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The sequencing of an album opening is a delicate art. The first song can’t be the best one, otherwise what follows will be a long anticlimax. But nor can it be the kind of straightforward track that most albums require at some point. The ideal curtainraiser should be neither filler nor killer. It should leave

I have started to grow flowers in my garden this year. I am picking my first tulips and I’m wondering how best to show them off in my house. Any ideas? What can compare to the joy of growing one’s own flowers? I’m thrilled for you: once you’ve had a go, you’ll never not bother

How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz. Apple and Amazon caused a sharp intake of breath on Wall Street last night as they warned that supply chain challenges and rising costs were having an impact on their businesses. Executives at the iPhone maker said the company could sustain

Sissinghurst called and Troy Scott Smith has returned. Back for a second stint as head gardener at the world-famous garden where he started his career 30 years earlier. “Sissinghurst is a part of me,” he says of the garden created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson after they purchased Sissinghurst Castle in Kent in 1930.

Engineering has not been one of literature’s great muses, but for Adrian Duncan — a Berlin-based Irish writer, visual artist and former structural engineer — it is central to his spare, affecting novels. Duncan’s 2019 debut, Love Notes from a German Building Site, revolves around Paul, a thirty-something-year-old engineer on an Alexanderplatz construction site, while

I’m hugely excited by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s efforts to shame his homeworking civil servants back to the office. Many have been critical of the passive-aggressive and rather Dickensian notes left by Rees-Mogg and his aides on officials’ desks, but I’m looking forward to testing out the theory in my own domestic setting. For those who missed

The aftermath of Emmanuel Macron’s re-election has turned into a fight for survival for the once-powerful political movements that gave France most of its postwar presidents. The centre-left Socialist party and the conservative Les Républicains (LR) were crushed in this month’s presidential vote. Now they risk being torn apart as politicians scrabble for alliances to

Hopes and Homes for Children Salisbury-based charity Hopes and Homes for Children has staff working across Lviv, Kyiv and Dnipro, and efforts are currently focused on providing essentials, medicine and supporting child protection services. In the UK, journalist Annabel Davidson has organised Jewels for Ukraine, a series of charity prize draws where a £10 donation

Arm is on the cusp of regaining control of its renegade China joint venture, in a move that would remove a significant obstacle to SoftBank’s plan to take the UK chip designer public. Government business records on Thursday night in Beijing showed that Allen Wu, the head of Arm China, had been removed from all

Sales at AstraZeneca soared 60 per cent in the first quarter, boosted by demand for its Covid-19 vaccine and the rare diseases medicines it acquired as part of its acquisition of Alexion. The UK drugmaker announced sales of $11.4bn, above the analyst consensus of $10.9bn, bolstered by $1.1bn coming from its Covid vaccine and $1.7bn

New satellite images of a North Korean nuclear facility suggest that Pyongyang is inching towards its first nuclear test since 2017, experts have warned, as Kim Jong Un ratchets up tensions on the Korean peninsula. The commercial satellite images were collected this week and analysed by experts from the Center for Strategic and International Studies

Reckitt Benckiser pushed up prices in the first quarter by more than 5 per cent to pass on higher ingredients costs, helping it to compensate for the reduction in disinfectant demand as Covid-19 restrictions ease. The maker of Durex condoms, Dettol and Lysol disinfectants, and Nurofen painkillers increased prices by 5.3 per cent, boosting like-for-like

Good morning. British politics is simple: the Labour party does well when general elections are about public services, the Conservatives do well when they are about literally anything else. Today, we explore one reason why 2024 may be a public services election, and discuss how targeted ads sometimes pay off, but carry several risks. However

Italian energy major Eni outlined plans to increase gas exports to Europe as it reported strong profits driven by soaring prices for oil and gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Claudio Descalzi, Eni chief executive, said the group had “rapidly reacted to the ongoing challenges of the energy market” by signing agreements in Algeria, Egypt,

NatWest struck a note of caution about the effect of inflation on its customers despite reporting first-quarter profits well ahead of analysts’ expectations. The UK lender said on Friday that pre-tax operating profit in the first three months of the year was £1.2bn, 40 per cent ahead of the previous year and significantly higher than

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan embraced the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman on a visit to Saudi Arabia, signalling the end of a years-long spat between the two men over the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The encounter on Thursday night between Erdogan and the day-to-day ruler of the Gulf kingdom is highly

The young British sitarist Jasdeep Singh Degun, born in Leeds, started Kirtan singing at his local Sikh temple as a boy. By 15, he was studying with Ustad Dharambir Singh, himself a pupil of Vilayat Khan and one of the best-connected figures in British Asian music. Two years out of a degree in music at

In the years after the first world war many composers found themselves struggling to take up where they had left off. Those who retained one foot in the romantic era often turned towards music that was elegiac, inward, haunted by images of death or farewell. In his mid-30s the Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck found his

The ghostly, vibrato-laden sustains, shrieks and honking low-note groans that Albert Ayler conjured from his tenor saxophone sounded outrageous when they surfaced in the early 1960s. And, as this compelling four-CD box-set audibly demonstrates, they still sound outrageous today. The collection presents two complete concerts from the Fondation Maeght art museum in the South of

The writer is a managing director at BlackRock For the private equity and venture capital firms of Bangalore, 2021 was a fine year. Inflows surged to record levels and a flurry of technology firms achieved “unicorn” status, with capital raisings that valued them at $1bn or higher. As central bank largesse supported markets around the

The renminbi is set to close out its steepest monthly fall on record as China’s economy reels from severe Covid-19 lockdowns and the US Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates, driving global investors to ditch Chinese assets. The Chinese currency has fallen 4.2 per cent this month to about Rmb6.6 per dollar, the biggest