Actor Livie Dalee plays on e of the witches in the new production of Macbeth at Hull Truck and here she tells us about the stuff she’s into that you should be too.

Design journalist and founder of Concrete Communities Leanne Cloudsdale bestows a brutalist beauty her best building badge.

Sports writer Tony Collins gets to the bottom of a mystery that keeps sports fans awake at night.

Our sporting necromancy correspondent Phil Ascough recounts a 50-year old tale of sorcery, spells and spoiled seasons.

It’s quarter finals week in the Carabao Cup, just two games from a showpiece Wembley final, and this season’s competition marks a bizarre anniversary for Hull City. Fifty years ago they really should have taken their place in the last eight of the competition – then known simply as the League Cup. As a Second Division team they should have been heading to play the mighty Spurs, then managed by former City boss Terry Neill, at White Hart Lane.

But they had lost 2-1 in the fourth round at Doncaster Rovers  on 11 November 1975, despite dominating a match against a team two divisions below the Tigers. Defeat was entirely beyond their control. Not the result of a dubious penalty, the ball deflecting off an unseasonal beachball, a sudden gust of wind or the keeper missing a shot after being dazzled by the floodlights. No, Hull City lost the match because a witch put a good luck spell on Donny.

Rovers sat sixth in the Fourth Division table and the attendance of 20,476 was evidence that home fans sensed an upset. Their manager, genial and wily north easterner Stan Anderson, seemed a little apprehensive in his match programme notes – or maybe it was mind games. He wrote that City’s attendances were “among the poorest in the second division” and victory would give them a chance of “a big tie and a packed house at Boothferry Park”. He added: “One of the game’s top strikers is on view tonight in Ken Wagstaff. With a top club there’s little doubt that Ken would have been in the England set-up. Injuries over the last three seasons may have taken their toll but he’s still a player to be reckoned with. Let’s hope for a cracker tonight!”

City boss John Kaye and his team must have been fancying their chances as they headed west to Donny’s old Belle Vue ground. A Tigers line-up which included Ken Wagstaff, Alf Wood, John Hawley and Roy Greenwood should have had enough firepower to see them through, with Jeff Wealands a safe pair of hands in goal. But City couldn’t have imagined having to overcome the talents of my mum’s friend Connie, who worked as a secretary in Doncaster Rovers’ office and counted white witchcraft among her hobbies.

Connie told me her story when we met a couple of years after the match. I had just started a career in journalism. My mum was a district nurse in Doncaster and said I should go and see Connie, who worked 30 hours a week for the health authority, lived just a couple of villages away, and made great pizza.

Connie revealed she had been interested in the occult for as long as she could remember and her interest ranged from simple herbal remedies to actual experiments in witchcraft. She had cast spells over the years to help her friends move house, get married and become pregnant. A woman from Thorne told me that Connie hit the post with one pregnancy attempt involving a few stones and bits of a tree from Glastonbury. “I didn’t get pregnant,” the woman said. “But a lot of my neighbours did, and all the gardens bloomed!”

I was at the match at Belle Vue and remember Greenwood tormenting Donny’s defence. Wood scored for the Tigers but Connie’s witchcraft kept Waggy at bay. Goals from Peter Kitchen and Ray Ternent won the match for Rovers. Connie told me she had spent the early evening of the match touring the area near her home and collecting laurel leaves which she used to prepare a spell to give the team good luck.

Three weeks later hordes of Rovers fans decamped to White Hart Lane. I watched again as Donny turned on the style, took the lead, fell behind at the interval but equalised early in the second half. Rovers were rampant and would surely have won the game but for the wizardry of Pat Jennings in the Spurs goal. But just a minute after Kitchen’s equaliser, Donny’s captain Les Chappell rolled a back pass to the keeper, who missed it. 3-2, and the match ended 7-2 as the magic unravelled – or did it?

Connie told me she had only ever done one “dirty deed” and felt it was time for another: “By then I had had enough. The players began to think it was all down to them, so I gave up.” She didn’t stop there, for good measure adding a curse to stop Rovers from winning promotion for at least four seasons.

After beating the Tigers, Rovers won their next game but then embarked on a disastrous run of eight defeats in ten league games and dropped to 12^th in the table. A run of form took them up to eighth, just three points off a promotion place, before, mysteriously, they fell away again. Rovers won only one of their final ten games and finished 10^th. They spent four more seasons in Division Four before winning promotion.

After meeting Connie I rang Stan Anderson to ask him if he remembered her. He said: “Remember her? How could I ever forget her?”

Phil Ascough

We all know where they are, but Hull Tour Guide Paul Schofield explains why they are.

Sculptor Caitlin Smith – from A Feminine Urge collective – talks us through the female artists who inspire her work.

His first significant action could be a charge for overnight stays in Hull but, our visitor levy correspondent Angus Young asks, will he do it?

As part of last November’s budget, the government announced it was giving new powers to mayoral authorities to create new overnight visitor levies. Various versions of a so-called tourist tax already exist in some places. Some cities have introduced a visitor charge where hospitality venues in a defined area have agreed to it.

In Manchester, a £1 per room, per night charge has been in place since 2023 in participating hotels and serviced apartments in the city centre. Similarly, a £2 levy is in place in eligible accommodation in Liverpool. (The Manchester tourist tax has so far proven popular and successful – Ed.)

The idea behind these schemes and the government proposal currently out for public consultation is for funds raised from charges to be reinvested back into the local visitor economy. That could be anything from creating new physical infrastructure to improving transport and  even funding new festivals and events. Potentially, any new levy would apply to visitors using hotels, holiday lets, bed and breakfasts and guest houses.

Announcing the new powers, government minister Steve Reed said: “ Tourists travel from near and far to visit England’s brilliant cities and regions. We are giving our mayors  powers to harness this  and put more money into local priorities so they can keep driving growth and investing in these communities for years to come.”

Tourism in both Hull and East Yorkshire has become big business in recent years with the city recently named as one of the 25 best places in the world to visit in 2026  by the National Geographic Magazine. Recent data published by the Visit Hull and East Yorkshire partnership back this up. According to latest research, there were 12.1 million day and overnight visitor trips to the region during 2023 and a total spend of £815.9m. Meanwhile, the region’s visitor economy supported 21,263 jobs.

So what does Hull and East Yorkshire Mayor Luke Campbell make of the new powers given to him by the government? So far, he hasn’t exactly been enthusiastic about it. “My instinct is that a mandatory levy probably isn’t right for the region,” he said “I am concerned that adding extra costs for visitors could damage businesses that are already struggling. I fully support efforts to drive local growth but I don’t think putting another charge on people coming here is the best way to boost the economy. My test is simple: does it help local businesses and bring more people into the area?  If not, I won’t back it.”

He has asked officers at the mayoral authority to provide a full assessment of the levy in partnership with the region’s two local councils and the tourism and hospitality sector. Businesses working in the sector are currently being invited to have their say by sending their views directly to the authority. He has also received assurances from ministers that he’s not required to introduce a levy and won’t risk having future government funding reduced if he doesn’t go-ahead with one.

As Reform UK pledged to make £90bn worth of tax cuts before last year’s general election, perhaps the Mayor’s stance is not particularly surprising. But is he right?

Without at least operating an experimental mandatory levy for a limited time, it will be impossible to judge whether it is a success or not. Alternatively, introducing a voluntary charging scheme is really a cop-out as Mayors are meant to lead. Seven Labour Mayors – including London’s Sadiq Khan and Manchester’s Andy Burnham – have already welcomed the new powers.

Will Hull and East Yorkshire’s Mayor buck the trend? We shall see once the consultation closes on February 18.

Angus Young

Andy Train, of Pride In Hull, picks a marvellous statue not enough people in the city get to enjoy.

Dr Robb Robinson of University of Hull outlines the short but fascinating life of a true ecological pioneer.

Our book discussers Caitlin and Ally-mai offer their selections for the YA in your life.