The Slow Newsletter

Good afternoon. Welcome back to Tortoise’s weekly Slow Newsletter.

Tortoise’s Third Birthday

Tortoise has been around for three years now — where’s the time gone? Since the early days sat around a table when Tortoise was merely a hatchling, we’ve hosted over 1,200 ThinkIns, listened to stories from around the UK and further afield, and most importantly built a wonderful network of over 55,000 members.

To thank you all for championing us, we’re holding a tea party this Saturday from 2pm at our newsroom in Fitzrovia, central London. We’ll talk about what we’ve learned about journalism and the world; as with all birthdays, we’ll look forward to the year to come. And, we’ll say thank you, with drinks and, of course, cake. Whether it’s in person or digitally, we’d love you to join us.

Loser spooks

Well it’s certainly been one hell of a week in the world of espionage. 40 Russian diplomats were expelled from four countries for spying. The French military spy chief quit after failings in Ukraine. Meanwhile the British Secret Services are making quite a name for themselves as the sharers, rather than keepers, of secrets.

You couldn’t ask for a better time for Slow Horses, Apple TV’s tremendous adaptation of Mick Herron’s spy thrillers, to arrive on our screens. In this week’s Creative Sensemaker, Matt d’Ancona reviews the return of Gary Oldman to the world of espionage as the slobbish MI5 veteran Jackson Lamb.

“The bosses in Regent’s Park, with their sharp suits, high-tech screens and elegant offices, maintain the fiction that everything is still “world-beating”. Lamb, who has seen it all, knows that the truth is otherwise, and that – as everyone in Slough House is already painfully aware – the business of national security, and anything else for that matter, is that much harder when you have lost the world’s respect,” Matt writes.

Read the Creative Sensemaker here.

ThinkIns

This month, join us in newsroom for a ThinkIns with:

Lynda Gratton on whether hybrid working is the answer.

Minouche Shafik on what we owe each other now.

And Jez Butterworth on what Jerusalem says about us.

That’s all for this week. If you aren’t a member yet, and feel like helping us build a different kind of newsroom, why not be my guest at Tortoise for the next 30 days? I hope I’ll see you soon.

Katie