,165

Across

1 A day to get around the Continent (6) 5 Slovenly type's got some neck! (6) 8 Everyman has potential to improve, solver: honestly (1,7,3) 11 Eyre hears a line that needs cutting in preparation for performance (9) 12 Small athletic club in purple (5) 13 Company constructed silos: they're enormous (7) 14 Conman's retiring, wanting rest badly (7) 15 A little garland is dainty, getting scorn (7) 17 Bin meat that's rotten all around (7) 20 Send back - drive back, perhaps, potato? (5) 21 Lofty structure from which it's announced 'It's time for girdles' (4,5) 22 Re-do the pork: awkward bloomer (3-3,5) 23 One authoritarian at back of boat (6) 24 One primarily dominant, yet nepotistically appointed, securing throne? (6)

Down

2 Multiple sentences with no escaping e.g. penguins? (10,5) 3 Some progress when visiting Greek island, reportedly (7) 4 Concession for entrance (9) 5 Rope material is brought into stable regularly (5) 6 Songwriter's payment: Taylor collected Japanese currency (7)

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7 'Term', 'oath', 'news', 'chat'? (4-6,5) 9 Caught by fabled avian, one with dozens of teeth (4) 10 Cake decorator's instructions returned with two cuts (4) 14 Wavy at the edges, building collapsed (9) 15 Ascertain age of potential partner (4) 16 A card game? Cut (7) 18 Give evidence of risk: Barbie's boyfriend accepting love (7) 19 Right-winger offering two extremes in tyranny? (4) 21 Author Dan is toast (5)

Name

Address

Postcode

Solvers are able to enter our crossword competitions online at: www.observer.co.uk/puzzles or via email to: competitions@observer.co.uk Paperless entry encouraged; postal entries will still be accepted. Five randomly selected correct solutions will each win a £15 book token. To enter the Everyman prize draw, submit a correct solution either online or by post to: Everyman No. 4,165, The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W1Y 3LP Email entries must include the crossword name and number in the subject line as it appears in print (e.g. "Everyman No. 4,165"). Entries without the correct subject will not be accepted. UK residents 18+ only. Max one entry per person. Closing date is Saturday following publication for online entries, postal entries must be postmarked no later than the Saturday following publication and must reach us within ten days of publication of the puzzle (i.e. by Wednesday week following publication). Winners announced Sunday two weeks after publication. For full T&Cs visit: https://observer.co.uk/puzzles/everyman/article/1/crossword-prize-draws

Sudoku classic

2 1
7 8 6
1 4 7 5 3
6 4
7 2 3
3 8 9
6 7
8 6 1 7 2
2 4 3

Fill in the blank cells using the numbers 1 to 9.

Each number must appear just once in every row, column and 3x3 box.

SOLUTION No. 4,164

Everyman No. 4,163

Jason Bevan, Belsize Park, London Delia Casadei & Stephane Crayton, Cambridge Mrs H Chandler, Wallasey, Wirral Ethan Hack, Didcot, Oxfordshire Hamish Pole, Stromness, Orkney

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Beyond the print edition: scan to subscribe to The Puzzle Edit – exclusive columns, setter insights and a weekly clue breakdown from puzzles editor Caitlin O'Kane

SUDOKU SOLUTION page 32

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OBLIKS SOLUTIONS

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MINDSET SOLUTIONS

Red

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observer.co.uk

16.08.26

31

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Gemelo No. 44 - Plain

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Name

Address

Post code

Across

1 Dangerous habit of passing on tea in M&S from the back (12) 10 Increasingly gentle Gemelo supplement facing resistance (6) 11 Jellyfish stoking Mediterranean country (3) 13 Tiny particle from N or M translated into French the wrong way (4) 15 Lecby power, classic Avenger rejects first picks (7) 15 Strange pyramid housing old creepy-crawly (8) 17 Do without occasionally antiwar Christian (5) 18 American fish, namely perch (5) 20 Aardvark hater turned corner (8) 22 Vast number from Pakistan and India, and smaller number from East in opposition (8) 26 Caterpillar falling short on account of being late (5) 28 Sect member finally chose between two versions of unknown gods (5) 29 Filling food canned by Yodei? (8) 30 Stronghold covering a relatively small area (7) 32 Piercing wall (4) 33 Poet's once more ignoring last century (3) 34 Ultimately, hint to crack puzzle proves incorrect (6) 35 Imitation of Gold disturbed Manic Street Preachers at first, left short of time (12, 2 words)

Down

1 Comic struggling with pun 13 where element is offered by minister (12, 2 words) 2 Precious jade turned up in Chinese and European blue mineral (6) 3 Cupids soaring in Italy (their capital) (7) 4 Deny across after one loses head (6) 5 Perhaps play unfinished chant over Hindu god (9) 6 What may be big up or picked up (3) 7 Chuck about what's inside of dried mud (7) 8 During seminar, do observers see Victorian fern? (6) 9 Old Parisian theatre guard longing for excitement (12, 2 words) 12 Shake can (4) 16 Fruit provider to go around every trustee (9) 19 Dismissal after Stokes bowled over (7) 21 Extremely dim bully clinging to one stone (7) 23 Definitely not Iron Man's core breaking circuit (6, 2 words) 24 College's extremely lovely college uniform (6) 25 American constitution restricting Express and associated organs (6) 27 Casualty throw old purse to pay broken Australian (4) 31 Bow and scrape, somewhat shown up (3)

The Chambers Dictionary (2016) is recommended. One answer is an abbreviation.

Gemelo No. 41 solution & notes

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Gemelo uses a cryptic shorthand for answer explanations which can be viewed at: https://observer.co.uk/puzzles/gemelo/article/gemelo-key

Access: 1.1 THORATIC - 15 8.10, 13.1 ONCAC, 13.7 ST. (FRY HAOK - 23 (H)ER? THEMA(bc), 15 FRIES around 4C, 18 GOHN AW - 27 E in VALI, 18 FRI(ER) in INST. 22 (PLZASANT JOD) + - 5CT+ 24 K AHM A, 26 LE around (II VV), 28 RIO+ in UNDO, 30 POP UTE around LA,

31.US (co)T) in LIOI, 32.ILL in MS &it [ref (assistance)], 33 (eh)S (Bo) SCOT, 34 BUND/ABIKS - BURG.

Down: 5 dU, 2 GJB, GN D, 3 ACT ON, 4 HAT+ IN I, 5 A MAD in RILL O(m), 7 SPH18 + 2 APP, 8 (VINE TESTS) + 9 (US), around W, 10 (c)P1925 around I, 14 L US SCARED(4), 15 FAR AND OLE, 19 PINTO around M(ur)SC, 20 K(er)I TT in NICE, 21 ((mnd)EE, EU KE(d))+, 23 (N MUTUA(I))+, 25 S(NM)+, 27 VALI D, 29 tM.

Rules and requests

To enter the Gemelo prize draw, submit a correct solution either online at: https://observer.co.uk/puzzles, via email to competitions@observer.co.uk or by post to: Gemelo No. 44, The Observer, 22 Berners Street, London W17 3LP

Email entries must include the crossword name and number in the subject line as it appears in print (e.g. "Gemelo No. 44"). Entries without the correct subject will not be accepted. Paperless entry encouraged. UK residents 18+ only. Max one entry per person. Closing date is Saturday following publication for online entries, postal entries must be postmarked no later than the Saturday following publication and must reach us within ten days of publication of the puzzle (i.e. by Wednesday week following publication). Three randomly selected correct solutions will each win a £25 book token. Gemelo No. 44 winners to be announced Sunday 13 September 2026.

For full terms and conditions visit:

https://observer.co.uk/puzzles/everymon/article/crossword-prize-draws

Gemelo No. 41 prizewinners

P B Mildred, Leverburgh, Isle of Hants

C Chatwin, Kenilworth Warwickshire

J Smalew, Ruddington Nottingham

Killer by Godefridus

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Normal Sudoku rules apply, except the numbers in the cells contained within grey lines add up to the figures in the curves. No number can be repeated within each shape formed by the grey lines.

Cinema Connect answers

The Killer (2023), Merit (2020) and Zodiac (2007) were all directed by David Fincher.

Chess by Jonathan Speelman

Diagram 1

Here 12-year-old Supratit Banerjee unleashed a beautiful finish against Scottish teenager Freddie Waldhausen Gordon. Can you find it? (See the end.)

Shreyas Royal is this year's British Champion after a very tense final round at Warwick University last Sunday.

The Ukrainian teenager Svyatoslav Bazakutsa (who lives here nowadays) was the early leader and remained in the mix until the penultimate round when he was defeated by Simon Williams in a characteristically manic game. At the end of that round, Pete Roberson was winning against Harry Grieve, needing just three accurate moves - admittedly the third wasn't so obvious - to force resignation. But he stumbled, then quickly let it turn right through 180'.

The final round began with Royal, Grieve and Williams on 6.5/8 ahead of four players on 6. Royal defeated Grieve quite cleanly and after Luke McShane beat Williams, Royal was the sole winner. 12-year-old Supratit Banerjee, who pulled off the fine finish in diagram 1, was defeated by Michael Adams (below) and the fourth person on six, Indian IM Siva Mahadevan, drew with Ameet Ghasi.

Royal made 7.5/9 ahead of McShane and Adams 7 and four on 6.5. Eleven-year-old Bodhana Sivanandan is the new women's champion, winning a play-off against Irish Women's Grandmaster Trisha Kanyamaraia after both made 5.5/9.

Royal, who was 17 in January, is the youngest ever British champion, beating the record held by Michael

Adams by a month. (Nigel Short was just 14 when he was first equal in 1979, but Robert Bellin won the play-off against him and John Nunn.)

Born in Bangalore, Royal's family moved to London when he was three and there was a big campaign in 2018 to keep the family here, until the authorities finally relented, renewing his father's work visa. Two years ago, he became the youngest English grandmaster ever with one of his GM norms a highly creditable 4/9 in the 2023 London Classic. Over the past year or so, he's been on something of a plateau but this impressive unbeaten victory should reignite his upward progress.

Shreyas Royal v Luke McShane

Warwick 2026 Scotch

1e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 exd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nxc6 bxc6 6 e5 Qe7 7 Qe2 Nd5 8 g3 8 c4 Bx6 is the main line 8...g6 9 Bg2 Bg7 10 c4 Bx6 11 0-0-0 12 Re1 Wxe8 13 Qc2 Qc5 14 Nd2 This line had been played a number of times previously. Black con win the e pawn but will be somewhat disorganised. 14...Bxe5 14...Rxe5 is a tad better according to computers. 15 Bf1 Nb6 16 Nb3 Qf8 17 Be3 Na4 Playable but the first step in what turns out to be on unfortunate journey. 17...d5 was okay at once. 18 Rad1 d5 19 cxd5 Bxf1 20 Rxf1 Nxb2? Obviously this is what Luke intended when he played Na4. The story horse looks as though he will escape but Shreyas had foreseen otherwise 21 Bc5 Qg7

Diagram 2

22 Rd41 a5 The best chance. If 22... Bxd4 23 Bxd4 Qf8 and either capture should win pretty easily 23 Qxb2 a4 24 Nc1Ra5 25 Re1 25 Nd3 Rxc5 26 Re1 transposed 25...Rxc5 26 Nd3 Rb5 27 Qc2 cxd5 Or if 27...Qf6 28 Rd4 + Rxd5 29 Qe2 wins the piece. 28 Qxa4 c6 Or 28...Rb8 29 Rxd5 (R 30 Rd7 Re7 31Rxe7 Qxe7 32 f4Qd6 say 33 Qc4 + 29 Rxe5 Rxe5 30 Qa8+ Qf8 31 Qxf8+ Kxf8 32 Nxe5 Rb1+ 33 Kg2 Rc1 34 a4 f6 35 Nd3 Rd1 36 a5 Ra1 if 36...Ke7 37 Rd4 Rxd3 38 o6 decides 37 Rf4 Ke7

Diagram 3

38 Nb4 About to lose at least one centre pawn, McShane resigned.

Diagram 4

Michael Adams played very powerfully in the final round. Here Black has such firepower aimed at the enemy King, that even the bulwark on f3 can't save him 33 Rcc? This makes it easy but if say 33 Qg1 Rff6 34 Rcf2 Rg3 35 Bc1e5 36 dxe5 dxe5 37 Rd1 Bxf3 smashes through 33...Rxg2! 34 Kxg2 Rxf3 35 Qxf3 Qg4+ The sting in the tail. White resigned.

In diagram 1 After 32...Qxf1+8 33 Bxf1 Nf3 White resigned. If 34 Qxf3 Rg1 is mate, and otherwise there's no defence against Rg1+ followed again by mate on g1.

Last week we looked at the Grand Chess Tour Super Rapid & Blitz in St Louis Missouri. It finished in victory for Kameshkalu Praggnanandhaa just ahead of Javokhir Sindarov. The annual Simpatfield Cup is now underway in St Louis, continuing until Wednesday.

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1 F Waldhausen Gordon v Supratit Banerjee (to play)

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2 Shreyas Royal (to play) v Luke McShane

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3 Shreyas Royal (to play) v Luke McShane

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4 Supratit Banerjee (to play) v Michael Adams


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Puzzles

SCHOOL SOLUTIONS page 30-32

5 5 6 8 3 4 2 1 7
3 7 8 2 1 6 5 4 9
1 4 2 7 9 5 8 3 8
6 9 5 3 4 1 7 8 2
4 9 7 9 6 2 3 5 1
2 1 3 5 7 4 6 6 4
5 3 1 4 2 9 6 7 8
8 6 9 1 5 7 4 2 3
7 2 4 6 8 3 1 9 5
3 9 2 8 4 7 1 5 6
1 8 4 6 9 5 3 2 7
6 7 5 2 3 1 8 4 8
4 1 9 5 6 3 8 7 2
7 5 8 4 2 9 8 3 1
2 3 6 1 7 8 4 6 5
9 4 1 7 6 2 5 6 3
8 2 3 9 5 6 7 1 4
5 9 7 3 1 4 2 8 8

Lexipedia Quiz: on celestial bodies by Joshua Blackburn

  1. The name of which day of the week has lunar origins?
  • A) Monday
  • B) Tuesday
  • C) Friday
  • D) Saturday
  1. Galaxy is from the Greek galaktos; what does galaktos mean?
  • A) Heavenly
  • B) Infinitely
  • C) Milky
  • D) Spacy
  1. What does the prefix astro- (in astronaut and astronomy) mean?
  • A) Sky
  • B) Star
  • C) Heaven
  • D) Universe
  1. The name of which celestial object comes from the Greek for "long-haired"?
  • A) Asteroid
  • B) Comet
  • C) Meteor
  • D) Nebula
  1. What does a selenographer map?
  • A) Shifting boundaries of solar flares
  • B) Coordinates of deep-space nebulae
  • C) Orbit trajectories of near-Earth asteroids
  • D) Topography of the Moon
  1. Eclipse derives from Greek ekleipein; what does ekleipein mean?
  • A) To darken
  • B) To reduce
  • C) To fail to appear
  • D) To hide

Lucky dip bonus question

  1. What was the first utopia?
  • A) An island
  • B) A dream
  • C) A garden
  • D) A sweet milk pudding

A word about...

Naming planets

So you want to name a planet? Not so fast, Copernicus – even if you've discovered one, you don't get to name it without the say-so of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), responsible for naming celestial bodies since its foundation in 1919. Stars, planets, asteroids, trans-Neptunian objects, near-Earth objects, planetary satellites, planetary surface features, rings and more – they all need names, and it's the IAU that manages them.

I say they "need names", but that's not strictly true. There's a universe of stars, planets and moons out there, and for the most part, astronomers refer to them by their formal designations: TrES-1b, 51 Pegasi b, Wasp-19. While exotic creations like Uhallamacha, Asuasiha and Khepdenreret can all be found in the IAU's Catalog of Star Names, they're largely decorative. Academics prefer to use their scientific alphanumeric designations: HD 155985, HR 6092 and HR 6324.

But names have their place. Not

only do the public and media like them, but when a celestial body is important enough, they're de rigueur. Sometimes names are the principal form of identification. In all such cases, naming needs rules. For instance, NameExoWorlds, an IAU initiative for every country to name an exoplanet and its host star, prohibits the names of living people and anything with political, military or religious significance. Names of pet animals are verboten too, as are trademarks and commercial names, so there'll be no Planet Coke and, regrettably, no World of Leather.

Dozens more rules exist to ensure the universe is named correctly. Given there's an estimated 200 billion trillion stars in the observable universe, and even more planets, the IAU had better get cracking. These stars won't name themselves.

Joshua Blackburn is the author of The Language-Lover's Lexipedia (Bloomsbury, £14.99). Order for £13.49 from observershop.co.uk. Delivery charges may apply

Goldilocks SOLUTION No. 37

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Scan to subscribe to The Puzzle Edit – the weekly newsletter from puzzles editor Caitlin O'Kane

Goldilocks crossword No. 38

Not too hard. Not too easy. Just right.

Goldilocks clues exclude enumerations; in a mid-sized crossword, they only make an already compact puzzle more straightforward. The enjoyment lies in lateral thinking, grid observations, and the distinctly modern British vernacular. Play the Goldilocks archive online by subscribing at observer.co.uk

Across

  • 1 Item signed by unfortunate child's classmates
  • 5 Beyoncé's The Lion King role
  • 9 Nintendo Switch ___ (smaller, cheaper version)
  • 10 This might not bode well
  • 11 Square footage
  • 12 One of many abandoned by irresponsible festival-goers
  • 13 Princess's sleep disturber
  • 14 Holmes to Lewis's Watson
  • 15 Combat-wear material
  • 17 Mercury Prize-winner, maybe
  • 19 Chippy choice
  • 22 Clay-rich soil
  • 23 Fanfare-imitating word
  • 24 Mischief god in Norse myth
  • 25 "I'm taking care of that now!"
  • 26 Went at quite a lick
  • 27 "Don't take that ___ with me"

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Down

  • 1 Thunder noise
  • 2 River that flows through Leeds
  • 3 Meaty option at Greggs
  • 4 Assam or oolong
  • 5 Unacceptable, or unwell
  • 6 Espresso + hot water
  • 7 It might be fisheye or telephoto
  • 8 Up the ___

  • 14 Castleton's ___ Tor (literally 'mother hill')

  • 16 Muggy
  • 17 ___ Well That Ends Well
  • 18 Fancy earplugs brand
  • 20 Father god in Norse myth
  • 21 It's often eaten to break a Ramadan fast
  • 23 Add (up)

Big Apple Sudoku by Godefridus

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Every row, column, and second row are the digits 1-5, plus an extra twist – the four highlighted 3+3 blue squares together form an additional set of boxes, which meet also include 1-6 with no repeats.

with a perfect cockpit, from Latin utopia (numbered). Each derived from Greek no (left) + Sopo (a place).

  1. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and

from the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  1. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  2. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  3. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  4. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  5. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and

  6. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  7. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and

  8. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  9. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and

  10. The world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first, the time of the world's first.

  11. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and

  12. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and

  13. All the island English philosopher Thomas Miller cannot the word for his book (Slopo (1316), where it was an imaginary island life) and


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

33

Staying in

Audio

Everyday epiphanies

Three podcasts share profound insights and extraordinary stories from ordinary people, including the US poet who taught schoolchildren to dream

Xavier Greenwood

Signal Hill

Signal Hill

A View from a Bridge

Joe Bloom

Strangers on a Bench

Tom Rosenthal

It can be easy in the swim of celebrity podcasts and edutainment shows to forget that the most extraordinary wisdom can come from ordinary folk. But Signal Hill, a non-profit audio magazine made by freelance independent producers, knows the score. Its latest issue includes the bittersweet diary of a theatre-maker who has spent this year recording her every waking moment, a feature by the food writer Ruby Tandoh about the plucky heroes trying to save the lute, and a "dispatch" from a group of American schoolkids on a walkabout in New Mexico.

These stories are delightful, in the most unexpected of ways, but none are more evocative than What's Inside the Moon. It tells the tale of Kenneth Koch (pictured inset), an American poet of the New York School, who was hired by a group of fellow writers to teach poetry to children. In 1970, Koch published Wishes, Lies and Dreams, a landmark

account of his efforts. More than half a century later, Jess Shane called up Koch's former students to find out how he changed their lives.

The episode is immaculately produced, using archival tape of Koch and his pupils, some of them as young as six at the time. "When you write a poem, you can say anything you want," Koch explains in one recording. "It can be true or a lie. What matters is that what you say sounds good to you." That is, Koch encouraged the children he taught to dream.

The throat lump appears when you hear from these same pupils, now in their 60s, describing how their dreams changed, how they stayed the same, and how many remain unfulfilled. "I'm 67 years old," Marion Mackles says by way of introduction. "I live on West 42nd Street in New York City, but fantasise about living everywhere else." Then we hear her poem,

written when she was a small girl learning from Koch. "I fell asleep and I had a dream of blue sky, of roses and a house of daisies," Mackles recites. "And I awoke and it was true."

Hopes realised or otherwise are also the subject of A View from a Bridge, an audio adaptation of the viral Instagram account, in which a diverse range of people meditate on life and death while talking into a red telephone on a bridge. Rebooted for a new season last month, Joe Bloom's podcast is at its best when it steers away from celebrities. Molly, a palliative care nurse, recalls a former roofer who spent his final days on the top floor of a Peckham high rise with a hole in his ceiling. Molly panicked at the state of the flat, but then realised that George was quite content. "He felt like he was up in the sky," Molly says. "He felt like he was seeing the birds come in."

It's goodbye for now to Strangers on a Bench, which after its 100th episode is taking an indefinite

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break. The musician Tom Rosenthal's podcast, in which he approaches people in parks and strikes up a conversation with them, has become a profound time capsule of the twists and turns of ordinary lives, always anonymous and uninterrupted by adverts. Rosenthal rounds things off in deft fashion with a 55-year-old Polish woman who turns the format around and starts asking him the questions.

The woman is guarded about her own feelings but gives her thoughts on the fantasies all of us harbour sometimes. "Don't ever stop dreaming," she says. "Don't ever stop. The moment you stop your imagination, then you can die."

Confessional shows raise valid questions about exploitation, duty of care and the audience's voyeurism. But when done right, an extraordinary story told by an ordinary person can be a sunbeam in anyone's day – until the episode ends, and the listener and confider are back to being strangers again.

Miranda Sawyer is away

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34

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Television

By Craig McLean and Kay Ribeiro and Stephen Armstrong

Films by Jonathan Romney

The week's highlights

Today

Pick of the Day

Black Watch

BBC Four, 10pm

Twenty years after its premiere at the Edinburgh fringe, a fresh airing for the National Theatre of Scotland play, filmed live in Dingwall. Iraq 2004: Black Watch soldiers bunker in Camp Dogwood in the supposed "triangle of death". Meanwhile, the UK government plots the regiment's dissolution by absorbing it into a single Scottish unit – a killer blow to the men's morale. Followed at 11.35pm by A Soldier's Story, a closer look at playwright Gregory Burke's masterpiece. CMc

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Bill Oddie Goes Wild

BBC Four, 7pm

After the recent death of 85-year-old conservationist Bill Oddie, another chance to enjoy him recalling his favourite moments from three series of his early 2000s wildlife programme. The former Goodies star's passion for birdwatching is showcased in Birding With Bill Oddie at 7.30pm, followed by Bill Oddie's Top Ten Birds at 8pm. KR

Sunny Nights

ITV1, 10.15pm

This fun Australia-set comedy drama pitches Will Forte and D'Arcy Carden as bickering American siblings Martin and Vicki, pinning their hopes and fortunes on their new spray-tan company. Forte and Carden have chemistry in spades, and the subplot of Martin being dragged into Sydney's criminal underworld is as entertaining as it is far-fetched. KR

Film

Top Hat

(Mark Sandrich, 1935)

BBC Two, 9.30am

Start the day in style with this, the third vehicle for Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers as a headline duo. Their best-loved film, it features an Irving Berlin score that includes Top Hat, White Tie and Tails, Isn't This a Lovely Day (To Be Caught in the Rain) and the impeccable Cheek to Cheek (this last number sending Mia Farrow's heroine into raptures in Woody Allen's 1930s-set The Purple Rose of Cairo). The plot involves mistaken identity among showbiz types flitting round Europe, and the supporting cast includes Eric Blore and Edward Everett Horton, but the fanciest names to drop here are choreographer Hermes Pan and production designer Van Nest Polgase. Sheer joy, sheer class. JR

Monday

Pick of the Day

Buried With Michael Sheen

BBC Two, 9pm

As with Netflix's Toxic Town drama, this two-part documentary examines the poisoning of innocent civilians and their fight for justice. For 50 years, Douglas Gowan claimed Welsh people were being poisoned by PCBs, "forever chemicals" dumped by US chemical company Monsanto. Shadow figures tried to discredit Gowan, who died in 2018, but now actor Michael Sheen helps takes up his cause in exposing the horrifying extent and consequences of the wrongdoing. KR

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Disclosure: Welcome to Glasgow

BBC Two, 11.05pm

"Welcome to the war zone – it's Glasgow city centre," ran the April headline in the city's newspaper the Herald. Myles Bonnar spends a week on the mean streets of Scotland's biggest city, investigating reports that areas are "no-go zones" due to antisocial behaviour, crime and homelessness – with anti-immigrant sentiment intensifying the unease. CMc

Everybody Lies

Channel 4, 12.05am

Vincent Elbaz stars as temperamental detective Vincent Verner in an eight-part French crime drama that follows the trusted formula. Fired from his job in Paris, Verner works in a bookshop until young prosecutor Alice Mojodi (Mariama Gueye) asks him to join her new team of misfits investigating corrupt, powerful men. Right up his rue. KR

Film

Witchfinder General

(Michael Reeves, 1968)

Legend Xtra, 1.30am

It's significant that the two most celebrated – at least, cult-consecrated – British horror films, this and The Wicker Man, should both be about the old, weird England. This Civil War drama is something other than a straight chiller, however, and receives distinctive stylistic treatment from prodigious young director Reeves, who died soon after its release, aged 25. Vincent Price plays real-life with hunter Matthew Hopkins, cutting a ruthless swathe through East Anglia. The film is very much a study of violence and political corruption, with Price giving a more solemn turn to the urbane European monsters he played in his films for Roger Corman. Reeves's English fields run murderously red throughout. JR

Tuesday

Pick of the Day

Celebrity MasterChef

BBC One, 9pm

Michelin-starred chef Giorgio Locatelli joins Grace Dent in the MasterChef kitchen, bringing warmth and wisdom as the new judge. The stars, including weightlifter Emily Campbell and reality star Shakira Khan, bring their own flavour. Comedian Joe Pasquale adopts a "more is more" approach with his "Frankenstein pie", while presenter Jason Mohammad is confident his keema will impress. A shame singer Jay McGuinness doesn't have his self-belief. Continues Wednesday and Friday. KR

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The Great ADHD Myth?

Channel 4, 8pm

With contention baked into its title, this documentary explores the "booming" rate of ADHD diagnoses. Ten years ago, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder was "relatively rare". Now, 2.5 million people are estimated to have it. Experts propose the idea that it's a social construct, and challenge the efficacy of treating children with a "chemical cosh". CMc

Little Bird

Sky Atlantic, 9pm

For nearly 200 years, Canada's Indigenous children were removed from their families, incarcerated in boarding schools and put out to adoption with white families. In 1967, Bezhig Little Bird plays on a Saskatchewan reserve. In 1985, Esther Rosenblum is treated to an engagement party by her Jewish community. This drama charts her journey in between. CMc

Film

The Untouchables

(Brian De Palma, 1987)

BBC One, 10.40pm

Two things have overshadowed this film's reputation. One is the bravura shootout paying homage to the Odesa Steps sequence in Battleship Potemkin. The other is Robert De Niro's insistence on wearing Al Capone's underwear to play the mobster (underwear in Capone's favoured style, not the actual garment). Written by David Mamet, it's based on the memoir by lawman Eliot Ness (played by Kevin Costner), and recounts his battle against gang rule in Prohibition-era Chicago. Sean Connery won an Oscar as a veteran cop, and De Palma directs the hell out of it. And showing the director in pure action mode, his 1996 Mission: Impossible (BBC iPlayer) kicks off the Tom Cruise franchise in style. JR

Wednesday

Pick of the Day

Professor T

ITV1, 9pm

Not that anything remotely "cosy" is what we need now, but welcome back Ben Miller's Cambridge University criminologist, who wields his OCD like a low-wattage superpower. As this fourth series begins, we catch up with the guilt-haunted professor six months after the death of DS Lisa Donckers and unable to carry out his "therapeutic" police work. But the mystery of a missing influencer draws him back in. A suitably gentle warm-up for Ludwig's return tomorrow. CMc

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Voices of the Valleys

Sky Arts, 8pm

The concluding part of this heartwarming series sees the three Welsh male choirs putting their hearts and vocal cords on the line as they take part in their respective competitions. Last-minute nerves and soaring temperatures prove challenging, but their camaraderie and strong Welsh spirit will see them through – along with some innovative props. KR

Love You to Death

Channel 4, 9pm

In 2010, Lisa Hayden-Johnson was imprisoned for child cruelty and perverting the course of justice, a shocking example of Munchausen syndrome by proxy. In this three-part documentary, those who helped end Lisa's "medical and psychological torture" of her son detail the case, along with input from Matthew himself. Lisa also tries to justify her actions. KR

Film

The Beast

(Bertrand Bonello, 2023)

Film4, 11.40pm

Bertrand Bonello (Nocturnama, Zombi Child) is currently French cinema's most conceptual auteur, with a taste for provocation and a playfully deconstructive approach to narrative. This film is inspired by the Henry James novella The Beast in the Jungle and explores its theme and variations across three eras, with Léa Seydoux and George MacKay paired in each. In 1910 Paris, Seydoux is a pianist whose ennui MacKay seems likely to dispel; in 2014, she is stalked by him in Los Angeles; and in 2044, they prepare to purge their emotions in an Al-ruled world. As the timeframes intersect, the film merges pastiche, social comment and even a touch of underwater peril. Cerebral, in a heady, hallucinatory game-playing way. JR


observer.co.uk 16.08.26

35

Thursday

Pick of the Day

Ludwig

BBC One, 9pm

You'd presume now that if David Mitchell's puzzle-setter John has been made a police consultant, life would be simpler. Alas, no. Between dodging chief constable Ziegler (Ralph Ineson) and helping his sister-in-law Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin) locate his twin, James, his stress levels are high. In series two's enjoyable opener, John heads to the theatre to deduce whether Patricia (Rebecca Front) or Portia (Doon Mackichan) brought the curtain down for the unfortunate murder victim. KR

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Dragons' Den

BBC One, 8pm

With Touker Suleyman out and beauty entrepreneurs Susie Ma and Jenna Meek joining Deborah Meaden, Peter Jones and Steven Bartlett, it's the first time female Dragons reign supreme. Haircare products catch green queen Deborah's eye and old-fashioned sweets appeal to Peter, but newbie Ma is a harder nut to crack. KR

Novak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter

Prime Video

Widely regarded as the greatest player in men's tennis history, Novak Djokovic might be one of the most misunderstood stars of the sport. This superb documentary, replete with commentary from former opponents, experts, family members and the man himself, charts his extraordinary story, characterised by inat – a Serbian term for stubborn defiance. KR

Film

Tár

(Todd Field, 2022)

BBC Two, 12.05am

Ex-actor Todd Field (Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut) directed two well-regarded features (In the Bedroom, Little Children) before really catching fire with this provocative drama. Cate Blanchett is phenomenally commanding as revered orchestra conductor Lydia Tár, whose reputation and psyche unravel when she is accused of sexual and professional misconduct. Tár was instantly controversial in its depiction of hot-button themes, but it transcends mere current-affairs status through its complex narrative, enigmatic execution and superb cast, including Nina Hoss, who reunites with Blanchett in Electra/Persona at the National Theatre this week. All this, and more Mahler than you can shake a baton at. JR

Friday

Pick of the Day

Miles Davis: A Celebration at

the Proms BBC Four, 8pm

Honouring the centenary of the jazz trumpeter's birth, an evening of orchestrated tributes, with American jazz trumpeter Ambrose Akinmusire and Japanese jazz musician/composer Miho Hazama. Presenting from the Royal Albert Hall is Clive Myrie, a lifelong jazz fan who counts Davis's Porgy and Bess as one of his all-time favourites. The repertoire includes classic cuts from that 1959 album, plus Sketches of Spain, Miles Ahead and more. Kind of brilliant. CMc

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Heat

5, 9pm

Danny Dyer reflecting on his life choices in the outback? No, not I'm a Celeb... but 5's 2023 Aussie thriller, in which Dyer plays a businessman whose annual family trip to visit an old friend turns into the holiday from hell. If the well signposted tension and simmering passion doesn't cause them all to combust, the looming bush fire might. KR

Station Eleven

Sky Atlantic, 9pm & 10.05pm

The double-episode finale for this HBO drama starring Himesh Patel and Mackenzie Davis, originally broadcast in the US four years ago. It's a brilliant end-times saga that's literally Shakespearean, focusing as it does on a theatrical troupe navigating a post-pandemic hellscape. Toggling between the near-present and 2040, it's endlessly wrenching. CMc

Film

Chicken Run

(Peter Lord, Nick Park, 2000)

BBC Three, 7.40pm

While not as universally adored as the Wallace and Gromit cycle – nor quite as ingenious – this remains one of the best-liked of Aardman's animation features, with its gentle spoofing of 1940s PoW dramas. It's set on a Yorkshire farm run by the tyrannical Mrs Tweedy (voiced by Miranda Richardson), where intrepid chicken Ginger (Julia Sawalha) is forever making escape plans. These start to look more feasible with the arrival of an American rooster, supposed flying ace Rocky (Mel Gibson). The film revels in Aardman's tender twirling of all things cosily British. It also gleefully flouts the phrase "rare as hen's teeth", with the studio's trademark choppers gleaming proudly in every beak. JR

Saturday

Pick of the Day

Motown Night

BBC Two, from 8pm

Building out from Marvin Gaye: A Tribute at the Proms, featuring the BBC Concert Orchestra and guest vocalists, an evening of Motor City magic. Gaye's Greatest Hits – Live in Amsterdam 1976 (9.30pm) is followed by Diana Ross at the BBC (10.25pm), then 1995 studio concert A Night of Wonder (11.25pm) from not-so-little Stevie. A tribute to Motown's in-house songwriter Lamont Dozier at the BBC (12.30am) and Motown at the BBC (1.30am) bring the starry celebration to a close. CMc

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The Voice UK

ITV1, 7pm

Welsh crooner Tom Jones meets his match for showbiz stories, as Destiny's Child singer Kelly Rowland joins him, will.i.am, and McFly's Tom Fletcher and Danny Jones, as coaches on the 14th series of the singing talent contest. Having served as UK and US X Factor Judge and sold 40m records worldwide as a solo artist, Kelly certainly knows her stuff. KR

Match of the Day

BBC One, 10.20pm

It's kick-off o'clock for the football season, with Mark Chapman joined by Alan Shearer and Wayne "I thought it was crap" Rooney. Highlights from Friday's match between champions Arsenal and Coventry, plus Hull v Manchester United; Everton v Crystal Palace; Ipswich Town v Sunderland; Nottingham Forest v Leeds; and Brentford v Tottenham. CMc

Film

The Third Man

(Carol Reed, 1949)

BBC Two, 10.15am

A mesmerising dark dream of a film that reveals more depth with every viewing. Scripted by Graham Greene – who road-tested the material by first making it a novella – it stars Joseph Cotten as the pulp novelist blundering into deep intrigue in postwar Vienna. The film boasts a staggering amount of elements that you'd have to call iconic, from Anton Karas's zitter theme to the climactic underground pursuit, while European chiaroscuro, as photographed by Robert Krasker, has never been more seductively engulfing. But it's hard not to think that, really, it all revolves around that quizzical smirk of Orson Welles's Harry Lane in his first close-up. Welles clearly thought so, and who would say he was wrong? JR

TV streaming

Picks of the Week

Black film-makers have been using supernatural creatures as an allegory for white dominance, power and exploitation since 1940's Son of Ingagi. Recently – with the films Get Out and Sinners, and the ultimately disappointing series Lovecraft Country – the horror is increasingly specific. The UK is only just coming to terms with the blood on our hands, and the remarkable Possession, from writer Karla Crome, is an early indication of the tales we will tell. The final episode drops on Sky Atlantic on Thursday, with the full, five-part season available to stream on Sky/Now. Gugu Mbatha-Raw stars as the young biracial lawyer sent to Jamaica to handle a delicate matter of disinheritance (just as Jonathan Harker was sent to Transylvania to help a local count in a property matter). A sugar-plantation owner has cut his only child out of his will, leaving the lot to the mysterious Cudjoe East. Jonny Lee Miller plays the outcast Oliver as delightfully posh and nervy, along to investigate with her. Two storylines intertwine – the first set 300 years ago, when Oliver's ancestors brutally repress a plantation rebellion; the second in the present, featuring an uncanny encounter with Sheldon Shepherd's Cudjoe, who claims to be nearly 300 years old. Spirit possession, stolen children and cries for justice infuse the finale, but solving this is not as simple as reparations.

Back in 2022, Mike Gunton, the creative director of the BBC's natural history unit, worked with The Jungle Book director Jon Favreau on the series Prehistoric Planet. Now they've reteamed for Lion (Disney+, Thursday), which follows a single pride of lions, and in particular a cub called Kio, who faces loss, exile and fierce rivals in his battle for supremacy. This real-life Lion King is Disney at its least saccharine, with Hans Zimmer providing the score.

Lees brutal and bloodsoaked is Disney Worldbuilders (Disney+, Thursday), which follows the theme-park designers, or "imagineers", as they are attempt to adapt Disney movies into rides. Wondered how they created Zootopia Land in Shanghai or World of Frozen in Paris? This is for you. If you're more curious about where Disney stands on neo-Nazis parading outside its parks on its LGBTQ+

friendly Gay Days, or paramilitary Chicano groups marching there to protest ice deportations, then maybe not so much. SA

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Gugu

Mbatha-Raw:

Is Jamaica-

bound in

Possession.

Des Riffle


36 observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Today's television

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Sunny Nights, ITV1, 10.15pm D'Arcy Carden attempts to make a go of her spray- tan business down under

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 7.25 European Athletics Championships: Birmingham 2026 (T) 10.35 TEU Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile Grant Gordon, Will Speck, 2022 (T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 1.0 News (T) 1.10 Weather (T) 1.15 Songs of Praise (T) 1.50 Money for Nothing (T) 2.35 Escape to the Country (T) 3.05 The Making Game (T) 3.45 Homes Under the Hammer (T) 5.05 News (T) 5.20 Regional News (T) 5.30 Countryfile (T) 6.30 Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 6.25 Countryfile (T) (R) 7.25 Breakfast (T) 9.0 Prayer and Reflection (T) (R) 9.30TEU Ho Hall (Mark Sandrich, 1935) (T) Musical starving Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers 11.05 The Best Dishes Ever (T) (R) 11.35 The Great British Sowing Bee (T) (R) 12.35 TEU Superman Nr. The Quest for Peace (Sidney J Farre, 1987) (T) 2.0 Cricket: The Hundred (T) The women's final (start-time 2.15pm) 6.0 Cricket: The Hundred (T) The men's final (start-time 6.0pm). 6.0 James Martin's American Adventure (T) (R) 7.0 James Martin's Saturday Morning (T) (R) 9.25 News (T) 9.30 Love Your Weekend with Alan Titchmarsh (T) (R) 11.30 Fern Britton: Inside the Ve's (T) 12.30 Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy (T) (R) 10.0 News (T) 1.05 Force of Nature (T) (R) 2.10 TEU Scissoway (1983) (T) 4.45 The Chase Celebrity Special (T) (R) 5.45 The Chase Around the World (T) (R) 6.40 News (T) 7.0 Force of Nature (T) 6.20 Cheers (T) (R) 7.40 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 8.30 The Simpsons (T) (R) 10.0 Sunday Brunch (T) 1.0 The Dog House (T) (R) 2.0 Four in a Bed (T) (R) 4.35 Our Farm Next Door: Amanda, Clive and Kids (T) (R) 5.35 Worst House on the Street (T) (R) Scarlet and Stuart face one of their biggest challenges to date 6.30 News (T) 7.0 Gogglebox (T) Compilation of highlights from series 27, in which the Goggleboxers check out more of the biggest and best TV. 6.0 Mikshake 9.05 Entertainment News on 5 (T) 9.15TEU The Spongebild SquarePants Movie (Stephen Hillenburg, 2004) (T) Children's animated comedy 11.0 Happy Campers: The Caravan Park (T) (R) 1.0 Cruising with Susan Calman (T) (R) 3.0 Cros Watch with Steve Backshall (T) (R) 4.0 Cros Watch with Steve Backshall (T) (R) 5.0 Sicily with Michael Portillo (T) (R) 6.25 News (T) 6.30 Birds of a Heather: 30 Years of Laughs (T) (R) 7.0The Best of Bill Oddie Goes Wild (T) From Hampstead Heath, Bill Oddie reminisces about his travels. 7.30Birding with Bill Oddie (T) Bill revisits his childhood birding haunts to discover how they have changed.
7.30 European Athletics Championships: Birmingham 2026 (T) Gabby Logan presents coverage of the evening session on the seventh and final day from Alexander Stadium. With analysis from Jessica Ennis-Hill and Greg Rutherford. 9.30 Q1 (T) (R) Ed Byrne, Cally Beaton and Jack Dee join regular contestant Alan Davies on the comedy panel quiz with Sandi Tokvug asking questions on the theme of all things theatrical, with points awarded for the most interesting answers. 8.0 Van Der Valk (T) Crime drama, starring Marc Warren. When a scientist researching cancer is found seemingly assassinated, Piet investigates the death and discovers a link to a pharmaceuticals billionaire. Last in the series. 8.0 Richard E Grant's Very Modern Odyssey (T) Richard searches for the mythical hypnotic lotus fruit in Tunisia. 9.0 The Piano (T) Claudia Winkleman hosts as the finalists prepare for their concert at Birmingham Symphony Hall. 8.0 Dogs Believing (Very) Badly (T) (R) In this edition, Graeme Hall meets two pups who make focusing on driving impossible. 9.0 Inside the Four Seasons: Park Lane (T) Documentary Director of engineering Gary begins the Presidential Suite refresh. 8.0 Bill Oddie's Top Ten Birds (T) A light-hearted guide in which the host counts down the UK's 10 most-loved and 10 most-hated birds. 9.0 Debuts at the Proms (T) A celebration of moments that made Proms history, with landmark premieres and remarkable debuts.
10.0 News (T) 10.25 Regional News (T) Weather 10.30 TEU Mission: Impossible 2 (John Bliss, 2000) (T) 12.25 TEU Spider-Man: Far from Home (Jon Watts, 2019) (T) 2.25 Weather 2.30 News 10.0 TEU The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) (T) 11.40 TEU Bismis and Clyde (Arthur Penn, 1967) (T) 1.30 Sign Zone: Ann Droid (T) (R) Comedy series. 10.0 News (T) Weather 10.15 Sunny Nights (T) New series, Australian comedy. 11.15 25 Years in Afghanistan (T) 1.05 Shop on TV 3.0 Inside Iran: War & Revolution (T) (R) 4.10 Unwind with ITV (T) 10.0 Celebrity Gogglebox (T) (R) 11.05 TEU Alice, Darling (Mary Nighy, 2022) (T) Thriller. 12.45 Ramsay's Hotel Hell (T) (R) 1.35 Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives (T) (R) 2.25 Couples Come Dine with Me (R) 10.0 When Caravan Holidays Go Horring Wrong (T) (R) 11.30 Britain's Worst Weather Disasters (T) (R) 1.0 Cruise TV (T) (R) 2.0 GPS: Behind Closed Doors (T) (R) Documentary series. 10.0 Black Watch (T) 11.35 Black Watch: A Soldier's Story (T) 12.35 Jane Austen: The Unseen Portrait? (T) 1.35 Debuts at the Proms (T) 2.35 Bill Oddie Goes Wild (T)

Monday 17

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Walter Presents: Everybody Lies, Channel 4, 12.05am Vincent Elbaz's laumans refuses to turn a blind eye to corruption

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.30 Countryfile Treasures (T) (R) 10.30 Garden Rescue (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) (R) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.35 Regional News (T) Weather 1.45 News (T) Weather 2.0 Money for Nothing (T) 2.45 Escape to the Country (T) 3.35 The Repair Shop (T) (R) 4.30 The Answer Run (T) 5.15 Pointless (T) (R) Quiz 6.0 News (T) Weather 6.30 Regional News (T) Weather 7.0 The One Show (T) 7.30 EastEnders (T) 6.45 Beechgrove Garden (T) (R) 7.15 The Answer Run (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone: The Repair Shop (T) (R) 9.0 News (T) 1.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 1.30 The Finish Line (T) (R) 2.15 Do You Know Your Place? (T) (R) 2.45 Animal Park Summer (T) (R) 3.30 Serengeti II (T) (R) 4.30 Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 5.15 Frog It (T) (R) 6.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 6.30 Bear Grylls: Wild Reckoning (T) (R) 7.0 Global Eye (T) 7.30 Mastermind (T) 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 10.0 This Morning (T) 1.30 News (T) Weather 1.55 Local News (T) Weather 2.0 Dickinson's Real Deal (T) (R) 3.0 Dusk or No Deal (T) (R) 4.0 Tipping Point (T) (R) 5.0 The Chase (T) (R) 6.0 Local News (T) Weather 6.30 News (T) Weather 7.30 Fletchers' Family Farm (T) (R) Kelvin is on a mission to expand the cow herd and Mamie prepares for lambing season. Milo, Kelvin and his dad start to work on an old vintage tractor. Last in the series. 6.30 The King of Queens (T) (R) 7.45 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier (T) (R) Comedy series. 11.10 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 12.05 News (T) 12.10 Find it, Fix It, Flog It (T) (R) 1.10 The Great House Giveaway (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) 4.0 The Great B&B Challenge (T) (R) 5.0 Chateau DV (T) (R) 6.0 American Pickers (T) (R) A toy museum readies to sell its collection of treasures. 7.0 News (T) Headlines. 6.0 Mikshake 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 News (T) 12.50 Matt Allwright (T) 2.20 TEU An Affair to Die For (Tamar Halpern, 2023) (T) Thriller starring Ryan Francis. 4.0 Castle (T) (R) An air marshal is murdered during a flight. 4.55 Love Nature (T) (R) 5.0 News (T) 6.0 Cyprus: Jewel of the Med (T) (R) A profile of the Mediterranean island. 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Traffic Cops (T) (R) Officers are on the lookout for a suspected cloned car. 7.55 News (T) 7.0 The Architecture the Railways Built (T) At King's Cross station in London. 7.40 The Flying Gardener (T) Chris Beardshaw visits the Beth Chatto garden. 7.55 The Art of Spain (T) With Andrew Graham-Dixon.
8.0 Panorama: Child Maintenance: Parents Under Pressure (T) Is the child maintenance system failing parents? 8.30 Scam Interceptors (T) (R) Catching crooks. 9.0 Death in Paradise (T) (R) A rap artist is shot dead at a soundcheck for a concert. 8.0 Only Connect (T) Accrual World Like on the Kintwits. 8.30 University Challenge (T) Quiz show Beth Gakes on City St George's. 9.0 Buried with Michael Skeen (T) The actor investigates allegations of toxic contamination in south Wales. 8.0 Emmerdale (T) Ruby orchestrates the theft of Jimmy's shipment. 8.30 Convention Street (T) George punishes Christina. 9.0 Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace - What Happened Next (T) A look at the stories of Susanne Barrow and Tom Yeo. 8.0 Martin & Roman's Irish Road Trip (T) Martin and Roman Kemp explore Meath and Dublin. 9.0 Celebrity Hunted (T) Two celebrities on the run drop in at a show bar in Leeds. A social media post provides the hunters to raid a retirement home. 8.0 Street Cops: Catching the Yoke (T) Documentary series. Officers chase a teen after finding a studied baseball bat. 9.0 Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law (T) Investigators hunt for a woman who is thought to love more than £2,300 in unpaid fares. 8.0 Street Cops: Catching the Yoke (T) Documentary series. Officers chase a teen after finding a studied baseball bat. 9.0 Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law (T) Investigators hunt for a woman who is thought to love more than £2,300 in unpaid fares. 9.0 Mastermind (T) Magnus Magnusson hosts the second heat of the 1977 series of the quiz. 9.30 Call My Bluff (T) Game show. Frank Muir, André Previn and Tina Brown compete against Patrick Campbell, Tom Conti and Barbara Kellerman.
10.0 News (T) 10.30 Regional News (T) Weather 10.40 Have I Got News for You (R) 11.10 TEU Mission: Impossible 8 (J) Abrams, 2006) (T) 1.05 Weather for the Week Ahead (T) 1.10 News (T) 10.0 Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing (T) (R) 10.30 Newsnight (T) Weather 11.05 Disclosure: Welcome to Glasgow (T) Documentary. 12.05 A House Through Time (T) (R) With David Olusoga. 10.0 News (T) Weather 10.45 Cold Case Forensics: In the Blood (T) (R) Last in series. 11.40 The Assembly (T) (R) 12.05 Shop on TV 3.0 The Staircase (T) (R) 4.05 Unwind with ITV (T) 10.0 Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives (T) Reality series. 11.05 Surgery Secrets of the Super Rich (T) (R) 12.05 Walter Presents: Everybody Lies (T) 1.0 Ramsay's Hotel Hell (R) 10.0 Police Interceptors: Taking Down the Shoplifting Gangs (T) (R) Documentary. 11.05 Traffic Cops (T) (R) 12.05 Car Pound Cops (T) (R) 1.0 Cruise TV (T) (R) 2.0 GPS: Behind Closed Doors (R) 10.0 Art on the BBC: Michelangelo - The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (T) 11.0 Arena: Art & Design: The Journey (T) 11.25 Wainwright: The Man Who Loved the Lakes (T)

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Tuesday 18

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Little Bird, Sky Atlantic, 9pm Darla Contois stars in this unflinching Canadian drama

BBC One BBC Two ITVI Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.30 Countryville Treasures (T) (R) 10.30 Garden Rescue (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 13.0 News (T) Weather 1.35 Regional News (T) Weather 1.45 News (T) Weather 2.0 Money for Nothing (T) 2.45 Escape to the Country (T) 3.30 The Repair Shop (T) (R) 4.30 The Answer Run (T) 5.15 Pointless (T) (R) 6.0 News (T) Weather 6.30 Regional News (T) Weather 7.0 The One Show (T) 7.30 EastEnders (T) 6.30 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 7.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone (T) (R) 9.0 News (T) 1.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 1.30 The Finish Line (T) (R) 2.15 Do You Know Your Place? (T) (R) 2.45 Animal Park Summer (T) (R) 3.30 Serengeti (T) (R) 4.30 Vintage Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 5.15 Flog It (T) (R) 6.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 6.30 Bear Grylls: Wild Reckoning (T) (R) 7.0 Nigellissima (T) (R) 7.30 Race Against the Tide (T) 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 10.0 This Morning (T) 1.30 News (T) Weather 1.55 Local News (T) Weather 2.0 Dickinson's Real Deal (T) (R) 3.0 Deal or No Deal (T) (R) 4.0 Tipping Point (T) (R) Ben Shephard hosts the arcade-themed quiz. 5.0 The Chase (T) (R) Quiz, hosted by Bradley Walsh. 6.0 Local News (T) Weather 6.30 News (T) Weather 7.30 Inside the Langham: Britain's First Grand Hotel (T) Reception supervisor Rodrigo welcomes a dancing idol of his. 6.30 The King of Queens (T) (R) 7.45 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier (T) (R) 11.10 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 12.05 News (T) 12.10 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (T) (R) 1.10 The Great House Giveaway (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) 4.0 The Great B&B Challenge (T) (R) Nichola and Roy welcome their first guests. 5.0 Chateau DIY (T) (R) 6.0 American Pickers (T) (R) A Virginia bluegrass legend has a few valuable mementos. 7.0 News (T) 6.0 Milkshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 News (T) 12.50 Matt Alwright (T) 2.20 DNB Living Next To Danger (John Murkowski, 2023) (T) Thriller with Kristi Murdock. 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 Love Nature (T) (R) 5.0 News (T) 6.0 Gibraltar: Jewel of the Med (T) (R) A profile of the peninsula in southern Spain. 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Police interceptors (T) (R) Two men in a van embark on a dangerous race through four counties. 7.55 News (T) 7.0 The Architecture the Railways Built (T) (T) On units in the Yorkshire Dales. 7.45 The Flying Gardener (T) Chris Beardshaw explores Leonardshire Garden and Sheffield Park Garden.
8.0 The Great British Sewing Bee (T) The sewers make tutus, cuddly toys and superhero costumes for children's week. 8.0 Saving Lives at Sea (T) New series. There's a 999 call about a fisherman who has fallen overboard. 8.0 Emmerdale (T) Joe has a surprise for everyone. 8.0 The Great ADHD Myth (T) Max Pemberton challenges current ideas about ADHD. 8.0 Motorway Cops: Catching Britain's Speeders (T) An uninsured Mercedes van refuses to stop on the M6. 8.0 To the Manor Born (T) Audrey and DeVere clash.
9.0 Celebrity MasterChef (T) New series, Joe Pasquale, Jason Mohammad, Emily Campbell, Shakira Khan and Jay McGuinness compete. 9.0 Emergency 24/7 (T) New series. A look at the emergency department at Southmead Hospital, Bristol, revealing the pressures it faces daily. 9.0 Coronation Street (T) Kit leaves Sarah to deal with Kacey's threat. 9.0 Celebrity Hunted (T) The hunters track two of the celebrity runners to a Leeds bar. Broadcasting legend Gloria Hunniford provides a safe haven for two fugitives in need. 9.0 The Georgians with Rob Rinder & Ruth Goodman (T) Rob and Ruth look at the coronation of King George IV in 1820 – one of the most lavish in British history. 8.30 Keeping Up Appearances (T) Hyacinth decides to buy a country retreat – but her plans, naturally, go awry.
10.0 News (T) 10.30 Regional News (T) Weather 10.40 DNB The Untouchables (Brian De Palma, 1987) (T) Gangster thriller. 10.0 Live at the Apollo (T) (R) 10.30 Newsnight (T) Weather 11.05 The Vampire Lestat: Interview with the Vampire (T) Double-bill of the horror. 10.0 News (T) Weather 10.30 Local News (T) Weather 10.45 DNB Octopussy (John Glen, 1983) (T) 1.10 Shop 3.0 The Summit (T) (R) 3.50 Unwind (T) 5.05 Long Lost Family (T) (R) 10.0 Gogglebox (T) (R) 11.05 Secret Lives... (T) (R) 12.05 Monaco's Superhomes (T) (R) 1.05 Hotel Hell (T) (R) 1.55 The Piano (T) (R) 2.45 DNB Orion (2023) (T) 4.20 Couples Come Dine (T) (R) 10.30 James Bulger: The Trial (R) 12.05 Serial Killer Wives (T) (R) 1.0 Cruise TV (T) (R) 2.0 GPs: Behind Closed Doors (T) (R) 2.50 Castle (T) (R) 3.40 Friends (T) (R) 4.30 The Highland Vet (T) (R) 9.0 On Camera: Photographers at the BBC (T) A revealing insight into several great modern photographers.
12.35 The Hit List (T) (R) 1.20 Weather (T) 1.25 News (T) 12.50 Sign Zone: Uncanny (T) (R) 1.50 Sign Zone (T) (R) 1.50 Sign Zone (T) (R) 10.0 Britain in Focus: A Photographic History (T) 11.0 Secret Genius of Plants (T) 11.55 The Science of Soil (T) 12.50 Britain in Focus (T) 1.50 The Flying Gardener (T) 2.05 Photographers at the BBC

Wednesday 19

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Love You to Death, Channel 4, 9pm Lisa Hayden-Johnson's shocking deception is recounted

BBC One BBC Two ITVI Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.30 Countryville Treasures (T) (R) 10.30 Garden Rescue (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 13.0 News (T) Weather 1.35 Regional News (T) Weather 1.45 News (T) Weather 2.0 Money for Nothing (T) 2.45 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 3.30 The Repair Shop (T) (R) 4.30 The Answer Run (T) 5.15 Pointless (T) (R) 6.0 News (T) Weather 6.30 Regional News (T) Weather 7.0 The One Show (T) 7.30 EastEnders (T) 6.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) (R) 7.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone (T) (R) 9.0 News (T) 1.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 1.30 The Finish Line (T) (R) 2.15 Do You Know Your Place? (T) (R) 2.45 Animal Park Summer (T) (R) 3.30 Serengeti (T) (R) 4.30 Vintage Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 5.15 Flog It (T) (R) 6.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 6.30 Bear Grylls: Wild Reckoning (T) (R) 7.0 Today at the Test (T) 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 10.0 This Morning (T) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.20 Local News (T) Weather 1.30 ITV Racing: Love from York (T) Day one of the Ebor Meeting. 4.30 Tipping Point Best Ever Pixels (T) (R) 5.0 The Chase (T) (R) Juke, Abby, Mahesh and Paul take part. 6.0 Local News (T) Weather 6.30 News (T) Weather 7.30 Inside the Langham: Britain's First Grand Hotel (T) The team celebrates the 160th anniversary of the Langham. Last in the series. 6.30 The King of Queens (T) (R) 7.45 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier (T) (R) 11.10 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 12.05 News (T) 12.10 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (T) (R) 1.10 The Great House Giveaway (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) 4.0 The Great B&B Challenge (T) (R) 5.0 Chateau DIY (T) (R) Becky and Mark rush to get ready for an open day. 6.0 American Pickers (T) (R) Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz are in Ohio. 7.0 News (T) 6.0 Milkshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 News (T) 12.50 Matt Alwright (T) 2.20 DNB The Body in the Attic (Damian Romay, 2023) (T) Thriller starring Abigail Hawk. 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 Love Nature (T) (R) 5.0 News (T) 6.0 Capri: Jewel of the Med (T) (R) One of the Mediterranean's smallest inhabited islands. 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Car Pound Cops (T) (R) Tracking cars as they are seized for a variety of offences. Last in the series. 7.55 News (T) 7.0 Villages by the Sea (T) Archaeologist Ben Robinson visits Cushendall in Northern Ireland. 7.30 Canal Boat Diaries (T) Robbie Cumming makes a running repair to his narrowboat in Yorkshire.
8.0 Fake or Fortune? What Happened Next (T) An update on whether two sketchbooks were the work of a young Toulouse-Lautrec. 8.0 Digging for Britain (T) (R) Alice Roberts explores archaeological treasures in the west of Britain. 8.0 Emmerdale (T) Kev makes a shocking confession. 8.0 Extraordinary Extensions (T) A Coyolion couple builds a barn extension. 8.0 Casualty 24/7: Every Second Country (T) Winter pressures have hit Barnsley Casualty leading to an increase in patients. 8.0 Simon Sebag Montefiore Remembers – Rome: A History of the Eternal City
9.0 Celebrity MasterChef (T) The contestants cook a pie for their guest, presenter Paddy McGuinness. 9.0 Murder Trial: Death of a Dog Walker (T) Part two of two former gamekeeper David Campbell takes the stand, accused of murdering his colleague. 9.0 Murder Trial: Death of a Dog Walker (T) Part two of two former gamekeeper David Campbell takes the stand, accused of murdering his colleague. 9.0 Love You to Death (T) New series. The story of a mother who fabricated her son's illness, and subjected him to unnecessary medical procedures. Continues tomorrow. 9.0 999: Critical Condition (T) A man worries that he may never walk again after a road traffic accident. Last in the series. 8.15 Rome: A History of the Eternal City (T) The role of religion in the city's power.
10.0 News (T) 10.30 Regional News (T) Weather 10.40 MOTO: UEFA Champions League (T) Play-off action. 10.0 Couples Therapy (T) 10.30 Newsnight (T) Weather 11.05 Couples Therapy (T) 12.05 Buried with Michael Sheen (T) (R) 1.05 Sign Zone: Antiquities: An Origin Story (T) 1.55 Evolution (T) (R) 10.0 News (T) Local News 10.45 Long Lost Family (T) (R) 11.40 British Touring Car (T) 1.05 Shop 3.0 Love & Death (R) 3.50 Inside the Langham (T) (R) 4.10 Unwind (T) 5.30 Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy 10.0 Outback Murder Highway (T) New series. 10.0 A&E: Crash Scene Emergency (T) (R) 11.05 Ambulance: Code Red (R) 12.05 A&E After Dark (T) (R) 1.0 Cruise TV (T) (R) 2.0 GPs: Behind Closed Doors (T) (R) 2.50 Castle (T) (R) 9.15 Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit (T) Identity and citizenship in the Empire.
11.30 DNB Monkey Man (Dev Page, 2024) (T) Premiere. 11.25 Weather (T) 1.30 News (T) 11.25 Weather (T) 1.30 News (T) 11.25 Weather (T) 1.30 News (T) 11.25 Weather (T) 1.30 News (T) 10.15 L Claudius (T) 12.0 The Australian Wars (T) 12.55 Canal Boat Diaries (T) 1.25 Rome: A History (T) 2.25 Villages by the Sea (T) 2.55 Mary Beard's Rome: Empire Without Limit (T)

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Thursday 20

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Norak Djokovic: The Wolf in Winter, Prime Video The life of the Serbian tennis champ

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.30 Countryville Treasures (T) (R) 10.30 Garden Rescue (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.35 Regional News (T) Weather 1.45 News (T) Weather 2.0 Money for Nothing (T) 2.45 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 3.30 The Repair Shop (T) (R) 4.30 The Answer Run (T) 5.15 Pointless (T) (R) 6.0 News (T) Weather 6.30 Regional News (T) Weather 7.0 The One Show (T) 7.30 EastEnders (T) 6.30 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 7.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone: Gardeners' World (T) (R) 9.0 News (T) 1.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 1.30 The Finish Line (T) (R) 2.15 Do You Know Your Place? (T) (R) 2.45 AnimalPark Summer (T) (R) 3.30 Serengeti II (T) (R) 4.30 Vintage Antiques Roadshow (T) (R) 5.10 Flag It! (T) (R) 6.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 6.30 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 7.0 Today at the Test (T) 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 10.0 This Morning (T) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.20 Local News (T) Weather 1.30 ITV Racing: Live from York (T) Day two of the Ebor Meeting, 4.30 Tipping Point: Best Ever Finals (T) (R) Compilation of some of the show's most dramatic endgames. 5.0 The Chase (T) (R) Jane, Winston, Daniel and Sammie take part. 6.0 Local News (T) Weather 6.30 News (T) Weather 7.30 Tom Kerridge Cooks Italy (T) Sicily's citrus heritage. Last in the series. 6.30 The King of Queens (T) (R) 7.45 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier (T) (R) 11.10 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 12.05 News (T) 12.10 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (T) (R) 1.10 The Great House Giveaway (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) 4.0 The Great B&B Challenge (T) (R) 5.0 Chateau DIY (T) (R) A cow shed is converted into a business suite. 6.0 American Pickers (T) (R) A Ford Model-A tow truck is unearthed. 7.0 News (T) 6.0 Mikshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 News (T) 12.50 Matt, Allwright (T) 2.20TIME Tins in the Family (Alex Caulfield, 2023) (T) Thriller starring Monique Plante. 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 Love Nature (T) (R) 5.0 News (T) 6.0 Corsica: Jewel of the Med (T) (R) Cameras focus on the French island. 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Around the World in First Class (T) (R) Josie Gibson heads to Hong Kong, and stays at the Rossevault Hotel. Last in the series. 7.55 News (T) 7.0 Villages by the Sea (T) Ben Robinson makes an amazing discovery at Norfolk's Holtham Estate. 7.30 Canal Boat Diaries (T) Robbie Cumming is invited to join a night-time illuminated boat parade.
8.0 Dragons' Den (T) Pitches include water-saving hair care, confectionery and handcrafted spice blends. 8.0 The Big Deal with Steph McGovern (T) The remaining six pairs team up to source and sell artwork for luxury homes. 8.0 Emmerdale (T) Calcio is intent on ruining Joe's day. 8.0 Renovation Rescue (T) A family who have been living in a building site for 18 months take matters into their own hands. 8.0 The Yorkshire Vet (T) Matt Smith helps a cow who has suffered a massive prolapse after giving birth. 8.0 The Bridge: Fifty Years Across the Forth (T) Documentary celebrating the Forth Road Bridge.
9.0 Ludwig (T) New series. An unusual double confession at a theatre sees John taking centre stage as he must prove who didn't commit the crime. 9.0 A House Through Time (T) Presenter David Olusoga examines the life of Victorian-era residents of the house on Calton Hill. 9.0 The Chase Around the World (T) The teams land in the final city, Athens, where they must take on and defeat all the Chasers. 9.0 Love You to Death (T) Lisa's world implores as an unthinkable truth is revealed – Matthew's illnesses are not as they seem. 9.0 Benidorm Is Murder (T) Dennis and Rona investigate the death of a farmer jackpot winner. Crime drama, with John Hannah and Carolina Bécquer. 9.0 TIME The French Connection (William Friedkin, 1971) (T) Oscar-winning fact-based crime thriller starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider.
10.0 News (T) 10.30 Regional News (T) Weather 10.40 The Truth About My Murder (T) New series. 12.40 Alan Carr's Picture Slam (T) (R) 1.25 Weather for the Week Ahead (T) 10.0 Red Dwarf (T) (R) The Inquisitor arrives on board. 10.30 Newsnight (T) Weather 11.05 Emergency 24/7 (T) (R) 12.05TIME (Todd Field, 2022) (T) 2.35 Sign Zone: The Mother of All Cows (T) (R) 10.0 News (T) Weather 10.30 Local News (T) Weather 10.45 TIME Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2022) (T) 1.20 Shop on TV 3.0 Love & Death (T) (R) 4.0 Unwind with ITV (T) Daily escape. 10.0 Love You to Death (T) Last in the series. 11.05 Outback Murder Highway (T) Documentary. 12.05 Outback Murder Highway (T) Last in the series. 12.55 Crime Scene Cleaners (T) (R) 10.0 Killer at the Crime Scene (T) (R) Karia Gasby's death. 11.05 Fare Dodgers: At War with the Law (T) (R) in London. 12.05 Street Cops: Catching the Yobs (T) (R) 1.0 Cruise TV with LovettBookit (T) (R) 10.40 The Poughkeepsie Shuffle: Tracing The French Connection (T) 11.35 TIME The Graduate (Mike Nichols, 1967) (T) Comedy drama with Dustin Hoffman. 11.15 Canal Boat Diaries (T)

Friday 21

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Station Eleven, Sky Atlantic, 9pm An argument sends Jessan (Himesh Patel) on an unexpected path

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 9.30 Countryville Treasures (T) (R) 10.30 Garden Rescue (T) (R) 11.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) (R) 12.15 Bargain Hunt (T) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.35 Regional News (T) Weather 1.45 News (T) Weather 2.0 The Hairdresser Mysteries (T) 2.45 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 3.30 The Repair Shop (T) (R) 4.30 The Answer Run (T) 5.15 Pointless (T) (R) 6.0 News (T) Weather 6.30 Regional News (T) Weather 7.0 The One Show (T) 7.30 The Traveling Auctioneers (T) (R) 6.15 Homes Under the Hammer (T) (R) 7.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 8.0 Sign Zone: A House Through Time (T) (R) 9.0 News (T) 1.0 Richard Osman's House of Games (T) (R) 1.30 The Finish Line (T) (R) 2.15 Do You Know Your Place? (T) (R) 2.45 AnimalPark Summer (T) (R) 3.30 Serengeti II (T) (R) 4.30 Flag It! (T) (R) 5.0 Gymnastics: European Championships 2026 (T) The third day. 7.0 Athletics: Diamond League Lausanne (T) The Athletissima. 6.0 Good Morning Britain (T) 10.0 This Morning (T) 1.0 News (T) Weather 1.20 Local News (T) Weather 1.30 ITV Racing: Live from York (T) The third day of the Ebor Meeting, 4.30 Tipping Point: Best Ever Finals (T) (R) 5.0 The Chase (T) (R) Carol, Fuad, Victoria and Anthony take part. 6.0 Local News (T) Weather 6.30 News (T) Weather 7.30 Abbey Clancy: Celebrity Homes (T) (R) Homes belonging to entrepreneur Seema Malhotra and fashion designer Alice Temperley. 6.30 The King of Queens (T) (R) 7.45 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.10 Frasier (T) (R) 11.10 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 12.05 News (T) 12.10 Find It, Fix It, Flog It (T) (R) 1.10 The Great House Giveaway (T) (R) 2.10 Countdown (T) 3.0 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) 4.0 The Great B&B Challenge (T) (R) 5.0 Chateau DIY (T) (R) 6.0 Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix Sprint Qualifying Highlights (T) 6.30 A Place in the Sun (T) (R) A holiday home in Gran Canaria. 7.0 News (T) 6.0 Mikshake! 9.15 Jeremy Vine (T) 11.30 Storm & Alexis (T) 12.45 News (T) 12.50 Matt, Allwright (T) 2.20TIME Stranger in My Home (Randy Carter, 2023) (T) Thriller starring Angela Cole. 4.0 Castle (T) (R) 4.55 Love Nature (T) (R) 5.0 News (T) 6.0 Croatia: Jewel of the Med (T) (R) A look at Hvar, the Croatian island in the Adriatic Sea. 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Tom Read Wilson's Grand Tour (T) (R) Tom embarks on a journey through Tuscany. Last in the series. 7.55 News (T) 7.0 Today at the Test (T) England v Pakistan. Catching up with all the best action from the third day of the first Test in the three-match series, staged at Headingley Cricket Ground in Leeds.
8.0 Celebrity MasterChef (T) The celebrities must serve up a three-course meal. 9.0Would I Lie to You? (T) (R) With Richie Anderson, Taj Atsad, Chris McCausland and Katherine Parkinson. 9.30Ann Droid (T) Michael decides to return Linda. Last in the series. 9.0 Bergerac (T) The race is on to find Kim before she comes to harm, and as Barney prepares to question Margaret, Jim has a shocking realization. Last in the series. 9.50The Secret Genius of Modern Life (T) (R) Hannah Fly delves into the mysteries of refrigerators. 8.0 Emmerdale (T) Jimmy sells his hulage business. 8.30Coronation Street (T) Glemla, Mary and Christina chide Todd for his drinking. 9.0Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Celebrity Special (T) (R) Laura Kenny and Kristin Janis-Murthy compete in the quiz show. 8.0 Surgery Secrets of the Super Rich (T) Victoria undergoes a non-surgical skin-tightening treatment. Last in the series. 9.08 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown (T) (R) With Jon Richardson and Judi Love taking on Rob Beckett and Katherine Parkinson. 8.0 Alexander Armstrong in Sri Lanka (T) (R) The presenter embarks on the second leg of his SriLankan adventure. 9.0Heat (T) (R) Two families of British ex-pats reunite in Victoria, Australia, for a summer holiday, with dramatic results. Drama, starring Danny Dyer. 8.0 Miles Davis: A Celebration at the Proms (T) A tribute to the trumpeter to mark what would have been his centenary. 9.15TOTP: 1982 (T) Featuring Captain Sensible, Kids from Fame and Duran Duran. 9.55TOTP: 1987 (T) Performers include Wax and Five Star.
10.0 News (T) 10.30 Regional News (T) Weather 10.40 TIME 7 Dresses (Anne Fletcher, 2008) (T) Romantic comedy. 12.25*Weather for the Week Ahead* (T) 12.30 News (T) 10.0 Qi (T) (R) With Rob Beckett. 10.30Newsnight (T) (R) Weather 11.05TIME 7 Dresses (Johnny Barrington, 2023) (T) Premiere. Comedy drama starring Louis McCartney. 12.30Today at the Test (T) (R) 10.0 The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox (T) 11.0News (T) Weather 11.30Local News (T) Weather 11.50TIME 7 Dresses (Brett Raines, 1998) (T) Comedy. 1.30Shop on TV 10.0 Big Fat Quiz: Best Bits (T) 11.05Sarah Millican: Bobby Dazzler (T) (R) Stand-up. 12.10TIME 7 Processes (Adam Deacon, 2023) (T) 1.50 Secret Lives of Gypsy Wives (T) (R) Documentary. 10.05 Heat (T) (R) Word of the fires spreading adds extra anxiety to the household. 11.05Piers Morgan: Uncensored (T) News and debate show. 1.0Cruise TV with LovettBookit (T) (R) 10.25 Nick Lowe: BBC Four Sessions (T) An acoustic set. 11.25Indiang: BBC Four Sessions (T) In London. 12.25Damien Rice: BBC Four Sessions (T) Performance. 1.25TOTP: 1982 (T)

Saturday 22

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39

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The Voice UK, ITV1, 7pm Kelly Rowland joins the coaching panel as the talent series returns

BBC One BBC Two ITV1 Channel 4 5 BBC Four
6.0 Breakfast (T) 10.0 Saturday Kitchen (T) 11.30 Anna Haug's Big Irish Food Tour (R) 12.0 Bargain Hunt (T) (R) 12.45 The Football Interview (T) 1.0 News (T) 1.15 Money for Nothing (T) (R) 2.0 Homes Under the Hammer (T) (R) 3.0 Escape to the Country (T) (R) 3.45 Final Score (T) 5.25 News (T) 5.35 Regional News (T) Weather 5.40 Weather (T) 5.45 The Hit List (T) 6.30 Alan Carr's Picture Slam (T) 7.15 The Paddington (Paul King, 2014) (T) Comedy starring Hugh Bonneville. 6.0 Children's TV (T) 8.45 Around the World in 80 Gardens (T) (R) 9.45 This Wild Life (T) (R) 10.15 The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949) (T) Thriller starring Joseph Cotten and Orson Welles. 11.55 The Great British Sewing Bee (T) (R) 12.55 Race Against the Tide (T) (R) 1.25 The One at Dawn (Anthony Asquith, 1943) (T) Second World War adventure. 3.0 Gymnastics: European Championships 2025 (T) 6.0 Pog (T) (R) 7.0 Today at the Test (T) 6.0 James Martin's American Adventure (T) (R) 6.55 The Boonmaker (Lewis Gilbert, 1976) (T) 9.25 News (T) 9.30 ITV Racing: The Opening Show (T) 10.30 James Martin's Saturday Morning (T) (R) 1.0 News (T) 1.15 TV Racing: Live from York (T) 4.30 The Chase (T) (R) 5.30 News (T) 5.45 Local News (T) 6.0 Deal on No Deal: Celebrity Special (T) Katherine Ryan takes on the Barker. 7.0 The Voice UK (T) New series, Emma Willis returns with the singing contest. 6.10 Cheers (T) (R) 8.0 Everybody Loves Raymond (T) (R) 9.25 Frasier (T) (R) 10.55 The Simpsons (T) (R) 1.20 Four in a Bed (T) (R) 3.55 George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (T) (R) The architect visits Portugal's thinnest house. 4.55 Grand Designs (T) (R) Zara and her partner Giuliano from Reading take a bear of faith as they build the 400-square-metre-millhouse-inspired home of their dreams in the Lincolnshire Worlds. 6.0 News (T) Headlines. 6.0 Mikshakel 9.15 Secrets of the Royal Palaces (T) (R) 11.0 Westminster Abbey: Behind Closed Doors (T) (R) 1.0 The Royals: Uncensored (T) 2.0 Coastal Adventures with Helen, Jules & Jill (T) (R) 3.0 Coastal Adventures with Helen, Jules & Jill (T) (R) 3.55 The Town Time to Time (Julian Fellows, 2009) (T) Family fantasy adventure starring Alex Etel & Suisson, Jewel of the South Coast (T) Last in the series. 6.55 News (T) 7.0 Cycling: Vuelta's España 2026 (T) Highlights. 7.0 Planet Earth: An Elephant's Tale (T) Cameras follow the struggles of a newborn elephant and its mother. 7.05 Life on Earth (T) David Attenborough looks at the sheer variety of mammals on our planet.
8.40 The Weakest Link (T) (R) With Kerry Goddman, Janet Street-Porter, Bez, Josh Jones, Jowita Przystał, William Hanson, Danny Clarke and Ruby Bhogal. 8.0 Marvin Gaye: A Tribute at the Proms (T) The BBC Concert Orchestra celebrates the singer-songwriter and musician. 8.15 The 1% Club (T) (R) Quiz, hosted by Lee Mack. 8.30 Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix Sprint and Qualifying Highlights (T) Steve Jones presents action from the sprint race and the battle for grid positions. 8.0 The Jobless Prince: What Will Harry Do Next? (T) (R) A team of experts look at what the future holds for the Duke of Sussex. 8.0 Hidden Wales: Last Chance to Save (T) Will Millard explores some of Wales's forgotten historic buildings.
9.30 New Are You? It's Alan (Partridge) (T) (R) A death leads to a moment of catharsis. Last in the series. 9.30 Marvin Gaye: Greatest Hits – Live in Amsterdam 1976 (T) A concert by the soul singer, with tracks including Let's Get It On. 9.35 The Spectre (Sam Morston, 2015) (T) James Bond goes in search of the elusive mastermind behind a secret criminal network with links to his own past, Thriller with Daniel Craig. 9.30 Night Fanger: Where Does the Money Come From? (T) An investigation into the finances of the Reform UK leader. 9.30 Night Fanger: Where Does the Money Come From? (T) An investigation into the finances of the Reform UK leader. 9.50 Kabul (T) (R) A man and Noorla must find their own way to the airport.
10.0 News (T) 10.15 Weather (T) 10.20 Match of the Day (T) 11.40 The Something in the Water (Hayley Easton Street, 2024) (T) Thriller 10.25 Diana Ross at the BBC (T) (R) Archive performances. 12.20 English Football League Highlights (T) 1.40 Shop on TV 3.0 WhatsApp Obsession The Murder of Stephanie Hansen (T) (R) 3.50 Unwind (T) 5.05 Fern Britton inside the Vets (T) 10.15 The Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Scheitert, Daniel Kwan, 2022) (T) Comedy. 10.30 When TV News Goes Horniby Wrong (T) (R) 12.30 Cops (T) (R) 12.55 Entertainment News on 5 (T) 1.0 Cruise TV with Lovel Bookit (T) (R) 2.0 GPs Behind Closed Doors 10.45 To the Manor Born (T) 11.15 Keeping Up Appearances 11.45 The Bridge: Fifty Years Across the Earth (T) 12.45 Life on Earth (T) 1.40 Hidden Wales: Last Chance to Save (T)
1.0 Weather (T) 1.05 News (T) 11.25 A Night of Wonder (T) (R) 12.30 Motown Master: Lamont Dozier at the BBC (T) (R) 1.30 Motown at the BBC (T) (R) 12.50 Kitchen Nightmares USA (T) (R) 1.40 Love You to Death (T) (R)

On the radio

Sunday

Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast 9.0 Sunday Morning 11.0 BBC Proms 2026 1.30 Music Map 3.0 The Circus in Solaris with Candler Shaw 4.0 Jazz Record Requests 5.0 The Early Music Show 6.0 Choral Evensong 7.0 New Generation Artists 7.30 BBC Proms 2026 10.0 Night Tracks 11.30 Unclassified 12.30 Through the Night

Radio 4

6.0am News Headlines 6.05 Heart and Soul 6.35 On Your Farm 7.0 News 7.0 Sunday Papers 7.10 Sunday 7.50 Radio 4 Appeal 8.0 News 8.0 Sunday Papers 8.10 Sunday Worship 8.40 Witness History 8.50 Tweet of the Day 9.0 Broadcasting House 10.0 Desert Island Discs 11.0 The Archers 12.15 Last Word Doing Death Differently 12.30 Just a Minute 1.0 The World This Weekend 1.30 Pride Before the Fall 2.0 Gardeners' Question Time 2.45 Opening Lines 3.0 Drama Libra 4.0 Take Four Books 4.30 Brain of Britain 5.0 Witness History 5.10 Behind the Crime 5.54 Shipping Forecast 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.15 Pick of the Week 7.0 The Archers 7.15 The Grand North Atlantic Home Video Archive 7.45 Just One Thing with Michael Mosley 8.0 Feedback 8.30 Last Word 9.0 Toast 9.26 Radio 4 Appeal 9.30 From Our Own Correspondent 10.0 Martian Blonds: The Ultimate Comender 11.0 Great Lives 11.30 How 11.45 Short Works 12.0 News and Weather 12.15 Crossing Continents 12.45 Belts on Sunday 12.40 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.0 News Summary 5.04 Last Word 5.34 Shipping 5.43 Prayer for the Day 5.45 Farming

Monday

Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast 9.30 Essential Classics 1.0 Classical Live 4.0 Composer of the Week 5.0 In Tune 7.0 BBC Proms 2026 10.0 Night Tracks 11.30 Round Midnight 12.30 Through the Night

Radio 4

6.0am Today 9.0 The Great Crime Mystery 9.30 How Did We Get Here No World Order 10.0 Woman's Hour 11.0 Behind the Crime 11.45 Book of the Week: The Fire in the Mountain Sicily, Etna and her People 12.0 News 12.04 You and Your's 1.0 The World 1.45 Human Intelligence 2.0 The Archers 2.15 Alone 2.45 Opening Lines 3.0 Great Lives 3.30 You're Dead to Me 4.0 Pride Before the Fall 4.30 Soul Music 5.0 PM 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.30 Just a Minute 7.0 The Archers 7.15 Front Row 8.0 The Briefing Room 8.30 BBC Inside Science 9.0 The Great Crime Mystery 9.30 How Did We Get Here No World Order 10.0 The World Tonight 10.45 Book at Bedtime 11.0 Obituary 11.30 Poetry Please 12.0 News and Weather 12.30 Book of the Week 12.40 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.0 News Summary 5.04 Pride Before the Fall 5.34 Shipping Forecast 5.43 Prayer for the Day 5.45 Farming Today

Tuesday

Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast 9.30 Essential Classics 1.0 Classical Live 4.0 Composer of the Week: Felix Mendelssohn 5.0 In Tune 7.0 BBC Proms 2026 10.0 Night Tracks 11.30 Round Midnight 12.30 Through the Night

Radio 4

6.0am Today 9.0 Invisible Hands 9.30 Michael Sheen Gets into Character 10.0 Woman's Hour 11.0 Add to Playlist 11.45 Book of the Week 12.0 News 12.04 Call You and Yours 1.0 The World 1.45 Human Intelligence 2.0 The Archers 2.15 Drama No, Prime Minister 3.0 Lady on Trial with Lucy Worsley 3.30 Heart and Soul 4.0 The Deadliest Book in England 4.30 What's Up Docs? 5.0 PM 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.30 Paul Sinha's Perfect Hub Quiz 7.0 The Archers 7.15 Front Row 8.0 Saving Young Men from Murder The Homeboy Story 8.40 In Touch 9.0 Crossing Continents 9.30 Scam Secrets 10.0 The World Tonight 10.45 Book at Bedtime 11.0 Wild Inside 11.30 Poetry Please 12.0 News and Weather 12.30 Book of the Week 12.40 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.0 News Summary 5.04 BBC Inside Science 5.34 Shipping Forecast 5.43 Prayer 5.45 Farming Today

Wednesday

Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast 9.30 Essential Classics 1.0 Classical Live 3.0 Choral Evensong 4.0 Composer of the Week: Felix Mendelssohn 5.0 In Tune 7.0 BBC Proms 2026 10.0 Night Tracks 11.30 Round Midnight 12.30 Through the Night

Radio 4

6.0am Today 9.0 Sideways 9.30 Breakin' the Cycle 10.0 Woman's Hour 11.0 Saving Young Men from Murder: The Homeboy Story 11.40 This Week in History 11.45 Book of the Week 12.0 News 12.04 You and Yours 1.0 The World 1.45 Human Intelligence 2.0 The Archers 2.15 Drama: United Kingdoms 3.0

The Grand North Atlantic Home Video Archive 3.30 All Under One Magnetosphere 4.0 The Power of Guilt 4.15 The Media Show 5.0 PM 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.30 Best Medicine 7.0 The Archers 7.15 Front Row 8.0 The Moral Mass 9.0 Invisible Hands 9.30 Michael Sheen Gets into Character 10.0 The World Tonight 10.45 Book at Bedtime: Mr Sidhu's Post Office 11.0 Nora Meadows' Week of Wellness 11.15 Follow the Rabbit 11.30 Poetry Please 12.0 News and Weather 12.30 Book of the Week 12.48 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.0 News Summary 5.04 Sideways 5.34 Shipping Forecast 5.43 Prayer for the Day 5.45 Farming Today

Thursday

Radio 3

Radio 4

6.0am Today 9.0 Invisible Haynes Stands Up for the Classics 9.30 The Guitar Story 10.0 Woman's Hour 11.0 The Cultural Life 11.45 Book of the Week 12.0 News 12.04 Scam Secrets 12.32 Sliced Bread 1.0 The World 1.45 Human Intelligence 2.0 The Archers 2.15 Drama: The Observer's Book 3.0 Open Country 3.27 Radio 4 Appeal 3.30 The Metaphor Consultant 4.0 The Briefing Room 4.30 BBC Inside Science 5.0 PM 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.30 Sideways 6.15 The Archers 7.15 Front Row 8.0 At Your Own Peril 8.15 The Media Show 9.0 Loose Ends 9.45 The Cows Are

Mad 10.0 The World Tonight 10.45 Book at Bedtime: Mr Sidhu's Post Office 11.0 Radical 11.30 Poetry Please 12.0 News and Weather 12.30 Book of the Week: The Fire in the Mountain Sicily, Etna and her People 12.40 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.0 News Summary 5.04 The Briefing Room 5.34 Shipping Forecast 5.43 Prayer for the Day 5.45 Farming Today

Friday

Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast 9.30 Essential Classics 1.0 Classical Live 4.0 Composer of the Week: Felix Mendelssohn 5.0 In Tune 7.0 BBC Proms 2026 10.0 Late Junction 11.30 Round Midnight 12.30 Through the Night

Radio 4

6.0am Today 9.0 Desert Island Discs 10.0 Woman's Hour 11.0 The Food Programme 11.45 Book of the Week: The Fire in the Mountain Sicily, Etna and her People 12.0 News 12.04 How Earth 1.0 The World 1.45 Human Intelligence 2.0 The Archers 2.15 Drama: Central Intelligence 2.45 Living on the Edge 3.0 Gardeners' Question Time 3.30 Short Works 4.0 Last Word 4.30 Sideways 5.0 PM 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.30 The People Have Spoken 7.0 The Archers 7.15 Add to Playlist 8.0 Any Questions? 8.55 This Week in History 9.0 Invisible Haynes Stands Up for the Classics 9.30 Breakin' the Cycle 10.0 The World Tonight 10.45 Book at Bedtime: Mr Sidhu's Post Office 11.0 American 11.30 All Under One Magnetosphere 12.0 News and Weather 12.30 Book of the Week: The Fire in the Mountain Sicily, Etna and

her People 12.48 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.30 News Summary 5.34 Shipping Forecast 5.43 Prayer for the Day 5.45 Living on the Edge

Saturday

Radio 3

6.30am Breakfast 9.0 Saturday Morning 12.0 Earlier... with Jools Holland 1.0 Key Changes: Radio 3's Essential History of Classical Music 2.0 Record Review 4.0 Sound of Cinema 5.0 This Classical Life 6.0 Music Planet 7.0 New Generation Artists 7.30 BBC Proms 2026 9.45 Talking Music 10.30 New Music Show 12.30 Through the Night

Radio 4

6.0am News and Papers 6.07 Open Country 6.30 Farming Today This Week 7.0 Today 9.0 What Happened to Quarter Culture? 9.30 What's Up Docs? 10.0 You're Dead to Me 10.30 Soul Music 11.0 Radical 11.30 From Our Own Correspondent 12.0 News 12.04 Toast 12.30 The People Have Spoken 1.0 News 1.10 Any Questions? 2.05 Any Answers? 2.45 The Archers 3.0 Drama: The Night of the Lunar Eclipse 4.0 Weekend Woman's Hour 5.0 Saturday PM 5.30 Sliced Bread 5.54 Shipping Forecast 6.0 Six O'Clock News 6.15 Loose Ends 7.0 Last Word Doing Death Differently 7.15 This Cultural Life 8.0 Archive on 4: The Age of Uncertainty 9.0 The Moral Mass 10.0 News 10.15 The Food Programme 11.0 Olga Kools OK Computer 11.30 Brain of Britain 12.0 Midnight News 12.15 Take Four Books 12.48 Shipping Forecast 1.0 As BBC World Service 5.30 News Summary 5.34 Shipping Forecast 5.43 Belts on Sunday 5.45 In Touch


40

observer.co.uk 16.08.26

Critics

Television

Mourinho plays a defensive game against Netflix

Barbara Ellen

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Mourinho Netflix

My Brilliant Career Netflix

House of the Dragon Sky Atlantic

'His flinty lack of cooperation is almost laudable': José Mourinho, below, is the subject of a 'missed opportunity' by Netflix; above, Philippa Northeast in My Brilliant Career. Netflix

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"

It does make you wonder if Mourinho's career is being lived out as a revenge fantasy

Joe Pearlman, director of the new Netflix docuseries, Mourinho, about Portuguese football manager José Mourinho, has said that Pep Guardiola was asked to appear. Mourinho's Spanish arch-rival at FC Barcelona said he'd do it if Mourinho asked him. To which the Portuguese manager responded: "Not a fucking chance!" Pearlman, who made 2018's brilliant Bros. After the Screaming Stops, noted that this said everything about the two men. Unfortunately, it also encapsulates everything Mourinho, all three episodes of it, has to offer.

On the face of it, Mourinho, 63, who has now been rehired by Real Madrid, is a fascinating subject. He's phenomenally successful: under him, Chelsea FC won the Premier League three times, the FA Cup, and three League Cups. He took Inter Milan FC to major wins, including the Uefa Champions League. Elsewhere in his career (including stints at Manchester United, Tottenham Hotspur and Roma), there have been dips and sackings, but few would dispute that he is one of the eminent managers of his generation.

Then there is Mourinho's personality: mercurial, vainglorious, Machiavellian, and that's when he's in a good mood. Joining Chelsea in 2004, after taking FC Porto to a Champions League win, he referred to himself as "a special one" (not "the special one"; he points out in the documentary, but still). He is charismatic and divisive. So why, in this documentary, is he so stiff and one-note?

Generally, the subjects of such series want to be understood, but Mourinho resists this. "You are pushing me to speak about myself and I don't want to," he says. He mainly wants to riff on his Big Dog greatness: "What does it feel like to win?" "Normality," he replies serenely.

Interviewees include Manchester United's Alex Ferguson, while ex Chelsea players Frank Lampard, Didier Drogba and John Terry give insights into how Mourinho (who studied sports science at university) inspired them.

Then there are the feuds: Arsène Wenger at Arsenal; power struggles with the former Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich; Barcelona dubbing Mourinho "the translator" (he previously acted as interpreter for Bobby Robson) clearly still rankles; and more, and indeed more. It does make you wonder whether Mourinho's sporting career is being lived out as a revenge fantasy.

Some later managerial stints are dealt with so quickly, they could qualify as a montage. Mourinho becomes emotional about his father dying, and how his father (also a football manager) was sacked on Christmas Day.

However, Mourinho's long marriage and family life are touched upon only briefly.

The avoidance is, in itself, fascinating: what lurks behind it? But it makes the profile lopsided and oddly sterile. Considering the tedious genre of soft-ball, glossy documentaries, Mourinho's flinty lack of cooperation is almost laudable. Nevertheless, this is a missed opportunity to understand the man behind the manager.

On the same streamer, there's My Brilliant Career, a six-part adaptation of Miles Franklin's 1901 novel, which is a set text in Australian schools (Gillian Armstrong's celebrated 1979 film starred Judy Davis and Sam Neill).

Set in 1890s Australia, it is created by Liz Doran and directed by Alyssa McClelland and Anne Renton. Philippa Northeast plays the spirited would-be writer, Sybylla,

who is sent to live with her upright grandmother (Anna Chancellor) in order to secure a wealthy husband and save her family from penury.

Sybylla is shown as outrageous from the off: reciting her own lascivious poetry at a gathering. She first bemuses the young men around her and then entrances them. Christopher Chung (Roddy Ho in Slow Horses) portrays a charming love interest, while Jake Dunn is a smitten English gentleman.

There are nods to Bridgerton – including bursts of contemporary music – and added themes (First Nation characters; a plot about homosexuality). But My Brilliant Career is not Austen with Australian accents; the core story is of raw female rebellion against stifling social mores. It is a rough and ready affair, while also pointedly erotic, with scenes of masturbation and sexual experimentation under the night sky. Northeast delivers an engulfing fireball of a performance as the irrepressible proto-feminist heroine. The result is an uncut gem of a coming-of-age period drama with a sparkle all its own.

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On Sky Atlantic, the series finale of Ryan Condal's House of the Dragon erupts with the Battle of Tumbleton. In this ever-broiling fantasy saga of dynasty, legitimacy and supremacy, this is the point when Rhaenyra Targaryen, played

by Emma D'Arcy, stops pretending to be the Vice Wise Blond Lady Making the Power-Hungry Men Look Bad.

Egged on by her husband/uncle Daemon, played by Matt Smith ("You have an absolute power within your grasp"), Rhaenyra has perceptibly hardened, shown here executing the High Septon who refuses to anoint her as queen. Afterwards, she stands before her people, pronouncing that she is the "prince that was promised".

Ormund Hightower, played with nasty relish by James Norton, is brutally dispatched by sword in a manner I hesitate to describe in this family newspaper. Several dragons – the posturing rock stars of Westeros – swoop and scorch through the skies.

Aemond (Ewan Mitchell), wasted recently with woo-woo magic plotlines and incestuous visions about his mother Alicent (Olivia Cooke), is finally reunited with Aegon (Tom Glynn-Carney), the brother he tried to kill (and the other main claimant to the throne). Poor doomed pregnant Helaena (Phia Saban) stops forlornly sewing her tapestry of prophecies and jumps out the window.

Author George RR Martin has been extremely critical about this Game of Thrones prequel veering away from his source text, Fire and Blood (2018). Still, this is a full-throated climax, weaving in bloodlust, grief, poignancy (Daemon surrounded by Tumbleton's civilian dead), last-minute betrayal and humour: "All you had to do was sit on your fucking dragon!" The next series will be the last: take your seats for the Westeros endgame.

WATCH LIST

Barbara Ellen's best of the rest

The Big Deal with Steph McGovern (BBC One)

The Apprentice for the art world? Seven pairs of amateur art dealers compete to turn a profit in the competitive industry or face elimination. The opener focuses on Royal College of Art graduates, but upcoming episodes of the series hosted by Steph McGovern (below) visit art scenes everywhere from Berlin to Margate.

Hit Point

(U&Drama) An offbeat thriller set in the criminal underworld. It stars Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Blood and Saffron Hocking.

He Had it Coming (BBC Three)

Australian comedy-drama, Lydia West (All from It's a Sin) stars as an art student, who together with an influencer (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) has to solve a murder.

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🔍 解读视角:本篇基于现象学本质直观、法兰克福学派批判理论(阿多诺/哈贝马斯)与批判话语分析(CDA)传统展开。

制度与权力批判深度研判:The Observer (2026-08-16)

▌ 本日全报思想与文化深思雷达 (Intellectual & Cultural Significance Radar)

在系统通盘梳理本期报纸所涉及的报道后,以下事件在思想史、文化政治与制度伦理层面最值得学者进一步深思:

  1. 【杰森·阿尔代之死与媒体围猎】 [F1_3, F2_15, F2_18, F2_19, F2_21]

    • 事件简述:剑桥大学教授杰森·阿尔代(Jason Alide)在涉嫌剽窃并遭到大规模媒体围攻后辞职,随后被发现失去意识(死亡) [F2_19, F2_21]
    • 思想文化深思切入点:探讨“真相追求”如何被算法流量与意识形态战争(如“反觉醒”战争)异化为一种现代形式的“公开处刑”,以及制度性多元化主张在面对个体脆弱性(如自闭症)时的伦理缺失。
  2. 【学术体制中的“漏洞”与“特征”之辩】 [F2_16, F2_17]

    • 事件简述:评论指出阿尔代的剽窃问题并非“异常现象”,而是学术界中屡见不鲜的系统性特征,但其被当作“漏洞”对待,成为了媒体围攻的焦点。
    • 思想文化深思切入点:分析制度如何通过选择性地将“系统性问题”个体化,从而在维持体制合法性的同时,将个体作为牺牲品进行道德审判。

▌ 精选核心专题深度思想论证 (In-Depth Dialectical Monograph)

专题一:数字时代的“公开处刑”:流量逻辑、种族政治与个体生存的非同一性

在杰森·阿尔代(Jason Alide)的悲剧性死亡中,我们目睹了一场由现代媒体、学术体制与意识形态共谋的“围猎” [F2_15 🔍]。现实困境在于,阿尔代被置于一个极度撕裂的场域:一方面是剑桥大学试图通过将其塑造为“多元化”象征来掩盖其历史种族主义遗产的制度冲动 [F2_16 🔍];另一方面是那些自称“种族现实主义者”的个体(如内森·科夫纳斯)利用剽窃指控,将个体学术瑕疵转化为一场针对黑人精英的意识形态战争 [F2_18 🔍]。在这种张力中,阿尔代不再是一个具有复杂人格的自闭症患者 [F2_19 🔍],而变成了一个被符号化的“漏洞”或“战利品”。

从话语策略分析,媒体在报道中采用了典型的“去施事化”修辞,将这场围攻描述为对“真相”的追求,但实际上,这种追求被数字流量的商业利益所驱动 [F2_18 🔍]。报道的规模与频率揭示了媒体如何将一个学术诚信问题迅速升级为一场“反觉醒”的文化战争。权力在此并非通过直接的禁令运作,而是通过“过度可见性”来实现摧毁——将个体置于全球数字聚光灯下,使其在无法应对的社交压力中精神崩溃。

这不禁让我们回想起阿多诺(Theodor Adorno)关于“同一性”的批判。在媒体的叙事中,阿尔代被强行归类为“剽窃者”或“多元化配额产物”,这种强行同一化的过程抹杀了其作为自闭症患者的特殊生存状态及其个体生命的复杂性 [F2_19 🔍]。当亚历山大·波普质问“谁会将蝴蝶置于轮盘之上碾碎”时 [F2_21 🔍],他揭示的是一种不对称的权力关系:拥有数字分发权的媒体巨头与处于心理边缘的个体之间,存在着绝对的权力差。

当代现实对这一理论的拓展在于,算法治理进一步加速了这种“非同一性”的消亡。在点击量至上的逻辑中,复杂的人性被简化为极端的标签。阿尔代的死亡不仅是对一个人的摧毁,更是对学术界与新闻业共同伦理底线的质询:当“真相”成为一种可变现的武器,且被用于服务于某种伪装成“现实主义”的种族主义时,制度性的正义已然沦为一种修辞。

专题二:制度性掩盖与个体牺牲:学术体制的“特征”与“漏洞”辩证法

阿尔代事件揭示了学术体制在处理内部危机时的一种深刻悖论:将“系统性特征”伪装成“个体漏洞” [F2_17 🔍]。剑桥大学副校长将阿尔代描述为一个“异常现象”,试图通过这种个体化处理,将剽窃问题隔离在个体的道德缺陷之中,从而保护体制的纯洁性。然而,事实是剽窃在学术界“屡见不鲜”,且博士学位的授予往往缺乏严谨的监督 [F2_17 🔍]

这种权力运作模式体现了制度的一种自我保护机制。当体制需要宣传其“多元化”成就时,它将阿尔代塑造为成功的象征 [F2_16 🔍];而当该个体出现瑕疵时,它迅速将其定义为“异常”,从而在心理和制度上将其剥离。这种从“象征”到“异类”的快速转换,揭示了制度性多元化主张在缺乏实质性支持时,实际上是将个体置于一种极高风险的政治博弈之中。

从社会学角度看,这种处理方式实际上是为外部的“围猎”提供了合法性。当体制本身将个体定义为“漏洞”时,媒体和意识形态对手便获得了将其“修复”(即摧毁)的道德许可 [F2_18 🔍]。阿尔代成为了一个被制度抛弃、被媒体消费的客体。

这种现象提示我们,真正的制度正义不应建立在对个体的符号化利用之上。如果一个体制仅在宣传层面接纳多元化,而在实际运行中依然维持着陈旧且缺乏监督的权力结构 [F2_16, F2_17],那么它所创造的“精英”实际上是极其脆弱的。他们不仅要面对学术挑战,还要在体制的冷漠与外部的恶意之间,独自承担起整个系统性缺陷的代价。


▌ 面向学者的开放性思想追问与研究路标 (Open Horizons for Scholarly Inquiry)

  1. 【关于“数字私刑”的制度性救济研究】:在算法流量驱动的媒体环境下,当个体被赋予某种意识形态标签并遭到全球性围攻时,现有的法律框架是否已完全失效?我们是否需要建立一种基于“心理完整性”的新型人权保护机制,以应对数字时代的“公开处刑”?
  2. 【学术体制的符号化治理研究】:探讨大学如何通过将个体塑造为“多元化象征”来掩盖结构性种族主义,以及这种符号化治理在危机时刻如何转化为对个体的制度性背叛。
🔍 解读视角:本篇基于制度理性架构(Logos)与生活世界集体情感(Pathos)内在辩证机制展开。

理性与情感辩证深度研判:The Observer (2026-08-16)

▌ 本日全报生活世界痛感与情感政治深思雷达 (Lifeworld & Affective Significance Radar)

在系统通盘梳理本期报纸所涉及的报道后,以下 2 个具体事件在生活世界痛感、情感政治动员与制度理性冲突层面最值得学者进一步深思:

  1. 【杰森·阿尔代之死与媒体围猎】 [F1_3, F2_15, F2_19, F3_21]

    • 事件简述:剑桥大学教授杰森·阿尔代(Jason Aldride)在被指控抄袭并遭到大规模媒体围攻后辞职,随后被发现失去意识(死亡),其自闭症患者的身份使其在面对舆论风暴时极其脆弱。
    • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点:探讨“反觉醒”政治动员如何将学术诚信问题异化为种族战争的筹码 [F2_18 🔍],以及数字流量逻辑如何抹除对个体肉身脆弱性(自闭症)的伦理关怀,形成一种制度化的“数字私刑” [F2_19, F3_21]
  2. 【阿富汗女性的生存绝望与具体诉求】 [F4_24 🔍]

    • 事件简述:在塔利班监控下,阿富汗女孩的诉求在“卡拉什尼科夫步枪”与“出国留学奖学金”之间剧烈摆动。
    • 情感政治与伦理深思切入点:这种极端的诉求对比揭示了在极权压制下,生活世界的痛感如何被推向两个极端:要么通过暴力寻求生存,要么通过逃离寻求救赎,展现了绝望感在情感政治中的具象化。

▌ 精选核心专题理性与情感辩证论证 (The Dialectic of Logos and Pathos Monograph)

专题一:数字流量理性对个体脆弱性的碾碎:杰森·阿尔代事件中的“围猎”机制

在杰森·阿尔代(Jason Aldride)的悲剧中,我们观察到了一种极其残酷的制度理性与个体痛感的错位。从制度理性架构来看,剑桥大学试图通过宣传阿尔代作为非白人教职人员的身份来完成其多元化主张 [F2_16 🔍],而部分媒体则将“抄袭”这一学术违规行为转化为一种政治符号,将其纳入“反觉醒”的意识形态战争中 [F2_18 🔍]。在这种逻辑下,阿尔代不再是一个具体的人,而是一个被符号化的“漏洞”,用于证明某种政治正确之虚伪。

然而,生活世界的真实痛感在此被完全屏蔽。阿尔代作为一名自闭症患者,其认知与情感处理机制在面对数百篇报道的密集围攻时极其脆弱 [F2_19 🔍]。这里存在一个深刻的辩证摩擦:媒体追求的是一种揭露学术不端的“真相理性”,但这种理性在执行过程中被商业利益驱动的流量逻辑所异化,变成了对个体的“私刑式”围猎 [F2_18 🔍]。当一名自闭症男子在现实中“倒在地上”时,数字空间的理性机器仍在高速运转,通过算法推荐将愤怒精准地投喂给受众,从而在追求“真相”的名义下完成了对一个脆弱生命的精神屠戮 [F2_19, F3_21]

这种话语温度差达到了极点。一方面是媒体与学术机构使用的高度去情感化、技术化的语言(如“异常现象”、“多元化主张” [F2_16, F2_17]),另一方面则是阿尔代在孤独与绝望中失去意识的具象痛感 [F2_19 🔍]。这种撕裂诊断出当代公共领域的一种病理状态:当理性被简化为“寻找漏洞”的竞争,而情感被异化为“群体围猎”的快感时,个体在面对制度性暴力时失去了最后的避风港。

专题二:极权理性压制下的生存悖论:阿富汗女性的极端诉求分析

在法里巴·纳瓦(Fariba Nawa)对阿富汗女孩的访谈中 [F4_23, F4_24],我们观察到一种极端的生存逻辑冲突。从制度理性来看,塔利班在阿富汗建立了一套严密的监控与压制体系,将女性的生活空间压缩至极点。在这种极权理性下,个体的生存被剥夺了常规的、渐进的改善路径。

这种压制导致了生活世界痛感的“极化”现象:一名 14 岁的女孩要求配备“卡拉什尼科夫步枪” [F4_24 🔍],而大多数人则请求“出国留学奖学金”或任何离开的途径 [F4_24 🔍]。这并非简单的选择,而是一种生存悖论的具象化——在完全失去安全感与权利的环境中,个体的理性选择被推向了两个极端:要么通过掌握暴力工具(步枪)来对抗压制,实现肉身的生存;要么通过彻底的地理逃离(奖学金)来寻求人格的救赎。

这种 Logos 与 Pathos 的摩擦在于:外部世界将其视为一种人道主义危机,但对于身处其中的个体而言,这是一种在“暴力”与“逃离”之间进行的分诊选择。这种极端的诉求对比揭示了当制度理性彻底背离人类基本尊严时,生活世界的痛感将不再表现为温和的抗议,而表现为一种绝望的、非黑即白的生存博弈。


▌ 面向学者的伦理与社会心理开放性追问与研究路标 (Open Horizons for Ethical & Sociological Inquiry)

  1. 【关于“数字私刑”与神经多样性伦理的追问】:在算法驱动的公共讨论中,我们如何构建一套能够兼容“神经多样性(Neurodiversity)”的伦理审查机制,以防止技术理性在追求“真相”时,因忽视个体的认知特质而演变为制度化的精神暴力?
  2. 【关于极权环境下生存策略的心理学追问】:当个体在“暴力自卫”与“制度性逃离”之间产生极化诉求时,这种心理机制如何影响受难群体的内部认同与长期心理重建?
  3. 【关于学术诚信与政治符号化的边界追问】:如何区分正当的学术监督与基于政治意图的“围猎”?在多元化指标(Diversity KPI)与学术质量之间,制度应如何建立一种不以牺牲个体心理健康为代价的纠错机制?