With tourists starting to be deterred by the frequent heatwaves and soaring prices in the Mediterranean, Lithuania has been growing in popularity as a beach-holiday destination. It is generally cooler and more affordable than the Med, and it doesn’t lack for natural beauty, said Sarah Rodrigues in The Guardian.

On a recent trip, I visited the beach resort of Palanga, “kitsch” and “rowdy” in parts, but I loved its 19th-century Tiškeviciai Palace and “uncrowded” sections of white-sand beaches, where the sea is shallow for a long way out (making them perfect for families). And the Curonian Spit – a forested sandbar more than 60 miles long – is magnificently “untamed”.

I stayed there at the “basic, comfortable” Hotel Nidus, cycled along some of the spit’s wild trails, climbed the 220-metre-high Vecekrugas Dune, and particularly enjoyed eating smoked fish with fresh tomatoes and drinking cold beer at one of the lagoon-side shacks in the village of Preila.

New York’s real Little Italy

There aren’t many Italians living in Manhattan’s Little Italy these days, just a lot of “mediocre” Italian restaurants, aimed at tourists. For the real deal, New Yorkers will tell you to head to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, said David Farley in The Telegraph – accessible on the B train. A century ago, this low-rise street was known as “the Italian colony” for its community of Italian labourers, and it is still packed with restaurants, delis and bakeries selling produce from the old country. Don’t miss the pinolate biscuits in the 108-year-old Madonia Bakery, or Pace’s Italian Market, which has 100 varieties of Italian cheese. But you should explore the side streets too. They are full of Balkan and Mexican stores and restaurants, the fruits of a new cycle of immigration that began decades ago: “This is America”, after all.

Luxury boltholes in the wild Algarve

Known as the Costa Vicentina, the southernmost stretch of Portugal’s west coast is famed for its towering cliffs and “pristine” surfing beaches. Much of it lies within a protected natural park, but a couple of boutique hotels have recently opened on the site of old farms, said Amelia Duggan in The Times – ideal for travellers who “prefer their wilderness to come with a high thread count”. Set about five miles back from the sea near the medieval town of Aljezur, the Vale Palheiro Earth Resort nestles in an “emerald” valley, its “vast” villas built with rammed earth. And further north, closer to the sea near the village of Odeceixe sits Amaria, a “white farmhouse complex”. Its suites have a “pared-back, contemporary aesthetic”, with walls of glass, “diaphanous” drapes and freestanding baths.

I’ve never liked camping, riding or group travel, so I wasn’t an obvious candidate for a group camping and riding trip in Kyrgyzstan, said Rachel Johnson in The Sunday Times.

I hadn’t reckoned, however, with the “adventuress and entrepreneur” Alexandra Tolstoy, a distant cousin of Leo, who has spent years guiding visitors through this landlocked Central Asian country on horseback (past guests have included the actor Dominic West, the “pie magnate” Charlie Bigham and the late satirist P.J. O’Rourke).

She’s a “natural saleswoman” who made the prospect sound “irresistible” – and thus it was that I found myself on a Turkish Airlines flight to Bishkek in May, to join her and some “yummy mummies from the Cotswolds and Chilterns” for a six-day, 120-mile trek among the “jagged”, snow-capped peaks of the Tian Shan, or Celestial Mountains.

We were accompanied by five Kyrgyz horsemen and a support team who moved our camp daily, packing our tents and the two “plastic thrones that served as our khazis” into former Soviet army trucks and transporting them along sheep tracks. A cook prepared “slap-up” breakfasts, lunches of plov (rice with “gobbets” of lamb) and good dinners (including freshly baked cakes), and I soon found I was enjoying myself – even falling “in love” with riding, camping (“you sleep so well in a snug tent by a rushing river”) and the “nomadic life”.

What helped most, of course, was the “indescribable” beauty of the surroundings – a mountain range that rises above 7,000 metres, and is “Edenic” in the late spring, its green valleys alive with wildflowers. We rode through walnut forests, skirted villages where boys on donkeys herded sheep, and watched a game of kok boru – polo with a goat carcass for a ball (the “tenderised” flesh is then cooked). But honestly, there were “too many highlights to list”, from swimming in “swirling” rivers to galloping beside magnificent lakes to siestas in verdant glens.

The Ultimate Travel Company has a 10-night trip from £7,215pp, excluding flights.

In the summer of 1976, there was a record-breaking heatwave, inflation and youth unemployment were worryingly high, a Labour prime minister had recently resigned – and a new subculture known as “punk” was spreading rapidly among the young.

Its seed was the Sex Pistols, a band formed only the previous winter, who wouldn’t release their first single, “Anarchy in the UK”, until 26 November. But their early gigs inspired the formation of The Clash, The Damned, Buzzcocks and many other punk bands.

Plenty of adults were appalled, but punk had a powerful influence on fashion, filmmaking and graphic design as well as rock music – well beyond punk itself. Members of the tiny audiences at two shows the Pistols played that summer – in Manchester in June and July – went on to found The Fall, Joy Division, The Smiths, Simply Red and the Creation and Factory record labels.

What even is a punk?

In Shakespeare’s time, the word meant a prostitute. In American-English it became a put-down for an inept youngster and/or petty criminal, as in 1971’s “Dirty Harry”: “Well, do ya, punk?” At around the same time, US music critics were starting to use the term “punk rock” for the amateurish, shouty garage rock bands that appeared in the 1960s. It was also applied to various New York acts – the Ramones, the New York Dolls, Richard Hell – who experimented with outlandish outfits, back-to-basics songwriting, and themes of teenage alienation. But “punk rock” didn’t become a media phenomenon until it crossed the Atlantic.

Why did it take off in Britain?

Britain, at the time, had a hyperactive music press and an entertainment industry with an appetite for eccentricity and theatricality. As American record companies had long understood, these made London an ideal launchpad for pop-culture trends. (The Ramones, who drew crowds of about 150 in New York, were astonished to find themselves in front of thousands of people when they played in Camden Town in July 1976.) The Sex Pistols crystalised punk into an easily imitated package, striking every pop musician who encountered them as “shock troops from the future”, as one critic put it. “It just blew all the other rubbish away,” said Joe Strummer, who joined The Clash after seeing the Pistols play in April. They were the hottest band in London by March 1976, and by 2 December they were household names in the UK.

How did they manage that?

John Lydon (aka “Johnny Rotten”), Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock were bolshy, in their late teens or early 20s, and from deprived backgrounds. (Jones, the guitarist, was functionally illiterate until his 40s.) Lydon, the singer, was smart, gobby and gleefully provocative, which endeared him to the band’s manager, Malcolm McLaren, a fashion designer who’d briefly managed the New York Dolls. Armed with a look provided by McLaren and his then-girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood – ripped clothes, safety pins, bondage gear, spiky, dyed hair – they swiftly outraged respectable opinion. People had used rude words on television before, but never in such uncouth tones as Lydon and Jones in a regional ITV interview on 1 December 1976. The next morning they were on the front page of every newspaper (“The FILTH and the FURY!” splashed the Daily Mirror).

Was that really groundbreaking?

The Pistols’ cartoon-yob image was an important part of their confrontational, anti-establishment appeal: spitting, pogoing, fighting and vandalism were rife at punk gigs. Their raw, confrontational attitude and do-it-yourself musicianship were a reaction against expensively produced “progressive” outfits such as Pink Floyd, “hippies” and over-dressed stadium rockers such as Elton John. “Up to that point, we’d all been singing about bowling along California highways,” one Northern Irish rocker recalled of punk’s impact.

Many found it intensely liberating: female-fronted bands such as Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Slits and X-Ray Spex got a leg-up from the movement. Jamie Reid’s iconic cut-out designs for the Sex Pistols’ record covers, with their “ransom note” lettering, inspired countless posters and fanzines, helping to democratise graphic design. Vivienne Westwood became one of the UK’s leading fashion designers.

How authentic was punk really?

McLaren, who’d been to art school, liked to say that the Pistols were “my sculpture, my painting, my little artful dodgers” – an artwork inspired by the French situationists, who aimed to shock people out of their complacency with unexpected spectacles. Lydon rejected this furiously, but McLaren certainly did mould the band. He chose their name (probably), selected band members and planned their media stunts; and they did record their only album, “Never Mind the Bollocks”, in a state-of-the-art studio with a producer who’d played keyboards on The Beatles’ “White Album”. While The Clash later made it big in America, sales figures for 1976 suggest that punk was largely a hipster and media preoccupation. No punk single made the year’s UK top 50; Abba, Rod Stewart and Demis Roussos dominated the album charts.

What became of the first punks?

The Sex Pistols reached new heights of controversy by releasing “God Save the Queen” (“She ain’t no human bein’”) during the Silver Jubilee in 1977, then broke up in chaotic circumstances the following January. The Clash’s original line-up soldiered on until 1982, by which time punk rock had mutated into post-punk and new wave. Countless noisy American guitar bands with an outsider ethos have been inspired by punk, and more purist scenes still exist across the Americas, Europe, Asia and Australia. More importantly, whenever someone with no training or credentials picks up a guitar, a brush or a pen, the spirit of punk lives on.

Sweet figs and salty prosciutto make an irresistible pairing, said food writer and cookbook author Sue Quinn. And it’s even better combined with the tang of blue cheese and the crunch of nutty pangrattato in this light but luxurious appetiser.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 80g creamy blue cheese
• 4 ripe figs, halved lengthwise
• 4 slices prosciutto, halved lengthwise
• 1 tbsp runny honey, plus extra for serving
• 1 small handful of basil leaves, torn

For the pangrattato

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 30g fresh breadcrumbs (not too fine; ideally sourdough)
• 20g chopped hazelnuts or walnuts
• 1 small garlic clove, minced finely
• grated zest of 1⁄2 a lemon

Method

• Preheat the oven to 200°C. Place a small spoonful or slice of blue cheese on the cut side of each fig half. Wrap each with a strip of prosciutto, and arrange them snugly in a baking dish.
• Drizzle with the honey and roast until the cheese has melted and the figs are soft – about 10 minutes.
• Meanwhile, make the pangrattato. Warm the olive oil in a small skillet, add the breadcrumbs, nuts and garlic and fry over a medium-high heat, stirring until crisp and golden. Stir in the lemon zest and set aside.
• Transfer the roasted figs to a serving plate, pour over the juices from the dish, and scatter with the pangrattato. Top with torn basil leaves.
• Serve straightaway, with an extra drizzle of honey, if desired.

Taken from Cheese Please by Sue Quinn.

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Westerns are often thought to glorify the violence and vigilantism of the 19th-century towns on the expanding American border. But the best films of the genre, including these eight superb entries, generally interrogate rather than reinforce that mythology.

‘My Darling Clementine’ (1946)

Director John Ford’s classic — perhaps better known to modern audiences by way of 1993’s retelling of the same story in the excellent “Tombstone” — is well worth revisiting. Henry Fonda stars as Wyatt Earp, one of three brothers en route to California when they encounter Old Man Clanton and his sons.

While Wyatt goes into the rough-and-tumble town of Tombstone, the Clantons murder his brother James. Wyatt then takes the open job of marshal in Tombstone and sets his sights on revenge — and on Clementine Carter (Cathy Downs), the ex-fiancee of local gambler Doc Holliday (Victor Mature). The movie’s themes of transition from lawlessness into civilization on the frontier are explored with “elegance, poignancy and dexterous economy,” and the film builds its world by “eschewing clear-cut character rivalries in favor of more complex emotional and social configurations,” said Matthew Connolly at Slant Magazine. (Prime Video)

‘High Noon’ (1952)

Gary Cooper is Marshal Will Kane, who receives word that Frank Miller (Ian MacDonald), an outlaw he banished to prison, is coming back on the noon train with his gang to exact revenge. Kane’s wife, Amy (Grace Kelly), begs him to reconsider, but he feels duty-bound to show up.

He tries to rally support from the town’s citizens but finds that they would prefer to let him face the music alone, a plot machination widely regarded as a commentary on how Hollywood treated those blacklisted during the McCarthy era. Director Fred Zinnemann’s “unusually circumspect and politically loaded” film “stands out as the proto antiwestern, questioning the conventions of a genre long before doing so was in vogue,” said Scott Tobias at The Guardian. (MGM+)

‘The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance’ (1962)

Part romantic triangle, part political parable about the underbelly of pushing the frontier westward, director John Ford’s “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” might be his finest work. Told in the form of an elaborate flashback, the narrative follows newly minted lawyer Ransom Stoddard (Jimmy Stewart) from his arrival in a freewheeling town in unincorporated territory through his deepening friendship with Tom Doniphon (John Wayne), their love of Hallie (Vera Miles) and his final confrontation with the nefarious Liberty Valance (Lee Marvin).

The give and take between the institutionalist Ransom and the take-matters-into-your-own-hands Tom mirrors long-running debates in American society about law and order and justice. The film is a “somber reflection on what was lost when education and morality” moved westward with the U.S. government and its “civilizing influences,” said Sight and Sound. (Prime Video)

‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966)

Director Sergio Leone popularized a new subgenre of frontier cinema: the spaghetti Western, named as such in honor of the Italian filmmakers who dominated the format, including Leone himself. The final and best entry of Leone’s trilogy, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,” is an origin story for Clint Eastwood's sharp-witted antihero “Blondie.” It’s a preautomotive road movie, as Blondie, Angel Eyes (Lee Van Cleef) and Tuco (Eli Wallach) race across the Civil War-era American West in search of a trunk full of Confederate gold. Featuring characters “united by their greed and virtually shorn of any humanity,” it “makes a mockery of any conception of good and evil,” said John Naughton at Empire. (YouTube)

‘The Grey Fox’ (1982)

Much less well known than most films on this list, director Phillip Borsos’ “The Grey Fox” stars Richard Farnsworth as Bill Miner, a stagecoach bandit who heads to the Pacific Northwest in Canada to rob trains when he is released from prison after thirty years. He falls in love with a radical, Kate Flynn (Jackie Burroughs), as he tries to stay ahead of Detective Seavy (Gary Reineke).

Setting the film on the Canadian frontier rather than the American sets it apart from its peers, and the more languid pacing and character-driven plotting continue to distinguish it as a mannered classic. Featuring a “smorgasbord of wide shots of the Pacific Northwest,” the movie’s “slower pace works, challenging the audience to appreciate not only the nuanced performances of its actors” but also the “natural beauty,” said Thaddeus Buttrey at Loud and Clear. (Kino Film Collection)

‘Unforgiven’ (1992)

Clint Eastwood directed 40 films, but it is this riveting Western that will be remembered as his masterpiece. He also stars as Will Munny, a retired outlaw with a checkered past who is talked into pursuing one last bounty. He enlists his friend, Ned (Morgan Freeman), to help track down and kill the men who brutally scarred a prostitute named Delilah (Anna Thomson). To do so, he must go through Big Whiskey’s corrupt sheriff, Little Bill Daggett (Gene Hackman).

“Unforgiven” is full of both quotable quips and savage violence, in the process upending sentimental notions about the American frontier. A film that explores a “range of moral ambiguities and profound historical questions,” it also challenges the “history of the American West and furthermore Eastwood’s own role in defining the West in cinema,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (Prime Video)

‘The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford’ (2007)

Despite containing a plot summary in its title and a tepid reception when it was released, director Andrew Dominik’s meditative film manages to be both suspenseful and insightful. It narrates the last months of the notorious Jesse James (Brad Pitt), whose gang is riven by suspicion and rivalry. Robert Ford (Casey Affleck) is a young gunslinger who joins James’ gang along with his brother, Charley (Sam Rockwell), but grows resentful of the legendary outlaw. Offering a “kaleidoscope’s prismatic tunnel vision on the Old West,” this is an “immaculately conceived, perfectly cast epic” that “patiently and meditatively observes an outlaw’s obsolescence,” said Nick Rogers at Midwest Film Journal. (Prime Video)

‘True Grit’ (2010)

Once upon a time, the Hollywood landscape was littered with Westerns of varying quality, but today they are somewhat scarce, making gems like directors Joel and Ethan Coen’s remake of the 1969 original all the more notable. When her father is murdered by the bandit Tom Chaney (Josh Brolin), 14-year-old Mattie (Hailee Steinfeld) hires U.S. Marshall Rooster Cogburn (Jeff Bridges) to track him down.

The hard-drinking, washed-out Cogburn is joined by LaBoeuf (Matt Damon), who is after Chaney for a different reason. It “adheres to many of the familiar touchstones of the Western genre, while remaining unmistakably Coenesque” and full of “all kinds of wonderful exchanges, unforgettable scenes and moments of weirdness,” said Ryan Lambie at Den of Geek. (Paramount+)

The Spectre, Rolls-Royce’s first electric car, launched in 2022 and is its bestselling model in Europe. The “Series II picks up where Series I left off”, said Matt Bird on Piston Heads: it is “Rolls’ most desirable car, made even more so”.

The two-door, four-seat coupe has 18% more range (up to 390 miles WLTP), 14% faster charging and a boost in power to 600hp, or 680hp for the Black Badge model. Combining “the best parts of the EV experience with the majesty and swagger of a Rolls-Royce really is a match made in heaven”.

The effortless nature of electric power is the perfect fit for a Rolls, said Will Dron in The Times. The extra weight of the battery isn’t a problem in such a hefty car; with “epic levels of brute force”, the dual-motor system can propel this “near-three-tonne lump” from 0-62mph in just 4.5secs (or 4.3 in the “potent” Black Badge version).

Putting your foot down feels “surreal” – there’s a “deceptive” sense of speed, as the cabin is so “ridiculously hushed” and the performance so smooth. “Deftly tuned”, “the steering feels light” and the chassis “beautifully pliant”. The Series II is “supremely comfortably sprung”, with a “dignified poise” even when it’s covering ground “disarmingly quickly”.

With a “truly sumptuous cabin”, the Spectre II feels “ultra luxurious without being fussy”, said Yousuf Ashraf in Evo. It’s far less digitised than most luxury cars, with a modest central screen and physical switches for major functions. A “5.5-metre blank canvas” for bespoke paint choices and trims, the Series II offers new options, including a blended two-tone paint scheme and fabric like a “Gucci bag with puffy quilting”. This update isn’t radical, but it “ticks pretty much every box”.

In 1929, the American photographer Berenice Abbott returned to New York after several years in Paris, said Seán O’Hagan in The Observer, and “found her home city in the throes of rapid transformation”. As “a new architecture of skyscrapers and towering urban canyons” altered Manhattan, she began work on an “epic” project to document the changing metropolis. She had already sensed that photography was the medium with which to capture the “urban dynamic” of the 20th century.

In 1928, she had asked: “How can anyone but a photographer hope today to fix for posterity the image of the modern city?” And that is a question that “echoes through” “Portrait of a City: A Century of American Photography”, at London’s Dulwich Picture Gallery. Bringing together works by US photographers from the 1900s to the 1980s, it is in fact “a portrait of several American cities”, from Dorothea Lange’s Depression-era San Francisco, to “the blankly intriguing streets” of Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles in the 1960s. It is not a complete survey, but it’s nevertheless a fabulous show that “just about adds up to a visual narrative of an American century”.

This “quietly contemplative but gripping” exhibition includes works by “era-defining photographers” drawn from the collection of Norway’s Savings Bank Foundation DNB, said Charlotte Jansen in The Guardian – which inevitably limits the curatorial choice. It begins with images of New York and its towering monoliths by the great pioneers Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, and then just keeps moving “through masterpieces”. Lange’s “Migrant Mother” (1936) is among the examples of early social documentary on show. There is also Lewis Hine’s iron worker on the Empire State Building, circa 1930.

Many of the photographers in the first half had trained as painters, which shows in their “glorious attentiveness to composition and light”. And, while you feel that some were trying to deal with the overwhelming vastness of the new American city by making pieces of it their own, others – such as the street photographer Garry Winogrand – disappear into it.

Upbeat and “unashamedly nostalgic”, the exhibition is full of striking imagery, said Jackie Wullschläger in the Financial Times. Look out, among many other things, for Steichen’s “The Maypole” (1932), which brilliantly conveys the excitement and vast presence of the Empire State Building, and for the film about Saul Leiter, that “unsung chronicler of mid-century American uncertainty”, who turned his poetic and painterly outsider’s eye on life in the East Village. “‘I may be old-fashioned,’ he said, ‘but I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty – a delight in the nice things in the world. And I don’t think one should have to apologise for it.’ Bravo to that, and to the spirit of pleasure throughout this show.”
Dulwich Picture Gallery, London SE21. Until 4 October

County Durham: The Cottage, Castle Eden

A Grade II Georgian country house set in over 4 acres of mature gardens. 6 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/ breakfast room, 5 receps, gym/leisure suite, tennis court, gardens, parking. £2.65 million; GSC Grays.

Leicestershire: Church Farm, Orton on the Hill

Fine Grade II country house set in approx. 5.85 acres. 5 beds, 5 baths, kitchen/dining room, 4 receps, self- contained 1-bed annexe, tennis court, triple garage with leisure suite. £2.1 million; Fine & Country.

Kent: Seal Chart, Sevenoaks

Delightful Grade II house with glorious gardens designed by Gertrude Jekyll. 6 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, tennis court, garage. £2.5 million; Hamptons.

Kent: Park Gate, Elham

Handsome Grade II country house in the Kent Downs, once the home of Sir Anthony Eden. Nestled in approx. 5.75 acres of beautifully maintained gardens with two paddocks and stables. 6 beds, 4 baths, kitchen/ breakfast room, 4 receps, self- contained 1-bed annexe, tennis court, garden, garage. £1.5 million; Fine & Country.

Devon: Vespers, Wood Barton

An exceptional property within a converted Trappist monastery surrounded by 80 acres of parkland. Period features include a Grade II granite staircase. 3 suites, shower, recep, office, study, kitchen/ dining room, use of leisure facilities (with swimming pool, sauna, gym and tennis courts), garden, parking. £875,000; Marchand Petit.

Kent: Vane Court, Biddenden

This magnificent and historic Grade II* Wealden hall house sits in approx. 8.5 acres. The property boasts period features including an oak-framed fireplace. 6 beds, 5 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, heated swimming pool, tennis court, pond, paddocks, garden, parking. £3.65 million; Jackson Stops.

Devon: Thatched Warren, Elstone, nr Chulmleigh

Charming Grade II thatched house set within landscaped gardens and located on the eastern slopes of the Taw Valley. 4 beds, 4 baths, 2 kitchens, 3 receps, games room, detached studio, tennis court, garden, garage. £825,000; Stags.

All the signs that summer is winding down are here — kids heading back to school, the days getting shorter and Halloween decorations taking over stores. Before giving in to fall’s arrival, celebrate the end of summer by going on a seaside escape. These six destinations offer one last beachy thrill.

Hampton Bays, New York

A weekend in the Hamptons is a summertime ritual for many New Yorkers. There are nearly two dozen hamlets and villages to spend time in, each with its own personality. Hampton Bays, part of the town of Southampton, is a relaxed option.

Set up shop on Ponquogue Beach or Meschutt Beach, and enjoy frolicking in the water and listening to the waves. Spend the night at Canoe Place Inn & Cottages, a “laid-back” waterfront property where the rooms are “well decorated and cozy” and the summer programing, like free outdoor yoga classes and concerts, “shines,” said Condé Nast Traveler.

Islamorada, Florida

South of Miami and north of Key West, Islamorada is the “perfect blend of Old Florida charm and salty barefoot luxury,” said Travel and Leisure. It’s known for excellent sport fishing, a vibrant arts enclave and the “state-of-the-art” Florida Keys History & Discovery Center. Learn about the area’s “complex” history through exhibitions on “Indigenous peoples, Spanish treasure fleets, Henry Flagler’s railway and the 1935 Labor Day hurricane.”

Kennebunkport, Maine

If you’re looking to experience “iconic” and “charming” New England, head to Kennebunkport, said Condé Nast Traveler. This historic town is filled with beaches and opportunities for kayaking, paddleboarding and lobster-boat cruising. Those who prefer to enjoy the water from land can walk around Dock Square, visit the Seashore Trolley Museum and hit up the Lobster Roll Trail for a taste of local seafood.

Pacific Grove, California

Spend any amount of time in Pacific Grove, and you’ll likely start daydreaming about living in this idyllic town. Victorian homes dot the landscape, and the views of Monterey Bay and its wildlife — otters, whales and seals — can’t be beat. Lovers Point Park is a great spot for swimming and picnicking, while Asilomar State Beach gets you close to tide pools.

Pacific Grove has a quaint downtown with cute shops like The Quill, a fabulous stationery and gift store, and beautiful boutique hotels. The historic Seven Gables Inn is right above the bay, and each charming room has windows you can open, letting in the sound of the waves.

Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina

With its surf, sand and “perfect spots to relax and watch the sunset,” this walkable town is a “beach lover’s heaven,” said Southern Living. Take the paved 2.5-mile Loop path to explore the area and soak up the scenic water views, or veer off for visits to Wrightsville Beach Park, the Wrightsville Beach Museum of History and Wrightsville Beach Arboretum. If the farmers’ market is happening, pick up some locally grown produce or handmade crafts.

Yachats, Oregon

Forget about racing around, trying to pack a ton of activities into your visit. Yachats is all about slowing down, connecting with nature and enjoying the scenery.

The best place to do this is at Cape Perpetua, where the forest meets the sea. Go for a hike through the giant spruces or stay at the overlook and stare at the Pacific. Nearby is Thor’s Well, a collapsed sea cave also known as the Drainpipe of the Pacific. Take caution when walking around here; the rocks can be slippery and waves have swept people out to sea.

By the time he won the Literature Nobel in 2010, Mario Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian novelist who died last year aged 89, had come to be regarded as the “Julio Iglesias of contemporary fiction”, said Nicholas Shakespeare in The Spectator.

For six decades he’d “defined headlines”: a global celebrity, owing not least to his “turbulent private life”, the winner of “numerous literary prizes” (some awarded “for mere famousness”, in the words of a critic). As Gerald Martin puts it in this biography, Llosa was a “literary adventurer, politician, diplomat and warrior” in one.

Politically, he had shifted from communist student to “reverential supporter of Thatcher and Reagan” – and come close to Peru’s presidency. Personally, he was an iron-willed, selfish man motivated by resentment and revenge.

It all began with “a whopping lie”, said Maya Jaggi in The New Statesman. Born in 1936, the Nobel laureate spent his first 10 years living with his mother and her snobby family, believing that his father, a merchant seaman, was dead; then, aged 11, he was told that his father was not only alive, but coming to live with them.

Ernesto Vargas proved to be a tyrant who beat his “spoiled son”. Thus, as Martin puts it, “10 ostensibly idyllic years without a father” were followed by 10 brutal years with one. His subsequent experiences – at a cadet school in Lima, a spell as a reporter on a crime beat – would feed his “brilliant early novels”; later, his decision to elope, aged 19, with his uncle’s sister-in-law inspired his 1977 novel “Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter”. Portrayed here as a cynical love rat, he dumped Julia to marry his cousin Patricia, 10 years his junior and “practically his sister”.

Martin believes that his “sadistic and often pornographic” fantasies about his “Lima Lolita” fuelled his 1966 novel “The Green House”. Fifty years on, he abruptly left Patricia for the socialite Isabel Preysler (Iglesias’ ex).

Martin – also the biographer of Gabriel García Márquez, with whom Llosa spectacularly fell out – has written a “genuinely critical life”, said Pratinav Anil in The Guardian. He “restores the women whom Llosa reduced to literary raw material”, and argues the writer was never really a socialist, so much as beguiled by a socialist he met at college (Lea Barba).

The book has flaws, said Ian Thomson in Literary Review. There are too many exclamation marks and the writing “can be breathy”. Still, it is a “considerable achievement”: “gossipy, erudite and deeply researched”, it will be the “last word on the man who wanted to be the most famous writer in the Hispanic world since Cervantes”.

“Whether he’s simply putting on his raincoat or making an entrance in his underpants, you can’t take your eyes off Roger Allam,” said Clive Davis in The Times. The veteran actor stars as cuckolded businessman Frank in The Old Vic’s revival of Alan Ayckbourn’s inventive 1969 marital comedy, “How The Other Half Loves” – and he gives a “masterclass” in comic acting. “Every pause, every hesitation, every bumbled phrase is a delight.”

As Frank’s wife Fiona, who is having an affair with one of her husband’s younger underlings, Dorothy Atkinson “brilliantly channels Penelope Keith’s Margo Leadbetter at her most majestically withering”, said Marianka Swain in The Telegraph. And the rest of the six-strong cast in this period-faithful production, directed by Phillip Breen, are also “terrific”.

In Ayckbourn’s world, a “chintzy middle-class living room can be as perilous as a thinly iced pond in a sudden thaw”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Here, the set-up involves the adulterous duo concocting fake alibis involving a hapless third couple, who get invited for dinner by the other two households on successive nights. In a brilliant piece of theatrical daring, Ayckbourn plays out these two “excruciating” evenings simultaneously; the visitors (on rotating chairs) “ricochet between the two ghastly meals, squirming as their hosts play out their marital tensions”.

The dinner party sequence ranks, alongside the middle act of Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off”, as “the most ingeniously crafted and reliably hilarious half-hour in English farce”, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. But while the play’s “geometric cleverness” remains fresh, other aspects have aged, in particular the gender stereotypes. Breen “sensibly treats it as a period drama”.

I’m afraid I found it all “implausible and dated”, said Nick Curtis in The Standard. The problem is that the “action doesn’t spring from the personalities here: rather, character is retroactively dictated by the levers of the plot”. It all seems contrived and artificial: I was left “smiling thinly amid belly-laughers”.
The Old Vic, London SE1. Until 19 September.

“I’m ashamed to say that I’d never heard of the 1901 novel ‘My Brilliant Career’ by Miles Franklin,” said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. Having watched the new Netflix adaptation, I have now “devoured it in one sitting”.

Described as Australia’s answer to “Pride and Prejudice”, it tells the story of a young woman “kicking against convention in turn-of-the-century Australia”. Sybylla Melvyn (Philippa Northeast) is an aspiring writer who has grown up running wild on her family’s outback farm. She is sent to live with her well-to-do grandmother (Anna Chancellor), who hopes to teach her how to be a lady and bag a husband.

Sybylla, who wants nothing more than to be an author, rationalises that she must “fully experience the world before I can write about it”, said Luke Buckmaster in The Guardian. Soon, she encounters a potential suitor, Harry Beecham (Christopher Chung), who in this version is Chinese-Australian and “totally ripped”. Sybylla becomes involved in a love triangle with Harry and an English visitor, Frank.

The six-part series is “steamier” than the novel, and at times “a tad syrupy”. But it has “pluck and sass”, and Northeast gives an “entertaining, high-voltage performance”.

The series “takes a very 2020s approach” to early 1900s Australia, said James Jackson in The Times, with a gay subplot, and another involving a young Indigenous horse trainer. It’s easy to make it sound “pretty naff”, but “My Brilliant Career” is “self-aware” – and thanks to Northeast’s “terrific performance”, it is highly enjoyable.

“Those of us pining to see more Sian Clifford since the end of ‘Fleabag’, in which she played Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s fierce sister”, have been rewarded with this “barnstorming” mockumentary comedy, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

Clifford plays Lady Isabella, a “haughty, but troubled” aristocrat who lives on a grand country estate (the movie was filmed at Somerleyton Hall in Suffolk), where she hosts an annual children’s talent competition, Stately Stars. Desperate to prove that she has artistic talent of her own, Isabella decides to compete against the youngsters, staging an elaborate multimedia performance, which includes poetry, action art and photographs of her “apparently dead body around the grounds”.

On hand to witness the mayhem is Sam (Laurie Kynaston), a “pushy, insecure young director” who shows up at the stately home to make a documentary. Funny, poignant and increasingly bizarre, “Lady” plays like a psychedelic “B-side to Saltburn”.

There is plenty of David Brent in this “frequently hilarious” film, said Kevin Maher in The Times, along with “bits of Alan Partridge and a dash of ‘This Country’”. The twist comes when the action suddenly veers into science fiction, and Isabella begins quite literally to disappear. The metaphor is clear – Isabella has become invisible to her husband, her peers and herself – and at times, her desire to be seen is almost “unbearably poignant”.

The shifts “from quirkiness to horror to tragedy” aren’t always seamless, said Gayle Sequeira in Sight and Sound, and some of the jokes go on too long. But by the end, the silliness gives way to something “meaningful and life-affirming”. “‘Lady’, much like the aristocrat at its centre, is an odd duck: erratic, but possessed of a tender heart and scrappy spirit.”

A day out in London usually comes with a hefty price tag – but it doesn’t have to. There’s still time to plan an affordable trip to the capital for the whole family before the kids go back to school. Savvy savers take note.

Spend an afternoon museum-hopping

Get your “cultural fix” at one (or more!) of London’s free museums and galleries, said Secret London. Children will love the “glittering jewellery” and “ancient sculptures” at the V&A or you could take them to the Horniman Museum and Gardens in Forest Hill to gawp at the “weird and wacky” objects on display. There’s also an “impressive garden and nature trail” to explore.

Take the kids to an outdoor show

“If you’re running out of juice towards the end of the summer hols” try dropping in at the Greenwich + Docklands International Festival, said Time Out. Running from 21 August–6 September, it’s “absolutely free” and includes a jam-packed line-up of “spectacular” outdoor theatre and dance. You’ll find something to keep “all ages” entertained.

Immerse yourself in nature at a park

Pack a picnic and “reconnect with nature” at one of London’s leafy parks, said Secret London. Stroll along the South Bank to the “hidden” Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden, which is home to more than 200 wild plants and a “luscious lawn”. There are plenty of spot to lounge in the shade too. Or take the kids for a bike ride at Walthamstow Wetlands. Here, there are “over 13 miles of paths across an untamed, wildlife-friendly site”.

Visit a city farm

“You don’t have to head deep into the countryside to experience rural life,” said Which? Bring the kids along to Surrey Docks Farm in southeast London, where they can “make new furry and feathery friends”. For £3 each, you can also book a “meet the small animals” session for little ones to get up close to the rabbits, ferrets and guinea pigs.

Relax at a pop-up beach

The Costa Del Croydon is back on the level 3A rooftop of the multi-storey car park at the Centrale and Whitgift shopping centre. Running until the end of August, entry to the “urban beach” is free, said MyLondon. Once inside, kids can “enjoy creative workshops” and play in the splash zones and sandpit.

Whether the ’80s were “morning in America” or the beginning of the end for the post-war political consensus, there is no question that the decade produced its share of landmark cinematic achievements as well as seat-filling blockbusters. These nine memorable films include huge box office hits as well as gems known mostly to dedicated cinephiles.

‘The Shining’ (1980)

Novelist Stephen King famously despised director Stanley Kubrick’s take on his story of hard-drinking writer Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), who slowly loses his mind when he serves as the winter caretaker at the snowy Overlook Hotel with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd). Beyond its now-iconic scenes, including Danny scribbling “murder” backwards on a door and Jack announcing “Wendy, I’m home!” as he chops his way through a door with an axe, Kubrick’s visionary film continues to lure in new generations of viewers with its mixture of technical wizardry and delirious performances. It’s a film that succeeds in “elevating horror to a different plane, removing its camp wiggeries and bogeymen to infuriate and bedazzle,” said Ian Nathan at Empire. (Prime Video)

‘Blade Runner’ (1982)

Harrison Ford, at the peak of his fame, plays Rick Deckard, one of the titular agents who hunt and retire rogue synthetic “replicants” in a bleak, polluted future Los Angeles set in 2019. Deckard is tasked with eliminating a band of rebellious replicants led by Roy (Rutger Hauer) who have returned to Earth to confront their creator, the CEO of the Tyrell Corporation.

In the process Deckard meets and falls in love with Rachael (Sean Young), a replicant programmed to believe that she is human. Director Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece raises still-relevant questions about the nature of synthetic consciousness, wrapped in a stylish noir casing. A “visionary” film that presents the “future as a black market, made up of scrambled sordid aspects of the past,” its unforgettable visual canvas gives it its “place in film history,” said Pauline Kael at The New Yorker. (YouTube)

‘Amadeus’ (1984)

A gripping biopic of Mozart (Tom Hulce), told from the perspective of the envious Antonio Salieri (F. Murray Abraham), “Amadeus” is one of director Milos Forman’s two masterpieces, along with “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Salieri plots to destroy the arrogant, often-unhinged Mozart, upend his relationship with Emperor Joseph II (Jeffrey Jones) and steal his final composition, “Requiem.” It gives us a “surprisingly true Mozart — young and tragically flawed, riddled with childlike tendencies whilst possessing the beautiful voice of God through his music” while “exploring themes of legacy, success, betrayal and the nature of talent,” said Victoria Vireikyte at Voice. (Prime Video)

‘Paris, Texas’ (1984)

Director Wim Wenders helms this slow, often surreal drama about a man, Travis (Harry Dean Stanton), who suddenly appears in the desert four years after going missing following the dissolution of his troubled marriage to Jane (Nastassja Kinski). His brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell), and his wife, Anne (Aurore Clément), have been raising Travis and Jane’s son, Hunter (Hunter Carson), in Los Angeles, and Travis decides he wants to try to find Jane in Houston. It’s a film that “shreds the emotions, leaving the viewer as raw and wounded as Travis,” while also being a “wholly American piece of storytelling in that the country’s ethos is rooted in self-discovery and redefinition,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (HBO Max)

‘Back to the Future’ (1985)

The ’80s were full of enjoyable pulp science fiction films, including E.T., but it is director Robert Zemeckis’ “Back to the Future” that left the most enduring mark on cinematic culture. Michael J. Fox is Marty McFly, a high school student whose mad scientist mentor, Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd), accidentally sends him back in time to the 1950s in a DeLorean.

While there, Marty inadvertently interrupts the meet-cute that brought his parents together and threatens to snuff out his own existence if he can’t fix it. A movie that turned Fox into a superstar, it is the “modern era’s zippiest comedy about the collapse of the American dream” that might also be “Hollywood’s richest, cleverest blockbuster,” said Amy Nicholson at the Los Angeles Times. (Starz)

‘The Sacrifice’ (1986)

While certainly not the best-known 1980s film about nuclear war, celebrated Russian director Andrei Tarkovsky’s “The Sacrifice” remains one of his finest. Erland Josephson is Alexander, an actor and journalist celebrating his birthday at his family’s Swedish estate when he and his family get word that World War III has broken out, with much of the world likely already destroyed.

Desperate to avoid the coming nuclear holocaust, he agrees to a bargain with God — to give up all of his earthly loves and possessions if the disaster can be reversed. An “extraordinary and rich film with profound depths,” it represents a “bravely uneasy capstone to a titanic career,” said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘Full Metal Jacket’ (1987)

Hollywood’s belated reckoning with the disastrous Vietnam War reached its apotheosis in the late 1980s, with two classic films released within a year of one another, first “Platoon” in 1986 and then Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket” in 1987, which follows a platoon of Marines including razor-witted Private Davis (Matthew Modine) and much-ridiculed Private Lawrence (Vincent D’Onofrio) from basic training through the ordeal of combat in Southeast Asia. The first half of this “astonishingly assured piece of film-making” depicts the “steady dehumanization of Marine recruits” at the hands of the abusive Gunnery Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) while the second half builds to a tragic climax that is a “mini-inferno of sniper fire and gushing bullet wounds, hard to live through but impossible to forget,” said John Patterson at The Guardian. (Prime Video)

‘Do the Right Thing’ (1989)

Writer-director Spike Lee’s groundbreaking film made him a household name, and Lee was only the second Black writer nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards. He stars as Mookie, a young father and delivery man at the eponymous neighborhood pizza joint run by Sal (Danny Aiello), a flashpoint for racial tensions between the largely black community and the restaurant’s racist owner. When Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) is killed by police after a confrontation with Sal, the neighborhood erupts in violence. Lee’s seminal film is a “virtuoso act of creation, a movie at once realistic and symbolic, lighthearted and tragic, funny and savage,” said Roger Ebert at the time at The Criterion Collection. (YouTube)

‘When Harry Met Sally’ (1989)

The standard against which all modern romantic comedies are measured, director Rob Reiner’s “When Harry Met Sally” is more than the sum of its well-known vignettes, including Sally (Meg Ryan) publicly demonstrating to Harry (Billy Crystal) the ability to fake an orgasm, and Harry’s unforgettable riff about how men and women can’t be friends. Harry and Sally are thrown together for a car trip from Chicago to New York after they graduate from college and dance around one another for years into their 30s as friends before taking the plunge into a romantic relationship. A movie that “treasured its characters, atmosphere, and setting,” it is also a “collection of finely hewn set pieces — nearly all of which pivot around nothing more than a conversation,” said Sonia Saraiya at Vanity Fair. (Prime Video)

Lisbon, Portugal’s beautiful capital by the sea, mixes pastel buildings and pretty tiled churches with incredible restaurants and quick access to beaches and mountains. Andaz Lisbon is the newest addition to the city’s hotel scene. Located right in the heart of central Lisbon, staying here is like being blasted with a rush of dopamine – its quirky and fun design choices make it a must-visit for style-conscious travellers.

Why stay here?

Andaz Lisbon is a maximalist’s colour-drenched fantasy bursting into life. Housed in a former bank – with the original doors intact – there’s nothing staid or corporate about this glamorous new hotel. If you’re a fan of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama, you’ll love the hotel’s pick ’n’ mix clash of colours and patterns that are emblazoned on every corner.

When you first walk in you’re greeted by the original marble staircase decorated with Joan Miro-esque vases. The hotel’s design delights in making everything big and bold with giant murals as feature walls in public spaces like the hallways.

Rooms are warm and inviting. A bright orange velvet armchair, pale blue-grey sofa and abstract 3D art on the walls provide pops of colour. There’s open shelving for your clothes with a floor-length mirror. The decor is a modern take on mid-century cool. There’s also a small mini bar with snacks – the first round is complimentary, which is a nice touch.

The bathroom is sleekly decorated with burgundy tiles and matching walls, beige marble, and bronze fittings, with Byredo Eleventh Hour toiletries on offer.

Eating and drinking

With its views out to São Jorge’s castle, an abundance of plants and a patchwork of clashing patterns, rooftop restaurant Luzzi is achingly stylish and brightens up your day instantly – and that’s before you even get to the food. For breakfast, it offers a well-curated buffet with crispy artisan bacon, homemade hash browns, a selection of cold cuts and cheeses, a mini salad station, and coconut pastries and plump doughnuts in their sweet corner. There’s also an à la carte menu where you can order fluffy pancakes or eggs however you like them.

Andaz Lounge downstairs pays homage to the kiosks you find dotted around Portugal offering casual light bites. It’s the perfect spot for lunch – try the cod and sweet potato fritters and the smash burger with port-caramelised onions. Then sink into one of the squidgy bouclé sofas with a tipple – all of the wines offered by the glass there are made by female winemakers.

At night, Luzzi is the perfect spot for a romantic dinner or group party – chef Bruno Alves has created a menu with nods to Portuguese heritage so there are Brazilian chicken coxinha, a doughy snack, and Peking glazed duck rice, which pays tribute to former Portuguese colony Macau. The standout dish is lobster acorda, juicy chunks of charcoal-roasted lobster served with a soup made of bread, garlic and olive oil, infused with a rich seafood flavour – and it’s a hearty enough portion for two. For dessert, try serrasura, made from cream and crushed biscuits. Luzzi’s heavenly version is layered with almond, fig, honey and bavaroise.

There’s also a bar with colourful checked walls, comfy low chairs decorated with geometric cushions, and little outdoor terraces – be sure to bag the one closest to the view of Rua Augusta Arch. With its marble tables and dedicated DJ booth, it’s like an upscale club without the sticky floors. Make sure to check out the loo at Luzzi – there’s red (yes, red) toilet paper, which somehow works with the rest of the decor.

The staff are uniformly kind and attentive – at breakfast one day I mention I won’t be staying long as I have to rush off for a day trip and someone brings me a takeaway box and cutlery, with a bag to carry it all in, so I can pack a lunch from the buffet.

Things to do

The hotel’s location right in the heart of Lisbon makes sightseeing a breeze. The iconic – and enormous – square, Praça do Comércio, and the riverside are just metres away. Take a walk around Baixa Chiado, marvel at the Santa Justa outdoor lift connecting the lower areas of the Baixa with the higher Carmo Square, and head to the ruins of an old church at Carmo Archaeological Museum. Don’t forget to grab a pastel de nata – egg custard tart – from the famous pastry shop, Manteigaria.

The verdict

Andaz Lisbon makes a welcome change from the stark minimalism that seems to be the default decor of many luxury hotels. It’s bold, loud and proud, catering to guests who care about good style, and offers an avant-garde twist and fine dining in a trendy new space. Don’t be surprised if it starts popping up on your Instagram feed very soon.

Ann was a guest of Andaz Lisbon

There are many stretches from Anthony Bourdain’s “gritty” and “well-chronicled” life that could work for a biopic, said Tim Robey in The Telegraph. But in “Tony”, Matt Johnson sticks with “just one summer” in 1975, when the celebrity chef was 19 – long before he found fame and fortune.

Based on the opening chapters of Bourdain’s bestselling memoir, “Kitchen Confidential”, the film opens as Tony – Dominic Sessa, the “deeply talented” young actor from “The Holdovers” – leaves home after failing to get a prestigious summer writing fellowship. He follows the “girl he fancies”, Nancy, to Cape Cod and gets “self-pityingly drunk” when he finds out she has a boyfriend.

After being thrown out of an oyster shack, a kindly chef (Antonio Banderas) gives him a job washing dishes and Tony finds himself in the “cramped, all-male milieu of flying expletives and cruel practical jokes”.

Johnson effortlessly mixes the “toxic camaraderie” of these scenes with montages of Bourdain’s slow-but-steady daily improvements. “It plays like ‘Rocky’ with kitchen knives”.

Gradually, Tony’s “insufferability” is “hosed away”, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times, and Sessa dazzles in the “contradictory” role of the “charismatic sad-sack”. Johnson has made a “funny, sun-kissed biopic” that is “spry” and “enjoyable” despite the “complicated brief”. “Tony” is aimed at those who know that the chef’s life story will lead to both “glory and tragedy” (Bourdain died by suicide in 2018). The film “isn’t the whole story”. But that’s “probably fitting” – the chef was “nothing if not a spinner of yarns”.

I found it a bit “strange”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. “Tony” is an “entertaining” watch but the “feelgood trajectory is compromised by what we know” about Bourdain’s troubled life and death. A scene in which Banderas tells Tony about a chef to Louis XIV who “killed himself in shame when the key ingredients didn’t arrive for a banquet” is “presumably there tacitly to acknowledge Bourdain’s heartbreaking fate. It sits oddly.”

Mostly, though, it’s a “rollicking, surprisingly sunny coming-of-age tale”, said Larushka Ivan-Zadeh in The Times. “Picture ‘The Bear’ with less angst and more innocence.” Johnson manages to capture the “blistering, sizzling energy” of Bourdain’s memoir and Leo Woodall is “succulently charismatic” as Tony’s “cocksure, coke-snorting” co-worker, Sal.

But the real star is Sessa who “nails Bourdain’s annoying young Turk braggadocio” while giving us a peek at the “unformed vulnerability beneath”. In all, it’s a portrait of the fiery young chef that’s “spicy, salty, and just sweet enough. I’d happily have second helpings.”

Katendrecht was “once at the heart of the world’s busiest port” and home to a “lively sailors’ quarter”, said Pat Riddell in The Guardian. But this “thin peninsula” on the south bank of the Nieuwe Maas River in central Rotterdam has undergone a dramatic transformation.

The regeneration of historic warehouses has seen the former red-light district turn into one of the city’s “most vibrant” spots, with craft breweries, boutique shops and galleries popping up everywhere. Last year, the opening of the Fenix museum of migration gave a boost to the “formerly downtrodden” neighbourhood’s “lively cultural and arts scene”.

Set within a “century-old warehouse”, this “showstopper” of a museum uses art to portray migration “not as an abstraction or headline, but as a shared human experience”, said Karen Bershtein in Time magazine. Inside, a “mirrored, double-helix steel staircase” winds up to “sprawling views of the River Maas” and the city. Contemporary works include the “Suitcase Labyrinth”: a striking installation “assembled from thousands of donated pieces of luggage”. And “don’t miss the Nederlands Fotomuseum” where you can see a vast collection of Dutch photography, said Derek Robertson in Time Out.

Evenings are easy to fill at the Theatre Walhalla: an intimate venue that hosts an eclectic programme of over 300 performances each year. It’s also worth checking to see whether you can catch a family-friendly show at the youth circus school, Circus Rotjeknor.

When it comes to food and drink, Delistraat is “buzzing from morning to night”, said Riddell in The Guardian. Here you’ll find “flaky pastries” at Jordy’s Bakery, a “huge range of whiskeys” at Café de Ouwehoer, and the “small but perfectly formed fine dining establishment”, De Matroos en Het Meisje, which offers a daily changing menu of four to six courses.

Consider booking a room at Hotel New York where you’ll find luxurious suites in the “former offices of the Holland-America Line’s directors”, or check in at the “permanently moored” former cruise ship, SS Rotterdam, which has been turned into a 254-room hotel. With much of its original decor preserved, it feels like “stepping back in time”.

This is the way to enjoy the British summertime. Battered fish and salt-and-vinegar-seasoned chips have been a staple for hundreds of years, best paired with stinging seaside winds and spray. Wherever you are in the UK, there will always be a handful of chippies vying for your order. Here are some of the best seaside establishments, giving you decades-crafted favourites, and some newer twists on tradition.

Anstruther Fish Bar – Fife, Scotland

“My heart belongs to Anstruther Fish Bar,” said Gordon Thomson in The Telegraph. Edinburgh has “salt and sauce”, a “piquant brown-sauce-and-vinegar combo”, and in Glasgow, the “mighty ‘fish supper’ reigns”, but fish on the east coast of Scotland is something else. Once you’ve navigated the queue under the “watchful eye of the mannequin fisherman”, you settle down into an “old-school caff table”. Last time I was there, I had haddock, with the “most incredible chips – perfectly crisp and yet fluffy inside – and mushy peas, all washed down with white wine and a craft beer”. Truly “award-winning fare”.
anstrutherfishbar.co.uk

Aldeburgh Fish & Chips – Aldeburgh, Suffolk

“The Cooney family and their faithful tribe of fryers have been frying in beef dripping on Aldeburgh High Street since 1967,” said Chris Haslam in The Times. There are actually two spots on the high street to pick up your supper, and you’ll get the “same shatteringly crispy battered fish” at both. Above the second location, the Golden Galleon, there’s a small dining space, but Aldeburgh’s “windswept sand and shingle beach is an unbeatable picnic spot”. I’ve even known a seal to have “bobbed along to say hello”.
aldeburghfishandchips.co.uk

Whelan’s Fish and Chips – Lytham St Annes, Lancashire

Whelan’s has been visited by some esteemed figures in the culinary world – such as Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein – and yet it primarily “remains a favourite with the locals”, said Delicious. It was established in 1937, and “since it started, not much has changed and for all the right reasons”. They source fish from “sustainable stocks, they use local produce (wherever possible)” and you are always looked after by “welcoming” staff. Of course, you can’t go wrong with something traditional, but keep your eyes peeled for one of the “gourmet fishcakes which often feature as a daily special”.
whelansfishandchips.co.uk

Ainsworth’s – Bridge Street, Caernarfon, Gwynedd

Now this is a “treasure trove of a place”, said Joanna Whitehead in The i Paper. Naturally, “no two chippies are the same”, and each place is “dazzling with individuality”: a “gratifying phenomenon in a homogenised world of chain eateries”. It is hard to beat cradling a “box of their glowing offering under your arm” and heading “to the waterfront to eat between bay and castle”.
ainsworthscaernarfon.co.uk

The Rockfish – Dartmouth, Devon

If you need convincing, look no further than celebrated chef Mitch Tonks’ “65 awards”, said Food and Travel Magazine. “Set overlooking the bucolic River Dart with its fishing boats meandering up and down with the ebb and flow of the tide, you can almost taste how good The Rockfish’s wares are going to be before they arrive.” In winter, the restaurant’s log burner is the perfect antidote to “long yomps across the moors”. There are a few West Country change-ups from your classic chippy menu: the “South Coast calamari with aïoli” and a “South Devon crab roll, served with pickled cucumber, Marie Rose sauce and lashings of sweet white crab meat” are fan-favourites.
therockfish.co.uk

Set midway between Amsterdam and Groningen in the northern Netherlands, the village of Giethoorn is the kind of place that should be prescribed for depression, said Gavin Haines in The Telegraph. With its thatched houses and “manicured” gardens, it’s “almost too perfect to be real” – but what makes it particularly “idyllic” is that it’s built largely around canals. Its charms are no secret: it receives about a million visitors a year (roughly a third of them from China), and the central waterway is often gridlocked.

Still, one local said he wasn’t much troubled by the crowds: the village still feels peaceful thanks to the absence of cars, and most of the visitors are daytrippers who leave around 5pm. If you go, book a B&B in advance, and hire a canoe or rowing boat to explore the wetlands in the nearby Weerribben-Wieden National Park.

The timeless charms of Tinos

A relatively quick two-hour ferry journey from Athens, Tinos is one of the more “wild and untouched” of the Cyclades, said Francesca Angelini in The Times – an “otherworldly” place with towering mountains, “frills-free” old chapels and gorgeous beaches. For a family holiday, I rented a “chic, understated” villa through The Thinking Traveller on the “sheltered” west coast, a 15-minute walk from the sandy beach of Kalivia.

From there, we visited other beaches (Kolymbithres was lovely), went on some good hikes, and explored several enchanting villages. I loved “mystical” Tarampados, with its medieval, Venetian-style dovecotes (“ornate” two-storey stone structures), and Volax was wonderful, with its “bizarre” rock formations (boulders which were apparently “hurled down by Zeus in a moment of rage”) – but most “spectacular” was Kardiani, a “maze” of whitewashed houses on the “precipitous” hillside above our villa.

A cookery and craft retreat in Japan

The little Japanese mountain town of Yamanaka is known for its hot springs, traditional crafts and food culture, all explored in Water, Wood, & Wild Things, by the American writer Hannah Kirshner. For those keen to experience them first-hand, Kirshner runs a biannual four-day retreat, Foodways and Craftways, said Jessica Kozuka in DestinAsian.

Guests stay at the “venerable” Hanamurasaki ryokan – an inn founded in 1902 with a rooftop onsen bath – and take part in cookery and craft workshops at Mokkei, a renovated 100-year-old house with an open kitchen. The programme also includes foraging trips, tea ceremony classes at one of the town’s tea schools, and traditional pastry lessons at a fifth-generation confectionery.

The Yucatán Peninsula is Mexico’s prime tourist hotspot, but most visitors stay in the north, around the “mega-resort” of Cancún and the stretch of Caribbean coast known as the Riviera Maya. The south of the peninsula is a different world, said Martin Symington in The Times – a vast, sparsely populated region which is relatively little visited by holidaymakers.

The distances involved in exploring it are considerable (the Yucatán, which stretches into Belize and Guatemala, is nearly as big as Great Britain), but so are the rewards. As you head south from Cancún, low forest and scrub give way to “deeper, darker” forest, and hidden away among it are some “magical” places, including one particularly “stupefying” sight – the ancient Mayan city of Ichkabal.

In the north, I stayed at Belmond Maroma, “a peach of a beach-fringed hideaway”, and visited the old colonial town of Valladolid, as well as the spectacular Mayan ruins of Chichén Itzá – “an archaeological honeypot up there with Petra or Giza”. Ichkabal feels very different. Its biggest pyramid, at 40 metres high, is taller than Chichén Itzá’s, and stands beside a “stadium-sized” central precinct surrounded by other monumental structures. All are half-covered in vegetation, and set in an “impenetrable” rainforest that stretches further than the eye can see.

This city reached its zenith between AD200-600, and was later abandoned and – incredibly – only rediscovered in 1994, when archaeologists working on another project “stumbled” upon it. Last year, it was opened to visitors, and yet – while I came across several jungle creatures (including a crocodile swimming in one of the city’s original reservoirs) – I saw only a handful of other tourists. Other unmissable sights include the Lagoon of Seven Colours, a narrow, 60km-long lake. Its water is wonderfully clear – great for snorkelling – and there are some “tranquil” boutique hotels on its shores, including the Habitas Bacalar.

I would only recommend making this dish – which has converted even a few hardened anchovy haters – during the summer, when peaches are at their best, said Dara Klein. You can use flat peaches, white peaches, yellow nectarines, white nectarines – whatever looks good at the time and feels ripe. And use the freshest, highest-quality mozzarella you can find. I like to serve the dish with fresh sourdough, ciabatta or focaccia, to mop up the juices.

Ingredients (serves 3-4)

• 370g fresh mozzarella
• 400g peaches
• 1⁄2 shallot or Tropea onion
• 2 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1⁄2 tbsp moscatel or red-wine vinegar
• 1 tsp dried oregano (the wild variety if you can find it), plus extra for sprinkling
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• zest of 1⁄2 a lemon
• 1 x 30g tin of anchovy fillets in olive oil
• sea salt

Method

• Drain the mozzarella and place on a piece of kitchen paper to dry. Allow the cheese to come to room temperature, this may take around 30mins.
• Meanwhile, wash the peaches and slice them in half, removing the stones. Cut each half into a variety of medium-sized chunks, cutting on an angle. Finely slice the shallot or onion.
• Add the peaches and shallot to a mixing bowl along with a large pinch of salt, the olive oil, vinegar, dried oregano, lemon juice and zest. Stir thoroughly to combine. Taste the dressing with a piece of peach and adjust very gradually with more salt, vinegar or lemon juice.
• Tear the mozzarella into large pieces. I like to taste a tiny bit to check for saltiness. Many mozzarelle are already seasoned, so it’s worth checking whether you need to add any salt.
• Remove the anchovies from their oil and blot with some kitchen paper. If they are particularly thick, slice in half lengthways.
• Distribute the mozzarella evenly across four plates (alternatively you can use a large platter). Season with salt, if needed. Spoon the peach mixture over and around the cheese, leaving the dressing in the bowl. Drape the anchovies over the peaches and mozzarella.
• Whisk the dressing a couple of times to re-emulsify, then spoon over each dish. Sprinkle a little more oregano on top and serve immediately with fresh sourdough, ciabatta or focaccia.

Taken from La Trattoria: Intuitive Italian cooking by Dara Klein.

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“From humble origins”, Notting Hill Carnival has grown to be the riotous explosion of colour we know today, a “cultural landmark” in the heart of London, said The Voice.

This year marks the 60th anniversary of what has become a “massive celebration” of Caribbean culture, “artistic expression, music, design, business and much more” for millions of people.

What is it?

The second largest carnival in the world, which takes place over the August bank holiday weekend, offers a wide range of music including “steelpan, calypso, soca, reggae, dancehall” and more, said Travel Noire. Food is also a “major part of the carnival experience”, and visitors can expect to sample everything from Guyanese pepper pot to Trinidadian roti.

But the event also stretches back “through several connected histories”, and it is these that continue to endure as carnival enters its sixth decade.

What’s the history?

Many Caribbean carnivals across the world trace their roots back to “rebellion against enslavement”, said Secret London. Enslaved people would don costumes and cover themselves with “paint, mud or oil, as an act of defiance against their oppressors”. This tradition is still seen in the parade today, on carnival Sunday.

A similar defiance in the face of tragedy was part of the birth of Notting Hill Carnival. The event began as a response to the “brutal, racially motivated murder” of Antiguan carpenter Kelso Cochrane in 1959, said Sky History. The 32-year-old was fatally stabbed in nearby Paddington, a consequence of the “febrile” atmosphere arising from racial tensions during the Windrush era.

That year, Trinidadian-born activist and journalist Claudia Jones organised an indoor carnival to “push back against the racism the community faced since the 1958 race riots” and “celebrate Caribbean culture”. When it moved outdoors in 1966, it became what is now known as Notting Hill Carnival.

What’s happening this year?

To mark the event’s 60th year, community leaders have “clubbed together to kick the party off”, said London’s The Standard. A “host of talks and panels” will be on offer, alongside dedicated walks through west London to “learn about what the carnival really means”.

But amid financial pressures and “scrutiny like never before”, the future of Notting Hill Carnival remains uncertain, said The Guardian in 2025. That year’s event was only saved by a last-minute “cash injection” of £1 million by the local council. It continues to be a “political lightning rod”, said The Times, and what happens “to the carnival depends on what happens at the carnival”. Policing challenges, the use of facial recognition and a debate over the location have all plagued the event in recent years.

What is “not up for debate” is the carnival’s “underlying importance” to the community. Its preservation for future generations is seen as one of the most “vital” ways to emphasise Caribbean identity – “and a British Caribbean identity, too”.

Northumberland: Loughbrow House, Hexham

An impressive Victorian country house set in mature gardens, less than 30 minutes’ drive from Newcastle. 7 beds, 5 baths, kitchen/diner, 4 receps, 3-bed self-contained cottage, 2-bed self-contained annexe, garden, garage. OIEO £2.1 million; Galbraith.

Oxfordshire: Honeysuckle Cottage, Shenington

Charming period cottage with far-reaching rural views. The cities of Coventry and Oxford are within easy reach. 2 beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, garden, off-street parking. £600,000; Savills.

West Sussex: Old Well Cottage, West Harting

A fine Grade II house within the South Downs National Park, close to Portsmouth and 4.5 miles from Petersfield, with easy railway access to London. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, heated pool, garden, parking. £2 million; Savills.

Devon: Great Gutton Farmhouse, Crediton

Characterful Grade II* farmhouse with approx. 21 acres of land and a thriving holiday letting business comprising of five cottages. 6 beds, 4 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, 4-bed self-contained barn, two 1-bed self-contained barns, two 2-bed self-contained annexes, garden, indoor pool, parking. £2.5 million; Knight Frank.

Flintshire: Lislea House, Northop

An elegant Grade II Georgian villa set in mature gardens of approx. 1.4 acres and framed against the backdrop of St Eurgain and St Peter’s Church, whose striking tower dominates the village skyline. Close to Wrexham, Liverpool and Manchester. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, garden, garage. OIEO £900,000; Tulloch & Carter.

Norfolk: Walnut Shade, Suton

This delightful Grade II medieval former hall house is set within approx. 2.5 acres, and is close to Norwich and Cambridge. 5 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, study, garden, outbuildings, garage, parking. £995,000; Sowerbys.

Given the recent fashion for screen-to-stage adaptations, it was perhaps only a matter of time before someone turned their attention to Jonathan Demme’s hit film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), said Nick Ferris in The Telegraph. Scripted by the American playwright Gina Gionfriddo, and directed by Nikolai Foster at the Leicester Curve, this new production is not a full-throttle success. But it’s a “surprisingly tasty treat” even so, which feels primed for commercial success.

Like the film, it conjures an “extraordinarily dark world”, making good use of scary prosthetics and video projections without veering into “gothic-camp”. John Partridge is convincing as Hannibal Lecter (though less menacing than Anthony Hopkins); and Mollie Gallagher makes a creditable stage debut as a Jodie Foster-like Clarice Starling. Yet the standout turn here is from Sam Jackson who, as the serial killer Buffalo Bill, brilliantly captures “the psychopathic ability” to switch fluidly “between the banal and the obscene”.

Strictly speaking, this is not an adaptation of the film but of Thomas Harris’ original novel, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. However, it does successfully recreate the film’s uneasy mix of the “electrifying” and the horrific, and the story is staged in a way that feels cinematic, while maximising the live impact of the sometimes “rawly appalling” events. Gionfriddo, a “front-rank dramatist”, foregrounds the “pervasive sexism” of the 1983 setting, and gives Buffalo Bill’s female victims more plot-time and agency than either the film or the novel. Daringly, she also plays up the (“warped”) pseudo-romantic aspect of the Lecter-Starling relationship.

I found the production most effective when it diverges from the film, said Holly O’Mahony in The Stage. For example, when Lecter breaks out of his chains here, it leads to a full-blown fight sequence which ends with him rising over his defeated opponent, “thrumming with excitement”. This is a “thrilling” moment. At other points, however, the show feels hampered by its efforts to recreate familiar visual motifs. Nevertheless, there is an “admirable ambition to presenting this grisly tale on stage for the first time, and plenty to make the squeamish baulk”.

The Curve, Leicester. Until 15 August.

A woman is “torn between motherhood and selfhood, duty and freedom” in this “brutal custody drama” based on a bestselling work of autofiction by the French writer Constance Debré, said India Lawrence on Time Out.

Vicky Krieps plays Clémence, “a make-up-free, short-haired, scooter-riding ex-lawyer” who has abandoned her successful legal career to become a writer. She has an amicable relationship with her former husband Laurent (Antoine Reinartz), with whom she shares custody of their eight-year-old son, Paul. But when Clémence tells Laurent that she is now dating women, he claims she is an unfit mother and files for sole custody. There follows a years-long battle “fuelled by Laurent’s infuriating, and borderline evil, determination to take Paul away from Clémence entirely”. It makes for a “compelling” film that is “utterly enraging” too.

The film “hits its mark with painful accuracy”, said Jessica Kiang in Variety. While Clémence tries to carry on with her professional and romantic life, she is consumed by the “near full-time job of fighting through a legal quagmire”. For 18 months, she is denied access to her son – and even after that, she’s restricted to brief sessions under supervision.

I wasn’t totally convinced, said Larushka Ivan-Zadeh in The Times. Clémence’s passivity sometimes feels “implausible”, and the lengthy scenes set in queer techno nightclubs could have done with a “good snip”. Yet Krieps keeps it all “compelling”, as her character “contracts into something pale, shaven-headed and almost saint-like”, a “warrior, victim and fugitive from feeling”; and the relationship between mother and son is “heartbreakingly vivid”. You will be hooked “right up to its unpredictable, provocative ending”.

Anime is a unique version of animated storytelling indigenous to contemporary Japan, a style that exploded in international popularity during the 1990s. With the ongoing proliferation of streaming services, international audiences have greater access to the large and diverse catalog of anime films than ever before, including these eight classics.

‘Grave of the Fireflies’ (1988)

A harrowing anti-war film, “Grave of the Fireflies” follows Seita (Tsutomu Tatsumi) and Setsuko (Ayano Shiraishi), siblings struggling to survive the final cataclysms of World War II after their mother is killed in the firebombing of Kobe. They move in with an indifferent, cruel aunt and then escape to an empty bomb shelter, where they try to survive by the light of fireflies.

To say that “Grave of the Fireflies” does not soften the cruelty of the children’s fate is putting it lightly, but even in sorrow the movie offers viewers breathtaking beauty. Watching the film is an “emotional experience so powerful that it forces a rethinking of animation” and leaves its haunting impression “not by reproducing reality but by heightening and simplifying it,” said Roger Ebert. (Netflix)

‘Akira’ (1988)

Kaneda (Mitsuo Iwata) is a teenaged motorcycle gang leader in 2019 “Neo-Tokyo,” a postnuclear apocalypse megalopolis. When his friend Tetsuo (Nozomu Sasaki) is abducted by military elites bent on turning him into a supernatural killer, Kaneda tries to rescue him. But Colonel Shikishima (Taro Ishida) finds that Tetsuo could become as powerful as the being Akira, rumored to be capable of destroying the world. Director Katsuhiro Otomo’s “Akira” is “one of the most important flashpoints in the history of animation,” and its depiction of a “rotting society held together with cruelty and desperation” has ongoing relevance today, said Tim Brayton at Alternate Ending. (Prime Video)

‘Kiki’s Delivery Service’ (1989)

Kiki (Minami Takayama) is a 13-year-old witch-in-training who leaves home for the first time with her talking cat, Jiji (Rei Sakuma). Settling into a seaside hamlet, she uses her new broom-riding skills to work as a kind of analog flying Uber Eats for the baker, Osono (Keiko Toda), who gives her a free place to stay while she trains.

Kiki also befriends a boy, Tombo (Kappei Yamaguchi), who yearns for her ability to fly — until she loses her magic altogether. Whimsical, beautiful and quietly moving, it is a coming-of-age masterpiece. Director Hayao Miyazaki’s “timeless” movie is “made for young hearts but also has a way of growing up with us, taking on new meaning when viewed at different life stages,” said Melanie McFarland at Salon. (HBO Max)

‘Ghost in the Shell’ (1995)

Major Motoko Kusanagi (Atsuko Tanaka) is an agent with Public Security Section 9, which tracks cybercriminals in the dizzyingly futuristic New Port City circa 2029, where people can wire their brains directly into the Internet. She’s tasked with apprehending The Puppet Master (Iemasa Kayumi), a hacker who appears to be tapping directly into these networked minds and altering memories. Director Mamoru Oshii's “hugely influential cyberpunk classic” is a heart-racing thriller that also “dialed deep into the potential of the information age, advances in robotics and subsequent philosophical questions” about digital consciousness, said Ben Travis and Luke Bradley at Empire. (Prime Video)

‘Princess Mononoke’ (1997)

In 15th-century Japan, Ashitaka (Yoji Matsuda), the prince of a dying kingdom called Emishi, is infected by a forest demon and travels west searching for a forest god that provides a cure. Instead, he stumbles into a war between the rapacious smelters of Iron Town, led by Lady Eboshi (Yuko Tanaka) and a coalition of forest spirits and creatures led by the wolf god, Moro (Akihiro Miwa), and her human daughter, San (Yuriko Ishida).

Crafted by Hayao Miyazaki, it is a film that “stands against intolerance in all its forms, political or social, and demands coexistence and understanding from its audience,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. It is also a “sprawling, perceptive wonder” that “could not be told through another medium.” (HBO Max)

‘Spirited Away’ (2001)

By winning the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2003, “Spirited Away” gave an art form known to Americans mostly through Saturday morning cartoons and the Pokémon phenomenon the kind of prestige previously reserved for high-end Disney and Pixar films. While 10 year-old Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents are en route to their new home, they take a wrong turn and wind up in what at first appears to be a derelict amusement park.

There, her parents are transformed into pigs and Chihiro is thrust into a vibrant but terrifying underworld. She is forced to take on a job in a spirit world bathhouse, as she tries to retrieve her parents and return them to their human form. The film is generally regarded as director and animator Hayao Miyazaki’s finest work. A “tremendously original and beautiful film,” it gives viewers the feeling of a “nightmare that’s not at all frightening but instead marvelous in its alienness,” said MaryAnn Johanson at Flick Filosopher. (HBO Max)

‘The Girl Who Leapt Through Time’ (2006)

If you associate anime with only one kind of genre — futuristic science fiction or magical realism — you’re in for a surprise with the moving coming-of-age story “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.” When adolescent Makoto (Riisa Naka) discovers that she can travel back in time, she uses her new powers to hold her friendships with two boys in suspended animation, traveling back again and again to short-circuit any developing romantic feelings and to preserve their childhood relationships. This “sweet, credible study” has a “fantastical premise” and succeeds with “subtle character studies rather than large-scale effects,” said Kim Newman at Empire. (HBO Max)

‘The Colors Within’ (2024)

Anime filmmaking remains dominated by men, making Naoko Yamada’s “The Colors Within” a triumph on multiple levels. It not only plants a flag for women in the industry, but as a gentle musical driven by character development rather than plot, it is also a departure from the kind of storytelling most commonly associated with the art form.

Totsuko (Sayu Suzukawa) is a boarding school outsider who has a kind of synesthesia, seeing other people’s auras as vibrant colors. When she links up with fellow misfits Kimi (Akari Takaishi) and Rui (Taisei Kido), they form a band and face the challenges of adolescence and growing up together. Yamada’s film “paints an exquisite rainbow of adolescent blues in this gentle tale of music and friendship,” and its “musically diverse songs beautifully channel the personalities of each member,” said Phuong Le at The Guardian. (HBO Max)

Tove Jansson is best known for the Moomins – “the melancholy hippo-like creatures” now seen everywhere from mugs to baseball caps, said Jonathan Romney in the Financial Times. But the Finnish writer also published books for adults. Her 1972 novel “The Summer Book” is a modern classic in Scandinavia, and became a cult hit elsewhere after being reissued in English in 2003. Now, it has been adapted for the screen.

Directed by Charlie McDowell (son of Malcolm), this “atmospheric film” will transport you to the “breezy calm of a small island in the Gulf of Finland”, where earnest eight-year-old Sophia (Emily Matthews) is spending the summer after her mother’s death. For company, she has her artist grandmother (Glenn Close) – a “placid powerhouse of twinkling wisdom” – and her grieving, distant father (Anders Danielsen Lie).

Not much happens and, at times, the story feels “pathologically benign”. But it is “beautifully photographed... all sunsets and wildflowers, knitwear and moss”. There are “strong performances at either end of the age spectrum”, said Jenny McCartney in The Sunday Times but the “necessary sense of Finnish originality” and “oddity” has been lost. The pace is slow, the score is “overly insistent” and the visual metaphors – repeated shots of dying pipe-tobacco embers, and a sapling being held up – are “heavy-handed”.

Still, the element that is central to Jansson’s book – the natural world – is beautifully observed, said Wendy Ide in The Observer. Gradually, the father emerges from his own grief to help his daughter, while the grandmother makes peace with the fact that the last season of her own life is almost at a close. It is a “muted but moving picture”.

“Like many a gothic thriller”, “Possession” on Sky Atlantic “is set around a creepy old house”, said Barbara Ellen in The Observer. The difference is that this one stands on the site of a former slave plantation in Jamaica. Its owner has died and has cut his only son, Oliver (Jonny Lee Miller), out of his will, and left his £50m estate to a near stranger – a local named Cudjoe East (Sheldon Shepherd).

British lawyer Claudia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is sent out by her firm to resolve the situation, partly because she has a Jamaican mother. She assumes that Cudjoe will turn out to be a simple fraudster, but things turn out to be stranger than anticipated.

“What follows is a dual-timeline mystery,” said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. One strand unfolds in the present day; the other takes us back to the 1700s, when the estate was worked by enslaved people under the “increasingly cruel” rule of Oliver’s ancestors.

Cudjoe claims to be 292 years old, and one of those people. Images from Claudia’s own nightmares start appearing in real life, and the spirits believed by locals to infuse the land grow increasingly restless.

Some may find the resort to the paranormal a cop-out, but ultimately, this is a powerful drama about unadmitted guilt, and whether justice for some crimes is possible. Via the £50m legacy, the series, which boasts some fine performances, addresses the issue of reparations for slavery, said Anita Singh in The Daily Telegraph. It is a worthy one, so it is a pity that in the midst of this, some of “the horror scenes can come over as unintentionally funny”.

The British Museum and the Natural History Museum tend to steal the headlines when it comes to an educational day out. But the UK is also home to many more eclectic offerings. Here are some of our favourite museum oddities across the country.

The Crab Museum, Kent

This Margate museum bills itself as “Europe’s first and only museum dedicated to the decapod”. It’s also one of the UK’s “most bizarre institutions”, said Amy Houghton in Time Out. Founded in 2021, the space is “crammed with crab trivia” and “hilarious tongue-in-cheek information panels”. The exhibits not only celebrate crustacean culture, but humans too. “For instance, there’s a slipper lobster dressed as a suffragette” and a “spotted reef crab dressed as a trade unionist in a diorama depicting the 1926 General Strike”.
crabmuseum.org

British Lawnmower Museum, Southport

“The grass is always greener in Merseyside”, said Etan Smallman in The Telegraph. In this Northwest museum, lawnmowers are “honoured as the revolutionary gadgets they truly are”. Visitors can walk through the history of the machine first patented in 1830 – English engineer Edward Budding tested the prototype at night to avoid the ridicule of his neighbours – and a “plethora of Victorian and Edwardian models”. One of the highlights is the “ever-expanding” showcase of “Lawnmowers of the Rich and Famous”. Old contraptions owned by King Charles, Princess Diana, Alan Titchmarsh and Brian May all feature.
lawnmowerworld.co.uk

The Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, Cornwall

In Boscastle for more than 70 years, this has been “one of Cornwall’s most popular museums”, said BBC Countryfile. Look out for signature exhibits including a “bellarmine jar found hidden in a house near Plymouth – complete with hair, nail clippings and pins”. You can find out about occult practices from British folklore and around the world, and “investigate examples of curses, spells and charms”. At a safe distance, of course.
museumofwitchcraftandmagic.co.uk

The Morbitorium, Wales

This certainly makes for a “peculiar day out”, said Lizzy Reece on Rest Less. It may only consist of three rooms but it is packed with a “huge range of oddities and curiosities”, spanning everything from “antique lobotomy tools and Ouija boards to mummified cats and Victorian sex toys”. There are special “after-dark” tours, and the site offers workshops and you can book a “private tarot, oracle, or rune reading”. “It’s sure to be unforgettable!”
morbitorium.co.uk

The Dog Collar Museum, Kent

This museum is devoted to “canine neckwear, not canonical uniform, by the way”, said The Londonist. Located within the grounds of Leeds Castle, near Maidstone, the museum is home to the largest collection in the world, though it would be hard to imagine “too much competition”. It displays more than 130 collars, spanning an “impressive” range from five centuries.
leeds-castle.com

What does Enid Blyton’s Land of Spells have in common with the Bay of Pentos in “Game of Thrones”? asked The Guardian. Both were portrayed by the same “sunny archipelago in the Mediterranean”: Malta.

The EU’s smallest country, “no bigger in size than Sheffield”, has over the past decade become “one of the most popular places” for American and British filmmakers to work. It has hosted more than 30 film and TV productions in each of the past three years, including “Jurassic World Rebirth” and Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator II”. The “microstate” just south of Sicily has stood in for Greece, southern France and even the Caribbean – in Guy Ritchie’s upcoming “Viva la Madness”.

Malta is “really punching above its weight”, said Adrian Wootton, the chief executive of the British Film Commission. It’s been “very aggressive, in a positive way”.

Small but mighty

Over the last century, the “small but mighty” republic has become “an appealing global destination for major film productions”, said Variety in 2024. After the Hollywood actors strike the previous year, requests to film came in “like crazy”, said co-founder of Valletta Pictures Joshua Cassar Gaspar. “The strikes didn’t affect us because the independent productions kept going, and many of us in Malta service TV shows, which were also unaffected.”

Providers were also less “Hollywood-dependent” than some European countries, such as the UK, said the news site. And productions benefited from a “hefty 40% tax rebate”. It’s probably “the most generous cash rebate in the world”, the producer of “Gladiator II” said on Deadline.

“Every euro that we invest in the rebate, the industry generates back four,” Malta’s film commissioner Johann Grech said in June. Today, film production is one of Malta’s “most effective” sources of investment, he said in MaltaToday. According to an independent report published this year, the industry contributed 0.28% of Malta’s gross value added between 2005 and 2017. That reached a record 2.16% in 2023. Since 2018, film production has contributed €1.2 billion to the GDP.

And “the economic effect is felt throughout the country”, driving infrastructure development, boosting hospitality and tourism, and attracting “numerous high-net-worth individuals” to the island. Film production is “one of Malta’s economic engines”.

A parallel universe?

As ever with “generous rebates”, there has been “some local pushback”, said Deadline. Malta’s infrastructure is “being tested to the limits as its cities, towns and villages regularly turn into film sets”, said The Guardian. Road closures and parking restrictions “have become a bugbear” for locals.

Critics say Malta’s rise as a filming location has “come at the cost of neglecting local cinematic talent”. The Malta Film Commission is “focused on courting international productions”, while domestic production is dependent on the arts council and its much smaller budget. Examples of Maltese films reaching international audiences are “few and far between”. With local crews in demand from international companies, Maltese directors “often find themselves being outbid by Hollywood”.

“There’s a bit of a parallel universe,” said Teodor Reljić, a Malta-based screenwriter. “People in servicing are thriving, but local filmmakers can’t pay a DOP [director of photography] because they are expecting ‘Jurassic World’ fees.”

“It is tempting to sit back and believe the local film industry to be ‘strong’ simply because many foreign productions shoot in Malta,” said producer Malcolm Scerri Ferrante in The Times of Malta. But volume alone “does not constitute a robust film industry, and certainly not an indigenous one”.

In her sell-out show at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Amanda Knox tells a joke about her daughter’s favourite game called “Momma goes to Italy” in which she grabs the bars of a jungle gym at their local playground and screams, “Let me out! Let me out!”

Knox’s conviction for the murder of her British flatmate Meredith Kercher in 2007, her years spent behind bars in an Italian prison, and her subsequent acquittal 11 years ago, made her famous and infamous around the world.

“Pigeonholed as either a true crime or tragic figure”, her one-woman set “Cartwheel” – named after claims by Italian prosecutors that she had turned cartwheels in a police station shortly after Kercher’s death – is, she said, “me going back to my roots and trying to reclaim who I was before all the bad stuff happened”, said The New York Times.

‘Damned whatever she did’

While it may be a surprise that Knox is trying stand-up at all, it’s “arguably even riskier” to debut such material in Britain, given the “mixed reputation” she has in Kercher’s country of birth, said The New York Times. The 39-year-old mother-of-two’s foray into comedy has “also raised questions about who has the right to tell a story on stage”.

After opening night, the Daily Mail published an article with the headline “Is there anything ‘Foxy Knoxy’ won’t do for attention – or money?” More than 42,000 people have signed a petition calling for the show to be cancelled, and Kercher’s sister Stephanie recently told the BBC she was afraid the event risked “normalising violence against women by making light of such a harrowing event”.

“No one walking out of the theatre could possibly reach that conclusion”, said Tristram Fane Saunders in The Telegraph. If anything, it was “too tasteful”; a “good-faith attempt by a novice performer to use the medium of stand-up comedy to tell her own story inoffensively, to the best of her moderate abilities”.

While some have argued it is a “disgrace that she’s telling it at all – and profiting from it”, classifying “Cartwheel” as comedy may have been her biggest “misstep”, said Brian Logan in The Guardian. Doing so “risks looking insensitive and inaccurately describes the show”, but, “judging by the evidence” and the very public outcry, “Knox would be damned whatever she did”.

‘Source of profound catharsis’

Humour has “always helped people to process terrible events” and “for that reason, great stand-up can sometimes be a source of profound catharsis”, said The Telegraph.

Nowhere is this more true than at the world’s most prestigious performing arts festival, where Fringe comics often draw on dark subjects and distressing personal experiences.

Richard Gadd’s 2019 Festival show about being stalked was turned into the worldwide Netflix phenomenon “Baby Reindeer”, while comedian Edd Hedges’ 2017 Festival debut, “Wonderland”, based on the story of a man who stabbed his mother and her friend 97 times, sparked a hit podcast series.

This year, Australian comedian Frankie McNair has won rave reviews for a set filled with jokes about her own experience of being sexually abused as a child.

“Uproariously funny”, it was a reminder that “there’s no topic inherently off-bounds for comedy”, said The Telegraph: “Knox ought to watch McNair, and take notes.”

If you need a break from nerve-shredding thrillers and true crime documentaries, try switching to something a bit more comforting. From a big-hearted coming-of-age tale to a star-studded drama, these escapist TV shows are best enjoyed curled up on the sofa with a tub of ice cream. Enjoy.

Sterling Point

“If escapism is the brief, then ‘Sterling Point’ fulfils it expertly,” said Micha Frazer-Caroll in The Guardian. The perfect antidote to dark, gritty shows like “Euphoria”, the coming-of-age drama follows “highly strung” 17-year-old Annie who discovers she’s inherited a house on a “picturesque Canadian island” and embarks on a “secret trip in search of answers about her late mother’s life”. Warm and funny, the show “manages to transcend the limits of its YA niche” and turns out to be “quite juicy”. It doesn’t have the “intensity” or “existentialism” of darker teen shows – but I found myself wanting to “stay with these characters and inhabit their island bubble”. “I didn’t want to go home.”
Amazon

The Five-Star Weekend

This “sun-soaked” drama stars Jennifer Garner as a food blogger struggling to cope after a “devastating loss”, said Nathalie Whittle in Good Housekeeping. She invites old friends from “different stages of her life” to visit her Nantucket home – but what starts as a “soul-searching weekend” soon unfurls into something far harder when “secrets emerge and friendships are pushed to their limit”. The result is a fun, absorbing series that’s “the pinnacle of escapist TV”.
Sky

Imperfect Women

Bingeing this show is like being “jet propelled into the captivating, messy world of people with far more exciting lives than your own”, said Lucy Wigley in Woman & Home. Based on the novel of the same name by Araminta Hall, the glossy mystery follows a tight-knit group of women whose lives are shattered when one of their friends is murdered. “Lavish”, “polished” and “utterly absorbing” this is the type of show you can “lose yourself in”. “Add it to your watch list.”
Apple TV

Heated Rivalry

This hit series follows the “years-long romance” between promising rival hockey players Shane Hollander (Hudson Williams) and Ilya Rozonov (Connor Storrie), said Michael Arceneaux on HuffPost. Much like the book it’s based on, the show is “fun and escapist and as horny as it is heartfelt”. Season one secured a 96% approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes – and the second instalment is “on the horizon”. Watch this space.
Apple TV

Gilmore Girls

This is “everything one could ever want or need in a comfort show,” said Andrea Park and Nicole Briese in Marie Claire. “Gilmore Girls” ran for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007 and follows single mother Lorelai and her precocious daughter Rory as they go about their lives. Set in the sleepy fictional town of Stars Hollow, Connecticut, where it’s “seemingly always autumn and wacky townspeople abound”. “Need we say more?”
Netflix

Gossip Girl

There’s something “uniquely comforting” about watching the “drama-fuelled escapades” of these “impossibly wealthy Upper East Side teens”, said Ranyechi Udemezue in Vogue. The show ran for six seasons between 2007 and 2012, reaching “a crescendo” as the friendship group enters adulthood. “If I’m ever stuck in a rut, ‘Gossip Girl’ will be sure to lift me out of it.”
Netflix

“For once the colour associated with a boom in Zimbabwe is blue, not gold,” said The Economist. The country’s blueberry industry is booming; it is exporting 40 times more of the fruit than 10 years ago as part of a wider fresh produce drive across the continent.

“The success of Zimbabwean blueberries, Kenyan flowers and South African oranges” would suggest that there is “huge potential for African agriculture to play the sort of role long envisioned for manufacturing”, said The Economist. And if Africa can learn from such success stories, “there will be fruitful returns”.

‘Momentum is still building’

Just a few years ago, blueberries in Zimbabwe were seen as a “relatively small niche crop”, said Linda Nielsen, CEO of Horticultural Development Council, on Fresh Fruit Portal. Now, it is becoming “one of the country’s most exciting horticultural export success stories”. In 2025, 9,500 tonnes of blueberries were exported from the country, this year the total is expected to reach 12,000 tonnes. And “momentum is still building”.

New production techniques promise “exciting development”, planting “improved blueberry genetics” from international “breeding houses”, with “encouraging” results. These newer varieties are showing “strong performance in yield, fruit quality, shelf life and production timing” and could “significantly speed up industry growth over the next few years”. And with “favourable growing conditions, competitive labour availability, improving technical expertise, and strong international demand for our premium blueberries”, the future is looking bright too.

One major reason for the African blueberry boom is improved trade with China, said Fruitnet.com. Zimbabwe has maintained strong export links to the EU, UK and Malaysia, but China offers a market “capable of absorbing considerably larger volumes”. Growing consumer interest in healthy eating has meant “premium fresh fruit” has become much more attractive to the Chinese.

New commercial agreements have also strengthened Zimbabwe’s position. At the start of May, China’s zero-tariff policy for 53 African nations, including Zimbabwe, took effect. The first arrival of blueberries into China represented “far more than a symbolic shipment”: it marked the “opening of a potentially significant new trade channel” for the industry.

However, compliance with China’s rigorous import protocols could add “another layer of cost and complexity”. Additional steps such as methyl bromide fumigation for airfreight needed to be approved by the Zimbabwean government, and fluctuations in seasons either in Zimbabwe, or competitors Morocco and Peru, could mean the African nation being squeezed out.

A ‘boon for Africa’

Beyond blueberries, a wider emphasis on fresh fruit could be a “boon for Africa” and “force a rethink of what is meant by farming and manufacturing”, said The Economist. “In recent years African agribusinesses have responded to rising global incomes – and demand for fresh produce.”

For example, Kenya and Ethiopia account for a combined 8% of global cut-flower exports and, last year, Europe consumed more than one million tonnes of avocados for the first time, and “much of its demand was met by Morocco and Kenya”. South Africa, whose biggest export has been citrus fruit since wine was overtaken in 2010, recently replaced Spain as the world’s largest citrus exporter.

This milestone in particular not only “marks a significant shift” in the fruit trade, but also “South Africa’s growing influence in international agribusiness”, said Business Insider Africa. Yet, while South Africa leads the export market by volume, China and Brazil dominate global production, though most is used domestically, said South Africa’s agriculture minister John Steenhuisen. Forecasts have been trimmed due to bad weather and war in the Middle East, but South Africa’s position in the industry is becoming more and more established.

There is no need to cram yourself into a tasting room in Napa or Burgundy like a wine-thirsty sardine. The globe is increasingly loaded with notable wine-making regions and traditions that offer boundless surprises: bottlings made from unique indigenous grapes, topographies you could never imagine that squeeze out wine, and calm, personalized vineyard tours. So put down the beefy cab sauv and start exploring.

Bolivia

Perhaps nowhere is as surprising a wine destination as this landlocked South American country. It has “grapes that shouldn’t grow” and a “rocky, punishing terrain,” said The New York Times. There are both 500-year-old forest vineyards in the Cinti Valley and Tarija’s “mountainous vines,” which are “among the highest elevation vineyards in all of the Americas” and produce 90% of the country’s wine, said Wine Enthusiast. Many of the grapes grown here, like negra criolla and tannat, have a European legacy, understandable being that Spain colonized the area.

The country’s wine-making boom has coincided, intentionally, with a tourism push, one that birthed the Ruta del Vino Bolivia. It is a “relatively under-the-radar” wine trail, said Wine Enthusiast. Travelers can expect “authentic, uncrowded experiences” that include half-day winery tours and a multiday tour that takes you to six wineries and a variety of local attractions. It’s all to experience a region that’s “both closer to the heavens and deeply connected to its roots,” said the Times.

China

There are many Chinas, with the country being 3.7 million square miles. Likewise, China’s wine boom comprises many styles across a “dozen distinct wine regions,” said Wine Enthusiast, including north-central “Ningxia, where vines are buried in the winter to stave off the extreme cold, to more temperate coastal and southern regions, such as Shandong and Yunnan.” Ningxia, by volume, is the winemaking hub: In less than 30 years, the region went from 200 hectares of vines to almost 39,000 hectares, an “area comparable to the entire vineyard surface of New Zealand,” said the drinks publication SevenFifty Daily.

Ningxia is known as the Bordeaux of China, so it tracks that some of the notable grape varieties grown in the area are famous grapes of Bordeaux, like cabernet sauvignon and merlot. Still, Ningxia is carving a wine space of its own, too, with grapes like aging-friendly marselan (a cross between cabernet sauvignon and grenache) and soft-edged cabernet gernischt. Treat a visit to Ningxia like you would a trip to Napa or, yes, Bordeaux: Make winery visits the centerpiece of the experience. They tend to be grand encounters in the wine-making heart of China.

Essex, England

At the International Wine Challenge in May, English wines won 25 awards, 15 more than the country won in 2025. One of the areas on the rise is Essex’s Crouch Valley, a region that was “identified by researchers as a location that could soon bear even sweeter fruit for wine producers” courtesy of a warming planet, said The Guardian.

England was once known only for its capabilities with sparkling wine. Essex has shown its particular suitability for “ripening Burgundy’s hallmark grapes chardonnay and pinot noir,” said Elite Traveler. So much so that winemakers from Burgundy are “scoping out plans to buy land in the valley,” said The Guardian.

While you’re in the area, explore how “gold-green fields roll to stone churches with lopsided Norman towers” and the coast is “fretworked with cockle-shell beaches, salt marshes and mudflats that trill with migratory birds,” said The Telegraph. Quaint villages, sublime restaurants, hidden fossils — Essex is primed for all kinds of jaunts.

Morocco

The most popular areas of this North African country, like Marrakesh and Casablanca, can be overrun with tourists. Not so with Morocco’s wine-making regions, like Meknes and Essaouira. A wine-centric trip can be a respite from big-city medina mayhem.

Native grapes, like the “crisp and floral Faranah,” said Wine Enthusiast, are inching their way back into production. There is also the local favorite vin gris, a “pale rosé made from minimal skin contact.” But the bulk of the country’s wine is currently made from European grapes. “The Syrah grape variety is, I think, very well adapted to our terroir, our climate and our way of doing things,” said winemaker Stephane Marriot to Grape Collective.

In the city of Meknes itself, you can marvel at the splendid Bab El Mansour gate and tune into the history of “diverse” Moroccan music at the National Museum of Music, said Lonely Planet. Or head to Essaouira for a sharp 180-degree flip. The coastal city is a liberal town with a surfer mentality, a city that “doesn’t take itself too seriously,” said Afar.

North Carolina

A lot can happen in two decades. In about 20 years, the Tar Heel State went from having a few dozen wineries to now boasting more than 200. The state’s first American Viticultural Area (AVA), the Yadkin Valley, was created in 2003. These days, the AVA “includes more than 45 wineries within 45 minutes of Winston-Salem,” said Food & Wine.

The state’s varied topography has birthed three growing regions: the Blue Ridge Mountains, the central Piedmont and the Coastal Plan near the Atlantic. “Wines are made in every style,” said Wine Enthusiast. Out west is optimal for European grapes like cabernet franc, and sauvignon blanc. The surprise is the way the coastal region handles the sweet, thick-skinned native grape, the muscadine. The best of the area’s cutting-edge wines harness the “musky aroma of muscadine wines without the treacly taste,” said Food & Wine.

Choose your travel destination based on your weather wants, alongside your drinking preferences. Asheville in the western mountains, Raleigh in the Piedmont or Wilmington and its environs for an ocean, muscadine breeze.

Slovenia

Slovenia has “long been a secret whispered among wine lovers,” said the wine publication Winera. But now the good word is out about the eastern European country. Slovenia, however, still hums barely audibly among the wine-tourism blips and pings that zero in on places like Tuscany and the Napa Valley.

The wines in Slovenia taste like they could be made nowhere else, even though they are influenced by the country’s neighbors, Italy and Austria. The diversity of winemaking is startling. The Vipava Valley is the “perfect place” to encounter the native grapes zelen and pinela, said Winera. Stajerska’s “rolling” hills are home to “expressive” sauvignon blancs and sparkling wines that “rival Champagne.” Brda, a municipality in the country’s west, is sometimes called the Tuscany of Slovenia and bottles “full-bodied wines from indigenous varieties like Rebula.”

The Vipava Valley sits a short drive from the capital, Ljubljana, and boasts a “magical combination” of “dramatic” karst landscapes and “medieval castles towering over pretty villages,” said CNN. If it is summertime, go for a hike. If it is wintertime, consider it the ideal excuse to hunker down and be subsumed by the top-tier eating and drinking.

Harry Potter star Jessie Cave is the latest actor to turn to OnlyFans to supplement her income.

“I’ve earned more, easily, than my entire acting career within one year,” she told The Times. Cave is best known as the Hogwarts student Lavender Brown but has also appeared in shows such as “Trollied” and “Call the Midwife”. She joined the online subscription platform known for its adult content in 2025 after receiving yet another audition rejection.

Posting non-explicit “hair content”, including videos of her brushing and braiding her hair while dressed as an elf, a maid or Lavender Brown, Cave said she made £15,000 on her first day and now has a “loyal bunch” of subscribers. “I do predict more people needing to use other platforms to make money when they’re not being an artist,” she said. “Everyone will be paying for everything.”

It is a “dystopian world view”, said the paper’s deputy culture editor Alice Jones, “where every interaction is monetised and, eventually, frankly, pornified”.

Regaining ‘control’

It is a story increasingly common among “Hollywood’s former middle class”, said Melissa Fleur Afshar on Newsweek. From Jaime Pressly to Shannon Elizabeth, some of the “most recognisable stars from the box-set and cable era” who were losing out on work and slipping off the cultural radar are “now migrating to OnlyFans instead”.

It looks like the “sole promise” of the site is “money and continued attention”, but in an acting industry “reeling from high-profile lawsuits and allegations of exploitation”, OnlyFans actually offers these people “control”.

“For decades, Hollywood operated in a way where actors relied heavily on gatekeepers,” said Estelle Keeber, a visibility expert and PR strategist. Paid subscriber platforms give users “direct access” to an audience “without needing permission from an industry middleman”.

‘Butts for Tour Buses’

It is not just actors. Lily Allen’s OnlyFans side gig in 2024, which netted her $10 (£7) a month per subscriber, “added to the long-running conversation around abysmal streaming payouts” for musicians, said Vice. The singer eventually stopped selling videos and pictures of her feet, saying “it wasn’t that fun”.

“Imagine being an artist and having nearly eight million monthly listeners on Spotify but earning more money from having 1,000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet,” she told The Standard last year.

The financial structure of streaming platforms means artists are increasingly “having to juggle budgets that resemble household accounts, such as vans against fuel, hotels against sofa-surfing and merchandise against storage fees”, said Paul Oliver, a digital innovation lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University, in The Conversation. “One cancelled show can tip a tour from workable to loss-making.”

Kate Nash used OnlyFans to fund the European leg of her 2024 tour after post-Brexit taxes left her in debt and struggling to pay everyone involved, in a campaign she called “Butts for Tour Buses”. Earlier this year, she told the Commons’ Culture Select Committee the only reason it was possible to continue tours “is because I sell pictures of my bum on the internet”.

The Maldives has become synonymous with luxury travel. Its hard-to-reach location and proliferation of private island resorts mean that, for many holidaymakers, the price point is out of reach. But while Maldivian beaches are stunning, there are many other destinations that make for equally picturesque getaways. Here’s our list of the best ones to consider when planning your next holiday.

Rangiroa, French Polynesia

When it comes to French Polynesia, Bora Bora is the first spot that springs to mind for many, but the popular island tends to “mirror the Maldives in price”, said Travel + Leisure. Luckily, the nearby island of Rangiroa is more of a hidden gem with “many of the same elements”, founder of Perfect Honeymoons Jim Augerinos told the publication. Travellers can expect to find the usual “overwater bungalows, electric-blue lagoons, white-sand beaches and that isolated island feeling, often at a noticeably lower price point”.

Zanzibar, Tanzania

If you’re after a destination with “escapist appeal” but don’t want to lose out on “cultural edge”, Zanzibar is the place for you, said Lauren Dana Ellman in Travel + Leisure. The rich “Swahili history” is a huge draw as well as the Unesco-listed Stone Town and local spice farms. It also delivers the quintessential “brilliant blue water” and “sugar-sand beaches”. A holiday here comes at a “far lower price point” but still offers “polished luxury”. Travellers can opt for “boutique stays” and choose from several romantic beachfront resorts without the “ultra-exclusive” price tag.

Sumba, Indonesia

This Indonesian island is “more untouched” with “only a tiny fraction of the tourists” found in Bali, said Robert Jackman in The Telegraph. Complete with “gold sand” beaches, this destination is perfect for those looking for their “own private paradise” away from any bustle. The island is “an hour’s flight from Bali” but definitely worth the longer journey.

Comino, Malta

This European country is “ideal for a budget break”, said Ellie Hutchings in Metro. Its “colourful marine life” is a huge draw for travellers wanting to get “up close and personal with sea creatures”. The “crystal clear ocean” provides “excellent” underwater views. It’s home to the “famous” Blue Lagoon that allows you to experience “bright blue depths” akin to the Maldives. As if the “sparkling azure water” wasn’t enough, the lagoon is also surrounded by “rugged cliffs peppered with gorse”.

The 1990s were a period of transition for the film industry, seeing the rise of both smaller, independent studios and the spectacular growth of home movie-watching. Despite this tumult, the decade produced countless films of enduring artistic and commercial significance, including these eight memorable classics.

‘The Silence of the Lambs’ (1991)

Both Anthony Hopkins as the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter and Jodie Foster as FBI trainee Clarice Starling turn in iconic performances in Jonathan Demme’s downbeat procedural. She is tasked with interviewing Lecter, imprisoned in an asylum for the criminally insane and one of the few characters in the film who doesn’t treat her with knee-jerk misogyny, who may have insights that could help catch “Buffalo Bill,” an active serial killer.

The film’s bleak aesthetic shaped a generation of noir-ish procedurals on the big and small screens. It endures as a classic because it is a “multifaceted interwork of classical storytelling, horror conventions and procedural standards, together reshaped into both a feminist landmark and a powerful study of transformation and identity,” said Brian Eggert at Deep Focus Review. (MGM+)

‘Boyz n the Hood’ (1991)

The late director John Singleton’s drama follows three childhood friends, Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.), Doughboy (Ice Cube) and Ricky (Morris Chestnut), first briefly as children and then as teenagers struggling to navigate the endemic violence and poverty of South Central Los Angeles. As one of the first mainstream films to depict the plight of urban neighborhoods with sympathy, humanity and nuance, it stands as a true cinematic landmark. A film that “showed how white supremacy set the conditions that ended in neighborhoods devastated by crime and, ultimately, violence,” it depicts an almost “post-apocalyptic world,” in which “what was destroying their landscape wasn’t an alien invasion or a virus” but racism, said Lawrence Ware at The New York Times. (Starz)

‘Groundhog Day’ (1993)

While time loops are a now-familiar part of the sci-fi landscape, director Harold Ramis’ “Groundhog Day” is the first English-language feature film to highlight the concept. Bill Murray plays Phil Connors, an irritable, cynical weatherman sent to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to report a story about the town’s quaint groundhog ceremony.

Trapped there by a massive snow storm, he realizes he is living the same day over and over again. After fruitlessly trying to kill himself in increasingly clever fashion, he gradually falls for his producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell). By avoiding “sentimentality and smalltown stereotypes in favor of one genuinely hysterical set-piece after another,” it is “not only one of the finest comedies of the 90s, but actually remains fresh, funny and original after repeated viewings,” said Caroline Westbrook at Empire. (Prime Video)

‘Pulp Fiction’ (1994)

Director Quentin Tarantino’s era-defining, endlessly quotable and propulsive thriller popularized the use of nonlinear narratives in mainstream filmmaking. The impossible-to-summarize plot follows multiple sets of characters over the course of three (very, very eventful) days.

Tarantino uses a “chapter” structure to tell the loosely intersecting tales, including one about philosophizing hit men Vincent (John Travolta) and Jules (Samuel L. Jackson), sent on a job for their boss, Marsellus Wallace (Ving Rhames), that goes hilariously awry. Uma Thurman’s career-making turn as Marsellus’ wife, Mia, is just one of many heart-stopping performances in a movie that is simultaneously ultraviolent and side-splittingly funny. An “absolute classic,” it is a project that “set the bar for cinema cool and redefined independent filmmaking,” and in the process “forever changed Hollywood,” said Jordan Crucchiola at Wired. (Paramount+)

‘Big Night’ (1996)

Tony Shalhoub and Stanley Tucci are brothers Primo and Secundo, immigrants operating a failing Jersey Shore restaurant during the 1950s. Primo is the stubbornly perfectionist gourmet chef, a character who prefigures the 2000s-era celebrity chef boom, and Secondo is the slick businessman who regards the popular Olive Garden-esque restaurant up the road, run by Pascal (Ian Holm), with envy while carrying on a secret affair with Pascal’s wife, Gabriella (Isabella Rossellini).

Pascal, who covets Primo’s culinary genius, tells Secundo he can get jazz great Louis Prima to make an appearance at their restaurant, and the brothers plot one last big, extravagant dinner to save the business. A film of “great wisdom and delight,” it is “about food not as a subject but as a language — the language by which one can speak to gods, can create, can seduce, can aspire to perfection,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (Paramount+)

‘Breaking the Waves’ (1996)

A film that was a kind of spiritual precursor to the aesthetically austere and hugely influential Dogme 95 film movement, Danish director Lars von Trier’s haunting masterpiece also shaped a generation of independent filmmakers. When oil-rig worker Jan (Stellan Skarsgard) is paralyzed in a work injury, he encourages his new wife, Bess (Emily Watson), to sleep with other men and tell him about it.

Believing this to be a kind of divine mission, she presses on with her struggle despite hostility from church elders and her sister-in-law, Dodo (Katrin Cartlidge), until a truly unforgettable ending leaves viewers stunned. A “raw, crazy tour-de-force,” it dares to “fuse true love with lurid exploitation and pure religious faith,” said Janet Maslin at The New York Times. (Mubi)

‘The Big Lebowski’ (1998)

Joel and Ethan Coen made several 1990s classics, including “Fargo.” But it is “The Big Lebowski” that remains the enduring cultural touchstone. Jeff Bridges is Jeffrey “The Dude” Lebowski, a middle-aged burnout whose apartment is ransacked by nihilist enforcers who are actually after a different person with the same name.

When The Dude tries to get reimbursed for the damage from the intended Jeffrey Lebowski (David Huddleston), he gets caught up in a lurid slacker-noir kidnapping caper, encountering a series of memorable goofballs including Lebowski’s daughter, Maude (Julianne Moore). A film that “warns us from the start not to expect any of its narrative threads to lead anywhere,” it takes the audience on a “labyrinthine route followed solely for the diversions encountered along the way,” said Jonathan Romney at Sight and Sound. (Netflix)

‘The Matrix’ (1999)

The brilliance of directors Lilly and Lana Wachowski’s “The Matrix” has been diluted over time by its inferior sequels and many imitators, but its inventively choreographed action sequences and dystopian narrative endure. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, a computer hacker who discovers that his reality is an illusion maintained by rogue AI overlords who keep humans in a state of permanent suspended animation while harvesting them for resources.

Neo joins a rebellion led by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) and Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) while evading Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving). The movie is also the source of the concept of “red-pilling” that plays such a prominent role in contemporary cultural discourse. “The Matrix” is a film of “immense scale and complexity” that “understood where things were headed far better than any film did at the time,” said Scott Tobias at The Guardian. (Peacock)

“There is no one more deserving of an exhibition of this scale than John Galliano,” said Anna Wintour in Vogue, as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute announced that it will celebrate the work of the flamboyant and controversial designer.

The New York exhibition, due to open next spring, “won’t shy away” from “any of the darkness” in his past, she added.

‘Thorny choice’

He was caught making a series of racist and antisemitic comments, so it’s “an astonishing comeback”, wrote Zoe Sottile on CNN. It “resurfaces” the question that has “dogged” artistic and cultural institutions during the “past quarter-century” of reckonings: what do we do with “great artists who do bad things”?

This is a man who “once proclaimed my whole family – and millions like us – should die”, wrote Faran Krentcil in the New York Post. But the exhibit is still “a fine idea” because he has repented, his clothes are “extraordinary” and Jewish “scripture” calls us to “gaze at our former enemy and search for shared humanity”.

High fashion, an “explicit celebration of wealth inequality” has “never been the place to look for lessons on virtue”, wrote Dana Thomas in the New York Times. But his “rehabilitation” and “coronation” is a “terrible idea” because his “infamous antisemitic rants” were “not an aberration”.

In fashion, “addiction, provocation and eccentricity” are “seen as normal” or “necessary”, elements of the creative process, but Galliano’s “comportment” went “way beyond all that”. Not all “great creators” deserve a retrospective, and someone as “incendiary” as Galliano “certainly shouldn’t be the subject of one during his lifetime”.

‘Nostalgia is so now’

But he “apologised often” for his “outburst”, claiming he had suffered from alcoholism and drug addiction, wrote Craig Saueurs on Euronews, and “many Jewish leaders” have “accepted his contrition as genuine”. The Institute consulted the Anti-Defamation League and the Union for Reform Judaism and they “signed off” on the project.

The Met is “tapping into something very current: nostalgia”, wrote Isobel Van Dyke on Dazed. We “look back on the runways of the past” and “moan” that fashion “will never be as good again”. Perhaps it won’t but “either way”, Galliano is “the epitome of fashion’s nostalgia” because he’s a “creative genius”, so there’s “a strong case” for exhibiting his portfolio and “confronting his contributions” to “fashion history”.

Nostalgia for trifle has led to a “sudden resurgence” in sales of the classic British dessert, said The Times. Made with layers of “sherry-soaked sponge, fruit, custard, whipped cream and jelly”, the traditional pudding is even popping up on the menus of fancy restaurants.

The origins of the dish go back to the late Tudor period but the cake base layer was only added to the recipe in the mid-18th century. Today, the dessert is no longer “just a festive centrepiece” but instead the “ultimate nostalgic crowd-pleaser” embraced “all-year-round”, Charmaine Katz, chef tutor at Waitrose said in The Times. Its popularity comes down to how “versatile” the dessert is: recipes can be either “quick and easy” or “dramatic and technical”.

Chefs are finding ways to put innovative spins on the traditional dish. At Restaurant Roots in Bournemouth, for example, the “bitter chocolate millionaire’s trifle” is “laced with Rémy Martin cognac”. Nowhere is “seemingly too posh for a trifle” as five-star hotels and restaurants, including The Ritz, have found their own “twists for a modern palate”.

Want to try making one yourself? Nigella Lawson’s showstopping “Anglo-Italian” trifle recipe is a “delightful summer pudding” perfect for “garden gatherings”, said WalesOnline. The recipe calls for soaking trifle sponges in limoncello then layering – the “shiny black of the berries” and “soft whiteness of the mascarpone”, topped with the “golden toastiness of the almonds” making it look ”beautiful”.

For a “gloriously pink” version, try Georgina Hayden’s “twist on the traditional Greek dessert ekmek” on the BBC. Swap sponges for “crisp, buttery kataifi” as your base, then drizzle over rhubarb syrup and top with custard and whipped cream.

A good trifle, however you make or eat it, is a “self-indulgent concoction” that will have you “sink into a pleasurable, full-sated stupor”, said Rowan Pelling in The Telegraph. “It’s the food stuff of hedonists: innocent-looking, nostalgic, yet laden with booze, not to be underestimated or (forgive me) trifled with. Edible heaven.”

“The klop, klop of water under the bows of a small boat will cure most troubles in this world,” wrote Arthur Ransome in his 1934 novel “Coot Club” – and, after my recent solo sailing trip in the Norfolk Broads, I have to agree with him, said James Stewart in the Financial Times.

Ransome’s book is set in this network of tidal rivers and shallow lakes, which “cumulatively snake” for 125 miles through the east of Norfolk. The lakes are medieval peat diggings that were flooded by rising seas in the 14th century, and long plied by cargo boats known as wherries.

The Victorians “reimagined” the area as a holiday destination, and operators began renting small yachts to visitors. Motorboats are now far more numerous, but sailing boats are still available to charter. Founded in 1932, Hunter’s Yard in Ludham has a fleet of yachts from “the golden age of Broads cruising”, some with cabins sleeping two to four. Renters must know how to sail, but novices can sign up for a “Learn to Sail” week.

The 90-year-old yacht I chartered, Hustler, was like “an Edwardian gentlemen’s club shrunk to a Wendy house”, with “lustrous” mahogany panelling and a Royal Doulton sink. And it had a “secret weapon”. Most motorboats won’t fit beneath the medieval bridge at Potter Heigham, and so are restricted to the southern Broads. But yachts can lower their masts to squeeze through, into a world where “the throb of boat engines” is replaced “by birdsong in sibilant reeds”.

I found the Broads “surprisingly social”. Dog walkers and fishermen waved, and a canoeist kept pace for a chat. The birds were wonderful, too, from kingfishers to marsh harriers and cranes “like dowager flamingos”. But mostly there was just me, the sound of creaking ropes, and the “low bosky horizons” stretching “beneath heroic skies”.

This was “landscape as serenity”, particularly in the dusk at Horsey Mere, reminding me “how sailing could still be” – “an interlude in which everything else can fall away, a momentary back eddy in the restless tide of the world”.

A southwards-pointing peninsula in the northern Adriatic, Istria lies mostly in Croatia today, but Slovenia also has a small chunk of it – which provides the entirety of that country’s 29-mile coastline. It is a lovely area, said Laura Coffey in The Guardian, with green hills, pretty villages and “colourful” seaside towns.

The largest and most “beautiful” of these, 25 miles south of the Italian city of Trieste, is Piran, known for its medieval Venetian architecture. Nearby lies the Strunjan Landscape Park, with a gorgeous beach, Moon Bay, and Izola, another “vibrant” historic harbour town. I can recommend the DeGrassi hotel there (“supremely comfortable”), as well as Kmetija Medljan, a simple farm stay in the hills. And I enjoyed visiting some artisanal wineries and food producers, including Korenika & Moškon, where the belica olive oil has a “powerful kick”.

Hiking the ‘Great Wall’ of Seoul

Hiking is South Korea’s most popular sporting activity – and thanks to the forested hills that reach far into the city, you can even do it in Seoul, said Oliver Berry in National Geographic Traveller.

Trails rise to 836 metres in the Bukhansan National Park, a little way out of town, but there are smaller peaks next to Seoul’s historic centre, traversed by the city’s medieval battlements (“Seoul’s answer to China’s Great Wall”). I walked along the wall’s northern section, passing three of the original city gates and climbing the “dome-shaped” summit of Inwangsan, which is only 338 metres high, but “punishingly steep”. The path was fragrant with juniper and mountain pine, and shaded here and there by cherry and maple trees – and there were “sweeping” views across downtown Seoul.

Doing Route 66 by train

It’s 100 years since the opening of Route 66, the “legendary” highway between Chicago and LA. Plenty of people are celebrating the centenary by driving it, but I made the 2,000-mile journey west by train instead, said Adrian Bridge in The Telegraph – which allowed for “leisurely contemplation” of America’s “stunning” landscapes, as well as plenty of “convivial” dining-car conversation.

A sleeper train, the Southwest Chief, does the route in 45 hours – or you can break up the journey, as I did. Among the highlights were St Louis (“the city of Miles Davis and the Blues”), Kansas City (where the Beaux Arts railway station is “an absolute gem”), and Flagstaff, Arizona (a “key” Route 66 staging post, full of “1950s-style diners”). But nothing could beat sunset at the Grand Canyon.

This dish is loosely inspired by my go-to Thai order: som tam, or papaya salad, said Ella Risbridger – except that I use mango instead, because I find it hard to get hold of good papaya. Apparently, one of the ways that fast food makes itself irresistible is by hitting most of the base flavours simultaneously: salty, umami, sweet. This dish does exactly that, except in the rather healthier form of an enormous bowl of mostly vegetables. It is peak summer food: zero cooking, 100% refreshing.

Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 1 red chilli
• 2 medium carrots
• 3 baby cucumbers (or ½ a big cucumber)
• 50g green beans
• 1 long red pepper
• 300g chopped mango
• 10g mint
• 10g Thai basil
• 10g coriander
• 1 romaine lettuce
• 150g cooked prawns or fried tofu, or chopped chicken or crispy chicken thighs
• 30g chopped roasted peanuts
• 1 lime
• sriracha, if liked

Method

• In a much-too-big bowl (it will hold everything!), whisk together the fish sauce, vinegar and sugar until the sugar dissolves. Thinly slice the red chilli and add it too (easy to omit).
• Peel the carrots and use a julienne peeler to turn them into thin, pretty little strips. Toss the carrot strips into the bowl and let marinate for a minute. Halve and thinly slice the cucumbers: if you’re using half a big boy, split it in half, and use a teaspoon to drag out the seeds. Discard the seeds, and thinly slice. Toss the cucumbers in with the carrots and stir.
• Chop the green beans. If you can do this on the diagonal, so much the better (discard the stringy ends). Add to the bowl. Deseed and finely slice the pepper; add to the bowl.
• Tip: this is a good point to stop at if you’re making in advance.
• Finely chop the mango into little dice. De-stem and finely shred the herbs, then shred the lettuce (wash the leaves; stack the leaves; roll the leaves in a bundle; slice the bundle across). Mix the leaves, the mango, the prawns into the pickled vegetables.
• Roughly chop the peanuts; quarter the lime. Divide the salad into bowls; drizzle with sriracha, if liked; scatter with peanuts; set the lime quarter at a jaunty angle for individual squeezes.
• Tip: if you keep the components separately in the fridge – so pickled vegetables and vinaigrette in one container, chopped lettuce and herbs in another, prawns in their packet – it is a phenomenal make-ahead lunch for the week.

Taken from The Kitchen Book: Good Food For Every Day by Ella Risbridger.

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A great vacation doesn’t have to break the bank. Stretch your vacation dollars at these seven budget-friendly destinations where affordable food, attractions and accommodations can be found around every corner.

Albania

Albania’s coastline is its “main event,” with Sarande, Vlore and Himare all known for “stunning seaside scenery,” said Time Out. Hikers can hit several trails in the Albanian Alps, like the popular Blue Eye Trail through rugged terrain, while those seeking a more cosmopolitan experience make the trek to the “lively” capital, Tirana, a “vibrant whirl of traffic, consumerism and unfettered fun,” Lonely Planet said. A highlight is Bunk’Art, a Cold War bunker turned contemporary art museum that shares the modern history of Albania.

Dominican Republic

Close your eyes, think of the Dominican Republic, and “delightfully tropical” white sand beaches and “lush” rainforests will likely come to mind, said Fodor’s. The island offers more than a beachy escape, with ample opportunities for activities like horseback riding, ziplining and exploring historic areas like the Zona Colonial in Santo Domingo.

Because there has been such heavy investment in tourism, the Dominican Republic’s infrastructure is “designed to accommodate large volumes of visitors.” So, hotels and all-inclusive resorts “compete aggressively on price” to fill their rooms year-round, Travel and Leisure said.

Estonia

The same culture and stunning scenery you’ll find in more expensive locales like Prague or Stockholm are also in “under-the-radar” Estonia, said The Washington Post. Tallinn, the country’s “storybook” capital, is filled with cobblestone streets, medieval walls, palaces and castles and trendy restaurants and shopping.

The city is a few hours away from “national parks, seaside villages and peaceful islands,” including Saaremaa on the Baltic. Book a day at one of the many affordable spas and enjoy saunas, indoor and outdoor pools, mud baths and body treatments.

Kenya

The “geographic diversity” of Kenya means visitors could be “admiring rhinos one day and lounging on an Indian Ocean beach the next,” said Travel and Leisure. It also means your “safari dreams can come true” because visitors can book trips inside Nairobi National Park, an affordable alternative to visiting remote reserves for multiple days. For the best prices, go during the off-season November through March, when the weather is dry and warm.

Malaysia

You’ll want to see all of the sights in Malaysia, but the hands-down best way to “dive into the culture and history” is by eating your way around the country, said Lonely Planet. Malaysia is at the “crossroads of China, India and dozens of Southeast Asian maritime kingdoms.”

The melting pot cuisine — tender beef rendang, rich nasi lemak, crisp roti canai and steaming bowls of laksa noodle soup — is “budget-friendly, plentiful and delicious.” By visiting local establishments and hawker stalls, steering clear of tourist traps and skipping alcohol, it’s likely you could eat for under $20 a day.

Poland

Sticking to Poland’s smaller cities and more rural areas offers visitors a “fabulous value,” said Time Out. Once an industrial center, Katowice is now one of the country’s most “innovative” cities, known for its festivals and vibrant musical scene, and “gorgeous” Poznan, Wroclaw and Lublin are home to an “arresting” mix of Art Nouveau, Gothic and Renaissance architecture. Bring your appetite to Gdansk, where you can “fuel up” on pierogi and zapiekanka, the Polish take on pizza, and relax on the “sandy sweep” of Brzezno Beach, said National Geographic Traveler.

Vietnam

There are opportunities for multiple types of trips during one visit to Vietnam. Head to the country’s eastern side for “palm-lined beaches and islands,” then go to “bustling” Ho Chi Minh City for cultural activities like water puppet performances and architectural tours, said Afar.

The central and southern countryside is “impossibly beautiful,” with “rice paddies extending in every direction” and highlands shrouded in mist. Train service is “dependable” and a wallet-friendly way to get across the country, and because of the “relative cheapness” of taxis, that transit method is optimal while in bigger cities.

While promoting his latest blockbuster, filmmaker Christopher Nolan listed scholar Emily Wilson’s translation of “The Odyssey” as one of his influences. Now, Wilson’s scathing critique of Nolan’s cinematic take on the epic poem has gone viral, inspiring additional backlash from critics and academics alike. Amid the heated controversy over one of the year’s biggest films, there may be a silver lining to the discourse.

Why Wilson trashed Nolan’s adaptation

Wilson’s expertise in the classics is undeniable. She is also no stranger to backlash. In 2017, she became the first woman to translate “The Odyssey” from ancient Greek into English, an interpretation “widely celebrated in academia and the literary world” as “comprehensive, modern in sensibilities and faithful” to Homer’s almost 3,000-year-old classic, said The New York Times. Her translation departs from the “masculine framing used by her male predecessors,” a move that has “subjected her to online harassment and misogyny from men and far-right figures.”

Before Nolan’s movie premiered, Wilson was “pumped” to see how the epic played out on the big screen, she said on The New York Times’ The Daily podcast. However, after seeing Nolan’s adaptation, Wilson said she would be “ashamed to have written any part of this script” at The London Review of Books. The film had “nothing convincing to say,” it lacked “psychological, emotional, political and ethical depth,” and the “writing is abysmal,” Wilson added. It was a “family-friendly audiovisual spectacle” comparable to an “elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display.”

Most of the nonwhite actors “play versions of the Black best friend, whose only role in the drama is to provide aid to the white protagonist,” Wilson said in her LRB review. She has since expressed regret for this “paragraph about the uses of the POC actors — who are all great, but IMO under-utilized,” Wilson wrote on social media. She still thinks the film “largely wastes its strong cast,” but she “framed it badly.”

A debate reminiscent of the golden era of critics

One of the most prominent figures to come to Nolan’s defense against Wilson was Joyce Carol Oates, a retired professor of the humanities and a prolific writer who has won a National Book Award. Wilson’s “tone of dismissal & haughty superiority strike a sour note,” Oates said on X. Instead of “disagreeing with interpretations of Homer in a collegial manner,” Wilson, who has “benefited enormously from Nolan’s film,” speaks in the “crude language of MAGA folks attacking someone with ideas that differ from hers.” Within the world of translators, Wilson’s review “seems all the more surprising since all translations are, presumably, subjective & not equivalent to the original text.” One would expect a translator to be “just a wee bit more thoughtful & respectful of others who are acting in good faith just as (she would claim) she is.”

Wilson used “baffling arguments” to “flay” Nolan’s adaptation of Homer’s poem, classicist Theo Nash said at Slate. She criticizes Nolan for deviating from the text, “as if the filmmaker’s choices were not also an act of interpretation.” The close attention that informs her translation is “lacking in her reading of the movie,” and the “idea that Nolan might have something new to say about ‘The Odyssey’ is denied.”

Whether or not you agree with Wilson’s perspective, it’s “always exciting to read a particularly full-throated pan,” said critic Kathryn VanArendonk at Vulture. Even if you don’t believe Wilson did her job as a critic, she has “done her job as a writer,” which is to “be a compelling read who makes her argument unmistakably clear.”

Figuring out “who is punching down here is really interesting,” VanArendonk added. Since Wilson has “academic authority” and is “writing with such vigor,” it is “easy to forget that she has less power” than Nolan, a Hollywood darling. That is also “part of the pleasure of the conversation.” Wilson is not interested in “softening any of it.” Still Nolan’s the one who “walks away unscathed, no question.” Of all the topics we could watch people fight about online, “how someone adapted ‘The Odyssey’ is such a good one.”

The Edinburgh Fringe Festival is exciting, eccentric and entirely bonkers. The energy that takes over the Scottish capital every August is utterly infectious, from street performers plying their trade to newbie comedians promoting their first shows. There is a reason why around three million people hit the Scottish capital for the festival every year.

But this popularity brings its own challenges. The Old Town’s famous lanes are packed with impenetrable crowds, prices shoot up to crazy levels, and it can all become a little overwhelming. But don’t worry, Edinburgh is a city of multitudes, and there are plenty of places to catch your breath.

Leith

The setting for Danny Boyle’s “Trainspotting”, now 30 years old, Leith has seen a transformation over the past decades and become a real foodie hub. This port district has no fewer than three Michelin-starred restaurants alongside others serving food of the highest quality. The recently opened Browns of Leith is a former engineering works that is now home to several eating and drinking options. The Royal Yacht Britannia is moored here, offering refreshments in the Royal Deck Tearoom or for something stronger, grab a cocktail or two on the riverside in The Shore area. Check out my favourite eaterie Eleanore, whose head chef Roberta Hall-McCarron is known locally for her bold flavours and inventive menus.

It is connected to the centre by the 1.2km Leith Walk, a lovely softly descending stroll on a sunny day and the perfect place for a pub crawl or spot of shopping in the one-off boutiques.

Portobello

There’s nothing more peaceful than a day at the seaside, and the Victorian town of Portobello – a 25-minute bus ride – offers two miles of golden sands and the perfect escape from the city. Take a dip with views of the Firth of Forth (check Sepa's water-quality index after heavy rains), grab an ice cream from award-winning Oscar’s Gelato, or enjoy a walk in nearby Figgate Park. The Portobello Bookshop is a lovely community-owned spot, and The Velvet Easel Gallery hosts contemporary Scottish artists.

Morningside

This suburb to the south of Edinburgh is packed with quirky things to see. Try to find the hidden Wild West lane, an alleyway decorated for an advert by a cowboy enthusiast some 30 years ago, which has stayed unchanged. The Dominion is a 1938 Art Deco cinema, a good spot when it's raining, and for walks, Corbie’s Crag is one of the lesser-known spots with sweeping views over the city. The nearby Royal Observatory Edinburgh also hosts talks on selected Tuesdays between November and March.

Stockbridge

This leafy, affluent neighbourhood is the kind you might look at in an estate agent’s window, picturing a new life. It has long been the bohemian village within the city, and there’s lots to see. You can easily spend a few hours discovering the delights of the Royal Botanic Gardens, founded in 1670, and housing one of the largest plant collections in the world. Or head to Raeburn Place, where you will find independent bookshops and cute little cafes, and if you're visiting on a Sunday load up on local produce at Stockbridge Farmer’s Market.

Cardinal, from chef patron Tomás Gormley, is making waves in the area with its divine tasting menu and fabulous, unpretentious service. Finish up with a walk along the Waters of Leith towards our next stop…

Dean Village

Just half a mile away is historic Dean Village, an adorable neighbourhood that was once home to 11 working mills. Sights include the arts and crafts Well Court, built in the 1880s, and a great spot to take some snaps, and St Bernard’s Well, which was built in the 1700s when locals believed the waters of the natural spring had medicinal healing properties. Dean Cemetery is beautiful when the leaves turn amber, so grab a hot drink from The Dean Coffee Shop and wrap up warm. Nearby is The National Galleries: Modern One, an impressive contemporary art museum.

Bruntsfield

Golf-lovers don’t have to go too far from the city centre to find a truly historic course. The Bruntsfield Links Golfing Society, founded in 1761 is the fourth oldest links in the world, and considered one of the best kept in the area. You can expect beautiful parkland and glorious views. The district is also known for its independent shops, such as Gulliver’s Toys and the dreamy stationery shop The Bay Tree Company. Grab a sandwich the size of your head at Italian eatery Toscano.

Jaymi was a guest at Cardinal and Eleanore

Suffolk: Crown House, Lavenham

A characterful Grade II property within a fine medieval village. 3 beds, 2 baths, 3 receps, kitchen/breakfast room, garden, detached garage/workshop with en-suite annexe. £835,000; Jackson-Stops

Suffolk: Read Hall, Stowmarket

This historic and picturesque Grade II* medieval manor house features moated grounds and gardens extending to 4.75 acres. 2 suites, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen, 3 receps, 2-bed annexe, barn. £1.25m; David Burr

Denbighshire: Plas Yn Llan, Llangynhafal

Distinguished Grade II house dating back to 1580. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, conservatory, gardens, outbuildings. £950,000; Fisher German

Suffolk: Barn Street, Lavenham

A charming Grade I former Hall House thought to date back to 1530, which has a wealth of original features. 4 beds, 2 baths, cellar, kitchen/breakfast room, utility, 2 receps, double garage with studio and workshop, partly walled and landscaped gardens. £1m; David Burr

Worcestershire: Haventree Cottage, Suckley

A sprawling, traditional timber-frame build, country home set in over two acres of private grounds with far-reaching views across the Teme Valley landscape. Main bed with en suite and dressing room, 5 further beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, garage, gym. £1.35m; Morgan Aps

Staffordshire: High Street, Kinver

High Street, Kinver. Remarkable Grade II Tudor house, built in 1563 and overlooking the River Stour. The house is a former winner of an English Heritage Award for the conservation of its woodwork. Main suite, 3 further beds, family bath, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, garden, log cabin overlooking riverbank. £500,000; Hunters

Oxfordshire: Cherry Tree Cottage, Goring Heath

Dating from the 17th century, this Grade II thatched cottage has been lovingly restored and was nominated for a South Oxfordshire Conservation Award. 3 beds, 2 baths, open-plan kitchen/dining room, recep, terrace, gardens and grounds of approx. 0.4 acre. £800,000; Warmingham

Suffolk: The Malthouse, Hacheston, Woodbridge

This remarkable Grade II* home dates back to 1541 and has maintained its original timber frame. Main suite, 2 further beds (both en suite), kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, study, garden, outbuilding. £650,000; Fenn Wright

The Julio Le Parc retrospective London’s Tate Modern “plunges” you into 1960s Paris, and it’s “riotous good fun”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian.

Le Parc was born in Argentina in 1928 and moved to France 30 years later, arriving in Paris as a refugee from his home country’s military dictatorship. There, he established a collective that sought to “subvert high culture with democratic play” and to fill the city’s – as he thought – dull museums “with noise and action”.

He created sculptures out of random objects: “bicycle spokes, a fan belt, geometric cut-outs, wobbly platters”. Often, the audience can participate, by pushing buttons that trigger his creations into activity – for he believed that looking at art should not be a passive experience. Some of his sculptures are reminiscent of cool 1960s abstract painting but more entertaining: “as if Bridget Riley had got fed up composing her optically confounding art and decided to open a funfair”.

Le Parc died, aged 97, just weeks before the opening of this fabulous exhibition, which is full of his “kinetic sculptures”: “miracles in light, creating impossible spatial illusions”. They use light, movement and mirrored surfaces to create shapes that “multiply, then vanish before, or rather inside, your eyes”.

“Everything in this show is just waiting to spring into life,” said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Even Le Parc’s fairly conventional early paintings are more sophisticated than they look. One 1959 composition initially “resembles nothing so much as a gingham tablecloth” but fast reveals itself to be a dazzling optical illusion.

But the “immersive installations” Le Parc made as a member of the “Grav” collective are far more interesting: 1962’s “awesome” “Continual Light Cylinder”, for instance, is a choreography of “prisms, mirrors, rotators” and lightbulbs that creates “a continuously changing aurora of mesmerising light in an enormous circle”.

It’s all great until we reach the last room, which sadly descends into “kitsch” – “all airbrushed rainbows and prisms, like prog rock album covers from the 1970s”.

At its best, Le Parc’s work is touched “with futuristic grace”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph, while also “seeming retro, as evocative of a specific historical moment as, say, a miniskirt or a lava lamp”. One installation creates “wispy, silvery reflections” from hanging metal squares; in another, constantly moving strands of white light are projected so as to resemble a close-up of “a gigantic clock face”.

Le Parc’s art isn’t always charming, and can at times feel “unsettling” and “aggressive”, but it’s rarely “slight”: his aim was never merely to “distract frazzled minds or dupe the eye”. Instead, he sought to create “a sense of poetry via mechanical means”. “This show is less fun-house, more laboratory of ideas.”
Tate Modern, London SE1. Until 3 May 2027.

An AI company has “destroyed” millions of books as part of a “controversial project” to train its models, said City A.M.

Tech giants want to “feed an insatiable demand for training data” but their methods could have serious ramifications for the publishing industry and the quality of future books.

Suspicious orders

The alarm was first raised when antiquarian booksellers in the UK and across Europe started to receive curious requests for thousands of obscure titles from anonymous buyers.

A London-based seller of rare books received two “unusually large” enquiries for specialist books from anonymous email addresses, with “no names or company details attached”, said City A.M. The buyers asked for additional photographs of the books before placing sizeable orders.

When the bookseller asked the purchasers “who they were and where the books were going, neither replied”. The retailer suspects the orders were placed by AI companies.

According to recent court documents, Anthropic, the developer behind Claude, launched an internal programme known as “Project Panama”, which concluded that books were “essential” for training advanced AI models.

One senior executive at the AI giant said that books taught systems “how to write well”, as opposed to using “low-quality internet speak”. The company bought millions of second-hand books, “sliced off their spines” using “industrial cutting machines”, scanned every page and recycled the rest.

Internal planning documents at Anthropic also showed bosses wanted to keep the programme secret, said Futurism. One executive said: “We don’t want it to be known that we are pursuing this project,” according to those recent court documents.

Orders have also come from Canadian company Zoom Books, according to AA, but the company has denied participating in the digitisation and destruction of books for AI development.

‘Legal loopholes’

This trend has “raised fresh concerns about copyright and the future of physical books”, said AA. But dealing with the issue could be quite another matter; copyright violations are “difficult to prove in court” because of “legal loopholes”.

Thomas Koch, of the German Publishers and Booksellers Association, said it “appears to be yet another example of AI companies using vast quantities of copyright-protected works to train their language models, without consent and without payment”.

The absence of disclosure obligations makes it “nearly impossible” for authors and publishers to determine whether their works have been incorporated into AI training datasets. Also, the legal standing “differs significantly across jurisdictions”.

AI systems have been “trained on copyrighted books” and can now produce new books “almost instantly”, leading to an “influx” of “low-cost, AI-generated titles” on digital marketplaces. Publishers are calling for stronger regulation from national governments and the EU.

Doctor-turned-writer Adam Kay is a National Year of Reading ambassador. He’s supporting the “Go All In” campaign to help people discover the joy of reading. His latest book, “A Particularly Nasty Case”, is out now in paperback.

Me Talk Pretty One Day

David Sedaris, 2000

I’d read anything by the ultimate acerbic essayist: bus timetables, laundry care labels... Luckily, I don’t have to, as he writes books. This one is warm and funny but sharp enough to cut, confronting Sedaris’ North Carolina upbringing and his brilliantly deranged family, before switching to his move to France and the frustrations of being a foreigner. Solid gold.

The Glorious Dead

Justin Myers, 2025

One of my faves from last year: a funny and twisty examination of grief, reputational damage and toxic friendship. A famous writer dies unexpectedly, leaving friends and family bereft but their rose-tinted memories aren’t long for the world when his memoir is unearthed.

Heartburn

Nora Ephron, 1983

Ephron was known for writing blockbuster comedies like “When Harry Met Sally” but this novel was her greatest achievement – one of the funniest books ever written. Based on the collapse of her marriage after her husband’s affair, it’s an unflinching portrait of betrayal and petty vengeance. With recipes!

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾

Sue Townsend, 1982

The inner yearnings of Leicester’s most lovable loser are an instruction manual for every teenage boy on how not to navigate adolescence. Townsend’s genius creation works just as well 44 (aaagh!) years later; the political satire and impeccable comic timing make it so much more than the diary of history’s greatest frustrated intellectual.

The Phantom Tollbooth

Norton Juster, 1961

My favourite book as a child, which I will be pushing on my own kids. A boy, bored by school, is transported to a magical kingdom and goes on a series of ludicrous quests. It is really a front for reinforcing the importance of a thirst for knowledge but is so funny and engrossing that young readers will never suspect a thing.