New York City’s big new Roy Lichtenstein show turns out to be “far more touching than I had anticipated,” said Jason Farago in The New York Times. Lichtenstein, who’s routinely celebrated as one of pop art’s visionaries, is usually credited with deflating high art by borrowing from comic books while reducing painting to components simple enough that a machine could reproduce them. In truth, the native New Yorker rendered each of the famous Ben-Day dots on his canvases “with something a lot like love,” a revelation that helps make the show “the most momentous exhibition of the season.” At a time when many of us are routinely deluged with AI-generated images, we see Lichtenstein (1923–97) modeling a constructive, decades-old response. With each dot painted by human hand and each choice he made in selecting from existing images and reworking them, he was insisting on the importance of a singular human vision, answering his own era’s flood of mass-market imagery by “keeping faith with a beauty that could last for all time.”

Lichtenstein wasn’t a lazy plagiarist, said David Smith in The Guardian. At the Whitney show, the artist’s sketchbooks and preliminary drawings show how often he altered the images of his source materials, “re-engineering line weights, cropping compositions, and shifting color fields to agitate the viewer’s eye.” The impact of his innovations was immediate, and the museum has re-created his breakthrough 1962 solo show at the Leo Castelli Gallery. His prescience was also such that by 1968, he was already speaking about his Ben-Day dots in relationship to new technologies that were translating visual imagery into transmittable data.

There’s no doubt that Lichtenstein is one of the winners of the American century, said Jerry Saltz in NYMag.com. He changed art forever, and “his style is one of the most recognizable in all of art history.” But while the Whitney show is “jazzy, bright,” and “packed to the rafters” with “paintings that jump off the walls,” its thesis falls flat. “The curators say every picture is an argument about seeing,” but Lichtenstein’s argument is the same every time, making “Like New” an illustration of “what happens when a revolutionary visual language becomes so familiar that the revolution disappears and leaves little to chew on.”

Lichtenstein’s best works, all from 1962 to 1965, were “satirical commentaries on American consumerism, the good life, the heroic male, and standardized beauty,” said John Yau in Hyperallergic. Unfortunately, he exposed the limitations of his style as soon as he began using it to produce mock re-creations of works by Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Cézanne, and other past masters. “He went from being a satirist of America’s ideals of comfort and beauty to being a parody of himself.” If we’re being honest, he never recovered.

Science fiction is a broad genre, and in one of its most beloved forms it is fused with the dynamics of a thriller. The best of these films are simultaneously suspenseful, thought-provoking and dazzling.

‘Aliens’ (1986)

Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), the lone survivor of the slow-burn rampage in 1979’s “Alien,” reluctantly tags along with a squad of Marines to a colony menaced by the Xenomorphs. This “perfect sequel” is a “war movie fused inextricably with science fiction,” said Ian Nathan at Empire. (Netflix)

‘12 Monkeys’ (1995)

James Cole (Bruce Willis) is a convict sent back in time from 2035 to find the source of a manufactured virus that wipes out 99% of the global population. The film succeeds as a “vigorous work of dark, surprise-filled science fiction,” said Janet Maslin at The New York Times. (Prime Video)

‘Children of Men’ (2006)

As a long fertility crisis threatens total societal collapse, Theo (Clive Owen) escorts a pregnant woman to safety through a bleak United Kingdom teeming with refugees and fear. This masterful parable is a “fast-paced, kinetically shot dystopia,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Prime Video)

‘Annihilation’ (2018)

Lena (Natalie Portman) is a biologist who joins an expedition into a slowly expanding extraterrestrial bubble, inside which plant and animal life, as well as reality itself, are subject to bizarre mutations. Watching this “shimmering sci-fi art installation” is a “foreboding, unique and wholly challenging experience,” said David Crow at Den of Geek. (MGM+)

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Naomi Alderman is the author of The Power, a 2016 best seller that won the U.K.’s Women’s Prize for Fiction. In her new novel, The Strangers, a writer also named Naomi Alderman is wrestling with grief when she discovers an alien animal species that begins proliferating.

‘The Vintner’s Luck’ by Elizabeth Knox (1998)

I read this in my early 20s when I was starting to work hard on my writing. I thought, If I can ever write anything as good, I’ll be happy forever. In 1808, a French winemaker meets an angel and, impossibly, they fall in love. It is about everything: love, sex, faith, death, memory, redemption, God. Buy it here.

‘Possession’ by A.S. Byatt (1990)

The best and classiest and most intellectual kind of mystery novel. In an archive, a researcher finds lost letters exchanged by two Victorian writers. Why were they writing to each other? Were they having an affair? And who else wants to uncover the truth? Just superb. Buy it here.

‘Leech’ by Hiron Ennes (2022)

I could not put this down, in a way I hadn’t experienced for years. A doctor arrives at a strange old castle to replace his predecessor who has died suddenly. But when he performs an autopsy on the older doctor, something strange wriggles inside him. A full world you can sink into that grips like, indeed, a leech. Buy it here.

‘Chocky’ by John Wyndham (1968)

A young boy believes he’s in contact with an alien. But the alien can’t be seen or felt; it’s only communicating with the boy’s mind. It can’t be real, can it? But if not, where are these strange new ideas in his mind coming from? The book is mesmerizing on parental love and as a weird tale. Buy it here.

‘The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James’ (1931)

James is the Victorian master of the ghost story. An M.R. James protagonist tends to be an academic—someone driven by curiosity who doesn’t know when to leave well enough alone. His novels are absolute master classes in how much to reveal, how much to leave to the reader’s terrified imagination. Buy it here.

‘Ficciones’ by Jorge Luis Borges (1944)

Borges writes stories that are an idea, an absolute crystalline unforgettable thought. I fell into these as a teenager, read them again and again; I could practically recite The Lottery in Babylon by heart for you. You’d also get a decent education just reading all the writers Borges mentions in his stories. Buy it here.

‘The Cauldron: The Making of the Modern Middle East’ by Simon Sebag Montefiore

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s latest best seller is “a triumph of blood-and-thunder narrative history,” said Sean McMeekin in The Wall Street Journal. At a time when conflict in the Middle East is again touching lives around the world, the British historian has delivered a sweeping and energetic account of the region’s turbulent last 125 years. Beginning in 1902, when the young prince Ibn Saud seized Riyadh to puncture Ottoman dominance, “Montefiore doesn’t play favorites, subjecting all his characters to scrutiny.” We get British and French meddling during and after World War I, the dramatic reset brought on by the next global conflict, and Cold War machinations that enflamed new conflicts. Then comes the 1979 Iranian Revolution, which Montefiore characterizes as epochal in its impact. “Not all his stories are original,” of course, “but he enriches them with fascinating details.”

“While vast in scope, The Cauldron is written in a way that is equally accessible to regional experts and neophytes,” said Jonathan Harounoff in the New York Post. Often, his story is carried by “the compelling and, at times, insidious characters who helped forge the Middle East we know today.” Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani, Qatar’s founding emir, sired 56 children. King Farouk, who ruled Egypt for 16 years, was addicted to gambling, food, and sex. As Montefiore marches readers though various crises and flashpoints, said Mark Urban in The Times (U.K.), he shows a determination to nail down which actors deserve blame. “Time and again,” he shows that the region’s leaders have been more than mere puppets, having more agency than self-regarding Westerners might suspect. And though he rips into Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini, today’s Israeli right wing, and many other regional players, “this is not a polemic but a work of history in which his judgments are rooted in deep research.”

The astonishing scope of the book is “both its greatest strength and its principal weakness,” said Sam Kiley in The Independent (U.K.). At his best, Montefiore “can make a complicated political order suddenly legible through a few deft sentences,” but the pileup of rulers, coups, and wars at times becomes “so dense that the reader can struggle to retain a firm sense of causation.” He also “distributes sympathy unevenly,” favoring pragmatists over fervent believers and, subtly, Israelis over Palestinians in the Middle East conflict that so often looms largest in the minds of outsiders. Montefiore is “too candid about Israeli wrongdoing to be described as an apologist.” Better yet, he’s written a book that anyone could learn from. “Its scholarship, range, and vitality make it an impressive achievement.”

‘Death of an Ordinary Man’ by Sarah Perry

“Death of an Ordinary Man is not a remarkable story,” said Amy Bloom in The New York Times. “What is remarkable is this book.” In 2022, a 77-year-old man was diagnosed with esophageal cancer and died nine days later. Because the man was her father-in-law, British novelist Sarah Perry watched that small drama unfold at close range after she and her husband moved in to provide 24-hour care. In Perry’s attentive account of those nine days, “there are no celestial visits, no shocking reconciliations.” Instead, there’s incontinence, there’s paperwork, and there are good and bad medical people—“all the things people ordinarily don’t write about.” Those details belong in this gift of a work, though, because “Perry’s entire point is that this condition of being alive includes, inevitably and properly, the process of dying.”

In speaking of her own experience in those final days, Perry “captures the feeling of existing in a strange, panicked void,” said Karin Altenberg in The Wall Street Journal. Perry and her husband, Robert, both previously busy with other things, suddenly find themselves caretakers sleeping on the floor of their patient’s bungalow. The world outside ceases to exist as nurses, relatives, and clergy visit. Meanwhile, Perry and Robert are figuring the logistics of end-of-life care in real time straight through to their charge’s final breath. Many of us are likely to find ourselves in a similar situation one day, and through her “deeply tender” account, Perry has “extended a hand to the reader with profound grace.

“It’s not easy to account for what makes this book so special,” said Joe Moran in The Guardian (U.K.). David Perry, the ostensible subject, was such a content, reserved Englishman that “some may even find him a little boring.” In part, Perry’s beautifully written book “works its magic through the adamantine detail and quiet lyricism with which it recounts a particular, unrepeatable life.” More than that, though, “what makes this book gem-like is that it succeeds in conveying the reality of death as this monumental, mythic thing that coexists surreally with the mundane world of council bin collections.” Though the breakdown of David’s body isn’t dignified, Perry notices that it’s also transfiguring, right down to this ordinary man’s fingertips.

Fjord

Directed by Cristian Mungiu (R)

★★★★

The film that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes this year is “a car crash occurring in what feels like real time,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. “One of the year’s undisputed highlights,” the newly released drama follows a family that’s torn apart soon after they move from Bucharest to a Norwegian village and their fundamentalist Christian beliefs generate suspicion. When the parents, Mihai and Lisbet, are accused of child abuse based on slim evidence, all five of the couple’s kids, including two teenagers and a breastfeeding infant, are taken away by child services. With co-stars Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve delivering performances that give little away, the movie “poses prickly questions it astutely refuses to answer.” Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, who previously won the Palme d’Or for 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, never reveals whether Mihai and Lisbet are guilty of serious mistreatment or not, said Monica Castillo in The A.V. Club. But while his latest award winner is “expertly crafted,” it belies his disdain for Norway’s progressive liberalism and the government overreach he thinks the mindset spawns. Fjord also “loses its focus” once a fed-up Mihai summons fellow religious conservatives to stand with him and his wife during their trial. “Excellent” work from Reinsve and Stan help save the movie from tipping into didacticism, said Brian Tallerico in RogerEbert.com. But Mungiu also hasn’t fully made his mind up about Mihai and Lisbet and the values they espouse. “One of the things that makes Fjord so rewarding is the sense that he’s exploring how he feels about these people and these issues along with us as their story unfolds.”

‘La Bola Negra’

Directed by Los Javis (R)

★★★★

Arriving in U.S. theaters after wowing festival audiences, this Oscar contender from Spain “has the sweep and audacity of a great modernist novel,” said Dana Stevens in Slate. “An at times exhausting but ultimately nourishing feast,” La Bola Negra toggles between three gay protagonists separated by nearly a century of time as it highlights the links between fascism and homophobia. “Not every one of its interweaving stories lands with equal power,” and some passages feel rushed, but “too much movie is better than not enough.” Each tale, “at first oddly, works in a slightly different register,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. In 1937, Sebastián, a musician forced to fight for the fascists in the Spanish Civil War, falls for a wounded prisoner named Rafael, initiating a love story that turns wrenching. By then, we’ve also met Carlos, who, in an “almost fairy-tale-like” 1932 setting, is barred from an elite club because of his sexuality. And we’ve watched Alberto, a grad student from our own era, begin investigating his grandfather’s past. It takes a while to see the stories’ links, but once you do, “the structure feels cleverly satisfying” despite the movie’s “unnecessarily overwrought” third act. Still, co-directors Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi—aka Los Javis—“execute this mighty vision with thrilling technical bravado,” said Richard Lawson in The Hollywood Reporter. It is “high time” we had a gay war epic of this much “scope and soulfulness and invention.”

‘Klara and the Sun’

Directed by Taika Waititi (PG-13)

★★★★

“Adapting a complex, questioning novel as a cockeyed child’s-eye comedy worked once before for Taika Waititi,” said Guy Lodge in Variety. But even fans of 2019’s Jojo Rabbit are unlikely to be moved by Waititi’s “twee, pulseless” adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel about an android purchased to be the companion of a sickly 14-year-old. In this disastrous misfire, “the filmmaker’s kooky affectations fight the stoic sadness of Ishiguro’s storytelling at every turn.” Jenna Ortega stars as Klara, the tale’s “Artificial Friend,” playing the robot as “a ditsy, cutesy innocent,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. Being solar-powered, Klara worships the sun as a god. But whereas Ishiguro made something of such fable-like story elements, Waititi’s “unbearably mannered” film “winds up saying nothing substantial or meaningful (or funny) about artificial intelligence, love, or grief.” And when we reach the twist ending, it’s “as unsatisfying and contrived as everything that has gone before.” The two leads do what they can, said Ben Gibbons in Screen Rant. Ortega has a tough assignment, and “her ability to imbue her character with emotion while still feeling robotic is impressive.” Mia Tharia, meanwhile, plays 14-year-old Josie “with enormous confidence, magnetism, and charm.” Alas, the actresses’ work is wasted on an adaptation that turns out to be “a ham-fisted sci-fi comedy with a hollow message.” Clearly, Waititi was “not the right choice for this story.”

Given the variability of last year’s snowfall, you would think heading to larger, more accessible resorts would give you the best guarantee for a full week of skiing. But “smaller, lesser-known resorts can often have bigger snowfalls, more vertical, fewer skiers and better off-piste”, said Alf Alderson in The Telegraph. Cheaper lift passes, shorter queues and fewer interruptions on the slopes also sweeten the deal, without compromising on skiing quality. Here are some of the best spots.

Heiligenblut, Austria

This tiny village beneath Austria’s highest mountain is “blissfully quiet”, said Sean Newsom in The Sunday Times. Each winter, the main road to Heiligenblut is “closed by snow”, and “few bother” to “wriggle in round on the back roads to ski its modest but spectacular area of intermediate-friendly slopes”. Heiligenblut is home to “mind-blowing” views of the 3,798-metre Grossglockner and a “non-existent (in a good way)” après-ski culture, allowing for proper relaxation. Anyone with an interest in ski touring or off-piste skiing will be “thrilled by its back-country potential”.

Tetnuldi, Georgia

The Georgian resort has “deserted slopes, deep powder and truly wild alpine panoramas”, said Alderson in The Telegraph. As you approach, you can see the “eponymous 4,858-metre Mount Tetnuldi, one of four Georgian peaks higher than Mont Blanc, glowering down at the pistes”. The resort has “consistently good snow and almost 1,000 metres of vertical” to explore. The long journey there is definitely “worthwhile”. “The 25km of marked pistes are a good warm-up for the world-class back-country skiing that’s the area’s big attraction.” At its foot, there is the town of Mestia, which is “famed for its stone Svan towers that date back to the 12th century”.

Brundage Mountain Resort, Idaho, US

This North American resort has an “uncrowded and unpretentious” vibe, said Ted Thornhill in The Independent. Just above the small mountain town of McCall, the resort offers a “classy experience”, welcoming both “strong skiers craving room to roam, and families who enjoy the low-stress atmosphere”. The après-ski is “friendly and relaxed”, once you’ve finished for the day on the area’s “famously light, dry snow”. “The average annual snowfall is around 320 inches and there are plenty of runs on which to relish it.”

Sainte-Foy-Tarentaise, France

“Sit in a lift queue at Val d’Isère or Tignes for long enough and someone will eventually mention Sainte-Foy, the resort a few minutes down the valley that regulars would rather keep to themselves,” said In the Snow. The whole area is “refreshingly uncrowded”, and though it only has 26 marked trails, its lift-accessed off-piste and powder terrain is “some of the best in the Tarentaise”. The low-key resort is in a prime location, with Val d’Isère, Tignes and Les Arcs “all easy day trips if you fancy a change of scenery”.

Vogel, Slovenia

“Vogel is one of the most spectacular ski resorts in Slovenia, if not in the whole of Europe,” said Tristan Kennedy in Snow. Most of the pistes are suitable for easy and intermediate skiers and expand on to “plenty of open, rolling terrain”. Vogel sits above Lake Bohinj – “just around the corner from that Instagram favourite, Lake Bled” – and has views over the Julian Alps and Triglav National Park. The resort’s “biggest selling point” is that it relies “entirely on natural snow, with no artificial snowmaking”.

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As one of the most popular and top-selling genres, romance has long transported readers into captivating love stories. These four swoon-worthy novels are perfect for anyone seeking an amorous read.

‘Pride and Prejudice’ by Jane Austen (1813)

Scholars celebrate Austen’s “pioneering use of free indirect discourse,” but you don’t need to be an expert to appreciate that “she helped invent the romantic comedy as we know it,” said Time. A “drolly perceptive chronicle” of Elizabeth Bennet’s “bumpy courtship” with Fitzwilliam Darcy, Austen’s “second and most influential novel” is the “ultimate slow burn.” ($25, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Outlander’ by Diana Gabaldon (1991)

After World War II, British combat nurse Claire and her husband embark on a second honeymoon to reconnect. Instead, she somehow “winds up in 1743 Scottish highlands” and falls in love with warrior Jamie — a “very different and very passionate relationship,” said Forbes. The first in a beloved series, this novel is best for fans of “time travel, historical fiction and very long novels.” ($30, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘The Notebook’ by Nicholas Sparks (1996)

The bond between Noah and Allie, the star-crossed lovers at the center of both the novel and the classic 2004 film, has ensnared romantics for decades. Their love feels “both idealized and grounded,” spanning “years, obstacles and ultimately memory loss.” The result is “more powerful than a typical love story,” said Business Insider. ($25, Hachette Book Group, Amazon)

‘Before I Let Go’ by Kennedy Ryan (2022)

Yasmen and her ex-husband, Josiah, try their best to coparent and run a business together, but they keep being pulled back into each other’s arms. Kennedy Ryan’s “emotion-driven books” are “anything but fluff,” tackling deeper issues such as “mental health and neurodivergence, social injustices, and climate change,” said Marie Claire. ($40, Hachette Book Group, Amazon)

Netflix should be on top of the world. The streamer has far more subscribers than rivals Amazon Prime, HBO Max or Disney+. But revenue and viewership growth has slowed, the streaming service is cutting staff and there are no hits like “Stranger Things” or “Squid Game” on the horizon.

What did the commenters say?

Netflix investors have been “increasingly worried” since the company’s failed bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, said The Wall Street Journal. While the service has the lowest cancellation rate among major streamers, Netflix has recently “struggled” with subscribers “spending less time watching programming on the platform.” That is a critical marker. Strong viewership tells executives “customers are satisfied and less likely to cancel their subscriptions.” Company stock has fallen 40% over the last year.

The problem is “keeping viewers hooked,” said The New York Times. Shows like “Beef” and “The Night Agent” are shedding audience in their latest seasons. Viewers are instead “drifting toward TikTok and YouTube for the attention Netflix used to own,” said Investing.com’s Jesse Cohen in an analysis, per the Times. While Netflix accounts for just under 8% of all U.S. viewing time, YouTube comes in at 14%.

The service has also suffered a “brain drain” that is affecting its hit-making ability, said Drew Taylor at The Wrap. The Duffer Brothers, who created “Stranger Things,” have left for Paramount, and filmmakers like David Fincher and Noah Baumbach are also departing. The key to any revival “will be to reestablish those relationships.”

What next?

Netflix earlier this month announced layoffs of 1,000 employees, as well as the departure of several top executives, said Variety. “I know that we could do better,” said co-CEO Ted Sarandos on an earnings call, per the outlet.

Peter Rice, the newly installed chief content officer at Netflix, “understands talent relations” and will help make the streamer a place where Hollywood creators “love to do” their “best work,” Sarandos said. Can wooing hitmakers help Netflix find its way back to dominance? “Stranger Things” have happened.

As leaves fall and the nights draw in, every coffee shop’s “non-negotiable” autumn fixture is sweeping consumers up in a “sea of spice-infused foam”, said Metro. You’d be hard pushed right now to find a menu where pumpkin spice latte is not on offer, with every establishment “from high-end bakeries to budget spots offering their own signature twist”.

The pumpkin spice latte made its debut in US Starbucks outlets in 2003 but it wasn’t until 2015 that it contained “any actual pumpkin”, said Britannica. The name came from the fact that the original cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg spice blend was the same as that used in pumpkin pie. The aim was to create a drink that captured the essence of autumn, and it’s proved such a hit that Americans now “guzzle about 20 million” Starbucks “PSL”s every year.

The pumpkin spice latte has “become a cultural phenomenon greater than itself”, said NPR. Over the years, it’s been seen as “shorthand” for everything from “basicness” to “femininity, and even for white culture”. But its most enduring impact is the “$500 million-dollar industry” it generates every year.

With the average pumpkin spice latte now costing £5.25, you may want to try swapping your coffee shop’s “autumn favourite” for a homemade creation, said The Telegraph.

The “real secret to the drink’s success” is in the “warming” blend of spices that is sweetened with pumpkin purée. Even if you don’t have a milk steamer to produce the signature latte froth, you can create a delicious “all-in-one” version of the PSL by putting 200ml milk, 50ml espresso and 1 tbsp tinned pumpkin purée in a pan, adding 1 tbsp brown sugar and a pinch each of ground cinnamon, ground ginger and ground nutmeg. Heat gently, whisking once steaming. Pour into a mug and top with a swirl of cream and another pinch of cinnamon.

John Steinbeck grew up among the fertile fields and mountains of Monterey County, California – a landscape he “vividly” described in his novels.

Fans who wish to explore his “beloved homeland” could start at his childhood home (now a restaurant) in Salinas, said Jacqui Agate in The Telegraph. At the nearby National Steinbeck Centre, you can see Rocinante, his camper truck.

Next, take the River Road Wine Trail through “a Steinbeckian swoop of sun-baked hills” to Pinnacles National Park, with its “tawny” crags and canyons. You could also visit the V6 Ranch in Parkfield – a cattle ranch that’s “about as close to Steinbeck’s agrarian beginnings as you can get” – and the coastal Post Ranch Inn, now a luxury resort, where he worked as a ranch hand in the 1920s.

A welcoming city in northern Spain

It’s not a “fashionable” place, but I love the city of León in northern Spain, said Annie Bennett in The Sunday Telegraph.

As a key point on the pilgrimage route to Santiago, it has a long history of “welcoming” visitors, and has some glorious architecture, including a gothic cathedral that is among the most “magnificent” in Spain, and the Basílica de San Isidoro, a Romanesque masterpiece with dazzling 12th-century frescoes depicting bible stories and scenes of rural life.

But it’s León’s tapas bars, more than anything, that “keep luring me back”. A glass of wine costs about €2.50 and is always served with a snack – perhaps a local speciality such as croquetas with local cured beef and Valdeón blue cheese. And the Parador de León is a gem – a former 16th-century pilgrims’ hostel, including a “sumptuous” breakfast.

Fair Isle’s magnificent migrants

Fair Isle is the UK’s most remote inhabited island – part of Shetland, but isolated from the rest of the archipelago, lying as it does 25 miles to the south of the main island of Mainland.

With sea cliffs up to 200 metres high, it is wild and spectacular, said Mike MacEacheran in The Times – and, thanks to its unique position, it’s a dream for birdwatchers, particularly during the autumn migration.

On a nine-night (two spent on the ferry) trip with Naturetrek, I stayed at the Fair Isle Bird Observatory, in a “cosy” room with “terrific sandy bay views”. Our guide, ornithologist Nick Boyd, was excellent, and we saw dozens of species, including a common rosefinch, a rare Fair Isle wren, and a buff-bellied pipit, “blown thousands of miles off course from North America” – a “once-in-a-decade sighting” that left me feeling “ecstatic”.

The Atlantic was the largest private yacht ever built when it emerged from a New Jersey shipyard in 1903. Two years later, it set a record for the fastest transatlantic sail crossing for a monohull yacht that would remain unbeaten for nearly 100 years. Sadly, the Atlantic suffered the “ultimate ignominy” in old age, said James Stewart in the Financial Times, becoming a floating tea room, before being broken up in 1982.

Later, however, a faithful replica, also called the Atlantic, was built. Completed in 2010, this 65-metre three-masted schooner is “a vision from yachting’s golden age to inspire romantics and dreamers” – and, following a refit last year, it will be available from this December to book on a weekly basis as it embarks on an “epic” journey around the world. “Few objects inspire devotion like great sailing yachts” – and on a recent day trip from Saint-Tropez, I found that the new Atlantic’s dozen crew (all dressed in matching navy trousers and monogrammed shirts) spoke of it with a “zeal” that was “way beyond professionalism”.

The biggest replica schooner afloat, it is a thing of great beauty, with a dozen sails, shiny brass fittings, and a “glossy raven-black hull”. Standing at its tip, with the “blue-black sea racing below”, I felt like I was “flying” – and it wasn’t hard to imagine its predecessor’s record-setting voyage as one of 11 cruiser-racers competing in the 1905 Kaiser’s Cup race. In that event, it sailed from Sandy Hook, New Jersey, to Lizard Point in Cornwall in 12 days, four hours, one minute and 19 seconds, despite having to contend with a three-day gale. Below decks, the new Atlantic has six double cabins, with carved panelling, mahogany parquet, green marble and walk-in showers with unlimited hot water.

Rates for a week on board start at €150,000 – which sounds only “slightly less scary” when you work out that that comes to £10,725 per head, assuming a party of 12, including all meals and wine.

James Stewart was a guest of Atlantic (atlantic-yacht.com).

One of the greatest privileges of my craic-riddled culinary career has been to work in the hallowed grounds of Ballymaloe House, said Oisín Davis. It is the epicentre of Irish cuisine, and I’ve been lucky enough to guide hundreds of the world’s best bartenders through its walled gardens to share the simplest of philosophies with them: farm-to-table food and farm-to-glass cocktails. It’s also where I grew to love lemon verbena, a wonderfully perfumed, citrus-tasting herb that adds a deliciously fragrant note to this dessert.

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 12 fresh lemon verbena leaves or 1 tbsp of coarsely chopped fresh rosemary, plus extra to decorate
• 100ml (plus 4 tsp) boiling water
• 300g fresh or frozen blackcurrants (thawed if using frozen)
• 60ml Glendalough Single Grain Double Barrel Finish Irish Whiskey
• 200g caster sugar
• 3 egg whites

For the whipped cream

• 250ml double cream
• 1⁄2 vanilla bean, split in half lengthways and seeds scraped out

Method

• The day before, put the lemon verbena or rosemary needles in a jar with the boiling water. Get the lid on, then once cooled, shake for a few seconds and let it infuse overnight in the fridge.
• Preheat your oven to 110C (230F). Line a large baking sheet with non-stick baking paper.
• Strain the liquid from the lemon verbena or rosemary, then pour into a saucepan on a medium heat. Add the blackcurrants and half of the whiskey. Simmer until the blackcurrants start to break up, then stir in 50g of the sugar until it’s dissolved. You now have a compote but you’re going to need some purée from it, so press 4 tablespoons of the compote through a fine mesh sieve. Discard the pulp in the sieve but set aside both the purée and the compote.
• Put the egg whites in a spotlessly clean, dry bowl and use an electric mixer to whisk to stiff peaks. Add the remaining sugar a little bit at a time, while continuously whisking until the meringue is stiff and glossy. Turn off the mixer, then slowly drizzle in the purée. Fold it through with just one stir to create a marbled look.
• Dollop six equal portions on to the lined sheet, using the back of a spoon to shape them into circles. Bake for 1.5 hours, then set aside to cool completely on a wire rack.
• To serve, whisk the cream, remaining whiskey and vanilla until it forms soft peaks. Dollop on top of each meringue, then add a spoonful of compote and decorate with extra lemon verbena or a rosemary sprig.

Taken from The Irish Whiskey Cookbook: 50 Recipes to Cook, Sip and Savour by Oisín Davis.

Because a handful of authors dominate mainstream horror fiction, it can be easy to miss how rich and diverse literary horror is, including, of course, the work of Stephen King. These four novels combine sharp prose with well-crafted terror.

‘The Haunting of Hill House’ by Shirley Jackson (1959)

An enormously influential work of dread, Shirley Jackson’s classic haunted house tale remains one of the rare horror books to receive literary awards. It is “one of the 20th century’s finest horror novels — and maybe the definitive haunted house story,” said Lara Zarum at The New York Times.

‘The Stand’ by Stephen King (1978)

Among Stephen King’s dozens of fiction books, “The Stand” remains his epic masterwork. It is about a flu named Captain Trips that wipes out 99.4% of the world’s population and forces the survivors to choose between the forces of good and evil. King’s “most sweeping horror novel” is also a “kind of inventory of American culture,” said Kirkus Reviews.

‘Come Closer’ by Sara Gran (2003)

Short enough to read in a single sitting, Sara Gran’s chilling story of an architect succumbing to demonic possession will leave readers stunned and unsettled. A “book that could damage the unwary psyche,” its “genius is in making the strange details so commonplace and incidental that ambiguity survives,” said Neil McRobert at Esquire.

‘The Grip of It’ by Jac Jemc (2017)

A troubled young couple moves from the big city and buys a small, haunted house, in a familiar set-up made terrifyingly unsettling by the way the reader is plunged into nonlinearity and fear alongside the characters. In “prose that is poetic and bereft of consolation,” Jemc “unsettles our notions of the boundaries between ourselves, our partners and anything else that may hurt us,” said Ahsan Butt at The Rumpus.

“Massive, ambitious, controversial, and expensive”, Jaguar’s luxury electric GT is here at last, said Top Gear Magazine, and setting a new tone for the marque – “all electric, more luxurious, rarer, bespoke”. The Type 01 is also the “last-chance saloon” for the carmaker. “If this car bombs, Jaguar dies.”

With more than 150 prototypes, and put through its paces from the Arctic to Death Valley, it is the most extensively tested Jaguar. It’s also the most powerful, aerodynamic and patented Jaguar of all time. At two metres wide and 5.2 metres long, it’s got “immense presence”, though its low stance and raked rear do make it look rather like a “cartoon villain getaway car”.

Jaguar has ripped up the rule book with the Type 01, which is built on an all-new platform. It is made from 73% aluminium but still weighs about 2.9 tonnes, said Evo. It is “unapologetically imposing”, with “towering proportions”, yet it only seats four.

With a 120kWh battery, and three e-motors – a 260kW front motor and twin 310kW rear motors – for a combined 1,015bhp, it has a claimed range of 450 miles. It can do 0-62mph in 3.2secs, with a top speed of 150mph, and charges from 10%-80% in just 22 minutes on a fast charger.

The Type 01 sits on massive 23-inch wheels, and the low profile and long bonnet make it look “a bit like a Batmobile”, said T3. Its interior is “gentler”, with a choice of NeoGrain fabric or leather. The driver gets a 24-inch OLED screen, and there’s a smaller 7-inch infotainment screen in the centre.

There’s no rear windscreen, just a digital rear mirror on the dash, which houses a panoramic soundbar. There’s a voice assistant for hands-free operation in 18 languages. Orders are expected to open early next year.

A movie doesn’t have to be set on Halloween to be scary, but it doesn’t hurt. The holiday atmosphere can provide an extra element of suspense when done right, as in these four notable films.

‘Halloween’ (1978)

Horror legend John Carpenter’s lean franchise-launching slasher deftly adds a supernatural aspect to his unkillable knife-wielding mental institution escapee, Michael Myers. The classic puts “viewers through a troubled nightmare of suspense and uncertain dread,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (AMC+)

‘Ginger Snaps’ (2000)

In this Canadian cult classic that doubles as a coming-of-age story, a sardonic goth transforms into a werewolf in the days leading up to Halloween and terrifies her younger sister. The movie, through character-building and atmosphere, “has fun with its own premises without turning into an empty camp exercise,” said Dave Kehr at The New York Times. (Peacock)

‘Trick ’r Treat’ (2007)

Arguably the best horror anthology ever, the movie features four intersecting segments centered around a demonic, pumpkin-headed trick-or-treater seeking to avenge sins of the town’s past. It’s a movie that “feels less like it was merely set on the holiday and more like it was built out of everything people love about it,” said Arleigh at Through the Shattered Lens. (HBO Max)

‘Hell House LLC’ (2015)

In this found footage gem, a documentary team seeks the truth about a haunted house massacre by tracking down its sole survivor, who has tapes. With a slow-burn buildup, this “genuinely suspenseful” movie “carefully sets up its scares in a way that actually contributes to the story,” said Luiz H.C. at Bloody Disgusting. (AMC+)

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A new “Carrie” adaptation is introducing another generation to the storytelling prowess of horror icon Stephen King. Here are the best of the hundreds of novels King fans have devoured for decades.

‘The Shining’ (1977)

Literary critics and fans often say “The Shining” is “one of King’s most important novels” and “with good reason,” said Forbes. The book follows writer Jack Torrance and his family to the haunted Overlook Hotel in the isolated Colorado mountains. “The Shining” is a good read for fans who enjoy “psychological thrillers that merge with horror.” ($20, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘The Stand’ (1978)

King’s eerie postapocalyptic novel “The Stand,” set in a “world ravaged by a ruthless pandemic,” follows an ensemble of characters across the “new, dangerous country.” The story builds to a “climactic battle between heaven and hell,” said Reader’s Digest. It’s a tale of “spiritual and sinister wonders, all told” with King’s “distinct wit and writing style.” ($22, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘The Dark Tower 1: The Gunslinger’ (1982)

The seven-book “Dark Tower” series is “King’s truest Tolkien analogue,” said The New York Times. It is an epic in “multiple modes (horror, sci-fi, fantasy, Western)” about a “gunslinger-knight” trying to save the world from “complete destruction by his foe, the Man in Black.” The first volume, “The Gunslinger,” is the shortest and gives you a “tiny taste of how weird and inventive the series gets.” ($29, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)

‘It’ (1986)

King’s “treatise on everything he’s learned about his dark craft” by that point in his career is “poured into the story of Pennywise,” a fear-eating shapeshifting entity, and the “gaggle of outcast children who choose to fight” the creature, said Esquire. The book’s eccentricity balances perfectly with the “romanticized myth of childhood summers” and the “grain and grit reality” of 1960s Maine. ($25, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)

Somewhat “miraculously”, Bonnie Garmus managed to make science and feminism “fun” in her bestselling debut novel “Lessons in Chemistry”, said The Boston Globe. In her second book, she is “poised to do the same thing for even more esoteric loves: poetry, fonts and literary publishing”.

The novel follows the life of Batter Gray, a middle-class Californian boy who possesses a “deep love” of poetry, much to his parents’ dismay. After graduating from college, he moves to New York to pursue his passion. “Like so many people coming of age in the city, he rents a terrible apartment, works three crummy jobs, and finally finds a girlfriend.”

Gray seems “destined” to end up at Peck & Peck, a “rarefied, pricey poetry journal”, though he’s the “copy guy”, working in the basement. Down there, “as is not uncommon in literary circles, he finds both mentors and nemeses” as he negotiates his way upwards.

In telling her story, Garmus creates a “Ferris wheel of characters”, like his font designer mother and “chaotic tyrant” of a boss. They and the many plot twists all “snap together delightfully” and make for a “rollicking good story”. If her debut novel “made you love chemistry, this one might just make you fall for poetry. Such is the force of happiness.”

There is a certain “mawkishness” that creeps into “Peck & Peck”, said The Guardian. As in Garmus’ first book, there is a “preternaturally intelligent dog”, added to a fragile love story and a hasty courtroom scene. But it is impossible not to be beguiled by the “freewheeling exuberance of her imagination”, and the “fierce exhortation to all of us to make words count”.

You might not have thought a novel set in the world of poetry could be funny, but “you’d be wrong”, said the Los Angeles Times. “The repartee sparkles” and the “farcical touches lighten the tone”. But it’s inspiring too. Batter, for all his quirks, is “perhaps the best poetry ambassador to have ever graced the pages of a novel”. Readers will be “hard-pressed to resist becoming a poetry stan”.

Above all, this is a “workplace comedy, a New York City coming-of-age story, and a giddy satire wrapped in a sometimes-ungainly bundle”, said Laura Miller on Slate. The Peck & Peck office, home to a whopping 39 editors and crowned with a “spectacular glass dome”, is “pure fantasia”, but Garmus does at times “ladle gooey dollops of sentimentality” into her work.

There is an “almost Wodehousian giddiness” to the book, but Garmus’ satire never comes across as “mean or bitter”. Characters sceptical of poetry and its place in the world are treated as generously as those who love it, because the form “is in truth both boring and transcendent”.

“Peck & Peck” may not reach the heights of “Lessons in Chemistry” but it is a “rare work of popular fiction that has prompted me to look up a William Carlos Williams poem, and I suspect I won’t be the only one on whom it has that particular, and very welcome, effect”.

Palo Alto, Calif.

In the Community Center neighborhood is this refreshed, 1973 mid-century modern atrium Eichler home. With the same owner for 53 years, the four-bedroom—plus office—has clerestory windows, its eponymous atrium, a brick fireplace flanked by glass walls, exposed beams, wood-clad walls and ceilings, and an updated kitchen and dining room.

Outside are a patio, mature landscaping, and an attached garage. Stanford University, dining, parks, and shops are a short drive. $4,988,000. Jennifer Buenrostro, Compass, (650) 224-9539

Belgrade, Mont.

This 2023, modern mountain home in the Gallatin Valley about 30 minutes north of Bozeman is set against Evan Reese Creek with mountain views. The great room features hickory hardwood floors, wood ceilings, and a stacked-stone Rumford fireplace, plus a chef's kitchen with a walk-in pantry, walnut cabinets, and a coffee bar.

The more than 33-acre lot has two covered patios and a heated, attached garage. $4,595,000. Charlotte Durham, Big Sky Sotheby's International Realty, (406) 581-8891

Minneapolis

On the National Register of Historic Places, Frank Lloyd Wright designed the Usonian Frieda and Henry J. Neils House, a 1951 mid-century modern, stone-clad home overlooking Cedar Lake.

The L-shaped floor plan is anchored by a large fireplace, and the three-bedroom also includes larch paneling, marble stone walls, built-in furniture, and roof-line windows. A new garage is outside, plus patios, a firepit, and water views. $2,495,000. David Stickney and George Stickney, Coldwell Banker Realty, (952) 473-3000

Santa Barbara, Calif.

Built in 1977, this updated, open-plan, California modern-style home in Foothill has four bedrooms. The living room features wide-plank wood floors, tongue-and-groove wood ceilings, a stone fireplace, and a glass wall; the kitchen includes an oversized quartzite island; and a guest suite has a Japanese soaking tub.

The nearly 1-and-a-half-acre lot with ocean and mountain views spans seating areas, gardens, a chicken coop, yard, sheds, and citrus trees. $5,395,000. Cimme Eordanidis, Village Properties/Luxury Portfolio International, (805) 722-8480

East Hampton, N.Y.

This 1985 organic-modern home in the Clearwater Beach Association was gut renovated in 2025. The five-bedroom's great room features high ceilings and arched shelf niches, while a second living room has a large conversation pit under a skylight, and the primary suite’s oversized glassed shower includes a built-in bench.

A pool on the half-acre, fenced property is surrounded by yards, a deck, and a heated cabana. $2,650,000. Sotheby's International Realty - East Hampton Brokerage, Yorgos Tsibiridis, (646) 270-4544

Evanston, Ill.

Near Lake Michigan, this updated, 1955, three-bedroom ranch in a Chicago suburb is less than 10 minutes from town. The industrial modern style home includes exposed ducts, a black brick fireplace, dramatic chandeliers, and a kitchen with exposed brick and an eat-in quartz peninsula.

It also has a sunken dining room and primary bedroom with a glass slider to an outdoor space. The set-back lot has a fenced yard and brick patio. $550,000. Bryce Hoffman, Coldwell Banker Realty, (217) 502-4940

‘Live at Carnegie Hall’ by Cameron Winter

★★★★

While listening to this album’s opening track, “I hear the Great American Songbook compressed into a brilliant point of light,” said Walden Green in Pitchfork. Cameron Winter, the frontman of the rock band Geese, was just 23 when he took the stage at Carnegie Hall last December for a single solo performance in which he put away his guitar to accompany himself alone on a grand piano. The resulting album—and the concert film that’ll soon accompany it—may be exercises in mythmaking, but Winter earns his acclaim here. The more he strips down his sound, “the closer he gets to some platonic ideal of music,” and though his 2024 solo album provided most of his set, the three new tunes are “some of Winter’s very finest.”

Still, this record “might drive a further wedge between the believers and the skeptics,” said Mark Richardson in The Wall Street Journal. Winter’s “unusual” singing style is even more conspicuous here; if you can’t get past that, his gifts as a songwriter may escape you. Still, the album is inspiring “precisely because it’s challenging.” It’s fun engaging with music “that needs time to sink in.”

‘She’s the Best’ by Troye Sivan

★★★

“There seems no reason why Troye Sivan should still be a relative cult figure within pop rather than an actual multiplatinum star,” said Alexis Petridis in The ­Guardian. The fourth album from the 31-year-old Aussie native is packed with “very hooky” songs and evidence of his many A-list backers. They include Madonna, who signed off on his cribbing of a past hit for “Party,” a deadpan good-times anthem. But at least Sivan “seems to be using the space he occupies to his advantage, to push and experiment,” and to write lyrics “as unapologetically queer” as they are here.

She’s the Best is “easily his finest collection of songs to date,” said Craig Jenkins in NYMag.com. “On the surface, the album is an ode to women Sivan has called friends, collaborators, and defenders,” but it’s “perhaps more interested in unpacking the invisible strings of lust and yearning that drag Sivan off the couch night after night.” For now, club life answers his worries about failing to find a forever mate, and an array of producers help him connect to today’s “time-travel-pop wave” as he expresses those feelings. The effort leaves him “redefining himself from song to song.”

‘Dedicated to You’ by Branford Marsalis Quartet & Dianne Reeves

★★★

The 1963 album John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman “will always remain sacred,” said Jim Hynes in Glide. But in Coltrane’s centennial year, saxophonist Branford Marsalis and singer Dianne Reeves have reinterpreted the most revered ballads album in jazz and made it newly stunning. “For so many of us who have grown used to Hartman’s warm baritone over countless listens,” hearing a new vocalist sing the same six standards “can be ear-bending.” But Reeves “wrings every drop of emotion from the title track,” delivers a “flawless interpretation” of “You Are Too Beautiful,” and teams with pianist Joey Calderazzo for an endearing “My One and Only Love.”

Marsalis and his quartet fill out the album with three Coltrane instrumentals, said Chris Pearson in The Times (U.K.). Still, “it’s those vocals that stay with you.” Reeves, to her credit, “becomes very much part of the band, embedded, one of the instruments.” On “Lush Life,” she does so by singing the intro alone, then stopping halfway through for solos from Marsalis and Calderazzo that “echo and expand on her initial vocal, as if they are her thoughts.” It’s an “exceptionally brilliant” take.

Many horror hits are more fascinating or engrossing than terrifying. But these four films manage to create genuinely unnerving atmospheres of dread.

‘The Exorcist’ (1973)

Director William Friedkin’s classic brought demonic terror straight to the heart of the postwar American suburbs with this story of a young girl’s possession. It retains its capacity to unsettle, leaving the “audience subject to devilish, claustrophobic torment,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)

‘The Blair Witch Project’ (1999)

The film that invented the “found footage” trope is also viscerally scary, following a group of students into the woods to investigate a local supernatural legend. Relying on atmosphere instead of flashy special effects, it “set up a convincing everyday reality and furtively sneaked the horror in,” said Steve Rose at The Guardian. (HBO Max)

‘Session 9’ (2001)

A group of workers is sent to clear asbestos from an abandoned mental hospital and slowly succumbs to claustrophobia, paranoia and fear. This “character-driven take on the classic haunted house movie” is “one of the great American horror films of the 21st century,” said Matthew Monagle at Roger Ebert. (AMC+)

‘The Witch’ (2015)

Director Robert Eggers delivers a taut, terrifying period piece with this tale of a 17th-century New England family expelled from their village and stalked by a witch — a movie that also put the then-fledgling studio A24 on the map. Suffused with “quiet, tangible malevolence,” the tale “carefully strips you of modern sensibilities, pulling you into a world without irony or awareness,” said David Crow at Den of Geek. (Prime Video)

“Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner’s marriage was not a marriage of equals,” said Sebastian Smee in The Atlantic. “Pollock was weak and Krasner was strong.” That dynamic comes across in the new joint exhibit at the Met. More importantly, the show “does each artist the honor of representing them at their best” and, by gathering so many of their exhilarating paintings, “makes a powerful case for abstract expressionism as an unassailable peak of 20th-century American visual expression.” It’s plainly “thrilling” to stand before a great Pollock or a great Krasner. And while Pollock’s groundbreaking drip paintings, the ones that made him America’s most famous artist, have lost none of their visceral power, this show “establishes beyond a doubt” that Krasner was both more talented than her hard-drinking, insecure husband and equally as accomplished and original. At Krasner’s peak in the late 1950s and early ’60s, the paintings she produced were better than any made by more celebrated contemporaries. Unfortunately, being Pollock’s wife, then widow, “meant being relegated to second place.”

“Right off the bat, the show opens with a big blast of Krasner,” said Holland Cotter in The New York Times. A half dozen large collage paintings, all from the mid-1950s, “look like a lineup of ghostly raised arms, but also like a garden grown wild.” One of them, 1955’s powerful Bald Eagle, incorporates scraps of both her husband’s drawings and her own earlier work. “Inevitably, and justifiably,” Pollock’s history-making canvases are presented in a huge gallery at the heart of the exhibition. These are the pictures that “brought a merging of paint, choreography, and gravity to the point of explosion,” prompting Life magazine to canonize Pollock in 1949 as arguably the country’s greatest living artist. But abstract expressionism, “like all radical art impulses,” soon lost its freshness, even for Pollock. He hit a creative block in the ’50s, returned to heavy boozing, and died in 1956 while driving drunk, about a mile from the eastern Long Island home he shared with Krasner. His young mistress survived the crash.

“By any reckoning, ‘Krasner and Pollock’ is one of the most gorgeously designed and ingeniously installed exhibitions in the Met’s history,” said Lucy Ives in Hyperallergic. And there’s little mystery about its subtext: We come seeking insight into how Krasner survived her entanglement with a needy, art-world comet, and how it all affected her art. As it unfolds the story in politely phrased wall text, the show “has all the sweetness of a gossip session with a cherished confidante.” Yet there’s “something breathtaking” about the way it “simultaneously undercuts Pollock and demonstrates why his priceless canvases remain relevant.” Here, amid 48 of his pieces and 74 of hers, his work matters most in the ways it contributed to Krasner’s artistic development. “I’ve never seen an upending quite like this.”

Kate Atkinson is the celebrated author of Life After Life, Case Histories, and 12 other novels set mostly in her native U.K. In her latest, Our Noble Selves, a former POW becomes a murder suspect while helping stage a 1951 festival intended to boost national morale.

‘Middlemarch’ by George Eliot (1871–72)

Essentially, Middlemarch is a historical novel, set in the period 50 years prior to its publication. Eliot’s breadth and ambition and energy in painting a picture of a society in the midst of cataclysmic change is astounding. I also think it’s a very romantic book—not something Eliot is often accused of.

‘Slaughterhouse-Five’ by Kurt Vonnegut (1969)

It took many years before Vonnegut felt able to give fictional shape to his experiences as a POW in the Dresden firestorm. The time-­ traveling, science-­fiction elements along with Vonnegut’s typical off-­kilter style work against the odds to make this—along with its ­ brother-in-arms, Heller’s Catch-22—one of the most powerful novels about World War II.

‘Persuasion’ by Jane Austen (1817)

I could have simply picked all six of Austen’s novels, but if I had to choose one, then this final one—a profound exploration of the human heart—would be the one. It is also about the pain of the path not chosen and the absolute powerlessness of women.

‘Parade’s End’ by Ford Madox Ford (1924–28)

This is cheating perhaps, because it’s actually a tetralogy that follows the fortunes of Christopher Tietjens from before the First World War and into its aftermath. It’s one of those novels—sorry, four novels—that I have trouble describing and am inclined to say, “Just read it.”

‘The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman’ by Laurence Sterne (1759–67)

Tristram Shandy is a very funny, digressive novel about a man trying to write his autobiography and failing to get past the first scene. I always remember my English tutor at university introducing it by saying that it was one of the first novels and also one of the first antinovels, although nowadays I think they would probably call it metafiction.

‘Just William’ by Richmal Crompton (1922)

I had a quietly passive only-­childhood, but ­William provided an alternative, escapist universe of naughtiness and high spirits. Even now, I would, if I could, be happy to live in William’s world. And have a dog called Jumble.

“It is a shame how many people wouldn’t dream of reading James Marriott’s eloquent, learned, and admirably brief book,” said Daniel Akst in The Wall Street ­ Journal. Reading is dying, as the 33-year-old London Times columnist tells us, so it’s inevitable that most of the public will miss out on the joys of following him as he lays out his concerns. The causes of his worries aren’t new. A 2022 survey found that in the previous 12 months fewer than half of American adults had read a book. A year later, another study found that in an average day only 16% read anything for pleasure. Of course, there’s “a lot more at stake” in this decline than good books being left unread. Marriott, by revisiting ties between the rise of mass literacy and mass democracy, “makes a strong case” that long-form reading is a necessary ingredient to sustaining the kind of rational and probing collective dialogue that has made mass democracy possible.

Marriott “might be insufficiently pessimistic,” said George F. Will in The Washington Post. Though he’s right that smartphones and the short-form videos they spawn have contributed to reading’s decline, the larger problem is that too many of our fellow citizens have become “pathetically nostalgic for the mental lassitude of pre-literate people.” It was not until the 18th century that large numbers of our forebears began reading widely, but we have them to thank for launching the modern age, and today, as childish thinking spreads, we’re seeing that “reason, tolerance, and progress are contingent, not inherent, facets of humanity’s story.” Marriott, “like many alarmists,” builds his argument on ­ cherry-picked data, said Chris Ferguson in Reason. He reports that reading scores for U.S. students hit an all-time low in 2024 without mentioning that they’d peaked in 2012, several years after the advent of smartphones. Meanwhile, the supposed link between literacy and healthy democracies is undermined by the highly literate societies that gave birth to the fascist regimes of 20th-­century Germany, Italy, and Japan.

“The New Dark Ages is too ominously titled,” said Michael O’Donnell in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Throughout the book, Marriott “thoughtfully acknowledges” evidence that reading and reason might not be utterly doomed, though he could have done more to acknowledge that the work many of us do still requires a lot of reading and writing. “Are we courting the same scenario as the Middle Ages, when a select few held the keys to knowledge, to the exclusion of all others? Probably not.” Still, “the thrust of Marriott’s ­argument — there is a decline in reading that is antithetical to the progress of the ­Enlightenment — strikes me as persuasive.”

‘You Can See Everything’

Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (R)

★★★★

“No two people will draw the same conclusions from this movie. That is part of what makes it a masterpiece,” said Shane O’Neill in The Washington Post. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s unsettling portrait of convicted Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes became “the most anticipated documentary of the decade” when an “unnerving” teaser was released last month showing a smiling, unblinking Holmes in extreme close-up staring at Fielder and insisting on her guilelessness. Word spread that shortly before she reported to prison in 2023, she had invited Fielder, the idiosyncratic mastermind behind The Rehearsal, to bring his cameras into her home, and in the resulting three-hour film, “she doesn’t get any less weird or more scrutable.”

Somehow “more shocking, thornier, and revealing than billed,” You Can See Everything “plays like an unraveling of certainty in real time,” said Adrian Horton in The Guardian. Holmes continues to insist she did nothing wrong when she became a billionaire a decade ago by touting a breakthrough medical device that her company couldn’t build, said Owen Gleiberman in Variety. Yet when she heads to prison halfway through, bidding goodbye to her husband and two children, this already riveting film “truly takes wing.” Bringing in a stand-in for Holmes, Fielder keeps pushing to understand his subject’s apparent detachment from reality, until the movie becomes “an intricate investigation into, among other things, the incomprehensibility of love,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. In the end, “it’s not just the film of the year.” It’s also “a documentary that stands shoulder to shoulder with the form’s all-time greats.”

‘Sense and Sensibility’

Directed by Georgia Oakley (PG)

★★★

The new screen adaptation of Sense and Sensibility is “not the lush, buttoned-up period drama of tradition,” said Nikki Baughan in Screen Daily. Director Georgia Oakley, coming off an acclaimed 2022 art house debut, clearly wanted to foreground relatable emotions over Regency-era costumery with her take on Jane Austen’s tale of the cash-strapped Dashwood sisters. “That’s not to say the film doesn’t look gorgeous.” But compared with Ang Lee’s “candy-colored” 1995 version, Oakley’s is “decidedly more grounded” as it once again lets us watch sensible Elinor and free-spirited Marianne pursue husbands after their father’s death lands them in relative financial peril. “For those of us who adore the 1995 film, unfavorable comparisons seem inevitable,” said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter.

Despite a “more than capable cast,” led by Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, the new movie has “a low-energy feel” in part because Oakley and her screenwriter “lean so heavily into Elinor and Marianne’s crushing disappointments and the forces holding them back in a period of vast gender inequality.” Fortunately, none of Oakley’s tweaks “dim the roiling passions of the sisters as they approach love from opposite ends of the emotional spectrum,” said Derek Smith in Slant. By focusing on Elinor and Marianne’s bond and how it’s tested by their different outlooks, this Sense and Sensibility “manages the difficult feat of breathing new life into these familiar characters’ interior lives.”

‘Misty Green’

Directed by Chris Rock (R)

★★★

“If Misty Green never comes apart at the seams,” it’s because Rosalind Eleazar “simply won’t let it,” said David Ehrlich in IndieWire. The Slow Horses actress is “never less than great” in the title role of Chris Rock’s new drama about a hot-mess Hollywood has-been who might just land a comeback role nearly 20 years after her peak if she can refrain from sabotaging herself for once. Rock’s “unkempt” script strains to combine a poignant character study with a scalding takedown of L.A.’s dream factory, and its excesses might have tanked the film if Eleazar didn’t hold it all together by “sheer force of will.”

The movie has “nothing insightful” to tell us about Hollywood’s dark corners that we haven’t heard already, said Alison Willmore in NYMag.com. The despicable side characters “feel a little easy,” starting with a producer, played by Adam Driver, who tempts Misty with drugs and lucrative sex work. Only one industry player comes across as noble—“probably because he’s played by Rock himself.” Fortunately, none of Rock’s misfires matter “once you lock into what Eleazar is doing,” said David Fear in Rolling Stone. She brings “nuance, shade, and emotional depth” to every story beat in Misty’s quest for redemption. “Eleazar doesn’t just make the movie work; she is the movie.” The TV veteran has never previously landed such a robust role, and “dear god, does she make the most of it.” She “deserves every accolade and every bit of the spotlight that Misty Green affords her.”

Rising flight and hotel costs, combined with “stubbornly finite” annual leave, means most holidaymakers can take “one or two big trips” in a year, said Sarah Rappaport on Bloomberg. So a “growing cohort” of time-poor travellers are treating their holidays as an “investment” in themselves. The desire to “come home with more than Instagram shots as souvenirs” has given rise to “purposeful travel”: the skillcation.

From ‘fly and flop’ to ‘skilliday’

According to recent research by Mastercard, nearly half of Europeans plan to learn a new skill on their summer holiday – and over half of 18- to 34-year-olds have already planned a skill-based trip this year.

More than half of the 27,000 holidaymakers from 28 European countries surveyed said skill-based trips felt more meaningful than traditional holidays, especially when curated by locals. One in three (37%) booked a trip this year specifically to learn a skill, with a new language topping the list. The “era of the ‘fly and flop’” is “giving way to the ‘skilliday’”.

Tourists are looking for experiences that “create muscle memories”, said Mastercard economist Natalia Lechmanova. From “winemaking and woodworking” to pottery and painting, consumers are “opening their wallets” for a taste of local culture, and a “lesson that lasts long after they’ve arrived home”. Skill-based travel also “tends to draw people beyond the crowded hotspots”, into smaller towns and lower seasons, reducing the impact of overtourism.

These trips tend to cost more than conventional holidays, but the pay-off is high. People often see “longer-lasting positive effects on psychological well-being” than when taking holidays focused on “sun, sea and partying”, psychology professor Andrew Stevenson told Bloomberg. Spending time learning a new skill gives you the added “feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment”.

Over the years, “I’ve clumsily thrown myself into swing dancing lessons in Italy, free-diving sessions in French Polynesia, and Spanish intensives in Ecuador”, said Julia Eskins in Vogue. “I came home from each one feeling a little more capable than when I arrived.”

A trip like this has a “purpose”; said Alex Ledsom in Forbes; the traveller is looking for more than “just a break”. The goal is to fill time with “experiences that teach, reconnect and transform”. Those going on skillcations usually opt to learn something that’s unavailable to them at home, with tactile crafts like “Peruvian weaving or Japanese pottery-making” becoming increasingly popular activities. People are more interested in learning about “heritage, expertise, traditions and customs” than ever before.

That has led to one of the “fastest-growing segments” in the tourism industry, said Lindsay Cohn in W Magazine. Hotels everywhere are “ramping up” their activity programs to offer the chance to develop “new experiential abilities”, and it’s not limited to crafts.

Diving is a popular option for travellers who wish to “explore azure reefs and haunting shipwrecks”. For instance, you can get your Padi certification during a stay at the Six Senses Laamu in the Maldives. As for those interested in a “culinary journey”, Grand Hotel Fasano beside Italy’s Lake Garda takes guests on a tour of a nearby village to get involved in “preparing traditional regional recipes, paired with Garda-style spritz aperitifs, homemade lemon verbena liqueur, and local wine”.

Go into a British bookshop and you may notice “a glaring stock gap”, said Lydia Spencer-Elliott in The Independent. “Star novelist” Sally Rooney, whose bestsellers include “Normal People” and “Conversations With Friends”, has announced that her books will no longer be sold in the UK due to her support for Palestine Action.

The Irish novelist had pledged to donate royalties from her books to the direct-action protest group, despite the fact that the UK has, controversially, proscribed it as a terrorist organisation. Rooney said last week that her publisher, Faber & Faber, had therefore decided it could no longer sell her work in the UK because doing so could “constitute a serious criminal offence”. For fans and bookshop owners, the news “hit like a gut punch”.

‘Affront to decency’

Rooney has shown courage in choosing “the thorniest path possible for this cause”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Authors can “write essays and sign letters” in support of Palestinian people, musicians can shout about it on stage, but that doesn’t “entail actively breaking the terrorism laws”. It’s Rooney’s support for this specific group that’s “effectively both barred” and “banned” her work from the UK and cost her "innumerable” sales and opportunities.

For her “more excitable” home-grown fans, it’s a case of “perfidious Albion strikes again”, said Eilis O'Hanlon in the Irish Independent. Fellow Irish novelist Colm Tóibín said Britain had gone “insane”, and the whole issue is “an absolute affront to decency” and freedom of speech. But I think that framing is “ridiculous”. Even if “the fiendish Brits” wanted to prosecute one of its “most illustrious” publishers for paying one of its authors what she is owed, Rooney is an Irish citizen living in Ireland, and thus not subject to UK terror laws. Her personal freedom of speech and right to protest are not at any risk. And Faber can keep publishing and promoting her in other countries, including her native Ireland.

‘Attention-seeking self-aggrandisement’

Despite “the uproar”, this isn’t “massively risky” for either Rooney or Faber, said Camilla Long in The Times. How many of her “whopping 6 million” worldwide book sales will she forgo? Her books “remain in libraries” and in any bookshops where they were already stocked. This isn’t a “book ban”; it’s a millionaire’s “self-imposed withdrawing of one’s further sales”.

This is “attention-seeking self-aggrandisement”, said Lionel Shriver in The Telegraph. Thanks to lucrative TV adaptations of her novels, Rooney can “easily live without further British royalties” and continue to “shout her devotion to Palestinians from the rooftops” (or fund their cause via multiple legal outfits). Faber, on the other hand, was caught “between a rock and a hard place”.

I’m “no fan” of Palestine Action; some of its members have “committed a campaign of criminal damage”, said Sam Leith in The Spectator. But Rooney and Faber have pushed the “simultaneous intolerance and vagueness of the UK government’s position” on the group onto “the front tables at Waterstones”. Supporters of Palestine Action are “being bundled into paddy-wagons for wearing T-shirts”. Will a UK citizen now face arrest for saying “I support Sally Rooney” or “carrying a ‘Normal People’ tote bag”? The problem isn’t Rooney’s speech, free or otherwise; it’s Britain’s “inconsistent attempt to police the border between legitimate protest and criminal thuggery”. What a “fine mess” we’re in.

“Remember when butter was considered bad?” said Morwenna Ferrier in The Guardian. Now, though, there’s been a revival of the golden spread. In our “little treat” economy, splashing out on a slab of high-end butter feels “more manageable” than buying a “decent bottle of wine”.

After consumption reached a “historic low” in the 1990s following a spate of anti-saturated fat health campaigns, perceptions seem to have “shifted” and butter has enjoyed a “cultural rehabilitation”. This may in part be because it’s become “tangled up with the anti-ultra-processed-food movement” – unlike margarine, butter is seen as a “pre-industrial, farm-adjacent product”.

The spread is “reprising its role as a kitchen stalwart” with sales of Waitrose’s Essential butter up 16% year-on-year, said Emma Henderson in The Independent.

These days it’s “rare to find a block of butter” for under £2. As prices continue to climb, it’s worth knowing which brands are “worth their salt”. Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference West Country Farmhouse butter is something “I just kept going back to”. Made in Somerset using a slower churning process, it’s “very bright yellow” and has a “great level of salty flavour” thanks to the addition of Maldon sea salt.

“I will never tire of” President Slightly Salted butter, said Sophie Morris in The i Paper. Perfect for slathering on your morning toast, this French butter made in Normandy always seems “chic next to its frumpier, yellower, British cousins”. As well as the “elegance” of its paler hue, “I love the fact it tastes as if the cows have dined on wildflower meadows”.

And if you’re keen to show off, grab a block of Kerrygold salted butter. Made from the milk of grass-fed cows in Ireland and wrapped in gold foil, it’s a “rich and creamy treat” that’s ideal for cutting into thick slices and using to top your “hot crumpets, teacakes and hot cross buns”.

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From the classic ‘Whodunit’ style to thrilling neonoirs, mystery novels have compelled readers to solve cases alongside detectives like Hercule Poirot. Here are the best, smartest and most revolutionary titles the genre created.

‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1902)

A round-up of the best mystery novels of all time is “incomplete without mentioning Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s work,” said Book Riot. Sherlock Holmes is one of the most “recognizable fictional detectives in pop culture.” His iconic novel follows the investigation of an “apparition of a monstrous dog” that purportedly “murdered Sir Charles Baskerville.” ($7, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Murder on the Orient Express’ by Agatha Christie (1934)

Sticking all your characters in a “contained bubble” and “throwing away the key” is a great way to “create tension and intrigue,” said thriller writer Hank Phillippi Ryan at The New York Times. Agatha Christie, the “queen of the locked room,” did it with “great panache and sleight of hand” by “misdirecting the reader into believing there was just one murderer.” ($19, HarperCollins, Amazon)

‘In Cold Blood’ by Truman Capote (1965)

Truman Capote’s bestseller “pioneered a new classification of novels”: true crime, said A&E. Capote’s “groundbreaking, real-life story” about a terrifying quadruple murder “effortlessly married” the “technique of colorful storytelling” with the “clarity and accuracy of journalism.” ($28, Penguin Random House, Amazon)

‘Devil in a Blue Dress’ by Walter Mosley (1990)

The first novel in the Easy Rawlins hardboiled detective series introduced the world to Mosley’s neonoir classic’s World War II veteran protagonist. Strapped for cash, Rawlins accepts a murder case whose resolution necessitates bringing the “superficially submerged tensions” between “Black and white Americans” to the surface, said Time. ($19, Simon & Schuster, Amazon)

Tracing a 135-mile horseshoe-shaped route through rural mid-Wales, Glyndwr’s Way passes through the splendid hill country that was at the heart of Owain Glyndwr’s 15-year rebellion against the English from 1400.

I am fascinated by this “great Welsh hero”, said Kevin Rushby in The Guardian, so I decided to hike the trail’s southern half, from the “pretty” border town of Knighton to Machynlleth, where the building in which Glyndwr held his Welsh parliament still stands.

I can’t say that I ended the journey feeling any wiser about the man himself – but it was a wonderful walk: “quiet, very quiet”, with highlights including the “lovely, slightly eccentric” town of Llanidloes, and the 564-metre-high peak of Foel Fadian, which affords some “great panoramas” of Snowdonia.

Marvellous mobiles in Philadelphia

Best known for his huge mobile sculptures – bright, abstract forms hanging from suspended metal frames – Alexander Calder was born in Philadelphia in 1898, and last year, a new museum dedicated to his work opened in the city, said Michael Joseph Gross in Travel + Leisure.

Designed by the architects Herzog and de Meuron, the galleries at Calder Gardens are “uplifting”, light-filled spaces in which the work is presented without labels or “curatorial statements” (Calder believed that we should interpret his art “on our own terms”). Outside, there’s a “meadowlike”, 1.8-acre sculpture garden laid out by Piet Oudolf (the Dutch landscape designer behind the High Line in Manhattan), to which admission is free.

It’s a worthy addition to a city known for its great art institutions, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Barnes Foundation, which has a huge collection of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings.

A handsome port in northern Spain

The port city of Avilés, in Asturias, was once known for its “steelworks and pollution” – but with few factories left now, said Isambard Wilkinson in The Times, its air is much cleaner, and it is well worth a visit.

Avilés’ old town is one of the “loveliest” in northern Spain, with its Renaissance palaces, “leafy” parks and medieval churches, including two dedicated to Thomas Becket (“Santo Tomás de Cantorbery”). And in 2011, the city was given a major boost by the opening of the gleaming-white Oscar Niemeyer Centre, a “futuristic” arts venue designed by the Brazilian architect.

If you visit the centre, try to eat at Yume; the city also has another fine restaurant, Casa Tataguyo, which serves traditional Asturian cuisine. From nearby San Esteban de Pravia there are boat trips on the “majestic” Nalón estuary; it also has an excellent hotel, the Gran Hotel Brillante.

For hikers, the mountains of Sweden’s far north provide an “overwhelming” sense of freedom, thanks to the country’s right to roam and an almost complete absence of paths. It’s a feeling I wanted my children to experience, said Adam Weymouth in the Financial Times – and so last August, we took them camping in the region.

We travelled by train across Europe to Stockholm, and spent a weekend there before taking the sleeper to Björkliden – a journey of roughly 17 hours. This tiny place lies 155 miles north of the Arctic Circle, beside Torneträsk, a 43-mile-long lake. From the station, you can climb into the hills, and soon feel entirely removed from civilisation; if you kept walking south, you wouldn’t hit a road for 60 miles.

We could pitch our tent where we liked thanks to the right to roam, so we chose a high bluff where there was a decent breeze to keep the bugs away. From there, we struck out on daily rambles across “bare” hills, where summits are as high as or higher than Scotland’s, though they are neither jagged nor particularly craggy.

During long days outdoors, we saw reindeer and golden plovers, and the children climbed rocks, picked blueberries and slithered down the snowdrifts that persist all summer. There were rivers of the “most glacial blue”, and lakes where we swam for “frantic seconds” in water that was “magnificently cold”. At night, the “buttery evening light” bled from sunset into sunrise at around 3am. Despite all the sunshine, the average daytime high in Björkliden in August is 11C or 12C, while at night, the temperature falls to 4C to 5C, making this a distinctly “coolcation”.

The weather was changeable, and after a week, with “damp” children and no food left, we moved into a small log cabin at the Abisko Mountain Lodge, near the village of Abisko (population 150). The meals there were excellent, and the lodge proved to be a good base for further walks, including to the Kårsa Glacier, a place of “alien” beauty that made the kids “giddy” with excitement. But as the glacier has shrunk by 80% since the 1940s, it also left me with a troubling sense of “loss”.

Every family needs a one-pot wonder they can have on repeat with no complaints, said Bob Dickinson. This Greek-inspired chicken and rice dish is ours. What makes it something you’ll look forward to eating are the simple additions that take no time at all: fragrant herbs, salty Kalamata olives and creamy feta. The herbs can be dried or fresh, and to make the recipe even quicker the next time you make it, you could mix up an extra batch of the seasoning.

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 1.5kg chicken thigh fillets (or 12 chicken thighs)
• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, crushed
• 2 courgettes, halved lengthways and finely sliced
• 250ml dry white wine
• finely grated zest and juice of 2 lemons
• 300g basmati rice, rinsed
• 500ml chicken or vegetable stock (broth) or water
• 100g Kalamata olives
• 1 tbsp oregano
• 1 tbsp basil
• 1 tbsp dill
• 1 tbsp mint
• 2 tsp rosemary
• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1⁄4 tsp ground cloves
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground black pepper

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200C. To make the Greek seasoning, combine the ingredients in a small bowl. Add the chicken thighs to a large mixing bowl, sprinkle over the seasoning and mix to make sure the thighs are well coated.
• Heat a large flameproof, ovenproof casserole dish (Dutch oven) over medium heat. Add 1 tbsp of the olive oil, then fry the chicken for 2-3 minutes on each side or until browned. Do this in batches, making sure that the chicken is only one layer deep and that all of the thighs come into contact with the bottom of the pan, so as not to sweat the meat. Transfer the chicken to a plate and set aside.
• Reheat the pan and add the remaining olive oil, garlic and courgettes. Cook for 5 minutes or until the courgettes are soft. Add the chicken back into the pan, along with the wine and lemon zest and juice. Sprinkle the rice over the top of the chicken, pour over the stock or water, stir, and cover.
• Transfer to the oven and bake for 30 minutes or until all the liquid has been absorbed by the rice. To finish, sprinkle with the Kalamata olives and crumble the feta on top.
• Tip: You can use finely chopped fresh herbs or dried herbs for the Greek seasoning. If you’re planning on doubling and storing the recipe for future use, dried would be best.

Taken from “The From Scratch Kitchen: Recipes and inspiration for rediscovering the joys of home cooking”, by Bob Dickinson. Available from The Week Bookshop, £24.99.

“Jeffrey Archer, who has died aged 86, was irrepressible,” said Stuart Jeffries in The Guardian – “though not necessarily in a good way.” At various points, he was accused of lying about his background, embellishing his CV, committing plagiarism and fraud and – perhaps worst of all – of being “unpleasant to underlings”. And while some of the allegations were never proved, he was convicted of perjury and perverting the course of justice and sentenced to four years in jail.

Yet Lord Archer of Weston-super-Mare – senior Tory politician, former athlete, bestselling novelist and bon viveur – simply sailed on. Editors continued to adulate him; his books kept selling in their millions; and sports stars, writers and politicians still flocked to the “shepherd’s pie and Krug” parties he hosted in his “sumptuous”, art-filled apartment overlooking the Thames. Archer, it turned out, was what the “Titanic” was supposed to be: “unsinkable”.

Murky beginnings

Growing up in Weston-super-Mare, Archer was doted on by his mother, who worked as a journalist on the local paper and sent him to Wellington School on a scholarship. As an adult, he’d imply that he had been to the grander Wellington College. Bullied for being puny, he threw himself into athletics and bodybuilding, and distinguished himself as a sprinter. He stayed at the school until 18, yet left with just three O levels.

On the basis of a false report that he had three A levels and had studied anatomy at a university in the US, he was then accepted to Oxford. But though he presented himself as an undergraduate at Brasenose, he was actually doing a one-year diploma in education at a teacher training college linked to it.

As a student in Oxford, he arranged fundraising drives for Oxfam, including via the coup of persuading The Beatles to appear at Brasenose. Yet as Michael Crick revealed in his biography, Oxfam was not only troubled by the way he exaggerated the sums he had raised; it also suspected that he was skimming off funds.

In Oxford, Archer met Mary Weeden, a chemistry student who became his wife in 1966. Settling in London, he found work as a fundraiser for the United Nations Association. Its chair, the ex-Tory MP Humphry Berkeley, became convinced that he was embezzling funds. But the UNA hushed it up, and Archer was accepted for the safe Tory seat in Louth, Lincolnshire, which he won at a by-election in 1969.

Pride and perjury

In his writing, Archer was no stylist, but he could tell a “rollicking story”, said The Times. In 1976, his debut novel, “Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less”, became a bestseller. His novels would go on to sell more than 300 million copies. He also returned to politics: Margaret Thatcher made him deputy Tory chairman in 1985, describing him as “the extrovert’s extrovert”.

Then, in 1986, the Daily Star sensationally accused Archer of having been a client of a sex worker named Monica Coghlan. He sued for libel and, in court, denied ever even meeting Coghlan (though he did admit to asking an intermediary to pay her £2,000 in cash to leave the country). She was vilified as a liar and an extortionist. In summing up, the judge famously highlighted Mary Archer’s testimony: “Remember Mary Archer in the witness box,” he told the jury. “Has she elegance? Has she fragrance?” With such a wife, how could Archer “possibly be in need of cold, unloving rubber-insulated sex in a seedy hotel?” Having presented what seemed to be a solid alibi, Archer won and was awarded £500,000 in damages.

Two years later, Archer was accused of insider dealing over shares he’d bought in Anglia TV just before a takeover bid. His wife sat on the firm’s board. He was cleared of that, but then fell out with a friend who had helped concoct his alibi in the libel case, and was charged with perjury.

Following his release from jail, Archer published his prison diaries, carried on with his charity work and wrote more novels. Mary, who survives him with their sons, remained by his side to the end. Explaining her loyalty, she once said: “I think I would find it a little monochrome, a little grey, to have a sort of a more conventional life with a more conventional husband.”

The best crime thrillers consider the way violence, an endemic feature of human societies, can spiral out of hand. These four superb films approach that reality from very different vantage points.

‘The French Connection’ (1971)

A pulse-pounding narrative follows hard-nosed New York City cops Jimmy Doyle (Gene Hackman) and Buddy Russo (Roy Scheider) as they try to bust up a heroin ring based in France. It’s a “story about ugly things and awful people, headlined by one of the era’s finest antiheroes,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘Fargo’ (1996)

In this mordantly funny parable, Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hires two inept sociopaths to kidnap his wife and puts himself on a collision course with small-town cop Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand). The film “rotates its story through satire, comedy, suspense and violence, until it emerges as one of the best films I’ve ever seen,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (MGM+)

‘Memories of Murder’ (2003)

Director Bong Joon Ho’s iconic procedural follows a sometimes hilariously inept investigation into a series of small town murders. The film “challenges and subverts the serial killer procedural in its entirety,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (Prime Video)

‘Blue Ruin’ (2013)

Macon Blair stars as Dwight Evans, a man living on the margins of society who learns that his parents’ killer is being released from prison. Dwight then sets off to seek revenge. The movie succeeds by “probing deeper than usual into the effects (and practicalities) of violence,” said Kim Newman at Empire. (Peacock)

The broadcaster and champion of the high street, who transformed the fortunes of Harvey Nichols, picks her favourites. She will be talking about her latest book, “I Shop, Therefore I Am”, at Stratford Literary Festival on 1 November.

Letters to a Young Poet

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1929

This book isn’t really about how to become a better poet, it’s about how to live. Rilke writes about solitude, love, patience and learning to live with uncertainty.

The Sea, The Sea

Iris Murdoch, 1978

Both entertaining and deeply unsettling. I love the way Murdoch gets inside the mind of someone who is completely convinced by his own version of reality. I once followed her around an airport because I so wanted to talk to her about this book – but was too in awe to say anything.

The Cost of Living

Deborah Levy, 2018

In this moving memoir Levy details the reality of reclaiming autonomy post-divorce. It sharply critiques the invisible burdens placed on women, while weaving in hopeful observations of everyday life.

Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath

Heather Clark, 2020

This deeply researched book rescues Plath from the tragic cliché of her death and is focused instead on the immense vitality of how she lived. Plath is shown not as a passive victim of despair, but as a brilliant intellectual and visionary poet.

The Age of Innocence

Edith Wharton, 1920

Wharton’s portrayal of 1870s New York society shows a world that is both dazzling and suffocating. The central romance captures the conflict between desire and duty, while the bittersweet ending shows how the choices we make can shape an entire lifetime.

Cider with Rosie

Laurie Lee, 1959

I’m blessed to have a house in the Slad Valley where Lee grew up. When I see the apple trees in bloom, it brings home this chronicle of his childhood. He evokes the warmth of a chaotic, loving family and the transition of a rustic world into the modern age.

The films Monica Dolan tends to appear in “aren’t massively high profile”, said David Jenkins on Little White Lies, though she is “one of the finest and most thoughtful actors working today”. In this true-life drama, she plays Galway-based amateur historian Catherine Corless, who in 2010 chose the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home, in her home town of Tuam, as the subject of an assignment for her evening class in local history.

In the course of her research, Corless discovered that, over four decades, 800 babies and infants had died at the home. Their deaths had been concealed, and their remains buried on site. Some were dumped in a disused septic tank. Dolan “tamps down the melodrama and ups the raw emotion” in a film that “carefully hits all of its expected beats”.

The scandal was the subject of a 2017 New York Times article, said Kevin Maher in The Times, which is adapted here by screenwriter Rebecca Lenkiewicz.

Sensitively directed by Frank Berry, the film “advances clearly and respectfully” through the investigation, as Corless insists on answers from the religious order that ran the home, and the Catholic establishment, and so uncovers evidence of systemic abuse and appalling cruelty. Yet she is herself an “unexpectedly complex” figure, who is recovering from depression – and also haunted by the cruelty that she meted out to the Bon Secours children she met in her youth.

It is “a painful, devastating film”, said Cath Clarke in The Guardian. Dolan really excels here, as do the actors who play the survivors. Some appear only briefly, “but their faces stayed with me”. You’d expect a drama like this to be “a difficult watch”, but with such assured performances, it is the opposite: you can’t look away.

Look up when you enter the Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall and “you won’t be able to stop looking up – because it’s raining musical instruments”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian.

If Tarek Atoui had “just left it at that, it would still be an impressive, intriguing installation”, but the Lebanese artist takes things a step further. His “sculptural creations” are set alongside an “ever-changing” soundscape including an “earth-shaking bass note” that “throbs from a hanging trumpet”. Together, “it’s entrancing”: the installation is an “interconnected musical machine”.

After last year’s “debacle” that saw Máret Ánne Sara hang 72 reindeer hides in the Turbine Hall, the Tate has pulled things back with Atoui’s “beguiling, poetic installation”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Various musical instruments appear to “float in mid-air” and from a distance “softly illuminated drum skins resemble glowing planets or moons”.

Below this “cosmic ensemble” visitors can “linger on rough-hewn, bed-like stones with a pleasingly sculptural quality”. A collection of large bowls are peppered throughout the space, “as if to catch the notes and vibrations falling like rainwater from the instruments above”.

Behind an “imposing plinth” technicians control the “swelling, ‘sonic landscape’” using mixing desks “bristling with multicoloured wires”. In this way, Atoui’s installation is “both high and low-tech”, bringing together modern technology and “something much older and more analogue, soulful and warm”.

I thought it was a flop, said Laura Freeman in The Times. Atoui has produced a work that is “visually fiddly and portentously orchestrated”. Instruments are hung alongside “various unappealing vents” and the music is mostly “muted: a generalised, Goop-y wellness-retreat backing track”. Overall it’s a “thin, mannered, cluttered commission and a waste of a magnificent space”.

Atoui’s installation is “certainly no spectacle” and lacks an “immediate wow factor”, said Jo Lawson-Tancred on artnet. His assortment of hanging instruments and wires “looks a bit like a cross between a boiler room and a mid-tier design store”. But the artist has managed to “fill the venue and redefine it”, conjuring a sculpture out of sound and asking visitors to “gather, mingle and improvise” their own sounds in response. His installation may prove “surprisingly memorable”.

This is an artist who has “grabbed the opportunity to work in this vast space with both hands”, said Jones in The Guardian. His work is “rich, ingenious, funny, sad, mystical” – it’s an installation to “lose yourself in for hours”.

Tate Modern, London, from 13 October until 11 April 2027

Forget the seven-year itch, said The Telegraph. Heterosexual couples are staying together longer, with divorces happening “a record 13 years after marriage”, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It might not be “a case of happily ever after” but people are increasingly “turning to couples therapy and forgiving infidelity” in what is a “bleak financial landscape”.

Staying power

The 13-year figure, from 2025, is the “longest average period marriages have lasted before divorce or dissolution” since records began back in 1963 and is up from a “record low” of 8.9 years in 1985, said The Times. Record highs were also recorded in same-sex civil partnerships, with male couples lasting 13.7 years on average, while female couples went their separate ways after 13.6 years.

The broad trend of marriages lasting longer is “not solely a British phenomenon”, said The Guardian. While divorce statistics are collected differently in different countries, data from the Pew Research Center in the US shows the median length of marriages ending in divorce rose from 10 years in 2008 to 12 years in 2023. In Germany, the average length of marriage was 14.6 years in 2025, and in the Netherlands it was 14.7.

ONS figures from 2023 show the average age of first-time marriage for opposite-sex couples has reached peak levels in the UK – at 34.8 years for men and 33 years for women. This could help explain why marriages are lasting longer, Jo Edwards, head of family law at Forsters, told The Times. People are making the commitment later in life and in doing so “perhaps invest more in it emotionally”.

‘Nuclear option’

Divorce is now “more accessible than it ever has been”, Lisa Pepper, a divorce lawyer at Osbornes Law, told The Guardian, yet “couples are staying together”. One of the “less romantic reasons” for this is that rising mortgages, rent and childcare costs mean they can’t afford to separate. Instead they are trying things like couples therapy or mediation before going for the “nuclear option” of divorce.

The result, said Rebecca Aston-Jones, a senior associate at Clarke-Willmott, is that some separated couples are stuck in “unhappy or hostile living environments” as they “continue to live under the same roof” so they can share their financial assets and split household bills.

The only age demographic for whom divorce rates are on the rise is the “silver splitters” – those in their fifties and sixties and older. Many of these couples have waited until their “children have flown the nest”, Edwards told The Times, before they start divorce proceedings. Younger Gen X and millennial couples are “less likely to rush into marriage and many are choosing not to marry at all”, said Laura Mortimer, a partner at BP Collins.

Another “fundamental change” that might help to explain the figures is the rise in cohabitation, Brienna Perelli-Harris, a professor of demography at Southampton University, told The Guardian. Marriage may be becoming a more “selective institution”, with over 90% of couples living together before tying the knot. Those who move in together and figure out the relationship doesn’t work can go their separate ways. “Those who stay together and eventually marry are, my research shows, the couples who are happiest.”

Williston, Vt.

On more than 11 wooded acres about 15 minutes from Burlington, this 2013 four-bedroom lodge home centers on a vaulted great room encompassing a kitchen with a C-shaped, double-height fossil-reef-topped island.

The timber-framed room also includes a floor-to-ceiling stone fireplace and a dining area with a window bench overlooking the trees. French doors open to walking trails, gardens, and a garage topped by an apartment. $2,495,000. Kathy O’Brien, Four Seasons Sotheby’s International Realty, (802) 343-9433

Bend, Ore.

Built in 2026, Harmony, a four-bedroom modern lake house in central Oregon’s Tanager Bend community, has a kitchen with vaulted, beamed ceilings, stone walls, wood-paneled appliances, and an oval stone island with seating and storage.

The great room echoes the stone-and-wood theme, and a glass wall looks out on a water-ski lake. Abutting old-growth ponderosa pines, the 2-acre property has a patio, yards, and landscaping. $5,285,000. Brian Ladd and Steve LaCrosse, Cascade Hasson Sotheby’s International Realty, (541) 633-4569

Portland, Ore.

This 2026 modernist four-bedroom in the Division/Clinton neighborhood features a clean lined kitchen anchored by a stainless-steel island with an Oregon white-oak panel. The home’s living room has exposed concrete walls, a wood-burning stove, and floor-to-ceiling oak built-ins.

Outside are bluestone patios, a modern pergola, a cedar sauna, and a guesthouse with a Brazilian granite island. Multiple cafés and shops are within walking distance. $4,647,484. Suzann Baricevic Murphy, (w)here, Inc., (503) 789-1033

Camas, Wash.

A new build, this sculptural modern home features a kitchen with a Verde Alpi marble island with rounded, reeded end panels; walnut cabinets; and herring bone wood floors.

Up the marble spiral stairs—or the private elevator—are four bedrooms; the primary has views of the Columbia River and a boutique-style walk-in closet. The lower level has a sauna, bar, and theater, and connects to a yard and patio. $2,788,000. Benson Bui and Matthew Tercek, Real Broker, (855) 450-0442

Marco Island, Fla.

This 1989 Mediterranean-inflected contemporary is built on a canal and features an open kitchen with a blue-toned waterfall island, made of Azul Macaubas quartzite, that seats four. The updated six bedroom features two primary suites and a lower level with a glass wine room tucked under floating stairs.

The lot has a pool and spa, a covered patio, an outdoor kitchen, and a private dock with a lift and a separate floating dock for smaller craft. $6,000,000. Lisa Pearl and Scott Pearl, Coldwell Banker Realty, (239) 248-2705

Minneapolis

In Old Town, this one-bedroom condo in a 2017 building has an updated kitchen with a three-seat Cambria quartz island with matching backsplash and stainless appliances. The space is lit by sun from a wall of south-facing windows.

It also includes a bedroom with floor-to-ceiling windows and a Calacatta-marble-clad bath. A balcony overlooks a walkable neighborhood with dining and shops, and building amenities include a gym and community room. $460,000. Mitra Rahimi, Verve Realty, (612) 718-1239

“My most cherished, most powerful food memories involve two ingredients: rice and pork,” said chef Donald Link in his book “Real Cajun: Rustic Home Cooking from Donald Link’s Louisiana.” It is a common refrain for people who were raised in the prairies and bayous of southern Louisiana.

The rice is there in the region’s popular eggplant dressing, dirty rice with chicken livers and in crawfish pies. Pork appears as cracklins, those deep-fried nubbins of seasoned pork belly and in all manner of Deep South charcuterie. Rice and pork even tango together in the region’s legendary sausage called boudin. Donald Link, born in southwest Louisiana, is the owner of a handful of restaurants in New Orleans, and “Real Cajun” takes you on a personal tour of all these tastes of his homeland, plus legions more.

Two foundational ingredients

No two boudins are alike, but the “truth is, they are all good,” said Link in his book. If you have had the privilege of eating multiple boudins from different shops, you know Link spills facts. His stars both pork shoulder and liver, plus two types of fresh chiles, a glut of spices and, of course, white rice.

Lima beans appear in a stew alongside smoked sausage; a suave pork roast is served over, yes, rice. Even chicken thighs are stuffed with sausage. Pork is ubiquitous, and rice nearly as much so, appearing in a gratin with zucchini, a soup with chicken and a fritter known as calas.

And beyond

Freshness and fiber are everywhere across “Real Cajun” too. Tender lettuces are slicked with a scallion-buttermilk dressing. Tomatoes bring a lush tang to stewed okra.

A sweet finish is obligatory. So there are recipes for satsuma-buttermilk pie, chocolate-pecan tart, blueberry cobbler and a staple of Link’s youth: lemon meringue pie. Man cannot live on rice and pork alone.

This autumn, a ton of games are dropping before November when Grand Theft Auto VI’s console release hogs the rest of the year. It’s a good time to be a gamer.

Control Resonant

Control finally gets a “proper sequel,” but this time “Jesse is benched in favor of her brother, Dylan,” said PC Gamer. Remedy Entertainment’s “signature weirdness” now takes place in New York City, with a “bigger focus on melee combat.” (out now for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S)

End of the Abyss

This “challenging yet rewarding adventure” boasts “gorgeous graphics and grotesque visuals” and features an “intricately crafted facility to explore,” said Gaming Trend. The game “manages to stand out amongst a crowded market” while delivering an “experience well worth diving into.” (out now for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S)

Gears of War: E-Day

The Coalition has “elevated the franchise to new heights” with this entry. It is an “engaging, brutal and surprisingly intimate campaign” full of “smart gameplay mechanics and wonderful surprises,” said Day One. It’s the “best Gears has ever felt to play.” (out now for PC, Xbox Series X|S)

Grand Theft Auto VI

GTA 6, Rockstar’s “long-awaited crime game,” is bound to be “one of gaming’s biggest cultural events,” said Polygon. It’s looking like a “pure open-world flex” that could “push the boundaries of gaming.” (Nov. 19 preorder for PS5, Xbox Series X|S)

“In a more just world, Emmett Till would have returned to Chicago and been allowed the uneventful privilege of growing older,” said Skylar Mitchell in Essence. Instead, the 14-year-old’s life was violently cut short in 1955, when he tried to buy bubblegum while visiting Mississippi relatives and a white woman accused him of disrespecting her. A “remarkable” photo exhibition in the city of his birth is now asking us to imagine what Till’s life might have looked like. Composed of 160 photographs taken across the past seven decades by 118 photographers, the show suggests the jobs, romances, family life, and lazy afternoons that could have been his. Seventy-one years ago, a published photo of a brutalized Till lying in an open casket “exposed the terrible consequences of racial hierarchy” and galvanized the civil rights movement, but this show “asks more of the eye.” It urges us, by way of powerful images created by Gordon Parks, Carrie Mae Weems, Dawoud Bey, Robert Mapplethorpe, and others, to see Black life as it is, stirring us to cherish and protect it.

“Emmett would’ve been 85 this year, had he lived,” said Anya Sesay in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His face “would’ve been seasoned with wisdom lines and wispy gray hairs,” much like the face captured by Terry Evans in his striking portrait Cliff Joseph (2015). Elsewhere, Adam Ekberg captures the radiance of the sun streaming through a forest canopy so vividly that “you can almost feel its warmth on your skin,” and you immediately realize that Till would have regularly experienced it, too. Images that evoke such universal sensations are “part of the exhibit’s brilliance.” Instead of offering a specific vision of the shape Till’s life might have taken, “each photograph compels us to make room for every version of who he could’ve been.”

Curator Sarah Elizabeth Lewis selected every image, but she didn’t work alone, said Susan Aurinko in Newcity. While poring over all 18,000 photographs in the MoCP collection, she regularly consulted with Wheeler Parker Jr., a minister who is now 87 and was Till’s cousin, best friend, and a witness to Till’s abduction by the two white men who lynched him. Once the photos were chosen, Lewis asked artists, scholars, and luminaries, including historian Lonnie G. Bunch III, singer John Legend, and painter Amy Sherald, to share their feelings stirred by the show’s title and any one of the images. Filmmaker Ava DuVernay chose Milton Rogovin’s informal, untitled portrait of a beautiful young Buffalo woman from his East Side, 1961-63 collection. “What we contemplate here is the girl that Emmett never got to meet,” DuVernay wrote. “The one who would have held his hand, and listened to his fears, and to his dreams.”

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Five-time Booker Prize nominee Sebastian Barry is the author of A Long Long Way, On Canaan’s Side, and Days Without End. The Irish author’s new novel, The Newer World, follows a formerly enslaved Tennessean who’s navigating America’s post–Civil War era.

‘Letters and Journals: Katherine Mansfield’ (1977)

The dark wind of a fatal illness blows through these letters and journals. Mansfield was only 34 when she died. She was the only writer that Virginia Woolf truly felt as a rival, and with very good reason. Buy it here.

‘The Last Chronicle of Barset’ by Anthony Trollope (1867)

Trollope had his manservant wake him early every morning and he would write till 8 a.m. By this method he managed to produce a great number of long, long books. The six volumes of the Barchester novels are crowned by The Last Chronicle of Barset, 900 pages of infinite readability. Buy it here.

‘The Great Fires: Poems, 1982–1992’ by Jack Gilbert (1996)

I met Gilbert briefly on an old track in the mountains of Paros in 1981, just a moment of two strangers passing and nodding and saying three words. His poems are classical, but severely and lovingly contemporary too. Buy it here.

‘Avid Reader’ by Robert Gottlieb (2016)

This is the generous autobiography of the greatest editor of his time. I had an exciting friendship with him in the last years of his long life. He referred at one point in passing to Toni Morrison’s Beloved—“which I just happened to edit.” Well, yes, my good Lord Bob. Buy it here.

‘The Journal of Sir Walter Scott’ (1890)

These poignant and revealing journals cover the years after the financial disaster that engulfed Scott. Instead of being declared bankrupt, he made an arrangement with his creditors that he would write his way out of difficulty. He is 54 in 1825 when he begins his diary; it ends about six years later, with his early demise. Almost on the stroke of that midnight, the debts were fully paid off. Buy it here.

‘The Hours’ by Michael Cunningham (1998)

This was the book everyone seemed to be reading in New York when I was there in 1998. Which was an encouraging fact, because it is in a way a very austere work of art, surreally channeling Virginia Woolf, its glistening surfaces suggesting somehow very great depths. If there are bookshops in heaven, I’d like to think Virginia Woolf was reading it too. Buy it here.

‘The Everywhere Millionaire: Who Is Really Rich in America and How They Got There’ by Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick

“When we talk about wealth, mainly we talk about billionaires,” said John Lanchester in The New Yorker. “But what if there were another group that, without drawing much attention, had grown collectively 13 times richer than the Forbes 400?” In their “brilliant” new study, economists Owen Zidar and Eric Zwick call attention to America’s Main Street millionaires, in particular the roughly 3 million owners of private businesses whose household net worth is at least $5 million. These are often stealth magnates—car dealers, beverage distributors, partners in law firms or medical practices—and they tend to have amassed their wealth through sustained hard work. “Unfortunately, there is a shadow side,” because they’ve also been so effective at wielding political clout that they’ve helped make life harder for many Americans. For now, “the best we can probably do about this concentration of wealth and power is to see it and name it, and that’s what Zidar and Zwick have done.”

The authors’ “eyeopening” account traces the rise of everywhere millionaires to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, said Greg Rosalsky in NPR.org. The bipartisan congressional bill cut tax rates, setting the top individual tax rate lower than the corporate tax rate. This triggered an explosion of so-called pass-through businesses, which pass profits directly to owners, who in turn pay taxes on that income at the lower rate. In 1980, pass-through businesses were small potatoes. “By 2011, they were generating more income than all traditional U.S. corporations combined—and accounting for most of the rise in the share of income flowing to the top 1%.” Zidar and Zwick, who identified this new millionaire class by diving deep into IRS records, have now attached their findings to “a colorful cast of characters,” including Chicago hot dog king Dick Portillo and other gogetters who started with nothing and made fortunes on surprising long-term bets.

“Zidar and Zwick tell this story with admirable clarity and precision,” said Nico Taylor in The Baffler. Though their “quasi-scholarly” language “can be bland at times,” it’s “a testament to the authors’ expository finesse that they manage to make fiscal history occasionally gripping.” Their book will be “of great interest” to readers who believe the rich now have the system rigged, said The Economist. As the authors point out, many everywhere millionaires enjoy the same luxuries as billionaires without attracting negative attention, and meanwhile they win new tax breaks and push through regulations that limit competition in their fields, including real estate sales, medicine, and law. But as critical as the book can be of millionaires, it “will appeal even more to those who hope to join their ranks.” Clearly, “much of the spoils of capitalism are still won by those who roll their sleeves up,” and “that is a great thing.”

‘The Vanishing Family: Love, Fate, and the Quest to End Dementia’ by Robert Kolker

Robert Kolker’s latest book “reads like a medical detective story,” said Carissa Wong in New Scientist. In a family of nine brothers and sisters, one after another of the siblings began exhibiting dramatic personality changes shortly before or after reaching the age of 40. Those afflicted became both apathetic and unable to read social cues, making them unrecognizable even to their spouses. Years passed before doctors solved the mystery, first attributing the behavioral changes to frontotemporal dementia (FTD), then linking that rare condition to a genetic mutation. But especially for anyone grappling with dementia in any form, there’s far more to The Vanishing Family than its initial mystery. “It is a tale of enduring love and devastating grief. It also offers a window into the neuroscience that could one day deliver a cure.”

Kolker, to his credit, “has written the biography of a family, making sure that each member is memorialized,” said Jennie Erin Smith in The Wall Street Journal. The siblings’ mother had FTD first, but her behavioral changes were attributed to alcoholism, and she died at 62 before anyone suspected otherwise. Christy, the first sibling to experience symptoms, was not yet 40 when, in the mid-1990s, she was dismissed from her executive position and soon after lost her husband and all interest in her children. The family’s story is mostly told from the perspective of Barb, the youngest sibling, who pushes for answers but puts off obtaining her own genetic test results. Kolker, author of the 2020 best seller Hidden Valley Road, once again proves to be “a keen interpreter of the science and subjective experience of mental illness.”

“For Kolker, the slipperiness of identity has been a recurrent theme,” said Julia M. Klein in The Atlantic. Here, he forces us to consider whether any of us have a fixed personality if FTD or Alzheimer’s can rewire it. Even so, his greatest achievement is “once again reportorial,” because “he has persuaded nearly every family member, the sick and the well, to confide in him.” His findings belie his book’s title. As healthy siblings care for the afflicted, the sprawling family “becomes, if anything, more unified— bonded, however imperfectly, by love.

‘Crisco’ by Miranda Lambert

★★★

With her 10th studio album, Miranda Lambert “teaches an ages-old genre some new steps,” said Joseph Hudak in Rolling Stone. The Texas-born multi-Grammy winner is by no means abandoning country, but by stirring in some disco and yacht rock, the 42-year-old singer-songwriter “shoots down any preconceived notions about who Miranda Lambert is.” She first “dipped her cowboy boot into disco” for “A Song to Sing,” a 2025 duet with Chris Stapleton that appears here and provides the “dreamy, mirror-ball vibes” that set the tone for the rest of this album. Because Lambert also sounds “more effervescent and ballsy than ever,” the results often feel like a party. Unfortunately, Crisco is “all crust, and no filling,” said Kyle Coroneos in Saving Country Music. It’s a fun record, with a strong concept that lets Lambert mix in plenty of vintage sounds. But despite “some impressive moments,” the album is packed with catchy songs that “don’t really say much of anything.” Exceptions include “To Everything” a mid-tempo ballad with real emotion. With more of those, “Crisco could have been more than just a shallow nostalgia kick.”

‘Popstar’ by Tinashe

★★★

“There are no bad Tinashe albums,” said Anna Gaca in Pitchfork. But her eighth might be “the best pop album of the year,” the kind that’s “fresh in the best way” because it’s “a little bit avant-garde” yet “immediately accessible.” It feels driven by “a sense of purpose—a compulsion, even—about connecting sounds circulating in pop, electronic, and dance music right now.” It packs in “dozens of brilliant little moments,” and though it takes cues from Blackout-era Britney Spears and FKA Twigs’ Eusexua, it remains “super recognizably Tinashe,” foregrounding her voice, her taste, and her cultural points of reference as a child of Southern California. “The whole album hopscotches between experimental and pop modes,” said Tobias Hess in The Fader. The experimental “Flashbacks” is a gem, combining drums that sound like pots and pans with a “glitched-out” chorus in which she boasts of giving a lover flashbacks to past bedroom romps. While the song evokes Charli XCX’s recent devotion to personal transparency and Rihanna’s knack for unforgettable hooks, “there are no other pop stars I can imagine making a track like this.”

‘Musk’

Directed by Alex Gibney (R)

★★★

“As a character study, Musk is fascinating,” said Bilge Ebiri in NYMag.com. “As a warning about our future, it’s terrifying.” Alex Gibney’s nearly four-hour long documentary, which has drawn insults and legal threats from its subject, “gives us both the myth and the reality,” turning back the clock on Elon Musk’s story to revisit all the pitches he’s made for his business ventures that have obscured troubling truths—such as the deadly unreliability of the self-driving software in Tesla’s cars. Viewers will come away convinced the world’s richest man mostly excels at self-promotion; they’ll also be frightened by the power he’s accrued. Still, you have to wonder: “Will it speak primarily to the converted?” Though Gibney’s film will surely spawn viewer nightmares, said Ben Croll in The Wrap, “it takes some time getting there.” The first half, which covers Musk’s early history as an entrepreneur, “charts a trajectory of upward failing” that enriches him enough to fund SpaceX, his reputation-making breakthrough.

The “more scabrous” post-intermission second half paints him as a man undone by the pandemic shutdown, but turns devastating only when it details how many millions will die as a result of his detour into slashing government jobs and aid programs for President Trump. When Ashley St. Clair, a recent Musk ex and the mother of one of his 14 known children, calls him “a nuke,” it chills. Some of Gibney’s daring formal choices, including having many of his subject’s past public statements spoken by a computer-animated Musk avatar, prove distracting, said David Fear in Rolling Stone. Still, once Musk builds its case that a man with a god complex has built an empire whose satellites, rockets, social media platform, and personal wealth give him enormous sway over our present and future, “it’s hard not to feel a deep sense of despair.”

‘Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother’

Directed by Bassam Tariq (R)

★★★

With his latest screen turn, twotime Oscar winner Mahershala Ali has given Hollywood “a new kind of action hero,” said Stephanie Zacharek in Time. Latif, a hitman who’s also a father of three and a practicing Muslim, faces compounding crises when his wife dies, leaving him with a newborn who can’t tolerate formula. The role gives Ali “plenty to work with,” because Latif’s quest to secure breast milk for his youngest helps pull him into the middle of a war between a porn king and a gold-toothed Christian fanatic played with aplomb by John Cho. And while the film is “most entertaining when it indulges its tawdry side,” it tangles credibly “with complex issues of faith.”

Your Mother Your Mother Your Mother “doesn’t completely cohere,” said Nick Schager in The Daily Beast. Writer-director Bassam Tariq is good at bringing out Latif’s struggles with faith and rapport with his children, but “there’s far too little focus on the adrenalized action,” and the hero’s compelling story arc is “sabotaged” by a “too-comforting” finale. Still, this picture, named after an Islamic hadith, “lives a notch above most action films,” said Alissa Wilkinson in The New York Times. While its violence is “shockingly graphic in places,” the film is beautifully shot, “crackles with tension,” and features standout performances from Ali and the actress Adia, who plays Latif’s teenage daughter. This is a movie that asks if a person who strives to be good can be forgiven for the worst they’ve done, and “when it’s in its rhythm, it’s a great story.”

“As Brits battle the country’s often-dire rail network”, railway pubs are sometimes the only thing that “keeps us sane amid countless delays, cancellations and strikes”, said Ed Cunningham on Time Out. If you find yourself at a loose end, or in need of travel refreshment, here are some of the best places across the country for a railway pint.

Tap on the Line, Kew, London

“Perched right on the platform at Kew Gardens station is a charming little boozer,” said Katie Forge on Secret London. London is known for its quirky pubs but few are this “unique”. The Tap on the Line (pictured above) is the only pub in the capital which sits directly on a tube station platform, and is one of the last remaining 19th-century stations. “It’s one of the very few places in the city where you can see your train coming, sink your pint, and still be on board by the time the train is ready to depart”. It also has regular live music, pub quizzes and a “wonderful atmosphere”.

The Sheffield Tap, Sheffield

“By my estimation the best station pub in Britain, the Sheffield Tap even stands out in a city full of excellent places for a pint,” said Will Hawkes in The Telegraph. This “Edwardian treasure” has been carved out of the station’s former “Refreshment Rooms”. It had been lying derelict until the mid-1970s, but has been given a second lease of life. It oozes class with a “mahogany bar, ornate barrel-plaster ceiling and terrazzo floor”, and even has a brewery in the “magnificent inner room”, which used to be the first class dining room. “A very elegant place for a pint indeed”.

Scott & Brassey, Carlisle, Cumbria

The Scott & Brassey has only been open since February, said Rachel Dixon in The Guardian, but you can still feel the history of the site. Its predecessor, the 301 Miles From London, closed in 2023, and customers can enjoy the same spot on platform 4, now with a “slick makeover”. There’s still the same original wooden entrance lobby, “hammerbeam roof and Tudor-style stone fireplaces”. Eight handpumps line the mahogany bar, and the feature wall behind is full of clocks, so there’s “no excuse for missing your train”.

Bank of Conwy, Conwy, North Wales

This warm, welcoming pub is across the road from the station at the “heart of this beautiful seaside town with a castle overlooking the harbour”, said Phil Mellows in The i Paper. It has been open since 2015, and has “warmly embraced modern craft beer”, with local favourites from Wild Horse Brewing down the coast at Llandudno. The building itself is a “nicely restored Grade II-listed former bank”, and has plenty of good cask ales on the pumps too, for “those of a more traditional disposition”.

The beauty of Lisbon’s pastel-hued architecture is one of the Portuguese capital’s major draws. Travellers enticed by beautiful surroundings would do well to stay at the newly opened Tarabel Lisbon, a luxury boutique hotel that prides itself on its decor. When you walk in, you’re greeted by an enormous antique birdcage wrought in the shape of a palace, with faux birds perched on top. This playful sensibility sets the tone for your stay.

Why stay here?

Situated on a hill in the Estrela neighbourhood, the Tarabel has no bad views. On one side, the former townhouse faces the splendour of the US Embassy building and its gardens. The other looks out at the show-stopping expanse of the Tagus estuary: the 25 de Abril Bridge, the Port of Lisbon, and the huge Christ the King monument across the river in Almada. An entire evening can be spent just sitting on the terrace with a glass of wine, watching the boats and cruise ships go by.

Tarabel’s impeccably manicured garden is on an incline, and is split into levels that naturally carve the space into smaller, intimate sitting areas. Parakeets – real this time – fly overhead and perch in the trees lining the garden. At the bottom is the emerald-green pool, providing guests with welcome respite from the heat. Bright white and yellow parasols complement the lush foliage, and looking up toward the hotel from the bottom of the garden you can see the large-scale tile artwork conceptualised by the owner and designer, a love letter to the azulejos (traditional ceramic tiles) of Lisbon.

The rooms

Rooms are spacious and luxurious. Most of the furniture comes from the owner’s personal collection, gathered over the course of a lifetime from visits to flea markets all over Europe. A trefoil side-table from Portobello Market sits next to a rococo settee from Marché aux Puces de Saint-Ouen, stripped and reupholstered in a modern fabric. The Tarabel also borrows some styling choices from its sister location in Morocco, such as the pleated rattan accents and the occasional white-painted lattice woodwork.

Although bright whites dominate the hotel’s design, the warmth of unvarnished wood furniture does much to temper its starkness, and judicious use of pops of colour – fresh greens, yellows and florals – gives visual interest to the luxe space. Surprising, quirky additions are peppered throughout, such as a small trompe l’oeil ceiling fresco of a conservatory roof, complete with climbing roses and birds. It’s the attention to detail that makes this gathering of unique pieces work.

Eating and drinking

The quaint collection of flea-market finds extends to the cutlery and tableware, down to the miniature silver-lidded salt shakers. Everything is served on antique porcelain, mis-matched in design, yet unified in style.

The menu at Tarabel is a fusion of Portuguese, French and Italian cooking, with offerings sure to please most palates. The starters opened strongly: the fresh hamachi sourced from the Azores was buttery and tender, and the scoop of homemade basil sorbet perched on the tomato carpaccio was surprisingly delightful. The chicken’s accompaniment of roasted and pickled vegetables provided a light, pleasant contrast to the meat.

The standout dish, however, was the juicy scarlet prawns on a bed of creamy, lemony Portuguese rice. It exemplified the principles of Portuguese cooking: simple, unfussy flavour profiles and a focus on high-quality ingredients. It’s a must-try dish for any seafood lovers. Desserts are delicious and uncomplicated. Chocolate moelleux and tropical sorbet, both elevated with a flavoured crumble (cardamom and lime, respectively) finished off the meal with a satisfying hit of sweetness.

The staff are attentive and put in a lot of effort, ready to share tips and favourite restaurants, and really go the extra mile to make your stay pleasant and memorable. I took a croissant from the breakfast spread to my room to have later, only to find that after a few hours it had been replaced on the (now clingfilm-wrapped) plate by two pastries.

Things to do

While there’s no shortage of things to do in central Lisbon, the hotel’s location encourages a trip west, to the historic district of Belém. There, a short walk along the waterfront can take you from the Belém Tower to the Monument of Discoveries, and the luscious Vasco da Gama garden. The stunning Jerónimos Monastery nearby is also well worth a visit, and as a reward for a hard day of sightseeing, right next door you can try the original pastel de nata at Pastéis de Belém, the bakery that created the world-famous egg custard tart in 1837.

The verdict

Tarabel’s design sensibility fits right in with the beauty of Lisbon’s architecture, and if you’re looking for a room with a view of the river, there’s few places where you could do better. Whether in a plush suite or poolside, the hotel offers a wonderful place to rest whenever you’re not exploring Lisbon.

Julia was a guest of Tarabel Lisbon; tarabellisbon.com

The Costa del Sol has had a bad rap. The ultimate package holiday destination, its name was once synonymous with mass tourism, cheap deals and expats seeking sun. But those days are over.

The 93-mile stretch of Mediterranean coastline in southern Andalusia has gone upmarket and repositioned itself as a year-round destination with an average of 320 days of sun annually. Five-star hotels are opening further down the coast away from Marbella’s flashy nightclubs, and attention has turned from the region’s famous beaches and golf courses to its whitewashed mountain villages, natural parks and cultural sights, including Málaga, with its Moorish architecture, art scene and huge range of museums.

Fairmont La Hacienda Costa del Sol – the only Fairmont property in Spain and which opened in 2025 – is at the forefront of the region’s reinvention and has recently added a new beach club. Unlike so many hotels there, it doesn’t close after the summer making it a great choice for winter sun.

Why stay here?

To switch off and enjoy the sea views with plenty of pampering. The hotel is on a quieter stretch of coast on the border of the lesser known Costa de la Luz, between Sotogrande and Gibraltar. If you’ve heard horror stories about the queues to register for the EU’s Entry/Exit System at busy Málaga airport, you can easily swerve them by flying to less crowded Gibraltar instead, just half an hour away.

Fairmont La Hacienda is on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean, a golf course and the distinctive Rock of Gibraltar itself. On a clear day, you can even see Morocco. Cleverly, the whole resort is upside down to maximise the spectacular views through a wall of glass in the top-floor lobby. Rooms are below and the pools and gardens on the ground floor – though this does make the lifts a little confusing as numbers go up even though floors go down.

It’s all impossibly chic inside – shades of white and biscuit-brown with warm wooden furniture, dark green plants and rattan lamps. Corridors are cavernous and there’s space and dappled light everywhere, with lingering airport niggles soothed as soon as you walk in the door by staff proffering cold towels and fresh juice.

There’s no bad – or small – room. All 150 king rooms have private terraces, with pale woods and décor in cool taupe shades, while some of the suites have plunge pools, private gardens or two bedrooms. If you fancy more space, there are 47 villas scattered around the grounds with between four and nine bedrooms each plus full kitchens. All have a sleek minimal feel, with jute rugs and linen cushions adding just a touch of colour to the all-neutral palette. Marble bathrooms have pricey Le Labo products and my signature sea view studio suite had a free-standing bath almost big enough to swim in, plus a bath pillow and wooden bath rack with space to hold a wine glass. It was quite tempting not to leave the room at all.

Eating and drinking

Food is a major focus. I felt like I was never more than a few minutes away from a platter of jamon croquettes or a bowl of juicy green olives. My favourite restaurant was Umbra, a poolside spot shaded by a bamboo ceiling and dotted with plants, which has a tapas-style menu of patatas bravas, fried calamari, prawn tacos and delicious roasted aubergine with sugar cane honey. Dishes can also be ordered straight to your lounger if walking the few steps from the pool feels like too much effort. Similarly, if you’re snoozing on the Blue Flag-certified beach, there’s no need to go far as the hotel’s new seasonal beach club La Cala de La Hacienda has Mediterranean dishes including gazpacho, grilled king prawns and burrata salad, washed down with a glass of cold Spanish albariño wine.

Back in the main hotel building, Il Faro Trattoria has sweeping sea views from its terrace and serves Italian classics including pizza and pasta. Desserts are the real stars of the show, with include limoncello sorbet with Italian meringue, mango and basil panna cotta and tiramisu all featuring. This is also the place for breakfast – a generous buffet of pastries, eggs, fruit and cheese. It’s worth arriving before 9am to avoid waiting for a table (and to try to nab one on the terrace).

However, the fine-dining restaurant Dalmar is the ultimate foodie destination if you’re hoping for a special occasion meal. Overseen by Benito Gómez, whose Ronda restaurant Bardal has two Michelin stars, it specialises in elegant Andalusian dishes such as marinated anchovies, chargrilled avocado with a spicy corn and vanilla dressing, and chicken roasted in a mushroom fricassee, all interspersed with tasty unexpected treats and served alongside local wines.

Things to do

Most guests do little more than walk on the beach, doze in the poolside cabanas or pop to the gorgeous spa, which has a range of hydrotherapy pools, a heated indoor pool, cold plunge baths, two hammams and a salt inhalation room for even more relaxing. There’s also a padel court, a 24-hour sea-view gym and a yoga studio with a resident teacher for those who really can’t sit still, while the neighbouring golf course is one of the best in Spain.

To explore further, the hotel can arrange trips to lively Marbella, the village of Jimena de la Frontera with its eighth-century castle or to Gibraltar, which is even easier to get to since the border crossing was removed as part of a new treaty in July. I headed to smart Sotogrande to tour the coastline by catamaran, watching dolphins swimming alongside the boat over a glass of cava then plunging off the back of the boat for a swim in the shadow of the Rock of Gibraltar.

The verdict

This stylish hotel has all you need for a do-nothing getaway, from its soothing décor and sea-view pools to its cossetting spa and impressive restaurants. Better still, it’s just a short flight away whenever a weekend reset is long overdue.

Siobhan Grogan was a guest of Fairmont La Hacienda Costa del Sol

Created in the 17th century, Japan’s Fujiko faith fuses Shinto and esoteric Buddhism in its reverence for Mount Fuji, the country’s highest peak. The faith still has some adherents, and visitors can join their pilgrimages, says Kate Crockett in Condé Nast Traveller, hiking 2,300 metres up the mountain’s lower slopes to the point, accessible by road, from which most climbers head out for the 3,776m summit. It’s a “soothing” one-day walk through ancient forests, which offers “tantalising” views of Fuji’s “snow-capped” peak, and stops at shrines along the way. You can do part of the route on horseback, and it’s worth staying longer, to visit other holy sites and sample the region’s “elegant” old pilgrims’ lodges – and perhaps the new luxury retreat Gora Kadan Fuji, with its “restorative” outdoor bath.

A four-day trip costs from £2,950pp, half-board (kammui.com)

The charm of Croatia’s “little Tuscany”

Most visitors to Croatia head for the “scrubby” and “sun-bleached” mountains and islands of Dalmatia. Set far inland, the rolling Samobor Hills are a different world entirely, said Mary Novakovich in The Guardian. Here, you’ll find a lush, “harmonious” landscape that could “out-Tuscany Tuscany”. The area is criss-crossed by forested trails, particularly in the Žumberak Nature Park, where residents of nearby Zagreb come to hike and bike at weekends. But the hills also offer less strenuous pleasures, including wineries known for their “elegant” sparkling wines. More than three dozen of these lie along the circular Plešivica Wine Road, including the “bucolic” 18th-century Griffin, and the “serene” Korak, which has a refreshingly unpretentious Michelin-starred restaurant. Also unmissable is the town of Samobor itself – the prettiest place in Zagreb county, full of “graceful” Habsburg-era houses in shades of “buttery yellow, apricot and pistachio”.

A week at Nadal’s school of padel

Often described as a cross between tennis and squash, padel is booming, with an estimated one million players in the UK. Being “utterly hooked”, I signed up for a week-long training camp at the Rafa Nadal Academy in Mallorca, said Jemima Kelly in the Financial Times – an “exhausting” experience, but “fun and exhilarating” too. Located in Manacor, the academy not only delivers world-class coaching in both tennis and padel, it has “top-notch” accommodation too, making a stay here feel like a proper holiday. Training days run from 8.30am to 6pm, but include a 3.5-hour break for long lunches and trips to the beach. I was impressed by the attentiveness of our coach, Rodri Ovide, and loved the resort’s spa.

The week costs from €3,984, full board (rafanadalacademy.com)

Isolated in the South Atlantic Ocean, 1,200 miles west of Angola, the volcanic island of St Helena has a “magic” that is “hard to define”, said Michael Binyon in The Times. It derives partly from the “beauty and variety” of the island’s landscapes, including “rich steep pastures” and “rugged bare mountains” rising to 820 metres. But it’s also to do with the island’s small size and friendly atmosphere: St Helena is less than one-third the size of the Isle of Wight, and is home to just 4,200 people.

Then there’s its pleasant tropical climate, its extraordinary history, the charm of its old buildings, and the sense of “stepping back into an earlier age” (although there is Wi-Fi here). In any case, I find it so “enticing” that I’ve returned seven times since first visiting in 2009.

The island is Britain’s oldest colony after Bermuda, having received its charter in 1659 during the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell’s son Richard. Its tiny capital, Jamestown, has “barely changed in two centuries”, and has the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere, as well as a “beautiful” botanic garden. The governor’s mansion, Plantation House, was built in 1791 by the East India Company, and is famed today as the home of Jonathan, a tortoise from the Seychelles who is now aged about 194 and thought to be the oldest creature on Earth.

St Helena’s other “world-famous resident”, Napoleon, was exiled here in 1815, after the battle of Waterloo. The farm where he lived, Longwood, is now French property and has been restored to how it looked on the day of his death in 1821.

The island has an extraordinary wealth of endemic wildlife, with hundreds of species found nowhere else on Earth; and it’s also a good spot for diving and for dolphin-watching trips, although it has no proper beaches. If you go, I can recommend the Mantis St Helena hotel. But be warned that flights (from Johannesburg, plus Cape Town in summer) are often cancelled due to bad weather. If you can, add a few days to your trip just in case.