Greenpeace is threatening to sue the Crown Estate for allegedly exploiting its monopoly ownership of the nation’s seabed. The environmental group claims that King Charles’ property management company has driven up UK energy prices with its “aggressive” approach to auctioning seabed rights.

Which seabeds do the Crown Estate own?
In 1959, the same year that large quantities of gas were discovered beneath Dutch waters, the Crown Estate’s legal adviser proposed extending the concept of Crown lands to cover the UK’s continental shelf. The 1964 Continental Shelf Act gave the Crown Estate rights to the seabed and subsoil, enabling oil and gas extraction in a range that extends to 200 nautical miles from the coast. The seabed is also leased out for offshore wind farms, cables, pipelines and aquaculture.

Since then, the monarchy has “gradually plundered” the seabed, said Prospect, “transforming it into nothing less than a rentier capitalist empire”.  The Crown Estate reported more than £1 billion in 2024-25, and according to Greenpeace, the seabed is “its most lucrative source of revenue”. 

How does that impact energy bills?
Greenpeace claims the Crown Estate has “exploited its monopoly position to charge hefty fees” for leases of the seabed, which has “massively boosted the estate’s profits” and driven up costs for the wind power sector and, in turn, energy bill payers.

The Crown Estate told The Guardian that the environmental group had “misunderstood” the estate’s “legal duties and leasing processes”. Taxpayers “benefit” from the estate’s stewardship and development of “our scarce and precious seabed resource”, a spokesperson said.

What about outside the UK?
With increasing interest in the potential of undersea mineral deposits, countries worldwide are looking to “permanently stamp their mark on the topography of the ocean”, The Guardian said last year. Some are “seeking to demonstrate that a nearby seabed is part of their continental shelf and therefore belongs to them”. Any that succeeds in doing so could “potentially extend its underwater sovereignty by as much as 350 nautical miles from its coastline”.

“Picture tennis doubles”, said Marie Le Conte in The Observer, and then “increase the intensity by around 15%”. Welcome to padel, in which players of all skill levels romp around “claustrophobic” courts wielding rackets akin to “those zappy things you can use to obliterate mosquitoes”.

In Britain, around 1,500 padel courts have sprung up since the start of the pandemic – a “exponential pattern of growth” that could see it “overtake tennis in Britain just as it already has in Spain”, said The Telegraph.

‘Fun’ and ‘sociable’ 
Part of padel’s appeal is its accessibility. Even “absolute beginners can enjoy a match within minutes of picking up a bat”, The Telegraph said, and players “tend to be more exuberant” than in tennis. “It’s a fun sport, a very sociable sport,” said Jamie Murray, one of Britain’s leading tennis doubles players. “It’s a lot easier to get started in the game than tennis.”

Attending a padel match for the first time “felt like an opportunity to get in on the ground floor” of this growing sport, said Le Conte in The Observer. But even if there was something charming about the atmosphere, “I have to confess, somewhat guiltily, that I do prefer the glitz and glamour” of tennis.

‘Deeply uncivilised’
“As a self-confessed tennis head”, said Arabella Byrne in The Spectator, I thought padel might feel familiar. “How wrong I was.” The lenient scoring system takes away the tension, while players “grunt and lurch around holding carbon fibre bats that look like squashed colanders”. The whole spectacle is “deeply uncivilised”. 

The game’s appeal is also lost on some residents of the living close to the newly erected courts appearing up and down the country. Padel involves firing plastic balls into glass walls, a combination that produces a loud, sometimes jarring noise. “We’ve had tennis courts here for years and they’re brilliant,” Bob Wilkinson, who lives near a recently opened padel court in Harrogate, told BBC Radio York. “Padel courts, it’s like a rifle shot.”

Sumo stars Wakatakakage and Tamawashi battle it out in front of a sell-out crowd at London’s Royal Albert Hall, which is hosting a five-day honbasho, or Grand Sumo Tournament. More than 40 of Japan’s elite wrestlers are competing in a custom-built traditional clay ring.

Ryan Pierse / Getty Images

“You’re not allowed to lick paintings in museums, which is cruel when you’re faced with something as mouthwateringly tempting as Wayne Thiebaud’s art,” said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. The late American artist dedicated his decades-long career to painting cakes and sweets carefully laid out on counters, tempting viewers to “take a big, juicy bite”. But he didn’t just paint to make you drool.

On display at the Courtauld Gallery in central London for his first UK museum show, Thiebaud’s work is both an “update on the long legacy of the still life, and a deep dive into burgeoning consumerism and the capitalistic euphoria of the mass-produced, mid-century American dream”. From “oozing cakes” to mustard-drizzled hot dogs, these are “exercises in painterly precision” with a keen awareness of art history, continuing, in his own way, the radical legacy of Cézanne and Chardin. “It’s still life painting at its modern best.”

Thiebaud’s “luscious yet unsettling” images make for an “excellent” exhibition, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. His depictions of ordinary snacks are both “irresistible and brilliantly peculiar”. Below the sweetness, “there’s a tang of melancholy and a dash of Cold War anxiety”.

Yet there’s also “benign delight” in Thiebaud’s celebration of everyday items and his “harmoniously balanced compositions”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. “No artist has ever more brilliantly captured the idea that such a trivial object can be beautiful, that it can be – and of course would become a thousand times over in his paintings – the stuff of art.”

Trump’s unflattering Time cover reveals his biggest fear
John Elledge in The i Paper
Donald Trump is unhappy about Time magazine’s latest cover, which features his photo taken from an angle that draws “unflattering attention to a declining jawline or to thinning hair”, writes John Elledge. “Demagogues have always sought to control their own image”, which is why so many sculptures of “ageing Roman emperors” look “suspiciously ripped”. As the 79-year-old president basks in his Middle East success, this cover shot sends “an uncomfortable message: remember you are mortal”.

The royals are still relevant, unlike the Church of England
Jenni Russell in The Times
Recent weeks have brought more “excruciating headlines for the royal family”, including fresh details about Prince Andrew’s “mortifying intimacy” with Jeffrey Epstein and the “threat of a court case” over “whether the Crown Estate is unduly profiting” from leasing UK seabeds, writes Jenni Russell. Yet even so, “two thirds of the country support the monarchy”. In “stark contrast to the other traditional pillar of British society, the Church of England”, the royals remain “capable of binding the country”.

Stop coddling your staff! Good bosses spar with their employee
Christian Marcolli in City A.M.
When we “prioritise politeness over honest exchange, we sacrifice excellent performance and opportunities for growth”, writes performance psychologist Christian Marcolli. Leaders in the corporate world “often mistake stagnant harmony for health”, which means “teams avoid conflict, conversations stay polite and difficult truths remain unspoken”. But “true excellence doesn’t emerge from comfort” and “artificial cohesion”; it is “forged in challenge”. A good boss will “stretch their teams’ thinking in a safe but demanding way”.