Radio enthusiast finds lost Desert Island Discs recordings
Good news stories from the past seven days
More than 90 lost recordings of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs have been found by a radio enthusiast from Suffolk. The episodes, which date back to the 1960s, were unearthed by Richard Harrison, who buys boxes of old reels and cassettes at car boot sales and auctions, and listens to them to find out what’s on them. Margot Fonteyn and Bing Crosby were among the castaways he found, but he said he’d been “most excited” by a 1964 episode featuring Dirk Bogarde. “The neighbours must have wondered what was up. I let out a huge yell of triumph.
Parkour athletes address energy crisis
Parkour athletes in Paris are using their talent for scaling high walls to flip the light switches of signs that have been left on overnight, in defiance of energy saving rules. Since 2013, shops in the city have been required to turn off their signs and displays between 1am and 6am, but enforcement is lax – hence the “Lights Off” operation. “Everyone can contribute [to energy saving] in their own way,” said Kevin Ha, who leads a group. “We put our physical abilities to good use.”
Couple rescue babies from burning daycare centre
An American couple have been praised for rescuing more than a dozen babies from a burning daycare centre. David Squillante and Doran Smith were visiting Barcelona on their honeymoon when they passed a building that had smoke pouring out of a doorway. Squillante ran in, and stumbled across “a bunch of babies” in a room that was rapidly filling up with smoke. Aided by his wife, he picked them up, put them into their cots, and dragged them all out into the street. “It felt like we watched it in a movie,” he recalled. “It just didn’t feel real.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
-
Starbucks workers are planning their ‘biggest strike’ everThe Explainer The union said 92% of its members voted to strike
-
‘These wouldn’t be playgrounds for billionaires’Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
-
The 5 best nuclear war movies of all timeThe Week Recommends ‘A House of Dynamite’ reanimates a dormant cinematic genre for our new age of atomic insecurity
-
Bugonia: ‘deranged, extreme and explosively enjoyable’Talking Point Yorgos Lanthimos’ film stars Emma Stone as a CEO who is kidnapped and accused of being an alien
-
The Revolutionists: a ‘superb and monumental’ bookThe Week Recommends Jason Burke ‘epic’ account of the plane hijackings and kidnappings carried out by extremists in the 1970s
-
Film reviews: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘The Mastermind’ and ‘Nouvelle Vague’feature A kidnapped CEO might only appear to be human, an amateurish art heist goes sideways, and Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ gets a lively homage
-
Book reviews: ‘Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity’ and ‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’feature An examination of humanity in the face of “the Machine” and a posthumous memoir from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who recently died by suicide
-
The dazzling coral gardens of Raja AmpatThe Week Recommends Region of Indonesia is home to perhaps the planet’s most photogenic archipelago
-
Salted caramel and chocolate tart recipeThe Week Recommends Delicious dessert can be made with any biscuits you fancy
-
6 trailside homes for hikersFeature Featuring a roof deck with skyline views in California and a home with access to private trails in Montana
-
Lazarus: Harlan Coben’s ‘embarrassingly compelling’ thrillerThe Week Recommends Bill Nighy and Sam Claflin play father-and-son psychiatrists in this ‘precision-engineered’ crime drama