The Times Daily Quiz: Thursday August 14, 2025
2 Premiering earlier this month, the BBC documentary series Parenthood is narrated by which 99-year-old natural historian?
3 The adjective 'chronometric' relates to the measurement of what?
4 Oliver Stone dedicated his 1986 film Platoon to 'the men who fought and died' in which war?
5 Which five-letter Irish word is used for gossip or a good time?
6 Which country's Krasheninnikov volcano has erupted for the first time in more than 500 years?
7 Founded in Naples, the AVPN has a decalogue (ten rules) for recognising which 'artisanal product'?
8 Between 1969 and 1974, Ian MacNaughton directed all but four of the 45 episodes of which BBC comedy?
9 In 1854, Irish naval officer Robert McClure was credited as the first man to navigate which sea route?
10 Rabbi Julia Neuberger said: 'Frankly, it's crap', about which 1994 Booker prize winner?
11 Formed in 1985, which British pop band's hits include Surrender, Twilight World and You on My Mind?
12 In 1390, Alexander Stewart, known as the Wolf of Badenoch, burned down which Scottish cathedral?
13 Which Edinburgh-born artist painted Marguerites (1912) and Rest Time in the Life Class (1923)?
14 The Oldest Member narrates nearly all of PG Wodehouse's stories about which sport?
15 Which pet rodent is pictured? Scroll down for answersAnswers1 Peter Pan
2 David Attenborough
3 Time
4 Vietnam War
5 Craic
6 Russia
7 Pizza, specifically 'true Neapolitan pizza'. The organisation is the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana
8 Monty Python's Flying Circus
9 Northwest Passage
10 How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
11 Swing Out Sister
12 Elgin Cathedral
13 Dorothy Johnstone
14 Golf
15 Gerbil
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The Guardian
2 hours ago
- The Guardian
TV tonight: the remarkable story of Ireland's first female president
8pm, Sky Documentaries 'Climate change is a man-made problem and requires a feminist solution.' Mary Robinson has one hell of a legacy: Ireland's first female president – she helped decriminalise homosexuality and legalised female contraception – who later became a UN high commissioner and has put global focus on the climate crisis. As women's rights are going backwards in the US and the climate challenge is running out of time, she tells her story in this documentary. Hollie Richardson 7pm, BBC Four The festival of Welsh arts is celebrated in Wrexham this year – with Wrexham FC and its Hollywood owners inspiring the opening show about supporting local teams. Events include a tribute to Dewi 'Pws' Morris and a performance by classical harpist Catrin Finch, folk fiddler Patrick Rimes and singer Al Lewis. HR 7.20pm, BBC One In India, a pregnant Hanuman langur babysits a mate's little one to get some practice in. Will she get the hang of it? And how will she stay safe from stray dogs? It's another round of nature's sweet and scary parenting moments, this time focusing on animals in the grasslands across the globe. HR 8pm, ITV1 A new case for Adrian Dunbar as the grieving, jazz-loving detective in this Sunday night sleuther. A body found decomposed in thick local woodland belongs to a woman who went missing six years previously. With his team in shock, Ridley has to call on a disgraced ex-officer to help him find the culprit. JS 9.20pm, BBC One The book launch is approaching in the final episode of this impressively realised novel adaptation, and the older Dorrigo is reflecting on his life. He's still tormented by memories of his wartime experiences but will externalising them allow him a measure of peace? PH 11pm, Channel 4 With suspected Islamic State operative Adilah (Yumna Marwan) having escaped her captors, and MI6 agent Imogen (Elisabeth Moss) getting blamed, the two women are separated for much of this episode. But that doesn't mean their uneasy alliance is over. Meanwhile, has anyone in this show considered the ethics of kidnapping a child for leverage? Seems not. Ellen E Jones Premier League Football: Chelsea v Crystal Palace, 1pm, Sky Sports Main Event At Stamford Bridge. Followed by Man United v Arsenal at 4pm. Super League Rugby: St Helens v Huddersfield Giants, 2.15pm, BBC Two From Totally Wicked Stadium.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘50 years of anger and pain': Miami Sounband's Des Lee when Irish terrorists colluded with MI5 to massacre Ireland's biggest band
'It was absolutely despicable,' says Des Lee, his voice trembling with emotion, 'to think that those people who were supposed to be protecting us had planned our murder …' I've never heard a story as astonishing as Lee's. His memoir, My Saxophone Saved My Life, recounts the events of half a century ago, in which his much-loved pop group, the Miami Showband, were ambushed by loyalist paramilitaries operating a fake army checkpoint, with half his bandmates murdered as he lay still, playing dead to stay alive. Though the attack carries strangely little traction in Britain, the Miami Showband massacre of 1975 is deeply etched into Irish cultural memory. Even amid the context of the Troubles, whose bleak statistics – more than 3,600 dead, more than 47,500 injured – made slaughter almost normalised, the killing of three members of the Miami Showband left Ireland in shock. Fifty years after the atrocity, Lee, 79, tells me about a tangled plot with its roots in the uniquely Irish phenomenon of showbands. In their heyday in the 1950s to 70s, showbands – besuited troupes, closer to cabaret than rock'n'roll, performing contemporary hits with slick routines choreographed down to the last synchronised leg kick – fulfilled a need for glamour and escapism at a time when overseas stars seldom visited Ireland. Showbands, who typically took the stage around midnight, provided a crucial context in which young people from the Catholic and Protestant communities could forget their troubles (and the Troubles), and let their hair down. 'As far as we were concerned,' Lee recalls, 'a punter was a punter, no matter what religion, creed or colour. They would mingle, and you could have a Protestant meeting a Catholic and getting married. It was incredible.' Born John Desmond McAlea on 29 July 1946, Lee grew up in the Catholic suburb of Andersonstown, West Belfast, in a relatively comfortable working-class family. He would supplement his pocket money in audacious ways. On 12 July, AKA The Twelfth or Orangemen's Day, the Protestant community would hold rallies at which the likes of Reverend Ian Paisley would vehemently denounce Republicans and Catholics. Lee would go along and blend with the crowd, collecting bottles discarded by the Loyalist throng and claiming the penny deposits. Lee found a job at a plumbing supplier but his head was soon turned by rock'n'roll, and he quit to follow in the footsteps of his nightclub musician father. He served his apprenticeship on a thriving Belfast scene centred around Cymbals instrument shop, where he rubbed shoulders with a teenage Van Morrison ('A strange guy,' says Lee, 'but an exceptional talent') and future members of Thin Lizzy. In 1967, the circuit's leading act, the Miami Showband, underwent one of its periodic reshuffles and drafted in Lee on sax, along with a handsome, charismatic singer-pianist called Fran O'Toole. Fronted by Dickie Rock, who had represented Ireland at Eurovision, the Miami were as big as it got. When Des calls them 'The Irish Beatles' with a twinkle, it's only slight hyperbole: they topped the Irish singles chart seven times. 'When I got the deal to join,' says Lee, 'I thought, 'My God, all my birthdays are coming together.' I jumped at it.' 'Girls were screaming,' he says. 'We would have 2,500 people inside watching us, and 2,500 outside trying to get in. I couldn't go to the shop without people wanting my autograph. It was stardom with a capital S.' Lee developed a close friendship and songwriting partnership with O'Toole, who later replaced Rock as frontman. Lee became the bandleader. His responsibilities included repertoire and finances, and ensuring everyone looked immaculate (70s footage shows them in dazzling-white suits with glittering lapels). He also instilled discipline. 'My job was to make sure everybody was squeaky clean,' he says. 'No going on the piss before a gig. We weren't saints or angels, make no mistake. What goes on afterwards, behind closed doors, nobody knows. But we had to put on a professional show.' The Miami Showband entered the summer of 1975 in an optimistic mood. The band had scored major hits with Charlie Rich's country standard There Won't Be Anymore and Bonnie St Claire's bubblegum-glam nugget Clap Your Hands and Stamp Your Feet. O'Toole was being groomed for solo stardom, and had been booked to play Las Vegas to launch his Lee-penned single Love Is, with the intention of positioning him as the next David Cassidy. But that show never took place. On Wednesday 30 July 1975, the Miami played the Castle Ballroom in Banbridge, County Down, about 10 miles north of the border. 'It was just a normal night, nothing untoward. We came off stage and did the usual thing: signed autographs, chatted to the fans, then we had a cup of tea and a sandwich, and got ready to do the journey back to Dublin.' Road manager Brian Maguire went ahead in the equipment van. Drummer Ray Millar drove separately to visit family in Antrim. The rest of the band – O'Toole, Lee, Brian McCoy, bassist Stephen Travers and guitarist Tony Geraghty – climbed into the Volkswagen minibus and headed south. Eight miles into the journey, at 2.30am on Thursday 31 July, they were flagged down by the red torch of an army checkpoint, a commonplace occurrence in the North. 'You would be asked the same questions: 'Where are you going, where are you coming from?'' says Lee. 'We would be sitting in the van with a bottle of brandy or whiskey, and we'd occasionally offer a drop to the soldier who stopped us.' They were asked to step out of the van – again, not entirely unusual – and made to line up facing the roadside ditch. At first, the soldiers chatted casually, but their demeanour changed when someone with an English accent joined them and began giving orders. McCoy found this reassuring, telling Travers that they were dealing with the British army rather than the less predictable, locally recruited Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR). Before the search, Lee asked permission to fetch his saxophone to show it wasn't a weapon, laying it on the road a few feet away. Suddenly, an almighty explosion tore through the van, throwing all five musicians across the ditch into the undergrowth. The soldiers had not been soldiers at all – at least, not on duty. The fake army patrol were members of the paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), although at least four of them were also serving with the UDR. Their intention was to plant a briefcase bomb under the driver's seat, timed to explode further down the road. The timer malfunctioned, instantly killing two members of the UVF's Mid-Ulster Brigade, Harris Boyle and Wesley Somerville. In the chaos, an order was given to shoot the fleeing musicians to eliminate witnesses. Lee lay still with his face in the grass, slowing his breathing and pretending to be dead – a trick he had learned from watching Vietnam movies – as he heard the murder of his friends taking place around him. First to die was McCoy, 32, shot in the back with a Luger pistol. Travers, 24, hit by a dumdum bullet, was seriously wounded. As Geraghty, 24, and O'Toole, 28, attempted to drag him to safety, they were caught by gunmen, pleading for their lives before being executed with Sterling submachine guns. O'Toole was shot 22 times, his long-haired head so badly mutilated that a doctor would later ask Lee if there was a girl in the band. Travers lay next to the body of McCoy and, like Lee, played dead. Once the attackers had apparently left the scene, Lee cautiously went to fetch help. 'The main road was the most horrific scene I've ever seen in my life,' he remembers. 'There were bits of bodies lying all over the place. It was horrendous.' The first passing vehicle, a truck, refused to give Lee a lift. Eventually, a young couple agreed to drive him to nearby Newry, where he alerted police. 'My hand was on the door handle just in case, ready to jump out, because I didn't trust anybody at that stage.' The killings stunned Ireland, and thousands lined the streets for the funerals of the murdered musicians. The Miami Showband had represented hope. Not only did their shows unite communities, but their membership was mixed: McCoy and Millar were Protestants, the rest were Catholics. Is it fanciful to suggest that they were targeted because someone, somewhere, resented this pan-sectarian fraternisation? Lee doesn't think that was the motive. 'We were the No 1 band, and this gang wanted maximum publicity. If that bomb had exploded when they intended, the Miami Showband would have been accused of carrying weapons for the IRA.' (Indeed, within 12 hours, the UVF accused the band of being bomb-traffickers, describing their killing as 'justifiable homicide'.) Lee agreed to testify at the trial in Belfast on condition he was helicoptered to and from the Irish border, with 24-hour protection. His life was threatened by relatives of the accused; he has, he says, been looking over his shoulder ever since. Lance corporal Thomas Crozier and Sgt James McDowell, both of the UDR, were sentenced to life in the Maze prison, as was John Somerville, brother of the deceased Wesley and a former soldier. (They were released under the Good Friday agreement.) Everything pointed towards collusion: covert collaboration between paramilitaries and the organs of the British state. Travers, Lee and Millar relaunched the Miami Showband with new members before the year was out, to familiar scenes of hysteria – but their hearts weren't in it. Travers felt they had become a circus, and that audiences had come to stare rather than dance; he left the band the following year. For Lee, now lead singer, it could never be the same without his lost band members. 'I looked around and there was no Fran, no Brian and no Tony, and I didn't enjoy that.' In 1982, tired of feeling that he and his family were in danger, Lee started a new life in South Africa, performing as a saxophonist and band leader on the Holiday Inn circuit. He remained there for two decades, only returning after his wife, Brenda, died. Travers, meanwhile, went on a tenacious, meticulous search for the truth, engaging with numerous investigations and initiatives. A 2019 Netflix documentary, Remastered: The Miami Showband Massacre, is centred around his dogged efforts. Through the years, the finger of suspicion has repeatedly pointed at two men: Capt Robert Nairac of the Grenadier guards (later executed by Republicans), and Robin 'The Jackal' Jackson, a former soldier from County Down and a key figure in the notorious Glenanne Gang, were believed to have planned the ambush. Both were named by British intelligence whistleblowers, and Ken Livingstone named Nairac as a conspirator in his maiden speech as an MP. In December 2017, 80 documents were released including a 1987 letter from the UVF to the then-taoiseach Charles Haughey on headed notepaper, which openly admitted collusion with MI5 in the attack. The evidence was now overwhelming. The historic activities of the Glenanne Gang, including the Miami Showband Massacre, fall under the purview of Operation Denton, due to report this year. The massacre hasn't faded from Irish memory. A sculpture commemorating the dead musicians, unveiled in 2007 by former taoiseach Bertie Ahern, stands on Parnell Square in Dublin. One person who apparently didn't remember, however, was Bono, who described the 2015 shootings at the Eagles of Death Metal show in Paris as 'the first direct attack on music'. He later apologised, and U2 incorporated a slide of the Miami Showband into their show. The survivors don't have the luxury of forgetting. The trauma has left an indelible mark. Travers was diagnosed, in later life, with enduring personality change. Lee has, he tells me, experienced profound survivor's guilt. In 2021, Lee was awarded £325,000 compensation, in a package he says was presented to survivors and families as a take-it-or-leave-it deal. He considers the sum to be 'peanuts, for 50 years of anger and pain'. More than financial recompense, he says what he hopes for, with up to five perpetrators still officially unaccounted for, is closure: 'Just tell the world the truth.' My Saxophone Saved My Life by Des Lee with Ken Murray is out now (Red Stripe Press)
Daily Mail
6 hours ago
- Daily Mail
Madonna, 67, is every inch the doting mum as she enjoys a family day out with her son Rocco, daughter Lourdes and twins Stella and Estere at Palio di Siena in Tuscany
Madonna was every inch the doting mother as she enjoyed a family day out with her children at the famous Palio di Siena in Tuscany on Saturday. The Queen of Pop, 67, couldn't wipe the smile off her face as she watched the Italian horse race. The race has been run in the city of Siena since medieval times, with the first formal race being organised in 1633. Mother-of-six Madonna was beaming as she spent time with Malawi-born twin daughters Stella and Estere, 12, who she adopted in 2017. She was also seen with her DJ son Rocco, 25, who she shares with director Guy Ritchie. Her eldest daughter Lourdes, 28, also joined in on the fun as she larked around with her siblings. Madonna is also mother to 19-year-old daughter Chifundo 'Mercy' James Kambewa Ciccone. Mercy was a four-year-old orphan suffering from Malaria when Michigan-born Madge adopted her in 2007, which led to a three-year legal battle due to her being a two-time divorcée. Her son David Banda, 19, whom she adopted in 2006, when he was just 13 months old, while she funded an orphanage in Malawi, wasn't in attendance at the family outing. Last month, Madonna sent fans into a frenzy as she teased her upcoming new music in new social media snaps. She confirmed earlier this year that her upcoming album will be a sequel to her hit 2005 album Confessions On A Dance Floor. Sharing an update to Instagram, she posted a behind-the-scenes sneak peek of her time recording in the studio in London, alongside producer Stuart Price. Sharing an array of snaps, Madonna was seen in the recording studio, putting on a busty display in a lace cami top while hard at work recording her new tracks. Madonna could also be seen wearing a t-shirt which said 'Mother' as she strolled around the Big Smoke. Sharing photos from the studio in February, Madonna was seen sitting behind a drum kit, in others she sings into a microphone and in still others she vamps for the camera in the way only Madonna can. 'My Valentine's Day gift to all my fans is to let you know I'm putting my heart and soul into my new music and I can't wait to share it with you!' she wrote. The new album will be her first since 2019's Madame X. No release date, or even estimate of when the new music would drop was revealed by the seven time Grammy winner.
