Dog days in Roman’s empire (Daily Telegraph)
The blurb would have us believe that as Benedict Allen and his team of huskies plunge over a precipice, the author asks himself: 'why do explorers put themselves in such dangerous situations? And – once the worst possible situation occurs – how do they find the resources to survive?’
Frayn’s typewriter v messy reality (The Tablet)
It's a paradox that would bother Lord Reith or William Russell were they alive today.
The drug trial that could have been me (Guardian)
The Parexel unit is a strange and private outpost within the sprawling concrete compound that is Northwick Park Hospital. It is basically one long corridor with seven or eight wards running off it, each containing half a dozen beds.
Down on the intensive chicken farm (BBC News online)
Lower Farm, just outside Chesterfield, is not what most of us would think of as a farm. It is run by a poultry company called Applied Group. Everything happens in four large sheds. Nearly all chicken meat eaten in the UK comes from a place like this.
Way out west (Sight & Sound)
Trollywood, as the area has inevitably become known, is not a popular name with the industry’s pioneers. Moodysson, whose Show me Love, Together and Lilya 4-ever were all made here, hates the term and clearly sees Trollhättan as the antithesis of everything Hollywood represents.
How to be a doctor in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe (The Lancet)
The professor of surgery hears a knock on his office door. A surgeon enters gingerly to apologise for missing an important student seminar they were running. “I was pushing the truck."
Has Mugabe won? (Prospect)
The speech reworked familiar themes of a degenerate and imperialist west trying to force its values on Africa. "Perhaps a new kind of devil found in Britain is spreading… The devilish system in which a man marries another man makes them disregard nature…This is a rotten culture."
How feasible is voting online at a general election? (BBC news online)
Imagine democracy had just been invented. Would the UK government decide to set up 50,000 polling stations on Thursday 7 May?
Swimming in Martin Strel’s backyard (FT)
Through my aircraft window, the river resembled a snaking green lava flow. A couple of days later I’m swimming in it, a wetsuit protecting me from the 13C chill.
The Private Eye cover at 50 (BBC news online)
Its formula of headline, photograph and provocative speech bubble has rarely changed over the years. Margaret Thatcher has made 95 appearances, the Queen 62, while Jeffrey Archer and Saddam Hussein are both into double figures.
Young, black and brummie (Young People Now)
Two teams of black young men are playing football on a Saturday afternoon. Suddenly a group of spectators yell out as they recognise a player and begin talking urgently into their mobile phones.
Letter from Harare (Prospect)
It has been raining for two weeks in Harare, with only an occasional respite for the city's graceful avenues to drip dry. For a country that has gone without heavy rain for several years, this is a turnaround.
