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What was your childhood or earliest ambition? To work with animals. The novels of Dick King-Smith had a significant impact on my early life. Private school or state school? University or straight into work? Two different state schools in rural County Cork, both Catholic, then art college in Dublin, specialising in sculpture. I was a

China’s renminbi has followed the Japanese yen’s downward path versus the US dollar. Both countries are sticking with loose monetary policies in sharp contrast to the trajectory of the US. But the similarities end there. Chinese companies have more to gain from a weaker currency. This week marked the renminbi’s biggest slide against the US

One thing to start: Greetings from an (unusually chilly) springtime Washington, which is almost bustling again after the pandemic lockdowns, due to the meetings of the World Bank and IMF. The bank and fund have been debating some urgent issues this week: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; spiralling energy prices; the spectre of stagflation; sovereign debt

Landscape architect Todd Longstaffe-Gowan’s new book is, as befits its subject, a glorious cabinet of curiosities. Covering a wide selection of idiosyncratic gardeners and their equally singular gardens, it ranges from the early 17th to the early 20th centuries, taking in many of the stranger features of the English tradition of landscape design. Longstaffe-Gowan avoids

For most of the pandemic we have been cheering on the vaccine scientists and manufacturers, cursing shortages of glass vials or giant growbags and then rolling up our sleeves when the precious doses are made available. No longer. Vaccine tracker Airfinity this month slashed its 2022 global sales forecast for Covid-19 jabs by 20 per

Dear reader, I had two moments of abrupt and instructive disillusionment this week. The first involved a busking violinist whose instrument was hooked up to a portable speaker. A tricky passage from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” was surging forth. I dug out a coin, intending to drop it in the violin case at his feet. A

She was told off by Mahatma Gandhi, charmed Nelson Mandela and shook hands with Mao Zedong. I suggest there can’t be many others who have hobnobbed with all three. “Not a bad trio,” Romila Thapar jokes. “My claim to fame is simply that I have met these guys!”  Far from it. Thapar, 90, has a

Are we there yet? It is a reasonable question for bond investors after a historic shift lower in government bond prices to reflect the increasingly hawkish tilt from the US Federal Reserve. Sadly for those left licking wounds, the short answer is ‘probably not’. In fact, judging from this week’s wobbles, the shake-out across markets

Emmanuel Macron and far-right challenger Marine Le Pen are going head-to-head in a final appeal to voters as the French president tries to avoid an upset and secure an emphatic second-term victory in Sunday’s election. Macron has cemented his frontrunner status in recent days with his poll lead stabilising at around 55 per cent vs

French carmaker Renault is exploring a stock market listing of its electric vehicle unit next year, as part of a plan to split the company in two. It announced in February that it intended to create separate units for EVs and combustion engine models in February. As part of its results presentation on Friday, chief

Dozens of cities in China are in full or partial lockdown in response to the spread of Covid-19 cases, meaning that a population roughly the size of the US has been stuck at home for several weeks, often with limited access to food and medical care. Among those cities in lockdown, Shanghai has received the

Peru’s president Pedro Castillo will travel to the Andean city of Cusco on Friday to address the demands of protesters angry about the rising cost of living who have blocked roads and a railway this week, stopping tourists reaching the ruins of Machu Picchu. Thousands of Peruvians joined a two-day strike in the Cusco region

Good morning. One of the many reasons I was so excited to join the Financial Times is its astonishing team of journalists whose work I have pored over and enjoyed since I was an undergraduate. One of those journalists, David Gardner, former international affairs editor, died suddenly this week. His obituary is in the paper

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It never gets old: the lagoon, the water-lapped maze of streets and canals, the salt-worn, crumbling buildings and campi (squares) hidden away like secret pockets. Whether enshrouded in winter fog with impending high waters or under the warm, beating sun, Venice is truly unforgettable. Although I have called Tuscany home for 14 or so years,

“But, you may say, we asked you to speak about women and fiction – what has that got to do with a room of one’s own?” So said Virginia Woolf at Girton College, Cambridge, in 1928, where she was giving a blistering lecture on why a woman couldn’t have written the 1,225-page War and Peace.

Situated in 28,000 acres of Yorkshire Dales national park, beside the trout-filled River Wharfe, are the crumbling ruins of Bolton Priory. Next to it sits The Hall at Bolton Abbey, its extraordinary ancestral house. The estate’s ruins inspired paintings by the Romantics, including Landseer and Turner; in his poem “The White Doe of Rylstone”, Wordsworth

The Financial Conduct Authority has raised concerns over the adequacy of challenger banks’ defences against financial crime, after a “substantial” increase in suspicious activity reports filed last year. The remarks come as the watchdog attempts to toughen its approach against money laundering, which the National Crime Agency estimates costs the UK £100bn annually. “Challenger banks

French prosecutors have issued an international arrest warrant for Carlos Ghosn and four people linked to an Omani auto dealer following an investigation into whether they helped divert funds from carmaker Renault to its former chair and chief executive for personal use. The warrants were issued against Ghosn, who was the architect of Renault’s alliance

When Jane’s husband died in a climbing accident in the Alps, she faced not only shock and grief but a daunting pile of paperwork. “It’s hard . . . having been married 43 years then all of a sudden your partner is not there any more and the world is on your shoulders,” says Jane, 72, who lives in