David Hockney, who has died aged 88, was widely considered to have been Britain’s greatest living artist, said The Daily Telegraph. Instantly recognisable, with his bleached-blond hair, round glasses, impish smile and “ever-smouldering cigarette”, he was for decades a subject of fascination to the world’s media, as Picasso had been a generation earlier. And just as Picasso once commented that he never produced a painting as a work of art – it was all research – Hockney was a man of restless curiosity, who for more than 60 years never stopped the process of experimentation and reinvention.

What drove him was an intense need to understand “the way the world works, how the eye sees it and how the brush sets it down”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. “What happens when raindrops strike still water? Or a body breaks the surface of a swimming pool? How do you capture a glass of water, transparency on transparency, or shafts of sunlight on a polished parquet floor?”

He was a superb draughtsman, but there was no medium he would not try in his effort to depict the world as it is seen. He worked in oils, acrylics, watercolours, charcoal, pen and ink, pencil, felt-tips, crayons; he produced etchings and drypoints; and made use Polaroid cameras, Xerox photocopiers, inkjet printers and the iPad. His inspirations ranged from Monet to Chinese scrolls to the Bayeux Tapestry, and he found inspiration in everything California’s epic landscapes to the graffiti in public lavatories.

Accessible superstar

He was fascinated by the mechanics of image-making, said Kelsey Ables in The Atlantic – and, as he put it, “any technology that is about pictures”. In 2001, he published an art historical book in which he laid out his carefully researched but hotly debated theory that the likes of Caravaggio and van Eyck had used devices such as concave mirrors and projecting lenses to achieve realism.

Hockney’s work was not always universally admired by the critics; but his aim, he said, had never been to please a room full of art-world insiders, but to make pictures that were appreciated by a lot of people. And he did. People flocked to his exhibitions; their posters became collectors’ items. In 2018, one of the sun-drenched paintings he produced in California – 1972’s “Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)” – became the most expensive artwork by a living artist ever sold at auction, at $90 million.

Yet neither his enormous success, nor the glamorous circles in which he moved – in Los Angeles, Paris and London – seemed fundamentally to change him. “The moment I first sold pictures to earn a living, I felt rich,” he said. “I’ve been rich ever since... You are a rich man if you do the things you want to do.” He retained a deep-seated seriousness about his work and a ferocious dedication to it; he was not a regular on any party circuit. And he never ceased to be a Yorkshireman (nor did he lose his accent, which he said might have been partly due to his inherited deafness: he started losing his hearing in his 40s).

He was an art-world superstar, who somehow conveyed a sense of being personally accessible. Modest, direct and down to earth, he remained close to his family (he spent every Christmas with his parents until their deaths) and for a period in the latter part of his life, he lived in the seaside town of Bridlington, in east Yorkshire. Over the years, he attained a level of popularity “that has eluded younger British artists”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian, “and has more in common with that of David Attenborough” or Queen Elizabeth II.

Grammar school boy

David Hockney was born in Bradford in 1937, the fourth of five children. His mother, Laura, was a devout Methodist and a vegetarian, while his father, Kenneth, who worked as an accounts clerk and also restored prams and bicycles, had been a conscientious objector, and was a militant anti-smoker.

Hockney inherited a propensity for strongly held views, but he famously campaigned for the right of smokers to smoke, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. He loved tobacco, he said. He kept 2,000 cigarettes at home “for emergencies”, and liked to point out that he had outlived four doctors who’d advised him to kick the habit. He held a sign reading “DEATH awaits you all even if you do not smoke” at a Labour Party conference in 2005, and from 2012 he sported a badge saying: “End bossiness soon”.

Hockney grew up during the War, and money was tight, but from the age of three, he drew where he could – even on the kitchen floor. Years later, he said that being gay in that era had not been as hard for him as it might have been, because he had always felt set apart by his talent. To his parents’ delight, he won a scholarship to Bradford Grammar School, but the boys in the top stream were not given much time in the art room, so he determinedly dropped down the divisions. In one science paper, he left the answers blank, and wrote “am no good at science but I can draw” above a sketch of the invigilator.

At 16, he was awarded a grant to attend Bradford School of Art. On his first day, he turned up in a suit, bowler hat and red scarf, but while his dress sense was outlandish, his work ethic was even then decidedly Protestant, said Sam Woodhouse on BBC News: he was at his easel for 12 hours a day. Later, he kept by his bed a sign reading: “GET UP AND WORK IMMEDIATELY”.

Extraordinary talent

He sold his first painting, a portrait of his father, in 1957, for £10. By then, the themes that would preoccupy him were already evident, said The Daily Telegraph: “a cool self-interest, a strong sense of pattern, the contrast between stillness and movement, surface and depth”. He refused to do National Service, and spent two years scrubbing floors as a hospital orderly instead. In 1959, he moved to London to study at the Royal College of Art, where his contemporaries included Allen Jones and R.B. Kitaj.

Figurative art was regarded as over in the early 1960s. Hockney gave the fashionable abstract expressionism a try, but found it unsatisfying. Eventually, he took Kitaj's advice – to paint the things that he loved, that interested him and mattered to him. In his second year at the RCA, he produced “We Two Boys Together Clinging” – the title refers to a Walt Whitman poem. It depicts two blob-like figures locked in an embrace. Numbered codes indicate that they represent the artist and his unrequited crush, Cliff Richard. Homosexual acts would not be decriminalised for another six years, but Hockney did not stay long in the closet. “Never worry about what the neighbours think,” had been his father’s advice.

To graduate, he was required to write a thesis. He refused to comply, stubbornly insisting that he be judged on his art alone. Recognising the extraordinary nature of his talent, the RCA not only made an exception for him, it awarded him a gold medal. He turned up to the ceremony wearing a gold lamé jacket. His sartorial style evolved over the years but was never less than eye-catching. “Yellow galoshes,” exclaimed King Charles delightedly, when he spotted the Crocs that Hockney had paired with a Savile Row checked suit for a lunch at Buckingham Palace in 2022. “Beautifully chosen!”

Out west

A star straight from art school, he was taken on by the dealer John Kasmin, who oversaw his production of “A Rake’s Progress”, a series of etchings inspired by a visit to New York in 1961. He’d relished the energy of the city and its more permissive attitudes, and these semi-abstract etchings depicted the rake cruising in Central Park, dying his hair and drinking in gay bars. Kasmin marketed them at £250 a set. With the proceeds, Hockney flew back to New York in 1963, and then on to Los Angeles. Other artists were drawn to Manhattan, said The Times, but he told interviewers that he found its lines too vertical.

As the plane made its descent, he was struck by the sight of hundreds of swimming pools twinkling blue in the sunshine. “My God,” he recalled thinking. “This place needs its Piranesi... so here I am.” Los Angelinos would later tell him, he said, that they had not really noticed the palm trees until he started painting them. As well as California’s sunlight and blue skies, he embraced its sense of freedom, and its open gay culture. He rented a flat in Santa Monica, and within a few months he had flown his parents out from Bradford to visit him. En route from the airport, his mother gazed out of the window, apparently rapt by these strange surroundings. “I don’t understand it,” she eventually remarked. “Such lovely drying weather and no one’s got their washing out.”

His first California picture was 1964's “Plastic Tree Plus City Hall”, said The Guardian, which celebrated the flat artificiality of LA, what the critic Robert Hughes called its role as a “glaring, over-lit, antiseptic madhouse”. To paint it, he had swapped his oils for acrylics. Doing away with surface texture, these plastic-based paints were perfect for capturing the bright colours and – “that signifier of a shallow”, more hedonistic world – “the dappled surface of a chlorinated pool”. The same year, he produced “Picture of a Hollywood Swimming Pool”. It is “poster-like” but – like the artist who painted it – its “frivolity is deceptive”. This is a “polished, late-modernist work”, with an “interplay of surface and depth” that draws “on its maker's knowledge of Matisse and Cézanne”. A voracious reader, Hockney was highly learned.

He followed it up with the pool paintings that remain among his most famous, including “Peter Getting Out of Nick’s Pool”, featuring the tan-lined bottom of Peter Schlesinger, his muse and lover, and 1967’s “A Bigger Splash”. In 1973 that work lent its name to a semi-fictionalised documentary about the artist. Shot over three years, it was focused on Hockney's painful break-up Schlesinger, his partner from 1966. Hockney repeatedly painted his partners, his friends and the other people around him, while refusing most commissions. The art critic Waldemar Januszczak once asked why he had never painted the late Queen. “Because I didn’t know her,” he replied.

Artistic evolution

In the 1970s, he produced a series of double portraits. One was of Christopher Isherwood (an avid collector of his work) and his partner Don Bachardy. “Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy” shows the fashion designer Ossie Clark, his wife, the textile designer Celia Birtwell (Hockney’s muse for several decades), and their cat (actually Blanche), in their flat in Notting Hill. The painting was a wedding present; but the conventions of wedding portraiture are overturned (she stands, he sits) and the portrait hints at the complexities of the couple’s relationship. He also painted his parents. In “My Parents”, his mother sits upright, staring lovingly at her son, her face illuminated by light from an unseen window; his father looks restless, as he sits hunched over a book. There is a space between them. “It is a tender picture about the failure of communication,” said The New York Times, “and the loving acceptance of that.”

The 1980s were a difficult period. As HIV-Aids ravaged LA’s gay community, Hockney saw countless friends and acquaintances fall sick and die. That his hearing was starting to deteriorate left him further isolated. Professionally, he moved away from painting and started to work on his “joiners” – hundreds of photographs (initially Polaroids) that he stitched together in an effort to create images that encompassed multiple viewpoints. He called this new cubism. Later on in the decade, he began experimenting with photocopies, and also distributed his drawings to friends via fax machines. Having produced evocative set and costume designs for “The Rake's Progress” at Glyndebourne in the mid-1970s, he embarked on major projects for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. More intimately, he painted and drew his beloved dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie, over and over again.

Meanwhile, he had continued to paint his mother, on his many visits home. She died in 1999, aged 98. A few years later, he left LA and settled in the Edwardian villa overlooking the sea that he had bought for her, in Bridlington. From his studio nearby, he produced a series of monumental paintings of the Wolds landscape. These formed the basis of “A Bigger Picture” – a record-breaking exhibition at the RA in 2012. The following year tragedy struck when his 23-year-old studio assistant, Dominic Elliott, was found dead in his house after a drink and drugs bender. Hockney – who had been asleep at the time – was devastated. Soon after, he moved to Normandy with his partner of two decades, Jean-Pierre Gonçalves de Lima, where he captured the shifting landscape on an iPad. During the March 2020 lockdown, he sent out a new iPad drawing of yellow daffodils against a grey field, with the message: “Do remember they can’t cancel spring.” He was at heart an optimist, who signed off emails to friends with the words: “Love life.”

Over the years, Hockney was offered countless honours and turned most down – including a knighthood. He did, however, accept the Order of Merit. It was a personal gift from the then-Queen, and he reasoned that it would be ungracious to reject it. Arguably, the honour he most appreciated came in 2007, said Sam Woodhouse. At a dinner at Tate Britain to mark his 70th birthday, it was announced that the smoke alarms would be turned off for ten minutes at the end, so that Hockney could have a cigarette with his coffee.

Bestselling mystery and suspense novelist and screenwriter Anthony Horowitz has published over 50 books for adults and for children, including the Alex Rider teen-spy series, and created the “Foyle’s War” drama series for TV. Here, he picks six of his favourite books. His latest Detective Hawthorne book, “A Deadly Episode”, is out now.

A Kiss Before Dying

Ira Levin, 1953

It’s hard to believe this brilliantly structured story of a psychopathic killer and the three women who are his targets was the debut of a 23-year-old. The killer speaks to you as he cold-bloodedly moves in on his victims. But you don’t know who he is.

The Modesty Blaise series

Peter O’Donnell, 1965-1985

I’ve always loved this series. His female Bond, a crime boss turned superspy, is a terrific creation and her “capers” are endlessly entertaining. It’s sad that Quentin Tarantino, a fan, never got round to making the film. And sadder still that Joseph Losey did – it tanked!

Thérèse Raquin

Émile Zola, 1867

There has never been a more profound exploration of murder and its consequences. It’s a dark novel in which the two lovers are destroyed by guilt, with a tense atmosphere as suppurating as a wound.

The Flashman series

George MacDonald Fraser, 1969-2005

Another lifelong favourite. The adventures of a Victorian rogue, coward and womaniser are so politically incorrect that it may now be illegal to read them. But they’re huge fun and a kaleidoscope of Victorian history.

Bleak House

Charles Dickens, 1852

Dickens has always been my mainstay and this masterpiece – an examination of the horrors of the Court of Chancery seen through the never-ending case of Jarndyce v. Jarndyce – includes, among a brilliant array of characters, the first detective in British literature.

Prisoners of the Sun

Hergé, 1949

Tintin was the first character I loved, and this – with its partner, “The Seven Crystal Balls” – is arguably Hergé’s finest work, with a breathtaking climax as Tintin escapes being burned alive. His stories inspire me to this day.

Hampshire: Nelson Place, Lymington

A beautifully renovated period property (the white house in the middle) in the heart of this popular coastal town. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, basement/gym, garden, outdoor bar, parking. £750,000; Savills.

Suffolk: Crag Path, Aldeburgh

An enchanting cottage (the little pink house in the middle) set near the high street and facing Aldeburgh’s famous shingle beach. Main suite, 1 further bed, family bath, kitchen/ dining room, 2 receps. £500,000; Flick & Son.

Cornwall: Quilkin Cottage, Gwithian

Pretty cottage in a woodland setting 750 yards from the beach. 3 beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, studio, garage. OIEO £530,000; Lillicrap Chilcott.

Wiltshire: Faerie Door Cottage, West Overton

A quaint, “chocolate-box”, 17th century thatched cottage. Boasting plenty of period features, the property sits within a secluded mature garden. 3 beds, 2 baths, utility, kitchen/dining room, recep, outbuildings, garden, parking. £675,000; Hamptons.

Suffolk: Jasmine Cottage, Lavenham

This characterful and picturesque Grade II* cottage is located close to numerous local amenities in the heart of this fine medieval wool town. 2 beds, family bath, kitchen/ breakfast room, recep, courtyard garden. £300,000; David Burr.

East Lothian: The Lookout, Canty Bay

A striking contemporary house in a dramatic coastal setting, with uninterrupted sea views across the Firth of Forth and Bass Rock. The setting, on a highly protected stretch of the North Berwick coastline, is both spectacular and secluded. 2 beds, family bath, open-plan kitchen/ living/dining room, terrace, garden, parking. OIEO £695,000; Knight Frank.

Kent: Staircase Villa, Eridge Green

This charming fairy-tale Grade II villa dates from around 1825 and is located in a small village just south of Tunbridge Wells. Main suite, 1 further bed, family bath, kitchen, utility, 2 receps, garden, outbuilding, parking. OIEO £400,000; Maddisons Residential.

Cornwall: Menaring Cottage, Crackington Haven

Lovely stone cottage with magnificent sea views in an unspoilt AONB close to the South West Coast Path. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/living room, garden, patio, parking. £650,000; John Bray Estates.

The fourth generation of Cayenne Turbo is all electric, and is Porsche’s most powerful production car, generating up to 1,140 horsepower, said The Telegraph.

And this SUV is “bonkers”: at 2.6 tonnes, it can do 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds. It has a top speed of 162mph and a 387-mile range.

Thanks to active aerodynamics, cutting-edge technology and “proper chassis engineering”, the Turbo Electric combines “heavyweight punch with impressive efficiency”, and “monstrous levels of mechanical grip”, said PistonHeads. It’s in the corners where the Turbo really sets itself apart from the standard Cayenne Electric. With true “steering feel” and readability, it’s “easy to feel in sync with an intimidatingly fast SUV”. The air suspension enhances the feedback, while still giving “fantastic” body control.

This car “is here to blow our minds”, said Top Gear magazine. It is a “generous all-rounder” that covers ground with “unflappable composure” at terrific speed. And it’s fast in other ways, too: hooked up to a 400-volt ultra-rapid charger, it takes only 15 minutes to get from 10%-80%.

Inside, it balances modern tech with analogue controls. The cabin is dominated by an impressive curved touchscreen and a configurable driver’s display. There’s masses of space in the back and, at 747 litres, the boot is vast. All the features may take a bit of figuring out, but it has “everything you need”. What we have here is “a practical, useful Porsche with a side order of performance car”.

Marilyn Monroe and David Attenborough were both born in 1926, said Waldemar Januszczak in The Sunday Times. If things had gone differently, we might be celebrating her 100th birthday this year as well as his. But “some candles were not made for lengthy flickering” and now, instead of a party, “we have a Marilyn blockbuster” at the National Portrait Gallery that is “packed to the rafters with her image”.

The show “goes down various alleys and has several twists. But it ends up coming to the simplest of conclusions: boy, did the camera love her.” It explores her photographic legacy in a clever way, grouping the “seemingly countless portraits” according to the photographers who took the pictures. It also insistently reminds us of Monroe’s own agency in creating her image: the exhibition casts her as a “self-made figure”. Born Norma Jeane Mortenson, she grew up poor, with an unstable mother and an absent father, and was passed from foster home to orphanage. But even from the early days, she “knew how she wanted to be seen”.

“Marilyn was acting for the camera long before she ever appeared on screen,” said Laura Cumming in The Observer. The earliest picture here is essentially a teenage self-portrait, taken in a photo booth: she’s yet to adopt her “trademark blonde hair” but she already has the “joyously open smile” and perfect teeth of legend. Picture by picture, she develops the look for which we remember her – and “a star is born”.

“You think you know her face, but each new image overturns the last.” She collaborates with each new photographer: “more intellectual with Eve Arnold, more intimate with Cecil Beaton, more seductive with Sam Shaw”. We variously see her “finger-to-temple over a book”; “tensely concentrated in a morning headstand”; “glacially glamorous in furs, or casually conversational in the back yard”.

Yet she is always herself in the photos – a quality the various paintings of her here fail to replicate. There are “tearful” pop-art homages by Peter Blake and Pauline Boty, and an “awful” portrait by Willem de Kooning that sees her as “a cock-eyed doll”. The “arc of this riveting show” is “perfectly conceived”, and as you reach the tragic finale, you cannot fail “to be intensely moved”.

It is moving, said Charlotte Jansen in The Guardian. But the exhibition also gets a bit “dull” at times. “Monroe’s cheeriness, the glut of gleeful smiles, becomes overkill” – and you long to see some “slips of the mask”. Still, it’s clear that she had “a special, unselfconscious command of the camera”. I wanted to “hate” this show – exhibitions of celebrity photography are seldom interesting – yet, whether as a “mousey-haired” teenager or as an “uncontainable, insanely glamorous film star”, Monroe herself radiates charm. She makes it worthwhile.

National Portrait Gallery, London WC2. Until 6 September

When it comes to island holiday destinations, the Maldives is one of the most sought after – and for good reason. The blue waters and skies seem endless, making you feel as if you have been transported to a different world. If you’re looking to switch off from your regular life, it is the place to be.

Last year, Centara opened two new resorts in the North Male Atoll, a chain of over 50 islands and islets that’s home to mesmerising corals and marine life. The Centara Grand Lagoon Resort and Centara Mirage Lagoon Resort make up The Atollia by Centara Hotels & Resorts. The multi-island destination is located 40 minutes away from the airport via speedboat and is connected by a walkable bridge for easy movement between the properties. While both are operated under the same brand, each provide a unique atmosphere suited for different types of holidaymakers.

Why stay here?

Winner of the Condé Nast Traveller Readers’ Choice Award 2025, the Centara Grand Lagoon Resort is nothing short of a tropical utopia. The buildings are inspired by the ocean, with soaring high ceilings, curved walls and pared-back décor in earthy tones.

If you choose the overwater villa, you can opt for one with a private pool and an outdoor deck that blurs the line separating you and the ocean. My husband and I are usually early risers and the view of the sunrise on the horizon was a major highlight of the trip. If you are lucky, which we were, you may spot dolphins swimming close to the deck in search of food in the mornings.

The Centara Mirage Lagoon Resort is a little more playful with its architecture and the overall aesthetic is eye-catching and modern. This is a family-centric accommodation with many facilities catered to children, including an expansive water park. Both resorts also offer two- and three-bedroom villas, which come with either a pool or Jacuzzi. If staying overwater is not your style, there are beachfront room options available too.

The spa

The island offers state-of-the-art luxury spa facilities that are operated under the SPA Cenvaree brand. Centara prides itself on its embedded philosophy of Thai hospitality and this is evident in the services on offer. There is an exhaustive list of traditional Asian therapies available as well as some modern salon offerings. The expert therapists are immensely knowledgeable and friendly. They help set the tone of the experience by making you feel comfortable and relaxed as soon as you step foot inside.

What sets the spa at the Lagoon apart is the design; it is located away from the rest of the resort area and feels like a sanctuary. Past the reception, you enter a minimalist white courtyard complete with water basins holding rustic centrepieces. The treatment rooms are spacious and filled with natural light. We were lucky to experience a couple’s massage and left feeling completely rejuvenated.

The facilities also include a Candy Spa that offers kid-friendly treatments like manicures and pedicures so the little ones can keep themselves engaged while parents indulge themselves.

Eating and drinking

When it comes to food, the Centara brand aims to provide guests with a taste of Thai culture while honouring Maldivian traditions. There are six distinct dining locations spread over both the properties offering various cuisines. The resorts are separately operated but all the restaurants are quite easy to get to regardless of where you choose to stay. A buggy is a quick call away but you can certainly walk too – that is, if you are willing to withstand the scorching sun you will face en route.

The best dining spot was Centara’s signature restaurant Suan Bua, serving authentic Thai food at the Mirage. I especially enjoyed the larb gai and massaman curry. The ingredients were fresh and the balance of tangy citrus notes and fiery spices made for an unforgettable meal. Every restaurant is included in the all-inclusive rates but the ones serving only a la carte menus require reservations so letting the concierge know where you want to dine early on is highly recommended.

Another memorable meal was at the Blue Fin, a Mediterranean-style beachfront restaurant specialising in seafood. We splurged on the lobster as it wasn’t included in the package but it was definitely worth it. I would be remiss not to mention the remarkable steak tartare on fried brioche, which played with a mix of textures.

Right next to Blue Fin, is the Sunset Social. As the name suggests, it is the perfect place to catch some magnificent views. The big draw is the catamaran seating and the specialised cocktails but traditional Atollian food is also served here. My favourite cocktail was Spirit of the Sun, which is made with elderflower-infused gin and lavender essence.

The Lagoon resort is also home to The Gallery, which is where guests come for their buffet breakfast and lunch. For dinner, they serve Indian tandoor dishes and also have a very small teppanyaki grill. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to try the Japanese food due to capacity issues and we felt like the Indian food was a bit bland, which we relayed to the staff. They made us a special breakfast the next day to make up for the disappointment and were very open to feedback.

The other spots on the island are Mirage’s Acqua, a traditional Italian spot serving all the cuisine’s classics, and The Sailhouse, where guests have their breakfast. The Lagoon also has The Club, which is a special access all-day lounge serving everything from breakfast to afternoon tea. Both resorts have swim-up bars in their main pool so you can cool down while enjoying your time in the water.

Things to do

The North Atoll is a prime hotspot for divers and surfers. Being a city person, the fear of not having enough to do held me back from going on island holidays for a long time. My stay at Centara changed my perspective because of the endless opportunities to be adventurous.

We started off kayaking in see-through boats, which allow you to look underwater as you paddle along enjoying the sea breeze. Seabob riding was also a surprising favourite for me. The seabob is an underwater scooter that operates like a mini roofless submarine. I was a bit afraid of how fast it would be but the staff were very encouraging and there were varying speed functions, which allowed me to choose a level I was comfortable with. We also went snorkelling and enjoyed seeing the fascinating coral and marine life from up close.

The resort had several other activities we didn’t get a chance to do including jet skiing, deep sea diving and sunset cruises. An especially lovely moment during the holiday was when we were surprised with a private beachfront dining tent for my husband and I to enjoy our dinner by the water. It was certainly a night I will cherish for the rest of my life.

The verdict

With so many resorts in the Maldives to choose from, any new ones need to overachieve in order to compete with long-time favourites. Centara more than lives up to its great reputation with The Atollia.

The resorts are significantly different but guests can effortlessly move between them. Despite Mirage being the more family-focused property, Lagoon has kid-friendly offerings as well and families can enjoy both resorts. For couples or groups of friends, the Lagoon is perfect for an unforgettable relaxation retreat. The Atollia allows you to choose what kind of energy you want for your holiday and gives you the best of both worlds.

Deeya was a guest of Centara Grand Lagoon Resort and Centara Mirage Lagoon Resort; centarahotelsandresorts.com

Babak Anvari’s Bafta-winning film “Under the Shadow” (2016) tells the compelling – and frightening – story of a woman living in Tehran at the height of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, whose grip on reality starts to fragment after her doctor husband is sent to the front, and her apartment is hit by missiles.

This taut and nerve-shredding stage adaptation, by Carmen Nasr, “could scarcely be timelier”, said Ryan Gilbey in The Guardian. “When Shideh and her neighbours huddle together in their bomb shelter, cursing Europe and the US for abandoning them, this could be a livestream from 2026.”

Director Nadia Latif’s stylish, well-acted production honours the original film – and its paranormal elements – but “escapes its shadow”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph.

For Shideh (Leila Farzad), life has become a “form of entombment”. With the action confined to a single room and a bomb shelter, we share her “dementing claustrophobia” – and her horror at the idea that her home has been invaded by a djinn, or malevolent ancient spirit.

There are several jump scares as the atmosphere becomes increasingly unnerving. In a superb performance, Farzad conveys the “surreal, terrifying ordeal of living in a war zone and the misery of having your life ripped away by forces beyond your control”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. Her Shideh is “truculent, grieving” and consumed by cold rage.

The piece is beautifully realised by Latif and designer Ben Stones, said Sarah Crompton on WhatsOnStage. A bomb blast, and the shock of “inexplicable happenings” in the apartment, are magnificently conjured. This production is “intriguing and always watchable”. But as the djinn becomes embodied, the delicate balance between the real and the supernatural starts to falter. “The play’s shocks begin to stray into ‘Woman in Black’ territory, and its shifts in tone become too jarring.”

Some special effects simply “work best in a multiplex”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Still, this intriguing play “succeeds in taking us into an unsettling realm; one where ideology, rather than a ghost, is the enemy”.

Almeida Theatre, London N1. Until 4 July

“You will, no doubt, be familiar with the 1995 footage of a supposed alien autopsy,” said Sarah Dempster in The Guardian, in which, over the course of 18 minutes, figures in hazmat suits dissect the corpse of a pot-bellied humanoid.

Since its “yikes-inducing” TV debut, the black-and-white film is estimated to have been viewed by a billion people. Now, for better or worse, it’s back. Over three “increasingly extraordinary” episodes, “The Alien Autopsy Scandal” unknots the incredible tale behind the footage.

It’s a saga “worthy of an Ealing comedy”, said James Jackson in The Times. Ray Santilli, a music producer, claims that in 1993 he was shown real footage of an alien autopsy filmed by a US military veteran at Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 (when an alien aircraft is supposed to have crash-landed there). He wanted $100,000 for it. But by the time the money had been raised, the film had oxidised and was ruined.

So, according to Santilli, he and his business partner decided to “restore” the footage in their flat in Camden, north London. The “alien” was created by a sculptor who had worked on “Doctor Who”, and then stuffed with animal organs. It’s bonkers, but “you may find yourself applauding the audacity of it all”.

“It’s a great watch – 'Spinal Tap' territory, but real,” said Rhik Samadder in The Guardian. The dishonest duo got rich from their deception, but in the age of AI slop, there is a certain charm to analogue hoaxes such as these. I thought I would feel scorn, but to my surprise, “I was moved”.

When the “spine-tingling” trailer for Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” was released, many of us hoped that the great director would be delivering his “career-crowning masterpiece”, said Nicholas Barber on BBC Culture: a “profound last word” on aliens arriving on Earth, a topic that has obsessed him for years. Instead, we have a “flimsy, outdated car-chase thriller” that contains “no ideas about aliens that we haven’t heard before”.

Josh O’Connor stars as Daniel Kellner, a cybersecurity boffin who works for Wardex, a powerful US organisation that has for years been concealing proof of alien contact (yes, on one level it is “Men in Black”, but without the jokes). After stealing classified files, he becomes a fugitive pursued by Wardex’s sinister supremo (Colin Firth, “badly miscast”).

Instrumental to Kellner’s plan to expose Wardex is Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a television meteorologist who suddenly finds herself able to speak to aliens. Her scenes are “fantastic”: Spielberg should probably have made the film about her powers and “ditched the rest”.

‘Signature elegance’

There’s plenty of the director’s “signature elegance” to enjoy, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph; some scenes move “with such breathless lucidity it is as if he is beaming excitement directly into your brain”. But the plotting is “woolly and lopsided”, while the tone is “an awkward mix of solemnity and silliness”.

I enjoyed it, said David Sexton in The New Statesman – it’s “as brilliantly filmed as anything Spielberg has ever made”, with a “marvellous” performance from Blunt and a “terrific” score from John Williams (his 30th for Spielberg). It’s a “corker, a proper summer blockbuster” and “a prime example of the genre he originally created with ‘Jaws’”.

When a coalition of “clerics, leftists, students, nationalists and secular intellectuals” launched the Iranian Revolution in 1979, they were united less by a shared vision than “a shared rejection” of the Shah’s rule, said Reza Aslan in The New York Times. And as Bozorgmehr Sharafedin and Yeganeh Torbati observe in “Stolen Revolution”, “egalitarian ideals and immense hopes” were snuffed out as “the religious regime hunted, expelled and jailed its former allies”.

That is the story of this “quietly devastating” book, which charts Iran’s transformation over the past half century into a “mafia state”. The authors tell it through the lives of six Iranians, including a revolutionary ideologue, a tech entrepreneur, and two women at the forefront of the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom protests.

“The result is one of the most perceptive books on modern Iran in years, capturing not only the machinery of repression, but the fragile forms of hope that survive beneath it.”

Once in power, Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, swiftly “abandoned his revolutionary promises”, said Dina Nayeri in The Guardian. All talk of prosperity ended (our saints “gave up their lives for Islam, not for economics”, he intoned). Conservative dress codes were enforced, and a new military police force – the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps – was entrusted with preserving the revolution.

While the presidency of Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005) marked a more liberal, “reformist era”, the hardliners regained control when he left office and have ruled the country ever since.

“Stolen Revolution” is both an “unwavering account of the regime’s absurdities” and a “meticulously researched primer on modern Iran”.

Parts of it will “move some readers to tears”, said Justin Marozzi in The Times. The authors describe the fates of Kosar Eftekhari and Rozhin Yousefzadeh, who joined the “protests that erupted after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini”, a young woman arrested for not wearing her hijab properly. “Eftekhari had her right eye shot out by a smirking plain-clothes officer”; Yousefzadeh was thrown into the “filthy and dangerous Qarchak women’s prison”.

It was ostensibly in the hope of ending such tyranny that the US and Israel launched their war against the regime. This “blistering” book suggests that, on the contrary, the conflict will only entrench its most hardline elements further – and that it will prove to be “yet another US blunder in the Middle East, [and] one that will cost Iranians, and the rest of us, dearly”.

The warm weather is finally here. With summer’s arrival comes a slew of concert tours to enjoy as the season’s live performances get underway.

Ariana Grande

Many hope for eternal sunshine throughout summer, and it appears Ariana Grande is one of them. Because the pop superstar has embarked on her “Eternal Sunshine” tour.

The venture, spanning North America and Europe, is in support of the “Wicked” actor’s prior two studio albums, and it may be the last chance to see Grande on a concert stage for a while. “I do know that I’m very excited to do this small tour, but I think it might not happen again for a long, long, long, long time,” Grande said last year on Amy Poehler’s Good Hang podcast. (through September)

A$AP Rocky

A$AP Rocky is one of the biggest names in rap and delighted fans when he released his first studio album in nearly eight years. Now he’s back on the road promoting that album with his “Don’t Be Dumb” tour.

The rapper is traversing the U.S. and Europe, and has revealed there is a difficult side of touring. “To go on tour, sometimes you got to quit drinking. You got to quit smoking. You got to get on a routine, get your breath work right,” the artist told Vibe. “There’s a lot of preparation that goes into it.” (through October)

BTS

There is no arguing that BTS is one of the world’s biggest bands, and the K-pop group’s loyal fans can now catch the group on the road during its “Ariang” world tour. The massive events, in support of BTS’ 2026 album of the same name, span seven continents over nearly an entire year and feature a “360-degree, in-the-round stage design — a first for a K-pop stadium tour,” said concert promoter Live Nation. The “immersive setup places the audience at the center of the experience while allowing for increased capacity at every venue.” (through March 2027)

Chris Stapleton

Few headliners have embarked on a concert tour as long as Chris Stapleton’s. The country icon’s “All American Road Show” tour began all the way back in 2017 and is finally coming to an end later this year.

In the time Stapleton has been touring, he’s released four studio albums and has performed at some of the world’s biggest venues, with guest stars including Willie Nelson and Imagine Dragons. Stapleton’s tour wrap-up comes as he “also celebrated the ten-year anniversary of his groundbreaking debut album, ‘Traveller,’ last year” said his website. (through October)

De La Soul

Hip-hop enthusiasts have a chance to see De La Soul live on its ongoing concert tour, with shows on several continents. The opportunity to attend one of these shows will surely be a thrill for fans of the legendary group, whose 1988 debut LP “3 Feet High and Rising” is considered one of the greatest hip-hop albums ever. But De La Soul has also undergone a metamorphosis in recent years, as in “many ways, one of the most influential groups in hip-hop is new: The duties have been reassessed,” and the “focus has shifted,” said NPR. (through October)

Doja Cat

Rapper and singer Doja Cat burst onto the scene more than a decade ago and has since become one of the biggest names in music. Now fans of her fifth LP, “Vie,” can hear her perform the songs live during her “Tour Ma Vie” in support of the 2025 studio album. The concerts, which play on all six inhabited continents, could be the last opportunity for fans to hear Doja Cat, at least for a bit. “I think I want to take three years off. I want to just do whatever,” the singer told Elle. (through December)

Foo Fighters

You can learn to fly across the country with the Foo Fighters during their ongoing “Take Cover” tour in support of the legendary rock band’s 12th LP, “Your Favorite Toy.” Wandering across four continents, the concerts mark a big change for the Foo Fighters: It is the band’s first live-performance series with new drummer Ilan Rubin, who was admittedly nervous about joining. Rubin did his “research, because, obviously, the band’s been around for so long,” the drummer told the Go with Elmo podcast last year, and a “lot of these songs have gone through different iterations over the years.” (through January 2027)

Olivia Dean

British singer Olivia Dean had her breakthrough last year with her second studio album, “The Art of Loving,” propelling her to international fame. So it seems natural for Dean to be making her way through the “The Art of Loving” tour, giving fans their first glimpse of the artist in a concert series.

At the shows, Dean’s followers can “expect a shared experience where everyone comes prepared to sing along and dance, a dose of fashion” and “songs she hasn’t performed live before,” said Elle. Performing live “has always been Dean’s favorite part of her artistry.” (through October)

Raye

If you’re looking for another British superstar, catch Raye when she performs alongside Bruno Mars on his “The Romantic” tour. It makes sense that Raye wouldn’t embark on a headlining tour of her own — because she just got through with one. The singer concluded her “This Tour May Contain New Music” tour earlier this year. But while people may understandably head to Bruno Mars’ concerts to see him perform, Raye is one of several big-name opening acts for Mars that you won’t want to miss. (through December)

Wiz Khalifa

Wiz Khalifa has maintained his status as one of the most well-known names in the rap game, and he’s joined forces with another superstar rapper, MGK. The duo is making their way across three continents on the “Lost Americana” tour.

While the concert series is officially MGK’s tour, Khalifa is billed as a co-headliner. If you can’t get to a live show, you can hear new music on the duo’s “Blog Era Boyz” mixtape, in which Khalifa and MGK “take it back to 2010 with nine tracks that channel the anything-goes spirit of the time,” said Apple Music. (through July)

Madonna’s bold 14-minute film to mark her latest album, “Confessions II”, has put music videos back in the spotlight. While the viewing figures are yet to reach the stratospheric heights of years gone by, the buzz generated by her star-studded new film shows the medium is far from dead. Here are seven trailblazing artists who helped revolutionise the genre.

Michael Jackson, Thriller (1982)

“As if it wasn’t enough writing one of the greatest pop songs of all time”, Michael Jackson went one step further by pairing it with “one of the most memorable music videos ever recorded”, said Kelly Murphy and Dale Maplethorpe in Far Out Magazine. Essentially this is an entire “horror movie in its own right”, and, of course, it gave the world an “iconic” dance that won’t ever be forgotten.

A-ha, Take On Me (1985)

Steve Barron’s “thoroughly immersive” music video for A-ha’s “Take on Me” expertly mixes live action with hand-drawn animation, while “seamlessly” bringing in each member of the Norwegian pop trio, said Slant Magazine. The story follows a teenage girl who is “literally drawn into a newspaper comic strip and falls heads over heels for its protagonist”. More than four decades on from its release, it remains “one of the most gripping narrative videos of all time” – and a “testament to the power, proficiency and poignancy of the medium itself”.

George Michael, Freedom! ’90 (1990)

Shunning his “image-driven fame”, George Michael refused to appear in any of the music videos for his album “Listen Without Prejudice”, said Slant Magazine. Instead, for this shoot he brought in a “bevy of top models” to lip-synch to his “pointed” lyrics, including Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista and Christy Turlington. David Fincher directed Michael’s defiant video which was intended to mark the Wham! singer’s “artistic rebirth”; by the final credits his famous black leather jacket and guitar have been “ceremoniously burned and destroyed”.

Madonna, Vogue (1990)

“‘Come on, vogue’ – Madonna commands it, and the world listened,” said Rolling Stone. In her third collaboration with David Fincher, the Queen of Pop turned vogueing – an “outlandish” form of dance that originated in Harlem’s queer, underground ballroom scene – into a “refined form of feminist posturing and a statement of sexual defiance”. Madonna has since been accused of cultural appropriation for the track, but “there’s no denying” her “iconic” video propelled ballroom into the mainstream and inspired “countless queer kids to ‘strike a pose’”.

Gorillaz, On Melancholy Hill (2010)

There are “countless” stand-out Gorillaz music videos but “On Melancholy Hill” is the “most poignant”, said Far Out Magazine. This is a “masterclass” in perfectly capturing a song’s atmosphere; it can mean anything you want whether that be a “rumination on loneliness”, “unrequited love”, or a “general feeling of malaise”. The beautifully animated video sees band member Noodle survive a ship sinking and embark on an underwater adventure in a submarine. There’s no “sense of resolution” which means you’ll be drawn back to the video for “another taste of that weird sense of longing”.

Beyoncé, Formation (2016)

This “surprise-released” video for “Formation” cemented Beyoncé’s status as “one of the most important” artists of all time, said Rolling Stone. In it, she moves between a “plantation-style house, where the black denizens are the masters not the slaves, to the top of a sinking police car”. The star teamed up with director Melina Matsoukas to make the video, taking inspiration from the likes of Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou to craft this “striking commentary on significant moments in Black American history”.

Childish Gambino, This is America (2018)

The “gut-punch impact remains no matter how many times” you watch “This is America”, said Rolling Stone. Donald Glover’s “musical alter-ego” Childish Gambino wanders from scene to scene, shimmying his way through “dancing kids, angry cops” and moments of both “social unrest and unfettered black joy”. Bursting with references from “viral dance videos to the 2015 shooting in a Charleston church”, it’s a music video that “launched a thousand think pieces”.

Anish Kapoor’s first major exhibition was at the Hayward Gallery nearly 30 years ago. But his latest, delivered in an age of “minuscule attention spans”, is filled with so many “tricks and surprises you’re likely to drop your phone mid-text into a black hole”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian.

Kapoor’s “mind-warping” piece “Mount Moriah at the Gate of the Ghetto” (2022) is one of the standouts – a mountain hanging upside down from the ceiling, painted in “thick slathers of red and black” and dripping “fire or lava that metamorphoses into wet, fresh blood”. It’s a “metaphysical rollercoaster ride of a show, a divine bloodbath”.

His “Plastic Sacrifice” series exposes “horribly surgical-looking”, synthetic PVC skin. “They resemble a serial killer’s trophy art.” Contrary to the “small, dry efforts” of much modern art, Kapoor “soaks the Hayward in the blood and guts of his unfettered imagination”.

With his “brilliantly gross” sculptures of “gory, vile piles of wet guts”, Kapoor’s message is clear, said Eddy Frankel in The Times. “It doesn’t matter how special you think you are, at the end of the day we’re all just meat”.

His paintings using Vantablack – the most light-absorbent pigment on Earth – are not as successful, however. What are meant to be deep, searching abysses are just “black squares and circles”. These may be “pretty heinous”, but, at its best, Kapoor’s art is “universal, enormous, overwhelming and very, very human”.

The newest intriguing installation, “Ha Makom”, finished earlier this year, could be a “film set, a spaceport, or a remote ancient temple”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Inspired by Uluru, the “sacred sandstone monolith” in Australia, it combines the “pristine” precision of his work, with “intense” colour.

In all, the “beautifully presented” show is “zinging”. If there had been any doubt, “Kapoor silences those who characterise his ambitious aesthetic quest, striving for metaphysical effects, as out of step with our ironic and cynical times”.

Hayward Gallery, London SE1, until 18 October

Two years ago, it was brat summer. This year, for summer 2026, everyone is wrapping themselves in a new trend: whimsy. From dopamine-spiking decor to more childlike, bright clothes, adults are romanticizing the smallest aspects of their lives and fully running with a lighthearted outlook.

Bring on the ‘childlike joy’

The word whimsy and the vibe associated with it are “having a moment,” thanks to Gen Z and millennials who have “recast the word to characterize a lifestyle that blends playfulness, spontaneity and being present,” said The New York Times. Searches on Etsy for “whimsical jewelry,” “whimsical decor” and “whimsy-related items” were each up by at least 50% from last year.

Shoppers use whimsy as a “form of everyday escapism, seeking out pieces that feel personal, playful and a little unexpected to make everyday life more extraordinary,” said Dayna Isom Johnson, Etsy’s trend expert, to the Times. The craze puts an “emphasis on offline activities” that parallels a “movement by young people who are leaving behind smartphones and screens,” the outlet said.

Being whimsical is about “bringing levity to life when you can,” said Business Insider. The trend is flooded with lively colors and playful accessories.

Whimsy is “easier to recognize than to translate," said NSS Magazine. It is not “just an aesthetic” but a “different way of inhabiting one’s days.” For those who relish it, being whimsical means “reconnecting with what as children seemed natural: to be amazed, to invent, to celebrate even the smallest things.”

Chasing authenticity

Whimsy devotees see it as a “response to compounding anxieties over a series of stressors, including a challenging economy, multiple wars and a volatile presidency,” said the Times. No one can control “what our leaders are doing,” but you can control “what kind of mug you’re going to choose, what cute outfit you’re going to wear and what beautiful thing you can do in your morning,” podcaster Liz Plank said to the Times.

In the age of the internet, millennials and Gen Z face a more intense flood of information than ever before. Whimsy offers an escape from the more performative aspects of social media, Nassir Ghaemi, a psychiatry professor, said to the Times. These online experiences have been “going on now long enough” that Generation Z and millennials have figured out that a “lot of these online interactions are inauthentic.”

With how swiftly the trend cycle swerves, the whimsical moment may not last. Gen Z, in particular, has “grown up in a context in which almost everything can be turned into merchandise,” said NSS Magazine. Many trends are “intercepted, packaged and resold as a product,” as has happened in the past with viral terms such as “girl math, girl dinner or demure.” All were “born for fun” but became “tools for overconsumption.”

Still, when whimsy is “understood in its purest, most spontaneous and curious sense,” said NSS Magazine, then it can be read as an “attempt to withdraw from the pressure of constant consumption, choosing to live with more freedom.” A whimsical life can be a “small form of everyday resistance.”

Marjane Satrapi made revolutionary Iran come alive in stark black-and-white images. The Iranian-born writer, artist, and director was best known worldwide as the creator of Persepolis, the groundbreaking graphic novel describing her childhood experiences of the Islamic fundamentalist 1979 revolution that ripped away women’s rights and led to the horrors of the Iran-Iraq War. Published in four parts, from 2000 to 2003, Persepolis sold millions of copies, and Satrapi’s 2007 film adaptation received an Oscar nomination and the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Satrapi said her goal was not just to protest the regime but also to humanize a people stereotyped as either terrorists or veiled, silenced women. “If these people scare you, look closer,” she said in 2007. “They have parents, they have lovers, they have hope, they have stories.”

“Satrapi was a born troublemaker,” said The Nation, just like the rest of her family. Descendants of a prince who became a communist, the Satrapis “opposed both the dictatorship of the shah and the theocracy that was established by the 1979 revolution.” At school, Satrapi “talked back,” wore what she liked, and hoarded tapes of rock music. When she was 14, her parents sent her to boarding school in Vienna for her safety, but she was lonely there, bouncing from dorm to dorm and even living on the streets a few months. After an illness, she returned to Iran, had a brief marriage to a war veteran, and earned a master’s degree in art. It was when she moved to France for further studies in 1994 that she finally “found her artistic voice,” said The Hollywood Reporter, as well as her longtime husband, Swedish actor Mattias Ripa. She followed Persepolis with Chicken With Plums, an illustrated story and film based on a musician relative. She then directed several more movies, including the 2019 Marie Curie biopic Radioactive, starring Rosamund Pike.

Yet her masterwork remained Persepolis, the story of the “gradual suffocation of a society,” said Le Monde (France), and of the lifelong depression that drove her to suicide attempts. Her family said she died “of sadness” a year after Ripa’s death from cancer. In her last book, she explored the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran, which started in 2022 after a woman arrested for improper hijab died in custody. “Human nature,” she said, “is made for freedom.”

Really savvy travellers know that second cities are the ones we should all be flocking to: the overlooked ones, the quieter ones, the underestimated ones that have so much to offer.

Brno must be the epitome of this. Bursting with character, beauty and culture, it may be the Czech Republic’s second city, but it’s by no means second rate. In fact, having spent a considerable amount of time here, I would argue that it’s the perfect place to explore Czech culture away from the crowds.

Things to do

I’m always an advocate of just walking around to get to know a place, and here is no exception. Take in the varied architecture, as well as the Vegetable Market, Brno Dragon, Capuchin Monastery, Freedom Square, and bizarre Astronomical Clock as you explore.

The Brno Pass is a convenient way to see as much as you can in the city, and great value too. Use it to visit some of the city’s biggest sights, such as the imposing Cathedral of St Peter and Paul and the Old Town Hall, which dates from 1240.

The pass also gives you entry to Špilberk Castle, probably the most identifiable sight in all of Brno. This 750-year-old castle tops a hill of the same name, and can be seen from most of the city. The complex houses several museums, with art and artefacts explaining the region’s history. The park and walls have wonderful views, so take a seat and relax.

From here you will see just how many spires Brno has; there are dozens of churches. The Church of St James, however, should be on your list. Founded in the 13th century, its angelically white interior feels peaceful and serene but climb up into the roof space and you will find a fascinating light show.

Architecture buffs may also be surprised to learn that Brno is home to one of modernist designer Mies van der Rohe’s masterpieces, the Unesco-listed Villa Tugendhat. Built in 1930 for textile company owners Greta and Fritz Tugendhat, it was a sensation when finished, and still impresses today.

One of the newest attractions are the Water Tanks under Žluty Kopec, a complex of three cisterns built between 1874 and 1917. They are vast, cathedral-like, and truly astonishing examples of industrial engineering. Enjoy the art show and peculiar acoustics.

Subterranean tourism seems to be a big thing here. Head underground to the Labyrinth under the Vegetable Market to learn more about how the city grew. There’s also the Second World War air-raid shelter, 10-Z bunker, and the Ossuary at the church of St James, which is the second largest in Europe after Paris’ Catacombs and houses the remains of 50,000 people.

Get out of the city and head to the Brno Reservoir, a 259-hectare man-made lake that’s just a short hop on the tram away. It’s probably best enjoyed in the summer, when you can swim and take boat trips across to Veveří Castle. Also, check out the nearby Brno Zoo and the Brno Dam, built in the 1930s. On its shore is the Infinit Maximus Resort Spa, home to heated outdoor pools, hot tubs and a sauna complex.

Eating and drinking

At the elegant Pavillon Steak House, in Park Koliště near the National Theatre, service is smooth, and the food is hearty and delicious, yet still refined. The steak selection is a fantastic treat for two.

The Czech Republic has a large Vietnamese population, and the food is some of the best this far west of Hanoi. Try Bonjour Vietnam for a big bowl of aromatic pho, or refreshing summer rolls.

Castellana Trattoria is one of those family Italians that’s become a local favourite. We couldn’t spot another tourist, which has to be a good sign. Expect steaming mounds of pasta, as well as charcuterie boards of hand-sliced prosciutto.

For casual eats go to Bistro Bastardo, a Mexican burrito spot that always had a queue outside, as well as Úvozna, a burger joint near the Water Tanks, or Zaza for puffy sourdough pizzas.

You’ll find a daily menu, a lunch deal that’s usually great value, almost everywhere. At Nepalese restaurant Pokhara we got soup plus a thali of three curries, rice and naan for around £7.

Lokál u Caipla is the place for traditional food and unmissable Czech pilsners, or you can try U Třech Čertů in the city centre. If you’re looking for a drink, head to t’PUUB for craft beers, Café Trojka for student vibes, Super Panda Circus for cocktails, Výčep na Stojáka for its suntrap, Monogram for coffee, and Klára Bára Wine Cafe for wine. The cosy Pivnice U Poutníka and Poslední leč both feel like real locals’ places.

Where to stay

The Grandhotel Brno is a great spot to rest your head. Situated across from both the railway and bus stations, it’s not far to take your bags, and almost everything on this list is walkable. The beds are large and comfy, and the rooms have plenty of space for chilling out after a long day. The breakfast features local delicacies such as poppyseed cake, as well as meats, hot bites and even sparkling wine for those special occasions.

Jaymi McCann was a guest of Go To Brno

There’s a “surging interest” in apes, said Euronews. Nature documentaries like David Attenborough’s “A Gorilla Story”, which revisits the gorilla family he first filmed in 1978, are inspiring tourists to book gorilla-trekking holidays in Rwanda, Uganda and the Republic of Congo.

But tracking these beautiful creatures in their natural habitat isn’t easy: it’s physically strenuous, and permits are strictly limited, to protect the endangered animals.

Rwanda has 14 mountain gorilla families that have been carefully habituated to human observers and “can be visited by up to eight tourists for one hour daily”, said Lizzie Frainier in The Times. I travelled to the foothills of Mount Karisimbi in Volcanoes National Park to meet a family group of 14. Watching a baby gorilla running around in a “ferny glen” and frolicking into the “dense brush” was “magical”. I’ve had my fair share of wildlife experiences as a travel editor but none has compared to this.

This kind of “low-volume, high-value tourism” is pricey: a day’s trek costs over £1,000, with proceeds going towards anti-poaching initiatives and community development. Accommodation ranges from basic guesthouses to “ultra-luxe boutique hotels”. If you really want to push the boat out, check in at Wilderness Bisate Reserve, which has “epic misty 360-degree views and four palatial suites”.

On my trek through Uganda’s Bwindi National Park, the forest suddenly becomes “alive” with mountain gorillas, said Olivia Singer in Vogue. On my five-day trip with Abercrombie & Kent, I spot “two gargantuan silverbacks and a baby”; they “meander around us” for an hour “as they go about their business”. It is, I decide at once, “the best day of my life”.

Each night, we rested our heads in Gorilla Forest Lodge’s “remarkably lovely cabin suites”. Gorgeously decorated with “locally crafted furnishings”, each room features a “bathtub so vast, it could easily accommodate a silverback”.

“Tropical fruit and chilli sauce” is a tried-and-tested flavour combination that “works”, said Lucy Knight in The Guardian. The zingy mix of fruity and spicy – “fricy” – flavours has been around in South American cuisine for years. Now, though, it’s being tipped as the food trend of the summer here, with “more fresh, spicy, exciting flavour combinations” appearing on UK menus.

‘Fricy’ may sound like a “silly word” but the demand is real, Holly Thomson, food editor at online food retailer Sous Chef, told the paper. The website has seen a 19% year-on-year increase in sales of the “hero product” of the trend: a Mexican lime, salt and chilli spice blend called Tajín.

“The hashtag #fricy hasn’t quite gone viral” yet, said BBC Bitesize, but there are “plenty” of posts celebrating the flavour combination. The Mexican drink mangonada, more traditionally known as chamoynada, a mix of mango with chamoy, a condiment made from pickled, spiced fruit, has “more than 47k TikTok posts with people trying the fricy taste for themselves”. Spicy fruit bowls that mix “fruit such as pineapple and mango covered in spices like chilli” are also having a moment.

Food trends usually rely on “emotional pull” and “visual appeal”. Just as the “striking purple” hue is responsible for the rise of ube, or purple yam, the “vivid yellows, oranges, reds and browns” of the mangonada makes people “curious” to taste it.

The mangonada has lured many customers into Mango Twist, a London café founded by Peru-born Dominic Vargas, which sells its own version of the drink. The “tangy, spicy, sweet, salty” combination is “something you wouldn’t find in the UK that easily”, Vargas told The Guardian.

But this isn’t the first trend marrying the sweet and savoury. People have been “endlessly seeking umami” flavours in their food, Marks & Spencer food trends lead Annette Peters told The Times. She added that this explained the increasing demand for miso-infused desserts because the “balance of sweet and savoury gives you such a depth of flavour”. As long as the dish doesn’t “tip into cloyingly sweet”, the pairing can be “delicious”.

There are luxury resorts that strive to feel like homes, and then there are homes that accidentally become luxury resorts. The Seed Bali sits firmly in the latter category.

Set on Bali’s less frenetic east coast in Candidasa, The Seed began life not as a commercial hotel but as a private sanctuary: an extravagant, deeply considered coastal estate built as somewhere to retreat with friends and family. Only later was it opened up as an exclusive-use resort. That origin story matters because it explains almost everything about the place. The Seed does not offer luxury in the polished, corporate sense. Instead, it feels like borrowing the sprawling tropical compound of your wealthiest, most tasteful friend – the sort of person who casually happens to own a treehouse, an underground karaoke bar and a five-metre diving platform.

Arriving here, you immediately notice how personal it all feels. The villas are filled with books, instruments, games, curios and thoughtful details that suggest actual living rather than generic hospitality design. You are not simply assigned a room, you are temporarily entrusted with the care of an extraordinary beachfront home.

Why stay here?

Most luxury resorts in Bali divide guests into different areas: your villa, your pool, the restaurant, the bar. The Seed does the opposite. The entire estate is yours alone. This means there are never any strangers drifting past your breakfast table or competing for loungers. And it means no awkward encounters with someone else’s screaming children while you are attempting serenity beside the pool (just your own screaming children if, like us, you brought them along for the high-end ride of their little lives).

Instead, what you get is 6,400 square metres of private beachfront escapism spread across multiple villas and communal spaces, all stitched together by jungle paths, koi ponds, cascading pools and hidden corners.

What is perhaps most impressive is how relaxed it all feels despite the obvious expense involved. There is no trace of stiffness or pretension and even though the staff hugely outnumber the guests, somehow they manage to remain almost invisible unless summoned. At one point our children collectively decided, in the way children do, that they desperately needed pancakes in the middle of the afternoon. Minutes later the pancakes appeared without fuss and doused in sugar syrup (which made them an instant hit). Perhaps some people might prefer the alternative: perpetually attentive service, but for those looking for genuine privacy, a largely invisible staff is a real pleasure.

The accommodation itself borders on absurdly indulgent. Choosing where to sleep becomes almost a competitive sport among your group. The Treehouse is exactly as magical as it sounds: a two-storey treetop hideaway with open-air decks, elevated reading nooks in the high branches and an outdoor rain shower beneath the sky. The Rabbit Hole is more playful, with its games room, pool table, ping pong and private bar, seemingly designed for long nights and bad decisions. Villa Eywa may be the architectural showstopper though: split accommodation connected by an elegant deck suspended above water so that you can literally swim beneath your own living room. It even has its own private waterfall which, delightfully, you can switch off if the sound becomes too much at night.

Several villas also include fully equipped kitchens and bars, meaning you can easily entertain yourselves if desired. If part of your group wants to keep drinking and talking into the early hours while others retreat to bed, there are enough private spaces to allow both.

And then there are the outdoor bathrooms. Many spots in Bali do these well, but The Seed fully embraces the pleasure of showering beneath open skies while warm evening air drifts through tropical greenery.

Eating and drinking

The Seed’s dining impressively manages a difficult balancing act: variety and tastiness without too much fussiness. Meals are served either communally around big tables or more casually wherever you happen to be lounging at the time.

The menu moves between Indonesian and Western influences. Particularly memorable were the chicken satay skewers, which were adapted for us to avoid peanuts due to an allergy. Ironically this made them arguably more historically authentic than the peanut-heavy versions now associated with satay after Portuguese and Spanish traders introduced peanuts from South America into Southeast Asia several centuries after their invention. Regardless of historical accuracy, they were excellent: smoky, light and savoury.

Equally strong were delicate fish dumplings resembling oversized tortellini, served beneath a bright curry sauce. Desserts leaned tropical. The pandan cakes were feather-light yet buttery, balanced neatly by sharp passionfruit sorbet. Of course, some travellers might want more undilutedly local cuisine, while others may prefer to have steaks and burgers all the way. For us it felt like the mix was pitched well – and in any case the kitchen will adapt to your preferences.

There is also a very well-stocked bar featuring genuinely top-shelf spirits rather than the usual resort approximations. Cocktails are excellent and dangerously drinkable. Our favourite was the coco margarita, best consumed while sitting outdoors beneath stars and watching the flickering lights of nearby Nusa Penida and Lombok on the horizon.

Things to do

The danger at The Seed is that you never actually leave it. Much of the pleasure comes simply from exploring the estate itself. There are hidden pathways, jungle gyms, koi ponds and lounging spaces that reveal themselves gradually over the course of your stay.

The pool alone could occupy several days, and did so in our case. Beautifully landscaped, it shifts from shallow lounging areas suitable for children into deeper sections for proper swimming. Then, in the middle, comes the genuinely unexpected feature: a deep plunge pool beneath a five-metre diving platform.

There is also an outdoor cinema positioned beside the ocean. One evening we watched the Richard Curtis animated Christmas film “That Christmas”, which felt wonderfully surreal in 25-degree Balinese heat. Still, sprawled outdoors with popcorn arriving for both children and adults, it became one of those oddly perfect holiday memories.

Should your group be more nocturnal, The Seed has perhaps the most elaborate after-hours set-up imaginable. Beneath one of the villas lies a soundproof underground entertainment space containing a bar, cinema, karaoke kit and fully equipped music room complete with guitars, piano, drums, microphones, amplifiers and an excellent sound system. It is the sort of room that begins innocently with “just one drink” before someone ends up attempting Led Zeppelin covers at 2am.

For those seeking virtue before inevitable vice, there is also a deck that is perfect for yoga, as well as a sauna and cold plunge, dug next to the pool with a little viewing window for friends to wave to you as they swim past. The gym is a spectacle in its own right: a seemingly Fred Flintstone-inspired jungle hideaway with barbells made of tree trunks and resistance baskets that you fill with heavy rocks.

The verdict

The Seed feels less like a hotel and more like gaining temporary access to a private world that could, by rights, have remained private. Children are well catered for, adults can oscillate between wellness and mild debauchery, and the sheer variety of spaces means groups can coexist without being on top of one another.

It is no great surprise that The Seed has been nominated in this year's Condé Nast Traveller Awards in the Readers’ Choice category. On Bali’s increasingly crowded luxury landscape, it offers something entirely distinctive: privacy, personality and the rare feeling that you are not staying in a resort at all, but in someone’s really rather wonderful home.

Arion was a guest of The Seed, Bali; the eight-bedroom estate sleeps up to 21 guests

A “sprawling” estuarine reserve in the eastern Indian state of Odisha, the Bhitarkanika National Park is home to the country’s second-largest mangrove forest and no fewer than 1,825 saltwater crocodiles (the world’s largest reptile).

I explored it on one of the four luxury catamarans – each with just two “teak-floored” guest suites – that were introduced here last year by Delhi-based Antara Cruises, said Sneha Thomas in DestinAsian. The meals served on board were good (including some terrific local dishes).

We went on guided walks and motorboat trips deep into the “dense” forest, and also visited a village on the park’s fringes. Conservation efforts have brought the park’s crocodiles back from the brink of extinction, but there is much other wildlife to see, including spotted deer, fishing cats, cobras and more than 200 bird species.

A three-day cruise costs from £790 per person (antaracruises.com).

The Blytonesque charm of St Martin’s

Of the five inhabited Scilly Isles, none is more enchanting than St Martin’s, said Paul Miles in The Telegraph. Situated in the north of the archipelago, it is a “Famous Five” sort of place that has barely changed since the 1950s. Home to just 140 people, it lacks the “upmarket” shops and holiday lets of Tresco (more popular with “well-heeled” tourists). But it has seductive beaches of “almost-white” sand, lovely walking paths, and with the island’s mild climate, it “feels like a garden”, peppered with exotic species such as “tall” echiums and blue-and-white agapanthus. It’s worth hiring a kayak to visit the uninhabited islands nearby, and dropping in at the community observatory, with its two telescopes: on clear nights, the skies here are “tar-black” and full of stars.

A wild mountain railway in France

Climbing from Nice into the Alpes-Azur mountains, the aptly named Train des Merveilles (Train of Wonders) plies one of Europe’s most “spectacular” railways, said Annabelle Thorpe in The Guardian. Built between 1883 and 1929, it reopened in December following a year-long, €73 million (£63 million) renovation. The line crosses more than 100 bridges and viaducts, climbing 1,000 metres in 100km on its way to Tende, a town set amid the “jagged” peaks of the Mercantour National Park. The landscape is so wild and the little medieval towns along the way so unspoiled that the two-hour journey seems to take you back in time. Make a day of it if you can, and stop at Sospel, with its 13th-century bridge and “crumbling” baroque churches, and La Brigue, to see the huge and “vivid” 15th-century frescoes by Giovanni Canavesio in the Chapel of our Lady of Fountains, two miles outside town.

Just south of Alice Springs, in the dead centre of Australia, the MacDonnell Ranges rise from the desert plains like creases on a tablecloth. With peaks up to 1,531 metres and cut through by deep gorges, these mountains are wild and spectacular, said Oliver Smith in the Financial Times.

For the region’s Aboriginal inhabitants – the Arrernte people – the place “brims with stories, sanctity and secrets”. Winding through their western half for 220km is one of the greatest hiking paths in the outback, the Larapinta Trail. Even a single day’s walking on it is a “serious undertaking”, with water available only at 13 trailheads along the way (each accessible by 4WD), and food at three (through-hikers must arrange additional drops). But for lovers of remote places and untamed nature, the effort is well worth it.

I walked sections of the trail early in the season (which runs from April to October), when the landscape was at its greenest after the summer rains. Waterholes “sparkled” and “desert oaks cast shade over wildflowers”.

My guide was Anna Dakin, a British artist who has been leading hikes here since 2018 through Art Tours of Australia. She admires the work of the celebrated watercolourist Albert Namatjira (1902-1959), a local Arrernte man whose old house (now in a “sorry state”) we visited. Anna and I set up base camp by the Finke (believed to be the world’s oldest river), where we slept in swags (canvas bivvy bags) beside a campfire, and made day trips by 4WD to different trailheads, walking about 15km a day.

We were roused each morning by a “dawn chorus of butcherbirds and willie wagtails”. In the early light, the “terracotta” landscape was “flecked with subtle colours”, from the “silver-green spinifex” to the “red-and-blue mallee trees”. It was yet lovelier at sunset, and our walks took us to wondrous places, including the Standley Chasm – a “pocket paradise” like a cathedral nave, where cycads and lemongrass grow between towering sandstone walls.

This lovely summer dish is one to prepare if you – or someone you know – has a glut of courgettes, said Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. But it also brings out the best in shop-bought courgettes. It only takes about half an hour or so, and contains lots of fibre and other nutrients. Perfect for a weekday lunch, or as a simple dinner-party starter.

Ingredients (serves 2)

• 2 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, sliced
• 2 firm, medium courgettes (about 350g total weight)
• 1 garlic clove, slivered
• 2 tsp baby capers or chopped larger capers
• 2 tsp finely chopped preserved lemon, or finely grated zest of ½ a lemon
• 400g tin cannellini beans, drained with 1-2 tbsp liquid saved (or from a jar, about 240g drained weight)
• 2 large slices of wholegrain bread
• sea salt and black pepper

To finish:

• a squeeze of lemon juice
• extra-virgin olive oil, to trickle
• a small handful of parsley, chopped (optional)

Method

• Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan (ideally at least 28cm) over a medium heat. Add the onion, season with salt and pepper and fry, stirring regularly, for about 10 minutes, until soft and golden. In the meantime, slice the courgettes about 5mm thick.
• Add the courgettes to the pan and fry for 10-15 minutes, until they are softening and colouring in places, turning up the heat a little if you need to.
• Toss in the garlic, capers and preserved lemon or lemon zest and cook, stirring now and then, for a minute or two.
• Now add the beans with the saved liquid (a nice way to lubricate them a little). Stir well, then put the lid on the pan and cook gently for a few minutes to heat the beans through. Taste to check the seasoning and add more salt and/or pepper if needed.
• Meanwhile, toast the slices of bread.
• Pile the bean and courgette mixture onto the hot toast. Spritz with lemon juice, trickle with extra-virgin olive oil and scatter with chopped parsley, if you like. Serve straight away.
• Tip: you can switch in any tinned beans or chickpeas here. You can also use frozen edamame beans: put them into a pan, cover with boiling water and simmer until tender while you cook the onions and courgettes; drain and add at the end.
• Tip: for a crunchy finish, toast 2 tbsp pumpkin and/or sunflower seeds in a dry pan before cooking anything else; set aside. Scatter over the courgettes before serving.

Taken from “High Fibre Heroes” by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

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Though caffeine remains the world’s most widely consumed drug, some people are turning to a smaller dosage to achieve their morning kick. A slew of lower-caffeine drinks are hitting the market as consumers look for ways to shake the negative effects of caffeine, while still having their daily cup of coffee.

‘Experimenting with a new range of options’

Even as millions of Americans consume mass quantities of caffeinated drinks, some question their caffeine intake. Many started “experimenting with a new range of options beyond the traditional cup of hot java, paying heed to caffeine’s impact on their sleep, mood and energy level,” said Bloomberg. Some people still consume multiple caffeinated drinks per day, but others are “becoming more cognizant of ‘energy management’ in their beverage choices,” Daniel Jhung, the president of the coffee and beverage division of Nestlé USA, told Bloomberg.

Many of the options are changing to accommodate shifting preferences. Younger consumers have begun to “embrace cold, canned beverages over hot coffee,” said Bloomberg. The change is not only evident in “rapid growth of energy drinks but also in less-supercharged options.” Sales of ready-to-drink, low-caffeinated bottles of coffee and tea were “up almost 15% in the 52 weeks ending March 22” of this year, while “sales of coffee beans and cocoa fell nearly 10%,” according to data from market research group Spins cited by Bloomberg.

A number of companies are also moving toward this trend. Panera Bread began “rolling out a new line of lightly caffeinated drinks,” said Business Insider, which comes about two years after the company’s discontinued, ultra-caffeinated Charged Lemonade was “linked to two deaths and multiple lawsuits.” While the Charged Lemonade had about 260 milligrams of caffeine, or the equivalent of three Red Bull cans, Panera’s lighter caffeinated drinks “contain about as much caffeine as a can of soda.” There has also been a resurgence in sales of Coca-Cola Zero Zero, which has no sugar or caffeine, said Bloomberg.

‘There are also some concerns about excessive consumption’

Many doctors seem to be happy that caffeine is trending the way it is due to potential health issues. Caffeine can “have positive effects on alertness, cognitive function and athletic function,” but there are also “concerns about excessive consumption and potential health risks,” said the American Medical Association (AMA). “One of the things that people don't realize is, if you think of it as a medicine, then the best way to use it is in small, frequent doses,” Dr. Shannon Kilgore, a neurologist, told the AMA.

Most people, despite the shifting tides, are consuming too much caffeine, which could have negative health effects. About 85% of adults “consume 135 milligrams of caffeine daily in the U.S.,” approximately “equivalent to 12 ounces of coffee, which is the most common source of caffeine for adults,” said the AMA. While drinking up to three cups of coffee per day “can reduce dementia risk and slow cognitive decline,” according to a recent JAMA study, even that would still be over the recommended daily dosage of caffeine.

The shift toward low-caffeine is because “health and wellness trends have persuaded many consumers to scrutinize ingredients more closely, with many trying to cut back on artificial dyes, added sugar, processed food and, in some cases, caffeine,” said Bloomberg. The anxiety of Jeremy Clark, an engineering professor in Montreal, has declined “almost to negligible levels” since he cut back on caffeine, Clark told Bloomberg. “So I think it was worth it.”

Cupra has carved a niche for itself as VW’s “fun, sporty brand”, but this could be “its ticket to the mainstream”, said Car Magazine.

The Raval is based on VW’s new MEB+ platform, with six trims and four motors to choose from. The entry-level Origin has a 114bhp electric motor and 37kWh battery with just 50kW DC charging. The flagship 222bhp VZ extreme hot hatch is “a stonker of a small electric car” with a 52kWh battery.

The “mature” VZ is “a blast to drive”; thanks to a “hefty punch of power”, it can get from 0-62mph in 6.8secs, said Autocar. With adaptive dampers and electronic front locking differential, it feels “properly engaging”, giving a taut, well-damped ride with “huge grip”. The brakes have an initial bite, but are satisfyingly firm. It may be “a bit lively” on UK urban roads, but it’s a great, playful, “surprisingly tactile little electric hot hatch”.

Cupra’s “spicy-little-tearaway” is surprisingly practical too, with a 441-litre boot, roughly 60 litres more than the VW Golf, said Top Gear Magazine. The “interesting” interior is “not gimmicky”. There’s a 10.25in driver’s display and a “responsive” 12.9in touchscreen. The VZ extreme gets “lovely”, comfy, “knitted” Cup bucket seats. With decent kit as standard, the Raval is “a solid little entrant to the market”.

Britain’s landscape has long been “a source of inspiration for artists”, whether the countryside, the coastline or the sprawl of “growing towns and cities”, said Tara Joshi in The Observer. This new exhibition at Pallant House records the various ways in which painters, printmakers and sculptors have captured the “sense and spirit of place” in our surroundings.

Bringing together works by more than 60 artists, it takes in much more than pictures of “pretty rolling hills”, instead encompassing “stories of labour, memory and myth”, and styles from romanticism to surrealism to pure abstraction.

As is often the case at Pallant House, it focuses on artists who espoused a particularly British form of modernism – Graham Sutherland, Eric Ravilious and Paul Nash are all present. Scenes of pastoral tranquillity clash with visions of “monstrous trees”, “almost flesh-like” terrain and “landscapes that seem post-apocalyptic”.

The show begins with the 18th-century “picturesque” movement and the Golden Age of the English watercolour, said Laura Freeman in The Times, featuring artists such as William Gilpin, John Sell Cotman and J.M.W. Turner. The real focus, however, is on the 20th century. Its first decade saw artists such as Wyndham Lewis and Edward Wadsworth revering the machine as an engine of progress; landscape painting seemed a “quaint” pursuit.

Yet following the industrial slaughter of the First World War, painters discovered “a new impulse to cherish” an environment beyond the cities. Paul Nash, recovering from the Western Front, painted ancient sites such as Avebury in Wiltshire and the Wittenham Clumps in Oxfordshire. Edward Bawden designed wallpaper mimicking the patterning of the fields. A new boom in motor touring led to illustrated guide books for Shell, employing many of these artists.

In this “gently elegiac show, rapture and sadness go hand in hand”. The growth of new developments is a recurring theme: Ravilious depicted a new bungalow beside a red-brick school.

There are a fair few “second-rate exhibits”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Many British modernists were mediocre, ripping off “stronger talents”, deploying an ugly palette or fetishising rural customs to the point of sentimentality. The best work, by contrast, has an “idiosyncratic poetry”, finding “strangeness in the familiar”.

There’s a “first-rate” Ravilious watercolour of the Cerne Abbas Giant, turfed over so as not to offer the Luftwaffe a navigational landmark; it’s hidden behind a barbed-wire fence, “as if Britain’s primeval id had been cordoned off”.

Other highlights include five panoramic semi-abstract paintings by Ivon Hitchens and a “vast” vision of the Thames Estuary by Michael Andrews, painted shortly before his death in 1995. It’s “otherworldly”, like a depiction of the hereafter. It makes for a fine ending to this uneven, but interesting show.

Pallant House Gallery, Chichester, W Sussex. Until 1 November

County Durham: Broomshields Hall, Satley

An exceptional Grade II Georgian home in the Durham Dales, set within approx. 6 acres of landscaped, south-facing gardens and approx. 12 acres of woodland. Main suite, 3 further beds (2 en suite), family bath, kitchen/dining room, 3 receps, 1-bed self-contained cottage, garage. £1.75 million; Finest Properties.

Wiltshire: Combe House, Castle Combe

This handsome honey-coloured stone house sits in approx. 3.9 acres with well-tended formal lawns bordered by sculpted hedging and terraces. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, outbuilding, parking. £1.65 million; Knight Frank.

Aberdeenshire: Auchinclech, Queenie Brae

A striking art deco house in a peaceful rural setting, perched above well- maintained gardens, on the edge of the Cairngorms National Park. 5 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, outbuildings, garage. OIEO £450,000; Galbraith.

Kent: Wierton Hall Farm Cottage, Boughton Monchelsea

Fabulous Grade II farmhouse set in over two acres of gardens, including a mixed fruit orchard and a productive vegetable garden. 4 beds, 4 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, studio, garage. £1.225 million; The Modern House.

Norfolk: Hunworth, Melton Constable

A characterful Grade II* millhouse in a magical setting on the River Glaven. The gardens have been remodelled by the Chelsea award- winning garden designer Arne Maynard. 5 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, sun room, 1-bed self-contained cottage, outbuildings, garage. £2.9 million; Savills.

Gloucestershire: The Malt House, Beach

This elegant Grade II Georgian house is surrounded on three sides by beautifully landscaped gardens featuring clipped box parterres. Main suite, 4 further beds (1 en suite), 2 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, 1-bed self-contained annexe, garage. £2.35 million; Knight Frank.

Cumbria: Farlam Ghyll, Farlam, Brampton

A fine former vicarage set within gloriously landscaped grounds of approx. 1.25 acres. 5 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/dining room, 4 receps, outbuildings, garage. £1.45 million; Finest Properties.

Devon: Bridgend House, Noss Mayo

Eye-catching Georgian house ensconced in well-stocked and maintained mature gardens of approx. 5.5 acres. 5 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 4 receps, heated swimming pool, paddocks, woodland, stable, garage. £2.25m; Marchand Petit.

Summers are the perfect time to explore, and that includes at museums. These new exhibitions — an examination of American Pop Art, a closer look at the scandalous painting that rocked early 20th-century France and an immersive celebration of Yoko Ono — are all worth the trek.

‘Guggenheim Pop: 1960 to Now,’ Guggenheim New York

The evolution of American Pop Art is explored in this exhibition of 29 pioneering and contemporary artists, like Maurizio Cattelan, Yayoi Kusama, Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol. A “reaction to the consumerism” that infiltrated the U.S. post-World War II, American Pop Art “elevates everyday objects” like soup cans to the “status of art,” often with an “irreverent sense of humor,” said Artsy. By placing historic works alongside recent acquisitions by current artists, the Guggenheim aims to demonstrate how the art form, “as a strategy, continues to inspire, provoke and evolve,” said Lauren Hinkson, the museum’s curator of collections. (through Jan. 10, 2027)

‘Hew Locke: Passages,’ The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Using “found materials and iconic imagery,” Guyanese British artist Hew Locke creates “theatrical tableaux” that speak on “iconographies of empire, history and collective memory,” said The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “Hew Locke: Passages” is an impressive — and comprehensive — look at his work, from the 1990s to today. More than 40 collages, sculptures and assemblages will be displayed, including “Infanta,” Locke’s “richly detailed” charcoal drawings, and his reimagined royal coats of arms. (June 21-Sept. 13)

‘Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal,” San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

When Henri Matisse debuted “Femme au chapeau (Woman with a Hat)” in 1905, it was a “clanging bell” that announced the “split between Postimpressionism and Fauvism,” the French avant-garde art movement, said Galerie. This portrait of his wife, Amélie, with a “greenish face” and “crazily bright, abstracted hat,” was like nothing ever seen before, and stunned the art world. “Matisse’s Femme au chapeau: A Modern Scandal” tells the “full story” of how the painting changed the rules and showcases works by the other artists who appeared in the 1905 Salon d’Automne in Paris. (through Sept. 13, 2026)

‘Saodat Ismailova: Melted into the Sun,’ Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, D.C.

Through her videos and photographs, Uzbek artist and filmmaker Saodat Ismailova “immerses” viewers in the “expansive landscapes, layered histories and cultural memory” of Central Asia, said the National Museum of Asian Art. “Melted into the Sun” is Ismailova’s first major solo museum exhibition in the United States, and her work will be presented alongside historical objects in the museum’s collection. Highlights include “The Letters,” photographic prints based on portraits of Ismailova’s family, and “Her Right,” a short film about “sacrifices made for the freedom of contemporary Uzbek women” that will be projected on horsehair. (June 13-Nov. 29, 2026)

‘Willem de Kooning Drawing,’ The Art Institute of Chicago

Famous for his “frenetic, abstract canvases,” Willem de Kooning was also an “exceptional draftsman” who got his start “copying from casts and antiquities like the Old Masters before him,” said Artnet. More than 200 of his drawings will be shown during “Willem de Kooning Drawing,” from the iconic “Excavation” and “Woman I” to pieces that have never before been seen in public. Some of the most fascinating works in the exhibition were completed during the 1960s, when de Kooning would create “obstacles to his long-honed skill,” like drawing with his non-dominant hand or while blindfolded. (June 14-Sept. 20, 2026)

‘Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind,’ The Broad, Los Angeles

A “cultural reframing” of Yoko Ono’s legacy is underway, and instead of being seen as the “woman who broke up the Beatles,” she is now “widely understood” to be one of the “foundational figures of conceptual and performance art,” said Vogue. “Music of the Mind” features works that “underscore” this, like “Freedom,” a 1970 film addressing women’s liberation, and original typed pages of her 1964 book, “Grapefruit.” Visitors can also directly participate in Ono’s work, with opportunities to hammer a nail into a canvas or tie a wish to a tree outside in the Broad’s plaza. (through Oct. 11, 2026)

Having had previous summer hits with revivals of “Anything Goes” and “Kiss Me, Kate”, the Barbican has returned with another “Cole Porter crowdpleaser”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph.

“High Society” – based on the 1956 musical film, but with a reworked script and extra musical numbers – doesn’t have quite the “giddy abandon” of “Anything Goes”, which provided a wonderful post-pandemic balm in 2021. But Rachel Kavanaugh’s production – which will soon be touring – is, even so, an “eminently welcome, frothy antidote to fretful times”, stuffed as it is with star turns, fabulous costumes, stylish choreography and “witty, imperishable songs” – including “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, “I Love Paris”, “Let’s Misbehave” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”.

It’s “dazzling”, said Clive Davis in The Times. Audiences who enjoyed the last revivals will not be disappointed. “High Society” (which was adapted from “The Philadelphia Story”) is a “portrait of the moneyed set misbehaving” at the wedding of heiress Tracy Lord, and it amounts here to a “gorgeously glamorous” piece of escapism. This is surely the “show of the summer”.

It is blessed by some fine performances, from Helen George, Freddie Fox, Felicity Kendal and others, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. But I wish the evening had a bit more bite. “The sarcasm could be sharper; the desire more intense; the atmosphere more febrile.” We get “fabulous frocks” and “tasty treats – but the fizz is a bit flat”.

“Call the Midwife” star George brings “pert, barefoot verve and a powerful set of pipes” to the lead role of Tracy, said Nick Curtis in The Standard. Some of the show’s male stars, however, are a bit colourless; and the performances overall are somewhat “arch”.

No one expects much plot or profundity from a Cole Porter musical, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian. But the lacklustre chemistry between the central trio “and a lack of full-bodied characters as a whole” make the evening feel like a “mechanical carousel of set pieces”. The staging is fabulous, musically and visually – but it “forgets the importance of story, character, emotion”. For true theatrical bliss, we need that too.

Barbican, London EC2, until 11 July; touring until 14 November; highsocietymusical.com

Russell T. Davies’ portrait of gay life in and around Manchester’s Canal Street in his 1990s drama “Queer as Folk” was, to use one of his favourite phrases, “a hoot”, said Ben Dowell in The Times: a joyful celebration of newfound freedoms. “How differently he sees it now.”

“Tip Toe”, Davies’ new Channel 4 series, begins with the lifeless body of Leo, the owner of a Canal Street bar played by Alan Cumming, swinging from a lamppost outside his house; his neighbour Clive (David Morrissey) stands beneath him. Then the story flashes back to 10 days earlier, to see how we got there. This is crusading, state-of-the-nation TV, and it can be unsubtle. “But when Davies steps down from his pulpit and lets his characters breathe, his story-telling is visionary” and “devastating”.

Yes, “Tip Toe” really is quite unsubtle, said Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. In the first episode, every possible culture-war issue is name-checked: transgender rights, pronouns, refugees, Brexit. We learn that Clive, a bigoted electrician, is “a workplace bully and a Leave voter”. It doesn’t matter where you stand on these issues; the show often feels “like agitprop, not art”. Fortunately, Davies is “too good and instinctive a storyteller” to bang the drum indefinitely, and in time he settles into his groove.

“‘Tip Toe’ certainly doesn’t tiptoe in,” said Benji Wilson in The Telegraph. “It wades in swinging, echoing its writer’s alarm at what he sees happening to the country.” This drama takes “wrong turns” but it is never less than “deeply stirring. TV polemic is back, loud and proud.”

Keith Jarrett’s “The Köln Concert” is not only the bestselling jazz solo album of all time; it is the bestselling piano album of any kind, said Demetrios Matheou on The Arts Desk. Yet the concert it records would never have taken place had it not been for the determination of a local teenager.

Ido Fluk’s film takes that story and “improvises the hell out of it”: it focuses not on Jarrett (we don’t hear even a note of the album) but on Vera Brandes, the charismatic 18-year-old promoter who booked him, and then – when the exhausted, and notoriously testy, musician threatened to walk away – all but dragged him onto the stage. “The result is a jaunty, charming, highly enjoyable paean to both artists and the many who support them.”

The film opens at Brandes’ 50th birthday party, said Ben Nicholson on Little White Lies; then takes us back to the 1970s, a “freer, simpler time”, when the spirited young Vera (Mala Emde) has stumbled into organising German tour dates for Ronnie Scott. At a jazz festival in Berlin, she sees Jarrett (John Magaro) improvise, and is so mesmerised that she resolves to bring him to Cologne.

The action follows a familiar trajectory (Vera faces various obstacles, including the disapproval of her stern father), and Fluk resorts to familiar devices (including fourth-wall-breaking lectures to the camera about jazz) but “it’s absorbing and fun”, if not fresh or impactful.

“Köln 75” has a “self-aware swagger” that sometimes feels effortful, said Leila Latif in Empire, and some of the broad comedic moments jar. But Emde is superb – and in the final, suspenseful stretch, the film becomes exhilarating.

“Sometimes – rarely – there is a book that I want to read again immediately, the very moment I have reached its last page,” said Andrea Wulf in The New Statesman. “Maggie O’Farrell’s new novel ‘Land’ is such a book.”

Much of it is set on a peninsula on the western coast of Ireland in the 19th century, during and after the Great Famine. Tomás, an Irish mapmaker who works for the English Ordnance Survey, has a mystical experience there while drinking from a once-holy spring in a copse. There is a brief detour into the peninsula’s prehistory and history – druids, ritual sacrifice, the coming of Christianity, English colonisation – before O’Farrell returns to the 19th century and follows the story of Tomás, his wife and children. There is “regret, loss, rebellion, love, family… I love all of O’Farrell’s novels, but I think ‘Land’ might be her finest.” It is “intimate, tender and crushingly devastating. It sings off the page and pierces your heart.”

It “will, I predict, prove as divisive as ‘Hamnet’”, her best-known work, said Randy Boyagoda in the Financial Times. “Once again, O’Farrell has created a story replete with intensely emotive renderings of family stresses, strains and loss.” (She is sometimes accused of creating “grief porn”.) Initially rooted in western Ireland, it becomes a sprawling saga of empire-era migration. “O’Farrell offers all of this in an unceasingly ardent storytelling style. But heartstrings can only be pulled so much, for so long, before they loosen or snap.”

“Land” is ambitious and intriguing, said Melissa Harrison in The Guardian. But it “feels somehow uncomfortable in its own skin” – and strikingly short on dialogue. “Neither fable nor history nor family saga”, it is “not consistently or confidently inhabited”. But I can see it making “an epic and richly textured film”.

From sunrise gatherings to dance festivals and floating-flower rituals, summer solstice celebrations certainly blow the cobwebs away.

The longest day of the year – when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky – has been marked all around the world for thousands of years, with traditions, holidays and festivals. For the northern hemisphere, the summer solstice usually comes on 21 June, while, for the southern hemisphere, it’s six months later, on 21 December.

This year in the UK, summer solstice sunrise – the start of celebrations for many – will be at 4.52am on 21 June, and the astronomical solstice – the exact moment that Earth’s axis tilts “towards the sun at its most extreme angle” – will be at 9.24am, said Space.com.

The term solstice comes from “combining the Latin words sol, for ‘sun’, and sistere, for ‘to stand still’”, meteorologist Joe Rao told the astronomy site. Here are some of the best places to stand still yourself – or maybe join the chanting and drumming – to mark midsummer.

Stonehenge and around the UK

The 4,000-year-old stone circle in Wiltshire is one of the most famous places to observe the solstice. Visitors flock to the site near “to witness the moment the sun rises up behind the ‘heel stone’, the ancient entrance to the monument”, said the BBC. If you’re thinking of going there this year, note that parking is limited and must be pre-booked; there will be special shuttle buses from Salisbury train station.

Glastonbury Tor is the “second most obvious place in Britain to celebrate the summer solstice and, arguably, it has the better views”, said BBC Countryfile. “It’s one of Britain’s most spiritual sites, so you’ll be part of a crowd drumming and chanting as they have done here for millennia.” The Tor, “crowned by the ruins of 15th-century St Michael’s Church”, offers a “timeless” view of “some of Britain’s most beautiful hills”.

Further north, there’s Saltwick Bay – a “small yet particularly photogenic section” of the Yorkshire coast – where the sun rises (and sets) over the sea, and rock formations glisten with “mirror-like” pools in the early morning light. You can also watch the “Black Nab rock stack and the twisted wreck of the Admiral Von Trump take centre stage” as the sun rises higher.

In Scotland, Arthur’s Seat, a “surprisingly wild spot” overlooking Edinburgh, is a “popular” and “lively” solstice viewpoint.

Europe and North America

In Greece, many “still follow the 2,500-year-old tradition” of climbing Mount Olympus to observe the solstice, while in some Eastern European countries like Belarus, people take “chaplets” – small flower garlands – to rivers and set them floating downstream, said Condé Nast Traveller. Swedes dance around “flower-covered maypoles”, and Catalonians “dress up as mystical or religious characters with typical ‘big head’ masks in a celebration that dates back to the Middle Ages”.

The Ottawa summer solstice Indigenous festival in Canada “puts First Nations culture on centre stage” with live performances, celebrating both midsummer and National Indigenous Peoples Day together.

And in Mexico, all eyes turn to the El Castillo pyramid at Chichen Itza, which was constructed so that the shadows of the setting sun at the summer solstice “look like a feathered serpent descending”. The symbol of Kulkulcan, a Mayan deity of wind, rain and the passing of time, it is a reminder “that the arrival of summer is a pivotal time to accept new beginnings”.

There’s a “noble tradition” of pop stars “putting on extravaganzas” in public toilets, said Ed Potton in The Times. “Never before, though, have we had a WC this full of VIPs.”

Madonna’s new 14-minute short film “Confessions II”, which marks the release of her latest album, features a “full-throttle celebrity perv-rave” in a nightclub loo packed with famous faces from Richard E. Grant to Benedict Cumberbatch. The Queen of Pop has delivered the kind of OTT, “bells-and-whistles music video” that seemed to be “on the way out”.

‘Hide the cocaine!’

In much the same way Madonna’s “Vogue” music video became “shorthand” for “‘pointy tits’” thanks to her pink conical bra, “Confessions II” will be remembered as the “vagina laser video”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. This time, the star must traverse a shadowy forest dodging green laser beams that fire from the dancers’ crotches in a symbol of “life force and unstoppable orgone energy”.

In one of the “clever scenes, Madonna literally morphs” into Julia Garner – the actor who is set to play her in her “long-gestating, self-directed biographical film”, said Joey Nolfi in Entertainment Weekly. She also “leans even more into embracing artists” who have followed her lead, such as Sabrina Carpenter. “The baton isn’t passed as much as it’s entrusted to artists who directly (Garner) and indirectly (Carpenter) walk in Madonna’s light.”

Later, she storms into the club bathroom where Chelsea footballers Cole Palmer and João Pedro “look around in alarm” from the urinal “as you would if the Queen of Pop sashayed past when you were having a wazz”, said Potton in The Times. “Hide the cocaine!” she sings before the camera cuts to Kate Moss flipping her hair in the mirror and dancing in slow-mo. Cumberbatch delivers some “textbook dad dancing”; “cruelly dressed” in a suit, he looks like “a City trader who has stumbled into a cool party and whipped off his tie to try and blend in”.

‘Gloriously over the top’

“Confessions II” is more than just a “flashy, star-studded commercial” for Madonna’s new album, said Nolfi in Entertainment Weekly. “It’s a powerful meditation on her legacy, her future, and how the world sees her as she reaches a new dawn in a storied life that’s largely played out in arenas beyond her control.”

The film will have “generated exactly the response she will have hoped for”, said Dan Wakeford in The Independent. Cameos from the eclectic assortment of celebrities have us “agog, debating who we are most thrilled to see sharing a frame”. But she’s also created a dance floor where “barriers between worlds have come down entirely”. The inclusion of the prestigious actor Cumberbatch is a “deliberate provocation”, telling us “high culture and club culture are the same culture” and it’s “cool to include someone who has no business being there”.

In its first 24 hours the film amassed just 1.2 million views on YouTube, far behind BTS’ “Butter”, which “racked up 108.2 million views on its first day in 2021”, said Potton in The Times. But “impact is not just about YouTube clicks” and various sequences from the dream-like film are sure to be “regurgitated endlessly” on TikTok. “There are signs that the event video could be on its way back.”

Of course, there have been “predictable snarks” about how Madonna should be behaving more appropriately for her 67 years. “Nonsense. Raucous, baffling and gloriously over the top, this film is exactly what she should be doing.”

It’s the ice, people! Yes, ice is central to the making of any cocktail — unless it’s a hot one. In the playland of frozen drinks, though, ice plays an all-the-more crucial role. It doesn’t simply chill then bolt for the sink. Ice becomes integral to the lush texture of a blended cocktail. These frozen reconsiderations of classic cocktails are summer manna.

Frozen Banana Daiquiri

An instant coconut cordial is made by combining coconut milk and sugar. Then you’re off to the banana-daiquiri races by blending together two kinds of rum (1 part each) with fresh lime juice (¾ part), half a way-ripe banana, that cordial (2 parts) and a load of pebble ice. (Get the recipe)

Frozen Caribbean Coffee

What happens when Irish coffee, tres leches cake and spiced coconut syrup take a trip to the islands? You get a lively, luxurious blended drink that merges a mixture of sweetened condensed milk and whole milk (2 parts) with an egg, coffee liqueur (¾ part), rum (½ part), brandy (½ part) and a heady masala-coconut syrup (¾ part). (Get the recipe)

Frozen Gin & Tonic

In this brain-freeze-y adaptation of a G&T, the tonic water is substituted by a tonic syrup. Because no one wants a watery frozen cocktail. A touch of that syrup (½ part) tangoes with gin (1½ parts), simple syrup (½ part) and lime juice (¾ part). (Get the recipe)

Pink Frozen Margarita

Campari (1 part) provides the pink element in this animated variation on a classic margarita. The tequila (3 parts), triple sec (2 parts), lime juice (2 parts) and agave nectar (2 parts) all play their roles like they typically would. The blender and ice step in for this performance, turning everything the right kind of chill. (Get the recipe)

Frozen Mojito

All that you admire about a mojito is present here. The mint (1 part), the rum (2 parts), the simple syrup (1 part), the fresh lime juice (1¼ parts). Start the four together in a blender so the mint is properly blitzed. Then add ice (8 parts), zap away and pour a few out for your pool mates. (Get the recipe)

Frozen Moscow Mule

You know the quartet — vodka (2 parts), ginger beer (3 parts), lime juice (¾ part), simple syrup (¾ part). Pour the lot into a blender, add ice, and your Moscow mule becomes even more of a warm-weather lounge-fellow. (Get the recipe)

Frozen Negroni

A Negroni is always an appetite-whetter. Come summer, one wants it to do double duty by dragging it into refreshing territory too. Freeze the base combination of gin (4½ parts), Campari (2½ parts) and sweet vermouth (2½ parts) for at least eight hours. Then whir that with ice in a blender. Zip, hunger, poolside nap. (Get the recipe)

Paloma Slushy

A handful of ingredients turn a classic paloma into a summertime icon for you and three pals. Start by freezing together grapefruit juice (2 parts) and lime juice (1 part) for a chunk of time. Toss the frozen juices in a blender along with tequila (1½ parts), sugar (¼ cup) and ice (4 cups). And if you like, line the rims of those glasses with salt. (Get the recipe)

Low-budget horror movie “Backrooms” has been generating “considerable buzz”, said Wallpaper. The unsettling directorial debut from 20-year-old YouTuber Kane Parsons is based on a viral web series he made as a teenager. It made $81 million (£60 million) in North America on its opening weekend, a new record for an original horror film.

The inspiration for “Backrooms” came from a discussion on the 4chan message board about slipping through a “crack in reality” and finding yourself in an “infinite maze of identical corridors”. Now, the A24 studio has adapted the chilling series into a film starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as a furniture salesman who discovers in his showroom basement a “fluorescent-lit threshold opening onto an eerie, labyrinthine office space” that looks like it stretches on for ever.

“Backrooms” is the latest success in the genre of liminal horror, based on the unsettling feeling of “in-between” spaces. “The horror here is not a monster or a ghost, but the Backrooms themselves.”

If that sounds like your kind of scare, here are eight other liminal horror films to lose yourself in.

The Shining, 1980

“One of the great classics of liminal horror,” this iconic film is “arguably one of the scariest” movies of all time, said SlashFilm. Much of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece centres on the “eerie emptiness” of the sprawling hotel Jack (Jack Nicholson) and his wife Wendy (Shelley Duvall) are looking after for the winter with their son Danny (Danny Lloyd). The long, deserted corridors that lead nowhere helped introduce the idea that emptiness “can, in itself be a character” or unsettling presence that creates a “sense of liminal dread”.

Lost Highway, 1997

“David Lynch can nail the atmosphere of liminality,” said MovieWeb. His surreal, neo-noir thriller follows jazz musician Frank Madison (Bill Pullman), who is accused of murdering his wife (Patricia Arquette). Through a series of haunting “dreamlike” sequences, Lynch builds an “uncanny” world while examining men’s toxic “obsession with women” and the lies people tell themselves to escape the truth.

The Blair Witch Project, 1999

Possibly still the “greatest found-footage horror movie”, this low-budget film is also an “excellent” example of liminal horror, said ScreenRant. The action follows three students who set out into the woods to document the mythical Blair Witch. “It’s a search none of them ever return from.” Space stretches and the “never-ending woods that loop constantly create a suffocating atmosphere”. It’s a must watch.

Pulse (Kairo), 2001

This Japanese techno-horror sees “ghosts invade the world of the living through the internet, terrorising those they encounter along the way”, said ScreenRant. It’s a “testament to the power of liminal horror” how Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s nerve-jangling film steers clear of “blood and gore”, instead exploring the “terror that comes from the corner of a room”.

It Follows, 2015

It “may not seem like it at first glance”, but “the label of liminal horror is a perfect fit” for this supernatural horror, said MovieWeb. The action follows Jay, a young woman who, “after sleeping with her boyfriend, becomes the recipient of a fatal curse” that follows her wherever she goes. “That is, unless she can pass it on.” With the feel of a “dream taking place in a cold landscape not unlike our own”, it’s a frightening watch.

Vivarium, 2019

Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots star as a “conflicted couple” who settle down in the suburbs only to find their new home is a “source of sinister stasis”, said Dread Central. Trapped in a disturbing development where “unlimited versions of the same house” line “roads that lead to nowhere”, they soon find themselves in a living nightmare with a baby boy to raise.

Skinamarink, 2022

Based “almost entirely” around “liminal horror scares”, this chilling film follows two young children who wake up in the night to find their father has gone and “the doors and windows of their house have disappeared”, said ScreenRant. As the hours unfold without him, they “encounter frightening visions in the dark recesses of their home”. Director Kyle Edward Ball brings this nightmare vividly to life, plunging viewers into the “unknowable terror” of murky, unlit spaces.

Exit 8, 2025

Genki Kawamura’s liminal horror is based on a Japanese video game of the same name, said Dread Central. Taking the Tokyo subway as its sinister setting, the busy commuter hub is transformed into an “endless purgatory for the film’s perilous protagonist”. Brilliantly immersive and filled with a gnawing sense of dread, Kawamura expertly makes the “innocuous subway tunnel feel like a layer of hell”.

The horror genre occupies the current Hollywood spotlight, and we have YouTube to thank for a bevy of high-grossing indie films directed by popular former users of the video platform. The runaway success of these box office darlings has industry insiders questioning if this crew represents a new filmmaking era or if it’s a passing phase.

Pipeline from YouTube-to-horror filmmaker

The recently released “Backrooms” is “part of a growing wave of breakout films from fledgling directors” who “honed their instincts on YouTube” rather than “inside the Hollywood ecosystem,” said The New York Times. Kane Parsons, the 20-year-old first-time director, signed a deal with distributor A24 to make the film when he was 17. He joined the ranks of two other creators who have “already turned online followings into surprise box-office hits this year.”

The “YouTuber-to-filmmaker boomlet,” said the Times, began in January when YouTube creator Mark Fischbach, known as Markiplier by his fans, self-distributed his horror movie, “Iron Lung.” Though it only cost $3 million to make, it “took in $50 million” in the end. The run of successful YouTube horror directors continued with “Obsession,” a $750,000-budget horror movie directed by Curry Barker. Both Barker’s film and “Backrooms” have surpassed $200 million in earnings each. “It’s not an anomaly,” Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s film school, said to the Times. It is the start of a “gigantic shift.” These are the “cinematic insurgents of our era.”

The YouTube generation has “finally come of age,” horror filmmaker James Wan, who coproduced “Backrooms,” said to Variety. They grew up creating content without money. That spirit has fostered a “new wave of filmmakers and storytellers.” YouTube is the “perfect incubator for emerging voices.”

There is a “whole generation of moviegoers who grew up” with a “very specific taste in horror, the stuff that sits a little outside the mainstream,” Jason Blum, the producer of the “Paranormal Activity” franchise, said to Variety. When one of these filmmakers “makes the jump to a theater, the audience that found them online comes with them.”

Wins with a grain of salt

While they are currently making a splash, these “box office victories come with caveats,” said the Times. All three movies are horror films, the genre that has “long been the most forgiving for first-time filmmakers, in part because horror is relatively cheap to produce.” For some studio executives, “that context is a reason for caution.” The real shift will come when “horror isn’t the only proof of concept.”

With so much emphasis being put on the “YouTube-to-horror movie trend” as the “next frontier of finding talented new voices,” a “difficult, uncomfortable conversation is more necessary than ever,” Slash Film said. Unless you exist as a “cisgender, heterosexual, white man,” the pipeline “doesn’t actually exist.” YouTube is not and has “never been a truly democratized platform,” and we are doing the “next generation of creatives a disservice by pretending it is.”

There are “random people from Discord who are, like, 14-year-olds” who are “not working in the industry at all, but they’re fucking wizards,” Parsons said to The Verge. Still, he refuses to “preach the blind optimism that I hear from a lot of other filmmakers who say, ‘You got a phone; everyone can be a filmmaker now.’”

The best lesson executives could take from the success of Parsons and Barker is “not to throw a zillion dollars at more movies that look just like these,” movie critic Alissa Wilkinson said at The New York Times. It would be to “find more creators like these two” because they’ve “built audiences in an organic way in the places that younger audiences congregate” and to give them “creative freedom to explore what feels right to them.” Remember, too, that “not everything will hit like these two movies.”

The world-renowned Bayeux Tapestry will embark on a “highly secretive journey” to cross the Channel on loan to the British Museum, said ITV News. The artefact, which depicts the Battle of Hastings in 1066, has reportedly been insured for “around £800 million” by the UK Treasury during its 10-month stay, which will begin in September.

The 70m embroidery, believed to have been created in the 1070s by English needleworkers, has left Bayeux only twice in 950 years. In 1803, it was displayed in Paris by Napoleon to inspire troops against the British, and during the Second World War it was moved several times to protect it from damage and the Nazi occupation.

The Tapestry is the “single most recognisable and understood object in our history”, former chancellor George Osborne, now chair of the British Museum, told the Financial Times. “The only thing that comes close is Stonehenge, and nobody’s going to be moving that any time soon.”

Dress rehearsals

The announcement of the loan “caused uproar” in France, said The Telegraph. A petition started by La Tribune de l’Art newspaper garnered around 78,000 signatures protesting the move due to the fragile condition of the tapestry. An assessment of the fabric in 2021 found that it contained “24,000 stains, 16,445 creases, almost 10,000 areas of damage and about 30 tears”.

A new “highly detailed” report on the arrangements for the tapestry’s transportation has “eased many concerns”, said Le Monde. “Nothing has been left to chance”, said Delphine Christophe, director general of heritage and architecture in the Ministry of Culture.

British roads – which generate “far more intense and constant vibrations” than their French counterparts – are the main source of concern. As such, teams have tested seven routes, and experts have “mapped every pothole and bump along the route from Bayeux to the British Museum”. Vibrations have now been “reduced by 96%”, said the outlet. This is about the “same level of movement a sculpture experiences on its pedestal in a museum”.

For the journey, the tapestry will be stored in a 1.6 ton “specially built climate-controlled crate” which is “literally suspended in mid-air” to minimise adverse motion. Two “full dress rehearsals” using a replica of identical length and weight have already taken place to practise proper handling of the 900-year-old work. The tapestry itself is currently being stored in a “secret location”.

‘Arduous’ journey

The Bayeux Tapestry is more than an artefact, said Financial Times political editor George Parker. Its arrival on British soil will be “hailed as a symbolic reconciliation of Britain and France after the chaos and bitterness of Brexit”. Ironically, despite depicting violent and bloody conflict between the Normans and Anglo-Saxons, the effort to bring the tapestry back to the UK has become a “symbol of Anglo-French co-operation”.

Britain’s journey to displaying the Bayeux Tapestry has been “arduous”, said The Independent. Requests to exhibit it in London have been “rejected several times”, most notably for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and for the 900th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings in 1966. President Emmanuel Macron, however, first “signalled his eagerness for the move” in 2018, although progress was stalled by the Covid pandemic.

Now, the British Museum is “set to hit the jackpot”, said Le Monde. The cost of installing, displaying and protecting the piece, none of which will be covered by France, is “classified and likely enormous”. But considering that the tapestry has attracted around 400,000 visitors in Bayeux, the museum could easily expect to generate at least “€10 million” (£8.6 million) in ticket sales.

This will be the “museum event of the century”, but it may not be the easiest viewing experience, said Apollo Magazine. Time slots for viewing will be “only 40 minutes”, which has caused the art community to “raise an eyebrow”. “With the tapestry being 70m-long, that means each visitor has about 34 seconds to move along the work in 7cm intervals.”

With jet fuel shortages and the introduction of the EU Entry Exit System forcing some of us to rule out international air travel, planning a staycation that highlights the best of British railway history is becoming increasingly appealing. As summer holidays beckon, most travellers are itching to embark on their next adventure. Here is our list of some of the best heritage train lines that will have you eager to jump on board.

Strathspey Railway, Highland

Following the original Perth to Inverness route, this railway boasts a 10-mile run from “Aviemore, the adventure capital of the Cairngorms, down the valley of the River Spey to Broomhill”, said Andrew Eames in The Times. Expect scenic views of “mountains looming in the background” and “midway” access to Boat of Garten which is “famous for the RSPB’s osprey conservation project”. It is common for passengers to stay on for the return trip but some disembark at Broomhill to get to Speyside Way, a “cycle and hiking route partly on disused trackbed” allowing you to “wander through whisky country”.
strathspeyrailway.co.uk

The Settle & Carlisle Line

“No other railway in England can hold a candle” to the trainline linking Leeds to Carlisle, said Anthony Lambert in The Telegraph. This is mostly due to the “grandeur of the rugged Pennine valleys” and the “many viaducts that span them”, including the “famous” Ribblehead. Watching the “majestic peaks” gliding past outside, it is easy to see why this is the “most popular” of Network Rail’s steam train routes.
settle-carlisle.co.uk

West Somerset Railway

This 20-mile route is Britain’s “longest preserved railway”, said Anthony Lambert in The Telegraph. Starting at Bishops Lydeard, the journey includes views of the “Quantocks on one side and the Brendon Hills on the other”. Some of the stations along the route are Stogumber, where you can access the famous Bee World, and Dunster, which is known for its “National Trust-run castle and idyllic high street”.
west-somerset-railway.co.uk

Audley End Enchanted Railway, Essex

And for kids, this miniature “fully electric, steam-outline locomotive” is a must-visit, said Secret London. Combining “timeless railway romance” with “cutting-edge green technology”, the design remains “faithful” to tradition with features like a mock chimney and an “authentic” whistle that helps “preserve the magic of steam trains without the emissions”. The train winds through Audley End’s Enchanted Forest, where the “forest fairies, woodland creatures and storytellers” you meet along the way “add a dose of theatrical sparkle”.
audley-end-railway.co.uk

Have bread; breadcrumbs are inevitable. You would think then, with boundless English-speaking cultures using bread, there would be endless words for breadcrumbs. Terms that are mere descriptors for the bread pieces, like “fine,” “medium” and “large.” Would that we have 50 words to express a range of kinds of breadcrumbs, in the way Tamil has more than four dozen words for love.

In “All That Crumbs Allow,” authors Michelle Marek and Camilla Wynne creep toward that goal. Across 45 recipes — each its own kind of breadcrumb-naming treatise — the duo proclaims how versatile the kitchen staple both is and can be.

A prayer to pulverization

There is much bread-on-bread action in this text. Marek and Wynne, who both have backgrounds in pastry, cannot help themselves. Wynne, in a recipe for bread and jam twice-baked croissants, eschews the nut filling and crafts a breadcrumb frangipane, which is then slathered on bisected day-old croissants along with the jam of your choosing and baked until crackly.

Marek reminisces about the sweet cheese dumplings of her childhood visits to the Czech Republic. Soft bread cubes are beaten with butter, sugar, flour, egg and farmers cheese before a poaching turn in sweetened boiling water. The pillowy dumplings are then added to hot crisped breadcrumbs and served with roasted or fresh fruit.

Other recipes for sweets include such zingers as breadcrumb-glazed doughnuts, rhubarb cardamom breadcrumb cake and witches’ froth, a fluffy cloud of whipped apple served with clattering toasted breadcrumbs.

Savory-heads, fret not: Marek and Wynne have not abandoned you. A three-page blueprint for schnitzel ensures the finest you might ever cook. Roasted potatoes are shellacked with buttery crumbs. From the annals of cooking past, sauce jouvert, spunky with marjoram, red wine vinegar, both walnuts and hazelnuts, and breadcrumbs, is raised from the annals of recipe history to be draped over pretty much any kind of vegetable.

In the beginning, there was bread

The book’s centerpiece chapters on starters, mains and sweets are bookended on one side by a treatise on how to make and store breadcrumbs of various sizes, with an under-duress sub-section about how to buy breadcrumbs. “There is, it must be said, something perverse about paying for breadcrumbs,” Marek and Wynne write. “Buying breadcrumbs is one of life’s cosmic jokes, and it makes us laugh every time.”

A pantry chapter closes “All That Crumbs Allow.” It is a terse collection of six recipes that swerves from the book’s much-used, dead-simple Crunchy Topping to Fairy Rocks, with their sparkling blend of freeze-dried raspberries, sesame seeds, ground rose petals, sugar and, yes, breadcrumbs.

The book’s coda is a collection of exciting recipes from pals. In Marek and Wynne’s world, breadcrumbs are not for gatekeeping. They are meant to be spread wide and far. You can almost hear the authors chattering, “May you forever follow a trail of gluten nubbins to immeasurable deliciousness.”

Instead of reaching for biscuits or chocolate to “combat the 4pm slump”, people are turning to a “more natural sweet alternative: dates”, said The Guardian.

The wrinkled fruit has been “thrust into the snacking spotlight” thanks to a slew of viral online recipes and a growing demand for alternatives to ultra-processed foods. Ocado reports that sales of Medjool dates have soared by 100% year-on-year and searches for date butter have shot up by 458% over the same period.

Some fitness experts are suggesting their followers swap “additive-laden” protein bars for energy balls made with a mix of dates, nuts and oats. And TikTok is bursting with ideas for comforting yet nutrient-dense snacks like “sticky fried dates drizzled with olive oil and served with tangy yoghurt”.

First cultivated in the hot, arid climates of the Middle East and North Africa, “dates have had a place in culinary culture for millenniums”, said The New York Times. Traditionally used to break the fast during Ramadan, they are a staple ingredient in everything from tagines to sticky toffee pudding.

With more consumers interested in adding fibre to their diet, dates are “emerging as a simple vehicle for the macronutrient”. One serving of dates (around two to three large Medjools) contains about 5g of fibre – “a helpful step towards the daily recommendation of 25g per day for women and 38g for men”.

Brands like Date Better are opting for “bold flavour choices” to stand out in the crowded market. Varieties include dates stuffed with cashew butter, coated in chocolate infused with lime and dotted with toasted quinoa “for texture”.

But it’s important to “manage your health-related expectations” if you’re reaching for a jazzed-up version of the fruit. “If it’s stuffed with peanut butter and covered in chocolate, enjoy it!” said nutritionist Maya Feller. “But don’t think it’s going to support gut health. Right? That’s a dessert.”

If you don’t want to splash out on pricey on-the-go packaged snacks, consider adding the fruit when baking cakes, said The Times. Dates can be “chopped or blended” and “stirred through the batter instead of sugar, substituting the weights like-for-like”. They also make a delicious caramel sauce: simply soak them in boiling water before “blending them with butter” and “adding enough hot water until you have a smooth sauce”.

Dates aren’t only suitable for sweet treats, though. “I do a simple but brilliant lemon, chickpea, feta and date traybake,” said author and cook Melissa Hemsley. “The sweetness of the roasted dates with the salty feta is amazing. I’ll have that in a wrap or toss it into a warm salad. It’s perfect.”

The authorities in China have banned a prizewinning film because nationalists and the manosphere “resented its portrayal of their country”, said The Economist.

The movie, “Her Heart Beats in its Cage”, is a prison drama based on real killing, centering on Zhao Xiaohong, who may be perceived as a “star in the making”, a “feminist icon”, a “murderer” or “part of a calculated deception”, said The Times.

Deeply conflicted 

Zhao killed her husband with a fruit knife during an argument that “spilt over into a violent altercation” about the wider division of domestic chores. A court found her guilty of intentional killing in 2009 and sentenced her to 15 years in prison.

She was preparing for release from jail when Xiaoyu Qin, a film director, “discovered” her. He visited her prison, and was surprised to find “marginalised individuals full of personality and complexity, intense clashes between notions of good and evil” and “deeply conflicted stories”, he told China Newsweek.

For the film, Qin blended documentary-style footage of Zhao’s time in jail, filmed with the approval of the government, with scripted performances by her and her family, including her husband’s relatives. Critics claimed that Qin had “lured” the grieving family into participating and “feigning forgiveness”, said The Economist.

When the film was shown last year at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain, it “caused an immediate stir” and “made headlines back home in China”, said The Times.

It was quickly criticised online for allegedly whitewashing a convicted killer. Some argued that the film was “condoning violence” and “rewarding a criminal”, while others “questioned whether she was a victim of domestic violence at all”, noting that the judge had “rejected” her claim of self-defence.

There were also “the usual claims” on China’s “highly nationalistic internet” that the movie depicted the country in a “bad light”, which is the “sort of issue” on which censors “tend to agree with popular opinion”.

The film’s release in China was hotly anticipated, but as controversy raged, it disappeared from schedules less than a fortnight before its release. No explanation was given.

Meanwhile, the film’s cast and crew are not responding to requests for interviews, so “even finding out their defence to the accusations and counter-accusations” aimed at the film has “become more and more difficult”, as reports and reviews are “ruthlessly scrubbed”. Zhao’s social media accounts have also been blocked, according to reports in state media.

Touchy nationalism 

Chinese “propaganda” is “full of distortion and deception”, said The Economist, but much of the reaction online “reflected a touchy nationalism”, claiming the film was a “Western plot to undermine party rule by spreading liberal, pro-feminist values”.

China is undergoing its own “version” of the “West’s culture wars”, said The Times, with feminists “calling out the patriarchy and sexual harassment”, while men, particularly young men, are “crying foul”.

But “more informed online debate” about the movie has focused on reforms to the justice system. The law has been altered to allow judges assessing a self-defence claim to take into account any previous history of domestic violence.

I remember southern Africa’s old-fashioned sleeper trains, with their wooden carriages and “grand” dining cars, from my childhood in what was then Rhodesia in the 1950s and 1960s, said Matthew Parris in The Times.

They fell out of use long ago, and few of the region’s railways now carry passengers at all. You can, however, relive their glory days – with added luxury – thanks to Rovos Rail.

This tour operator was founded in 1989 by Rohan Vos, a South African businessman with a “passion” for restoring old railway carriages. The company’s trains now ply routes across the region, from Cape Town to as far afield as Dar es Salaam, going at a slow pace for comfort (the tracks are narrow gauge and sometimes poorly maintained) and making many stops for excursions to nearby “wonders” and occasional nights in “lovely” lodges.

I took an 11-night trip from Pretoria to the “massive sand dunes and mysterious desert coast” of Namibia – an expedition that combined “adventure” with “amenity and elegance of a high order”. Our train had 19 carriages from the old Rhodesia Railways, but carried just 60 passengers: my compartment occupied a third of a carriage and had mahogany panelling, brass fittings and an en suite shower.

The meals served in the two “magnificent” dining cars were “splendid” and varied. The staff were charming. A South African historian gave “sparkling” lectures. And I never tired of the observation car, where I spent chilly mornings and warm evenings sipping coffee or post-prandial negronis and watching the “ever-changing” landscape slip by.

In South Africa, we went for a cruise on the Orange River and took a trip to the Augrabies Falls, where the river plunges into an “immense” granite gorge. In Namibia, we gazed over the vast Fish River Canyon and saw lions and elephants in the Etosha Pan game reserve. The most fun I had, though, was sliding down a huge sand dune at Sossusvlei. “I felt like a boy again.”

Distant Journeys (distantjourneys.co.uk) has a 16-night trip from £9,696pp, including flights.

I always say you get more flavour from the shells of a crustacean than you do from the meat, said Theo Randall. That is why, for this risotto, I start by making a stock based on the prawn heads and shells: it’s very easy to prepare and uses up all the parts of the shellfish that usually go to waste. The resulting risotto is intense and delicious.

Ingredients (serves 4)

For the prawn stock:

• 500g frozen shell-on prawns, defrosted
• 1 carrot, roughly chopped
• 1 leek, washed and chopped
• 2 celery sticks, halved
• 6 parsley stalks
• 2 litres water

For the risotto:

• 2 courgettes
• 5 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 garlic clove, sliced
• 300g tomato passata
• 2 celery sticks, finely chopped
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 300g carnaroli risotto rice
• 100ml dry white wine
• 50g unsalted butter
• 1 tbsp chopped flat-leaf parsley
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

• Remove the heads and shells from the prawns and place in a saucepan with all the prawn stock ingredients except the water. Cook over a medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the heads and shells turn red.
• Add the water and cook for about 20 mins to reduce by a third. Strain through a fine sieve, season with salt and keep to one side.
• Slice the prawns in half lengthways, keep to one side.
• Cut the courgettes into 1cm rounds, then stack three rounds on top of each other and cut into 1cm matchsticks.
• Put 2 tbsp of the oil, the garlic, courgettes and a pinch of salt into a small frying pan over a medium heat and cook for 5 mins, stirring occasionally, so the courgettes have a little colour. Add the passata and cook over a low heat for 5 mins. Check the seasoning, then set aside.
• Put the remaining oil, the celery and onion into a large, hot, straight-sided saucepan and cook for 3 mins over a medium heat. Add the rice and cook for 3 mins until the rice absorbs the oil and turns translucent. Add the wine and cook until absorbed.
• Start adding the prawn stock, ladleful by ladleful, stirring until the rice is just covered before adding more. Do this for 10 mins, then add another ladleful and check the seasoning. The risotto should be wet, almost soupy; the rice should have a good bite.
• Add the courgette and tomato sauce and stir until the risotto starts to thicken. Give the pan a shake, and when you feel the risotto is becoming emulsified, add the prawns, butter and parsley. Stir until combined, then remove from the heat, add a lid and set aside for 2-3 mins. Remove the lid, add some black pepper and give it one last vigorous stir. Serve in warmed pasta bowls.

Taken from “The Italian Table: 100 Classic Recipes Celebrating the Spirit of Italy” by Theo Randall

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Beware the politician who claims to be “100% committed” to their constituency, or their country, said Laura Freeman in The Times. “There is much to be said for a hobby and hinterland.”

In a photograph in the first room of this exhibition, Winston Churchill stands at his easel, a paintbrush in his hand, a cigar in his mouth. “Over 50 years, in and out of office, and in and out of black-dog glooms, Churchill produced more than 500 paintings. About 50 of them are gathered here.” None are of any great artistic merit.

But the show conveys the sense of a man who was unflagging in his efforts and eager to learn (he sought advice from the likes of John Lavery and William Nicholson) – and who loved painting, the whole business of it: “the colours, the carrying bag for canvases, the sending off of telegrams to request a new tube of cadmium rose, the doing of daub after daub in the hope that the next one might be a keeper”.

And wherever he went, he kept an eye out for what he called a “paintatious” spot. “If it weren’t for painting,” he once said, “I couldn’t live; I couldn’t bear the strain of things.” As you walk through this charming, informative exhibition, “you share his pleasure and release”.

Churchill “came to painting late”, said Nick Curtis in The Independent. He was 40 years old, and at a very low ebb following the catastrophic failure of the Gallipoli campaign, when he took up the hobby, in 1915, and became hooked. He dismissed his efforts as “daubs”, and he repeatedly stressed that, for him, painting was therapy, a refuge from the strains of his work. But when, in an effort to get an honest appraisal of his talent, he submitted paintings under an assumed name to the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition, they were praised by the committee and accepted.

Their charm, though, lies in their amateurishness, said Olivia McEwan in The Guardian. Churchill wasn’t trying to impress anyone; nor was he using art to make a point (though the cannon pointing across the Channel in “The Beach at Walmer”, from 1938, is surely a metaphor). He was a Sunday painter, who showed in his Mediterranean landscapes (probably his best works) a love for “dazzlingly contrasting colours”.

The exhibition is interesting because of who Churchill was: it records where he went, what he saw. You would not mistake him for a major artist, and perhaps not even a minor one.

No, you would not, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Many of his canvases look like “inexpert imitations” of post-Impressionist paintings he admired. I was surprised, though, to find that, overall, he was a pretty decent painter. A few of his oils don’t work (and the stick figures in the backgrounds of some are risible), but they almost all convey “his infectious passion for the art form”, and one or two really come together. Look out for the view, from about 1924, of his beloved Chartwell in the snow. It is “delicious”.

The Wallace Collection, London W1. Until 29 November

The Olympic gold medal-winning cyclist picks her favourite books. Her own book, “The Fear Opportunity: How Feeling your Fear Builds Strength and Confidence”, is available for purchase.

Invisible Women

Caroline Criado-Perez, 2019

This book explores the under-representation of women in the way the world is designed. It is tragically enlightening about the gender bias in everyday life.

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

Charlie Mackesy, 2019

I love this beautifully illustrated book in so many ways; it’s comforting and reassuring and filled with the kind of phrases that should be ingrained in your soul for all the hard moments in life. I wish I had read it as a child.

The Chimp Paradox

Steve Peters, 2012

I lovingly call Steve Peters “Uncle Peters”, because I worked with him on the Olympic team and he had such a huge influence on my life. This book helped me understand my behaviour better and allowed me to access my fullest potential. I would not have won gold without Steve.

Circe

Madeline Miller, 2018

I’m obsessed with mythology and I loved this reimagining of the sorceress from “The Odyssey”. I find it intriguing the way that Miller looks at ancient myths from the point of view of the characters. I couldn’t put it down.

Milk and Honey

Rupi Kaur, 2014

This poetry collection made me go, “Wow!” I’d never come across anything like it, and I found it very reassuring because it reflects the struggles and anxieties of the female experience in a way that is very relatable. It doesn’t pull any punches.

Dancing with Elephants

Jarem Sawatsky, 2017

In Western society we’re not very good at navigating death, and this book helped me through the loss of my brother and father. Sawatsky describes his journey through terminal illness and shows us how to celebrate the experience, rather than mourning the person it’s happening to. Beautiful.

Wiltshire: Upper Minety, Malmesbury

This charming period Cotswold build offers long views over the surrounding countryside. The property comprises approx. 38 acres, with 2 paddocks and land laid to permanent pasture. 5 beds, 4 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, outbuildings, stables, garden, parking. £1.75 million; Knight Frank.

Devon: Higher Collaton, Blackawton

An elegant Georgian property with just under 10 acres of pasture. 6 beds, 4 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, 2-bed barn, 1-bed cottage, garden, parking. £1.5 million; Marchand Petit.

Bedfordshire: North End, Bletsoe

Grade II thatched farmhouse with a wealth of period features. 5 beds, 4 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 5 receps, garden, outbuildings, parking. £1 million; Fitzjohn Estates.

Lincolnshire: The Old Farmhouse, Fulbeck

A glorious Grade II property set in mature gardens and situated in the heart of one of Lincolnshire’s most attractive villages. 5 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, outbuildings, garden, parking. OIEO £750,000; Mount & Minster.

Hertfordshire: New Hall Farmhouse, Wareside

A pretty period farmhouse with 15th-century origins and later extensions. The property is set in approx. 2.4 acres of mature south-facing gardens and enjoys far-reaching views across the neighbouring countryside. 6 beds, 6 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 4 receps, summer house, detached 1-bed annexe, outbuilding, garden, parking. £2 million; Hamptons.

Pembrokeshire: Llanddinog Farmhouse, Llanddinog

This stunning, newly renovated holding is set in approx. 3.6 acres close to the coastal communities of St Davids and Solva. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/dining room, 3 receps, 1 letting cottage with 1 bed, 2 letting cottages with 3 beds, 1-bed lodge, garden, paddocks, outbuilding, parking. £1.5 million; Country Living.

Cumbria: Foldgate Farmhouse, Corney

A handsome house in the Lake District National Park, with views to the Isle of Man. Main suite, 4 further beds (1 en suite), 2 baths, kitchen/dining room, recep, snug, garden, parking. £585,000; Davidson & Robertson.

Scottish Borders: Sunwick Farmhouse, Berwick-upon-Tweed

A traditional 18th-century building in a charming countryside setting with views of the Cheviot Hills. 6 beds, 3 baths, kitchen/dining room, 2 receps, outbuildings, garden, parking. OIEO £485,000; Galbraith.

With more people looking to unplug from the digital world, analog “grandma hobbies” are making a comeback. Crafting activities like crocheting, baking, painting and knitting are especially popular among young people looking for a way to slow down. And they have been shown to help with mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Here’s how to get your granny on.

Start with a gateway hobby

The list of so-called grandma hobbies is long, with some being more complicated than others. There’s no need to start an advanced project immediately, and the right task could keep you more engaged in the long run. Many people “jump straight into punch needling or crochet and are put off when they don’t get it right,” said Andie Reeves, a writer and fiber artist, to Verywell Mind. Try a more accessible endeavor, such as “cross-stitch, coloring books or simple beading kits.”

Match your “activity levels to the hobby that you choose,” said Susan Albers, a psychologist at Cleveland Clinic. If you are tired, ” choose an activity that has slow, repetitive movements, such as crocheting or knitting.” If you are feeling more alert, a “brain puzzle or putting together a puzzle can help to tap into your focus and concentration.”

Let go of perfectionism

Grandma hobbies are therapeutic because they allow us to make mistakes and focus on the joy of creating. Amid the pressure to “constantly hustle and be productive,” grandma hobbies offer a “refreshing pressure-free way to achieve fulfillment and well-being,” said Forbes. They remind you that “time spent doing something slow, quiet and meaningful is not wasted.” Rather, it’s “restorative" and a way of “choosing presence over pressure and imagination over efficiency.”

Embrace taking a break from the digital world

It’s hard to “doomscroll while embroidering,” said Verywell Mind. Crafts offer an “immersive experience that pulls us out of the (often addictive) digital world.” Picking up a “crochet hook, a paint brush or a recipe for bread reconnects you with simple, sensory pleasures,” said Emily Sharp, an art therapist, to Verywell Mind. While you are “using your hands and letting your mind wander,” you are “getting in touch with a part of yourself beyond the phone screen.” That’s a practice “we should all actively nurture.”

Take your time

The most valuable aspect of incorporating grandma hobbies into your life “lies in embracing the freedom of slowing down and savoring the process,” said Forbes. When you set aside time for mindful activities, you “reconnect with a softer pace of life.” To make this a consistent part of your routine, “start by dedicating small, nonnegotiable time slots each week for your chosen hobby.” Remember not to do them for “social media, for likes or for others’ approval.” The magic lies in indulging in these activities “purely for your own satisfaction, without any expectation of a perfect outcome.”

Don’t forget community

You can obviously do these hobbies alone, but there’s a lot to be gained from doing them with other like-minded people. If possible, “learn from someone who already does it,” said Shelly Dar, a mental health and well-being specialist, to The Good Trade. “Ask your grandmother, your neighbor, someone at a community garden.” These hobbies are “always meant to be passed hand to hand, and that exchange is part of the healing.”

Engaging with other hobbyists “fosters a sense of connection based on shared interests,” which is “especially valuable in today’s technology-driven world that often leaves people feeling isolated,” said Patricia Dixon, a licensed clinical psychologist, to Good Housekeeping. It can motivate you to “improve and deepen your skills, creating an environment of mutual growth.”

Listening lounges, recording studios, secret venues and vinyl lending libraries are a few of the perks guests can tap into at these seven hotels made for music lovers. You may not run into your favorite artist, but you sure might discover a new one.

Aria Hotel Budapest, Hungary

Music inspired every design element at Aria Hotel Budapest, starting with the piano-keyboard marble inlay that stretches across the indoor courtyard. Rooms come in four styles — Classical, Opera, Contemporary and Jazz — and feature elegant touches like Murano glass chandeliers, coffered ceilings and custom area rugs.

In the afternoon, guests are invited to a wine and cheese reception with live music, and they can end the night on the rooftop High Note SkyBar. Aria even has a musical director, who arranges performances and special events and compiles soundtracks for individual stays.

D Maris Bay, Marmaris, Turkey

Once the sun goes down, the energy level at D Maris Bay goes way up, as guests prepare to spend the night dancing to DJ sets and live musical performances. Situated in a “stunning bay” on the Turquoise Coast, the resort’s “fabulous setting” and “extensive facilities” make it “one of the best” luxury beach properties in Turkey, said The Telegraph.

The property’s nightlife is second to none, with DJs coming from around the globe to play. The resort also hosts a summer gala series that blends gourmet dining with musical performances; previous artists included Seal and Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Hotel El Ganzo, San José del Cabo, Mexico

The soundtrack of Hotel El Ganzo includes musicians jamming in the Underground Studio and bands performing on the private marina. Creatives love staying at this boutique property, where murals cover the walls, the rooms feature one-of-a-kind paintings and the Musicians in Residence program brings artists like Thievery Corporation, Rufus du Sol and Khruangbin to the hotel. When you’re ready to chill, head to the beach and swim club Playa El Ganzo, the rooftop pool, or the spa and wellness center.

Hotel Saint Cecilia, Austin, Texas

Named in honor of the patron saint of music, Hotel Saint Cecilia is an “ultraprivate” spot where “record label execs, artists, musicians and writers” go for a getaway, said Condé Nast Traveler. The rooms and suites inside this Victorian-era mansion have their own “distinct decor and personality” and come with Rega turntables and Geneva sound systems. When you feel like listening to tunes, head to the hotel’s lending library and borrow a vintage vinyl; while you are there, check out one of the many rock biographies available to borrow.

Okupa Athens, Greece

The centerpiece of Okupa is the Kitchen & Listening Bar, an “all-day space that combines brunch, dinner and a listening bar moment,” said Vogue Adria. Okupa is a place where “food, music and atmosphere” all “function as one and the same mood.” Here, you can enjoy an on-property jazz session, DJ set and concert in one day. The 32 modern, comfortable rooms come with portable speakers and, in some cases, record players. The music never need stop.

The Verb Hotel, Boston

The Verb Hotel “proudly” celebrates its hometown musical heroes, with local artists “commemorated through posters and pictures” across the hotel, said Rolling Stone. Other big acts who visited the city are “immortalized with autographs and coffee table books,” and this memorabilia makes the property feel like a “retro-chic museum” that “happens to offer plush beds.” For an over-the-top experience, stay in one of the Backstage trailers complete with Bose sound systems, custom art and “unique pieces of tour life.”

W Nashville, Tennessee

Music surrounds you at W Nashville. Both established and up-and-coming artists perform inside the intimate Living Room Bar & Lounge, and guests have a chance to attend listening sessions and songwriting collaborations in the Sound Room, a small venue hidden behind a wall of speakers.

The party continues poolside, where local DJs keep the tunes going at the Wet Deck. It’s a “stylish” property with excellent service — head to the friendly concierge with requests for “tickets to the Grand Ole Opry or whoever is playing at the Ryman,” said Condé Nast Traveler.

At the grand old age of 83, and after some 60 years in the theatre, Richard Eyre has finally made his Stratford debut. And with this spectacular production of “The Tempest” – which also marks the return of Kenneth Branagh to Stratford – the venerable director has opened his account in considerable style, said Michael Davies on What’s On Stage.

He brings clear storytelling and a brisk one-hour-each-way running time to Shakespeare’s famously dense text, while leaning into the visual grandeur of its undiscovered island full of “masques, magic and monsters”. Eyre also fills the play with music: Branagh’s Prospero doesn’t so much conjure the storm as conduct it.

This is an “enchanting” and visually thrilling staging, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, “with something of the children’s magic show to it”. Initially, Branagh “follows in the vein of his fast and furious” Lear, performed in the West End in 2023. He “seems to be speeding through the part, rather than inhabiting it”; he’s “too puckish, almost larky”.

But as the evening wears on, “there’s growing depth and poignancy to his performance”, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times. “We feel the struggle in him as he watches the sexual attraction between his daughter Miranda and Ferdinand (played with lovely, clumsy humanity by Ruby Stokes and Fred Woodley Evans), and wrestles with his desire for vengeance over those who have wronged him.”

If you’re still smarting at the memory of Sigourney Weaver’s appalling verse-speaking in the West End, said Clive Davis in The Times, you’ll certainly enjoy Branagh’s command of the Shakespearean text. What you don’t glimpse, from this lithe 65-year-old, is “the vulnerability” that some have found in the character.

The evening’s other star is set designer Bob Crowley, whose backdrops draw on the tropical fantasies of the painter Henri Rousseau. Much of the action takes place on a circular platform, and he “conjures up shimmering washes of gold that evoke the most perfect sunsets”.
Until 20 June; Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon.

“Irish writer-director John Carney delivers an aspartame rush of enjoyment with this terrific comedy of bromance and betrayal in the world of music,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

“Power Ballad” is “about making it and dreaming big”, but it’s also about something that is often unacknowledged in films about showbiz: the binary nature of success and failure. For every star, there is an army of people who tried and failed to make it.

Paul Rudd plays Rick Power, a likeable American who was once in a promising band but, on tour, he fell in love with an Irish woman, stayed with her in Dublin and now fronts a wedding band. Secretly depressed that he sabotaged his own career, he is initially resentful when, while performing at a fancy venue, he meets Danny Wilson (Nick Jonas), a “preening” ex-boyband star trying to go solo and searching for a hit song. But Rick is flattered by the star’s attention, and “rashly” plays him a song he has been working on. Later, Rick is in his car when a familiar tune comes on the radio. Soon he is hearing it everywhere.

At this point, most films would “morph into a frantic comedy of revenge”, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. “Power Ballad” is no exception but Carney (known for “Once” and “Sing Street”) adds that rare thing: nuance. “Danny isn’t a cartoon villain”; just a weak man in a cut-throat business. And Rick only goes ape when other options are exhausted.

Also, it is refreshing that the women – Rick’s wife (Marcella Plunkett) and daughter (Beth Fallon) – are sardonic and self-possessed, while “the men do the emoting”.

Still, “Power Ballad” mixes in quite a lot of familiar Carney themes, said Kevin Maher in The Times. It’s “solid, sweet, smartly crafted entertainment”.