Cecil Newton obituary: Survivor of D-Day who almost lost a leg

As dawn broke off the Normandy coast after a miserably rough crossing, a fellow trooper of the 4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards aboard Cecil Newton's tank landing craft (LCT) decided to make tea on their field cooker. A huge orange flame shot up, the LCT commander threatened them with death, and then the guns of a hundred warships opened fire.
Gold Beach, one of the five Allied divisional landing zones on D-Day, June 6, 1944, was the 50th Northumbrian Division's objective. To give the assaulting infantry battalions a chance of making it across the beaches, the Allied air and naval forces were to pound the defences in preparation, but they could only do so much. Intimate support by tanks was necessary. To give the tanks a

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The Guardian

30 minutes ago

• The Guardian

Country diary: A bumper year for orchids – the meadow is brimming with them

Last month, we made a choice on the farm in the midst of the spring drought. The grass was going to seed, risking the quality and amount of hay we could produce. We decided to 'top' the meadows early and hope for rain rather than settling for a poor crop. So far, it's paying off. There has been rain, and the grass, stimulated by mowing, is at last swaying in the breeze. A late hay harvest now looks possible. The drought, paradoxically, has brought a benefit. The grasses, so often dominant, have been suppressed, giving wildflowers a head start. The grazing pastures are no longer monocultures. This year, as horses swish flies, the fields are full of oxeye daisies, creating a landscape as bucolic as an Alfred Munnings painting. Also paying off is my prediction of a bumper orchid year. Wading through the wildflower meadows, I find bee orchid after bee orchid. Each has a pale pink, three-petalled flower with what looks like a fuzzy brown and yellow bee resting on it. If this were southern Europe, a species called the long-horn bee would think this was a female, misled not just by appearance but by the mimicry of pheromones. He'd have a go at mating. Whether the male ever realises he's been tricked into 'pseudo-copulation' with a fake bee I don't know, but either way, he has pollinated the plant. In the UK, the long-horn is so rare that the bee orchids self-pollinate. Then I start finding pyramidal orchids everywhere in the meadow. On top of each long stem is a flower spike, packed full of tiny, delicate individual flowers. Each has that distinctive orchid shape, varying in colour from light pink to strong purple. These ones are such bright magenta they almost glow, and will be pollinated by long-tongued butterflies, and hawk moths, whose proboscis can reach 25mm long. I pick a handful of the sainfoin fronds – loved by horses, naturally anti-inflammatory and anti-parasitic – and return to the stables where the leaves are gratefully munched. In the eaves, the baby swallows are also open mouthed, gaping and calling as the parent swoops in with food. I found a chick dead on the ground this morning, but three remain, looking more ready to fledge each day. Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian's Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at and get a 15% discount

The Guardian

an hour ago

• The Guardian

The ‘sacrifice zone': villagers resist the EU's green push for lithium mining

Filipe Gomes had been craving fresh air and quiet routine when he and his partner quit the chaos of London's catering industry for the fog-misted hills of Covas do Barroso, the sleepy Portuguese farming village in which he was raised. But his rural idyll has been disturbed by miners drilling boreholes as they push to dig four vast lithium mines right beside the village. The prospecting has sparked resistance from residents who fear the mines will foul the soil, drain the water and fill the air with the rumbling thunder of heavy trucks. 'They are destroying everything,' said Gomes, who runs the only cafe in the village with his partner. 'They are taking our peace.' Covas do Barroso is among the first villages caught up in Europe's efforts to green its economy. As the continent weans itself off fossil fuels that poison the air and heat the planet, demand for lithium is surging, to build batteries that can run electric vehicles and balance renewable-heavy power grids. Across Europe, people living near lithium deposits appear unconvinced that mines will bring good jobs and are unmoved by pleas to stop a bigger ecological threat. Attempts to push projects through in the face of local resistance have been met with cries of 'colonialism'. In Serbia, broad swathes of society have taken to the streets over the past year to protest against a lithium mine planned for the Jadar valley. In France, a lithium mine planned beneath a kaolin quarry in Allier has alarmed activists and divided residents. In Covas do Barroso, in northern Portugal, people say their village – at the heart of a heritage farming region recognised by the United Nations – has been turned into a 'sacrifice zone'. 'You're talking about destroying an area that has been classified as a globally important agricultural heritage site, an example of sustainability, an area with a system of water management that is at least over 500 years old,' said Catarina Alves Scarrott, a member of the protest group Unidos em Defesa de Covas do Barroso (UDCB). 'You're going to sacrifice all of this for open-pit mines. And then, you start to ask: for what?' The answer, for EU officials and the Portuguese government, is to obtain a soft white metal that is needed to stop burning fuels that make extreme weather dramatically worse – and do so without relying exclusively on foreign suppliers. Europe produces almost no lithium itself. More than three-quarters of the world's raw supply comes from just three countries: Australia, Chile and China. The latter dominates the refined supply of lithium too. Anxious about energy security and scrambling to get more mines dug at home, the European Commission set a target last year of meeting 10% of demand for critical raw materials from domestic sources by 2030. In March, it listed the planned mine in Covas as one of 47 strategic mineral projects that would benefit from 'coordinated support' to become operational. The decision is being challenged by MiningWatch Portugal, ClientEarth and UDCB, which lodged a complaint with the commission in June. Environmental concerns about waste and water are not the only factors that have left communities such as Covas wary of prospectors. Kwasi Ampofo, a metals and mining analyst at BloombergNEF, said the sales pitch had been made harder by the mining industry's historically poor reputation for safety and the lack of skilled domestic labour forces to profit from the work. 'It's going to be very hard for the EU to develop primary sources of lithium domestically,' he said. 'Not impossible, but very hard.' In Covas, the long-running struggle between villagers and miners has intensified as political support for the project has grown. The Portuguese environment ministry granted the British mining company Savannah Resources a one-year 'administrative easement' in December that allows it to prospect in the land around Covas. The villagers filed an injunction that held up the process, but the ministry quickly allowed work to resume, arguing it was in the public interest. People in the village, where a tattered banner declares 'no to the mine, yes to life', say they feel misled by the miners and betrayed by the government. They accuse the company of trespassing on land it does not own – much of which is held in common ownership – and downplaying the nature and scale of the project. But opinions in the surrounding Boticas region are mixed, with some hopeful the project will boost a neglected rural economy. Savannah Resources declined to comment. It has previously told local media it is acting within the law and makes efforts to keep people informed. It projects the mine will produce enough lithium for half a million EV batteries a year and describes itself as 'enabling Europe's energy transition'. But the continent-wide resistance to lithium mining reveals a snag that green groups and mining companies alike have been reluctant to acknowledge. While surveys find vast public support for stronger climate action – as much as 80-89%, according to a project by the Guardian and newsrooms around the world – the infrastructure for a carbon-free economy carries trade-offs that affected communities are often reluctant to bear. Some residents of Covas, which is itself threatened by wildfires and droughts, say they recognise the tension, even if they consider the costs too great. 'Every village faced with a mine will say 'no, no, no', I get that,' said Jorge Esteves, a forestry worker. 'But what's different here is the proximity to our homes.' Sign up to This is Europe The most pressing stories and debates for Europeans – from identity to economics to the environment after newsletter promotion Gomes, the cafe owner, said he would also have fought an oilwell if someone had tried to drill one in Covas. 'I don't agree with that either, though I have a car – but that's already happening,' he said. 'We do need to find a solution, but what we are doing now is not a solution.' Studies have shown that a societal shift away from private cars – such as creating walkable cities with good public transport – would greatly limit the rise in demand for lithium, as would halting the surge in SUVs that need big batteries. Analysts note there are also significant quantities of lithium in electronic waste such as phones and laptops that do not get recycled. For the lithium that does need to be extracted, harvesting it from brine does less damage to the environment than mining it from rocks. But with 250m combustion engine cars on EU roads and next to no lithium produced at home, electrifying vehicle fleets without domestic sources of lithium would still mean extracting more abroad. Analysts fear this would largely take place in regions with weaker environment and human rights laws. 'It's not necessarily a dilemma with no exit, but it's a real one,' said Thea Riofrancos, a political scientist at Providence College who visited Covas and several others mining regions when writing a book about lithium extraction. Mines were most likely to face resistance from people when developers failed to include them in the decision-making process, she added. 'It's not the environmental risks or the water risks on their own – if they're not combined with a sense of exclusion, then oftentimes those don't in and of themselves cause protests,' she said. 'It's the harm combined with the lack of voice to be able to say something about that harm.' In the green hills of Covas, it is unclear whether a friendlier approach by Savannah and the authorities would have won people over or simply tempered their rage. But the anger at the process is palpable. 'The biggest shock initially was not even the impact of the mine,' said Alves Scarrott, who grew up in Covas and moved to London. 'It's the attack on democracy, and democratic processes, and the rights of the people that live there.'

Times

3 hours ago

• Times

How to make perfect pesto and why you're probably doing it wrong

Isn't it funny how it's always the simplest recipes that cause the biggest disagreements? Take pesto, for example. Typically it's made from five ingredients: basil, pine nuts, oil, garlic and cheese. Yet ask people in Liguria, the Italian region where the sauce originated, and you will be given a hundred different methods. Some add parmesan, others pecorino; some grind it by hand, others blitz it in a processor. In fact, the only things they agree on is that pre-made pesto in jars is an abomination (and don't even mention vegan pesto made with nutritional yeast) — and that the only basil worth using is Genoese, grown in fields cooled by sea breezes. 'If you haven't got good basil, make something else,' says Stevie Parle, the chef behind the popular Italian pasta restaurant Pastaio in central London. He waves a large bunch of Genoese basil under my nose and it's true, it does have a more robust, spicier, less sweet scent than the basil we are used to buying in the supermarkets, which has a more metallic, minty flavour. 'Basil really is the most important thing, and this has its own PDO [protected denomination of origin quality label], meaning it's come from the right region and has been grown in the right way, facing the coast so it doesn't get too hot or too cool.' When you grow Genoese basil, you can pick a crop from it three times, but it's only the tender first crop that achieves PDO status. Parle buys his from Natoora, the vegetable wholesaler, and it comes with its roots intact to ensure freshness. 'I have tried repotting it and growing it in the past, but you will never get the same flavour because it's about the soil and climate where it comes from.' That's the basil variety agreed on, but Parle warns me that you can go down a rabbit hole chasing an illusory concept of authenticity for almost every other detail. 'Even within Liguria there's a lot of variations, some of it regional, some of it between families. Some people will blanch their basil for 10 seconds before refreshing it in iced water, especially towards the end of the basil season when the leaves are bigger and tougher. Others will add a splash of milk or cream at the end.' Parle's own quirk is to freeze the basil for 15 minutes before using it. 'It's something I overheard at my favourite restaurant to have pesto in — Da Laura, just up the coast from Portofino — and it makes absolute sense to me. It breaks the cell walls so you get a brighter, greener, more basily pesto.' The other constituents are again a question of finding the best possible varieties. To this end, Parle prefers Italian or Middle Eastern pine nuts, which are longer than the more stubby and ubiquitous Chinese ones. Their flavour is much nuttier, something he enhances by toasting them briefly in a dry pan. Then there is the choice of oil. 'This is getting quite niche now,' Parle admits, 'but you don't want a peppery oil from Tuscany as it will overpower the pesto. Ligurian oil is perfect, but it's quite hard to find in this country, so I'd recommend an oil from the south of France made from ripe black olives, which is more delicate, almost buttery.' Your ingredients assembled, you have to decide whether to use a pestle and mortar, as is traditional, or a food processor. 'It's probably better if you do it with a pestle and mortar, and ten years ago when I used to write a recipe column, I'd have said you must,' Parle says. 'But it's just ridiculous. I've got three kids and two busy restaurants [recently he launched Town on Drury Lane] — I'm using a machine.' Certainly not a knife, though. 'I actually watched a video this morning of a chef whom I really admire making his pesto with a knife, and I just thought, 'Mate, we need to have a conversation about this. I mean, why would you?' People would say you want a bit of texture, but I think that's rubbish. You want it to be completely smooth, as if you have spent hours grinding it by hand with your pestle and mortar.' The final texture he controls by adding a little optional ricotta ('I like mine on the creamy side') or a splash of pasta cooking water to make it slightly looser and glossier. You'd hope that would be all the controversies dealt with, but then we come to accompaniments. Pasta, obviously, but which one? 'I like lasagnetti,' Parle says, 'which are very fine, wide sheets, because I like the way the pesto sits on them. In Liguria you'll often get trofie, which are little twists, and they work well too. Spaghetti not so much, and I don't like conchiglie either because you don't want a shell full of pesto, you just want a slick covering.' Parle also likes to add potatoes and green beans. 'I love a double carb,' he says. 'I cut my potato very, very thin on a mandolin, so it's as thin as the pasta, and then it takes the same amount of time to cook. It just adds another interesting texture and maybe also you're getting slightly starchier water, which I think is really important. And then a few green beans because they're delicious.' That's pretty much where he draws the line. I suggest a smear of pesto on grilled fish, but he sticks his tongue out in disgust. 'No, it's not for fish, it's not for chicken — and please, it's not for sandwiches,' he says definitively. Surely there must be something else, I ask. 'Oh OK, yes, soup. You can add a spoonful to a summer bowl of minestrone if you like. I'll concede that.' Stevie Parle's ultimate pesto recipe Parle freezes the basil for 15 minutes before using it CHRIS MCANDREW FOR THE TIMES Makes about 400ml Ingredients • 100g basil leaves • 30g pine nuts • 1 small garlic clove • ½ tsp fine salt • 90g ricotta (ideally fresh sheep's ricotta) • 40g parmesan, finely grated • 100ml extra virgin olive oil Method 1. Wash and pick the basil, then lay the leaves flat on a tray and put in the freezer for 15 min — this locks in their colour. 2. Toast the pine nuts in a dry pan over a medium heat for 2-3 min, until golden and fragrant, then leave to cool. 3. Crush the garlic with the salt until smooth, using a pestle and mortar or the flat side of a knife. 4. In a high-powered blender, mix the basil, pine nuts, garlic paste, ricotta, parmesan and olive oil until it becomes silky and bright green. 5. Taste and adjust with seasoning. Loosen with a splash of cold water or more oil if needed. Six alternative pesto combinations Pesto alla Trapanese GETTY • Pesto alla Trapanese — a Sicilian version with almonds instead of pine nuts combined with fresh chopped cherry tomatoes, basil and pecorino. • Pistachio — use pistachios instead of pine nuts, and leave out the ricotta for a richer, silkier texture. • Rocket and walnut — use peppery rocket and toasted walnuts instead of basil and pine nuts to make a punchier, more wintery version. • Courgette and mint — either add mint alongside the basil or replace it, depending on your taste. Blend raw courgette, mint, garlic and lemon zest with a little parmesan for a light, summery twist. • Wild garlic — swap basil for wild garlic leaves in spring for a much stronger and earthy flavour profile. Keep everything else the same. • Parsley and hazelnut — swap out the basil for flat leaf parsley and the pine nuts for toasted hazelnuts. The toasted nuts give an almost woody, rich taste.