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Hello and welcome to Spectator Out Loud.

Each week we choose some of our favourite pieces from the magazine and ask their writers to read them aloud.

I'm Patrick Gibbons and on this week's podcast.

Following the pager blast that rocked Lebanon this week,

Paul Wood asks, where do Israel and Hezbollah go from here?

Ross Clark reports on the news that Ireland is set to receive 13 billion euros

from Apple following a ruling by the ECJ,

but the government didn't want it. Why?

Reviewing Ben McIntyre's book, The Siege, The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS hostage drama,

Andrew Lysett looks at the circumstances surrounding the 1980 Iranian embassy siege in London.

As a new exhibition of the works of Vincent Van Gogh opens at the National Gallery, Laura

Gascoigne argues that the troubled artist would approve of its focus. And, with the news that

cork bottles could soon be a thing of the past, Henry Jeffries provides his notes on corkscrews.

Up first, Paul Wood. Israel's security cabinet met in a bunker in the Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv on

Monday night. The main item on the agenda was Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia whose missiles and

rockets have forced tens of thousands of Israelis from their homes in the north. The meeting lasted

into the early hours of Tuesday. At 2.26am, the Prime Minister's office

issued a statement saying Israel's war aims had been updated, no longer just destroying Hamas

in the south, but also the safe return home of everyone in the north. Israel will continue

...