Chloe Lea and Tom Sweet in Great Expectations. Miya Mizuno/BBC |
The golden age of English fiction |
Everywhere I look, says Susie Goldsbrough in The Times, I see Charles Dickens. He appears in Zadie Smith's first historical novel, The Fraud, out next month; earlier this year Olivia Colman camped it up in the latest adaptation of Great Expectations. Partly it's because Dickens was so prolific – he wrote 20 novels and seven plays, as well as "roughly 70 letters a day". But perhaps it's also because "the novel died with Dickens". That may be an exaggeration, but the Victorian era saw one of those freak bits of historical alchemy where "very specific economic conditions" meet the "lightning strikes of individual creative brilliance". |
Literacy rates were booming, steam had replaced hand printing and paper prices dropped, creating a surge in the production of books and magazines. When the window tax ended in 1851, homes became brighter, "always a good thing for readers". And they were spoilt for choice – with easy access not just to Dickens, but also to George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Charlotte Brontë and all the rest. The Victorians were "as addicted to the printed page as we are to the flickering screen". Today, just 17% of under 25s read in their day-to-day lives. But perhaps that doesn't matter. Cultural forms have always risen and fallen – today we might have a dearth of great novels, but we're living in the "golden age of TV". The Wire, The West Wing, Succession – these are our Middlemarches, our Bleak Houses. Even better, "we get to keep what the Victorians left us". |
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An ad for the original Fyre Festival. The reality was rather different |
Hero Convicted fraudster Billy McFarland, who has learned the virtue of persistence. McFarland spent four years in a US prison after organising the disastrous Fyre Festival in 2017, which promised a luxurious jolly on a Caribbean island but ended up housing attendees in disaster relief tents. A sequel has now been announced and 100 tickets have already been sold, despite the event having no confirmed location. "It has been the absolute wildest journey to get here," McFarland said in a recent video. "And it really all started during the seven-month stint in solitary confinement." |
Villain The blue crab, which is marauding across Italy. It arrived from America in the 1940s, but the population has "exploded" recently, says Nicholas Farrell in The Spectator. The granchio blu has been attacking children and seagulls, and its voracious appetite for clams is threatening the supply of the country's much-loved spaghetti alle vongole. One upside is that the crab itself tastes like lobster for a third of the price. However, to reduce numbers to manageable levels would require "colossal" consumption. |
Villain The conductor Sir John Eliot Gardiner, whose conduct away from the baton is seemingly not up to scratch. Gardiner, 80, has withdrawn from a scheduled performance in September after being accused of punching and slapping a singer, William Thomas, who apparently arrived on stage from the wrong direction during a concert in France on Tuesday. The conductor allegedly confronted Thomas afterwards and called him a "dozy bastard". |
Villains Visitors to St Stephen's church in Ipswich, who are using the medieval graveyard for activities rather more earthy than quiet contemplation. According to Suffolk police, the raised tombstones have become a "convenient platform for al fresco sex", says The Times, or are used as tables for drinking and drug-taking. Railings might be installed to discourage procreation in the home of the dead. |
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"Not technically a diplomat or statesman". Taylor Hill/Getty |
The Pentagon's worrying dependence on Elon Musk |
Last October, says Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker, Pentagon official Colin Kahl made a phone call "to avert disaster in Ukraine". The recipient wasn't some top-level government official, but Elon Musk. Even though the billionaire businessman is "not technically a diplomat or statesman", Kahl remembers, "I felt it was important to treat him as such, given the influence he had". SpaceX, Musk's space firm, had for months been providing internet access across Ukraine through its Starlink satellites, described by one soldier as the "essential backbone of communication on the battlefield". But last autumn Musk gave the Pentagon an ultimatum: if it didn't assume the £400m annual cost of Starlink, he would cut access. This June, the Defence Department agreed to cough up. |
Few civilians can claim to have become the "arbiter of a war between nations" in such a decisive way. But Musk's influence on the US government doesn't end at the defence department. SpaceX rockets are currently the only way Nasa transports astronauts to space; Joe Biden's plan to boost electrical vehicle ownership depends on charging stations owned by Musk's firm Tesla. Worries about this "degree of dependency" are only intensified by the billionaire's "erratic behaviour". Board members at his companies have raised concerns about his use of the prescription sleep aid Ambien, which can cause hallucinations, and he is said to self-medicate with ketamine. His change of heart on supplying Starlink to Ukraine came after what he described to defence officials as a "great conversation" with Vladimir Putin. For now, officials have no choice but to put up with him. As fellow tech titan Reid Hoffman puts it, Musk's attitude is like Louis XIV: "L'état, c'est moi." |
Magical swimming pools from Java to Hollywood |
When the FT invited writers to reflect on their favourite swimming pools, the responses spanned the globe. Cal Flyn picked Seljavallalaug in Iceland, a "rough-and-ready outdoor pool built into an isolated hillside" beneath the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. Pico Iyer chose the pool at the Mondrian in West Hollywood, where waitresses glide "from table to deckchair in sarongs, bearing drinks" and beautiful young people – "pretending to be actors" – strike poses while standing in the warm water. |
William Dalrymple opted for the pool at the Amanjiwo hotel in Java: "huge and magnificent, a shimmering blue rectangle, lined with honey-coloured limestone, set between round masterworks of umbrella topiary on one side and spreading magnolia trees on the other". And Paul Theroux went with the Olympic-sized and entirely public Andrew "Boy" Charlton Pool in Sydney, neatly situated at the edge of Woolloomooloo Bay, "with views of the magnificent harbour". See the rest here. |
Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip in 2001, arriving by Concorde in Kuwait. Tim Graham Photo Library/Getty |
The irresistible glamour of Concorde |
The story of Concorde is set to be depicted in a new "Crown-esque drama", say Ollie Macnaughton and Stephanie Bridger-Linning in Tatler. And it promises plenty of "glamour, espionage and sabotage". For 30 years, everyone from Princess Diana to Mick Jagger hopped on the supersonic jet to traverse the Atlantic in under four hours. It was a "glamorous flying circus": Dolly Parton flirted with pilots, and Michael Jackson signed autographs at 60,000ft. Andy Warhol was "so taken by the custom Raymond Loewy silverware" that he couldn't resist pocketing a few pieces when he landed. |
Each flight began with a dedicated check-in and glass of champagne prior to departure. Passengers were escorted to their seats and addressed by name. On leaving, cabin crew would hand out keepsakes. Staff uniforms were designed by Hardy Amies; meals were prepared by Alain Ducasse and The Dorchester's Anton Mosimann. By the time of the final Concorde flight in 2003, the liners had hosted royals – flying Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip to Kuwait, America and Barbados – and opened the door to "mind-bending schedules": Phil Collins was famously able to play both the London and Philadelphia Live Aid shows on the same night, literally travelling back in time. As one former flight attendant puts it: 'If money had a smell, you could smell it on the Concorde." |
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Street performers at the Edinburgh Fringe. Dan Smit/Shutterstock |
The uncomfortable truth about comedy |
The award for the funniest joke at this year's Edinburgh Fringe was won by Lorna Rose Treen, with: "I started dating a zookeeper, but it turned out he was a cheetah." It doesn't really work, says Rod Liddle in The Spectator. "Why would a zookeeper be a cheetah?" If she'd said, "I started dating a big cat – turned out he was a cheetah", it still wouldn't be terribly funny, "but it would at least have semantic integrity". The Fringe seems to have "banned all the stuff that's really funny anyway" – the Leith Arches venue, for example, blocked Father Ted writer Graham Linehan because of his views on transgender issues. |
Many progressive types say they don't like comedy which "punches down" and makes fun of minority groups. But it's only "punching down" if you consider black and Asian people, for example, beneath you. "If you consider them – and lesbians and transgender people and the disabled – not to be simply victims, but essentially no different from anyone else, then it is not 'punching down' at all." The whole point of comedy is to "poke away with glee and guile" at the stuff which lurks darkly in our unconscious. As Freud put it, "jokes let out forbidden thoughts". If we, say, laugh at a joke "equating Muslims with terrorists", we're partly mocking our own "deep-seated prejudices". The joke is on us, and the laughter which follows is "truly cathartic". |
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"When women gossip, we get called bitchy; but when men do it's called a podcast." Comedian Sikisa Bostwick-Barnes |
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