Hannah Tomes
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US Production Editor @spectator
Articles by Hannah Tomes
Wales has a new First Minister. Her honeymoon won’t last long
Eluned Morgan has this morning been voted in as the new Welsh First Minister – the first woman ever to hold the position. The Labour member for Mid and West Wales was unopposed for the nomination within her party and won 28 votes out of a possible 60. The Conservatives’ Andrew RT Davies got 15 votes; Plaid Cymru’s Rhun ap Iorwerth 12. Unlimited access to spectator.com.au and app The weekly edition on the Spectator Australia app Spectator podcasts and newsletters Full access to spectator.co.uk Or
Devastating: Almeida Theatre’s King Lear reviewed
King Lear Almeida Theatre, until 30 March Yaël Farber’s production of King Lear at the Almeida Theatre is imbued with an undercurrent of tension that feels as if it’s constantly on the edge of exploding into violence. It’s not her first crack at Shakespeare – in 2001 she adapted Julius Caesar, and she directed Hamlet at the Gate in Dublin in 2018 and Macbeth at the Almeida in 2021 – but I’d be willing to bet it’s her most virulent.
The Scottish government’s bizarre egg donor drive
A bright pink box fills my screen; soon it’s filled with blue cartoon sperm swimming towards a large, wobbling egg, where they congregate to spell the word ‘joy’. Alongside it is a message, which reads: ‘By becoming an egg or sperm donor, you could give the joy of starting a family to more than 200 people in Scotland, who need help becoming a family.’ It’s accompanied with the hashtag ‘JoyLoveHope’.
What the UN court’s genocide verdict means for Israel
The International Court of Justice has handed down a preliminary ruling instructing Israel to prevent a genocide from happening in Gaza. Judge Donoghue, speaking at the court in The Hague, said the country must take ‘all measures within its power’ to prevent acts that breach the genocide convention and must ensure ‘with immediate effect’ that none of its soldiers are involved in any acts which contravene it.
Comedy of the blackest kind: Boy Parts, at Soho Theatre, reviewed
Boy Parts Soho Theatre, until 25 November There’s something mesmerising about watching a good mimic. And Aimée Kelly, who plays fetish photographer Irina Sturges in Soho Theatre’s Boy Parts, is a very good mimic. Across the 80 minutes of this one-woman performance, she inhabits the bodies of dozens of characters, each a carbon copy of the worst kind of person: oleaginous city bankers; shrill, hysterical twenty-something women; ‘Andrew Tate-core’ men.
Teenage boy arrested after teacher stabbed
A teenage boy is being questioned on suspicion of attempted murder after a male teacher was stabbed at a Gloucestershire secondary school this morning. The teacher was attacked in a corridor and suffered a single wound, Gloucestershire Police assistant chief constable Richard Ocone said at a press conference this afternoon. The teacher is in a stable condition.
Labour has a way to go to win the Selby and Ainsty by-election
‘Absent’ seems to be the word that most often springs to mind for voters in Selby and Ainsty when asked about their former MP, Nigel Adams. Back in my home constituency for a few days, one of the most common complaints is that he was a Westminster politician who didn’t care about the area; a Boris Johnson loyalist who hitched his wagon to the former PM – and came undone by association.
Is Margaret Thatcher ultimately to blame for the current social housing crisis?
By the time she was 25, the journalist and broadcaster Kieran Yates had lived in almost as many houses. Having rented for more than a decade, I feel her pain. I’ve lived in flats that made me physically unwell (mould has a lot to answer for) and survived housemates whose approach to kitchen hygiene made every day a salmonella minefield. I would visit a former boyfriend whose bedroom was, essentially, a glorified crawl space in a cold artists’ warehouse.
Britain ‘ready to assist’ in search for missing submarine
Britain is ‘ready to provide assistance’ to the rescuers searching for Titan, the submarine which lost contact while on an exploratory visit to the Titanic, a spokesman for Rishi Sunak said this afternoon. The rescuers are facing a race against time as the craft runs out of oxygen. The expedition left for the site of the shipwreck – around 370 miles off the coast of Newfoundland – on Friday.
Carla Foster needs compassion, not punishment for her abortion
In May 2020, two months into the pandemic, Carla Foster, a 44-year-old mother-of-three took pills at home to trigger an abortion. The foetus – a girl – was between 32 and 34 weeks old; a viable age for survival outside of the womb. On Monday, the mother was jailed for 28 months (with half of the sentence to be served on licence). After the judgment was handed down, abortion campaign groups, women’s rights activists and a host of MPs immediately rushed to share their outrage at the decision.
Rishi Sunak is pulling the rug out from under renters
Rishi Sunak is having a busy week. After announcing his crackdown on anti-social behaviour over the weekend, he set out a slew of new promises yesterday to ban laughing gas, increase fines for littering and give police powers to ‘move on’ what he deems ‘nuisance’ beggars. Among them was a proposal that would allow landlords to evict tenants with just two weeks’ notice if they are disruptive to neighbours through noise, drug use or damage to property.
Eating alone | The Spectator Australia
To some, the phrase ‘table for one, please’ is among the saddest in the English language. Perhaps this isn’t a surprise; the concept of social dining for pleasure dates back to Ancient Greece. There, meals would be served at all-male gatherings on low tables so the guests could recline while eating (a recipe for heartburn, but luxurious nonetheless). Then would come the symposium, the section of the evening dedicated to drinking.
Why is social media pushing young women to donate our eggs?
As a millennial who spends a lot of time on social media, I assumed I was desensitised to adverts. I thought I was ad-blind, until I started being bombarded with posts asking me to donate my eggs. It was a post from the London Egg Bank which first caught my eye, offering a ‘freeze and share’ scheme. In this country egg donors are only allowed to be paid £750 in compensation, but there’s nothing to stop them being given treatments in lieu of cash – and egg freezing is expensive.
Keeping no-fault evictions would betray private renters
How many U-turns can a government perform before it starts spinning out of control? Liz Truss is reportedly considering yet another change of heart over existing policy: this time over plans to end no-fault evictions. In the month or so Truss has been Prime Minister, she’s U-turned on a key Treasury appointment and scrapping the 45p rate of tax.
How the newspapers covered the Queen’s death
As the nation wakes up to its first day after the Queen’s death, newspapers in Britain – and around the world – have published historic editions to commemorate her 70-year reign. Here’s a look at some of them. The Times focuses on the Queen’s extraordinary life of service. It also features a moving quote on the back page from her Christmas broadcast in 1957: ‘I cannot lead you into battle.
Queen Elizabeth II: in tributes
Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died this afternoon at Balmoral, the royal family confirmed. The gravity of the news has been felt across the world, with leaders offering words of sympathy – and reflecting on a reign that spanned 70 years. The first of the tributes came from her son Charles – the new King. He wrote, in a statement released by Buckingham Palace: ‘The death of my beloved mother Her Majesty The Queen, is a moment of the greatest sadness for me and all members of my family.
Recession could push millions of Britons into poverty
As the Tory leadership contest rumbles on, questions are being fired at Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak about what they’ll do to tackle the economic crisis facing Britain. The Foreign Secretary has promised to suspend green levies and Sunak said he would axe VAT on household energy – something he had ruled out as chancellor. But there are mounting fears neither of these strategies will go far enough to help a public facing the devastating combination of rising bills and soaring inflation.
The twists and turns of ‘desire paths’
Pause in a park or field in summer and look out across the grass and you’ll see a multitude of thin, earthy tracks breaking up the swaths of green like shatters in a pane of glass. These are most commonly known as desire paths – although other names include cow paths, desire lines, pirate paths or social trails – and are created when humans (or animals) are drawn in the same direction over and over, flattening the grass and eventually wearing it away.
Why do we only care about American abortion rights?
In the week since Roe vs Wade was overturned, you’ve hardly been able to switch on the news or open a paper without hearing British politicians and commentators decrying the decision. Almost every woman I know was furious after hearing the news; I’m sure I wasn’t alone in failing to hold back a few tears of frustration at this eroding of established rights.
Brought me to tears: Tortoise Media’s Sweet Bobby podcast reviewed
Eleven years ago, Kirat Assi received a message on Facebook from a man named Bobby. There was a family connection — he was the elder brother of her second cousin’s boyfriend, who had recently passed away. Bobby wanted a shoulder to cry on, someone to speak to as he processed the grief of losing a sibling. Kirat obliged. They grew closer. When he had work worries, health problems, when his marriage began to break down, he told her everything. Eventually, they became lovers.
The enduring appeal of Baileys
For many, the first Baileys of the year heralds the start of the festive season; to others, it’s a drink to be consumed only when the temperature drops into single digits. A bottle lasts up to 24 months — opened or unopened, refrigerated or not — and it is an essential component of any worthwhile drinks cabinet. A few weeks ago, Morrisons announced a Christmas deal: Baileys at £10 a litre. To a Baileys fanatic like me, it was quite the call to action.
Texas’ war on women
After the news broke last week about Texas’ strict new law on abortion, the internet was awash with a global outpouring of pain at the takedown of yet more women’s rights. The strict legislation would, it is estimated, prevent eight in ten women from accessing an abortion and making an informed choice about her body, her life. The new law, which scraped through the Supreme Court with a 5–4 majority, prohibits abortions after six weeks, counted from the date of the woman’s last period.
Love is not a thing that’s owed
Some people I love in a place I love ‘It’s a family problem, it should be solved as a family problem,’ says Thomas Markle, speaking about his fractious relationship with his daughter Meghan on Good Morning Britain yesterday. ‘Making this a big drama for the world, every day, is kind of ridicuous.’ And he’s right, in a way. At its heart, the apparent break down of their relationship is, and should remain, a private matter — a family matter.
Ireland’s Daughters: The changing landscape of abortion legislation
When her baby was diagnosed with a fatal foetal abnormality at 20 weeks, Claire Cullen-Delsol asked her doctor if she could be induced to terminate the pregnancy. But Ireland’s strict abortion laws meant that her request was denied, even after her doctor said there was no medical reason to keep her pregnant. “In my head, an abortion was this gory, bloody thing, like you learn in Catholic school. I didn’t realise that an induction would be considered an abortion,” 34-year-old Claire tells me.
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