Evening all,

It’s Imogen here bringing you a bumper Weekend Edition – possibly our biggest ever? We have everything from an enraging piece – introduced by our co-founder Carole Cadwalladr below – about the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder trial debacle in Malta to a weekend recipe for salmon en croute by our old Observer comrade and king of restaurant critics Jay Rayner. All the pieces are introduced below – keep scrolling to make sure you don’t miss anything!

First, the question that everyone is asking this week: have you managed to land a ticket to the new Bayeux Tapestry show at the British Museum – aka the museum event of the decade and the focus of an absolute media frenzy? No, me neither! Luckily I saw it in Normandy while on a family camping trip aged nine, and even at that young age its depiction of the events leading up to the Norman Conquest in 1066, its awe-inspiring artistry and brutal imagery, stayed with me. I’d love to see it again but, following revelations in a piece for the Nerve by our new art critic Ben Luke about the show’s billionaire backer Igor Tulchinsky – who has sponsored the exhibition to the tune of £5m, and has funded the IDF and donated to Trump even while the president undermines cultural institutions such as the Smithsonian – I feel less inclined to waste time in the online queue or hand my money to the BM. 

As Ben puts it in his must-read piece, “this show should be an unmitigated triumph” but “the billionaire’s support is part of a pattern of dubious fundraising ethics at the museum, about which concerns have grown over the past decade”. Given what Ben describes as “the deep humanity that is inherent in the tapestry and its brutal evocation of the reality of war”, are we to turn a blind eye to the fact that Tulchinsky – celebrated all over the BM’s marketing materials and the subject of a newly painted portrait in its foyer – supports governments that are actively waging wars?

Elsewhere, we have exciting news about our upcoming anniversary celebration at the King’s Cross Vision Festival on 27 September. The inimitable comedy creator and podcaster Cody Dahler will join Carole for a panel on “fighting hate with humour”. If you haven’t come across Cody’s satirical news explainers on Instagram or TikTok, you’ve been missing out. Here’s his latest (a British Museum special, fittingly). We are thrilled Cody will be joining us – more names coming soon! Tickets available here – we have sent discount codes for Nerve members; hit reply if you’d like us to send them again.

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Here are the links to today’s pieces:

Carole Cadwalladr writes: Last week came the shocking news from Malta that one of the island’s richest businessmen had been cleared of ordering the murder of investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia after a decade-long campaign to achieve justice for her family. My first contact with this story was months after her death because among her final investigations was one into SCL – the parent company of Cambridge Analytica – and over the years I’ve got to know her sons and the press campaigners and lawyers who’ve fought for so long to find out the truth about who ordered the brutal car-bombing. What happened to Daphne is a morality tale of political corruption and impunity, and I was determined that we should cover it for the Nerve; I am delighted that Stephen Grey, an ex-Reuters journalist, who was in Malta for the verdict, agreed to describe the long (and not yet finished) journalistic efforts to uncover the truth. Read it here.

“Patriot Platform” have hardly been out of the news this week, writes Stewart, but with the number of small boat arrivals falling fast, they need new targets. So, “having exhausted the limited possibilities Portsmouth has to offer, on Wednesday Daniel ‘Danny Tommo’ Thomas assembled his phone-a-goons outside the offices of the Daily Mail". It’s really not clear why the proudly Christian rightwing protester has taken against the proudly Christian rightwing national newspaper. As Stewart says, “Thomas standing in the street shouting up at the offices of the Daily Mail is just a dog barking at its own reflection, writ large in multi-storied plate glass”. Read his brilliant column here.

The British Museum’s Bayeux Tapestry exhibition is a “curatorial and scholarly triumph” that truly lives up to the hype, writes Nerve art critic Ben Luke. However, he says, there are “lingering, inescapable, questions about the museum’s funding that leave a sour taste”. For starters, Palantir founder Peter Thiel got an exclusive VIP preview of the embroidery, raising suspicions that he’d be funding the museum in some form in the future. And could they not have found a less divisive main sponsor than billionaire Igor Tulchinsky? Ben’s unmissable report is here.

The acclaimed BBC foreign correspondent reported from Kabul while people were fleeing the Taliban in 2021. Now she’s managed to find a way to return. “This place and its people have been woven into my life for decades,” she tells Ursula Kenny. “It was wonderful to be back, even if it was laced with the pain that so many friends were no longer there.” She talks about the stories of Afghanistan that appear in a new edition of her award-winning book, The Finest Hotel in Kabul, how reporters find courage and cope with trauma – and the teabags she won’t go on assignment without. Read the interview here.

“One of the main things I sensed about Tommy Robinson,” says Matt Shea, director of the explosive new documentary about the far-right activist that has just aired on Channel 4, “is that behind him is this mass of people who are constantly donating to him. He has raised hundreds of thousands of pounds from his supporters… but it's very unclear what that money is spent on.” Talking to the Nerve’s Lucia Osborne-Crowley, Matt explores Robinson’s ties to Russia, his connections to Elon Musk, his dubious claim to have been “debanked” – and the growing concern among some former allies that he is just “milking poor working-class people for their money”. Read the interview here.

Currently starring in the acclaimed stage musical adaptation of Pride, about a group of gay and lesbian activists joining the miners’ strike of 1984, actor Samuel Barnett made his name playing Posner in the stage and screen versions of Alan Bennett’s The History Boys. Following the news that Pride is transferring to London’s Bridge theatre in November, he shares his recent cultural discoveries – including the West End show that made him cry with laughter, the author he can’t stop re-reading and the restaurant where every course is “a flavour explosion”. Read Samuel’s culture tips here.

“Agatha Christie was an astonishing observer of the vagaries and cruelties of human beings,” the screenwriter Sarah Phelps tells Dorian Lynskey in his deep dive into the author’s legacy. As Christie’s The Mousetrap hits its 75th anniversary in the West End this month – and with a bumper autumn season of Christie TV, theatre, books and events coming up – Dorian sees the play for the first time (on its 30,618th showing) … and finds it far from what he was expecting.

After decades as a revered restaurant critic, in 2024 Jay Rayner published his first recipe book, Nights Out at Home, in which he showed readers how to recreate some of the best meals he had eaten in restaurants. Now as he publishes its sequel, Nights Out in the Kitchen: More Recipes and Stories from a Restaurant Critic’s Life, our former colleague on the Observer is sharing his delicious salmon-wrapped-in-pastry recipe, which takes its inspiration from memories of watching his mum (Claire Rayner, famed as an agony aunt in the 1970s) preparing dinner. Get Jay’s recipe here.

That’s all for this week! Have a good weekend and we’ll see you again on Tuesday.

Imogen