Ignoring Sudan could prove a deadly mistake

Villain
The Mapperton House duck strangler, who is still at large. The head gardener at the Dorset stately home says he saw a terrier attack Quackers, one of Viscountess Hinchingbrooke’s three pet ducks, before the owner picked up the bird, broke its neck and tossed it into some long grass. The viscountess – also known as Julie Montagu, an American yoga instructor and blogger – says she has received 2,000 messages from armchair sleuths since putting out an appeal on Instagram.

Hero
Joey Chestnut, who smashed his own world record for hot dog eating in a much-hyped Netflix face-off against arch-rival Takeru Kobayashi. The 40-year-old competitive eater took down 83 of the sausage snacks in 10 minutes – with no dipping the bread in water or separating dog from bun – seven more than his previous best. Kobayashi put away a measly 66.

Villain
US Navy commander Cameron Yaste, who seems not to know one end of a gun from the other. Yaste attracted widespread ridicule after the Navy posted on social media a photo (above) of him firing a rifle with the scope mounted backwards. He has been relieved of his command of the USS John McCain.

Villains
The builders who charged €336,000 to put up a bike rack for the Irish parliament. Taoiseach Simon Harris called the cost of the 18-bike shelter “inexcusable and inexplicable”.

Colin From Accounts
The first series of Colin From Accounts, a smash-hit Australian comedy about an unlikely couple bonding over an injured dog, was “unfailingly funny, honest, acute, kind and really rather wonderful”, says Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. I’m delighted to report that the second series is shaping up to be even better. Like the first instalment, the show follows the ups and downs of Gordon and Ash, played by real-life couple Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, as they try to navigate their relationship with each other and their beloved dog. It maintains the perfect blend of “hard-edged laughs and genuine emotion”. Two seasons, eight episodes each.

Slow Horses
Apple TV’s Slow Horses, which began its fourth series this week, seems to get “better and better”, says Carol Midgley in The Times. Based on Mick Herron’s bestselling book series, the show follows a ragtag group of disgraced spooks who have been kicked out of MI5’s main building and lumped with the agency’s most menial tasks. The plots can be as violent and action-packed as they like, but “the beating heart of it” is character, wit and dialogue. Gary Oldman “contaminates the screen beautifully” as the group’s dirty-mac clad leader Jackson Lamb; Kristin Scott Thomas exudes “icy froideur” as MI5 boss Diana Taverner. It’s “not far short of perfect”. Four seasons, six episodes each.

The 16-year-old who sank four German submarines

Biffy Dunderdale was a “legend in his own lifetime”, says Alan Judd in The Spectator, at least within MI6. Born in 1899 in Odessa to an Austrian countess and a British trader representing the machine-gun maker Vickers, he had a cosmopolitan upbringing that furnished him with fluent English, Russian, German, Turkish, French and Polish. His real first name was Wilfred, “Biffy” being acquired through “youthful handiness with his fists”. Early in World War One, while studying naval architecture and engineering in St Petersburg, he was instructed by his father to oversee the assembly of submarines sold in kit form to the Russians. The 16-year-old Biffy took a crew out for sea trials, spotted German submarines, sank four, and was awarded the equivalent of a knighthood by the Tsar.

Although he may have started working for MI6 earlier, he was formally inducted into the service in 1921 and posted to what was then Constantinople. One of his first tasks was to arrange the clandestine exfiltration of the Sultan, who feared for his fate in the new Turkish republic. This done, Biffy was handed the delicate task of evacuating the European women of the Sultan’s harem. “A pocketful of gold sovereigns helped ensure that the British ladies were safely embarked on the Orient Express.” His next job, as head of the MI6 station in Paris, was much improved by the company of his rich and glamorous American wife. The role suited them both, and the independent income helped with the endless entertaining of visitors from London and elsewhere: long lunches, late partying in nightclubs, trips on his river boat and excursions in his bullet-proof Rolls-Royce. After spending World War Two running agents in France, and turning his attention to the Soviets in the Cold War, he was able to retire, in peace, in 1959.

A Suspicion of Spies: Risks, Secrets and Shadows by Tim Spicer is available for pre-order here.