The UK is seeing huge numbers of colourful migrants this summer, in what was widely predicted to be the largest arrival of painted-lady butterflies for 17 years.

“We are in the midst of a miracle,” said wildlife writer Simon Barnes in The Observer. During the last painted-lady spike, in 2019, they arrived in their hundreds of thousands. Clouds of the butterflies are now being spotted once again, as Butterfly Conservation’s annual Big Butterfly Count – the world’s largest citizen-science insect count – gets under way.

What are painted ladies?
Formally known as Vanessa cardui, they are medium-sized orange butterflies with black markings and, on their forewing tips, white spots on a black background. Every year, in a spectacular long-distance migration, they fly from the desert fringes of North Africa, the Middle East and central Asia to mainland Europe and then Britain and Ireland. Each September, they then fly south again, completing a 9,000-mile round trip and one of the world’s longest insect journeys. “They can move from egg to adult in less than six weeks,” said Barnes in The Observer, so it might take “three or four” generations to reach the UK.

In an average year, the number of painted-lady arrivals in the UK hovers around 15,000, although some years, hardly any reach our shores. But butterfly experts are confidently predicting a surge in numbers this year, in “a once-in-a-decade ‘painted lady summer’”, said The Guardian.

Why are numbers spiking?
It’s down to a combination of “favourable early spring conditions in southern Europe”, the recent heatwaves and “benign southerly winds”, said The Guardian. The last time this happened, in 2019, more than 420,000 painted ladies were recorded in the UK. But that pales in comparison to the record year of 2009, when more than two million painted ladies arrived in the UK over a two-day period in May. Over the course of that summer, there were a “barely credible” billion painted ladies, said Barnes.

Despite the excitement about the “painted-lady summer”, butterfly numbers in the UK have long been decreasing, according to Butterfly Conservation. Sightings hit record lows in 2024, although there was “improvement” in 2025. More than three-quarters of butterfly species are in decline as a result of factors including climate change, habitat loss, pollution and plant pesticides. 

If the “gossip in publishing circles” is to be believed, novelist Rachel Cusk turned her eye to Natalie Portman for her latest book, said Leaf Arbuthnot in The Telegraph. The actor isn’t named in “Life of M”. But the similarities between the character “M” and Portman are “so glaring they become hard to ignore” – and the portrayal is far from complimentary.

‘Literary assassination’
“Life of M”, which is published next month, is about a film star who allows an unnamed writer to chronicle her life. There are “certainly points of correspondence” between Portman and M in the novel, said John Self in The Times. M was a child actor who later played the role of a ballerina and modelled for a big brand, among other things. Portman and Cusk both live in Paris, and move in similar circles, and the novelist has never been shy about putting “whoever she likes into her books”.

“As literary assassinations go, Cusk’s of M is sly and subtle, but it is lethal nonetheless,” said Arbuthnot in The Telegraph. Cusk stresses M is pretty, “humble” and “gracious”, but the “unsettling argument” she carefully builds is that “M is engaged in a constant effort to seem like a believable person”.

‘Delicate balancing act’ 
Cusk is just the latest in a “long line of writers” to cause upset by allegedly basing their characters on real people, said Self in The Times. Philip Roth was a “master” at it, and Nora Ephron famously wrote about her divorce from the journalist Carl Bernstein.

It’s a “delicate balancing act”, said Marshall Fine on BookTrib. Novelists run the risk of “being accused of writing a roman à clef, in which only the names have been changed to protect the guilty”. The “trick” is to find ways of using real people in creative ways to “inspire characters who are products of your imagination”.

For now, Cusk hasn’t addressed the rumours, and unless Portman speaks out to “correct the record, the truth will never be known – nor can it really matter”, said Valerie Stivers on UnHerd. “If the result of the two women’s friendship is a very strong Cusk book indeed, everyone should be happy – including, if her art-appreciation is real, Natalie Portman.”

Nude volunteers painted in colours from Pride flags lie outside Las Palmas Cathedral in Gran Canaria, in an art installation by photographer Spencer Tunick. Hundreds of people bared all to be part of “Gran Spectrum”, a tribute to the global LGBTQ+ community.

Angel Medina G / EPA / Shutterstock

The Lake District has so much to offer beyond its “spectacular panoramic views”, said Condé Nast Traveller. Famed for its impressive lakes and rugged mountains, the Unesco World Heritage site also has a “fantastic culinary scene” and “activities galore” to keep the whole family entertained, come rain or shine.

For historical sightseeing, visit the “turreted grey knuckle” of Wray Castle, a masterclass in Victorian Gothic Revival architecture built in 1840. Also worth visiting is the 17th century Holker Hall, where the gardens are a mix of “manicured borders and lawns” and “untamed areas of wildflowers and woodlands”.

Another must-see is the old home of William Wordsworth, the “Lake District’s ‘literary leviathan’”, said Sean Newsom in The Times. At Dove Cottage, you’ll “get a thrilling sense of his early, heroic years”, while the museum next door has his handwritten journals and letters on display.

For a mix of history and nature, take a boat tour with Ullswater Steamers, which have been operating for more than 160 years. Ullswater, England’s second-largest lake, is simply stunning, with a landscape of “rolling green hills” and “ancient woodland”. And for thrills, try ghyll scrambling, aka gorge walking. At Stoneycroft Ghyll, put on a wetsuit while you “scramble upstream”, then “abseil back down”, and then jump into the “deeps beneath the waterfalls”.

Gastronomes are well served too. It is “hard to go wrong with food” in the Lake District, said Condé Nast Traveller. Try the “deservedly famous” sticky toffee pudding in Cartmel and enjoy “seasonal deliciousness” with “exceptional views of Skiddaw” at Lingholm Kitchen in Keswick. There are also various Michelin-starred dining options including The Cottage in The Wood, above Keswick, and Forest Side in Grasmere.

Andy Burnham can learn from India’s ‘cockroaches’
William Hague in The Times
Narendra Modi’s “humiliating” capitulation to pressure from the “millions of young people” in India’s so-called cockroach movement highlights “the intensifying anger of Generation Z”, writes former Tory leader William Hague. The world’s youth “face more challenges, higher costs and greater insecurity” than ever. As our new “prime minister considers his ten-year plan”, he “should focus on fairness between generations”. Unless political leaders “understand” and “act on” young people’s anger and frustrations, more of them will “be caught out” like Modi.

The progressive-Islamist alliance of the Greens is doomed to fail
Stephen Pollard in The Telegraph
The attack on Berlin’s Gay Pride festival should be a “terrible warning” to Zack Polanski’s Green Party about their “poisonous strategy” of “joining hard-Left progressive politics with an embrace of Islamism”. But they are “too far down” that “rabbit hole” to recognise the “fundamental incompatibility between LGBT-embracing progressives” and those who seek a “caliphate under sharia”. The “Red-Green alliance” must eventually “break down”, but until it does, “a similar attack here would probably lead” to “denials” about the perpetrator’s “motivation”.

Ali G isn’t funny any more
Josiah Gogarty in The New Statesman
Sacha Baron Cohen’s “suburban wannabe gangster” Ali G has returned to our screens, writes Josiah Gogarty, but as we learned with Peter Mandelson, “bringing back colourful characters from the Blair years is not always the big-brain move you think it is”. The “humour” of Ali G centres on a tracksuited white man from Staines who is “hopelessly trying to imitate black culture”, but now that rap, streetwear and “patois-inflected Multicultural London English” are “influential and mainstream”, poking fun at them “falls flat”.