Marking 40-year milestone from the end of Falklands
FALKLANDS ANNIVERSARY
THE ANNIVERSARY of the end of the Falklands Wars in 1982 will take place tomorrow.
British forces advanced on Stanley and Argentine troops fled in disarray, after which Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher informed the House of Commons that the Argentinians had surrendered.
The 10-week Falklands War claimed the lives of 255 British personnel, three civilian Falkland Islanders, and 649 Argentine personnel.
Among the casualties were those on HMS Sheffield, which was hit by an Argentine missile on May 4, 1982, killing 20 crew members and injuring many more.
A memorial sculpture, resembling the prow of a ship breaking through a wave, was unveiled at the National Memorial Arboretum on the 40th anniversary of that event last month.
Anniversary of the end of the Falklands, tributes to Grenfell Tower victims five years on, women writers honoured and more. John Blow looks at the week ahead.
GRENFELL MEMORIAL
IT WILL be five years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, a milestone which also occurs on Tuesday.
The fire in west London killed 72 people, and a 72-second silence for the victims has been organised to take place at the memorial wall, which features 72 green hearts and is located in the Atrium of Westfield shopping centre in Shepherds Bush.
After the silence at 2pm, the names of the victims will be read out through a speaker system.
Grenfell survivors and bereaved families will also take part in a silent walk, which begins at the tower itself.
WRITING AWARD
ON WEDNESDAY the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction will be announced. It is awarded annually to a female author of any nationality for the best original full-length novel written in English and published in the United Kingdom in the preceding year.
The six shortlisted books are Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead, Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason, The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki, The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa AllenAgostini, The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak, The Sentence by Louise Erdrich.
Chair of judges and bestselling writer Mary Ann Sieghart previously said “the shortlist contains a wonderfully diverse range of stories, subjects, settings and authors, from the experience of a Native American woman in a haunted bookshop to an early female aviator in the Antarctic”.
The winner will be announced after 6pm in London.
CEO’S FATE
A MEETING behind closed doors is due to determine the future of Sheffield Council chief executive Kate Josephs after her role in ‘partygate’.
A cross-party committee is to meet in private on Thursday to discuss the findings of an independent investigator appointed to look into the matter.
Ms Josephs first apologised in January this year after it emerged a gathering was held to mark her leaving the Civil Service on December 17, 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic.
She remains on discretionary paid leave from her £190,000-a-year job as a decision from the committee is awaited.
BIRTHDAY GREETINGS
SIR PAUL McCartney will celebrate his 80th birthday on Saturday.
Born in Liverpool as James Paul McCartney on June 18, 1942, he shot to international fame as bass player and, with John Lennon, a key songwriter in The Beatles – a band that broke up well before he had even turned 30.
He embarked on a lengthy solo career after ‘the Fab Four’ disbanded but will forever be most closely linked with the group, interest in which has been constant since and piqued again recently with the release of the almost eight-hour, three-part Get Back documentary on Disney+.