Sorrell reels from ANOTHER profit alert as £430m is wiped off his S4 Capital stake

By Jessica Clark

Updated: 17:01 EDT, 18 September 2023

Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.

A jagged land of glaciers, gentoo and giant petrels is one of the most remote places on Earth. 

King Edward Point is a haven for wildlife surrounded by Icey waters and during the harshest months of the year, only 10 people occupy the land making it the smallest ‘capital city’ in the world by population. 

Situated on South Georgia Island, around 1,400km south-east of the Falkland Islands, it is a permanent British Antarctic Survey research station. 

It is the capital of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands, on the northeastern coast of South Georgia.  

Found midway along South Georgia, King Edward Point Research Station lies at the entrance to King Edward Cove, a small bay within Cumberland East Bay, only accessible by boat. 

Since 1909, King Edward Point has been the residence of a British Magistrate administering the island. 

It is often confused for Grytviken, which is the site of a disused whaling station nearby, at the head of King Edward Cove. 

In summer, between 20 to 40 people inhabit the station, but in winter only ten people dare to stay. 

Three Government Officers are employed to live and work at the station on an overlapping rota and the British Antarctic Survey staff are employed on contracts of 17 months. 

Workers include one fisheries scientist; one zoological field assistant, for seals and penguins. Two boating officers, a doctor, a station leader and two technicians – both electrical and mechanical. 

The main focus of the research conducted is to provide scientific advice to assist Marine Protected areas, attention is also drawn to sustainable management of the commercial fisheries around the island. 

The team have published a number of ‘projects’ from Gentoo Penguin Tracking to understanding the Impact of plastics.  

Staff will have to endure harsh climate and should expect snow at any time, temperatures vary from a frosty -15C in winter and +20C in summer, but the island is usually covered in snow from May to October. 

Each take turn to cook, clean and make bread and a traditional formal three0course meal is prepared on Saturday evening. 

They endure training in navigation, search and rescue before moving and on arrival and receive advanced first aid training. 

According to the British Antarctic Survey, their team makes their own entertainment and participate in ‘hill waking, skiing, a half marathon, model yacht racing, film nights and an annual entry to the Antarctic film festival’.

Alongside minimal staff members is an array of wildlife, from gentoo, macaroni and king penguins, to giant petrels, elephant seals pintail ducks and sooty and wandering albatross. 

Alongside South Sandwich Islands, five million seals of four different species live. In addition to 65 million breeding birds of 30 different species including the world’s only subantarctic songbird, the endemic South Georgia pitpit.

In the warmer months, elephant seals and fur seals breed on the beach before the research station. 

The waters surrounding the island are also a key habitat for migrating whales and plenty of fish and Antarctic krill occupy it.  

To prevent harm to the environment which they are occupying, King Edward Point researchers take ‘every care’ to reduce the risk of spreading new alien species. 

As a result, fresh produce is inspected and washed on delivery and non-native species are returned for identification. 

Visitors must scrub their footwear, and vigorously inspect their clothing before arrival.  

BOOK OF THE WEEK

BEHIND THESE DOORS 

by Alex South (Hodder & Stoughton £16.99, 352pp)

Most people have pretty strong feelings about what prisons should be like. Hardly anyone knows what they are like.

Half the population is convinced they are holiday camps where unrepentant villains feast on smuggled fillet steaks. The other half thinks they are unjust hellholes whose inmates should for the most part be let out.

Neither of these beliefs is correct. The truth is in some ways quite a lot worse.

The miserable result of this empty controversy is that nothing intelligent is ever done about our jails. So they grow worse. And we will pay for this.

As experienced officers retire, there will be violence and chaos will increase. And it will be unendurable to think that there are innocent people in there, at the mercy of unrestrained savagery. For there are.

Alex South — a brave young woman who became a prison officer — endured danger, misery and near-despair, and has written a superb, compelling book about these experiences. Everyone should read it. It is not what you might expect.

Though the complex issue of female officers in male prisons is touched on quite a lot, it is not really a huge part of the book. It is fairly obvious that these officers can do a lot of good, but sometimes at great peril to themselves.

South is a likeable and candid guide to this dark world.

Perhaps her strongest message is this. It is upon the prison officers — patient, thoughtful, courageous, diplomatic and stoical — that the safety and peace of our prisons chiefly depend. Yet they simply do not have the public esteem which is still — often unjustifiably — given to the police.

Instead, many of them go quietly crazy with the things they have to do. Now, the older, experienced men (perhaps guessing what is to come) are leaving and, as she warns: ‘A storm is coming’.

South was not fooled by the criminals she watched over, nor beguiled or tricked by them. She knew the terrible things they had done to others and sometimes tried to do to her.

She was subjected to a vile false accusation, she was covered in blood and she was knocked unconscious in a dreadful fight. Yet she tried to do good, even when it was thankless, to people who most of us would cross the street to avoid.

She and her fellow officers also sought to sustain human kindness, and to prevent harm, injury and death. They did not always succeed.

If this book is right, they will succeed even less in the future.

A hundred years ago, a fiercely moral society believed that prisons were for ‘the due punishment of responsible persons’, and there was little or no pretence that they were there to try to make people better.

Beds were hard, discipline was hard, work was hard; the cells were cold and the food basic. Warders, as they were then called, were in charge.

Now, all that is lost. But it has not been replaced by the liberal paradise which 1960s reformers presumably hoped for.

For one thing, our softer prisons are far fuller — because they no longer deter the borderline cases from committing crime. In 1961, before Home Secretary Roy Jenkins diluted the criminal justice system, there were 27,000 prisoners in England and Wales, in drug-free prisons, more or less totally controlled by the authorities.

Nowadays, there are around 80,000, in prisons swirling with drugs and weapons, where a pitifully small number of officers try to keep control, and increasingly fail. The alarming descriptions of sudden violent explosions in South’s book are a warning of the future.

Not long before she decides to leave, she writes: ‘I can’t guarantee a prisoner’s safety. There’s too much in the way. The phones and drugs and weapons and gangs and bullying. I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety. I can’t guarantee my own.’

In theory, we are trying to ‘rehabilitate’ those inside. In truth, we neither punish nor rehabilitate.

Life in prison is a series of humiliations and deprivations, just as bad in their own way as the bread and water and porridge of the Victorian age — squalid accommodation, dreary food, the forced company in shared cells of people you would normally avoid with all your might.Plus an endless undercurrent of violence and menace made far worse by drugs and weapons.

No wonder so many prisoners try to take the quick way out by hanging themselves.

If you think we have abolished capital punishment, think again. We have it in large quantities — with despair doing regular service as the hangman.

In one week, South records cutting down three hanged men. One died. One was revived but suffered permanent brain damage. Another was saved, but yelled at her, over and over again, ‘Let me die!’

Yet while some prefer death to prison, many offenders are barely touched by jail. They are not afraid of it. Actual served sentences are often shorter than the rehab courses the criminals are asked to undergo.

The feebleness of police and courts means that many criminals do not enter prison until they have already committed so many crimes they can neither be deterred nor turned into better people.

Anyway, how would modern British prisons turn their inhabitants into better people? There is little evidence that they do.

Wormwood Scrubs, West London’s vast Victorian jail, was clearly the worst (and most typical) experience of South’s time in the prison service. She was surrounded by drugs, violence was almost normal, some prisoners were so far out of their minds — almost certainly due to drugs — that they plainly ought to have been in mental hospitals.

The place was filthy, with rats everywhere. Basic security was so poor she actually witnessed a drone delivering two Big Macs to a cell window before swooping off into the London darkness.

But next time, you see, it could be delivering a knife or a gun. A storm truly is coming.

Set around a stretch of golden sandy bays and framed by three lush mountains, cities don’t come much prettier than Spain’s San Sebastian. 

But it’s the food that sets this coastal city apart; it is the birthplace of the pintxo (also known as pincho) after all, a bar snack that is a meal in miniature. 

And with bars dishing out wine from €2 and pinchos from €1.50, a holiday here doesn’t have to break the bank.

Where to eat and drink

Gandarias

Grab a table outside this standing room-only pinchos bar and eavesdrop on locals speaking in the ancient Basque language. The bar does the best solomillo — steak served on bread, topped with green pepper (restaurantegandarias.com).

Baztan

Fill out a paper order form while browsing the colourful pinchos displayed at the bar and pass it to a waiter. Pair food with the local txakoli, a fizzy, crisp white wine. Find some of the city’s best vegetarian and vegan pinchos here (barbaztan.com).

Bar Ganbara

This family-run pinchos bar in the Old Town uses the freshest ingredients (the simple but delicious plate of tomato and olive oil is testament to this). Sit at the bar and watch the staff dish out plates with impressive frequency. Ganbara’s speciality is spider crab tartlets (€3). Wine and beer from €2 (ganbarajatetxea.com).

Where to stay

Hotel Arbaso

Overlooking the cathedral, with valet parking and an excellent restaurant, Arbaso is a perfect city-centre hotel. Rooms have wooden floors, Marshall bluetooth speakers and Dyson hairdryers. Rooms from £99 (hotelarbaso.com).

Hotel de Londres

An imposing 19th-century building near the seafront. The bar is popular with locals. Doubles from £93 (hlondres.com).

Hotel Zinema7

In the un-touristy Amara neighbourhood, this cinema-turned-hotel has rooms themed on stars who have visited the San Sebastian film festival. Doubles from £67 (zinema7hotel.com).

Things to see & do

Take a dip at La Concha

Join the elderly Basque locals for a swim at La Concha, which stretches a mile from the Old Town to the suburb of Ondarreta and is one of Europe’s best urban beaches. Even in winter, the golden bay is busy with locals walking their fluffy dogs and children splashing about in the water. During summer, a floating platform moored offshore allows swimmers to escape the crowds.

Hike up Mount Urgull

Make room for yet more pinchos by working up an appetite on a hike up this mini mountain, which rises from the Old Town and the bobbing boats of the harbour.

The 30-minute walk is scattered with landmarks and viewing points, and topped with a 12th-century castle and 12-metre-high statue of Jesus Christ. At the top, watch the sunset while sampling a bottle or two of cider from one of the 42 cider houses on the outskirts of the city (buy six bottles from Essencia Wine in the Old Town for €18).

Join a pinchos tour

Pinchos-hopping is obligatory when in San Sebastian. The best way to pack the bars in is to join a txikiteo (the official word for a pinchos crawl), which will see you bounce from bar to bar in the Old Town and pair colourful, small bites with local wines and cider.

A word on etiquette: don’t overload your plate from the bar-top displays but, instead, sample one per drink, two if you must, then move on. Tours from £25 (viator.com).

Stroll around the cathedral

Made of sandstone and slate quarried from local mountains, charming Buen Pastor (the good shepherd) Cathedral was completed in 1897 at a time when the city was becoming a flourishing, aristocratic seaside resort.

The spire of the cathedral, set in a pretty square surrounded by tulips, can be seen from across the city. On a summer’s day, the sun shines brightly through the stained-glass windows, casting an array of dancing colours on its walls. Free entry.

How to get there

London Gatwick to Bilbao returns from £65 (vueling.com). Buses to San Sebastian take one hour (£15, pesa.net).

Comedian Al Murray once said that Australia is great around the edge – but a bit more work is needed in the middle.

But perhaps Australians simply can’t tear themselves away from the edge. After all, it’s home to some of the very best beaches in the world.

And here we present the photographs that prove it. Twenty-one images of beaches, from Perth to Sydney via Tasmania, that have it all – powder-soft white sand, other-worldly turquoise water, epic surf waves and, of course, kangaroos.

These are beaches worth travelling around the world for. 

There is a 121-mile-long beach, a strip of sand that hosts the longest-running event in competitive surfing, a beach that was voted the best in the world in 2023 and some super-chic city beaches.

Scroll down to behold them. Which one is your favourite? 

Witness the evolution of Paris from the glamour of the Belle Epoque era through to the Second World War and beyond, courtesy of this breathtaking coffee table book.

Paris Then and Now by Peter and Oriel Caine, published by Pavilion, matches archival images of the city with contemporary photographs taken from the same viewpoint, honing in on Parisian landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower, the Avenue des Champs-Elysees and the Gare du Nord railway station.

Both authors have been living in Paris for the past 30 years and run Paris Walks, a company that offers English-language walking tours of the city throughout the year.

In the introduction to the book, they write: ‘The story of Paris is one that covers more than 2,000 years, and remarkably, the city has safeguarded wonderful evidence of its heritage from every age.

‘The origins of the city can be traced from prehistoric times to the present day simply by walking through the streets. There is nothing more exciting or pleasurable to do in the city than seek fragments of the past, now woven into the fabric of today; this is what the following pages aim to do.’ 

Scroll down for a ‘stunning visual history of Europe’s most beautiful and romantic city’, as the book promises…

TOUR EIFFEL – PICTURED IN 1889 AND PRESENT DAY 

ARC DE TRIOMPHE – PICTURED IN 1890 AND PRESENT DAY

GARE D’ORSAY/MUSEE D’ORSAY – PICTURED IN 1935 AND PRESENT DAY 

GARE DU NORD – PICTURED IN 1919 AND PRESENT DAY

PLACE DE LA CONCORDE – PICTURED IN 1912 AND PRESENT DAY 

CHAMPS ELYSEES – PICTURED IN 1900 AND PRESENT DAY 

MINISTERE DE LA MARINE – PICTURED IN 1944 AND PRESENT DAY 

STATION DE METRO ODEON – PICTURED IN 1910 AND PRESENT DAY  

PONT ST MICHEL – PICTURED IN 1880 AND PRESENT DAY  

COUR DU LOUVRE – PICTURED IN 1860 AND PRESENT DAY 

There is a saying that Argentinians are Italians who speak Spanish and act like the English. Yes, they seem to enjoy queuing, polo is popular among rarefied groups and some apparently take tea at 4 o’clock (though I don’t meet any). But it would be more accurate to say that Argentina feels European.

Two-thirds of its 45 million population have family who made the journey in search of a better life at the turn of the last century. Italy is everywhere: in charm, style, cuisine. Mostly in the way the country is run. Business and politics revolve around what you can get away with. The economy should be in ruins but somehow manages to get by.

One of the problems with this vast country is choosing where to go. I could head to Patagonia and its glaciers or Bariloche and its lakes. But I choose the less-visited northwest, with its volcanoes and mesmerising emptiness.

Most trips begin and end in Buenos Aires. We stay in Palermo, the home of the impressive MALBA, the Museum of Latin American Art, where Frida Kahlo is the star.

Close by, Recoleta is wealthier, and coiffed ladies fight for pavement space with professional dog walkers. Here, the cemetery contains tombs of Argentina’s greats, including Eva Peron (Evita), the famous First Lady who stole the nation’s heart from 1946 until her premature death in 1952.

With the country’s annual inflation running near 100 per cent, people spend monthly salaries almost as soon as they are paid. Bars and restaurants in Buenos Aires seem to be doing a roaring trade, serving steaks and exotica such as llama carpaccio.

When you think of Argentina, you invariably think of tango, the sensual dance that many aspire to but few achieve (my wife and I took classes in London before we left, only to find that we tripped on each other’s toes). Buenos Aires is replete with clubs where you can watch tango over food and drink until the early hours – but choose carefully.

My favourite attraction in the capital is Palacio Barolo. When completed in 1923 it was South America’s tallest skyscraper – 22 storeys inspired by Dante Alighieri’s 14th Century poem, The Divine Comedy. At the top is a lighthouse that has been switched on only twice – at the end of the First World War and for Argentina’s recent World Cup win.

A two-hour flight takes us to the colonial city of Salta, its central square dominated by a cathedral.

Also on the square is the Museum of High-Altitude Archaeology. Inside, in a glass box, sits a 15-year-old girl, frozen in time. In 1999, scientists working 23,000ft high on the Chilean border found three Inca children buried at the top of the Llullaillaco volcano. They had been there for 500 years.

These children had been chosen for their beauty, and walked for seven months from Cusco, the Inca capital, to reach the summit. They were then put to sleep with alcohol and froze in the extreme cold. Child sacrifice was considered a gift to the Gods.

As we drive down Calchaqui Valley the next morning, we stop at gorges with names such as Devil’s Throat. We’re heading to Bodega El Esteco, a vineyard in Cafayate. It is a mystery to me why Argentina does not export more wine. The reds – malbec or the less famous tannat – would give most competitors a run for their money.

For the next four days we are ensconced in a 4×4 with our guide Gaston, as he takes us to remote terrain. They call it Pachamama, Mother’s Land, where you can visit Museo de la Pachamama to see its striking Viracocha pre-Inca and Inca masks.

Its barrenness is the attraction: vast stretches of jagged rocks, pumice fields and lakes populated by pink flamingos.

With just a few settlements and hundreds of miles of unpaved road, most of the time you’re on your own.

Gaston also escorts geologists carrying out experiments on rock erosion. ‘Scientists have scoured the earth,’ he says, ‘here is the closest you get to Mars.’

On the way down from our lunar landscape we pass the town of San Antonio de los Cobres, the end point for the Train to the Clouds. The line is an engineering marvel. Originally built for freight, it now runs for tourists to wonder at the sights below.

Though you see posters proclaiming the Falklands, known here as the Malvinas, to be Argentine, the British are popular here, and populous. I meet the ancestor of one emigrant – Kevin Begg – while sipping torrontes wine.

I had arrived at Los Potreros ranch that morning on a flight from Salta to Cordoba. Kevin’s is one of the region’s largest cattle farms: 500 Aberdeen Angus spread across 6,500 acres. He wears the gaucho beret and seems as Argentine as anyone here – though he went to boarding school in the West Country.

Apart from the decor, sumptuous food and lively conversation, people mainly visit Los Potreros for the riding – 100 horses cater to every level. You can go fast or slow, savouring the open hills – think Yorkshire Moors in abundant sunshine.

On our final morning, Kevin springs a surprise. We are going to play polo.

I am not a good horseman, I remind him, but he just smiles and introduces me to Belem, our teacher, who encourages me with exhortations of ‘well done, come on’ as I lean to hit the ball.

We split into two teams, divided between hapless visitors and accomplished gauchos. My team loses 3-0. It’s like (far too often) England versus Argentina, but they are all too polite to say so.

 HISTORY 

Great And Horrible News 

by Blessin Adams (William Collins £18.99, 304pp) (William Collins £18.99, 304pp) 

Summer 1657: two apprentices, John Knight and Nathaniel Butler, shared a bedroom in a house in Milk Street, London. 

The premises belonged to John’s master, who was away, so John had invited his friend over because he disliked being alone. This proved a terrible mistake.

Nathaniel had his thieving eye on the money kept downstairs and only John stood in his way. In the night, Nathaniel ‘plunged a knife into John’s face and slashed his cheek open from his mouth all the way to his ear’. He held John down until he died. Then, Nathaniel severed his tongue, ‘for no other reason,’ he later confessed, ‘than to please the devil’.

Arrested, tried and sentenced to death, Nathaniel became a repentant sinner. ‘Now I am launching into the ocean of eternity,’ he proclaimed on the scaffold. ‘Lord Jesus receive my soul!’

In the opening chapter of her grimly fascinating book, Adams draws upon the popular literature of the day to tell the story in vivid detail.

People in the past enjoyed learning about true crime as much as we do — and the bloodier the better. We have podcasts and gritty TV dramas; they had lurid broadside ballads and cheap pamphlets.

One thing that has changed over the centuries, thankfully, is the nature of punishment. 

For example, we no longer take such a harsh view of sex outside marriage. Adams quotes the case of Henry Wharton and Elizabeth Mason who were condemned for the ‘crime’ of begetting a ‘base born childe’. Stripped naked to the waist, they were paraded through the streets of their Middlesex village and flogged repeatedly.

The most horrendous punishment of all was reserved for treason. Adams describes the process of hanging, drawing and quartering with excruciating precision. Little wonder that a gentleman named Miles Sindercombe was prepared to commit suicide to avoid it. 

Sindercombe had been hired to kill England’s Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell, but he proved an incompetent assassin, botching the job several times before being captured.

In prison, facing the horrors of ‘drawing’ (having his intestines removed while he was still alive), he took poison. ‘I do take this course,’ he wrote, ‘because I would not have all the open shame of the world executed upon my body.’

Even after his death, however, the authorities were intent on humiliating him. His body was hauled to a scaffold at Tower Hill. Beneath the scaffold was a hole into which his corpse was thrown, and a huge iron stake was driven through it.

This was a version of the punishment liable to be inflicted on any successful suicide.

Adams recounts the tale from 1619 of Francis Marshall, a 70-year-old Essex farmer who killed himself in a fit of melancholy. Determined to make suicide look like murder, family members mutilated his body, beating and slashing it to persuade the local coroner’s jury that he had been done to death by robbers.

Then, as now, the crimes that aroused particular public outrage were those involving children. The story of Margret Vincent, a Catholic convert in Acton, London, in 1616, who strangled her small sons in the belief that she was saving their souls, now seems a case of tragically misplaced religious fervour and mental illness.

To the pamphleteers of the time, she was ‘more cruell than the viper, the invenomd serpent . . . or any beast whatsoever’.

‘The early moderns were obsessed by stories of death, crime and justice,’ Adams states in her introduction. Her book, which covers the two centuries between 1500 and 1700, proves her point with a succession of grisly but engrossing cases.

Advertising giant S4 Capital drawing up succession plans to replace its founder – the legendary Sir Martin Sorrell

By Luke Barr, Financial Mail On Sunday

Published: 16:51 EDT, 29 April 2023 | Updated: 16:51 EDT, 29 April 2023

Some links in this article may be affiliate links. If you click on them we may earn a small commission. That helps us fund This Is Money, and keep it free to use. We do not write articles to promote products. We do not allow any commercial relationship to affect our editorial independence.

POPULAR MONEY SECTIONS
Take me to…