JFK signing the order to blockade Cuba, 1962 |
More dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis |
Sixty years ago, when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev moved nuclear warheads to Cuba, some of the most perilous weeks in world history ensued. But there are two reasons why the situation with Russia today is "even more dangerous", says Max Hastings on the BBC's Jeremy Vine Show. |
The first is that "shooting has already started". During the Cuban Missile Crisis, a single American spy plane was downed over the island; now, thousands of fighters are dying daily in Ukraine. The second is that Vladimir Putin is a "less stable figure" than Khrushchev. Under the communist system, the latter was "answerable to a presidium in the Kremlin", meaning he had to justify his actions to other bigwigs or risk being ousted. "As far as we know, Putin is answerable to nobody." |
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Kate Moss (with Pete Doherty): another cool girl lost to yoga. Getty |
Oh, Kate, whatever happened to the three Cs? |
When Kate Moss unveiled her new wellness brand, says Kara Kennedy in The Spectator, my first reaction was: "great, another cool girl who's been swallowed up into the mundane world of green shakes and yoga". This is a woman who once bragged that her beauty regime consisted of "three Cs and one V": cigarettes, champagne, coffee and vodka. I don't blame Kate herself: her face cream costs £95, and her sacred mist – "whatever that is" – is priced at £120. "If there are people out there naive enough to buy all this then power to her." I just feel it's a rather sad testament to how boring our society has become. |
Back in the 1990s, the hard-partying Primrose Hill set would be snapped falling out of clubs "amid rumours of drug-fuelled nights and partner-swapping". But our Instagram age seems to weed out "anything (and anyone) that isn't filtered and poised to perfection". Celebs have traded "wreaking havoc" for pedalling wacky wellness products, like Gwyneth Paltrow's "This Smells Like My Vagina" candle. And anyone who does show signs of being "remotely cool" is condemned for their "erratic" and "disturbing" behaviour. When supermodel Cara Delevingne had a few too many at an awards show, papers were flooded with reports begging her to get help. "Yawn." I wish we'd all lighten up and realise "a little bit of naughtiness can only be a good thing". |
The polls have the Tories a whopping 33 points behind Labour, says Michael Deacon in The Daily Telegraph, with Liz Truss already more unpopular than Jeremy Corbyn "at his absolute nadir". It's ironic: when MPs forced out Boris Johnson because they thought he'd become too unpopular, the party was trailing Labour by nine points. "Nine points! Oh, those halcyon, carefree days." Now the Tories would "privatise their own grandmothers to be nine points behind". One pro-Tory journalist optimistically noted that "the entire domestic political conversation" would change if Vladimir Putin launched a nuclear strike on Ukraine. Yes, "chin up, Prime Minister". If Russia "brings an end to civilisation as we know it, everyone will soon forget all about that mini Budget". |
How Johnson's defenestrators must have missed him at the party conference, as they watched Truss "squawk her way through her big speech like a malfunctioning fax machine". How they must have "goggled in horror" at the U-turns and Cabinet infighting. The dying days of Johnson's premiership felt like a "non-stop cavalcade of scandal and disgrace". Yet now, somehow, it seems like an era of "blissful calm" and competence. Come back, Boris. "All is forgiven." |
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THE TOWNHOUSE This Grade II listed home sits just minutes from Peckham's bustling Bellenden Road. It has three bedrooms, a spectacular library, and a garden with a large studio at its centre. The house retains plenty of original features, including tall sash windows which bathe the living room in light, as well as multiple marble fireplaces. Peckham Rye station is a two-minute walk. £2.55m. |
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Alan Rickman in Love Actually: a "total disdain for celebrity" |
The wit and wisdom of Alan Rickman |
The newly published diaries of the late actor Alan Rickman confirm he was "powered by real intelligence, wry cynicism and a keen bullshit detector", says Anna Leszkiewicz in The New Statesman. Each entry is short: usually a few lines relating the day's events, "with a sly observation or an exasperated aside thrown in". Many recount a lifestyle with touches of turn-of-the-millennium glamour: dancing with Emma Thompson, chatting with Kate Moss at gallery openings, and drinking champagne on his way to Glyndebourne. ("Little Olde England still determinedly putting out its collapsible chairs," he wrote. "I kept thinking 'someone with a machine gun will appear any minute'.") |
Yet Rickman harboured a "total disdain for celebrity". In one moaning entry, he described the Baftas as "embarrassing and engorged", the acting equivalent of a duck's neck, "force-fed to make foie gras". He was no less cutting about his teenage colleagues on the Harry Potter films. Daniel Radcliffe is not "really an actor"; Emma Watson's "diction is this side of Albania at times". Tony Blair also makes several appearances in the diaries, most favourably after Rickman was invited for a dinner at Chequers ("real sense of the shiver of history going through the gates"). By 2007, his opinion of the outgoing PM had somewhat diminished: "He could have saved himself a great deal of time by just reprinting the lyrics to My Way." |
The new Chelsea girls: living it up in Stockwell. Instagram/@alicemcgowan |
There was once a time when venturing south of the Thames "would bring a Chelsea girl out in hives", says Tatler. But nowadays, the "deep, deep south" – Peckham, Camberwell, Brixton and the like – is the "new epicentre of London's elite". Westminster types no longer plot in Mayfair's member's clubs, but in the "bougie gastropubs of Greenwich", home to the new PM and Chancellor. A "younger, edgier crowd" prefer Peckham: Bellenden Road, with its "toff-filled restaurants" like Artusi and The Begging Bowl, now far surpasses King's Road. Expect the same ambience in Brixton, where your neighbours would include both acting royalty (Joanna Lumley) and real royalty (Prince Fritzi von Preussen, a descendant of Kaiser Wilhelm II). Suitably cool pastimes include dancing to techno at Phonox nightclub and catching stand-up sets at the Cavendish Arms, or, to locals, "the Cav". |
"For New Yorkers, 6pm is the new 8pm," according to The New York Times: the city that never sleeps has embraced the early dinner. I'm also a convert, says India Knight in The Sunday Times. Recently, the only table I could get at a particular restaurant was for 6pm, and to my surprise, the place "was heaving" when me and my dining companions turned up. We had a lovely evening and were done by 9, and I was tucked up in bed by 10, "feeling as if I'd had a life-changing revelation". I now realise that "eating late is insanity". A dinner at 8 or 9 "gobbles your entire evening", but one at 6 gives you hours of time afterwards and is better for your digestion to boot. |
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"Life is easy to chronicle, but bewildering to practice."
EM Forster |
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