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A good coffee table book can spark infinite conversations, and this is especially true when the focus is on travel. Guests connect over destinations they’ve visited or dream of seeing, sharing memories and tips, and the spectacular photography might also encourage them to pick up a camera and better document their future trips. Stack these books in your living room, and see how they inspire.

‘African Adventures: The Greatest Safari on Earth’ by Aline Coquelle

Let photographer Aline Coquelle show you Africa through her eyes. The book is split into four experiences: seeing Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe, the Okavango Delta in Botswana, the Great Migration in Kenya and the silverback mountain gorillas in Rwanda.

“African Adventures” features “epic” wildlife photos of baby elephants learning to walk and protective lionesses with their cubs along with snaps of the “most beautiful” boutique lodges, said Condé Nast Traveler. Coquelle’s “stunning” photography also offers a “deeper exploration” of each area’s “talented contemporary artists, artisans and conservationists.” ($120, Assouline)

‘Destinations of a Lifetime: 225 of the World’s Most Amazing Places’ by National Geographic

“Destinations of a Lifetime” combines the breathtaking photography National Geographic is known for with helpful insider information on how to visit like a local and the histories of each spot. Chapters include “Sea and Shore,” “Mountain Majesty” and “Town & Country,” showcasing different locales and pulling together itineraries that allow you to see as many of these connected places as possible. If you’re stuck on the next country or city you want to visit, flip through “Destinations of a Lifetime,” pick any page and you’ll be booking a plane ticket in no time. ($21, Amazon)

‘Dream Trips of the World’ by Lonely Planet

This comprehensive guide explores 100 spectacular travel opportunities, including witnessing the Northern Lights in Norway, cruising down the Nile River and visiting Bhutan’s monasteries. Each trip featured is accompanied by a detailed itinerary on where to go and what to see, tips on places to eat and how to pack, beautiful photography, and comments from local residents and travel experts on ways to best approach the destination. ($45, Lonely Planet)

‘Gray Malin: Dogs’ by Gray Malin

Welcome to the whimsical world of fine-art photographer Gray Malin and his model pups. Malin took his canine muses on his travels, capturing the dogs as they relaxed poolside at the Beverly Hills Hotel, took a ski lift in Aspen and explored the streets of London. Use this as inspiration for places to go with your own pooch. ($50, Barnes & Noble)

‘Great Maps: The World’s Masterpieces Explored and Explained’ by Jerry Brotton

This collection of 64 highly detailed maps spanning “continents and centuries” is a “pleasure to peruse,” said Reader’s Digest. Historian Jerry Brotton digs deep, explaining why each map was created and who its audience was. The two-page spreads bring the illustrations to life, and anyone who enjoys “maps, data, visualization and history” will spend hours poring over the book. ($21, Amazon)

‘100 Hikes of a Lifetime U.S.A.: The Country’s Ultimate Scenic Trails’ by Stephanie Pearson

When choosing which quests to feature in her book, Stephanie Pearson selected some challenging ones that will test your mettle. She also included “incredible” opportunities that “aren’t necessarily long and difficult,” letting hikers of all abilities “see migrating birds, walk in the footsteps of ancient humans” or learn a “little-known slice of American history,” she told Outside. You’ll find extreme adventures, like the 6,800-mile American Discovery Trail from California to Delaware, alongside day hikes families can accomplish together. ($29, Amazon)

‘Slim Aarons: The Essential Collection’ by Slim Aarons and Shawn Waldron

After spending World War II as a U.S. Army photographer, Slim Aarons vowed to only take photos of “attractive people who were doing attractive things in attractive places.” He stayed true to his word, famously shooting the “playgrounds of Gstaad and Mallorca, Bali and Beverly Hills,” said Vanity Fair. “Slim Aarons: The Essential Collection” features hundreds of his renowned portraits of “socialites and literary lights, royals and moguls, ingenues and artists,” and his focus on “tiny design elements” give “each frame an extra layer of texture, color and nuance.” ($121, Amazon)

‘There and Back: Photographs from the Edge’ by Jimmy Chin

Mountaineer and “Free Solo” director Jimmy Chin doesn’t shy from extremes, and “There and Back” is filled with “jaw-dropping imagery” from his adventures around the globe, said Condé Nast Traveler. The “soaring formations” of the Ennedi Desert in Chad and “frozen expanses” of Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land are some of the “thrilling” natural wonders featured in the book, which is “sure to inspire” the “adventurer in your life.” ($21, Amazon)

‘Treasured Lands: A Photographic Odyssey Through America’s National Parks’ by QT Luong

Every U.S. National Park shines in “Treasured Lands.” More than 600 vivid images show off the beauty of each spot, from the tight Slot Canyons of Zion to the jagged Grand Teton peaks reflected in the Schwabacher Landing pond. Photographer QT Luong took the pictures during all four seasons and in all kinds of weather, and explains in captions how and when each stunning visual was captured. ($90, Amazon)

‘Walk With Me: New York’ by Susan Kaufman

Everyone knows what the Empire State Building and Brooklyn Bridge look like. In “Walk With Me: New York,” photographer Susan Kaufman captures a side of the city that postcards miss, turning her camera toward colorful stoops, charming park corners and quaint storefronts. It’s a fresh look at one of the world’s most photographed places. ($26, Amazon)

If the “gossip in publishing circles” has any merit, novelist Rachel Cusk has 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.

An unflattering portrait

“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 “played a ballerina” in a movie and is a “model for a major brand”; Portman starred in “Black Swan” and her face is splashed across billboards as the long-time ambassador for Miss Dior.

Cusk’s character was also a child actor whose first film included sexual scenes that “originally included several scenes in which the child was shown wanting or inviting sexual interaction with the central male character”. Portman’s debut in “Leon” in 1994 saw her mother step in to insist scenes with her daughter and an older co-star were removed from the film.

Cusk has remained “tight-lipped” on the rumours. It’s “handy” to generate a buzz ahead of publication and the novelist has never been shy about putting “whoever she likes into her books”. Her divorce memoir “Aftermath” explored the breakdown of her marriage to her ex-husband in vivid detail, while her “bracingly honest” book about parenting, “A Life’s Work”, was widely criticised for her unflinching portrayal of motherhood. “It has reached the stage, in fact, where an effective modern curse might be ‘May you appear in a Rachel Cusk book’”.

Portman and Cusk both live in Paris, and move in similar circles. The actor is (or was) a fan of Cusk and even interviewed the writer, picking two of her novels to discuss in her Instagram book club. But “no one in her right mind who understood Rachel Cusk’s work would allow her to write about her”, said Valerie Stivers on UnHerd. Cusk excels at “reducing the human to the mathematical product of cold existential forces” – appearing in one of her books is “never going to be flattering”.

“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”. What is “cruel” about the character is the “impregnable fort of isolation she believes the actress lives within”.

A ‘delicate balancing act’

Cusk is just the latest in a “long line of writers” to cause upset by basing their characters on real people, said Self in The Times. Philip Roth was a “master” at it, first casting a “thinly disguised avatar of his wife”, Claire Bloom, in his 1990 novel “Deception”, before he “twisted the knife”, with another caricature of Bloom, this time as a self-loathing antisemitic Jewish actor in “I Married a Communist”. And Nora Ephron famously wrote about her divorce from the journalist Carl Bernstein in her novel, “Heartburn”, which features a food writer who is seven months pregnant when she discovers her husband’s affair.

Non-writers assume we novelists insert real-life people into our books out of “spite”, said Amanda Craig in The i Paper, but a novel is “what it says on the tin – a work with made-up characters and situations”. My “long-ago ex-boyfriend”, the literary critic David Sexton, thought he had been “unflatteringly depicted” in my novel “A Vicious Circle” and “threatened to sue”. I might use a line of dialogue I’ve heard “uttered by a real-life person” but most writers I know “go through agonies” to make their characters who might “have their roots in reality as remote as possible from the original”.

Creating characters inspired by real people is 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”.

While there is no legal requirement to seek permission from the real person who inspires a work of fiction, the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain advises that it is “good practice” to inform subjects of creative writing projects in advance, to get their “blessing” to reduce the risk of future legal action, and to remove any “identifying information”.

For now, Cusk hasn’t addressed the rumours about “Life of M”, and unless the actor speaks out to “correct the record, the truth will never be known – nor can it really matter”, said 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.”

“This place literally changed the world,” says guide Zach Ozburn as we tour Sun Studio, standing on the spot where Elvis Presley was discovered, where Johnny Cash recorded “I Walk the Line”, where B. B. King recorded “3 O’Clock Blues”, and where a collection of other globally influential artists made some of their earliest recordings in the 1950s (among them Ike Turner, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins). “Together, these artists transformed music – in less than 10 years.”

Elvis recorded his first hit single, “That’s All Right (Mama)”, here in 1954, Ozburn tells us. “It was so popular, notorious DJ Dewey Phillips played it on his radio station more than 10 times in one session,” he says. “Elvis was signed to a three-year contract, then sold to RCA Records for $35,000 (£26,000) 17 months later.”

Under the helm of record producer Sam Phillips, this now-legendary studio got itself a name as the “birthplace of rock ’n’ roll”, the first home of Elvis and a pioneer in blues, gospel, country music and beyond.

Today you can see the original microphone many of its artists recorded on, browse memorabilia from its 1950s heyday, and hear the tracks recorded in the building, and it’s genuinely fascinating. But it’s just one of the many sites I discovered during an eye-opening trip to Memphis, Tennessee, “home of the blues”, where history and heritage sit on literally every corner.

The Elvis effect

Elvis moved to Memphis with his family when he was 13, and traces of “the King” are still found across the city. On a visit to Graceland, I explore the mansion he lived in for 20 years after buying it in 1957. It houses a string of eclectic rooms – among them “the den”, decked out in a whimsical jungle theme, and a downstairs bar and lounge area where bright yellow and navy tones shimmer beneath a mirrored ceiling.

Elsewhere, elaborate chandeliers dangle above palatial furnishings, while an adjoining museum showcases many of Elvis’s once-worn costumes – from his renowned gold lamé jacket to the American eagle jumpsuit he wore at his Hawaii concert – alongside his suite of giant cars and motorbikes, not least the famous pink Cadillac.

Beyond Graceland, there are plenty more reminders of Elvis’ legacy. At the historic, diner-style Arcade Restaurant downtown, I tuck into stacked-high pancakes in the booth he reportedly used to sit at (“near the back, so he could come in the back entrance and escape if fans started to go wild,” in the words of my waitress).

On a music-themed circuit of the city with Backbeat Tours, I visit Overton Park Shell, the outdoor amphitheatre where the star had his first big public performance during a concert in 1954. (“His knees were shaking from nervousness and he thought the crowd was booing, when they were actually screaming”, our local musician-guide, Davy Ray Bennett, tells us, as he regales us with humorous tales.)

Later in the tour, we pass the home Elvis and his family lived in before he became famous – a small apartment in a modest block – and the high school Priscilla went to after moving here.

Beale Street blues

It was Beale Street, of course, that gave “the King” much of his inspiration. Running through the heart of downtown Memphis, this is where artists including Louis Armstrong, Muddy Waters and B. B. King performed in late-night bars during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, developing the Memphis blues sound that was first pioneered here by musician W. C. Handy.

The street fell into disrepair and was largely abandoned in the late 1960s and 1970s, but it was revived in the 1980s; today, it’s the historic hub of the city and a major tourist hotspot, with neon-lit bars and blues clubs once again lining the strip, live bands playing in almost every venue from the afternoon through to the early hours.

Back in the day, Beale Street wasn’t just a spot for music, though; on a guided history tour of the city’s African American culture with local company A Tour of Possibilities (ATOP), I learn more about the street’s significance in the first half of the 20th century.

“This was known as the country’s main street for African Americans,” says our guide, Devon. “It was a pro-Black street during the era of segregation, where African Americans could enter through the front door, not the back door, with Black-owned shops, clubs, restaurants and businesses forming a vibrant hub.” It was also the home of Ida B. Wells’ anti-segregationist newspaper, Free Speech, housed in a church built for the community.

A complex history

But beyond the more positive stories, Beale Street has a complex history. I learn this is where sanitation workers marched on 28 March 1968, led by Martin Luther King Jr, in the fight for better wages and working conditions. When a group of participants began looting, violence erupted as police attacked with tear gas and shot and killed a 16 year-old amid hundreds of arrests.

King returned to Memphis six days later on 3 April to lead a second, non-violent march, delivering the famous “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech that was to be his last. The following day, he was shot from the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, where he was staying.

The National Civil Rights Museum now stands on the spot where King was assassinated, and traces the history of the civil rights movement – from slavery through to the civil war, abolition and the ensuing Jim Crow laws that enforced segregation in the Southern states.

Its displays provide in-depth context to the music and culture that developed in a cotton-rich city which was at the heart of the slave trade during the mid-1800s – when enslaved people were freely bought and sold on its streets, travelling along the Mississippi River – and it’s a moving, eye-opening portrayal of the country’s struggle for equality which is, in many ways, still ongoing.

But it’s also a reminder of the power of art and music in uniting. “Music kind of transcends everything,” said Ozburn on my tour of Sun Studio, and he wasn’t wrong. Memphis’ music scene broke down racial barriers at a time of extreme division in the wider American South, integrating Black and white artists and audiences in a way that many argue was epitomised by Elvis – who took Beale Street blues for his inspiration – and also by WDIA, the radio station started by white founders for an African American audience (and drawing a mix of both Black and white listeners).

The Stax story

Perhaps nowhere was this unification better showcased, though, than at Stax Records, the storied studio that empowered Black and white artists to write and record together during the 1960s and 1970s.

Established in 1957 by founders Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton in a predominately African American neighbourhood, unity and inclusion were the ethos here; house band Booker T. & the M. G.’s brought together black and white musicians, while songwriting duo Isaac Hayes and David Porter also bridged the racial divide, composing around 200 songs here together (among them Sam & Dave’s iconic “Soul Man”).

While Stax is no longer an active recording studio, it’s now the site of the Stax Museum of American Soul Music – an ode to the label’s history, complete with an exact replica of the original studio and control room where the likes of Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas, Wilson Pickett, Eddie Floyd and Carla Thomas all once recorded. (Redding recorded “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” here just a few days before his sudden death in a plane crash.)

Wandering around, I have Ozburn’s words in my head about how Sun Studio “changed the world”, but it wasn’t only at Sun. Across the city, stars broke down barriers and left their mark. The struggles continued, but musicians found a parallel, underground world that didn’t differentiate, and they gained a global audience in the process.

To visit now is to walk in the footsteps of those who shaped the face of modern music and challenged the status quo on a grassroots level. This is a fascinating, many-layered city that definitely deserves your time, not only to trace the legends of the musical greats, but also to learn how their art intertwined with the battle for civil rights in a complex story that still resonates today.

Where to eat

Beyond the music and civil rights history, Memphis is home to a thriving culinary scene; here are some of our favourite dining spots if you’re heading to the city.

The city is world-renowned for its barbecue – specifically pork, slow-smoked over hickory wood and dry-rubbed with spices or doused in a tangy-sweet, tomato-based sauce. For a casual, unpretentious spot where you queue at the counter to order, head to Central BBQ downtown and try the acclaimed pulled pork sandwich, served with classic sides that range from BBQ beans to mac ’n’ cheese.

Once a 1950s salon where Priscilla Presley used to get her hair done, The Beauty Shop is well worth a visit – expect a quirky, modern-meets-retro vibe where the likes of sugar & spice duck with roasted black grapes, pork & pickled peach with mustard fennel dust, and honeynut pumpkin with salsa macha are served at booths set beneath old-school, Belvedere hooded hair dryers.

Memphis has a generous handful of fine-dining restaurants and among the stand-outs for me was Amelia Gene’s, where I tucked into asparagus panzanella with morel mushroom, a rich, buttery bucatini with salt & pepper sauce, and scallops with grits and bacon. Elsewhere, Michelin-recommended Felicia Suzanne’s was also a standout, offering a high-end twist on Southern classics (from short ribs to fried green tomatoes and shrimp and grits) and scarlet chairs and chequered floors for décor.

Where to stay

Set in the heart of downtown and a 10-minute walk from Beale Street, Arrive Memphis is a vibrant hub with an eclectic design – think exposed brick walls, jazzy black-and-white patterned bathrooms and chic light fixtures. There’s a bakery and bar in the lobby, while live music bar Earnestine & Hazel’s, the spot where Aretha Franklin, B. B. King, Tina Turner and Ray Charles all used to hang out, in classic Memphis style, is a two-minute walk away.

Laura French was a guest of memphistravel.com

From the moment you come through the gates of La Bastide, you know you’re in for a treat. Set in extensive gardens 10 miles south of St-Rémy-de-Provence, this striking old French country house is the location for one of Stirred Travels’ extraordinary culinary adventures – a fantastic luxury holiday where you can master the art of cooking simple, delicious French food with a renowned chef.

On arrival we were greeted with the warmest of welcomes with drinks and canapés – a chilled glass of champagne, homemade parmesan shortbread and tapenade crostini, an amuse-bouche of what was to come – on the charming terrace, under the shade of the huge, ancient plane trees.

We were introduced to our fellow guests, who had come from far and wide – Australia, Hong Kong, Ireland and Britain – a fascinating and eclectic mix of people, all with a shared passion for food; and of course the charismatic chef, Neil Borthwick, of The French House in Soho, who would be sharing his extensive knowledge with us during the week.

To whet our appetites, we were given a bound recipe book of the dishes we would be helping to prepare, plus the itinerary for the week, which struck the perfect balance between hands-on cooking and restorative down time, interspersed with interesting trips to local markets and the best restaurants and artisan producers in the area.

The location

With thick stone walls which keep it cool, the house has 11 en-suite rooms, all air-conditioned, and original stone staircases and fireplaces. There are numerous places to sit and read a book, or compare tasting notes with fellow Stirred travellers.

Outside, you can relax on a sun lounger by the pool, borrow a hat from a basket under the pergola next to it and take a stroll around the lovely gardens, or have a glass of wine in the dappled shade of the wide terrace, which is bordered by a flowerbed filled with spectacular hydrangeas with flowerheads the size of bowling balls.

Patrick Obert, who co-founded Stirred Travel in 2016, seeks out extraordinary European locations for the company’s unique culinary escapes, matching acclaimed chefs with exceptional regional food, in a relaxed house-party atmosphere. Between 12 and 16 weeks a year are hosted in luxury properties in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, with a selection of notable chefs including Spanish chef and restaurateur José Pizarro, Jeremy Lee from Quo Vadis and Jake Simpson, former head chef of Bocca di Lupo.

The cooking

Our fabulous chef Neil, who is married to the Michelin-starred celebrity chef Angela Hartnett of Murano, was a brilliant teacher, ably assisted by fellow chef Carolyn, creating delicious French food using simple ingredients, cooked well. Despite being a protégé of Gordon Ramsay, Neil is patient, calm and relaxed, and was happy to let us crack on with his recipes, each guest tackling a different part of the menu for one of the following meals, with a little gentle, positive guidance along the way.

There is no pressure; guests can do as much or as little as they want, but Neil’s passion for food is infectious, as is his respect for the ingredients. Time flew by as we chopped and stirred, listening to entertaining anecdotes of his life in busy kitchens with an array of different chefs. Every dish has a history, where he learnt to cook it, the mistakes he made along the way, which all adds to the flavour.

There is a real sense of achievement as you sit down to lunch at the long table outside the kitchen after a morning cooking, and tuck into the most wonderful baked sea bass en papillote with artichoke barigoule, a traditional Provençal recipe cooked in stock, followed by a light but chewy pavlova, which we all had a hand in preparing.

Following a relaxed afternoon by the pool and a siesta, we were invited to sit at the long bar in the open kitchen in the evening and watch, or help, Neil make dinner, a drink in hand courtesy of charming Finn, who looked after all the guests so well. He told us that a fabulous wine we enjoyed with dinner one night was made by a former fireman who learnt viticulture by watching videos on YouTube.

Every meal was delicious, without exception, and despite wolfing down everything from an incredible lobster salad or rabbit with mustard sauce to steak tartare on crostini (which I was dubious about but actually thoroughly enjoyed), thanks to some clever alchemy from Neil, you never felt uncomfortably full.

Like the holiday, the menu was perfectly balanced, with so many wonderful vegetables, beautifully cooked to bring out their full flavour; I discovered that traditional French food needn’t be rich and heavy, it can be clean and light, too.

We also learnt how to make bread, pissaladière – a fabulous caramelised onion tart – chicken liver parfait and gazpacho. Puddings were a real highlight: we made choux pastry for Paris-Brest, brioche, savarin soaked in cassis, and lemon tart. I can’t wait to recreate all the dishes at home for family and friends.

Out and about

It’s not all about the cooking though. The itinerary is carefully planned with excursions to villages such as Eygalières and Ménerbes, local artisan producers and the best eateries, including the famous Le Bistrot du Paradou.

We also went to the bustling market in the pretty town of St-Rémy, which sold an array of goodies from linen clothes and block-printed tablecloths, olive-wood bowls and lavender to fantastic fruit and vegetables, truffles, jewellery and pottery. There was enough time to peruse the vibrant stalls, have a coffee and watch the world go by, before visiting a local goat farm, where we met the cheeky livestock, learned about the family-run business and sampled amazing fresh goat’s cheese.

En route to a lovely lunch at the popular Edú restaurant in St-Rémy, our knowledgeable local guide told us about the legend of the mistral in Provence – the strong winds that follow the rain and are key to agricultural productivity as they prevent mould forming on crops. The mistral is reflected in everything from the landscape (with cypress trees planted as windbreaks) to the architecture (the houses face south with no windows on the wind-facing north side) – and even the art, as depicted in Van Gogh’s swirling clouds and wind-bent trees in works such as “Starry Night”.

The verdict

Several of the guests were solo travellers, and many were return customers. I can see why. Stirred Travel has perfected the recipe for culinary holidays: a decent dollop of cooking, a sprinkling of relaxation, a handful of conviviality, a slice of luxury and a spoonful of charm. Whether you’re a serious foodie, or just keen to brush up on your cooking skills in a relaxed and spoiling environment, with great, like-minded company, Stirred Travel’s culinary breaks will leave you hungry for more.

Xandie Nutting was a guest of Stirred Travel; stirredtravel.com

Bluffton, S.C.

This 2021 lodge-style home near the coast in the Lowcountry has a studio accessory dwelling unit (ADU) above a carriage-house garage with a covered front porch, wood floors, a full bath, and a galley kitchen.

The three-bedroom main home has marsh views, a double-height living room with reclaimed beams and a loft, and a kitchen with dolomite counters. A screened porch and balconies overlook the leafy property. $4,125,000. Amanda Cutrer, Palmetto Bluff Real Estate Company, (843) 874-3558.

Gladwyne, Pa.

Built in 1920, the Normandy-style Wooded Hill estate, on almost 7 acres in a Philadelphia suburb, has a refreshed contemporary two-bedroom guesthouse with a floor-to-ceiling art-piece fireplace, a sunroom, and a wall of windows.

The eight-bedroom central home has seven fireplaces, formal dining and living rooms, a billiards room, and a lower level with a theater and gym. The lot includes a pool, a golf green, formal gardens, and stone paths. $7,495,000. Lavinia Smerconish, Compass, (610) 547-6637.

Santa Monica, Calif.

In the Ocean Park neighborhood, this 1911 expanded and updated one-story Craftsman shares a lot with a 2004 one-bedroom modern guesthouse with polished concrete floors, a second-level deck, and oversize windows.

The two-bedroom main home has coffered ceilings, roofline windows, stained glass, and glass doors that open to a fenced courtyard with a mature sycamore and an orange tree. The Santa Monica Pier is about a 10-minute drive. $3,350,000. Mike Deasy and Sara Clephane, Compass, (310) 275-8880.

West Coxsackie, N.Y.

Haas Hill, a more than 148- acre estate in the Hudson Valley, includes a renovated twostory cottage circa 1950 with a full bath and kitchenette, plus a cabin set up as a kids’ bunkhouse. The main Englishcountry-style home has three bedrooms, a kitchen with a new AGA stove, heated terra-cotta floors, and a built-in banquette.

The wooded property features a pool, barn, and wildflower garden. $2,450,000. Raj Kumar, Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty, (201) 689-0533.

Woodbury, Ga.

The Cove, a 136-plus-acre property along the Pine Mountain Escarpment and Flint River about 45 miles from Columbus, has a main lodge and three furnished guest buildings, including the one seen here, with vaulted wood ceilings and a bay window reading nook.

The main three-bedroom has an open plan with a stone fireplace and water-facing deck. Also on the grounds are five ponds, waterfalls, a pool and spa, a tennis court, a dock, and a boathouse. $4,400,000. Jon Kohler, Jon Kohler & Associates, (850) 508-2999.

Thornton, Colo.

About 20 minutes north of Denver, this 1955 ranch home has a chalet studio ADU with a bed nook, a pass-through galley kitchen, laundry, and a deck.

Across a fenced, xeriscaped courtyard with fountains is the two-bedroom main home, which has an open living area and a kitchen with a granite peninsula and sliders to the back. A pool, community center, and park are walking distance. $515,000. Kim Davis, LIV Sotheby’s International Realty, (303) 882-0888.

Politics is the art of human beings solving problems without killing each other. Sometimes those efforts fail, never more memorably than in these classic political thrillers. They run the gamut from true storytelling about presidential corruption and the rescue of American diplomats in Iran to entirely fictional yet still believable stories about predatory drug companies and communist surveillance operations.

‘Foreign Correspondent’ (1940)

Hotshot New York Globe crime reporter John Jones (Joel McCrea) is dispatched by his editor, Mr. Powers (Harry Davenport), to Europe on the precipice of WWII to figure out what is about to envelop the continent in director Alfred Hitchcock’s thriller. There Jones discovers an espionage ring bent on selling out the U.K. and the Netherlands to their adversaries.

While the movie functions superbly as a “bold call to action to stop the looming threat of Nazism in Europe,” it also “boasts some of Hitchcock’s most memorable sequences and technical tricks, making for one set piece after another of formal virtuosity” despite the era’s technical limitations, said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)

‘The Conversation’ (1974)

Arriving the same year that a wiretapping scandal brought down the administration of President Richard Nixon, director Francis Ford Coppola’s quietly devastating thriller follows Harry N. Caul (Gene Hackman), a surveillance wizard hired to record a conversation between Ann (Cindy Williams) and Mark (Frederic Forrest) at the behest of the shadowy Director (Robert Duvall). Harry’s growing suspicion that the young couple is in danger fuels a twisty narrative that keeps both him and the audience guessing and appraising their relationship with technology. A film that is more than just a “product of its Watergate-era anxieties,” Coppola’s haunting masterpiece is a “chillingly prescient and masterfully crafted character study with themes that echo louder than ever in our hyper-surveilled world,” said Andy Punter at InSession Film. (Prime Video)

‘All the President’s Men’ (1976)

While it may seem quaint by today’s standards, the Watergate scandal consumed American politics for more than a year, ended Richard Nixon’s presidency and permanently decreased the public’s level of trust in the government. Director Alan J. Pakula’s film recreates the sleuthing of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward (Robert Redford) and Carl Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) that blew the conspiracy wide open.

“All the President’s Men” mesmerizes by faithfully depicting the banal proceduralism of good journalism. A film that “intentionally underplays the enormity of the central conspiracy and eludes any histrionic moralizing,” this “subversive detective story” brilliantly “rejects mythologizing the pivotal history behind it,” said Wes Greene at Slant Magazine. (Prime Video)

‘The Official Story’ (1985)

Alicia (Norma Aleandro) and Roberto (Héctor Alterio) are middle-class Argentines with connections in government and business and an adopted daughter, Gaby (Analia Castro), that they adore. But Alicia soon begins to suspect that her daughter is one of the children grotesquely stolen from the desaparecidos, dissidents disappeared by the country’s authoritarian junta, and that her husband might be in on the repugnant scheme.

Director Luis Puenzo has made a “must-see film that, in light of the real events, paints a haunting picture of the cruelty humans inflict on one another” and also delicately “honors the memory of those affected by the tragedy that unfolded in Argentina,” said Matthew Jones at Philosophy in Film. (Tubi)

‘The Constant Gardener’ (2005)

“The Constant Gardener” is the first great paranoid thriller of the 21st century. When his wife, Tessa (Rachel Weisz), dies mysteriously, British diplomat Justin Quayle (Ralph Fiennes) gradually discovers layers about who she really was, first suspecting her of being unfaithful and then unraveling a conspiracy to test a new drug on unwitting African patients. Helmed by the great Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles (“City of God”), it is a “brainy thriller” whose “visuals create an overwhelming sense of the world gone mad, the world falling down around the hero just as he's beginning to understand the way it works,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘The Lives of Others’ (2006)

At once both chilling and moving, director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck has created what may stand as the most enduring indictment of the 20th century authoritarian surveillance state. Set in East Germany near the end of its communist regime, it is about Stasi officer Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe), who begins surveilling a prominent playwright, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), and his mistress, Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

The monastic Wiesler eventually comes to believe Dreyman is harmless and in the process doubts the very foundations of autocracy itself. A film that is “alert to the Kafkaesque absurdity of everyday life” in communist regimes, it “has a maturity and breadth of vision rarely found in a debut feature,” said Geoffrey Macnam at Sight and Sound. (Prime Video)

‘Argo’ (2012)

Ben Affleck directs and stars in this zippy thriller about the clandestine efforts to exfiltrate six American diplomats who managed to escape before they became hostages at the U.S. embassy during the Iranian Revolution. Affleck stars as CIA officer Tony Mendez, who concocts a creative cover story about how the diplomats are in Iran working on a Canadian science-fiction film. Affleck “displays a fearlessness when it comes to mixing genre” in this “part-comic, part-thriller narrative” whose mostly-but-not-entirely-true twists and turns “ensure your nails are down to the quick by the end credits,” said Amber Wilkinson at Eye for Film. (Prime Video)

‘Manuscripts Don’t Burn’ (2013)

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof’s haunting “Manuscripts Don’t Burn” had to be smuggled into the Cannes Film Festival to protect its cast and crew, who remain anonymous to this day. It follows two government assassins, Khosrow and Morteza, who are tasked with tracking down, torturing and killing a group of dissidents suspected of distributing a manuscript.

That document pertains to what became known in Iran as the “Chain Murders,” a series of assassinations of intellectuals and dissidents in the 1990s. A “harrowing masterpiece,” it is an “unflinching look at creative oppression” that stands as an “entirely singular film experience,” said Joshua Brunsting at CriterionCast. (Prime Video)

‘Official Secrets’ (2019)

The combination of arrogance and doctored intelligence that led the United States and its allies into the 2003 Iraq War is almost made for Hollywood. In “Official Secrets,” real-life British intelligence officer Katharine Gun (Keira Knightley) uncovers evidence of a joint British-American conspiracy to spy on and then pressure diplomats from countries on the U.N. Security Council to secure their votes for a resolution authorizing the war.

Martin Bright (Matt Smith) and Peter Beaumont (Matthew Goode) are journalists at The Observer who wrestle with the implications of publishing the story. The film turns a “historical footnote with potent resonance” into a “compelling tale of injustice on an individual and global level,” said Peter Travers at Rolling Stone. (Netflix)

The Odyssey

Directed by Christopher Nolan
★★★★

“Modern mainstream films don’t come more daring, mammoth, and accomplished than Christopher Nolan’s latest,” said Nick Schager in the Daily Beast. But for all the IMAX-size spectacle the director has packed into his hit adaptation of Homer’s 3,000-year-old adventure tale, what makes the movie special is that “Nolan cares deeply about his story’s human element, and there’s rarely a moment when the former overshadows the latter.” A grave Matt Damon plays Odysseus, a military hero who endures a 10-year journey home after the Trojan War, though it’s Anne Hathaway who “proves the film’s emotional core,” playing Penelope, Odysseus’ faithful, agonized wife. “Many of Nolan’s set pieces are marvelous,” said Kyle Smith in The Wall Street Journal. Odysseus and his dwindling crew battle giants, match wits with a Cyclops, and are transformed into pigs by Circe, embodied, in the film’s “most beguiling performance,” by Samantha Morton. But while The Odyssey is certainly “among the year’s best pictures,” I can’t call it one of Nolan’s best. The characters are “not as sharply drawn” as those in his Batman films, the emotions aren’t as deep as in Interstellar, and his current blockbuster isn’t “as propulsively exciting or as suspenseful as Oppenheimer.” Still, Nolan’s passion for movies is evident “in every frame,” said Manohla Dargis in The New York Times. “Even when his characters don’t stir you, his filmmaking does,” and he’s “in his cinematic wheelhouse” as he slips fluidly between the story’s multiple time frames. To me, “His Odyssey is a classic in every sense, a transporting affirmation of the art and a work of pure cinema.”

Her Private Hell

Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
★★

“Sex, violence, neon, and leather: Nicolas Winding Refn is back,” said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. Unfortunately, the first film in a decade from the once acclaimed director of Drive “feels like someone trying to rekindle a fire that went out years ago.” Dropping co-stars Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets) and Charles Melton (Riverdale) into a bold-colored dystopia, Refn again tries to find filmic beauty in both sex and violence. “And sometimes he does,” reminding you why he has a devoted fan base. More often, Her Private Hell is merely “an echo of something better.” This “disaster” of a film doesn’t even have a story, said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. Thatcher’s Elle is trying to reconnect with her disreputable father while battling an evil stepmother and trying to avoid a brutal serial killer. Throw in Melton as a soldier trying to find his missing daughter, and the “pretentious” results play like a cross between “David Lynch at his most bafflingly obscure” and “the world’s most avant-garde perfume commercial.” Her Private Hell is “very much not for everyone,” said Chase Hutchinson in The Wrap. Instead, it’s “primarily a series of visceral, vibrant, and increasingly violent visions that you have to let wash over you.” And it helps to be a Refn devotee. “For those who’ve appreciated the way the filmmaker has increasingly stripped away plot to get right to making the equivalent of nightmarish neon paintings, it’s really something special.”

“I can’t imagine a world without books,” said Nicole Russell in USA Today. But most Americans already “live in that world.” That’s the “devastating” takeaway from a viral new story in The Atlantic, which details why “the age of reading is over.” It notes that the number of Americans who read for pleasure has dropped more than 40% over 20 years — the decline cuts across age groups, gender, and education levels — and that fewer than half of adults read a single book a year. Reading progress for elementary students has stalled and only about a third of high school seniors are “proficient” at analyzing complex fictional themes. We can blame smartphones, social media, and short-form videos, all of which deliver “perpetual hits of dopamine” at the expense of the deeper analysis and comprehension gained by reading. It’s no wonder President Trump was re-elected, said Marsha Lederman in The Globe and Mail (Canada). When the electorate relies on TikTok for knowledge, “you get today’s dumbed-down, polarized world on fire.”

Reading is not “going extinct,” said David Wallace-Wells in The New York Times. Yes, fewer Americans are reading for pleasure, but those who do are reading more. Book sales are near-record highs; there are now 70% more independent bookstores than in 2020; and the amount of time that young Americans spend reading has actually crept up from 8.4 minutes a day in 2003 to 11.7 minutes in 2022. And let’s not pretend there was ever a golden age of reading, said Joel J. Miller in his Substack newsletter. In the supposedly idyllic pre-smartphone age, the best sellers were often genre junk and millions of Americans “read nothing, read little, read badly, or read mainly to kill time.” Worrying about the future is “easy to do when you romanticize the past.”

My worry is we’re not alarmed enough, said Rod Dreher in his Substack newsletter. Hitler came to power in a highly literate Germany, but the Nazis took advantage of movies and radio to push simple messages with immediate emotional impact. We know how that ended, and in our postliterate age, a future dictator would “have an incomparably easier time of it.” Don’t believe me? Consider “the college students who are being memed into hating Jews” by social media. And things will only get worse as more people use AI to digest, analyze, and make judgments on everything from study papers to legal documents and news reports. By giving up on the hard work of reading, Americans “are training themselves not to think, but to obey.”

South Korea has some wondrous ancient sites, and none are more important than those around Gyeongju, says Oliver Berry in National Geographic Traveller. Set among forested hills a couple of hours by high-speed train from Seoul, this historic town is a lovely place to wander, with its leafy avenues and traditional hanok houses and gardens.

But the height of its glory came more than 1,000 years ago: from 57BC until AD935 it was the capital of the kingdom of Silla, and for some time, one of the largest cities on Earth. The “most obvious legacy” of that time are the royal tombs “dotted around” the town – more than 100 mounds like giant “molehills”. Several of these have yielded extraordinary treasures, many of which are on display at the town’s dazzling National Museum.

Alongside Baekje and Goguryeo, Silla was one of three kingdoms that ruled the Korean peninsula together for hundreds of years, until the late 7th century when, with the help of Tang Chinese forces, it defeated the others. Many of Gyeongju’s treasures date from before that victory – including the 11,000 items found in the Cheonmachong (or “heavenly horse”) tomb, believed to have been created in the 5th or 6th century.

Today, visitors can enter the mound itself, where golden crowns, jewelled caps, suits of armour and gilt-bronze sandals sit under spotlights in the “inky” darkness. The most famous item is a birch-bark saddle emblazoned with a prancing horse – the design from which the tomb takes its modern name.

Several other sites around town also have roots in the Silla period, including the Woljeonggyo Bridge, a recent reconstruction of a structure built in AD760. Flanked by “ornate” gatehouses, and spanning 60m, it is the country’s largest wooden bridge. Grander still is Bulguksa Temple, set on the slopes of Mount Tohan, nine miles from Gyeongju. Although restored and altered many times over the years, the temple retains various treasures from the 8th and 9th centuries, including stone pagodas, and gilt-bronze statues of the seated Buddha.

Built to celebrate Škoda’s 130th birthday, the Fabia 130 is a sporty hatchback – a souped-up version of the top-tier Monte Carlo trim, and the fastest Fabia yet. With a top speed of 141mph, it does 0-62mph in 7.4secs; and bhp is up from 148 to 175 thanks to a beefy 1.5-litre turbocharged petrol engine, paired with the seven-speed automatic gearbox. Tweaks have been made to the suspension, throttle control, traction and steering, said The Telegraph.

According to Autocar, the 130 is a “warm hatch”, not “hot enough” to earn Škoda’s sporty vRS badge – but some proper hardware engineering has gone into it. It’s “satisfying to drive quickly”: an entertaining but comfortable ride. The chassis is “nicely judged”, the 18-inch alloy wheels have good grip, but the steering lacks feel, and it’s a shame there’s no option for a manual gearbox.

Inside the Fabia 130 it’s like going back to the mid-2010s – which is great for usability, with lots of physical buttons, knobs and dials, but “old and a bit dull” to look at, said Car Magazine. All in all, the 130 is a pleasantly “warmed-over version of this middle-aged small car”. It’ll cost you around £30,000, and for that you could get a faster Mini Cooper S; but the Fabia offers better value: it’s a superior ride and is a more practical all-rounder.

“And why do you think you are sick?”

I knew why I was sick. I was sick because I had a cold. And I had a cold because I have a toddler. And toddlers are, as far as I can tell, living, breathing vectors of disease.

But when I gave that answer to Dr Melanie Gatt, pithily I might add, on my first proper morning at Mayrlife, she looked at me with the patient expression, ironically, of someone explaining something to a toddler.

Because at Mayrlife, it turns out there is much more to every sickness. Here, in a pristine clinic on the banks of an even more pristine glacial Austrian lake, illness is not simply bad luck that happens to you. It is a signal. And almost every signal, according to the Mayr method on which the whole place is built, traces back in some way to the gut.

It is fair to say that when I arrived at Mayrlife, and having read some of the reviews, I was a tad sceptical and a bit more than a tad apprehensive. No alcohol I could just about do, but no caffeine? And no sugar? Well that sounded like no fun at all. I was fully braced for days of being upsold pseudoscience by people in white linen. But I left, to my considerable and ongoing surprise, a convert. Not to a diet, but to an entire way of thinking about what it takes to live a good, healthy life.

Why stay here?

Mayrlife is tucked away on the banks of Lake Altaussee, a glacial jewel hidden in the mountains of the Salzkammergut, roughly two hours from Salzburg. Austria is not a country that does things by halves and if you come to Mayrlife solely for the views, you will not be disappointed. Throughout my stay I felt connected with nature in a way that is a lot harder to achieve in a city in the UK. In fact the spa town has a history of salt mining that stretches back centuries and some of Mayrlife’s treatments involve that very salt.

The medical methodology underpinning everything here was developed by Dr Franz Xaver Mayr, a 19th-century Austrian physician who became convinced that the health of the digestive system was the key to overall wellbeing. In essence, it was Mayr’s view that an unhappy or inflamed gut undermines the immune system and that a great many of the ailments we treat as separate misfortunes, such as my cold, are in fact the same story told in different symptoms. This was the crux of Dr Gatt’s question and it is the philosophical backbone of what is now called Modern Mayr Medicine. It is a fundamentally holistic way of treating ailments through a personalised nutritional plan and medical treatments.

If that sounds like a lot of hard work for a holiday, CEO Dr Dieter Resch and his medical team deliver the whole experience with the elegance and class of a five-star hotel as well as the rigour and scientific knowledge of a private health clinic. It was clear from my very first day at Mayrlife that these were not people gesturing vaguely at science. They were doing the actual thing.

Mayrlife has 64 rooms, ranging from comfortable doubles to suites, penthouses and even private residences. The park residences are Mayrlife’s most generous offering. Containing a loft-style living area with kitchen, two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a sweeping balcony with lake views, they also come with a private spa replete with steam bath and sauna.

While those are for the rich and famous (of which Mayrlife counts many as clientele, discreetly of course) even the rooms for us mere mortals are perfectly appointed. Every room in the building has a view of either the lake, the Dachstein Glacier or the village below. The interiors are warm and soft, while the beds are undoubtedly the most comfortable I’ve ever slept in. In fact, much of the experience of being in the room is very similar to that of a high-end hotel. Just with more materials offering you ultrasounds and IVs. And, of course, no chocolates on the pillow.

Eating and drinking

Food at Mayrlife is both a form of therapy and a learning exercise. The kitchen uses regional and organic ingredients to produce menus built around the principles of gut regeneration. They are also calibrated precisely to each individual’s diagnostics. Those initial assessments with Dr Gatt, tested through a muscle-response exercise, what your body is and is not tolerating when it comes to a number of food groups. That test, along with blood analysis, forms the foundation for a custom nutrition plan that evolves throughout the stay.

It is worth saying the meals you get at Mayrlife are not like the meals you’ve had at a hotel. They are broth heavy, smaller in volume than a typical hotel dinner and guests are encouraged to chew at least 40 times before they swallow. All of the meals I had at Mayrlife were delicious, but more importantly they felt nourishing. If the treatment at Mayrlife is holistic, that shines through in the food. The plate is put together as a whole, with no one aspect a star, rather the ingredients sing in unison. That is not to say I wasn’t dreaming of chocolate Hobnobs by day three. But they make it a lot easier to follow the plan by making the meals themselves so delicious.

Somewhere around day three I was handed a single sheet of paper headed “10 Ingredients for Your Well-Being”. It is a mantra for eating and one that on the face of it I knew but I very rarely did.

For example, begin the day with warm water and herbal tea rather than coffee. Eat raw food only before four in the afternoon, because raw vegetables in the evening sit and ferment in the gut rather than doing anyone any good. Try to leave four or five hours between meals so the digestive system can finish what the sheet euphemistically called its “clean-up”, like “a kitchen after cooking”. Use cold-pressed oils and keep them in the fridge. Everyone should have a good breakfast, a hearty lunch and a light dinner. Chew properly. Taste things. In fact, the most radical instruction on the entire page was to pay attention to what you were eating while you were eating it. That means no phones in the dining room and no chatting too. They place a real emphasis on mindful eating.

None of this is revolutionary, and that is precisely the point. What Mayrlife does is take a set of principles you already basically know to be true and remove every obstacle to actually following them. This means that after a few days the new rhythm stops feeling like a regime and starts feeling like the obvious way to do things. By the end of the week, I could see the error of my ways. Not only did I sleep better than I had done since my toddler was born, but the idea of stuffing myself full with pasta and then immediately going to sleep no longer appealed. It was fundamentally a change of mindset.

What distinguishes Mayrlife from the more spartan end of the detox resort market is the cooking school. Guests don’t just eat differently for a week, they can learn how to replicate it. The class uses everyday kitchen equipment and demonstrations showing how to put the dishes together, equipping guests for when they return home. The genius of it is in that implication. This is not a week you survive and then leave behind, but a way of doing things for the rest of your life.

Things to do

A typical Mayrlife day arrives, printed and personalised in your room. The diagnostics that underpin all of this, be it the blood analysis, tolerance testing, a 3D body scan, the myodiagnostic, are of a level usually associated with elite sport or at least very specialist private medicine. But it was Dr Gatt’s calm, evidence-led way of explaining the results that made me excited to see and feel their effects. The list of treatments Mayrlife offer feels limitless and they can range from psychotherapies to IVs to ultrasounds. What Willy Wonka was to chocolate factories, Mayrlife is to medical treatments.

My treatments ranged from the restorative to the genuinely bracing. Cryotherapy takes place in a chamber at minus 110C. This is a temperature the body treats as a full-blown emergency and responds to accordingly, accelerating recovery and dampening inflammation. The IHHT hypoxytraining alternates the oxygen you breathe to mimic high altitude and stimulate the body’s cellular machinery. Water plasma therapy and water shiatsu take place in a highly concentrated saltwater pool. There is a Swiss stone pine sauna, multiple infrared cabins, and a beauty concept developed alongside Dr Barbara Sturm, the skincare physician whose anti-inflammatory approach has acquired something of a cult following among skincare aficionados. The idea, consistent with everything else at Mayrlife, is to work from the inside out.

It is hard to say exactly what benefit each treatment brought me, given I had never had very many of them before. But I certainly felt rejuvenated and restored after the treatments and my fitness watch notified me of an improvement in my recovery times after exercise and my sleep scores. Data begets data but it’s hard to argue with the numbers.

For those who wish to venture out of the resort, the surrounding landscape is spectacular. There are guided hikes and mountain bike tours as well as tennis and a nine-hole golf course in the immediate vicinity. The lake itself is perfect for a dip – although I was warned off that because of my cold – and it is hard not to lose yourself in the magnificence of your surroundings, even if it’s just for a little walk to start your day.

The verdict

It is hard to compare the experience in Mayrlife. The comparison to make is less with other hotels than with places where you can get private diagnostic medicine and a week of serious clinical intervention. It is worth noting as well that the support does not stop when your stay does: Mayrlife’s medical team continues to guide you once you are home. In fact the number of repeat visitors is testament to the fact that their programme works for a large number of guests.

It is far more than a wellbeing reset, and far more than just a beautiful setting. The benefit of being shown that every choice you make when it comes to food and your gut can make a massive difference. And that there are better choices available.

So why was I sick? Well I still blame my toddler. But I am still following some of the Mayr method at home. I’m practising mindful eating and taking the supplements I was prescribed. But more than the effect on my day to day has been an effect on the way I view eating and the choices I make about what I put in my gut. Did I wolf down the free chocolate Hobnobs on the flight home? Yes. But as Frank Sinatra would have said if he’d been to Altaussee, I did it (the) Mayr way.

Mayrlife Medical Health Resort, Altaussee, Austria. Programmes from €2,990 (7 nights, all treatments and food included). Rooms from €460/night. mayrlife.com

Ana Mendieta “made art from blood, feathers, flowers and sand and in such fresh ways, you’d think these primeval substances were new inventions”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian.

“She literally played with fire, drawing a human figure with gunpowder on the ground or on the trunk of a tree, then setting it alight”; the resulting scorched shadows bring to mind the victims of a nuclear bomb or the dead of Pompeii.

Mendieta was born in Cuba in 1948, and when the revolution came, she was sent to the US, where she always felt like an outsider. “Home, for her, was the past”, and she made it her mission to “excavate the very origins of art and mythology”.

Mendieta worked in many disciplines: painting, film, photography, performance, sculpture. She used “organic matter”: a human silhouette made of flowers; a hand imprint in a muddy wasteland; a fertility goddess figure carved in limestone. Her art is “irresistible”, and creates “a personal mythology … as weirdly coherent as William Blake’s”.

If she had lived, Mendieta would have been “at the forefront of the art of this century”. But in 1985, aged only 36, she died – falling from the balcony of her 34th-floor apartment in New York, in suspicious circumstances. The artist Carl Andre, her husband, was tried for murder, and acquitted.

The show is packed with “raw, timely works”, said Chloë Ashby in The Independent. They “compel us to pay attention to the natural world”. Scattered throughout are pieces from her Silueta Series, begun in 1973. Many of these are photographs, documenting the artist’s practice of stamping human silhouettes into mud and observing as “weeds and brambles” or other growths rendered them invisible.

Elsewhere, a famous video sees the artist next to a stream, “pouring a pail of cow’s blood over her body”. Blood spilling from her limbs, she lies down in “a mass of soft white chicken feathers”. When she stands, she is “a woman transformed, part-human, part-bird, bizarrely and brilliantly engaged with nature”.

Many of Mendieta’s concerns – “feminism, environmentalism, anti-colonialism” – resonate today, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Yet this is not a show about “identity politics”. It is, rather, “filled with a rich visual poetry” that is “both forceful and fragile”.

One photograph from the Silueta Series, for instance, sees a human outline half buried on a hillside, “arms clamped by its sides in the manner of an Egyptian mummy”. Another sees Mendieta herself deep in a rocky cavity, as if consumed by the wildflowers sprouting around her.

The exhibition doesn’t make a martyr of her: Andre is barely mentioned, and this is for the best. Staged with “flair” and “sensitivity”, it crackles with “a sense of pagan magic” – and it’s by far the best show Tate Modern has mounted this summer.

Tate Modern, London SE1. Until 17 January

Interest in majoring in history may have declined over the course of the 21st century, but the field remains a powerful engine for streaming television content. Audiences are still flocking to true stories as well as fictional narratives set in an authentic past. Even in a landscape full of painstakingly rendered period dramas, these eight superb series stand out from the historical crowd.

‘Roots’ (1977)

“Roots” is the story of Kunta Kinte (LeVar Burton), seized from what is now The Gambia by slave trader Captain Davies (Edward Asner) in 1767 and then sold to the family of John Reynolds (Lorne Greene) in colonial Maryland. The story spans generations, with the narrative following Kunta’s daughter, Kizzy (Leslie Uggams), and grandson, Chicken George (Ben Vereen), who finally tastes freedom after the Civil War.

Unsparing in its depiction of slavery’s bottomless brutality and shocking cruelty, the series, which debuted just six months after the U.S. bicentennial celebrations, became a ratings sensation. A series whose “very existence seems remarkable” given the “overall whiteness of popular culture at that time,” it is the “most important scripted program in broadcast network history,” said Matt Zoller Seitz at Vulture. (Prime Video)

‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1995)

One of the most frequently adapted works of literature, Jane Austen’s 1813 novel, “Pride and Prejudice,” shines as never before or since in director Simon Langton’s celebrated, six-part limited series, which made Colin Firth a star. Firth plays Mr. Darcy, a wealthy aristocrat who first repels and then falls for Elizabeth Bennet (Jennifer Ehle), one of the struggling Mrs. Bennet’s five daughters and a razor-sharp wit.

Ehle and Firth have spectacular chemistry, and the runway of a limited series allows the creators space to fully explore the depth of Austen’s narrative. The BBC’s masterpiece is a “rare instance in which the screen adaptation of a novel serves as an equally worthy companion piece to the written source material,” said Tanya Pai at Vox. (Peacock)

‘Downton Abbey’ (2010-2015)

While it lends itself to easy parody, creator Julian Fellowes’ “Downton Abbey” is an ongoing global sensation, including three feature-length movies — all for good reason. Set on a crumbling English estate, the narrative begins before the First World War, as a family of aristocrats headed by Robert (Hugh Bonneville) and Cora Crawley (Elizabeth McGovern) and their three daughters navigate the social, political and economic changes sweeping the country.

The truest stroke of genius, though, was dividing the narrative between these often clueless elites and the cooks, servants and other employees of the estate, whose dramas are rendered with convincing detail and given voice by a superb ensemble over the course of six seasons. The series succeeds with “addictively gossipy tales of relationships and rivalries” as well as “longer arcs of social change and historical unravelling,” said Adam Sweeting at The Arts Desk. (Peacock)

‘The Last Kingdom’ (2015-2022)

Despite the inevitable comparisons to the fictional universe in “Game of Thrones,” the action in “The Last Kingdom” is grounded in history. The fictional character of Uhtred (Alexander Dreymon), a wealthy nobleman raised as a boy by invading Vikings, works with the real historical figure of King Alfred (David Dawson) to unify the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and fend off the Great Heathen Army sent by Danish invaders.

Adapted from Bernard Cornwell’s popular “Saxon Stories” series of novels about the birth of England, the BBC Two production, which later moved to Netflix, outclasses a number of similar projects. The dedication to character development “turns every single small, seemingly innocuous moment on this show into a moment of insight and significance,” adding “richness and depth” to its “captivating” storytelling, said Kyle Fowle at The A.V. Club. (Netflix)

‘The Crown’ (2016-2023)

One of the more ambitious and successful productions undertaken in the streaming era, “The Crown” follows the life of Queen Elizabeth II from when she was a young woman thrust unexpectedly into power until the death of Princess Diana and her son Charles’ remarriage to Camilla Bowles. The principal characters, including Queen Elizabeth, are played by three different sets of actors for two seasons each.

The lavish production, which totaled $648 million, landed A-list actors like Dominic West as middle-aged Prince Charles and Olivia Colman as the Queen circa the 1970s, and humanized the royal family without whitewashing their selfishness and privilege. It is a triumph not just because of its “fair-minded characterizations of the Royal Family and the visual extravagances of one of the most expensive shows ever made but also in the deft incorporation of events that shaped U.K. politics, culture and national identity,” said Inkoo Kang at The New Yorker. (Netflix)

‘Alias Grace’ (2017)

“Alias Grace,” one of those shows that likely suffered from the Netflix model of dumping all of its episodes at once, stars Sarah Gadon (“Wayward”) as Grace Marks, a maid convicted of murdering her wealthy employer, Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross) and his housekeeper, Nancy (Anna Paquin). Based on Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel, itself a fictionalized account of a true story, the six-part limited series proceeds along two timelines, with Grace narrating the events of the past to a psychiatrist, Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), who becomes infatuated with her. The show, which meticulously recreates the milieu of 19th-century Canada, is “nothing short of a triumph,” said Rebecca Lea at Den of Geek, bolstered by a “fascinating, intelligent performance” from Cadon as the mysterious, unreliable narrator. (Netflix)

‘It’s a Sin’ (2021)

In 1981 London, three flatmates, Ritchie (Olly Alexander), Colin (Callum Scott Howells) and Roscoe (Omari Douglas) arrive in the big city to chase their dreams. They do so amidst the burgeoning HIV/AIDS crisis that begins as a seemingly distant rumor but eventually consumes many of the characters.

A uniformly excellent ensemble succeeds in depicting this historical tragedy over the ensuing decade by giving its characters authentic, convincing inner lives and never allowing them to lose their sense of joy and purpose amid the suffering that surrounds them. It is a “propulsive, galvanizing, even joyous” series that also serves as a “stirring requiem for the dead, shot through with defiant life,” said James Poniewozik at The New York Times. (HBO Max)

‘Pachinko’ (2022-2024)

Apple TV+ can frustrate with its disinterest in marketing some of its most lush productions, none more so than the gorgeous “Pachinko,” a multilingual historical epic set in Korea and Japan. It is a two-timeline series, following Sunja (Kim Min-ha) in early 20th century Korea and her emigration to Osaka, Japan in 1931 after marrying a Christian minister named Baek Isak (Noh Sang-hyun), and moves back and forth to the 1980s, where an elderly Sunja sees her grandson, Solomon Baek (Jin Ha), trying to succeed in business while navigating lingering discrimination against Koreans.

The series offers viewers insight into a setting — interwar Asia — and themes that should be novel to all but the most ardent historians. The show “ranks among the finest original series Apple has produced,” one whose plot mechanics “illustrate the cyclical nature of generational trauma,” said Alison Herman at Variety. (Apple TV+)

In 2023, the South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh was convicted of murdering his wife, Maggie, and 22-year-old son Paul. The pair had been shot at the family’s hunting estate; Murdaugh claimed to have discovered the bodies after returning from a visit to his mother.

It’s not hard to see why the case “gripped America”, said Robbie Millen in The Times. It involved the “privileged and powerful” – the Murdaughs were big cheeses in the South Carolina Lowcountry – and the man himself, known as “Big Red”, didn’t seem the murdering type: he appeared to be a “loving husband and doting father” with a charming “down-home manner”.

Yet as the novelist James Lasdun shows in this “elegant and intelligent” book, Murdaugh was in fact a fraudster who swindled millions out of clients and law firm colleagues, and was addicted to opioid painkillers. In “Family Man”, Lasdun does a “skilful job of juggling all the elements of the story, which takes some dark and ludicrous turns”.

Prosecutors claimed Murdaugh was driven to murder because his financial deceptions were about to be revealed, said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian. They said he believed that no one would launch proceedings against him while he was dealing with a “tragedy of such biblical proportions”.

At first, Lasdun was sceptical of this theory, refusing to believe that a man with no history of domestic violence could “bring himself to shoot loved ones merely to delay his own imminent financial exposure”. Yet in his “meticulous” retelling – the “prose is pure pleasure” – Lasdun comes to accept that “Big Red” was probably guilty, despite never reaching an “iron-clad conclusion”.

“More than 10 books about the Murdaughs have been published to date”, and HBO and Netflix have both released miniseries about the killings, said Orlando Whitfield in The New York Times. Lasdun “does not pretend to reveal new evidence about the murders”; instead, he relays the tale of the “fall of the house of Murdaugh” in often “staggering” detail.

While at times this threatens to become overwhelming, his approach does “illuminate, to devastating effect”, how the case encompassed many of the “direst aspects of contemporary American life: opioid addiction, litigiousness, brazen mendacity”. And the final chapters are “stunning”. Even now, “there’s more to come”, said Millen in The Times. This May, Murdaugh’s conviction was overturned on appeal, owing to jury interference. A retrial is expected. “I can’t wait to read Lasdun’s musings in an updated paperback.”

In his new role as artistic director of Birmingham Rep, Joe Murphy has got off to a flier, said Alison Brinkworth on WhatsOnStage. Having given us a “sparkling” “Midsummer Night’s Dream” for his main stage debut, we now have this production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, and it is “dazzling” – superbly designed, thrillingly cast and “sure to bring goosebumps of excitement”.

Murphy has deployed a fairly small company, accompanied by a superb seven-piece live orchestra, but as every performance is a head-turner, the evening feels “epic”.

Sondheim’s 1979 musical – about the late 18th-century London barber whose quest for vengeance on the corrupt judge who raped his wife, had him banished and stole his infant daughter leads him into multiple gruesome murders – is given a “grandly monumental staging” that suits the story’s “operatic sweep”, while releasing the musical from any “Victoriana clutter”, said Holly Williams in The Stage.

Fittingly for a tale about how violence corrupts, a vast angel of justice hangs between two staircases, while soot spreads up pale walls and white costumes like a “creeping moral stain”.

Ramin Karimloo brings a “fabulously demonic darkness to his portrayal of Sweeney”, a man who clutches his “personal pain like a knife”, said Rachel Halliburton in The Times. And his performance is more than matched by that of the cabaret star Meow Meow, who makes for a “rip-roaringly Hogarthian” Mrs Lovett, the yellow-clad accomplice who bakes the demon barber’s victims into pies (here, revenge is a dish served hot). But in this production there isn’t a single weak link, “vocally or dramatically”.

In a staging notable for its clarity, visually and otherwise, the singers’ diction is as sharp as a scalpel cutting through ice – “not one sliver of Sondheim’s spikily subtle wit goes missing”; and Leo Munby’s musical direction “brilliantly captures the tale’s jagged emotions”. All told, it’s a deliciously blood-curdling production that “goes for the jugular but ultimately captures your heart”.

The House, Birmingham Rep. Until 15 August.

Christopher Nolan is “hardly a stranger to ambition”, said John Nugent on Empire. His first major film, “Memento”, told its story in two sequences – one that moved forward in time, the other backwards. Since then he has tackled wars, “dreams, wormholes, the nuclear apocalypse and Victorian teleportation machines”. But his adaptation of Homer’s “Odyssey” – the 8th-century BC Greek poem that is the definition of epic – may be his most ambitious yet.

The first feature to be shot entirely on giant Imax 70mm cameras, it is “jaw-detaching” in its scope and scale. Plunging the viewer into a world of both “divine fantasy and grounded realism”, this is filmmaking “at a magnitude” few directors could imagine, let alone execute.

Nolan has produced a “mythic spectacle” that honours its ancient source material, “while also addressing more topical themes of exile, war trauma and survivor’s guilt”, said Wendy Ide in The Observer.

Like the poem, the film unfolds in multiple timelines. The present-day framing takes place on the island where an exhausted Odysseus (Matt Damon) washed up 10 years after the Battle of Troy, and is now held captive by the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron).

In the same time frame, we meet his sad queen Penelope (Anne Hathaway) who – back in Ithaca – is being besieged by “power-hungry suitors”, including Antinous (a marvellously venomous Robert Pattinson), while her restless son Telemachus (Tom Holland) waits for the return of the father he has never known. Incidents from the previous decade are then woven in as Odysseus recovers his battered memory – the deception at Troy, and his adventures in the years after that, including an encounter with the enchantress Circe (Samantha Morton), and a diversion through Hades.

Nolan has conjured some “tremendous” scenes, said Deborah Ross in The Spectator, some of which would not be out of place in a horror film (the cyclops is “truly terrifying”). I had my doubts about Damon’s casting, but in the end he does make you care about the man broken by the years he has lost. And though some may find the modern speech jarring, what’s the alternative? We’d struggle if they spoke in ancient Greek.

But for two hours the film is just set-piece after set-piece, backed by a deafening score, which becomes rather wearying. Yes, it’s short on jokes, said Kevin Maher in The Times; but “The Odyssey” – with its extraordinary cinematography and big ideas “about the impossibility of home” and “the absurdity of heroic individualism in a boundless universe” – is a masterpiece nonetheless.

Film fans are embarking on “epic journeys of their own” to see Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of “The Odyssey” in one of the “few surviving” Imax 70mm cinemas, said The Guardian.

That’s because it’s the first feature film to be shot entirely on 1570 film – “named for the width of the film stock (70mm) and the 15 perforations on each frame”. It’s “the highest-resolution film format in existence”, so it makes sense for fans to watch the Oscar-winning filmmaker’s masterpiece in his “preferred format”, right?

‘Very exclusive’

But getting your hands on “summer’s hottest ticket” is far from easy, said Mashable. Fans are spending “hundreds of dollars”, travelling thousands of miles, and even planning pregnancies around seeing Nolan’s film in Imax 70mm cinemas: the only format that lets you watch “The Odyssey” with the “fullest image possible”.

Those who opt for other cinemas, with formats like the standard 70mm, or 35mm, will have a “sizeable chunk” of the frame cut off. So some of the “sheer vastness of the landscapes that Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema are capturing” will be lost.

Most cinemas shifted to digital around a decade ago and there are just 41 worldwide that are able to show Imax 1570 film, eight of which are in California. The UK is home to three of them: two in London and one in Manchester. No theatres in Asia, Africa or South America can screen Nolan’s film in his intended format, making it a “very exclusive – and very Western – affair”.

I thought the “buzz” around “The Odyssey” being shot on Imax 1570 cameras was “clever marketing hype”, said Charles Pulliam-Moore on The Verge. But to “get a true sense of the story Nolan is telling” you really do need to watch it in an Imax. Many of the scenes are “perfectly fine” in the 35mm format; however, those that feature the film’s “gargantuan monsters” take on a “different gravity” when displayed in the Imax 70mm’s 1.43:1 ratio.

Nolan has made a film that is “immersive” in a way most modern features aren’t. But the higher ticket price coupled with the fact that the “vast majority” of people will never get to watch his film in the way he intended it has prompted accusations that the director is “anti-art and contributing to the culture of obsessive format purism”.

‘Far more fiddly and expensive’

Shooting on 1570 cameras is no easy task as they’re “notoriously heavy, loud and require frequent reloading”, said The Guardian. During “The Odyssey” shoot the film stock had to be changed “every three minutes” and Nolan worked closely with Imax to create a “soundproofing ‘blimp’ to house the 180kg camera to make it quiet enough for him to record dialogue on 1570 for the first time”. Projecting the finished film is also “far more fiddly and expensive” as a highly trained projectionist needs to be present for the entire screening.

But Nolan’s popularity has risen alongside 1570’s “mini comeback”. The number of cinemas able to project these films has risen from 30 to 41 since the release of “Oppenheimer” in 2023. And it’s not just Nolan who has helped spark interest in the format: several other big-name directors have followed suit including Denis Villeneuve who shot “Dune: Part Three” on Imax cameras.

“There’s certainly more demand,” Imax CEO Richard Gelfond told Variety. But adding more 70mm screens isn’t that simple as new Imax film projectors haven’t been made in “about 50 years”. Sources at Imax said many of the parts needed to build them “simply no longer exist”.

Even if Imax does “magically” figure out a way to manufacture more 70mm projectors, there aren’t many cinemas where they could be installed as “exhibitors aren’t building enough auditoriums that are capable of housing its towering 1.43:1 screens because of high construction costs”.

The company remains one of the movie industry’s few “reliable bright spots”, with attendances having “languished” since the pandemic, said Rebecca Rubin in Variety. Buyers have been “circling” and in May it was reportedly in the “early stages of exploring a sale”. For now, Imax is in an “enviable position”.

“It is still one of the great bargains in British culture,” said The Times. An on-the-day Promming ticket at the Albert Hall is just £8 – and the wide variety of “world-class talent you can catch for under a tenner is remarkable”.

Running until 12 September, the “world’s biggest classical music festival” features a jam-packed schedule of 86 concerts, said The Telegraph. Most are in London, but other venues across the UK will also be hosting events in locations including Gateshead, Bristol and Sunderland. It’s a “truly spectacular” line-up.

Edward Gardner and An Alpine Symphony

“Some works are just made to soar at the Royal Albert Hall and Strauss’ widescreen tone poem is one of them,” said The Times. Conductor Edward Gardner will be your “sherpa on this journey up and down the mountain” with the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Expect dazzling vocals from soprano Louise Alder, who will be singing Joseph Canteloube’s celebrated orchestral “Songs of the Auvergne”.

Royal Albert Hall, 27 July

Kafka Fragments

Finnish soprano Anu Komsi and her husband Sakari Oramo perform this hauntingly beautiful recital as part of celebrations to mark György Kurtág’s 100th birthday. It’s a “very different, vanishingly delicate side” to the Hungarian composer’s music, filled with “faint echoes” of Bach, Schumann and Bartók, said The Telegraph.

Bristol Beacon, 9 August

Berlioz’s Requiem

The “biggest beast” is Hector Berlioz’s “Requiem”, written to commemorate the French soldiers in the revolution of July 1830, said The Guardian. Antonio Pappano conducts the “humungous” London Symphony Orchestra plus “extra brass choirs dotted around the Albert Hall”.

Royal Albert Hall, 15 August

Amériques

“Someone at the Proms deserves a pat on the back for including Edgard Varèse’s bracingly vivid ‘Amériques’”, in a season that marks the 250th birthday of the USA, said The Times. The French-born composer wrote this “homage to urban chaos” shortly after he “decamped to New York”. It’s performed together with Dvořák’s “Cello Concerto”.

Royal Albert Hall, 23 August

Martha Argerich

Argerich is 84 years old but the Argentinian pianist’s “astoundingly athletic artistry” is “undimmed”, said The Telegraph. She will be returning to the Proms with the Munich Philharmonic for Beethoven’s “2nd Piano Concerto”, and the concert also contains an overture by “feisty” Parisian composer Louise Farranc.

Royal Albert Hall, 5 September

'Gerontocracy in America: How the Old Are Hoarding Power and Wealth' by Samuel Moyn

“It is a safe bet that the AARP will not be promoting Gerontocracy in America to its 38 million members,” said Alexander Zaitchik in The New Republic. The explosive growth of America’s over-65 population over the past several decades so alarms author Samuel Moyn that his dark prognosis of its consequences “casts a shadow on the very medical advances that enabled it.” The U.S. will soon be home for the first time to as many people over 65 as under 18. Meanwhile, those seniors are six times more likely to vote than 18-to-34-year-olds, and they tend to put their own interests first. Moyn, a Yale law professor, proposes a series of policies aimed at trimming back elder Americans’ political and financial clout. Unfortunately, compared with other variables affecting our politics, age “turns out to hold little explanatory power,” and many seniors are struggling themselves.

“Despite the sometimes acerbic tone of his book, Moyn’s aim isn’t to stick it to the old,” said Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker. Among his suggestions for rebalancing a system that seems to favor the old is to expand entitlements for seniors so that they don’t feel they must cling to housing and jobs to secure a comfortable final chapter in life. But Moyn does want the power of younger voters amplified. Currently, the median age for members of Congress is over 60 and the median age of voters in primaries is 65. To shift the balance toward youth, Moyn offers a range of potential remedies, including making voting a requirement, as Australia does, and even allowing young people to vote twice: once for themselves and a second time for fellow citizens who haven’t yet hit legal voting age.

When he focuses on the elderly’s domination of politics, “Moyn has a point,” said The Economist. There remains no good mechanism for getting rid of lawmakers such as former senator Dianne Feinstein, who was struggling to fulfill the basic demands of her job when she died in office at 90. But Moyn favors mandatory retirement ages in all professions, a policy that may make sense in academia, where some tenured professors hang onto their posts long after their productivity spirals, but less so in other fields, where employers tend to keep paying only those who remain top performers. Also, for a book that claims to stand for youth and progress, American Gerontocracy “often seems oddly conservative,” said Noah Berlatsky in Washington Monthly. Moyn is so certain that concentrated power in the hands of the elderly is unnatural that he’s willing to curtail seniors’ individual rights to restore what he sees as society’s natural order. Because of such radicalism, his is “not a book that will age well.”

'The Face: A Cultural History' by Fay Bound-Alberti

Until the invention of the mirror in the 17th century, said Ginia Bellafante in The New York Times, “most people’s own faces were likely foreign to them.” Fay Bound-Alberti’s “ambitious, entertaining” new book calls attention to how the rapid spread of the new technology likely changed every user’s sense of self, but she doesn’t dwell on that shift in consciousness because she has much other ground to cover. Surveying tens of thousands of years of how images of the human face have been produced and interpreted, she starts by informing us that artists depicted human figures long before they drew or sculpted human faces, then races through time all the way to today’s facial surveillance technologies. Though it’s not always clear what the book’s unifying argument might be, “the richness of the research more than compensates.”

Much of the action occurs over the past, said Max Liu in the Financial Times. While the Venus of Brassempouy, a tiny 25,000-year-old ivory sculpture found in France, is believed to be the oldest surviving depiction of a human face, it was not until the Renaissance that artists routinely attempted to capture in a subject’s face the sitter’s very soul. Bound-Alberti argues that many of the prejudices and presumptions we bring to reading faces spring from that moment, and her larger account, while consistently engaging, is “at its most compelling when it becomes polemical,” showing how the classism, racism, and sexism of that remote past still shape today’s punishing beauty standards.

Given how many of Bound-Alberti’s observations are grounded in fact, “it is a shame that The Face veers, chapter by chapter, into the abstract,” said Zoë Huxford in The New Statesman (U.K.). In the weakest chapter, a closing consideration of face transplants, she calls the very rare procedure an example of the commodification of the face taken to its extreme, and the interpretation simply doesn’t fit the evidence. “Still, The Face is a meticulously researched and unsettling book, and Bound-Alberti’s overarching message is poignant” — namely, that we should stop yearning for more perfect faces and instead seek a world that accepts the faces we have.

“The sand and the sea spray of the Pacific are calling,” said Astrid Kayembe in Food & Wine. Though Los Angeles County boasts 76 miles of coastline and packs it with great food options, finding a restaurant that offers true beachfront dining can be a challenge. Below are four, stretching from Malibu to Santa Monica, where the coast’s cooling breezes and “stunning” views make every meal more memorable.

Duke’s Malibu

Malibu

Named after Olympic surfing champion Duke Kahanamoku, this classic Malibu spot leans Hawaiian and East Asian. Poke tacos, creamy coconut stew, and Korean short ribs are highlights, and you can’t beat the ocean view you can enjoy from Duke’s recently refurbished patio. 21150 ­Pacific Coast Highway

Malibu Farm at the Pier

Malibu

On the iconic Malibu Pier, Helene Henderson’s beautiful restaurant “joins coastal cool with the rustic texture of her Topanga Farm.” Henderson’s farm-to-table veggie-focused dishes offer a sense of escape from the bustle, while the pergolas and crashing waves “make for a refreshing girls’ brunch or romantic date night by candlelight.” 23000 Pacific Coast Highway

Paradise Cove Beach Cafe

Malibu

Paradise Cove is one of Malibu’s “smaller and more serene beaches,” but when you step into this laid-back café, “its heritage as Hollywood’s beach is palpable.” Photos of screen legends adorn the walls, while on the patio, “you can find simple serenity, sharing a seafood tower with family and sipping out of a pineapple while sinking your toes in the sand.” 28128 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu

Back on the Beach Cafe

Santa Monica

Will Rogers State Beach regulars know the charms of this casual eatery where the chairs and tables sit on the sand while cyclists and skateboarders zip past. The menu favors Italian seafood dishes, to be enjoyed with a panoramic sunset view. 445 Pacific Coast Highway, Santa Monica

Your eyes do not deceive you. These colossal hotel swimming pools are as gigantic as they look. They are each property’s main attraction, letting swimmers, divers and paddleboarders live out their aquatic fantasies. Some are historic, and some are modern wonders, but all are architectural marvels.

The Biltmore, Coral Gables, Florida

Guests have been diving into The Biltmore’s massive pool — it covers 23,000 square feet and holds 600,000 gallons of water — since 1926. Surrounded by “grand Mediterranean architecture and classical statues,” the pool is an opulent spot for “doing laps or having a leisurely float,” said Secret Miami. Esther Williams once used it as her stage, putting on aquatic shows before starstruck crowds, and Tarzan himself, Johnny Weissmuller, spent time here as a swimming instructor.

Diamante Cabo San Lucas, Mexico

Spanning 10 acres, the saltwater Crystal Lagoons pool offers something for everyone. Guests can go swimming, sailing, kayaking and paddleboarding, stopping whenever they’d like for a refreshing drink at the swim-up bar. While lounging poolside, you can soak up views of the Pacific Ocean and the sand dunes of the Diamante Golf Club, ranked by Golf Digest as the top course in Mexico.

Fontainebleau Las Vegas, Nevada

Fontainebleau Las Vegas’ six-acre Oasis Pool Deck fits right in with the city’s “glitz and glamour,” said Time Out. Take your pick from seven different pool experiences, like hanging out at the “high-energy” LIV Beach day club or relaxing in the blissful La Mer enclave.

On certain nights, the Oasis Pool Deck turns into an outdoor theater, with “Black Panther,” “The Secret Life of Pets” and other popular movies screened poolside. Swimming is not only allowed during the movies but encouraged.

Marina Bay Sands, Singapore

Think of Singapore, and its distinctive Marina Bay Sands hotel will likely come to mind. The property — three towers with a rooftop infinity pool “balanced” across the 57th floors — is a “fixture of every postcard rack and travel brochure,” said Travel and Leisure.

The swimming pool is part of Marina Bay Sands’ claim to fame: At 492-feet long, it’s the world’s largest infinity pool. Only open to hotel guests, the views from the deck are phenomenal, and it’s “obligatory” to take a selfie with the skyscrapers behind you.

The Oberoi Udaivilas, Udaipur, India

At the “glamorous” Oberoi Udaivilas, the long pool that stretches past its suites is an “architectural work of wonder,” said Condé Nast Traveler. Guests can slip into the water from their patios or relax on a lounger, gazing out at the pool “sandwiched between views of the garden and ocean.” For the ultimate stay, book one of the extravagant accommodations that comes with its own private pool.

Perfect Day at CocoCay, Bahamas

There’s only one way to get to Oasis Lagoon, the Caribbean’s largest freshwater pool, and that’s by Royal Caribbean ship. Oasis Lagoon is located on a private island used exclusively by the cruise line and caters to all interests.

Families usually stay in the far end of the pool, with its “sloping entry and gentle fountains,” while adults in party mode assemble by the swim-up bar, said The Points Guy. There are “numerous little nooks” where you can find “in-the-water seats” and “undulating loungers in the shallows.”

San Alfonso del Mar, Algarrobo, Chile

To see San Alfonso del Mar’s “jaw-dropping” swimming pool is to believe it, said Islands. The 3,000-foot-long pool holds 66 million gallons of water and is a “breathtaking feat of craftsmanship.”

When the property opened in 2006, it earned the Guinness World Record title for largest swimming pool on Earth, overshadowing even its closest competition. Today, it’s the “perfect” playground for sailors and kayakers, with a sustainable filtration system that “minimizes energy use” while ensuring water remains in “crystal-clear condition.”

Robot carers sound grim but Diane Morgan and her co-writer Sarah Kendall offer another, more “intriguing perspective” in their new BBC comedy, said Hannah J Davies in The Guardian. What if they were “incompetent and socially inept” but “also considerate, compassionate and lovable”?

This “wonderfully fresh and funny” show follows Sue (Sue Johnston), an elderly widow whose “whiny” son Michael (Paul Ready) has bought her a second-hand robot carer called Linda. It’s “not much of a spoiler” to reveal that Sue develops an “unlikely bond” with Linda (played by Morgan with a “perfect level of unblinking stiffness”).

Cleverly, “Ann Droid” is set in an “entirely normal suburban Britain”, where robots just happen to be helping out with the gardening or the supermarket shop, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. “They don’t feel out of place.” As Sue’s friendship with Linda blossoms, the show unfurls into an “unexpectedly poignant sitcom” that looks at “the challenges of growing old”.

In its more “slapstick moments”, there are echoes of Morgan’s earlier show, “Mandy”, about a jobless woman’s bizarre money-making schemes, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. Both shows revel in the “offbeat and surreal” but this one is “softer, less outrageous, more observational”.

Linda’s “bluntness” prevents the show from slipping into “sentimentality”. When she realises Sue is grieving her late husband, the robot must “research why it is that humans feel sad when someone dies” but her findings are “lightened” by the fact she can only call Sue’s partner “Dead David”. “This is a sly sitcom, then: silly on the outside but, when you look closer, smart and heartfelt.”

With her “terrible wig” and “strange head tilts”, Morgan plays Linda “uncannily well”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. Not much about the concept is new but, at its core, the show “isn’t really about robots”. Often more of a “sadcom than a sitcom”, it delves into the “profundity of grief”. But there are “plenty of funny moments”, too, as Linda “proves her worth” through a series of “escapades” that suggest having a robot carer might not be such a bad thing. “It is daft, but deceptively deep.”

Sam Neill’s chameleonic charm carried him across screens for five decades. Over 150 films and TV shows, the New Zealander played scoundrels as effortlessly as scientists, proving himself comfortable in supporting or starring roles, in blockbusters or indies. His dashing allure helped jump-start a new wave of Kiwi cinema with 1977’s Sleeping Dogs, yet he could also be terrifying, as in horror films Omen III (1981) and Event Horizon (1997). He won accolades as the jealous husband in The Piano (1993) and as a menacing cop in the BBC series Peaky Blinders. But his best-known role was Alan Grant, the awestruck, resourceful paleontologist in Jurassic Park (1993). Neill said he initially assumed the Steven Spielberg blockbuster wouldn’t do much for his career because the CGI dinosaurs would outshine the actors. Instead, the Oscar-winning film earned him global acclaim. “People just know me all around the world,” he said in 2013. “And they’ll start roaring like dinosaurs.”

Nigel John Dermot Neill—he started going by Sam in childhood— was born in Northern Ireland and raised in New Zealand, his father’s homeland. A stutterer as a child, he began acting at boarding school as a ploy to meet girls and found his speech impediment disappeared onstage. After studying at Wellington’s Victoria University, he landed his first TV part in 1971 and quickly became his country’s biggest acting talent of the day. Neill “combined a credible Everyman quality with rugged good looks and a hard-to-place accent,” said The New York Times, which allowed his roles to span continents and genres. His idol was the equally versatile James Mason, and it showed: “Critics praised him for nuanced performances even in forgettable projects.”

“Neill became a full-fledged movie star” after Jurassic Park, said Rolling Stone, but he made just as much impact with his “jovial persona.” During the Covid pandemic, he built a huge online following sharing videos of animals at his New Zealand vineyard, and himself singing and playing ukulele. Though constantly performing, he never considered himself a celebrity. He was consistently “self-deprecating and unpretentious,” said The Washington Post. “I’ve never had an image,” Neill said in 1995, “nor have I fostered one or wanted one, which has meant that I’ve had fantastic freedom to do whatever it is that appeals at the time.”

Over the past decade, Microsoft has spent nearly $80 billion on a bet that gamers would “flock to its Netflix-like subscription service,” said Cecilia D’Anastasio in Bloomberg. But that costly strategy “hasn’t worked out.” Last week, the company said it was laying off 3,200 employees at Xbox, its video-game division, and divesting from five game studios in an industry-rattling about-face. In an unusually candid letter, Xbox’s new CEO, Asha Sharma, said Xbox was struggling to manage “the most severe hardware crisis in its history,” and admitted that its videogame business was “not healthy.” This mess is partly due to “a central flaw” in its streaming strategy. “While consumers might be willing to pay a monthly fee to Netflix to stream thousands of TV shows and movies,” research from Circana shows that the majority of U.S. gamers buy at most two games a year and play them on repeat—not enough to warrant them signing up for a $23-a-month Xbox GamePass subscription.

There has been a “steady drumbeat of layoffs” in the gaming industry since the stay-at-home pandemic boom faded, said Sarah E. Needleman in Business Insider. Consumers want familiarity and comfort and are “spending more hours inside a small number of long-running” titles, which has left little room for breakthrough new releases from younger studios. Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty maker Activision Blizzard in 2023 has also failed to deliver “the subscriber surge Microsoft hoped for.” In the “heady days of 2018’s Fortnite mania, or after the pandemic-fueled fast-forward in 2020,” it was easy to believe that “scale was the answer,” said Oli Welsh in Polygon. But that has backfired. As a result, the world’s biggest game publisher rests “on a weak foundation without a clear mission statement.”

Sharma has a new strategy, said The Economist, and it is just as bold. She wants to win back console customers, whom she considers the core of the business, and launch a new device, code-named Project Helix, in 2028. But this means navigating an industry-wide supply-chain crisis driven by AI demand for memory chips. Component costs rose 50% during her first 50 days as CEO. And Microsoft needs more consoles to accommodate the “eagerly awaited release” of the new Grand Theft Auto VI, which reportedly cost billions to develop. The best move for Microsoft may be just to sell Xbox, said Jay Peters in The Verge. The question is who would buy it. Few companies are large enough to afford “an entire interactive-entertainment conglomerate” with slowing revenue. Meta is exiting the industry following its metaverse venture, and Amazon is focused on its own cloud-gaming service. Netflix is favoring smartphone-controlled TV games. Sharma hasn’t even been in her role for six months. But the changes at Xbox are “far from over.”

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The heat is very on, but that doesn’t mean you have to sweat it out. When you don’t have an air conditioner or the temperature is so high that AC isn’t enough, turn to these items to reinvigorate yourself.

Avène thermal spring water

One spray of this “soothing” mist on a hot day gives you a “quick refresh,” said Glamour. The pure thermal spring water contains postbiotic microflora, which can calm the skin and reduce redness. It’s also free of fragrance, paraben, alcohol, silicone, mineral oil, aluminum and sulfate, a mist ideal for most skin types and safe for use throughout the day. ($15, Ulta)

Cozy Earth bamboo sheet set

These sheets are made from 100% bamboo viscose, which is temperature-regulating and “next-level soft,” said Architectural Digest. Snoozing on the fabric feels like being “draped in a luxuriously lightweight silk,” and because it is thin, air passes “easily through the layer,” keeping you cool and comfortable overnight. Choose from more than a dozen solid colors and limited edition patterns, from twin/twin XL to split king. (starting at $258, Cozy Earth)

Green Pet Shop cool pet pad

As soon as your dog or cat sits on this pressure-activated gel mat, they’ll feel instant relief. It stays cool for up to three hours and recharges on its own after 20 minutes of nonuse, without the need for water or electricity. Mats come in five sizes (extra small to extra large) and are portable for travel. Tip: Putting a mat inside the refrigerator first will “make it even more refreshing,” said Forbes. (starting at $25, Amazon)

Harbor House cooling reversible Tencel comforter blanket

If you need a blanket to sleep even on the hottest nights, this one’s for you. Harbor House’s comforter is filled with sustainable, eucalyptus-based Tencel fibers that are breathable and moisture-wicking. It adapts to your body temperature, helping to reduce overheating and ease you into a good night’s sleep. (starting at $160, Harbor House)

Hydro Flask 24 oz Wide Mouth with Flex Chug Cap

During a heat wave, staying hydrated should be at the top of your to-do list. Having a water bottle within arm’s reach is a “helpful reminder to keep on chugging,” and Hydro Flask’s Wide Mouth with Flex Chug Cap allows for “spill-free sipping,” said Wirecutter. Its double-wall vacuum insulation makes this bottle “particularly adept” at keeping water cold for 24 hours, and the “slim spout” ensures a controlled flow. ($40, Amazon)

Pure & Gentle Arctic Wave cooling body bar

Turn your shower into a frosty retreat with this cooling body bar. Refreshing ingredients like eucalyptus and hydrating spearmint wake up the skin, while coconut oil softens it. The bar is plant-based and cruelty-free, and one is the equivalent of 16 12-ounce bottles of liquid body wash. ($10, Pure & Gentle)

Purple DreamLayer pillow

The foam inside this supportive pillow is “firm, yet squishy enough” to mold to and cradle your head, said Real Simple. An outer gel grid layer promotes “great” airflow, so you won’t “wake up feeling sweaty.” You can also add or remove foam to “easily” adjust the pillow’s height. The price makes it “definitely a splurge,” but it’s a “worthy investment.” (starting at $209, Amazon)

Torras Coolify 2S neck air conditioner

This “easy to use” neck air conditioner delivers an arctic blast whenever you need it, said Wirecutter. A “decadent” array of advanced semiconductor plates lines the device, and when pressed against your skin feel like a refreshingly “cold can of soda.”

The Coolify has a dual-axis hinge design, expanding to accommodate most neck sizes. Don’t pack it up when summer’s over. The thermal chips can be used as heaters. ($199, Amazon)

The romance of Prague is enthralling, from its pretty winding lanes to its skyline of rising spires. Over the past few decades it has become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Europe, with more than eight million visitors a year, and with its history and heritage it is easy to see why.

But at the same time, the Czech capital has grown into a sophisticated and refined luxury option for the discerning traveller, with world-class galleries and a dynamic food scene. Michelin recognised this with the Czech Republic’s first national guide in December 2025, including five Prague restaurants that have earned stars.

Things to do

The Prague Visitor Pass makes things easy, offering access to most of the city’s big sights as well as public transport (including a vintage tram). I started with a morning at Prague Castle, the largest castle complex in Europe, where you could probably spend days exploring.

After that head down the hill a little to the Baroque terraced Vrtba Garden, an oasis in the heart of the tourist area, or head further west to the Eiffel-inspired Petrin Tower, built in 1891, where you will find some of the best views of the city.

Of course, everyone wants to see the renowned Astronomical Clock of the Old Town Hall, but the crowds really are changing the experience. Head inside to the Old Town Hall Museum for a different perspective on it, but a great tip is to try the new Mozart Museum directly opposite. It not only has a fascinating interactive display on the composer and his connection to Prague, but also the best views of the clock.

The National Gallery is spread over several locations in the city, but my favourite was the Trade Fair Palace, which has a spectacular collection of works from Picasso, Monet and Van Gogh. Head to the Kunsthalle, which opened in 2022, or Dox, with its eyecatching airship shape, which hosts art, literature, performance and architecture.

Get on the water and explore the River Vltava with a boat trip. With Prague Boats, a two-hour trip takes you out into the suburbs for a leisurely journey through a different side of Prague. If time is tighter, the Prague Venice River Cruise lasts 45 minutes and takes you off the river and into the canals. It is also connected to the small but interesting Charles Bridge Museum.

Eating and drinking

If you’re going to splash out on one Michelin meal while you’re there then make it La Degustation Bohême Bourgeoise. This fine dining restaurant is a little out of the centre and takes you away from the crowds. You can expect a seasonal multi-course tasting menu inspired by Czech cuisine and made with local ingredients.

The Vietnamese community is one of the largest immigrant populations in the Czech Republic, and therefore you can find some of the best pho this far west of Hanoi. But at Taro, a pair of first-generation Vietnamese-Czech brothers are taking things a step further with a tasting menu that merges the two cultures beautifully. Nothing feels expected, but you will leave with a smile on your face.

Hidden behind the tourist options across from the Astronomical Clock is Restaurant 420, a bright welcoming space that is packed with locals, with products are made in the basement bakery and butchery. Expect elevated Czech and central European classics like pork with Szegedin sauce or veal schnitzel.

Bjukitchen is a chic little cafe that’s a perfect stop on a busy day. Start the morning with a hearty brunch, like the scrambled eggs with pecorino, black pepper, and chives on freshly baked sourdough, or a grilled cheese with roasted pepper pesto, sun-dried tomatoes and basil pesto. Definitely don’t miss their home-made soft-serve ice cream.

Myšák is a pastry shop that dates back to 1911, and is still one of Prague’s favourites. Check out the original shop on Vodičkova Street, or one of the newer branches. The sweet buns with vanilla custard are a particular speciality, and the ice cream sundae has been a local staple for 80 years.

Le Petit Beefbar au Grand Cafe, in the W Hotel, serves some of the city’s best steaks in the timeless art nouveau setting of the former Grand Café. The fillet steak and the namesake Beefbar signature sauce were utterly divine.

Forbina, across from the National Theatre, offers delicious crafted cocktails inspired by its neighbour’s theatre productions. Bokovka has a wonderful courtyard to pause for a glass of wine, and U Kunštátů serves a wide selection of craft beers.

Where to stay

Following a stunning renovation, W Prague opened in December 2024 to much fanfare. It is a glorious example of how classic Prague Secession architecture can be modernised sympathetically and stylishly, and you can expect the signature W attention to detail throughout. There are 161 guestrooms and suites, some overlooking Wenceslas Square in the heart of the city, while the Above Rooftop has panoramic views and a menu that changes seasonally.

The Away Spa offers an escape from the urban bustle with a series of pools, jacuzzis, saunas and steam rooms. Try the all-season water journey, which takes you through warm and cold experiences and ends with a refreshing snow shower, or indulge in a treatment customised to your needs. I left feeling like a new woman.

Jaymi McCann was a guest of Czech Tourism, Prague City Tourism and W Prague

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.

Things to do

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

“William Wordsworth is the Lake District’s ‘literary leviathan’”, said Sean Newsom in The Times. He “transformed our appreciation of the natural world” with his poems, and by visiting his old home, Dove Cottage, you’ll “get a thrilling sense of his early, heroic years”. Next door, the Wordsworth Museum has 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 over 160 years. Ullswater, England’s second-largest lake, is a must-see with a landscape of “rolling green hills”, “ancient woodland”, and “plunging crags”.

Thrill-seekers can try ghyll scrambling – a ghyll is a “short, sharp mountain gully cut by a thundering stream”. At Stoneycroft Ghyll, put on a wetsuit while you “scramble upstream”, then “abseil back down”, and then jump into the “deeps beneath the waterfalls”.

Eating and drinking

In the Lake District, it is “hard to go wrong with food”, said Condé Nast Traveller. Try the “deservedly famous” sticky toffee pudding in Cartmel or enjoy “seasonal deliciousness” with “exceptional views of Skiddaw” at Lingholm Kitchen in Keswick.

Cranstons Cumbrian Food Hall is a recently renovated butchery that is great for picking up a “huge variety” of locally sourced produce or enjoying sausage rolls, pies, meal boxes, and salad at the hot-food counter. The Lake District also has a number of Michelin-starred dining options including The Cottage in The Wood, above Keswick, and Forest Side in Grasmere, said The Telegraph.

Where to stay

If you want “indulgence with a capital I”, stay at the Gilpin Hotel & Lake House, just 10 minutes from Lake Windermere’s shore, said Helen Pickles in The Independent. This “modern country-house hotel” has a variety of room styles that ranges from the “lavishly cossetting” to stand-alone chalets with personal spas.

For a more family-friendly option, The Swan Hotel & Spa, at Windermere’s southern tip, is “away from the crowds” in a lovely “riverside setting”. It “ticks plenty of boxes” with a range of amenities including a spa, pool, gym, and adventure playground. The place “goes big on colour” with public areas decorated in “clashing pinks and hot oranges” or “dazzling floral wallpapers”.

Harpswell, Maine

In Bailey Island in Casco Bay, this 1896 shingled five-bedroom has a beach and ocean frontage. The updated cottage’s wraparound front porch opens to a living area with exposed rafters, wood floors, a stone fireplace, and shiplap walls; the kitchen includes an eat-in island and an apron sink.

On the 1-acre lot are yards, gardens, a deck, and a shed for guests or projects. Portland is about an hour away. $2,500,000. Will and Ally Fuller, Legacy Properties Sotheby’s International Realty, (207) 560-7000

Darien, Conn

Located about an hour from Manhattan, this updated colonial on a 1-plus-acre lot is in the Tokeneke community on the Long Island Sound. Built in 1947, the four-bedroom has picture windows framing water views, built-ins, a sleek white kitchen with a dining nook, and a sunroom with a bar.

Also on the property are a pool, a one-bedroom guest cottage, a dock, a veggie garden, and a chicken coop. $5,895,000. Stacy Book, William Raveis Real Estate/Luxury Portfolio International, (203) 858-6309

Marshfield, Mass.

The Treehouse at Wales Pond, a 2015 cedar-shingle modern four-bedroom home about 10 minutes from Humarock Beach, offers a vaulted great room anchored by a metal fireplace with glass panels. Its concrete floors are topped by a loft and skylight, and it includes a yoga studio with tatami mat floors.

The nearly 3-acre lot has a pool, spa, yard, pizza oven, trails, and a pond that attracts local wildlife. $3,475,000. The Collective, Compass, (617) 807-0853.

Newport, R.I

This condo is on the grounds of Beechbound, an 1880 waterfront estate, and is housed in the main Scottish-baronial-style mansion, designed by Peabody and Stearns. One of seven apartments, the three-bedroom sits above a mahogany-clad entry and has crown molding, a fireplace, alcove windows with water views, and a chef’s kitchen with a Viking stove.

Shared spaces include a covered patio overlooking the harbor, a beach, and grounds originally designed by Frederick Law Olmstead. $2,950,000. Kate Kirby Greenman, Gustave White Sotheby’s International Realty, (401) 848-6727.

Penobscot, Maine

Wardwell Point, a relocated 1800s post-and-beam barn reassembled in 1992, is on the Bagaduce River roughly an hour south of Bangor. The five-bedroom features wide-plank reclaimed pine floors, a great room with a stone-and-brick fireplace and floor-to-ceiling windows, a kitchen with heated terracotta hex tiles, and a cupola overlooking the water and woods.

The approximately 18-acre property includes a patio, meadows, and shoreline. $2,375,000. Joseph Sortwell, LandVest/Christie’s International Real Estate, (207) 706-6294.

Lynn, Mass

About a half-hour from downtown Boston, this renovated two-bedroom condo is in an 1893 classical revival building overlooking Nahant Bay. The apartment includes wood floors, a new kitchen with stainless appliances and stone counters, a living room and bedroom with ocean views, and an updated bath.

A sandy beach and a park are across the street, and transportation, shops, and dining are nearby. $359,000. Bianca Araujo Mendez, Engel & Völkers, (617) 685-9657.

The execs at Universal Studios must be “a tad nervous,” said Jordan Ruimy in World of Reel. With Christopher Nolan’s $250 million adaptation of The Odyssey due to open in theaters on the weekend of July 17, Universal barred critics from publishing reviews until the final day before theatrical release as controversy over Nolan’s casting choices continued to stir up loud attacks from online commenters. Since January, right-wing culture warriors, led by Elon Musk, have alleged that the film pushes a “woke” agenda, primarily because Nolan chose a Black actress, Lupita Nyong’o, to play Helen of Troy and cast trans actor Elliot Page as a soldier. And the attacks didn’t stop when critics praised the movie in their initial social media reactions. In fact, Universal blocked comments on its websites after a trailer for The Odyssey racked up more than 700,000 thumbs-downs on YouTube, making it the second-most-disliked trailer ever, behind only 2025’s Snow White, whose haters disliked seeing Latina actress Rachel Zegler as the lead.

In my reading of the tea leaves, said Miles Klee in Wired, “there’s no reason to suspect that anyone at Universal is sweating right now.” Yes, the studio’s review strategy was unusual, but mostly because mainstream critics were given a chance to see and comment on Nolan’s star-packed film before the social media influencers who are relied upon these days to build audience excitement for most new movies. The bulk of the abbreviated early reactions, including from IndieWire and The Guardian, have been rapturous, and ticket presales point toward a $80 million to $100 million opening weekend for the director’s follow-up to 2023’s Oppenheimer, a Best Picture winner. Nolan himself seems unfazed that his take on a landmark cultural artifact is stirring backlash from at least one corner. “Remember,” he said last week, “I spent 10 years of my life dealing with Batman.” The only question now, said Matt McGloin in Cosmic Book News, is whether all those “angry thumbs” translate into empty seats or whether the anti-Odyssey mob “goes down as the loudest minority in movie marketing history.”

This is the summer of “cerebral pursuits” in France, with “a big rise” in the sale of “holiday workbooks”, said The Times. With their “cahiers de vacances” – an adult spin-off from school revision guides – grown-ups are “brushing up on” algebra, history and grammar on the beach.

All grown up

Holiday workbooks were originally designed to help schoolchildren to keep up with their studies over the long summer break. But the new adult versions are a real hit: you only have scan bookshop shelves to see “the scale of the phenomenon”, said Aleteia. French adults are using the workbooks not only to “evoke childhood summers” but as an entertaining way to learn something new during the summer holidays.

Last year, over 650,000 holiday workbooks were sold – double the year before – and publishers are reporting even bigger sales this summer, said The Times. Among the most popular ones are “Les Maths en Vacances”, which has readers practising geometry by folding their beach towels, and “Énigmes de l’Histoire” which focuses on historical puzzles, such as the “mysterious fate of Louis XVII”, who disappeared after his parents were beheaded during the French Revolution. “Passeport Adultes Anglais” is all about improving your English – with a “notably challenging” section on making British “herb jelly”. There are also logical reasoning challenges, and police-investigation workbooks with “puzzles to solve” in a “Cluedo”-style format, said Instant.

‘Need to disconnect’

Adults want to buy these books because they allow them to “learn a lot while having fun”, Didier Ferat of workbook publisher Solar told Aleteia. The format is not “intimidating” and you can work through a book “alone or with others”, Carole Strang of leading workbook publisher Éditions Nathan told Instant. There’s a sense of nostalgia at play, too: everyone knows these workbooks from their schooldays. They are associated with a “pretty strong memories” of childhood “summers and holidays”.

They are also physical and “concrete”, allowing you to “move beyond the digital world”, said Ferat. There’s a new “appreciation” for offline activity. The “need to disconnect” from our mobile devices has people shifting to entertainment that requires “a pencil in the hand”.

The desire to disconnect with a nostalgic activity explains the associated boom in “kidult” colouring and sticker books, and an increasing passion for puzzles and crosswords. Dictionary publisher Robert has launched a new series of themed giant crossword books this summer. At a time when the “world of books is suffering”, Robert’s Charles Bimbenet told Instant, “this enthusiasm is welcome”.

Creole and Cajun food both hail from Louisiana, but only one was born in New Orleans. Rich and soulful, Creole cuisine emerged from the city’s kitchens during the 1700s, influenced by French, African, Indigenous, Spanish and Caribbean cooking styles.

Tomatoes, roux and the Holy Trinity of diced onions, celery and green bell peppers are the foundation for many a Creole dish. When you then add shrimp, crab, oysters, sausage and okra, the magic commences, and classics local dishes like gumbo, crawfish étouffée and red beans and rice spring to life. Ready for a taste? In New Orleans, no one does authentic Creole better than these eight treasured spots.

Clancy’s

Clancy’s is the “paradigmatic” Uptown New Orleans bistro, where the menu is “Paris-at-the-mouth-of-the-Mississippi,” said The New York Times. This was the “life project” of waiter turned longtime owner Brad Hollingsworth, who died in 2024, and is still owned by his wife and stepson. Executive Chef Jerry Harkins Jr. and his team have “mastered” both the French-Creole standards of turtle soup and shrimp remoulade and “idiosyncratic” specialties like fried oysters covered in melted Brie and Clancy’s smoked duck with dirty rice.

Dooky Chase’s Restaurant

Dooky Chase is not just a restaurant. A Tremé institution for more than 80 years, it opened during segregation and gave Black diners with few options a place to convene over a warm and comforting bowl of gumbo or crawfish étouffée.

Over time, Dooky Chase — and its talented late co-owner and chef, Leah Chase — gained a reputation for “specializing in the seasoned flavors of Black Creole culture,” said New Orleans Magazine. During the 1950s and ’60s, civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall sat down and strategized over the same dishes that Dooky Chase still serves today — shrimp Clemenceau, red beans and rice, oyster po’boys and Creole-seasoned fried chicken.

Galatoire’s 

At Galatoire’s, jackets are required, tank tops and flip flops are verboten and you must order an “impeccable Sazerac, soufflé potatoes and shrimp remoulade for the table,” said Bon Appétit. Founded in 1905, Galatoire’s is one of the most “elegant” restaurants in the country, with “tuxedoed waiters” who present with a flourish plates of shrimp Creole, crab ravigote and trout meunière amandine. End your meal in true New Orleans fashion with a cup of café brûlot, a spicy, alcoholic beverage that is — whoosh! — flambéed tableside.

Guy’s Po-Boys

New Orleans and po’boys “go hand in hand,” said Southern Living. The “simple, hearty” sandwich was created in the 1920s for striking railroad workers (“poor boys”) and requires bread with a crusty exterior and pillowy interior that can handle a protein like roast beef and fried oysters, plus all the fixins.

Guy’s excels at crafting the “classics,” such as golden fried shrimp and blackened catfish, as well as its own creations, like The Bomb, said Tasting Table. This “eclectic” po’boy brings together the shrimp and catfish that put Guy’s “on the map” along with melted Swiss and cheddar cheeses.

Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe

Plan accordingly for a visit to Li’l Dizzy’s Cafe. Only open for lunch, diners line up early for a seat at this “cherished” Tremé restaurant that’s “keeping Creole soul food alive,” said Mashed. The “deliciously juicy” fried chicken is regularly heralded as the best in New Orleans, and the gumbo is thick and luscious.

If you find yourself at Li’l Dizzy’s on a Friday, you’re in luck: The day’s special, catfish jourdain — fried catfish topped with shrimp and crabmeat in a lemon butter sauce — is a local favorite. You don’t have to be from the neighborhood to feel the love. The cafe’s owners “welcome everyone as if they’re family.”

Neyow’s Creole Cafe

Tanya Dubuclet was her grandmother’s faithful sidekick in the kitchen, and now those “secret recipes” she learned growing up are staples on the menu at Neyow’s Creole Cafe, said Essence. Favorites like the rich filé gumbo, crawfish balls, chargrilled oysters and carrot soufflé are all “cooked with love” and keep Dubuclet’s late grandmother’s “memory alive.” For a taste of pretty much everything, order the Neyow’s Extravaganza Dinner for two, featuring gumbo, stuffed crab, stuffed shrimp, steak, fish, two sides and two desserts.

Vaucresson’s Creole Café

When the steaming bowls of gumbo and plates of savory yakamein start coming out of the kitchen at Vaucresson’s Creole Café, “heads turn,” said NOLA.com. That’s because Chef Bunny Young’s style of “New Orleans home cooking” is “increasingly rare” to find at restaurants and always a welcome sight.

Vaucresson’s started decades ago as a butcher stall, evolving into a butcher shop and restaurant now operated by third-generation owner Vance Vaucresson and Julie Frederick Vaucresson. Try one of the restaurant’s famous sausages in a po’boy or the smothered okra plate, which is “every bit as much about the Creole sausage, crab and shrimp as the namesake vegetable.”

Vyoone’s

The “gratifying” French-Creole fare at Vyoone’s — escargot in bone marrow, “delicate” duck l’orange with mushroom bread pudding, les galettes de crabes — matches the cafe’s “warm ambiance,” said Resy. The French onion soup is “excellent,” as are the crawfish beignets and crevettes et gruau, a generous helping of large barbecue shrimp over grits, topped with bacon and smoked gouda. Vyoone’s, named after its founder Vyoone Segué, has an inviting indoor space, but dinner tastes even better when eaten outside in the “marvelous” courtyard.

By African standards, Malawi is a small country (a bit smaller than England, in fact), but with its diverse landscapes and vast lakes, it can offer a wide variety of experiences in a single safari holiday, says Ben Lerwill in National Geographic Traveller. For a gentle start, head to the Shire Highlands, in the southeast, where forested hills rise above 2,000 metres, and tea plantations have flourished for more than a century.

Among these estates is Satemwa, which was founded in 1923 and later became the first in Malawi to be Fairtrade-certified. Guests stay in a 1930s bungalow, Huntingdon House, with “roaring” log fires, clawed bathtubs, antique furniture and “luxuriant” plants in silver vases. Satemwa’s 3,700 acres are interspersed with swathes of mahogany woods that shelter creatures including antelopes, porcupines and more than 600 avian species, some of them spectacular, making birdwatching trips “a joy”. Coffee is also grown on the estate, but tea tastings are particularly delightful, with black, green, oolong and white varieties to sample, some of which are served at Claridge’s.

Next, you might visit Liwonde National Park, a 212-square-mile expanse of mopane woodland three hours to the north. Poaching once devastated the park, but in the past decade, 40,000 wire snares have been removed, and black rhinos, cheetahs, lions and wild dogs have been reintroduced. I stayed at Mvuu – one of just a few lodges here, with “spacious” tented chalets and “excellent” food – and went on wonderful game drives and walking safaris, spotting lions, elephants, hippos and other species.

The country’s true “marvel”, however, is Lake Malawi – one of the world’s largest and deepest lakes, home to at least 1,000 freshwater fish species (more than Europe and North America combined). I stayed at Pumulani Lodge, which has steps down to a beach. Kayaking along the wooded shore, I spotted fish eagles and hamerkops, and the snorkelling was dazzling.

With its “sorbet-coloured” hillside towns, the Amalfi Coast is one of Italy’s most beautiful places – but its high prices and traffic-clogged roads can be a pain. If you visit in the high season, you might do better to stay in Salerno, says Jessica Furseth in The Guardian, the “relaxed” port city just to its east. Restaurants and hotels there are much cheaper, there are regular ferries to places such as the town of Amalfi, and the city has attractions of its own, including a lively seaside promenade and an old town with an impressive medieval cathedral. It also sits on a main coastal rail line from Naples, offering quick, easy access to Pompeii (back towards Naples) and to Paestum (further south), with its ancient Greek tomb frescoes and temples of “golden” stone (“inexpressibly grand”, according to Shelley).

An idyllic escape from Melbourne

Set in the “gentle” hills of the Macedon Ranges, a 90-minute drive north of Melbourne, the little Australian town of Daylesford is “a hotbed of farm-led fabulousness”, much like the village in the Cotswolds after which it was named in the mid-19th century, says Sarah Turner in The Sunday Times. Daylesford has a great Sunday market and some “posh” boutiques, but is best known for Lake House, a hotel and restaurant that has driven the town’s evolution from “hippyish” to (appealingly) “haute” in recent decades. Run by Alla WolfTasker – now one of Australia’s most “revered” chefs – and her husband Allan, it offers wonderful five-course tasting menus for £130, which is a “fine-dining bargain” by Cotswolds standards. Stay if you can in one of its 33 hotel rooms, or at the “very luxurious” six-suite lodge set on its own farm, where kookaburras and cockatoos flit about the mineral-water-fed swimming pool.

A charming Victorian seaside resort

“The sweet, sensible sister of brassy Scarborough”, the Yorkshire seaside resort of Filey is “almost absurdly nice”, says Helen Pickles in The Daily Telegraph. Home to just 7,000 people, the town is “elegant” and quite unspoiled, with just one amusement arcade, a small “child-friendly” funfair, and no “flashy attractions” – and the five-mile beach it sits on is “gorgeous”. Recent years have seen the opening of a small gin distillery and the launch of a spring literary festival, but most of Filey’s shops and cafés are long-established. For instance, Sterchi’s Chocolatiers opened in 1916. Wherever you stay (the White Lodge Hotel is “the place for treats and celebrations”), don’t miss the town’s pretty boating lake, the Sunday concerts at the bandstand, or the RSPB’s Bempton Cliffs reserve, which is home to spectacular seabirds.

This dish felt like a permanent fixture on our menu during the late 1970s and early 1980s, says Rick Stein. I probably first had it in Paris, during one of our early trips, which would have been around 1978. When my then wife Jill and I were on holiday, we made a point of testing things out and picking up recipes and ideas for the kind of restaurant ours should aspire to be. When fish conservationists began discouraging people from fishing for skate, we discovered that ray was OK – so this dish was born.

Ingredients

• 4 skinned ray wings, about 225g each
• 15g nonpareilles capers in brine, drained and rinsed

For the court-bouillon

• 300ml dry white wine
• 85ml white wine vinegar
• 2 bay leaves
• 12 black peppercorns
• 1 onion, roughly chopped
• 2 carrots, roughly chopped
• 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped
• 1 tsp salt

For the black butter

• 175g butter
• 50ml red wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley

Method

• First, make the court-bouillon. Put all the ingredients into a large pan with 1.2 litres of water. Bring to the boil and simmer for 20 minutes. Set aside to cool, which will allow the flavour to improve before using.
• Put the ray wings into a large pan. Pour over the court-bouillon, bring to the boil and simmer the wings very gently for 15 minutes until they are cooked through.
• Carefully lift the ray wings out of the pan, leave the excess liquid to drain off and then place the wings on to 4 warmed plates. Sprinkle with the capers and keep warm.
• For the black butter, melt the butter in a frying pan. As soon as it starts to foam, turn quite brown and smell very nutty, add the vinegar, then the parsley. Let it boil down for a minute or so, until slightly reduced. Pour the butter over the ray and serve.

Taken from “The Seafood Restaurant Cookbook” by Rick Stein and Jill Stein, published by Jon Croft Editions at £35. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £31.99 (incl. p&p), visit theweekbookshop.co.uk or call 020 3176 3835.

Pulling up at Son Xotano, after driving to the centre of rural Mallorca, feels a bit like arriving at a friend’s big place in the country that you have always been a little jealous of.

At the heart of this 12-century estate is a honey-hued manor, with pastel-blue wooden shutters and a sun-drenched terrace. A grand Mediterranean finca, it invites exploration.

In the grounds, a large pool is framed by striped sunloungers, cabanas and daybeds. The message to spend as much time as possible horizontal is a splendid idea. This is not a hotel for energetic daytime activities or rowdy nights at the bar. It is a place of calm, next to vineyards within a rural landscape where guests are encouraged to find a quiet corner, perhaps among the cypress trees or lavender, and slow right down.

Why stay here?

Son Xotano is one of the newest additions to the Annua Signature Hotels group founded by brothers Álvaro and Iñaki Sasiambarrena. Their philosophy is to create design-forward retreats across the Mediterranean, combining the natural surroundings and heritage of each property with high-end service and amenities.

It was on show from the start as we strolled up the path to check in to be greeted by a mass flutter of butterflies dancing around our ankles.

When choosing a place to stay, it is tempting to head to Mallorca’s dinking coastline, but head inland and the gentler pace is beguiling. And if you crave the beach or Palma’s twisty shopping streets, they are just a short, 25-minute drive away.

There are 22 rooms here, a variety of suites and doubles, with views of the gardens or countryside in the distance. Some come with their own private terrace or garden. There is no beige or grey palette here. Instead, our room was a delightful mix of soft creams and pastels, and on the wall behind the bed some specially commissioned artwork – a giant mural depicting trees and peacocks in vivid blues and greens.

All rooms come with air conditioning, coffee machine, safe, Wi-Fi, robes, slippers, Aesop products and a minibar. I needed to ask for a kettle and teabags, and there is no TV – but one can be wheeled in on request.

The shower was enormous. I popped my head into one of the bigger suites that had a free-standing bath, but one of the many delights of staying in such a unique building is that no two rooms are the same. All have the particular quirks – wooden beams or quaint tiny windows – of a centuries-old property.

Eating and drinking

Situated next to the pool and providing sustenance from early morning to late at night is the Son Xotano restaurant. Under the shade of olive and cypress trees, we started the day with breakfast – a huge buffet supplemented by table service. The fruit platters were a thing of beauty. As guests flop after a swim, lunch – from small plates to classics like salads and hamburgers – can be brought over.

In the evening the restaurant becomes the focal point of the hotel. As the sun sets tables are laid out on a terrace, or you can do as we did and choose a romantic table set apart among the trees. The menu features local, seasonal ingredients and is Mediterranean and Mallorcan with a contemporary approach. The porc negre loin had the crispiest skin and was delicious. Order a bottle of César wine – a lively dry white produced for the sister hotel in Lanzarote and only available through this collection of hotels.

Things to do

Yoga, massages, horse-riding and much more can all be arranged if you can drag yourself away from the pool. A car is definitely a good idea so you can explore nearby towns and beaches.

In Palma, wander the cobbled lanes of the Old Town and call in at the wondrous gothic cathedral. The island’s finest beaches are also within easy reach, from the sweeping white sands of Playa de Muro to the tranquil coves of Cala Tuent and Cala Deià, while the nearby Serra de Tramuntana offers some of Mallorca’s most scenic drives and hilltop villages, including Valldemossa and Deià.

Closer to the hotel, don’t miss the charming market town of Sineu or a wine tasting at one of the vineyards around Binissalem, Mallorca’s best-known wine region.

The verdict

If you are looking for an alternative to the coast and want to truly unwind, Son Xotano is a gem. Don’t expect a packed programme of activities – there isn’t even a gym.

You will, however, come away feeling relaxed and refreshed.

Jonathan was a guest of Son Xotano Hotel; annuahotels.com

South Korea is having a moment. K-pop superstars BTS are one of the biggest bands on the planet while “KPop Demon Hunters” has racked up more than 500 million views as the most-watched film in the history of Netflix.

From kimchi to must-have skincare, we can’t get enough of all things Korean, evidenced by UK visitor numbers increasing 17% between 2024 and 2025. Now that figure looks set to rocket with Virgin Atlantic, the only British airline to fly to the country, having recently launched a daily, direct flight to Seoul from Heathrow. It puts the South Korean capital firmly on the city-break map, offering a thrilling mix of skyscrapers, temples, neon-lit shopping streets, easy-reach mountains and fantastic food.

Things to do

It is easy to feel bamboozled by options when you arrive in Seoul. The city is vast, a jigsaw of distinctive neighbourhoods spread over more than 200 square miles. Luckily, the Metro is easy to use and very efficient, and Ubers are cheap, though traffic can be heavy.

Get a feel for the city's history first by touring one of its five Joseon Dynasty palaces. The 14th-century Gyeongbokgung is the largest, with a traditional twice-daily changing-of-the-guard ceremony, but Changdeokgung is the loveliest, a UNESCO-listed former royal residence with a cherry blossom-filled secret garden. Admission is free if you come wearing traditional Korean dress, as many tourists choose to do. Afterwards, wander the narrow streets of nearby Bukchon Hanok Village, lined with traditional homes with curved tiled roofs, tea houses and craft shops.

If you come seeking trends, and shops, head to Hongdae shopping district packed with department stores, street food stalls and entire shops filled with photo booths and props to pose with. Make a beeline for the flagship Olive Young store, the country’s biggest cosmetics retailer, where there’s a whole wall devoted to sheet masks, testing stations and a vending machine that doles out free skincare samples.

Myeong-dong is even hipper, with cat cafés, independent boutiques, galleries and bars. Book a slot at Colorize to try out the TikTok trend of having your colours analysed to discover which suit you best, or sign up for a K-Pop dance class near Hongik University to rate your chances of making the next BTS video.

Over in Gangnam, there are upmarket stores, a sprawling underground mall, the 8th-century Bongeunsa Temple and a giant golden statue honouring “Gangnam Style”, the famously catchy song about the area.

For a total change of pace, it’s worth taking a day trip to the DMZ, the 160-mile Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea. It’s around an hour from Seoul, through rigorous passport checks, walls of barbed wire and signs warning of possible landmines in the area. Only pre-booked guided tours are allowed, which include a walk along the mile-long Third Infiltration Tunnel, an eerie, narrow underground passage carved into the granite 73m below ground. Discovered in 1978, it was built by North Korea for up to 30,000 soldiers an hour to pass through and potentially launch a surprise attack on the south.

From the adjacent Dora Observatory, it’s even possible to look into North Korea itself, spotting military watchtowers, the skyline of Kaesong city, a solitary tractor working the fields and a huge flag billowing in the wind on one of the world’s tallest flagpoles. More sobering still, in the DMZ’s small museum, it’s possible to sit down with a North Korean defector to learn how they escaped the country and what life was really like there.

Eating and drinking

Need a quick meal in Seoul? Look no further than the humble 7-Eleven stores all over the city. Many of these have huge (and cheap) eat-on-the-spot food options, including fresh kimbap, design-your-own ramen, kimchi-flavoured everything and even bento boxes, plus sitting areas to wolf it down.

Check out chimaek – chicken and beer – shops for crispy Korean fried chicken. There’s a whole street of them in Myeong-dong or for an elevated take on the classic, head to Kyochon Pilbang in Itaewon – if you can find it. Pull on the large paintbrush hanging on the wall close to Itaewon station to gain access to this unmarked speakeasy-style basement restaurant, where chicken is served with sauces you can paint on with the supplied paintbrush.

Korean BBQ has to be tried at least once. In Bongsan in Seogyo-dong, there are built-in barbecues in the middle of tables for diners to grill their own beef brisket, wagyu and pork belly with sides, sauces, yet more kimchi and shots of soju, a vodka-style spirit made from fermented rice. Don’t wear your best clothes though, the smell lingers long after dinner. Afterwards, stroll the busy surrounding neon-lit streets for caricature and portrait shops, karaoke bars and ice-cream parlours, including the popular 32 Parfait, known for its whopping 32cm soft-serve cones.

Where to stay

The design-driven Mondrian Seoul Itaewon is a trendy spot with a buzzy hotel entrance full of locals having coffee, a second-floor lobby inspired by a fairy-tale forest with towering plants and illuminated swings hanging from the ceiling, and an outdoor pool overlooking the city. Standard rooms are small but sleek in shades of grey with dark wooden furniture and statement armchairs. Don’t miss the rooftop bar with its panoramic views of Seoul. Namsan Botanical Garden and the lively Itaewon-dong strip, with its restaurants and clubs, are both within walking distance.

Siobhan Grogan was a guest of Virgin Atlantic and Mondrian Seoul Itaewon. For more information, go to English.visitkorea.or.kr

“The godfather of Chinese contemporary art”, Ai Weiwei is also an activist who has, over decades, “documented the failures and excesses” of the Chinese Communist Party, said Tim Smith-Laing in the Financial Times.

He has been imprisoned, kept under house arrest and, eventually, exiled. Earlier this month, for a one-off performance piece at his new show in Manchester’s Aviva Studios, Ai re-enacted a full 24 hours of his 81-day detention inside a replica cell.

‘Best at enormous scale’

“This is an artist for whom risk has real meaning. His courage and achievements are nothing short of extraordinary,” said Smith-Laing. So I walked into the cavernous hall where “Button Up!” is being held “ready to be moved and awed”. Instead, “I found myself mostly unmoved and underwhelmed”.

Everything is on a vast scale. The giant mural “History of Bombs” is made up of 3.5 million Lego bricks. The sculpture “La Commedia Umana” is a chandelier made from 2,000 pieces of glass, shaped like human body parts. The room is “like something out of Piranesi’s prisons: indescribably vast, its ceiling and far walls disappearing into darkness and simultaneously crammed and scattered with objects that were all out of scale”. But big art is not necessarily good art.

Ai’s art always works “best at enormous scale”, said Eddy Frankel in The Guardian. It’s most effective when “blown up, expanded, shoved in your face”. And, in this sense, the artist doesn’t disappoint. Spread across one wall is “a giant inflatable dinghy” filled with figures in lifejackets. It’s not a good-looking piece of art, “but it makes a point, and makes it loudly”: if you think you can ignore the refugee crisis, think again.

‘Heavy-handed’ symbolism

Elsewhere, “house-sized flags” sewn from hundreds of thousands of buttons represent the emblems of the multinational alliance – Britain, the US, Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the Austrian-Hungarian empire – that invaded China in 1900. The flags hang heavy, as if “weighed down by history and its continuing impact”. “Not everything here is that good, sadly.” There are some questionable exhibits and, at many moments – with Lego bombs or the migrant boat on Hokusai’s great wave – “the symbolism is so heavy-handed it feels as if Banksy did it”.

Ai “has never excelled in nuance”, said Cal Revely-Calder in The Telegraph, and the work on show is certainly anything but subtle. Sometimes, this works: the most “affecting” thing here is a serene re-creation of a Ming-era temple, reconstructed in its entirety. But all too often the effects are “superficial and brief”.

Throughout, Ai rails against “the murky legacies of the West”, and his sallies on big topics such as “colonisation, refugees, war” are presumably intended to make the visitor “feel guilt”. Yet his work lacks any “second dimension”, and its worthy messages frequently come across as simplistic. “Meaningful politics seems to escape Ai Weiwei. So does meaningful art.”

Aviva Studios, Manchester. Until 6 September

In his 1960 novel “Rabbit, Run,” John Updike wrote that growing up means joining, whether you like it or not, a “sky of adults” that hangs over the next generation. The messy, confusing, glorious process of becoming an adult has been the backbone of countless wonderful movies, with some of them, like the underrated 1986 drama “Lucas,” currently lost to the streaming world. While everyone surely has their favorite, these eight beautiful films capture the highs and lows of moving from one phase of life to the next.

‘Breaking Away’ (1979)

In “Breaking Away,” Dave (Dennis Christopher) is a recent high school graduate in Bloomington, Indiana, who becomes obsessed with becoming an Italian cycling champion and passes himself off as an exchange student to his crush, a college student named Kathy (Robyn Douglass). He convinces his townie friends, including Mike (Dennis Quaid), to join him in an informal cycling competition against a group of privileged University of Indiana students.

The friends, all in the process of figuring out who they want to be, spend their last summer together training for the thrillingly staged race. A “treasure,” the film is a “wonderfully sunny, funny, goofy, intelligent movie that makes you feel about as good as any movie in a long time,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (Prime Video)

‘The Breakfast Club’ (1985)

In “The Breakfast Club,” a group of suburban Chicago high school malcontents from rival cliques, including a bullying John (Judd Nelson) and the stuck-up Claire (Molly Ringwald), are forced to spend a long Saturday detention together, supervised by vice principal Mr. Vernon (Paul Gleason). They are tasked with writing an essay about who they think they are, which they delegate to the group nerd, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall), and over the course of the day everyone, including the overbearing authority figure, gets a chance to share and humanize their struggles. Director John Hughes’ “simple, one-location talkie” brings Generation X’s “submerged angst to the surface” in a movie that is “still the definitive ’80s teen movie,” said Simon Crook at Empire. (Netflix)

‘Stand By Me’ (1986)

The beloved “Stand By Me,” based on a Stephen King novella, follows 12-year-old Gordie (Wil Wheaton) and three of his friends, Chris (River Phoenix), Teddy (Corey Feldman) and Vern (Jerry O’Connell), as they take an unauthorized hike searching for the body of a missing teenager. Narrated by a grown-up Gordie (Richard Dreyfuss) decades later, director Rob Reiner’s film is a masterclass in atmosphere and character-building. Met with underwhelming reviews when it was released, “Stand By Me” has “aged into a staple of youthful nostalgia for its deft straddling of the line between childhood and adulthood,” said Charles Bramesco at Rolling Stone. (MGM+)

‘Mermaids’ (1990)

Cher plays Rachel Flax, a single mom raising two daughters, 15-year-old Charlotte (Winona Ryder) and her younger sister, Kate (Christina Ricci). Rachel is a free spirit who has moved her kids around every time a relationship goes south, and the film opens with a move to a small town in Massachusetts.

Rachel dates a shoe store operator named Lou (Bob Hoskins), while Charlotte nurses a crush on her handsome young school bus driver and flirts with Catholicism to the chagrin of her Jewish mother. Narrated by Charlotte’s “droll inner monologue,” it is a “fun, heartfelt, well-directed film that still holds up pretty damn well” decades later, said Nadine J. Cohen at The Guardian. (MGM+)

‘Pariah’ (2011)

Adepero Oduye is Alike, a 17-year-old girl whose conservative parents’ marriage is falling apart around her in their Brooklyn apartment. Alike knows she’s a lesbian but hasn’t told anyone, including her father, Arthur (Charles Parnell), a police officer, and her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans). Her best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), is already out, and helps Alike navigate the minefield at home, as Alike explores her identity and ultimately faces a heartbreaking choice.

A tremendous turn from the then-unknown Oduye helps carry this quietly powerful film. It’s a “tender, sporadically goofy, yet candid examination of emergent identity,” making it the “finest coming-of-age movie I've seen in years,” said Ella Taylor at NPR. (Netflix)

‘Boyhood’ (2014)

There may never be another film like director Richard Linklater’s stunning ‘Boyhood.” Linklater followed the same group of actors over the course of 12 years, with a total of just 39 days of filming. Mason (Ellar Coltrane) is 6 when the film begins as his dad (Ethan Hawke), a musician, splits from his college professor mom (Patricia Arquette). Lorelei Linklater, the director’s daughter, plays Mason’s older sister, Samantha.

In a series of vignettes, we see Mason growing up, his dad stumbling toward maturity and a more consistent presence in his life and his mom moving around Texas and seeking stability and happiness. Through its unique structure, this “beautiful, simple and ambitious film” lovingly “creates the closest thing to a real experience as few motion pictures ever have,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Netflix)

‘Moonlight’ (2016)

The haunting masterpiece by director Barry Jenkins (“The Underground Railroad”) follows a young Black Miami man named Chiron through three distinct phases of his life. As a lonely, bullied elementary student he’s played by Alex R. Hibbert and goes by Little. His mother, Paula (Naomie Harris), is a drug addict and Little falls under the tutelage of a drug kingpin named Juan (Mahershala Ali) and his girlfriend, Teresa (Janelle Monáe).

Ashton Sanders plays Chiron as a high school student who develops a taboo romantic relationship with Kevin (Jharrel Jerome); Trevante Rhodes is Chiron as a fully grown man who goes by Black, who follows in Juan’s drug-dealing footsteps and reconnects with Kevin (André Holland). A “moving and mysterious” film, it is “about masculinity, the wounds and crises of which are the same for all sexualities but conditioned by the background weather of race and class,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Hulu)

‘Eighth Grade’ (2018)

Director Bo Burnham’s “Eighth Grade” stars Elsie Fisher (“The Bear”) as Kayla, a shy 13-year-old who produces a YouTube show whose only fan seems to be her awkward single father, Mark (Josh Hamilton). Anchored by an extraordinary performance from Fisher, the film’s centerpiece is a pool party thrown by the popular Kennedy (Catherine Oliviere), where Kayla sees her crush, Aiden (Luke Prael).

It is both a universal story about trying to fit in and also a quietly searing commentary about the Gen Z milieu, including active shooter drills and ubiquitous smartphones. Burnham’s film “reflects arguably the worst stretch of growing up in America’s education system,” said Andy Crump at Paste magazine, but is nevertheless “compassionate, radiating retroactive kindness for the children we all were to soothe the adults we are now.” (Prime Video)

Based on the Kei car – Japan’s smallest motorway-legal vehicle – the Super-N has been part-developed on British roads and, at just 3,599mm long, it’s the marque’s smallest car in the UK, said What Car? The electric motor delivers just 63bhp in regular driving mode, and it takes 14.5secs to get from 0-62mph, but push the purple boost button and a total of 94bhp is unleashed, allowing you to do 0-62mph in a “more respectable” 10 seconds.

A virtual seven-speed gearbox, coupled with a “futuristic four-cylinder sound”, gives the Super-N “proper character”, said Top Gear. It’s easy to drive smoothly and, though the 128-mile WLTP range isn’t huge, you’ll get nearer to 200 miles in the city, so it’s efficient too. With a low centre of gravity, the car is pretty agile on the road; suspension is on the stiff side and there’s a bit of body roll, but the steering has decent feel.

With four seats, the “characterful” Super-N is “surprisingly spacious”, said Auto Express. There’s no underfloor storage, and the boot is a tiny 162 litres, but the “magic seats” go flat, giving a whopping 967 litres. And while there is a lot of scratchy plastic, the things you touch “feel more premium”. The front seats are comfy with good visibility. There’s only one trim; the standard kit includes two screens, rear camera and Bose stereo.

“I wanted to walk out of ‘Life Support’ many times,” said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times, and “I mean that as the highest recommendation.” This “essential” documentary, told from the perspective of international doctors who volunteered to help civilians in Gaza between October 2023 and September 2025, offers a rare glimpse into life – and death – in the besieged enclave.

It is particularly vital considering that, since the war began, no independent foreign journalists have been allowed into Gaza. Using interviews and video footage, director Daniele Rugo weaves together the testimonies of surgeons, paediatricians and other medical staff as they confront “nightmarish wounds” in hospitals that double up as shelters, while bombs fall. In its “stark simplicity” it is “deeply racking”.

Doctors tend to be careful with their words and don’t reach for “overstatement or exaggeration”, said Cath Clarke in The Guardian. But their “measured accounts of hell on earth” make this “devastating film almost unbearable to watch”. The doctors pay tribute to their Palestinian colleagues, who work marathon shifts, often while grieving personal losses. One surgeon takes sitting-down breaks during an operation to avoid blacking out from hunger. Another brings her teenage children to work, reasoning that, if they die, they will die together.

We see “the erosion of life” in Gaza first-hand, said India Lawrence on Time Out, from the “heartbreaking footage” of people relaxing and lounging under beach umbrellas in 2022, to the nightmarish reality of life in wartime. There is no dramatic climax, just the slow, relentless descent towards Gaza’s “total devastation”. “Life Support” is “not a happy watch”, but it is “an urgent and essential piece of reportage”.

“Here we are again,” said John Nugent in Empire. Since 2010, Disney has produced more than 20 remakes “adapting old, animated material into shiny live-action form” – more than one a year. But few have used source material so recent – “or seemed so pointless” – as “Moana”.

‘Shot-for-shot remake’

It is practically a “shot-for-shot remake” of the 2016 animation, which was a “high point” for Disney. Once again, we are in ancient Polynesia, as Moana, a spirited chief’s daughter, goes on an oceanic quest to save her dying island of Motunui, enlisting the help of the narcissistic demi-god Maui.

But whereas the animated version was “fun, funny” and had “fantastic music”, this feels “flat”. It barely counts as live-action, either: a good two-thirds or so is animated, with the CGI often retaining a “cartoon aesthetic”, in a way that feels “awkward” and jarring next to flesh-and-blood actors. At one point, a character marvels at a “sacred place” surrounding them, while pointing to what is plainly a green-screen studio.

‘Exquisite form of agony’

“You will wonder why they bothered to make a replica,” said Brian Viner in the Daily Mail, “except insofar that you won’t wonder at all.” Disney can “hardly be bothered to conceal the fact that their overwhelming priority is to generate dollars”.

There are, though, “flickers of warmth”. Catherine Laga’aia is “engaging” as Moana, and creates “a lively chemistry” with Dwayne Johnson, reprising the role of Maui.

Johnson’s performance is “oddly lacklustre”, said Kevin Maher in The Times, and his wig is ridiculous – he looks like a “demented extra from ‘Hairspray’”. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s songs remain catchy, but mostly the film provokes only “an exquisite form of agony”.

The blowing up of the Nord Stream gas pipeline in the Baltic in September 2022 “has been called the greatest act of sabotage in modern times”, said Robert F. Worth in The New York Times. In one blow, the explosions ended Germany’s energy dependence on Russia – where the gas originated – and “set off a year-long argument about who was responsible”, with Russia, the US and Ukraine all identified as possible culprits.

Partly thanks to a “meticulous German police investigation, and partly because of some very dogged reporters”, we now know that Ukraine’s SBU intelligence agency was responsible. Their motive was to “stop Germany from feeding Russia’s war machine with billions of dollars in annual gas payments”.

Bojan Pancevski, a US-based reporter who “spent years untangling the plot”, has now written a “spectacular book” about the bombings, which reads like a “police procedural”.

The team of divers – four men and one woman – who headed to Germany’s Baltic coast had “possibly the daftest cover story in the history of espionage”, said Colin Freeman in The Telegraph. If stopped, they were “ready to claim that they were making an aquatic-themed pornographic film”. But they weren’t, and “the bombs went like clockwork”, damaging three of the four pipelines beyond repair.

Because the pipelines lay 80 metres below the surface, beyond the reach of “even the best-trained special-forces divers”, the organisers recruited “civilian deep-sea divers” from Ukraine’s Black Sea diving fraternity, who practised for months in disused Ukrainian quarries. They escaped from Germany by van, and only one has been arrested (he’s to stand trial in Germany later this year).

These days, it is common for current affairs to be trumpeted with the phrase “reads like a thriller”. “‘The Nord Stream Conspiracy’ genuinely does.”

Waterfalls are a gift of both sight and sound. They look magnificent, elegantly cascading into canyons and tumbling roughly over cliffs. The steady din of rushing water and booming splashes only adds to their beauty. These awe-inspiring waterfalls are reminders of how, sometimes, Mother Nature loves to show off.

Ban Gioc-Detian Falls, China and Vietnam

These multi-tiered falls straddle the border between China and Vietnam, surrounded by lush greenery and towering karst hills. Visitors can take in the calming sight from land, or hop on a bamboo raft and see it from the river below. On the Vietnam side (Ban Gioc), several smaller waterfalls to the side add to the majesty.

Havasu Falls, Arizona

This legendary waterfall, which “topples off fiery red rock and drops into a turquoise pool,” is so vibrant it almost doesn’t look real, said Travel and Leisure. It is on the Havasupai Reservation near the Grand Canyon, and to get here, you must have a permit, book a stay at the Havasupai Campground or Havasupai Lodge and then hike (or helicopter) in. Havasu Falls is the star of the show, but the nearby Navajo Falls, Mooney Falls and Beaver Falls are “similarly spectacular.”

Helmcken Falls, Canada

You’re going to want to see British Columbia’s Helmcken Falls during the summer and winter, when it shines in two incredibly different ways. During the warmer months, the water freely cascades down, as expected. Once the temperatures drop and days get shorter, the falls become “truly epic,” said the BBC. As the water tumbles over into the canyon, a “huge cone of ice begins to form,” creating an “awe-inspiring structure” that over the winter can grow to “almost half as tall as the waterfall itself.”

Iguazu Falls, Argentina and Brazil

You hear Iguazu Falls before you see it. The “low, thunderous rumble” rises from “deep within the jungle,” signaling that just around the bend the incredible falls await, said Travel and Leisure.

Hundreds of cascades, “some gentle and ribbonlike, others violent and towering,” make up the falls, and the sight is a sheer “spectacle.” If you have time, view Iguazu from both the Argentinian side, where an “incredible” network of walking paths drops you off close to the falls, and the Brazilian side, which provides a “panoramic view from farther back.”

Kalandula Falls, Angola

The roaring Kalandula Falls are considered sacred, a place where locals once performed rituals to ask the gods for health and wealth. Today, visitors come to witness the majesty of one of Africa’s largest waterfalls by volume, tucked far from the beaten path. To get here, you’ll have to hike down a rocky trail that snakes past the mighty Lucala River.

Kuang Si Falls, Laos

Kuang Si Falls starts off easy, with shallow pools that spill into wider pools. From there, the main waterfall brings the drama, with a 200-foot drop. During the dry season, visitors can cool off by swimming in the turquoise waters. If you don’t want to get wet, there are several bridges and viewing platforms to soak in the gorgeous views of the water and surrounding forest.

Langfossen, Norway

Wild and rugged Langfossen drops more than 2,000 feet, crashing down the mountainside and under the E134 highway. This is one of Norway’s tallest waterfalls, and while most others in the country are used for hydroelectric power generation, Langfossen is still in its natural state. Visitors can take a strenuous hike up an old farm path to be close to the waterfall and soak up panoramic views of the surrounding fjords and mountains, or marvel while on a boat ride across the fjord.

Seljalandsfoss, Iceland

Seljalandsfoss offers a rare opportunity to walk behind a waterfall. A path takes visitors around the back of it, into a small cave; tread carefully, as this area can be wet and slippery. Seljalandsfoss’ “beautiful high falls” are a sight to behold from the front, tumbling down over a “rocky scarp into a deep, green pool,” said Lonely Planet. North of Seljalandsfoss is its sister waterfall, Gljúfrabúi, which “gushes into a hidden canyon.”

Sutherland Falls, New Zealand

It takes “some effort” to reach Sutherland Falls, but your reward for making the trek is “jaw-dropping” views of the natural wonder, said Afar. New Zealand’s tallest waterfall is close to Milford Sound in Fiordland National Park, and “intrepid” hikers can reach it via the 33-mile Milford Track. Otherwise, book a helicopter tour to get an aerial look at Sutherland, which “escapes through a gap in a glacial cirque” before plunging more than 1,900 feet over three cascades.

Victoria Falls, Zambia and Zimbabwe

The Lozi name for Victoria Falls, Mosi-oa-Tunya, translates to “the smoke that thunders” and aptly describes the loud and misty scene. The falls change “dramatically” over the year, and are at their most “powerful” after the summer rains, when “enormous clouds of spray” carry over the gorge, “drifting across the surrounding rainforest,” said Forbes.

When the water levels are lower, the falls look “clearer,” and it’s easier to “better appreciate the geological scale” of the area. This is also your chance to take a “high-adrenaline” swim in Devil’s Pool, a natural pool right on the edge of the falls on the Zambian side.

Wailua Falls, Kauai

You don’t have to go far to get to Wailua Falls. This double-tiered waterfall can be seen from the road, making it accessible for those who can’t hike or have small children in tow. Set amid lush tropical foliage, Wailua is the quintessential Hawaiian waterfall, and likely looks familiar to fans of 1970s television — it appeared in the opening credits of “Fantasy Island.”

If you ask any gamer what the best game ever is, the answers will vary. Over time, video games have evolved from simple pastimes enjoyed by children to vehicles for layered storytelling with lush graphics that transport players. So what qualifies as the best may be more complicated in an era when games can rival movies in quality. Still, some of these titles have yet to be knocked off their top spots.

Tetris (1989)

Alexey Pajitnov’s puzzle game, as simple as it is, has had millions of fans around the world who know that the “simple act of turning geometric shapes and fitting them together” is “at once stimulating and meditative,” and the “drive to beat a high score could be a lifelong fixation,” said Rolling Stone. For 40 years, the “act of placing Tetrominoes has been iterated to exhaustion,” with multiple crossovers in popular media. The game continues to stand the test of time. Whether you’re “playing an older monochrome version on Game Boy” or using a VR headset to “gaze into surreal worlds as you chase a higher score,” Tetris is “still Tetris.”

Super Mario World (1991)

As a “character and a franchise,” Mario has been at the “forefront of just about every innovative leap in gaming,” said Rolling Stone. There are many Mario games, but Super Mario World is the “perfect sweet spot.”

Its “tight controls and inventive level design” are the “gold standard that others have been chasing for decades.” There are a “whole bunch of reasons” for Super Mario World’s “iconic status,” said GQ. Not only did it launch with Nintendo’s SNES console, but it also featured a “joyous abundance of platforming trickery” and an “effervescent soundtrack that absolutely slaps.” Plus, we got the “debut of a charming green dinosaur called Yoshi.”

Metal Gear Solid (1998)

People have different favorites in this series, but the original release of Metal Gear Solid “set the blueprint” for what the franchise “grew to become in later years: prescient, politically infused stories met with supernatural, fourth wall-breaking sequences,” said Rolling Stone.

The “stealth gameplay and clever enemy AI” were impressive, pushing audiences to “think on their toes to outwit potential threats.” Beyond the “cat-and-mouse bits,” there was a “deeper soul to everything in the game.” Inventive moments in the game became “historic emblems that shaped not just the series” but also the “unique elements video games can offer as a medium.”

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998)

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild may have shaken up gaming when it was released for the Nintendo Switch, but there is another Zelda game that stands out as the series’ crown jewel. The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is “indisputably one of the greatest games ever made,” said IGN.

Not only did it “redefine action/adventure games,” but it also “completely changed the way the industry thought about 3D combat and exploration.” This version of Zelda “took what was great about its predecessors” and “expanded on those themes and ideas exponentially.”

Halo: Combat Evolved (2001)

Microsoft needed a “killer app” to ensure that the original Xbox would “make a strong impression on gamers,” and it got one with Halo: Combat Evolved, said SVG. A sci-fi first-person shooter with an “epic campaign mode and frenetic multiplayer,” the game introduced players to the “iconic protagonist Master Chief.”

25 years later, it still “ranks highly among the best Halo games of all time.” The start of a “long-running franchise” that also heralded the “arrival of the Xbox,” Halo: Combat Evolved “shook up the industry.”

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011)

Skyrim captured both “hardcore and casuals” with its “streamlined role-playing design,” said GQ. Its “snowy mountain peaks” are an “incredible discovery space with 100s of hours of quests and secrets” and — “like all Bethesda games” — thousands of “fan-made mods created entire new quests and systems” to “elongate the game’s life for over a decade.”

Although The Elder Scrolls has been a “highlight of roleplaying games for years,” it wasn’t until the fifth installment that its “deeply mechanical vision of first-person fantasy broke through into the mainstream,” said Rolling Stone. Skyrim is “one of the few games that lives up to the premise that no two play-throughs will ever be the same.”

Grand Theft Auto V (2013)

The fifth entry in the Grand Theft Auto franchise has had a “profound effect on video games as a whole,” through its “staggeringly realistic open-world design” and “eclectic mix of storytelling and goofiness,” Rolling Stone said. To this day, the game has a thriving “online ecosystem” that encourages “everything from role-playing as cops and robbers to pulling off a daring casino heist.”

The single-player campaign is “revolutionary on its own,” but GTA Online “spread the game’s influence further” and helped “define the idea of a live-service multiplayer.” With its “timely commentary” and an “unstoppable multiplayer machine,” GTA V has “easily secured its spot among the greats.”

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

Full of “weighty choices, complex side quests,” and a “cornucopia of deadly monsters,” The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is probably “as close to the perfect fantasy role-playing game (RPG) as we’ve gotten,” Rolling Stone said. With its “shockingly dense open world” filled with “threads to unfurl,” it’s a game that “refuses to hold your hand.”

The Witcher 3 is “rarely easy,” but its challenges demand that “players meet the game on its own footing,” said Rolling Stone. By doing so, audiences will find “one of the richest stories in all of gaming and an unforgettable role-playing experience.”

Disco Elysium (2019)

Despite being a more recent game, there is “nothing else quite like Disco Elysium,” said IGN. The 30-hour story at the core of the game, which remembers your choices, is a “unique blend of noir detective fiction, traditional pen-and-paper RPGs” and a “large helping of existentialist theory.”

Its “twisting plot,” cast of memorable characters, and “sheer depth of choice” combine to create an “experience that begs to be savored in a world riddled with crime, poverty and violence,” said IGN. Somehow, it manages to “make all of this fun” and, “surprisingly often, funny.” A “gorgeously designed isometric RPG,” Disco Elysium is “truly a unique experience,” and one that will “surely live long in the memory of any who have for many years to come.”

Elden Ring (2022)

Elden Ring is the newest game on the list, and although it’s “built off the bones of the Dark Souls series,” it remains an incomparable gem, said Rolling Stone. Developer FromSoftware’s “chilly open-world fantasy,” partly conceptualized by Game of Thrones writer George R. R. Martin, is “dripping with gothic style.”

FromSoftware games are “notorious for their unrelenting difficulty,” but Elden Ring’s “pivot from smaller, puzzle box-like catacombs” to a more “languidly paced sandbox adventure” makes “every encounter feel more alluring.” Elden Ring’s unfriendly world, teeming with enemies, is the most “beautifully depressing space you’ll ever want to occupy for a hundred hours or more.”

This year, the world’s largest performing arts festival will stage 3,649 shows from 71 countries across 258 venues, culminating in a “mammoth” 53,884 performances, said Annie Lewis in Luxury London.

The festival has helped turbocharge the careers of Rowan Atkinson, Steve Coogan, Judi Dench and countless other names in the creative industries, and gives newcomers the chance for their big break. Here’s all you need to know about the nation’s favourite celebration of the arts.

What is the Fringe?

The event began unofficially in 1947 as an addition to the Edinburgh International Festival, set up to celebrate European culture after the Second World War. Eight small theatre companies made the trip to the capital that year to perform after the main festival closed, and the official Fringe Festival Society was created in 1958.

Now in its 79th year, the Fringe has “become so vastly bigger that it’s no longer the fringe of anything”, said Andrzej Lukowski, theatre editor at Time Out. It always runs for three weeks in August – this year from 7 to 31 August – though in reality shows will often preview on a day or two before the official start.

Why go?

“Truly, all human life is here,” said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Telegraph. Nowhere else in the world would you find performances of “Endometriosis: The Musical!”, “Robot Wars with Roombas” or “Chekhov in Flemish Sign Language”. Some of the biggest names in the comedy industry continue to return, with Frank Skinner, Nish Kumar and Catherine Bohart, James Acaster and Sara Pascoe all making appearances this year.

But the main appeal of the Fringe is that it’s not “awash with big names”. This is the place where people “go to see the comedy stars of the future before they’re famous”. Traditionally, many of the performances have been free, operating a pay-as-you-feel policy. If ticketed, shows are generally under £20 across the city's theatres, pubs and streets.

There are many other fascinating festivals in the city running at the same time. There’s the aforementioned Edinburgh International Festival and the “hugely popular” Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, which involves a “series of fancy military parades”, said Lukowski in Time Out. If any more reason is needed to flock to the city, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Edinburgh Art Festival and the Edinburgh International Book Festival are taking place close by.

What should you see?

“Comedy is king,” said Saunders in The Telegraph. Perhaps the festival’s most “controversial” stand-up show this year will be Amanda Knox’s “Cartwheel”. Wrongfully convicted in 2007 of the murder of Meredith Kercher, Knox wrestles with how to “explain her life-story to her young daughter”. Tickets are also almost sold out for “rising star” of “Saturday Night Live UK” Ania Magliano and her show “Peach Fuzz”, as well as previous Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Ahir Shah, “one of the most intelligent voices in stand-up”, back with “Golden”.

There’s a “great mix” of “returning shows, debuts and even some world premiere runs” in drama too, said Kevin Quinn in Edinburgh Evening News. Director Emma Howlett’s “ambitious” female-led “The Plot” is a tragi-comic “fast-paced, imaginative exploration of power, truth and the stories” set in the aftermath of the Gunpowder Plot. Writer and actress Hannah Reilly’s acclaimed “Roleplay” also serves up a “bold, provocative and darkly funny” depiction of a “broke feminist podcaster who rebrands as a provocative ‘slutfluencer’ in pursuit of fame”.

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the tomes piling up on your bedside table, try reaching for a novella instead. These slim, punchy books can be finished in a single day – and might just reignite your love of reading. Here are some of our favourites.

Assembly by Natasha Brown

Inspired by her career working in finance, Brown’s thrilling debut is just a hundred pages long and “written in vignettes that leave a lot of white space on the page”, said The Guardian. The story follows a young Black woman who “seems to have it all”: a great job, money, and a “loving, liberal, generationally wealthy boyfriend”. But simmering beneath the surface is a “desperate rage” at the racism and misogyny she navigates every day.

Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner

This “deeply strange” novel begins “conventionally enough”, with a quiet young woman leaving London to start afresh in a rural village, said The Guardian. But Townsend Warner “gleefully” changes tack when her heroine, Lolly Willowes, becomes a witch. “Smashing together” an array of genres from folk horror to nature writing, it’s a short but mighty book that helped cement its author as “one of the true originals of 20th-century English literature”.

Orbital by Samantha Harvey

Harvey’s “otherworldly” 140-page novel scooped the Booker Prize in 2024, proving longer doesn’t necessarily mean better, said Good Housekeeping. Set aboard the International Space Station, her “gorgeously written” book follows six astronauts orbiting Earth over 24 hours. Filled with beautiful prose and breathtaking imagery, she offers an “intriguing perspective on the human race’s treatment of our planet”. It’s a must-read.

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

Set in a small Irish town in the 1980s, this is a “quiet but deeply moving” story, said Daisy Lester in The Independent. It follows a “duteous father” who is confronted with the harrowing treatment of unmarried young women at the hands of the church at one of the country’s infamous Magdalene Laundries. “Haunting yet hopeful”, I devoured the entire book in “one short afternoon, but have been reflecting on it for far longer”.

Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys

Rhys’ “chilling, dreamlike” prequel to “Jane Eyre” explores another side to Charlotte Brontë’s “madwoman in the attic”, said Adrienne Westenfeld in Esquire. We meet the white Creole heiress, Antoinette Cosway, in Jamaica years before the events of Thornfield Hall. Isolated and lonely, she is soon “driven to despair” by the cruelty of her new husband Edward Rochester. Rhys’ book is just 176 pages long; packed with “gorgeous imagery and turbulent emotions”, it will roll over you like a “hazy island fever dream”.

Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? by Lorrie Moore

Moore expertly captures “female adolescence and the intensity of its friendships” in her “luscious and funny” book, said The Economist. The action follows Berie as she looks back at the “small, wild joys of her teenage years”, and tries to figure out how her life has become so “staid and unfulfilling”. She begins to see the “mockery and rebellion” she and her best friend had loved as “callow answers to teenage insecurities” – but her story still “vibrates with regret for what she has lost”.

Netflix’s announcement last year it had green-lit a new adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic book series immediately ruffled feathers. Podcaster Megyn Kelly issued a stark warning for the streaming giant on X: “If you woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie’ I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project”.

Now, that adaptation has arrived and, unsurprisingly, not everyone likes it.

‘The reboot that nobody needed’

Few things offer a more “sobering barometer of the current state of our politics” than how the “Little House on the Prairie” reboot became a “battle in America’s ongoing culture wars” before a cast had even been announced or anyone had watched it, said Jason Kyle Howard in Politico.

It’s a “particularly striking example” of how popular entertainment is politicised “precisely because” the original – in this case NBC’s version from the 1970s – is seen as “decidedly non-political” and has been enjoyed by fans of “all political stripes”. Ronald Reagan famously loved the show.

Those of us who watched the original will remember it with “misty-eyed nostalgia”, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. This is the “reboot that nobody needed”. Created by Rebecca Sonnenshine, who brought in female directors for each episode of the first series, it includes “sympathetically portrayed” Native American characters who “take up a lot of screen time”.

The basic story remains intact: the Ingalls family “head out west to establish a new life on the prairie”, navigating a series of challenges and dangers along the way. As viewers, we’re invited to “envy” the pretty scenery and simpler way of living; the production design “fits neatly into the Instagram aesthetic” and the women’s immaculate dresses have echoes of a tradwife fantasy. It’s hard to “shake the feeling” that the show has been made for an audience with “short attention spans and a desire for social media likes”.

“Netflix did indeed woke-ify ‘Little House on the Prairie,” said Rebecca Onion on Slate Magazine. It makes a “deep bow to contemporary concerns about the politics of the source material”. Among the Ingalls family’s new friends are a Black couple and a French Canadian woman who “wears trousers and practises free love”. The streaming giant’s take with its “sassy and resourceful Ingalls sisters” and “full cast of multicultural” friends feels “sanitised in a way that’s sure to annoy ‘Little House’ purists”.

‘Gentle but gripping’ new take

“Is this ‘woke-ifying’?” said James Poniewozik in The New York Times. “Call it what you want”, but failing to feature Native American characters would have been a “conspicuous choice in an era of rich Indigenous stories like ‘Reservation Dogs’”. Using multiple voices to explore the story’s “underlying conflicts” is the “most interesting aspect of a familiar series”.

The “worst people you know” will likely complain the reboot is “woke”, said Daniel Fienberg in The Hollywood Reporter. That’s because the Black doctor who featured only “briefly” before has been turned into a fleshed-out person with a “love interest and backstory”, and Indigenous characters have been introduced to “articulate the discomfort of being forced off their land in the name of Manifest Destiny”. If that makes it woke then “so be it”, but I’d like to point out the Ingalls remain the show’s “undisputed heroes” who are “fundamentally decent and empathetic people”.

Does the reboot get into the “racial-ethnic offences Wilder allegedly committed while writing her many books?” said John Anderson in The Wall Street Journal. “No.” But, like the books, it does explore the “well-founded fear that settlers had about the Native Americans around them, and the oblivious attitude of the pioneers toward the people they were displacing”.

Remaking the “beloved tale” was “always going to be a risk”, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. But Sonnenshine has “navigated this potentially fraught undertaking with skill”. Cleverly, she lets audiences “take what they want” from the show, whether that means “indulging in the fantasy of living off the land or baulking at the show’s grittier truths”. Either way, it’s a “gentle but gripping” update.

The right “best” visa for you sits at the junction of several Venn diagram circles: climate, economic opportunity, length of stay, language, culture. Whether you want to dabble in a new adventure for a limited span of months or crave a long-term residence plan far from the United States, there are options. It’s a big world out there. The right so-called “golden” visa can crack it open.

Croatia

The Central European country is not the slightest bit demure with its enjoining of would-be digital nomads. The country’s website on the topic sports the cocksure hashtag #CroatiaYourNewOffice; Croatia’s focus on this segment of travelers has been so successful that researchers there published academic papers on the phenomenon. The process for acquiring this kind of visa in the country is clear and smooth, just like the beloved waters surrounding its nearly 80 major islands.

Estonia

Hard to believe that digital nomad visas are quite a new invention, considering the pace at which they have blasted across the globe. Estonia was the first to launch the new visa breed, debuting its version in 2020. The European country is “incredibly digital, with widespread Wi-Fi in public areas and almost all government services — including birth certificates, medical records, and even contract signing—available online,” said Afar. No surprise then that to secure the visa, your work must be 100% remote. Digital is as digital does.

Germany

Not every visa for workers is created equal. Many countries have lofty requirements for both income and fixed employment status. Germany, though, was ahead of the curve in welcoming freelance workers and self-employed workers with its visa for freelancers and the self-employed. Freelancers, whether artists, journalists or teachers, need proof of their vocation with, say, a diploma or a license, along with evidence of financial means. Self-employed business owners, on the other hand, must show a vested economic interest in Germany.

Greece

There are many ways to shake a stick at what constitutes an optimal country for additional residency as an American. Greece nails oodles of desirable attributes, according to Henley & Partners, a company that provides residence and citizenship planning. The company’s Global Residence Program Index scores countries across such categories as reputation, quality of life, visa processing time and time to citizenship. Greece landed the number one slot in the 2026 index. Crack open the ouzo, and start packing.

Panama

Forest and family: These are two ways Panama sets itself apart with its residence-by-investment program. Invest a minimum in teak reforestation, and you are bequeathed two years of temporary residence. Triple that investment and — blammo! — instant residency. Once you have secured residency with your Panamanian golden visa, er, red carpet visa as it is dubbed here, you can bring along your spouse, children within certain parameters and your parents. It is an expansive familial welcome that guarantees your loved ones can experience the country’s historic pueblos and beachcentric glory.

Romania

All the nature, a live-wire capital, reasonable cost of living — Romania provides a touch of everything you might want from that digital nomad life. It includes being in a country that not every other expat has stationed themselves in, a boon unto itself. When you’re not experiencing the best of Bucharest, head to Europe’s “Yellowstone,” aka Transylvania, “home to one of Europe’s last great wildernesses,” said Afar.

Thailand

Do the beaches and chiles of Thailand live rent-free in your brain and body? If you’re up for the fiscal commitment, a Thai golden visa could be yours. The investment visa provides tax benefits and exemptions, plus the ability to include a spouse and dependents without a minimum stay requirement. There are varied tiers of investment: The highest tiers can provide residency for up to 20 years. Lesser fiscal mortals can opt for a long-term visa, which grants up to 10 years of residency.

United Arab Emirates

Many golden visas necessitate proof of out-of-country employment, whether a full-time gig or contract with an employer based elsewhere. Not the one offered by the United Arab Emirates. According to the country’s golden visa website, “those with exceptional talent or rare specializations” (artists, doctors, athletes, etc), “humanitarian pioneers or frontline heroes,” investors, entrepreneurs and outstanding students can be granted renewable visas good for 5 to 10 years. Dubai, even though it currently sits in the crosshairs of the war with Iran, has long been an expat magnet.

Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated mythic action epic “The Odyssey” is out this week. Count down to its release by watching or rewatching some of the director’s greatest hits.

Oppenheimer (2023)

The word of the summer in 2023 was “Barbenheimer”, as the blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” both hit the big screen. “Oppenheimer”, definitely the darker half of the double feature, is Nolan’s “profoundly unnerving” retelling of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and the part he played in developing the atomic bomb, said Clarisse Loughrey in The Independent. Nolan is “committed to understanding the inner workings of his subject”, observing the chapters of Oppenheimer’s life with “sickly wonder” and painting a picture of a “man deep in denial”. The film is carried by Murphy and Robert Downey Jr., who both earned Oscars for their performances.

Inception (2010)

The one thing to know about Nolan’s 2010 thriller, “Inception”, is that “it is not a trick”, said Nev Pierce in Empire. “It is ingenious but not crafty, knotty but not duplicitous.” There is no “‘ta-dah!’ moment” where you find out everything was only a dream. The starry cast of actors is led by Leonardo DiCaprio who plays Dom Cobb – a spy-for-hire who steals his targets’ ideas from their subconscious minds as they sleep. Visually breathtaking, with cities folding in on themselves and zero-gravity fight scenes, it’s an “exhilarating” watch that fully immerses you in Nolan’s imagination. But it’s more than just spectacle: “this is about life and death and what might be beyond and between”.

Dunkirk (2017)

Nolan’s 2017 Second World War film about the evacuation of British troops from the French town of Dunkirk in the face of the German advance has a “heart-hammering intensity”, said Robbie Collin at The Telegraph. The movie features separate narrative strands following soldiers, pilots and sailors to bring the “single pivotal historical moment” powerfully to life on land, air and sea. With the “crisp” landscape shots, “meticulous” period detail, “superb Hans Zimmer score” and all-star cast, Nolan is able to capture the true “British ‘Dunkirk spirit’”.

Interstellar (2014)

Despite being one of Nolan’s more scientifically ambitious movies, “Interstellar” still has a massive “gravitational pull”, said Mark Kermode at The Guardian. Our unlikely hero, Joseph Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) is “prompted by ghostly forces to lead an exploratory mission through a wormhole beyond the rings of Saturn, abandoning his family in search of a future for all humanity”. With stunning shots of space and imagined planets, “Interstellar” is a “futuristic fable” that leaves viewers “awestruck” and reaffirms Nolan as “cinema’s leading blockbuster auteur”.

The Dark Knight (2008)

The second instalment of Nolan’s Batman trilogy “leaps beyond its origin and becomes an engrossing tragedy”, said Roger Ebert. “The Dark Knight” picks up in the months after its predecessor, “Batman Begins” (2006), with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) navigating the moral dilemmas that come with being the Gotham vigilante. Boundaries of good and evil are blurred even further with the introduction of Batman’s most iconic villain, The Joker, played by Heath Ledger, who died before the film was released. In his “key performance”, which earned him a posthumous Oscar, Ledger presented The Joker as “more than a villain”. Nolan’s gritty retelling of this iconic story redefined the “comic-book movie”.

Getting to Traena in Norway’s Arctic Circle is “a bit of a schlep”, said James Stewart in The Times. From Oslo, you can catch a flight to Bodo and then take a passenger ferry to Onoy, “a small island transit hub on the Helgeland coast”.

The “first indication” that it’s going to be “worth it” comes as the ferry “weaves south where north Norway shatters into 20,000 islands”. But it’s confirmed on the final leg of the journey as a “fist of peaks nears in the open sea” during the hour-long crossing from Onoy to Husoy island.

Here you’ll find Ytri: a new luxury hotel “billed as ‘Norway’s most remote island retreat’”. At first glance it appears more like an “elongated village of small barns, their wooden cladding silvering nicely or painted rust-red, black and the green of oxidised copper”.

The little “fishing island with 450 residents” doesn’t seem like an “obvious” choice for a swanky new retreat. But faced with “squeezed incomes and an ageing population”, the islanders voted “almost unanimously to create a hotel”.

This is a place made for “edge-of-the-map escapism”, said Chloe Frost-Smith in Vogue. Ytri has been built like a “contemporary coastal hamlet” with 38 rooms and suites, a boathouse, a restaurant serving “traditional open sandwiches” and a yoga and wellness area complete with saunas. Days are easy to fill with “hikes to ancient caves” and “candlelit dinners of seafood pulled from the water just metres from the hotel”.

Consider taking a shuttle boat to the nearby island of Sanna which “boasts three peaks”, said Worldcrunch. To reach the top of one of them, adventurous travellers must go through “what locals call ‘the tunnel of love’, an 800m-stretch dug inside the mountain”. The reward is the view: on your right stretches the “endless sea”, and on your left “the impressive contour of the continent dotted by white glaciers”.