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Camilla Tominey
Associate Editor
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Donald Trump famously spoke about how easily powerful, high-profile men could abuse their positions when it came to women.
“When you’re a star they let you do it,” he bragged to TV host Billy Bush in 2005. “You can do anything. Grab them by the p---y. You can do anything,” he repeated.
The US president was rightly condemned for the admission, which was made during the Noughties – a period that has been brought sharply back into focus by the imprisonment of Russell Brand for rape and sexual assault and David Walliams being named as the celebrity behind a sex claims injunction.
The allegations made against Walliams are not as serious as the crimes committed by Brand; he has not been found guilty of anything in a court of law.
The children’s author, however, now faces a police investigation over accusations he groomed and sexually assaulted a 15-year-old girl. Walliams is said to have kissed and groped the teenager at his north London home in 2007, when he was 36.
The cases of Walliams and Brand share striking parallels in the environments in which the men operated: the apparent sense of impunity with which they behaved and the lack of responsibility they appeared to take for their actions.
The times may have changed, but the sense of entitlement among some powerful men – and the reluctance of those around them to challenge it – plainly has not.
This column is available only to subscribers.
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See our full coverage below:
Walliams faces police investigation over ‘sexual assault of girl, 15’ ➤
How children’s author ‘abused fame to groom and assault young girls’ ➤
‘There was a darkness to him’: How ‘creepy’ David Walliams’s mask slipped ➤
Walliams’s Regent’s Park home on sale for £10.5m ➤
Book publisher ‘protected author at all costs’ ➤
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Annabel Denham
A work-from-home fraudster was only caught after accidentally using the wrong email address – and one of his bosses had never even met him
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Oliver Brown
Scandalous that Carrick is dangled over a cliff by Sir Jim and his hapless lieutenants
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Celia Walden
Britain has never been more workshy
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• Labour has been accused of “massively overestimating” the scale of conversion therapy in the UK. A recent Cabinet Office tender suggested that an official hotline to report cases had been used by as few as 300 people a year, down from a previous estimate of 15,000.
• The suspected mastermind of a terror plot on RAF Fairford directed attacks on Britain via FaceTime, US prosecutors have alleged. Mohammad Ali Hassani was charged with six terror-related offences yesterday.
• A senior US soldier has been arrested by British counter-terror police for allegedly spying for Russia. The 41-year-old was detained on suspicion of offences under the National Security Act.
• Donald Trump has claimed a “huge victory” in his $10bn (£7.5bn) lawsuit against the BBC after a judge rejected the broadcaster’s attempt to have the case thrown out.
• Thomas Markle cut an electronic monitoring device from his ankle days after he was arrested on suspicion of possessing child sexual abuse content. The Duchess of Sussex’s father was pictured this morning in a mugshot released by Florida sheriffs.
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When my daughter began identifying as a boy, writes our anonymous author, I found myself fighting to help her reconsider. Now I fear Labour’s proposed Conversion Practices Bill could make it harder for parents to support children questioning their gender, with potentially serious consequences for families.
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Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean) and Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell) remain at the heart of the series’ romantic intrigue
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There are sex scenes aplenty in the return of Rivals, and if you’ve ever wanted to know what Danny Dyer looks like in the buff, well, this is the show for you, writes Anita Singh, our Arts and Entertainment Editor. The second half of series two resumes with the death of Monica Baddingham (Claire Rushbrook), whose car crashed in a storm after she learnt of her husband Tony’s affair with Maud O’Hara (Victoria Smurfit). Even her funeral has an aphrodisiac quality, judging by what some of the mourners get up to after sneaking away from the wake.
For subscribers only ➤
Plus, it might be time for Noel Fielding to move on from Bake Off ➤
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Supermarket fridges heated to 50C, blood banks breached and airlines grounded by hoaxes. Adversarial states are no longer just targeting military installations; they have turned their attention to civilian life. Contingency planners warn that hostile hackers can paralyse Britain without firing a shot, leaving ordinary households to face an insidious new front line.
Continue reading ➤
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Antoine de Massy was no party boy, yet after staggering out of a notorious nightclub, the 29-year-old tech entrepreneur mysteriously fell to his death. In a hyper-surveilled Monaco, where unlocked Bugattis sit untouched, his final steps vanished into a rare CCTV blind spot. Was it a drunken accident? Or were there darker forces at play?
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Amid 25,000 trees in Staffordshire, 500 mourners gathered around five Yorkshire sandstone plinths. For decades, service personnel who had taken their own lives were consigned to a no man’s land of remembrance, denied recognition on official monuments. The new Elysium Memorial offers grieving families long-sought solace, but an unsettling silence remains.
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Dressing well is less about how much you spend than knowing what makes an outfit work. Lisa Armstrong, our Head of Fashion, shares her advice on getting more out of your wardrobe, explaining how a little creativity and a sharper eye can make all the difference. Sometimes the best new outfit is one you already own.
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Here is another article that I hope you’ll find helpful this morning:
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Portstewart
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Diana Henry growing up in Portstewart, Northern Ireland
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Diana Henry
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It seems odd to be comforted by November, of all months. The leaves have fallen and the sky is pewter, but where I grew up, on the coast of Northern Ireland, November was when you felt the power of the weather return.
Summer weather was changeable, early autumn golden; in November there could be storms so strong you had to fight against them with your body as you walked along by the sea in Portstewart, the small coastal town where I lived until I was 10. We hunted waves. We used to drive to Ballintoy – no more than a small harbour and a tearoom – just to feel the force of the waves as they shot over the harbour wall.
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Credit: Alamy Stock Photo / James Brown
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You had to really shove against the car door to open it and, once outside, the wind could be so powerful that it was momentarily difficult to breathe. Nature was a force you couldn’t ignore. I’m still taken by surprise when I go back to Northern Ireland. Even as I descend the steps from the plane at Aldergrove, my senses are assailed by the scents of the countryside: grass, trees, smoke.
I come from an area more than a single town, a string of coastal villages 50 miles north of Belfast, but I’ve lived in London for more than 40 years. The weather here is tamed by buildings, I rarely feel nature’s power unless I go to the small wood nearby, or to Hampstead Heath and, even then, it’s muted. Frost, which makes pavements and bare trees glitter, doesn’t last long here.
When I walked to school as a teenager in Northern Ireland, I could almost smell the frost and feel the coldness in my lungs. I started the day walking by trees that could have been drawn on a Christmas card. I felt alive. I feel for my children, born and raised in London, that they haven’t experienced any of that.
The weather affects how we live; I remember November days when it was so cold or so stormy we were pushed indoors, days when the fire was lit and constantly tended to. We watched nature through the windows, gauging the roughness of the sea by whether we saw an RNLI boat on the horizon.
The weather dictated the school day too. My primary school was in Coleraine, a market town and the hub that connected small coastal towns, such as ours. There was a whiskey distillery just opposite the school; the smell of fermenting mash was impossible to ignore. It got dark so early that the classroom lights were switched on as early as 2.30pm. We were allowed to put our heads down on our desks on grey days and listen to Mrs Munro, our teacher, reading from the Little House books.
That’s the best memory I have of where I grew up, reading or being read to as the wind howled and the waves crashed. I don’t go back home much these days. I’ve now lived twice as long in London as in the place I come from, but I carry forever with me the memories, the smells, the sea, and that comforting feeling of being inside on a stormy day.
Have you ever been to Portstewart? If so, let us know your memories of it here.
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Tick tock!
Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal Reader Correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories.
Orlando writes...
“Argh sorry – I’ll be there in 10.” If you are due to meet me at the pub, there is, I’m afraid, a fair chance that you’ll receive this message as you order your first pint (assuming you haven’t already marched off in indignation). Time-keeping has never been my strong suit – though, in my defence, I’ve come a long way in the past decade or so, if you can believe it. Blame it on my upbringing in Cornwall, where the promise to do something “dreckly” means that it might happen in the next fortnight.
To those who regard the “pathologically delayed” as rude, Rowan Pelling made a plea for clemency. “Honestly, we don’t think our time has higher value than yours,” she wrote. Unless the late person in question is, say, Vladimir Putin, I would second her on this.
Some readers were sympathetic. Angus Jo observed: “The foremost cause of lateness is underestimating how long it takes to do something. Some people have an instinctive ability to estimate this accurately but others don’t.”
Others were somewhat less forgiving. For Christine Barnes, tardiness was “so rude. I wouldn’t be hanging around for someone who couldn’t be bothered to show up on time.”
Charles Holden made the point that there are far fewer excuses today: “If one is running late, in this age of immediate communication, a short explanation at least enables the other party to use their time effectively. The biggest travesty is regular lateness for meetings, resulting in disruption, repetition and annoyance. The occasional unavoidable occurrence is understandable but, again, in such circumstances a short communication is, at least, polite.”
Yet while the time-challenged can be annoying, they can also be craftily managed, as Bill Ashton pointed out: “My wife is habitually late. When going to occasions such as the theatre, in order to arrive on time I have to tell her that the start time is 15 minutes earlier than it actually is.”
How forgivable is lateness? Send your responses here, and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of this newsletter.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name.
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1918 | First World War Armistice signed by the Allies and Germany comes into effect, with hostilities ending at 11am (see our coverage in the following day’s paper)
1961 | Catch-22 by Joseph Heller is published by Simon and Schuster
1999
| The House of Lords Act is given Royal Assent, restricting membership by virtue of a hereditary peerage
2022 | Cypto currency FTX, founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, files for bankruptcy, amid accusations of criminal misconduct
Plus, in the news this week, the home of Hugh Grant’s character in the film Notting Hill has gone on sale. For how much?
1. £5m
2. £5.5m
3. £7m
4. £7.5m
Click one of the options to reveal the answer...
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Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including The 1% Club, Cogs, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
Yesterday’s Panagram was MARTYRDOM. Come back tomorrow for the solution to today’s puzzle.
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Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow.
Chris Evans, Editor
I’d love to hear what you think of this newsletter. You can email me your feedback at fromtheeditor@telegraph.co.uk.
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