William Sitwell

5 days ago | yahoo.com | William Sitwell

It’s quite the contrast. Pope Leo XIV standing, benign, proud and humble on the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Dressed in a white cassock with a bright red shoulder cover and stole decorated with saints and motifs of the Catholic Church. The crowd in St Peter’s Square, and tens of millions of television viewers around the world, both elated and comforted by the presence of this man, newly elected by the papal conclave on May 8 2025, 17 days after the death of Pope Francis.

5 days ago | telegraph.co.uk | William Sitwell

The verdict, decided in secret by an all-powerful, all-male clique, is announced to the Church's 1.4 billion followers quickly and decisively. Compare this to the Church of England - with some one million regular worshippers and an average of 700,000 who attend weekly Sunday services - whose process for choosing a successor would, if it was dramatised, be more like a 16-part re-run of Crossroads, buried deep in the early afternoon schedules. In fact, it's worse than that.

1 week ago | aol.co.uk | William Sitwell

This week’s review was supposed to be about Kaji, a place that’s all big screens, loud tunes and tall flames. Or, as they put it themselves, where “the thrill of fire-driven cooking meets the pulse of high-energy music”. It’s a Japanese restaurant, whose stoves – behind the long, central bar – are manned by a collection of burly lads. It’s all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat.

1 week ago | telegraph.co.uk | William Sitwell

This week's review was supposed to be about Kaji, a place that's all big screens, loud tunes and tall flames. Or, as they put it themselves, where "the thrill of fire-driven cooking meets the pulse of high-energy music". It's a Japanese restaurant, whose stoves - behind the long, central bar - are manned by a collection of burly lads. It's all tummies, bald heads, tattoos and heat.

1 week ago | yahoo.com | William Sitwell

It was my greatest achievement of the week. It demanded perseverance, patience and intellect. But I got there. I got through to a chap at the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, my ambition being to seek clarity on eligibility for delinked payments (don’t ask). To reach this civil servant, I first manoeuvred deftly through acres of text on the Government’s website, before finding a number. I called it and was slightly scared by the, albeit recorded, gruff Northerner who directs calls.