The Times, September 20 2016

As Trump and Clinton prepare to debate on TV, Nigel Farndale, who has met both, has some tips.

As scoops go, it is not quite up there with Watergate, but I was the first journalist to uncover the secret of Donald Trump’s brushed-forward, combed-over hairstyle, the one that looks like a sunken apricot soufflé. He wets it, then applies copious amounts of hairspray.
That was in 2008. When it became clear last year that he really was running for president — that it wasn’t a weird joke — my interview with him did much pinging back and forth on social media, especially in America.
“People always comment on my hair,” he told me, “but it’s not that bad, and it is mine — look.” He tugged on the front. “I mean, I get killed on it. I had an article where someone said it
(read more at The Times)
G.

German PoWs who found love and liberty on Britain’s farms

More than 25,000 prisoners of war who worked on our farms returned to live here. On Remembrance weekend Nigel Farndale discovers their stories
(The Times, November 11 2016)


Having fought as a young man in the First World War my grandfather was too old to fight in the Second. Even if he had been of serviceable age it is doubtful he would have been allowed to join up, given that he was in a “reserved occupation”, farming. He was expected to dig for victory instead.
The Second World War did, nevertheless, come to him in the form of German prisoners of war. An army truck would collect them from a nearby camp every day and deliver them to the farm, which was in Wensleydale, North Yorkshire. Because there was a food shortage after the war — as well as a shortage of manpower, before demobilisation at least — many of the German PoWs were obliged… (read more at the Times (Paywalled))