27 December, 2023

In the headlines

The Conservatives are considering axing inheritance tax in the spring as part of a pre-election giveaway, says The Daily Telegraph. Other cuts under consideration include increasing the higher rate income tax threshold and providing government support to first-time home-buyers. The Met Office has warned that parts of the UK could face power cuts, flooding and travel disruption today, as Storm Gerrit brings strong winds and heavy rain. Gusts of up to 70mph are expected on the south coast of England, while parts of Wales and the Pennines could see as much as 90mm of rain. An Oxford University mathematician claims he has worked out the best strategies for board games. Marcus du Sautoy’s top tips include playing as Mrs Peacock in Cluedo and snapping up the orange properties in Monopoly. “If you understand the underlying maths, it’s going to give you an edge,” he says. “That’s why my family have stopped playing games with me.”

Long reads shortened

Churchill during the Boer War, with his “almost invisible moustache”. Hulton Archive/Getty

The prison escape that made Churchill’s name

Winston Churchill launched his political career on the back of a tale of astonishing “derring-do”, says The Economist. In 1899, the future prime minister was covering the Second Boer War for the Morning Post newspaper. He was already an acclaimed writer – he had arrived in Cape Town with “a valet, a supply of fine wines”, and a contract for an eye-watering £250 a month (around £26,500 today). But when he was captured after an ambush, the Boers rejected his claim that he was just a reporter and should therefore be released, citing British newspaper accounts of his combat role during the skirmish (“MR CHURCHILL’S HEROISM” read one incriminating headline). Taken to Pretoria and locked up with British officers in a converted school, he “resolved to break out”.

Other prisoners were wary of letting Churchill join their escape plans because he was, in one biographer’s words, “unfit, too famous and he couldn’t keep a secret”. But he talked his way into joining a plot, broke out alone – before his co-plotters were ready – and set out on foot for the border 500km away. After covertly hitching a lift on a coal train, he knocked on someone’s door seeking shelter – and by “astonishing good fortune” it belonged to a British coalmine manager. His host, John Howard, hid him in a mineshaft with a box of cigars and a bottle of whisky, and hatched a plan to smuggle him to the coast “in a trainload of wool”. By this point, “Wanted” posters were everywhere, mocking Churchill’s “stooping gait” and “almost invisible moustache”. But the scheme worked. Arriving in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique), Churchill “walked into the British consulate covered in soot and introduced himself to the startled consul”. The following year, still only 25, he was elected as an MP.

Photography

National Geographic’s pictures of the year, chosen from more than two million images taken by 165 photographers, include shots of a lion’s mane jellyfish floundering in Arctic seas; a quartet of hyenas arriving at a pond in Kenya; elephants dotted around a tea plantation in India; and branches sagging under the weight of monarch butterflies in Mexico.

Noted

Popular Science magazine has selected its “50 greatest innovations of 2023”. Top discoveries and inventions include the first effective treatment for the early stages of Alzheimer’s; a new kind of shock-absorbing hammer; carbon-negative cement; super-light body armour; and America’s latest stealth bomber, which can evade radar and drop nukes. See the full list here.

The great escape

The Cleopatra Spring in the Siwa Oasis. Getty

When the FT asked its contributors for their favourite travel discoveries of 2023, the responses spanned the globe. William Dalrymple chose the Siwa Oasis in Egypt, a remote desert outpost with “eerie blue waters” in the shadow of “unearthly mountains”. Tim Moore went for the “vast, low-slung” Estonian island of Saaremaa, calling it proof that Europe still has places “that time, and other tourists, forgot”. And Horatio Clare picked the Royal Decameron Club in Runaway Bay, Jamaica, for demonstrating that Caribbean package holidays don’t have to be “a hell of pinking flesh in a resort like a stranded cruise liner”. See the rest here.

Film

No prizes for guessing which film topped the English-language box office in 2023, says the Daily Mail: Barbie grossed a whopping $1.44bn worldwide. More surprising is that Greta Gerwig’s hit was almost pipped by The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($1.36bn), with Oppenheimer ($954m) a distant third. The rest of the top 10 comprised the usual mix of superhero fodder (the latest instalments of Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man and Ant-Man), big-name franchises (Mission: Impossible, Fast & Furious) and Disney films (The Little Mermaid, Elemental).

Fashion

Sarah Snook sporting the “stealth wealth” look in Succession

This year came with a host of “TikTok aesthetics”, says Vogue, which got picked up by fashion commentators and journalists before quickly being discarded as “cringe”. We had Succession-style “stealth wealth”, “logo-less, quality, expensive clothing that’s imagined as a kind of camouflage for the rich”; an “old-money aesthetic” that delighted in loafers, blazers and Dom Pérignon; and Barbiecore, as pink and “plastic-fantastic” as the film. More bizarre was mermaidcore (“all things pearlescent, beachy, shimmery”); “succubus chic”, a “ghoulish, sexed-up Morticia Addams look”; and “Tomato-Girl Summer”, a linen- and headscarf-heavy celebration of la dolce vita.

Quoted

“As you get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes, and I can’t remember the other two.”