As well as being executive editor of The Independent, I am also chair of a small charity called Inspiring Girls UK, which helps girls broaden their ambitions and career possibilities by connecting them with female role models. In this role, I am often asked: who was your greatest inspiration when you were growing up?
I always give the names of three women. My mum (still my number one!), Lois Lane (and later the war correspondent Martha Gellhorn, once I discovered a non-fictional journalist to look up to) and Gloria Steinem, who died last week at the age of 91. Campaigner and writer Eleanor Mills says she felt exactly the same about the feminist icon and was lucky enough to meet her on several occasions. While she found her awkward in person, clipped and even quite terrifying at times, in this brilliant essay Eleanor writes about Steinem’s shyness too, and why she was the ultimate example of how we should all go forward and thrive in our own lives, on our own terms.
Coming so soon after Dolly Parton, it does feel like the mood is darkening all around us. The storm clouds are gathering, quite literally, after what has been one of the hottest summers on record. El Nino, categorised by many as a “Super” El Nino, is now firmly established and set to become one of the strongest events on record. Helen Coffey talked to forecasters about what this will mean for the weather in the UK this autumn, with one telling her the extra power it will add to storms will bring floods “the likes of which we haven’t experienced in centuries”.
Meanwhile, Chris Blackhurst looks at why our food security joins energy security as the great UK must-do, a problem that Burnham and his government needs to address. Read his inside look at why your traditional Sunday roast could soon be up for the chop. And not in a good way.
And Alan Rusbridger recounts the tale of how a truly Biblical hailstorm he experienced on holiday shattered his windscreen in more than 20 places and brought traffic on the A1 outside Zurich to a complete standstill. With extreme weather events playing out across the world to devastating effect, he asks how climate deniers are still getting away with calling climate change a giant scam?
I wrote here last week about how the world feels very far from normal right now. A week on, it doesn’t feel like it is going to recalibrate any time soon. Trump, after all, is still making his trade-mark shocking statements, saying last week that he wouldn’t necessarily help the UK should Argentina decide to invade the Falklands.
Expert Keir Giles says we are right to think of these times as the new normal. Ahead of the publication of his new book, ‘American Overthrow: Moscow’s Endgame in Its Long War with Washington’, he writes that anyone who believes Trump is a temporary aberration — that his time in power will soon be over and that, as soon as he departs, things will start to return to “normal” — is deluded.
But if the world around us feels increasingly beyond our control, we can always take back control of our own personal calibration and resets.
As ever, we have our senior fitness writer, Harry Bullmore, on hand with some brilliant advice on strength training, and what everyone heading to the gym for the first time in a while should know.
Meanwhile, if, like me, you are sober-curious after a rather boozy summer, you might be interested in Rosamund Hall’s look at how GLP-1 weight loss drugs affect your appetite for alcohol too. And after a summer of disrupted routines, food editor Hannah Twiggs asks nutritionists which five easy changes they’d make for better health. From smarter protein and fibre to better carbs and fewer UPFs, there are some top tips here for getting some new-season energy.
Which, when you look at the world right now, we’re all going to need quite a lot of.
Until next weekend!
Victoria Harper
-Nina-Hoss-(Clytemnestra)-and-Ella-Lily-Hyland-(Chrysothemis)-in-Electra-Per.jpg?quality=75&width=1368&crop=3%3A2%2Csmart&trim=1164%2C1663%2C676%2C1098&auto=webp "Electra/Persona review: Cate Blanchett brings star power to chilly, cerebral show")
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