The Electric Pitchfork

Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs: the director gathers together a fantastic cast, including Bill Murray, Greta Gerwig, Bryan Cranston and Jeff Goldblum Wes Anderson, along with his trademark dream-team cast, talks to Jonathan Dean about his new animation If you say  Isle of Dogs  really quickly, it ends up sounding not like the jut of land in the Thames, but, rather, “I love dogs”. And if you do,  Wes Anderson ’s new film is your cinematic Crufts, a constantly charming story of canines in trouble and the humans who team up to help them. The animation is set in Japan, but not as we know it. Yes, they prepare and eat sushi, as shown in a scene likely to be the year’s most horrific for vegans, but if things are bad for Japanese fish, they’re no better for their dogs. Following a disease outbreak, all breeds are banished to Trash Island, where rats eat chewed-off dog ears and food packages largely consist of maggots  and rot. The dogs are voiced by an al...

Counting the cost of Putin’s war against ‘traitors’ Russia has often eliminated ‘traitors’ abroad but no leader since the 1960s has shown such interest in killing, says Christopher Andrew, the intelligence services historian The main responsibility for the 21st-century revival of the KGB tradition of trying to assassinate Russian defectors belongs to President Vladimir Putin. He first applied to the KGB at the age of 14, was asked to wait until he was older, joined immediately after graduation and has been an intelligence hardliner ever since. In 1998, at the age of 45, he became head of the FSB, the post-Soviet successor to the domestic arm of the KGB, whose multiple responsibilities nowadays include poisonings and assassinations on foreign soil. Putin is the only current world leader, and only the second leader in Russian history, to be a former intelligence chief. He made public his personal loathing for defectors after being humiliated by the arrest in the US  in 2...

General Eisenhower and Kay Summersby: a love affair that helped win the war Kay Summersby and General Eisenhower were ‘as close as two coats of paint’ The pressure of supreme allied command almost broke Eisenhower. What kept him sane was his secret liaison with his driver, an Irish former model, writes the author of a new novel about the couple. In the climactic months of the Second World War the allied commander, Dwight Eisenhower, came close to a breakdown. It was March 1945 and allied forces were preparing to cross the Rhine for the final assault on Nazi Germany. After almost three years of high command, seven-day working weeks, little sleep and 60 cigarettes a day, the 54-year-old commander was mentally and physically exhausted. His superiors in Washington persuaded the baggy-eyed, vile-tempered general to take a break. Ike, as he was known to his troops and adoring public, reluctantly accepted a short spell of recuperation at a lavish villa near Cannes in the so...

BODY & SOUL V-juvenated! The new £3,500 treatment that has changed my life She’s had two children and has hit the menopause with all its discomforts. Here, Kate Thomas, 50, describes what happened on a visit to a leading gynaecologist Kate Thomas March 3 2018, 12:01am,  The Times Health “By the third session I can tell there is a definite change going on inside me” ARMANDO FERRARI/GALLERY STOCK Share Save Tania Adib is chatting away, practical and relaxed, as if all this were perfectly normal. But then for her it is. She’s a gynaecologist. I’m sitting opposite her in one of those chairs with my legs up and apart and my pants off, feeling all sorts of awkward. Yes, I’ve had smear tests, but I have never been to a gynaecologist before, let alone one who is going to have a go at rejuvenating my vagina with a long, slim probe. The only thing protecting my modesty is a small towel draped across my lower tummy. Oddly it helps, because I ...

Have breakfast in London, lunch in Newfoundland at the start of a city break Canada is closer than you think. Five hours’ flying time makes a long weekend possible in this beautiful corner of Canada Three types of whales are seen regularly off Newfoundland Pull back your hotel curtains in St John’s and you may just see a giant iceberg drifting past the harbour mouth. Such sights make Newfoundland seem a world apart from the rest of Canada… but it is surprisingly close to Britain. Hop on a plane in London at breakfast-time and you can be in St John’s just over five hours later; in time for lunch, in fact. With a 3½-hour difference – yes, quirky Newfoundland has a time zone of its own – it is easy to spend a long weekend in this beautiful corner of Canada. St John’s is a small but vibrant city and it is easy to get around on foot. Several of the best hiking trails can be reached from the centre and most restaurants, bars and museums are a short wa...