Category Archives: Life and style

Garry Kasparov: ‘The thing about jail is the sound when they lock the door’

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The chess grandmaster, 58, on growing up in Baku, Putin’s bloody dictatorship and losing to Deep Blue

My mother was Armenian, my father Jewish. My father died when I was seven and my mother never remarried. She lived the rest of her 50 years for me. It’s the greatest thing that happened to me – I had a mother who dedicated her entire life to her only son.

I grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the deep south of the USSR. Everybody spoke Russian because it was an imperial city. At 10, I was sent to the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku to learn how to play chess. It didn’t take long for me to see the gap between reality and propaganda.

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‘Welcome to England. How are you doing?’: the artist who holds out a hand to refugees

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Marie Gracie helps families arriving from Afghanistan. The Guardian angel sends a party entertainer to help the children adjust to their first English winter

Marie Gracie never met the boy, but his fate changed her life. On 2 September 2015, three-year-old Alan Kurdi washed up, drowned, on a Turkish beach. His family were Syrian refugees, trying to reach Europe. Journalist Nilüfer Demir took a photo. Alan lies face down, in a T-shirt and shorts. His feet are so tiny. His hands are upturned, facing the sky.

“I’m a mother,” says Gracie, an artist from Milton Keynes. “Can you imagine anything worse than your child being in the news like that?” She reached out to her local chapter of Refugees Welcome, set up in the wake of the Syrian war.

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Indian supplier to UK fashion brands agrees to pay £3m in unpaid wages

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Shahi Exports, which makes clothes for the UK high street, has agreed to pay staff minimum wage and arrears

India’s largest garment company has paid out an estimated £3m in unpaid wages to tens of thousands of workers, after two years of refusing to pay the legal minimum wage.

Last month Shahi Exports, which supplies dozens of international brands, agreed to pay nine months of back pay to about 80,000 workers, with further payments expected in the coming months that will increase the total paid back to workers to £7m.

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Living in a woman’s body: I was obsessed with being thin, then I became pregnant and felt invincible

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After years of disgust, I saw the possibility of beauty in my body just as it is. Now I am the happiest I have ever been

My body is an accordion. Not because it sounds horrible. I mean, it does. It clicks and cracks and honks, and when I try to sing nicely my son screams from the pit of his soul, like I’ve brandished an axe. No, what I mean is, it’s like an accordion because, for 32 years I was squeezing her in. In and in, for a half-life.

On a BMI chart, I’ve always been “obese” – technically, ill. So for decades I saw my body as defective, disappointing and disgusting. If I looked at it, I felt the kind of hatred and repulsion I normally reserve for racists or people who say “hashtag justsayin’” out loud.

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Living in a woman’s body: I was mutilated – and I swore I would stop this happening to another girl

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I was told I was a coward if I resisted female genital mutilation. For decades since then, I have worked, and risked everything, to protect other girls

I was 14 when my mother and grandmother announced that I was going to have my clitoris, my labia majora and my labia minora cut out. They said that if I resisted I was a coward. In my culture, the worst thing you can be called is a coward.

I was never naive. I grew up as a Maasai girl in Kenya in the 60s and 70s. At some point in my childhood, I became aware that there was a rite of passage into womanhood. I was to have my vulva mutilated by an elderly woman using a blunt instrument. But I was also part of the first generation of Maasai girls to be sent to school, where I met girls from communities who didn’t practise female genital mutilation (FGM). I learned from them that you can grow to be an adult with your vulva intact. That was what I wanted.

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‘They’ll have to carry me out in a box’: inside the apartments of the luckiest renters

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They scored beautiful New York City homes for far below market rate – and no, they’re never leaving

For most, finding an apartment with the right balance of square footage, amenities, neighborhood, and monthly rent is akin to a competitive sport. These New Yorkers – who lucked into the housing lottery, moved in decades ago, or inherited – placed on the podium and are staying put.

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Living in a woman’s body: this body is a genetic mistake – but it is sex, laughter and beauty too

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It is radical to love a body that the world says is wrong – and I love mine completely

This body is a genetic mistake, a pitiable stare, the scan on a mundane Tuesday lunchtime with a doctor speaking in hushed tones by the bed.

It is glorious too, thanks. It is deep-in-the-bones laughter at 2am with people who love you; only strangers care that it is sitting in a wheelchair while doing so (“Have you got a licence for that thing, sweetheart?”). It is straight-As, promotions and beating expectations as much as the odds. It is being buckled over from the pain, clutching a public toilet bowl, pills and dignity rattling at the bottom of a handbag. It is sex, fevered goosebumps and kisses to the skin like magic. It is warm summers with friends, sunshine on bare legs and 90s dance music ricocheting through the air. It is fucking knackered.

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Living in a woman’s body: the Taliban fear our beauty, strength – and resistance

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Growing up in Afghanistan I was taught to hide my body. Now I see it as a symbol of rebellion against those who would try to control me

As a child, I never rode bicycles or played sports such as gymnastics and karate because it was “not good for girls”. I later understood it was to avoid the risk of breaking my hymen and “losing” my virginity, but I only understood the magnitude of this “loss” when my cousin and best friend got married. She had been abused by a mullah – a religious cleric – as a baby. Her mother was less worried about the trauma caused to her daughter by the abuse than she was about her daughter’s hymen having been broken as a result.

These fears were not misplaced. When my cousin did not bleed on her wedding night, she was sent back to her mother’s home the next morning beaten black and blue. Nobody questioned or blamed the husband.

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‘All kinds of discrimination’: inside the secretive world of New York housing co-ops

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The exclusive buildings, which make up most of Manhattan’s apartment stock, operate with impunity. Getting access can be a nightmare

At the end of last summer, Claire and her partner, Alan, found the perfect New York apartment.

“At the time we naively thought the mortgage process would be the most difficult part,” recalled Claire. “Little did we know.” The first-time buyers were suddenly confronting the reality of trying to purchase an apartment in a market-rate co-op building.

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A new start after 60: ‘I’m one of the world’s worst athletes – but I learned to skate in my 70s’

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Richard Epstein, a 78-year-old scientist with stage four prostate cancer, says that skating helps him to embrace uncertainty

The first time Richard Epstein went to his local ice-skating rink in Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was handed a free pair of skates. They had been left behind by a discontented customer. “I do things out of my comfort zone, and good things happen,” he observes.

This wisdom was borne out last December, when Epstein, now 78, skated in his first exhibition. His wife filmed his routine, which he performed with his coach, Teri Moellenberg, then his eldest daughter posted it on Twitter, along with a note that Epstein has stage four prostate cancer. Nearly 3 million people viewed it. Epstein is somewhat baffled by the response, describing himself as “just an old guy going around in circles”.

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‘I’ve had letters from klansmen’: Jennifer Beals on Flashdance, The L Word and fighting to get diverse stories told

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The actor, who broke through in 1983 playing a welder who dreamed of being a dancer, reflects on a life of activism, why gen Z give her hope and joining the Star Wars universe

Jennifer Beals is talking to me by Zoom from … “Do I have to say?” she asks. Not really, I tell her. “I can tell you there’s a blizzard outside and it’s really beautiful.” Her reticence, which lasts about 30 seconds, is because she is in New York, filming a yet to be announced new season of Law & Order. You could imagine her taking a friend’s secret to the grave; she is very cagey about where she lives, tending to call herself “nomadic” and describing her home as “the middle of nowhere” (in reality, somewhere near Los Angeles). Commercial discretion, though? Not so much.

It is creepy to go on about how young actors still look, as though that were a goal in itself, but Beals, 58, is so unchanged – since she first played Bette in The L Word in 2004; since Devil in a Blue Dress in 1995 – that my brain thinks it is making a mistake. She definitely, positively starred in Flashdance in 1983, her breakthrough role after a tiny part in My Bodyguard three years earlier, yet that can’t be right – it was 40 years ago! It is like walking past someone you think you knew at school, then realising that it can’t be them because this person is 21.

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How rock climbing gave me a new perspective on the world – and myself

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Spending time high above the ground allowed me a unique view of the land and my relationship with it

Climbing, I once thought, was a very manly activity. A pursuit for macho adventurers on a mission to conquer – conquer the mountain, conquer their fear, conquer themselves. That may be the story for some climbers, but as I found my way into this activity, I came to see that something quite different happens on the rock.

Like wild swimming, rock climbing immerses you within the landscape. On the rock, I am fully present. Eyes pay close attention, scanning the details of the rock, trying to read the passage up the cliff. Ears are alert, tuned in to the sounds of the stone, my partner and the environment. Hands roam across the surface, feeling for features while the whole body works to stay within balance, coordinating itself around the various forms of the cliff. Unlike walking, where I could happily trundle absent-mindedly through the landscape, in climbing, attentive observation is essential.

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Playing with dolls helps children talk about how others feel, says study

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Research suggests playing imaginary games can aid development of social skills and empathy

Playing with dolls encourages children to talk more about others’ thoughts and emotions, a study has found.

The research suggests that playing imaginary games with dolls could help children develop social skills, theory of mind and empathy. The neuroscientist who led the work said that the educational value of playing with Lego and construction toys was widely accepted, but the benefits of playing with dolls sometimes appeared to have been overlooked.

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Paula Radcliffe: ‘I could probably still beat my kids in a race’

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The athlete, 48, on childhood asthma, dogs, Portaloos and the last mile of a marathon

I had asthma as a kid and still do. I started blacking out a little at the end of training runs. Then, at 14, I was diagnosed with exercise-induced asthma by a brilliant doctor who told me, “This isn’t going to stop you doing any of your sport, you’re just going to have to learn to control it.” I have inhalers in pretty much every bag.

What makes me sad? Losing people I care about – I lost my dad in 2020. And hearing stories about kids who weren’t as lucky as my daughter, who beat cancer last year. I burst into tears when the doctor gave us the initial diagnosis, but she’s been so brave. The chemotherapy made her hair fall out, which was obviously difficult for a teenage girl. But she’s bounced back so quickly.

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Too cool for the pool: how the Dryrobe became the most divisive thing you can wear

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They were invented so surfers and swimmers could get undressed without flashing. So why are Dryrobes – half-towel, half-jacket – taking over our high streets?

During the spring lockdown in 2020, Christopher Sloman was walking down a street in Hove when he saw what looked like a green dinosaur looming towards him. The 48-year-old charity shop worker was baffled by the figure in the distance – until he realised it was a woman whose coat was so oversized that her hands (one carrying a phone, the other a coffee) “looked really small,” Sloman says. “I thought: My God, what on earth is that?”

“That” turned out to be a Dryrobe – the £160 ankle-length, waterproof robe designed as an outdoor changing robe for surfers in 2010 which has become the go-to piece of kit for any half-serious outdoor swimmer.

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‘My life completely turned around’: is manifesting the key to happiness – or wishful thinking?

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The controversial concept of willing your goals into existence has leapt in popularity since Covid began. But how do you do it – and can it help you realise your dreams?

In the first months of the UK’s spring 2020 lockdown, Jennifer Doyle, a teacher and single mother, was at a low point. “I was in a bit of a hole, struggling to cope on my own and focusing only on the negatives of my life,” says the 39-year-old. “Then – during a Zoom quiz, of course – my friend said I should look into manifestation to help. I did – and my energy totally shifted. I started thinking about what I wanted from life, rather than what was wrong with it.”

Doyle was not alone. In early July 2020, Google Trends reported a peak in searches for “manifestation”, which is often described as a way of willing your goals into existence. In the past 22 months, the website Life Coach Directory has seen a 450% rise in potential clients searching for manifestation techniques. On TikTok, the hashtag #manifestation has 13.9bn views. It is part of the huge wellness market, which is worth about £1.1bn.

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‘It stopped me having sex for a year’: why Generation Z is turning its back on sex-positive feminism

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The movement championed the right to enjoy sex and was supposed to free women from guilt or being shamed. But now many are questioning whether it has left them more vulnerable

Lala likes to think of herself as pretty unshockable. On her popular Instagram account @lalalaletmeexplain, she dishes out anonymous sex and dating advice on everything from orgasms to the etiquette of sending nude pictures. Nor is the 40-year-old sex educator and former social worker (Lala is a pseudonym) shy of sharing her own dating experiences as a single woman.

But even she was perturbed by a recent question, from a woman with a seven-year-old daughter who had caught her new partner watching “stepdaughter” porn involving teenage girls. Was that a red flag?

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Scam the bereaved, defraud the dead: the shocking crimes of America’s greatest psychic conman

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He was the fake medium from Florida whose scandalous cons almost got him shot. So why did M Lamar Keene then blow the whistle on psychic swindlers? A new podcast finds out

What does it take for someone to impersonate a dead teenager to the grieving mother of the deceased? For M Lamar Keene, a prominent Tampa-based medium in the 1960s and 70s, it was a cinch – all it required was a cocktail of cunning, charisma and sheer audacity. In front of the congregation of his spiritualist church, Keene would enter a trance state and appear to speak as the deceased 17-year-old, Jack, and ask Jack’s mother, Lona, to donate thousands of dollars to the church. One day, Lona asked Jack about the secret name he used for her, to prove it was really him, and Keene was stumped – until he attended a gathering at her house and feigned a headache. While pretending to rest in her bedroom, he searched her belongings and found the name scribbled in a family Bible: “Appleonia”. He pulled it off.

Keene confessed to being a conman in his 1976 book, The Psychic Mafia. Jack and Lona’s was just one of many audacious cases he revealed in the exposé, which shook the world of spiritualism so much that it led to an attempt on his life. Someone took a shot at him on his lawn but missed, leaving a bullet in the side of his house. In the book, Keene described how mediums shared client information so that they could conduct “hot readings” based on solid facts. He recounted how they would steal jewellery from clients for a few months, only to pretend a dead family member’s spirit had made it reappear (which usually resulted in generous tips). Ultimately, he confirmed that mediums formed a vast network to fraudulently monetise people’s grief. So why did Keene – the so-called Prince of the Spiritualists – choose to blow the whistle on everyone?

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