ROBERT DUVALL (1931 - 2026): AN OBITUARY

Robert Duvall, the actor who spent seven decades convincing audiences that a man could be both granite-faced and profoundly human, has died at the age of ninety-five. He passed away peacefully at his farm in Virginia, reportedly after a final, perfectly delivered line to his doctor: “I’m not done yet.” The doctor, perhaps wisely, disagreed. Duvall never looked like a movie star, which was the point. While Hollywood busied itself manufacturing pretty boys with the emotional range of a parking meter, Duvall arrived looking as though he had been carved from the side of a mountain and then taught to speak in complete sentences. 

He could play a Mafia consigliere with the calm of a man ordering coffee (The Godfather), a surf-obsessed colonel who loved the smell of napalm in the morning (Apocalypse Now), or a broken-down country singer who finds redemption in a motel room (Tender Mercies), for which he finally collected the Oscar that had been hiding from him since 1972. Each time, he did it without once raising his voice above a murmur or resorting to the histrionics that lesser actors mistake for depth. Critics called him 'authentic.' Duvall, who served in the US Army and studied at the Neighbourhood Playhouse with people who took Stanislavski seriously, probably filed the compliment under 'obvious.' 

He did not do glamour; glamour would have been embarrassed in his presence. He did truth, or at least the version of it that could survive on a film set without being laughed off the screen. Off-screen, he married four times, the last union—to the luminous Argentine actress Luciana Pedraza—lasted longer than most Hollywood studios. They tangoed together in Buenos Aires, which must have been a sight: the sternest face in American cinema gliding across a floor as if he had been born wearing patent leather shoes instead of cowboy boots. One suspects the tango suited him; it is, after all, a dance that rewards restraint and impeccable timing.

Duvall outlasted nearly everyone he started with. Brando went mad, Nicholson went cartoon, Pacino started shouting for no reason. Duvall simply kept turning up, quieter and better, in everything from Lonesome Dove to Days of Thunder and Falling Down, reminding younger actors that acting is not about volume but about listening. In an industry that mistakes noise for significance, his silence was revolutionary. He is survived by his wife, a great many horses, and a body of work that will not date because it was never fashionable in the first place. Somewhere, Tom Hagen is still advising caution, Colonel Kilgore is still waiting for the wind to change, and Mac Sledge is still singing about broken hearts and second chances. Robert Duvall has left the stage, but the smell of napalm lingers on.

PADDINGTON, PINTS & PATRIOTISM: IN APPREICATION OF HIROSHI SUZUKI

In an age when British politicians treat the United Kingdom as little more than a departure lounge for the next international summit, it is refreshing—nay, borderline miraculous—to encounter a diplomat who actually seems to enjoy being here. Hiroshi Suzuki, Japan’s Ambassador to the Court of St James’s, has achieved something that eludes most of our native leaders: he has fallen in love with Britain, and he is not ashamed to show it. 

While Sir Keir Starmer racks up air miles at a rate that would make a budget airline blush—forty foreign jaunts in barely eighteen months, with Beijing, Shanghai, and the inevitable COP circus still fresh on the itinerary—Mr Suzuki is to be found in a Glasgow pub, raising a pint of Tennent’s and declaring, with the earnest delight of a man who means it, that he is having “a wee swally.” One watches the clip, filmed mere days ago before he cheered on Celtic’s Japanese contingent against Livingston, and feels a pang of something suspiciously like national pride. Or perhaps it is just embarrassment that a visiting Japanese diplomat appears more at home in Scotland than our own Prime Minister does in the entirety of the British Isles.

Mr Suzuki’s enthusiasm is not the calculated bonhomie of the professional charmer. It is the real thing, the sort that cannot be faked without looking faintly ridiculous. He has been coming to Britain since the 1990s, long before it occurred to anyone that he might one day represent his Emperor here, and the affection shows. Where others might dutifully sample a fish supper out of diplomatic obligation and then hurry back to the embassy for a restorative cup of green tea, Suzuki dives in with the abandon of a man who has waited decades for the privilege. Boddington’s in Manchester: “gorgeous.” A full English breakfast: cause for wide-eyed rapture. Haggis, neeps and tatties in some Glasgow establishment only yesterday: presumably another triumph, though one awaits the inevitable video with the resigned pleasure of a nation that has found, in a Japanese diplomat, its most persuasive tourist board.

This is not mere performance. Suzuki travels with a stuffed Paddington Bear—yes, really—as a prop for his social media posts, a gesture so disarmingly whimsical that it would look contrived on anyone else. On him, it works, because the delight is palpable. He attends Celtic matches, tours landmarks he describes as “amazing,” and posts clips of himself mastering regional dialects with the solemn concentration of a scholar deciphering ancient scrolls. The British public, starved of uncomplicated enthusiasm from its own leaders, laps it up. Newspapers that normally reserve their praise for visiting rock stars or retiring footballers now proclaim him the most popular ambassador Britain has ever had. One suspects even the French ambassador is quietly seething with envy.

Meanwhile, back at Downing Street—or rather, somewhere above the Atlantic—Sir Keir Starmer pursues the higher calling of global statesmanship. One understands the necessity, of course. There are trade deals to be chased, climate pledges to be reiterated, and photographs to be taken shaking hands with presidents who may or may not still be in office by teatime. Yet there is something touching about the Prime Minister’s apparent conviction that the cost-of-living crisis at home can be solved by yet another trip to Brasilia or Beijing. One pictures him boarding the government jet with the weary determination of a man who has realised that the only way to escape the latest polling catastrophe is to put several thousand miles between himself and the electorate. “Never Here Keir,” the wags call him, and the nickname sticks because it contains an uncomfortable truth: the Labour government, having promised to fix Britain, seems keener to admire it from a safe distance.

It is not that foreign travel is inherently suspect. Diplomacy requires it, and Britain’s place in the world demands a certain amount of globe-trotting. But there is a difference between necessary engagement and compulsive absenteeism. Starmer’s predecessors at least pretended to enjoy the odd domestic photo-op—Blair grinning beside a pint, Cameron hugging huskies, Johnson brandishing a kipper. The current incumbent gives the impression of a man who views the United Kingdom primarily as a launchpad for more important destinations. When he does touch down briefly, it is to deliver a speech reminding us that his latest summit will, in some mysterious way, put money back in our pockets. One awaits the evidence with the same patience one reserves for the arrival of fusion power.

Suzuki, by contrast, practises a form of diplomacy so old-fashioned it feels revolutionary: he turns up. He stays. He drinks the beer, eats the food, learns the phrases, and posts the evidence with the guileless joy of a tourist who has stumbled upon paradise. In doing so, he achieves what armies of spin doctors and trade envoys cannot: he makes Britain look appealing again, not as a reluctant participant in global forums, but as a place where a cultured Japanese gentleman can find happiness in a pint of lager and a football match. Soft power, we are often told, is the art of attraction rather than coercion. Suzuki understands this instinctively. Our own government, one suspects, has read the memo but filed it under “pending.”

There is, of course, a gentle irony in all this. Japan, a nation not exactly renowned for extrovert exuberance, sends us an ambassador who embraces British pub culture with the zeal of a convert. Britain, meanwhile, elects a government that seems to view the domestic scene with the mild apprehension of a vegan invited to a barbecue. One does not wish to overstate the case—Suzuki is, after all, paid to be charming, and Starmer is paid to govern a fractious G7 economy through turbulent times. Yet the contrast is instructive. In an era when political leadership increasingly resembles a perpetual airborne seminar, there is something profoundly grounding about a diplomat who would rather be in a Glasgow boozer than a Brussels briefing room.

Perhaps we should knight him. Or make him Poet Laureate. Or simply leave him alone to continue his one-man campaign to remind us what we have. Hiroshi Suzuki, with his Paddington Bear and his unfeigned delight in our eccentricities, has become an unlikely national treasure. Long may he remain among us, raising a glass to the gorgeous, the amazing, and the occasionally incomprehensible pleasures of British life. One rather suspects he will still be here long after the Prime Minister’s jet has taxied off to the next indispensable summit. And when that happens, the rest of us will know exactly where to find him: in a pub, somewhere between the Tennent’s and the tatties, having the time of his life.

ANTI-VALENTINE'S DAY RANT 2026: THE MYTH OF THE "SOULMATE"

Ah, Valentine's Day – that glittering commercialised shrine to human delusion where we persuade ourselves that, amid the teeming billions of inadequates, there lurks a single flawless specimen destined to mend the unpatchable rents in our souls. Plato started the rot, of course, with his fanciful yarn about Zeus bisecting us like overripe melons because we were getting above ourselves. Ever since, we've been stumbling about, four-limbed and half-witted, in search of the missing piece that will finally make us whole. 

A touching thought, if you can overlook the implication that we're all, by divine decree, incomplete wrecks. History, never slow to pile on the misery, refined the torment. Medieval troubadours turned it into courtly love – knights mooning over unattainable ladies, proving their devotion through exquisite self-denial. Lancelot and Guinevere: a template for every doomed affair since. Shakespeare added cosmic cruelty with his star-crossed lovers, fated to adore each other while the universe conspires to keep them apart. And then Hollywood arrived, peddling the fairy-tale ending where passion conquers all, provided the lighting is soft and the soundtrack swells at the right moment. Science, bless its cold, dispassionate heart, has finally weighed in to confirm what any honest observer already suspected: the whole edifice is a house of cards built on wishful thinking.

Take the psychologists. One traces our modern obsession back to those chivalric tales that first insisted we pick one person and stick to them for life – a notion that apparently arrived just as industrialisation was ripping communities apart and leaving individuals lonely, alienated, and desperate for a saviour in human form. Enter dating apps, the apotheosis of relation-shopping: swipe through dozens, hundreds, thousands of profiles until the soul itself goes numb. You're not searching for love; you're auditing inventory. Another academic draws a helpful distinction between the soulmate (pre-fabricated, effortless, handed down by destiny) and the "one and only" (something two people cobble together through years of adaptation, apology, and occasional dental damage). The soulmate fantasy, he warns, is a trap. Believe in it, and the first serious row prompts the inevitable thought: if this were meant to be, it wouldn't hurt so much. Better to bail out and resume the search for the real thing – which, naturally, doesn't exist.

Then there are the love coaches who point out that the electric "spark" so often mistaken for destiny is frequently just trauma in a party dress. That intoxicating push-pull, the hot-and-cold routine that keeps you hooked? Your nervous system recognising a familiar wound and gamely trying to reopen it. The strongest attachments, apparently, form not with consistent partners but with those who alternate charm and cruelty – a pattern with a pedigree going back to abusive relationships studied decades ago. What feels like fate is often just the echo of an old injury, dressed up as romance. Biology chimes in with its own dampener: hormonal contraceptives can subtly rewrite attraction, flattening the natural cycles that once guided mate choice. Change the pill, change the feeling; suddenly the person who once seemed perfect looks merely tolerable. If chemistry can be so easily meddled with by pharmacology, the idea of a single pre-ordained match begins to look decidedly shaky.

Mathematicians, never ones to miss an opportunity to crush hope, have run the numbers. Their algorithms reveal not one soulmate but many viable candidates – second-order, third-order, fourth-order – all perfectly adequate provided neither party can do better. Comforting, isn't it? Plenty of fish in the sea, each marginally less disappointing than the last. And what sustains the rare couples who endure? Not grand gestures or cinematic passion, but the small, grinding kindnesses: a cup of tea in bed, a warmed car on a winter morning, wildflowers jammed in a jam jar. The mundane choreography of shared life, performed daily amid money worries, family demands, and the quiet management of each other's frailties. It turns out the most "soulful" relationships are not those that feel fated but those that survive the realisation that they aren't.

So there we have it, courtesy of science: soulmates are a mirage, love is maintenance work, and the happiest endings are the ones that haven't ended yet – usually because both parties have run out of energy to leave. Happy Valentine's Day. May your illusions hold just long enough to get you through your poncy, overpriced dinner this year.