A winding five-hour drive from Bhutan’s capital, Thimphu, the Phobjikha Valley is one of the Himalayan kingdom’s most beautiful places, and also a prime spot to see black-necked cranes, said Ian Trower in DestinAsian.

With their striking black-and-white plumage and crimson crowns, these rare birds are “revered” by locals, who call them “birds of heaven”. Conservation efforts have helped boost global numbers from around 6,000 in the 1990s to more than 17,000 today, and each year several hundred overwinter in Phobjikha’s “farm-fringed” wetlands.

Their arrival is celebrated with a festival of folk music and dancing at the 17th-century Gangtey Monastery. Tour operators such as Ampersand and hotels such as the luxurious Gangtey Lodge offer bird-watching walks, and there’s also an exhibition at the valley’s “decagonal” Black-Necked Crane Information Centre. Go between November and mid-March, when the birds return to the Tibetan Plateau for the summer.

Hiking in the mountains of Bavaria

It’s not particularly popular with British visitors, but the Allgäu region of southern Bavaria is a lovely place for summer hiking, said Will Hide in The Times.

On a recent trip, I stayed at the Hubertus Mountain Refugio, a 66-room “wellness resort” with a big spa, an outdoor pool and friendly staff dressed in dirndls and lederhosen. The surrounding Alpine peaks rise above 2,600 metres and allow for lots of long, bracing walks through woods and flower meadows.

For lazier days, there’s plenty of cultural interest within easy reach, including Lake Constance (a 45-minute drive west), the picturesque historic town of Kempten, and Neuschwanstein, the “fairy-tale” palace built by King Ludwig II. Two of his other residences – Hohenschwangau and Linderhof – are also within striking distance.

A coastal walk in northern Cumbria

Few corners of the UK feel as on the edge of things as the north Cumbria coast, a low-lying strip hemmed in by the Lake District fells, said Chris Moss in The Guardian.

It is beautiful but “gritty” too, and scarred by industry in parts, as I discovered on a recent three-day walk along its portion of the England Coast Path. From Maryport (a pleasant town where L.S. Lowry liked to paint), I went south to St Bees Head, with its “spectacular” cliffs, a journey of 23 miles.

Highlights along the way included Workington (a friendly place that “looks as its name sounds”) and Whitehaven, surely one of England’s “loveliest” coastal towns – a former “industrial powerhouse” with “crumbling” grandeur in spades, but which also has a “striking” new hotel, The Edge, an angular, “rust-coloured” building by the sea.

Known for their mild climate and “sandy botany”, the four Charente islands lie just off France’s Atlantic coast. With their “preposterously pretty” harbour towns and great oyster beds and salt marshes, they have long drawn holidaymakers, said Antonia Quirke in Condé Nast Traveller.

But though they “jump with life” from early summer, they retain an “enduring tranquillity” and an “immaculately civilised” air. Best known is the Île de Ré – the second largest, at 33 square miles, and the smartest, favoured by wealthy Parisians and so “utterly Gallic” it feels “as if staged by set dressers”. Oléron – the largest, at 67 square miles – is busier and “less bourgeois”, but it too is “full of fresh air” and “good spirits”, as are Aix and Madame, which are tiny by comparison.

From La Rochelle, it’s a quick drive over the toll bridge to Ré. In its “stylish” main town, Saint-Martin-de-Ré, families stroll along the port and through the “stone-flagged” lanes, where bicycles are propped everywhere below “sun-blistered” shutters.

Equally lovely is the village of Ars-en-Ré, where locals queue for quiche and fruit tarts at the bakery in the main square. Honeysuckle “droops” down terrace walls, and scattered across the countryside beyond are whitewashed cottages “fringed in hollyhocks”. The landscape has a “timeless” quality, with its low horizons, pine forests and vast stretches of sand “the colour of apricots”.

Along the coast, shacks sell a half-dozen “world-class” oysters for a few euros, and there are some wonderful food markets in the towns. Ré has some of the archipelago’s best places to stay, such as Hôtel le Sénéchal and Hôtel de Toiras. But it’s worth spending time on Oléron too, an island that looks “especially astonishing” when approached by boat from Ré.

On a recent trip, I cycled around its “mesmerising” marshes, still “prowled” by paludiers, who harvest salt using wooden hand tools. I also visited the Île d’Aix, where you can tour the villa from which, in 1815, the British took Napoleon off to exile on St Helena.

Compared with the likes of BMW (which sold more than 2.5 million cars last year), JLR is a “minnow”, said Steve Fowler in The Independent. It sold just over 352,000 vehicles last year, employing 43,000 people globally, and 34,000 in the UK. But the company, owned by India’s Tata Motors, is a “big fish in a small pond”, creating work for businesses in supply chains up and down Britain. And the “decline of a single species can cause a whole ecosystem to collapse”.

‘Rotten 12 months’

So the news that JLR is cutting 4,000 jobs is worrying, said Nils Pratley in The Guardian. The firm has had a “rotten 12 months” thanks to Trump’s tariffs, luxury taxes in China, inflation in materials costs and a disastrous cyberattack. But it’s a decent business, making sensible redundancies in the name of competitiveness, and is not facing a “VW-like existential crisis”.

Or not yet, said Ben Marlow in The Telegraph. JLR has not yet recovered from its “preposterous” pink rebrand in 2024. Combined with the cyberattack, a four-year new product drought, and the success of Chery’s Jaecoo 7 (the “Temu Ranger Rover”), the company looks wobbly.

I learnt how to make this vibrant dip in Aleppo, where I led culinary tours before the uprising, said Anissa Helou. They included a lesson from chef Maria Gaspard, who made all kinds of fabulous dishes, including this one.

Ingredients (serves 6)

• 600g beets
• 80ml tahini, or to taste
• 1 clove garlic, peeled, minced to a fine paste
• juice of 1 1⁄2 lemons, or to taste
• sea salt
• extra virgin olive oil, to drizzle over the dip
• 1 tbsp finely chopped flat-leaf parsley or slivered pistachios, for garnish

Method

• Preheat the oven to 220C.
• Wash the beets and cut any excess stalks but without cutting into the beets. You do not want them to bleed during baking. Wrap each beet with foil and place on a baking sheet. Bake for 1 to 1 1⁄2 hours, depending on their size, until soft but not mushy.
• Remove from the oven on to a large cutting board. Unwrap, then peel and cut into chunks. Place in a food processor. Add the tahini, garlic and lemon juice and process until you have a smooth purée.
• Transfer to a large mixing bowl. Add salt to taste and more lemon juice and/or tahini if you feel it needs it. Spread in a shallow round or oval serving bowl, making grooves here and there.
• Drizzle a little olive oil in the grooves and sprinkle with the chopped parsley or slivered pistachios.
• Serve with good bread.

Taken from Lebanon: A Culinary Celebration by Anissa Helou.

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It’s going to be a big fall for museum lovers. Major exhibitions focusing on a legendary tapestry, extraordinary needlework created by American schoolgirls and bejeweled Islamic art are all opening, each one displaying priceless objects from around the globe. Peep these six standouts.

The Bayeux Tapestry, British Museum, London

One of the most important works in European history is the Bayeux Tapestry, a nearly 230-foot-long embroidered cloth that tells the tale of the 1066 Norman conquest of England. The remarkable piece of art is almost 1,000 years old, and on display at the British Museum thanks to a historic agreement with France. Abundant in “visual thrills, horrors and humor,” the tapestry is “stupefying and delightful,” laid out in a case that fills the gallery, said The Guardian.

The tapestry is the hottest ticket in London, and if you can’t secure entry through the traditional channels, there’s another way. One Aldwych is offering the exclusive Bayeux Tapestry package until the end of the year, which includes an overnight stay in this luxe Covent Garden hotel, plus two tickets to see the Bayeux Tapestry, two themed cocktails, English breakfast in the morning and a curated in-room mini-bar. (through July 11, 2027)

‘Broken. The Power of the Fragment,’ Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, Italy

These remnants tell a story, piece by piece. “Broken. The Power of the Fragment” examines the “reasons and circumstances that have led to the destruction or damage of sculptures,” from war to natural disasters to vandalism, said Palazzo Strozzi. In this well-rounded exhibition, works by Michelangelo and Auguste Rodin are shown next to modern art by Louise Bourgeois and Huma Bhabha, who have “taken the fragment as a starting point for new expressive possibilities.” (Sept. 25, 2026-Jan. 24, 2027)

‘From the Louvre: Masterpieces of Islamic Art,’ Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, Washington, DC

This groundbreaking exhibition of 26 objects from the Louvre’s permanent Islamic art collection marks the first time the museum has loaned the set to another institution. The “treasures” include “Baptistery of Saint Louis,” a 14th-century brass basin from Syria or Egypt, and two “jewel-embedded” ivory pen cases believed to have been commissioned by 17th century Mughal emperor Jahangir, said Artforum. All of the objects — paintings, jade, ceramics, glass and metalwork — are from the 7th to 19th centuries. (Sept. 26, 2026-Jan. 18, 2027)

‘Locating Girlhood: Place and Identity in Early American “Schoolgirl” Art,’ American Folk Art Museum, New York City

The “spectacular” handiwork of 18th and 19th century American girls will be on display at this exhibition “several years in the making,” American Folk Art Museum Deputy Director Emelie Gevalt told Antiques and the Arts Weekly. This collection of more than 100 examples of needlework and other decorative arts, on loan from dozens of museums and private collections, is one of the most “significant” presentations on the subject in years and “sheds new light on a rich but understudied genre.” (Oct. 9, 2026-Feb. 28, 2027)

‘Losing Ourselves Together: The Art of Bobby Anspach,’ Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

The Toledo Museum of Art invites you to enter the world of Bobby Anspach. The late Toledo-born artist created sculptural installations, and “Losing Ourselves Together” is “anchored” by his immersive “eye machines,” which use “light, sound and carefully constructed optical effects” to alter your sense of “time and space,” said the museum. At your visit’s end, stop in the reflection room, a space for “contemplation and relaxation.” (Oct. 17, 2026-March 14, 2027)

‘Mathematics and the Art of M.C. Escher,’ The National Museum of Mathematics, New York City

Dutch graphic artist M.C. Escher specialized in “mind-bending images” of “impossible architecture, tessellations and visual paradoxes,” making him a “beloved figure in both the art and math worlds,” said the National Museum of Mathematics. In this exhibition, the focus is on his works that feature “elegant mathematical structures,” spotlighting more than 60 wood engravings, drawings, lithographs and 3D objects. (Oct. 1, 2026-Feb. 8, 2027)

Rising from the Kazakh steppe – a vast sweep of grassland so flat that the horizon seems to run in a perfectly straight line – Astana has few hills, forests or other natural features to interrupt the view. Yet the city itself is anything but understated. Giant pyramids, sweeping towers, an 150-metre-high tent and one of Central Asia’s largest mosques punctuate the otherwise level landscape, giving the capital a rather theatrical presence.

This is largely because modern Astana is a young capital. It became Kazakhstan’s capital, succeeding Almaty, in 1997, when it was still a relatively small northern city known as Akmola. What followed was a vast programme of construction – with architects from around the world brought in – that turned the northern steppe city into the political and administrative centre that it is today.

The result is a city of striking contrasts. Spend the morning having a look at the ambitious architecture, the afternoon walking beside the Yesil River, and the evening eating horse sausage in a hidden cocktail bar. There is plenty here that is polished and monumental, but some of the best experiences are considerably more ordinary.

Things to do

The best place to understand Astana’s architectural excess is Nurzhol Boulevard, the ceremonial spine of the modern city. The broad 2.5km pedestrian axis runs between the Khan Shatyr shopping centre and the Ak Orda Presidential Palace, passing some of Astana’s most recognisable buildings along the way.

The landmarks arrive in quick succession on a walk along the boulevard: the Presidential Palace, the sweeping headquarters of government ministries and the distinctive Northern Lights (Severnoye Siyaniye) towers – a trio of curving, blue-green glass skyscrapers that appear to lean towards one another. Baiterek Tower stands roughly in the middle, its golden sphere visible from much of the surrounding city. With a viewing platform at 97 metres above the ground and open to visitors, this is the city’s centrepiece, inspired by a Kazakh legend of the tree of life and the mythical bird Samruk.

At the end of the boulevard, it is difficult to miss Khan Shatyr. Norman Foster’s 150-metre-high structure looks like a gigantic translucent tent and is officially the world’s largest tent-shaped building. Inside, however, the concept is much less exotic. It is a shopping and entertainment centre with shops, restaurants, cinemas and an indoor amusement area.

You’ll also find Sky Beach Club here: an indoor beach with imported Maldivian sand, palm trees and warm water. It is a strange but rather enjoyable response to Astana’s climate. In a city where winter temperatures can plunge to brutal levels, the idea of going to the beach without going outside is difficult to argue with. Entry to Sky Beach is expensive, so unless you are desperate for tropical temperatures in the middle of the steppe, it may be enough to admire the architecture and move on.

For a more local scene, head towards the Yesil River. The promenades on either bank make for some of the city’s nicest walking and cycling, flanked by coffee, boba and ice cream shops aplenty. The Atyrau Bridge, a pedestrian and cycle bridge built as a gift from the Atyrau Region for the capital’s 20th anniversary, links the two sides with a striking structure inspired by a sturgeon fish, referring to Atyrau region’s Caspian fishing heritage. During the summer, the river also becomes a cooling-off spot for the locals. The Gorodskoy Plyazh, or city beach, is a designated swimming area in Central Park, and on warm afternoons it fills up quickly.

For another reminder of the scale of the new Astana, visit the Nursultan Mosque. Opened in 2022, it is the largest mosque in Central Asia, with four 130-metre minarets surrounding a huge blue-and-white dome that can accommodate more than 30,000 worshippers. One of the minarets has a lift to observation decks at 90 and 110 metres, offering an unusually good perspective on the city.

Over the other side of the river, Saryarka, one of the older districts, is a useful antidote to the monumentalism of the new capital. The historic centre has an old square, fountains and a collection of low-rise buildings, including several former merchant houses, like that of Matvei Kubrin, built in the early 20th century and now occupied by a supermarket. Other buildings associated with the Kubrin family have been converted for different uses, their survival offering a glimpse of the commercial town that existed here before Astana became a capital.

The Holy Assumption Cathedral – one of the city’s major Russian Orthodox landmarks – is yet another reminder of Astana’s layered identity, bringing a very different architectural vocabulary to the streets. Meanwhile, the Wall of Peace is a small but interesting monument to the city’s role as a venue for international religious and diplomatic dialogue. Neither needs hours of sightseeing, but both help discredit the idea that Astana is simply a city of shiny new buildings.

Astana’s surroundings are considerably greener than the city itself. Burabay National Park, about three hours away by train, makes an easy day trip. Take an early train to Borovoe station and arrange a taxi to take you around the park. The landscape changes quickly and pine forests, granite hills and clear lakes replace the flat steppe around Astana.

Hike Bolektau Peak for views over Burabay and the Chebachye Lakes, go boating on Burabay Lake, or rent a bike to explore some of the area’s extensive cycling trails. In summer, Chebachye is also a popular swimming spot.

There are several stops worth building into the day. Aqmaral deer farm collects naturally shed antlers for use in traditional medicine, while Sokolov’s cheese farm produces around 38 varieties using Italian techniques, with wheels of mature cheeses including a 31-month-old Montasio ageing on wooden racks in a cool storeroom.

For lunch or breakfast, Tary Café’s signature breakfast – featuring qatlam, a flaky pastry filled with cheese, qazy horse-meat sausage, eggs, ayran cheese dip and tea made from zhide, or oleaster berries – is particularly good. The cafe overlooks the lake and pine forest, making it an especially pleasant place to eat after arriving by train.

Eating and drinking

Astana has a growing restaurant and bar scene, although it is still considerably smaller than Almaty’s. Qazaq Gourmet is a good introduction to contemporary Kazakh cooking in a polished setting with wine pairings. The restaurant’s menu combines traditional recipes from around Kazakhstan with modern techniques, and their 11-course Ómir tasting menu uses individual dishes to explore different aspects of Kazakhstan’s culinary and cultural traditions.

Line Brew has been part of Astana’s dining scene since 1997, and is best known for its house-brewed beer, with the line-up ranging from a straightforward premium lager to fruitier pomegranate, raspberry-lime, wild strawberry and blackcurrant brews. Its sprawling menu runs from Burgundian-style escargots, to steaks and dry-aged beef.

For cocktails, Temple Bar is considerably more clandestine. There is no obvious sign, and the entrance looks sufficiently like a janitor’s cupboard that you may wonder whether you have taken a wrong turn. Once inside, red velvet curtains open into a dim, living-room-like space furnished with mismatched sofas and lamps. There is no cocktail menu. Instead, the bartender asks what spirit you like, what flavours you want and how strong you want the drink to be. Ask for something spicy and sour with tequila and you might end up with a clarified coriander cocktail, suspiciously close to exactly what you wanted. The bar also serves zhaya, made from the salted, cured, and smoked or dried meat of a horse’s rump. Astana, it seems, is quite happy to be futuristic and traditional at the same time.

Where to stay

The Hilton Garden Inn Astana is a comfortable base for your visit to the Kazakh capital. It is centrally located, making it relatively easy to reach the main sights, while its rooms and service offer a level of comfort that feels more expensive than the rates suggest. The Russian and Turkish steam rooms are a welcome place to unwind after a full day of crossing Astana’s enormous distances.

Avantika was a guest of Visit Astana and Visit Aqmola.

Bermondsey: Java Wharf, Shad Thames, SE1

A stylish waterfront warehouse studio apartment with a private balcony, next to Tower Bridge and looking over St Saviour’s Dock. The balcony is a relaxing, tranquil space and, internally, the main studio room is cleverly laid out, with a fitted, open-plan kitchen, a work-from-home space as well as dining and living room areas. Residents of the historic building benefit from a daytime building concierge, the rights to moor a boat on the dockside, and access to a large shared west-facing roof terrace with panoramic London skyline views. £399,950; Anderson Rose.

Alexandra Park: The Chantry, N22

Charming split-level apartment within a church conversion of unique character, which retains the large original windows. The property is close to Muswell Hill Broadway and all the amenities at Alexandra Palace and park. Main suite, 1 further bed, family bath, semi-open-plan kitchen/recep. £375,000; Martyn Gerrard.

Notting Hill: Linden Gardens, W2

A beautiful apartment occupying the raised ground floor of an elegant Victorian conversion, offering a refined blend of period elegance and contemporary design. The open green spaces of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park are within easy walking distance, as are Queensway’s extensive amenities. 2 beds, family bath, kitchen/recep, sunroom. £995,000; Landstones.

Wapping: St Katharine’s Way, E1

An impressive Grade II fourth-floor riverside apartment within a warehouse conversion, with lift, balcony, secure parking, concierge and well-maintained communal areas. Principal bed with en-suite and excellent storage, 1 further bed, shower room, recep, kitchen, parking space. £1.195m; Knight Frank.

Bermondsey: Bermondsey Street, SE1

Characterful Grade II house built in the early 1800s. The property is tucked within the Conservation Area and directly overlooks the green open expanse of Tanner Street Park. Believed to have been a watchmaker’s, the original shopfront remains intact. 2 beds, 2 baths, 2 receps, kitchen, courtyard and terrace. £1.35m; Knight Frank.

Shepherd’s Bush: Bloemfontein Way, W12

Superb architect-designed freehold house with gated access, tucked away from the bustle but close to a range of independent shops, restaurants, pubs and music venues, as well as excellent transport links. 2 beds, family bath, recep, kitchen. £595,000; Savills.

City of London: Creechurch Lane, EC3

A bright and spacious apartment in a converted Victorian tea warehouse overlooking a quiet internal courtyard, tucked away off Leadenhall Street. The amenities of Liverpool Street and Aldgate are close by. 1 bed, family bath, kitchen, large recep with juliet balcony. £475,000; Anderson Rose.

Notting Hill: Pembridge Villas, W11

First-floor apartment set within an elegant period conversion designed by Patrick Williams of Berdoulat, one of House & Garden’s Top 100 Interior Designers. The world-famous Portobello Road is a stone’s throw away, as is Westbourne Grove. 2 beds, family bath, open-plan kitchen and recep, balconies. £1.395m; Savills.

Barbara Cartland, like most successful writers, was a creature of routine. Every day, between 1.15pm and 4pm, she would recline on a chaise longue, “clad in brilliant pink, hair a platinum helmet”, and dictate around 7,000 words to a secretary while “fondling a Pekingese”, said Wendy Holden in Literary Review.

By these means, she churned out roughly 20 novels a year – more than 700 over the course of her lifetime – and sold 750 million copies, a figure “exceeded only by Shakespeare and Agatha Christie”.

While her “tales of virgins and sheikhs, pirates and princesses” were devoured across the world, they proved especially durable in the Middle East: “Arab men,” she noted, “can’t get enough of the sort of girl I write about.”

It would be easy simply to mock Cartland, but the journalist and broadcaster Matthew Sweet avoids this trap in “The Great Dictator”. Without skipping over her faults, he “gives her virtues full credit” and treats her as a figure of “cultural and historical importance”. The result is a “fantastically enjoyable, drily hilarious and incredibly well-researched biography”.

Cartland may have had a “marshmallowy exterior”, but Sweet shows in this “brilliant book” that behind it “lurked sinews of high-tensile steel”, said Kathryn Hughes in The Guardian.

Coming of age just after the First World War, at a time when there “were not enough husbands to go around”, she resolved to be “financially self-sufficient”.

She spent the 1920s working as a gossip columnist, reporting on the escapades of the Bright Young Things, before making a “tactical marriage to a dull man called Alexander McCorquodale”, who proved to be an alcoholic. Divorcing him after having a daughter, Raine (the future Countess Spencer, stepmother to Diana, Princess of Wales), she “effected a neat swap” by marrying his paternal cousin, which meant she didn’t even need to change her surname. In 1950, the pair settled in Camfield Place, a manor house in Hertfordshire, where she lived until her death in 2000, aged 98.

“Sweet writes with great wit and brio but also considerable sympathy,” said Lynn Barber in The Observer. He points out that Cartland was a “great organiser”. While clothes were rationed during the Second World War, she set up a scheme to lend wedding dresses to Auxiliary Territorial Service brides. Later, she led a campaign to create a reservation for Gypsies near Camfield Place: “Barbaraville” opened in 1963 and “remains to this day”. It is, Sweet suggests, “perhaps her most lasting achievement”.

Tracy-Ann Oberman has form when it comes to bold theatrical reboots, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. In 2023, the actress “memorably reclaimed” “The Merchant of Venice”, turning Shylock into an East End matriarch in the 1930s. Now, she takes on “Present Laughter”, Noël Coward’s arch self-portrait of a vain, ageing, star actor Garry Essendine (anagram: neediness).

Directed by Lindsay Posner, the production turns Garry into Geri, and shifts the action from 1930s London to 1970s New York, though the characters remain mostly British. It is an evening of “mild mirth” rather than “wild guffaws”, but the transpositions work well, and Oberman, playing Geri, has the “glittery presence to hold the flimsy, at points farcical, affair together”.

“What initially sounds like a gimmick proves surprisingly effective,” said Kris Hallett on WhatsOnStage. Oberman is “tremendous”, switching effortlessly between diva-ish theatricality and genuine loneliness. “Present Laughter” is not prime Coward: “It is expertly constructed and often very funny, but beyond its central character, there is precious little flesh and blood.”

And Posner’s production moves, if anything, too swiftly; “what starts as pace eventually feels like rushing”. But it is a visual treat, with a design that evokes an impossibly stylish Manhattan existence, with Warhol-esque portraits of Geri, and a “parade of immaculate dressing gowns”, and “shimmering gowns”.

It is not only the central role that has been gender swapped, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. Coward’s ghastly avant-garde playwright Roland Maule here becomes Rosina, an “intense cross-genre experimentalist for whose work no theatre is far enough off-Broadway”.

The standout performance, though, is from James Dreyfus as Geri’s long-suffering assistant Monty, said Ben Kulvichit in The Stage. Dreyfus made his name in 1990s sitcoms such as “The Thin Blue Line”, and his “funny bone is as strong as ever”: he communicates “decades of devotion and exasperation with the bristle of his moustache, and his line readings are drier than gin”.

Festival Theatre, Malvern, from 15-19 September, then touring until 28 November.

“There’s a marvellous tenderness and generosity to this elegant tale of autumnal regret; an intimate movie acted with effortless grace by Willem Dafoe,” said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.

Dafoe plays Ed Saxberger, an ageing New Yorker who works for the post office, living alone in a small, book-filled room, drinking and playing pool with his friends in the evening.

One day, he is amazed to be accosted by “a dandyish young hipster” outside his apartment building; this is Meyers (Edmund Donovan), who has found Saxberger’s long-since out-of-print volume of poems. He declares him a neglected genius; he and his rich, “callow and excitable” literary friends take up his cause, and want to use their connections to get him republished.

Amused, and more thrilled than he wants to let on, Saxberger finds the attention of these young people dizzying – particularly because one of them, a beautiful and volatile actress (the “superb” Greta Lee), has “a kittenish crush” on him.

Director Kent Jones has great fun with these “achingly mannered” aesthetes, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times. They call themselves the “Enthusiasm Society”, and describe their meetings as “fermentations”; one of them even “wears a cape”. But “drama pulses under the comedy, too”, and a “cool astringency” grows.

“Late Fame”, adapted from a novella by the Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler, is “razor-sharp on class and art”, said Kevin Maher in The Times. Unearned riches, it tells us, “are mostly for the rich”.

In the end, “it’s Dafoe’s film”. It’s a reminder that he’s often at his best when he’s not at full stretch in “loony mode” (as in “Poor Things” or “The Northman”). “He’s in nearly every frame, quiet and serious, achingly sympathetic. It’s worth watching just for him.”

Guy Ritchie made his name in the 1990s with films set in cartoonish criminal underworlds; but he is himself of posh stock, and owns a shooting estate in Wiltshire. In his Netflix series “The Gentlemen”, he mixes his fantasy vision with his personal history, said Nick Hilton in The Independent.

Ludicrously entertaining

The show stars Theo James as Eddie, aka the 13th Duke of Halstead, who inherited the family seat at the start of series one – and discovered that it was playing host to a cannabis factory run by a crime family (headed by geezer-in-chief Ray Winstone).

Eddie, who recently left the Army and is as hard as nails, gets in on the action and in series two, he extends his criminal empire and forms a transactional alliance with a shady fellow aristocrat (Hugh Bonneville).

Unfolding over eight episodes, this brash gangster romp is ludicrous enough to be entertaining in its own way; but the dialogue and plotting really are unforgivably bad.

Baroque deaths and showdowns

A “caper composed primarily of fists, shouting and men made of fists shouting ‘faaackin’ ’ell’ in tweed” sounds like a composite of everything Ritchie has ever made, said Sarah Dempster in The Guardian. It is fun, but it lacks the energy that fizzed through his early work.

You feel that Ritchie wants to say something meaningful about Eddie’s moral descent, said Ben Dowell in The Times; but the show is far too in love with carnage and wisecracks to hold on to anything serious. Besides, you don’t come to this unsophisticated series for that. You come for “chases, showdowns and more baroque deaths than you can shake a shooting stick at”.

Andy Burnham will give England’s mayors the power to introduce an uncapped tourist tax. This will be set as a percentage cost of accommodation – rather than a flat fee – at the discretion of regional leaders. Housing Minister Angela Rayner chaired a virtual meeting at No. 10 North today to discuss the tax.

The plans were initially announced under Keir Starmer’s government at the last Budget and outlined in the King’s Speech in May. In his first speech as prime minister, Burnham committed to starting the scheme towards the end of the 2027-28 financial year.

This tax could “raise hundreds of millions of pounds” for local public services, said The Guardian. But it could also be a “blow for the hospitality industry”, already “squeezed by tax rises and extra employment costs”.

Where would the money go?

A tourist tax would allow mayors to “prop up crumbling local authority finances and invest cash back into the area”, said The Telegraph.

Local authorities are already facing a financial “crisis”, with a “record 35 councils now relying on £1.5 billion of emergency government financial support to balance their books”. This would also allow the 14 regional mayors in England a new “revenue-raising stream”, especially when they are unable to raise council tax bills, which is still a council-level decision.

This is part of Burnham’s “wider devolution agenda”, said The Times. He has also been a long-standing supporter of overnight levies, implementing a “city visitor charge” in April 2023 while he was mayor of Greater Manchester. It consisted of a £1 per room per night fee, which was designed to “pay for measures aimed at attracting more visitors”.

Does this happen elsewhere?

A tourist tax, or overnight levy, already exists in some parts of the UK. After Holyrood passed a law permitting the levies in 2024, Edinburgh introduced a 5% overnight rate this summer, capped at five nights. Glasgow also has a 5% rate, while Aberdeen’s is 7%. However, these rates are at the discretion of local authorities, with no central cap.

In Wales, a capped levy of £1.30 per person per night will be introduced in April 2027. This is reduced to 75p for hostels and campsites. The cities of Manchester and Liverpool also have voluntary schemes, of a £1 and £2 per room per night charge.

Across the world, major cities such as New York, Amsterdam and Rome all employ variations of a tourist tax. Berlin also applies a 7.5% tax on accommodation costs, while Paris has a tax based on the type of accommodation. For an overnight stay in a two-star hotel, for example, there is a €3.25 (£2.86) charge, and for a four-star hotel the rate is €8.45 (£7.43). Lisbon, however, levies a flat rate of €4.00 (£3.52), up to a maximum of seven nights.

How will it affect the hospitality industry?

Implementing these taxes is “not going to be painless”, Allen Simpson, chief executive of UKHospitality, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme. He claimed it would add roughly £100 to £120 to the average cost of a family holiday, and feared that by devolving only one tax-raising power, mayors would “pull that lever until it snaps”.

Simpson’s trade body also claimed the move would cost 33,000 jobs and cause a £2.2 billion hit to the UK’s GDP. Other global destinations with a cap on their tourist charges have much lower VAT rates than the UK.

New Conservative shadow chancellor Andrew Griffith said that an uncapped tourist tax would be “hugely limiting for the chances of the young people who might otherwise be employed in tourism and hospitality”. It would also be “utterly wrong” to use the funds for “propping up dodgy town hall finances on the back of even higher youth unemployment”.

However, Mayor of London Sadiq Khan welcomed the proposal, arguing that a “well-designed, modest” overnight visitor charge would “raise and invest funding locally”.

The Bayeux Tapestry, which opens today at the British Museum, is “shivers-down-the-spine, tell-the-grandchildren sort of stuff”, said Laura Freeman in The Times. Textbooks can tell you the facts: “seventy metres, 58 scenes, 626 figures”, but the reconstructions and photographs are nothing like the real thing. In fact, it’s “more than a shiver of excitement”, it’s the “loan of the millennium” and truly "magnificent".

The British Museum is offering a “once-in-a-lifetime – no, once-in-history – opportunity to experience a genuine wonder of the world at close quarters”, said Mark Hudson in The Independent. Right from the off, it is best to “let the images carry you”. After Harold assumes the throne, having sworn allegiance to William on a trip to France, the early sections of the Normans’ preparations for war have a “documentary veracity” and “cinematic drive, that propels us remorselessly onwards to the departure of the Norman longships towards the English shore”.

Throughout, the Tapestry portrays “storytelling of the highest order”, and “simply getting it to London is a momentous achievement”, said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. Its “most famous section”, the Battle of Hastings, feels like an “11th-century equivalent of Pablo Picasso’s anti-war masterpiece ‘Guernica’ (1937)”. It is “pure carnage”. Horses fall, warriors are decapitated and a mace flies through the air: “an emblem of anarchy and violence”. But far from a “tub-thumping celebration of Norman power”, it is striking how much it feels like a “requiem” for Anglo-Saxon England. “To see this astonishing artefact back in Britain for the first time in 1,000 years is the most moving moment of my career.”

The pace of the battle scenes “hurtles along”, said Jonathan Jones in The Guardian. But in the borders, the Tapestry sets out its action in a “wider world, and even, when it shows the comet, a larger cosmos”. Against the brutality of the violence, depictions of peasants working the land are stitched in “distracting, vibrant detail”. This is both “pointed and poignant: whoever wins, whoever rules England, country people will still work the soil”.

Some of the best bits are when there is no violence at all, said Jo Lawson-Tancred on Artnet. The artwork certainly has some historical “limitations” of accuracy, but most importantly it offers a “rare, secular insight into a medieval way of life that might otherwise feel too remote to imagine”. We see unique depictions of a “lavish” Norman feast of food seized from the English in Pevensey, with striking detail of cooking in a “cauldron over fire and serving roast meat on skewers”.

There are moments of levity, too, said Andrzej Lukowski in Time Out. It may be “extravagantly otherworldly”, but it is also “accessible by dint of its simplicity”. The narrow tapestry is “topped and tailed by joyously random images of fantastical beasts and the odd weird naked guy”. This is not just an artefact consigned to the past: “it’s boyishly excitable about the details of conflict, an action comic realised in millennium-old cloth”.

The Bayeux Tapestry is on display in the British Museum from 10 September 2026 until 11 July 2027. Tickets will next be released on 21 October for viewings between 1 January and 31 March 2027.

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the prolific chef and restaurateur in New York City, operates more than 45 restaurants around the world and has written five cookbooks. All of his books capture the remarkable way he merges simplicity and elucidative flavor combinations. His fourth book, 2011’s “Home Cooking with Jean-Georges ($40),” does so in a particularly utilitarian fashion.

Cooking with eyes wide open

Vongerichten’s five-ingredient watermelon salad, for example, is a ferocious overturning of how to think about a favorite fruit. The rich funk of the blue cheese and resonant twang of freshly ground black pepper convince the watermelon to let its sweetness glow. The fruit’s juicy core tangoes with extra-virgin olive oil’s grassy unctuousness. Pop, pop goes a dusting of flaky salt.

In the recipe’s intro, Vongerichten offhandedly notes the salad “tastes even better when the watermelon is cold and the cheese is room temperature and soft.” Texture steps into the spotlight and turns a sublime recipe all the grander. Vongerichten tosses this intel at the reader as an aside. He cannot help himself. Wisdom plops out of him like ice in a sleet storm.

Such is how “Home Cooking with Jean-Georges” flows. This is a book in which the tricks, takeaways and techniques are embedded in the recipes themselves. Parmesan chicken teaches you that breadcrumbs are extraneous when you grate Parmesan on both large and small holes on a grater, coat chicken breasts with it, bake, and, whammo, savory, textural contrast without the filler.

You might in no other cookbook see someone add a stick and a half of butter to boiling water to cook mustard greens. Then you eat those greens, all silky, their jagged acerbity mellowed after four minutes of boiling, and you shake your head in confounded appreciation.

Famous chef, best-in-class writer

A chef creating a cookbook is only as reliable as their writer. For “Home Cooking,” Vongerichten enlisted one of the finest recipe writer-developers in the game, Genevieve Ko, who is currently an editor at The New York Times.

Ko ensured the recipe’s instructions in this book were as pristine and legible as Vongerichten’s cooking is nimble and gleaming. A watermelon salad can say so much and teach so readily if its quiddities are conveyed with precision. Effortlessness has perhaps never been presented with such rigor.

“What a challenge”, said Liz Else in New Scientist. Penning the “first major biography” of Stephen Hawking with the theoretical physicist’s estate and the “whole scientific world” all “watching closely to see the result”. But science writer Graham Farmelo has pulled it off. “Kudos all round.”

Farmelo paints a “comprehensive and accessible portrait” of Hawking as an “extraordinarily determined man” who had a darker side to which the public and scientific community “mostly turned a blind eye”, said Philip Ball in The Guardian.

The “uncomfortable but unavoidable truth” is that Hawking’s refusal to give scientific credit to others, sexism and “controlling behaviour” were largely “ignored because of his disability”. “I think it is indeed going to take us years to process that.”

Farmelo first covers the science which offers a “genuinely inspirational tale”. Hawking’s work on black-hole thermodynamics would have been “impressive by any measure”. But achieving it while living with “debilitating and ultimately paralysing” motor neurone disease is remarkable.

The “problematic stuff” emerges from “those closest to him”. His friends at Oxford found him “lazy and entitled”; his youngest son said his father never let him win at board games as a child; and his “unsparing ridicule” of the religious beliefs of his first wife, Jane, contributed to the unravelling of their marriage. We also learn how “scandalously bad” he was at acknowledging the work of others, something that became clear early on when he “failed to indicate his debt” to the physicist Roger Penrose.

This pattern of “accepting more than his fair share of credit” certainly “ruffled feathers” in the scientific community, said John Gribbin in Literary Review. But in person he was “gregarious and generous” to his students.

Farmelo gives non-scientists a “good sense” of why Hawking’s work matters, including “succinct discussions of how black holes evaporate” and the “nature of gravitational waves”. But his book also puts the facts into “context”. The result is an “absorbing and informative account of the life of the most interesting physicist of the second half of the 20th century”.

Sweden’s “second city”, Gothenburg, is less crowded than Stockholm and, thanks to the “icy, clean water surrounding the coast” is known for its excellent seafood, said Arielle Domb in The Independent.

Located on the country’s southwest coast, at the mouth of the River Göta, the city has been a “crucial” destination for the fish and shellfish trade since the 18th century. Its daily indoor fish market, Feskekörka, is still open today. Housed within a building that resembles a church with “pointed Gothic arch windows”, you’ll discover “vibrant fish stalls” selling everything from lobsters and crayfish to whole salmon. A two-day seafood festival “celebrating west coast ingredients” takes place every September, this year from 18 to 19.

Gothenburg is “brimming” with trendy restaurants and coffee shops. Bar Bulot is a lovely spot for natural wines and seafood dishes like “delicate halibut ceviche with thin slices of melon” or “oyster with a tangy tapioca mignonette”. For a really “exquisite” meal try Champagnebaren, where you can feast on “edible flower-decorated dishes that look like paintings”. And if you feel like a cocktail after dinner, head to the “stylish” bars Bruno or Unity Jazz, both “around the corner”.

If the city has one “must-see district” it has to be Haga, said Alicia Miller in National Geographic. Grab some salty liquorice at Lakritsroten to munch while you explore the “cobbled streets and cute boutiques”, and stop to browse in the antiques shops.

There is “nothing more Swedish” than fika – slowing down for the country’s cherished “coffee-and-cake ritual”. If you want to “feel like a local” go to “sip artisanal coffee” at da Matteo on the central shopping street of Magasinsgatan before buying a sourdough cinnamon bun from Alvar & Ivar to “nibble in Slottsskogen park”.

To “get to grips” with the city’s history, consider spending an afternoon at the Museum of Gothenburg which is “primely placed in the 18th-century former Swedish East India Company headquarters, on the banks of Stora Hamnkanalen” (Great Harbour Canal).

Perhaps best of all, Gothenburg is within easy reach of a “beguiling” archipelago, said Lizzie Frainier in The Times. Vrångö, the southernmost inhabited island, is just a 30-minute ferry ride from Saltholmen port. With fewer than 400 residents, it’s home to two “ruggedly beautiful” nature reserves, each with its own hiking trail. There is only one hotel on the island – Kajkanten Vrångö – where traditional boat houses have been transformed into pared-back “self-catering” accommodation that look out over the water. Order a seafood hamper from nearby Fiskeboa to enjoy the “sweetest langoustines you will ever taste”.

A “touchstone of British factual television”, will come to an end this September, said Radio Times. Two 90-minute episodes of one of the world’s longest-running documentaries will air on ITV in an “epic and moving end to a television landmark”.

Based on a Jesuit maxim – “give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” – 14 seven-year-olds from a variety of backgrounds were interviewed in 1964 about their thoughts and aspirations for the future. But the tenth and final iteration will see a return of many cast members, who have mixed views on the show’s practices.

‘Glimpse of the country’s future’

This “groundbreaking ITV documentary series” has been described as the “Bayeux tapestry of television”, said The Guardian. Over the last six decades, the children’s progress has been “creating a snapshot of Britain’s social history”.

But this instalment will have some “noticeable differences”. Michael Apted, the researcher who found and selected the participants, and interviewed them for each episode, died in 2021. Director Asif Kapadia, who was chosen to replace Apted for his acclaimed Ayrton Senna, Diego Maradona and Amy Winehouse films, has since called this documentary the “most beautiful thing I’ve ever made”.

Two of the subjects have died. Lynn Johnson, who became a librarian in east London, was the first, in 2013. Nick Hitchon, a Yorkshire farmer’s son who became a nuclear scientist, approached the programme wanting to record a final message after being diagnosed with terminal cancer. He died in 2023, just “hours” after his final “heartbreaking” interview.

The documentary was originally intended as a “one-off” for the current affairs show “World in Action”, said The Times. But it intrigued audiences as it “promised the viewer a glimpse of the country’s future”.

The cast’s lives continue to diverge. Tony Walker, a “cheeky-chappy kid” from Bethnal Green, east London, dreamt of becoming a jockey, but turned to cab driving, while Andrew Brackfield claimed to read the Financial Times aged seven, successfully predicted he would attend Cambridge, and is a retired partner of Linklaters. But in a “villain-free series”, Bruce Balden’s “fundamental goodness still shines”. In the first episode he said we should “give most of our money to poor people”, and by “28 Up” was “teaching maths to immigrants in the East End and in 35 Up was teaching in Bangladesh”.

‘Outrageous’ inequality

Over this time period, we have seen the participants “grow up, marry, separate, have careers, suffer illness and depression”, said The Independent.

Cast members have also accused Apted of “pursuing an agenda and have been intermittently unhappy at how they were portrayed”. Throughout you can see a “reluctance to continue to appear on screen warring with a sense of duty – a generational one, perhaps – not to disrupt a historic enterprise”.

Many of the cast stepped back for one or several episodes. One of a “trio of prep-school toffs”, Charles Furnaux left after 21 and became a BBC producer, while Liverpudlian teacher Peter Davies dropped out for three instalments after being “monstered by the right-wing press for calling Margaret Thatcher’s government ‘an incompetent, uncaring bloody shower’”.

Considering the aims and scope of the project, it is “outrageous” that only four girls were chosen alongside 10 boys, cast member Jackie Bassett told The Mirror. Bassett, alongside two friends from the same “working-class east London” primary school, and “solo upper-class Suzy” were the only female representatives on the show.

Bassett famously challenged Apted on camera for “asking the women about marriage and children rather than anything else”. She would later “point blank refuse to speak about certain topics”. “I was not going to talk about something that would affect my family, my children – so I basically just told him no”, said Bassett. “He didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it.”

Shandy is “poised for a resurgence”, said Jane Denton on This Is Money. The thirst-quenching mix of lager and lemonade has become an “unlikely” drink of choice for 20-somethings who are seeking out lower alcohol content tipples that “don’t compromise on taste”.

Originating in 1850s England as “shandygaff” – a mixture of beer and ginger ale – the popular drink had dropped the “gaff” by the end of the 19th century and swapped in lemonade for a citrussy twist. Shandy “started going out of fashion” in the 1990s, Jane Peyton, founder of the School of Booze, told the publication but it is now “undergoing a revival”.

Ocado sales of shandy have climbed by 40% year-on-year, said Rachel Dixon in The Guardian, and the drink is popping up in supermarkets everywhere. Made with just two ingredients, it’s “easy to make at home” and “shouldn’t get you too sloshed”. Use a “chilled glass”, pour in classic or cloudy lemonade up to the halfway point, then “slowly add the beer”.

For a fruity twist, try mixing lager with pink grapefruit soda or pale ale with lime soda. And for a sweeter tipple you can blend lager with cola to create a sweeter, amber-brown coloured cocktail that’s known as diesel in Germany. “Yes, it’s a thing”.

If you’d rather buy your shandy ready to drink, try Pillars Radler, said Melissa Cole in The Telegraph. Packaged in a “suitably nostalgic” stubby bottle with a “charming” yellow label, it blends “quality” lager with orange zest and lemon juice for a touch of “refreshing acidity”.

Other options to keep an eye out for include LoFi’s Raspberry Radler which feels like “inhaling a slightly jammy slice of summer”, and Shandy Shack Ginger Beer Shandy which perfectly balances the “bready malt” of the pale ale with “decently spicy ginger pop”. It’s a “belter”.

Home to the world’s largest Japanese diaspora, as well as sizeable Korean and Chinese communities, the Brazilian megacity of São Paulo is one of the best places outside Asia to enjoy Asian food, said Austin Bush in Travel + Leisure.

In the thriving Japanese district of Liberdade, where street lamps resemble torii gates, beloved old izakaya (Japanese pubs) rub shoulders with stalls selling Japanese-Brazilian street food such as hot rolls – breaded, deep-fried sushi.

The nearby district of Bom Retiro has a similar concentration of Korean bars and restaurants. And, in recent years, a new culinary wave has emerged, as chefs create bold fusion dishes or, more subtly, adapt Japanese recipes to uniquely Brazilian produce, from Amazon river fish to jambu, a tongue-tingling herb. Among the finest exponents of these trends are the “highly acclaimed” Kotori, Aizomê, Kanoe and Goya Zushi – restaurants as exciting and distinctive as any in the city.

A Croatian island without the crowds

Croatia’s best-known islands (Hvar, Korčula and so on) lie in its far south, but there are plenty of others, many of which are beautiful but much less touristy. Among them is Dugi Otok, said Mark Palmer in The Times – a verdant, 26-mile-long sliver of limestone that lies an easy ferry ride from the fascinating harbour town of Zadar.

Take a boat tour of the nearby Kornati National Park, an “otherworldly” wilderness of stark, arid islands criss-crossed with ancient stone walls. And be sure to spend some time in Zadar itself (I can recommend the Hotel Bastion), an elegant place with some lovely museums and architectural “treasures”, including impressive Roman remains.

A week-long walk in the eastern Alps

An “epic” 466-mile hiking path, the Alpe-Adria-Trail runs from Austria, via Slovenia, to Italy’s Adriatic coast. For anyone wanting to see the magnificent Alpine landscapes through which it passes, however, there’s an easier option, said Paul Bloomfield in The Telegraph: the Alpe-Adria Circular. This 83-mile circuit passes through all three countries, offering an intriguing sample of their overlapping cultures, and is usually done in a week (Walks Worldwide has a self-guided eight-day package, with luggage transfers, from £895).

Most walkers start in the Austrian town of Villach, from which the path winds through wildflower meadows and beechwoods to “chocolate-box” Alpine pastures, “teal-emerald” lakes and photogenic hamlets such as Borgo Lussari in Italy. The highest point is the 6,043ft summit of the Schwarzkogel, with spectacular views of the Julian Alps – including Triglav, the triple-peaked mountain that adorns the Slovenian flag.

A remote town of some 900 souls beside Hudson Bay in Canada, Churchill is known as the “polar bear capital of the world”. Every autumn, as the bay freezes, hundreds of these bears gather around it before heading out across the ice, and thousands of tourists come to see them. But Churchill also hosts another annual wildlife spectacle, said Oliver Smith in the Financial Times – one that attracts fewer visitors but is equally worth seeing.

Each summer, thousands of beluga whales migrate to the mouth of the Churchill River, to feed on small fish and nurse their young. These pale cetaceans, which grow up to 18ft long, look from a distance like countless “white-topped waves” in the river (which is more than a mile wide here), and visitors can safely kayak and paddleboard among them.

Churchill is inaccessible by road, so I flew there in a prop plane from Winnipeg, admiring the “vastness” below, where sunlight danced on rivers, and the forest gradually gave way to tundra. (You can also travel by train – a two-day journey.)

The “wind-harassed” town sits in pancake-flat surroundings studded with “landmarks of rust and ruin” – the wrecks of a cargo plane and a steamship, the remains of an old rocket research facility, and so on. I stayed at the Churchill Northern Studies Centre, where lay visitors mingle with research scientists.

My six-day Belugas for the Bold itinerary included shared accommodation, guided nature walks, lectures on ecology and indigenous culture, and water activities. The town’s museum has beautiful indigenous artefacts, and on walks you will see lovely flora and might spot polar bears.

But most wondrous is the chance to see the belugas. Apparently, they are sometimes “mischievous” enough to tip paddlers into the water, but I felt a great sense of peace among them. So low to the water, I could “almost sense the stroke and whip of each flipper”, and every time a curious whale surfaced, I felt a “jolt of surprise, as though aquarium glass were fracturing”.

The trip costs from £2,075, excluding flights (churchillscience.ca).

This is a moist and moreish cake to have at any tea party, said Jennifer Rinkoff. With a scrumptious mascarpone buttercream, you’ll be tempted to make it every weekend.

Ingredients (makes 1)

• 175g butter, softened, plus extra for greasing
• 175g caster sugar
• 4 medium eggs
• 175g self-raising flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 2 tbsp strong espresso, cooled
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2 tbsp milk

For the syrup and topping:

• 2 tbsp strong espresso, hot
• 1 tbsp caster sugar
• 250g mascarpone cheese, at room temperature
• 150ml double cream
• 50g icing sugar, sifted
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• cocoa (unsweetened chocolate) powder, sifted, for dusting

Method

• Preheat the oven to 160C fan/180C/350F/gas mark 4 and grease and line a 900g (2lb) loaf tin with baking parchment.
• In a large bowl, cream the butter and sugar until pale and fluffy. Add the eggs one at a time, mixing well but being careful not to over-mix. Fold in the flour and baking powder. Stir through the cooled espresso, vanilla extract and milk until smooth.
• Pour the batter into the prepared loaf tin and bake for 40-45 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean.
• While the cake is still in the tin and warm from the oven, make a syrup by mixing the hot espresso with the sugar until the sugar dissolves. Poke small holes in the loaf with a skewer and spoon over the syrup. Leave to cool completely.
• In a bowl, whisk the mascarpone, cream, icing sugar and vanilla extract until thick and spreadable (don’t over-whisk or it may split). Spread the mascarpone topping generously over the cooled loaf using a small spatula.
• Dust with cocoa powder for a lovely finish. Chill for 1-2 hours to set before slicing, and store any leftovers in the refrigerator.
• Tip: this cake can be frozen for up to three months. The frosting and cake can both be frozen but it’s best to freeze them separately, or the finished cake can be frozen if sliced first.

Taken from ‘The Jewish Bakery: over 100 Family Recipes from east London’s oldest Jewish bakery’ by Jennifer Rinkoff.

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When it comes to weekend breaks, a good location is essential. It doesn’t matter whether the hotel is perfect – if the surroundings leave something to be desired, you’ll find yourself longing to get home. Luckily, Woodstock is charming. Just eight miles from Oxford on the eastern edge of the Cotswolds, the pretty market town is lined with traditional stone cottages, old pubs and bakeries.

On a quiet road close to the centre lies The Feathers. Tucked amid 17th-century townhouses, it looks fairly unassuming. But when you step through the doors, it’s clear that this is a swanky spot. Local property developer Daniel Ede bought the hotel in 2023 before carrying out a multi-million-pound revamp. Fast-forward to today and the hotel has an air of confidence: a collection of awards are proudly displayed on a chest in the reception area.

Why stay here?

The location is outstanding. We went for a short walk before dinner and stumbled upon the grounds of Blenheim Palace, where families lounge with picnics on the grassy slopes overlooking the lake.

Back at the hotel, the calming interiors encourage proper rest and relaxation. Our generously sized room – the Goldcrest Suite – had been carefully renovated with plush grey carpets, gilded mirrors and an enormous (and very comfy) king-size bed framed by flowing white drapes.

The layout felt a little unusual – a mini-sofa and TV were tucked awkwardly behind a semi-dividing wall, and the freestanding bathtub is in the main room, although you can pull across a golden chinoiserie-style folding screen for privacy. (There’s also a separate bathroom, with a shower, stocked with Urban Apothecary fig-scented toiletries.) This is likely due to the nature of the rambling Grade II listed building: the total of 23 suites and rooms vary in shape and size.

Thoughtful touches were everywhere, from the carefully selected tapestries adorning the walls to the tasty snacks laid out for our arrival including slices of lemon drizzle cake. Efforts have clearly been made to preserve the building’s historic details like the stone fireplace, while rooms have been updated with modern touches.

Eating and drinking

The Nest is a fun spot for dinner. Glowing wicker lamps sit atop marble tables in the bustling wood-panelled restaurant. Staff are attentive and knowledgeable but unobtrusive, and the cocktails are excellent. The menu changes with the seasons: we enjoyed a goat’s curd and parmesan tart bursting with sweet, juicy Isle of Wight tomatoes and flaky pan-roasted hake served with a decadent vadouvan curry sauce, tiger prawns and fennel shavings. Be sure to order a side of the crispy potatoes and the zingy herb salad. The Cotswolds sourdough rolls with whipped butter were a nice touch, too. If you’re looking for something more casual, head to The Aviary bar and outdoor terrace for pizzas and small plates.

Breakfast is served at The Nest. There’s a selection of fresh juices, pastries and muffins, alongside heartier classics like the full English, or smoked salmon sourdough crumpets.

Things to do

You won’t find a gym, spa or pool at The Feathers, but there’s plenty to do nearby. Keen walkers can set out on foot into the grounds of Blenheim Palace to soak up the stunning scenery. Afterwards, head back into Woodstock for ice cream at Alfonso Gelataria on the high street.

Oxford is a short drive away; consider a day trip to the historic city to wander through the colleges, go punting along the River Cherwell, or while away an afternoon in one of the many pubs or cafes.

The verdict

The Feathers ticks a lot of boxes for a weekend break. It was a cool, calming refuge when we visited during one of the many summer heatwaves, but come autumn it will be cosy and inviting. This is the type of place you leave feeling exactly as you should: well-rested, refreshed and relaxed.

Irenie was a guest of The Feathers, feathers.co.uk

Midnight sun is a simple enough concept in theory, but it’s oddly disorientating in practice. I was almost a thousand miles north of Iceland, closer to the North Pole than to Reykjavik, and I knew the summer days would last all night. But my eyes or mind (or maybe even my soul) just wouldn’t stop waiting for dusk.

On overcast afternoons, the sky often brightened as the evening wore on, as if the world were turning in reverse. Sometimes, long after a sensible bedtime, the sun would break through the cloud for the first time that day. I took photos, but they didn’t capture the weirdness. They couldn’t, of course, because the sense of weirdness came from within – from my body clock and its sense of how the world had always worked, until that moment. Now, thrillingly, it seemed that all bets were off.

Under the skin of the Arctic

It’s a soulful place, Svalbard, all rock and ice and sky. The peaks are dark and snow-capped, the valleys deep and glacial. Sometimes photos come out black and white even when you take them in colour. The sea, rarely out of sight, has many moods: near the glaciers, it is flat and milky from the minerals released after centuries trapped in ice. Further out in the fjord, it is black, glossy and angular. Our guide steered skilfully through the swell and we pitched, rolled and occasionally crashed our way through the white-frothed waves.

We were on our way to Isfjord Radio, a historic communications station that directed transatlantic shipping and air traffic from 1933 until GPS rendered it obsolete in 1999. The historic buildings once occupied by radio operators now house guests of Basecamp Explorer, which runs a range of Arctic adventures on Spitsbergen, the largest of Svalbard’s islands. Rugged exteriors and simply furnished rooms are warmed by the exceptional hospitality of the Basecamp crew, who conjure up sophisticated tasting menus featuring Arctic fish and game. Reindeer tartare with fig and black sesame was one of the highlights; a smoky seal yakitori was another.

I had spent the previous two nights at Nordenskiöld Lodge, the most remote of the three Basecamp Explorer properties, and indeed the world’s northernmost commercial accommodation. You are totally off-grid here, relying on solar panels and a log-fired stove (and sauna). Home-cooked meals are prepared by your hosts, whose responsibilities also include taking a dinghy out to the nearby glacier and hauling in boulder-sized chunks of ice to melt down for drinking water and cooking.

A Svalbard safari

Every visitor wants to see a polar bear, but only a few will be lucky. I almost was, which felt unluckier still: the day after I left, a mother and her two cubs wandered past Isfjord Radio. (The day before that, one member of my group had spotted a whiteish bear-shaped object, some distance away, amid a field of dark gravel and moss. “I cannot be certain it’s a rock,” our guide said, lowering her binoculars. So maybe I had been lucky after all.)

They may be hard to find but polar bears are common enough, and dangerous enough, that armed guides are compulsory anywhere outside Longyearbyen, the archipelago’s largest town (which is not that large – its population of 2,100 is outnumbered by the bears). In the town itself you may see Arctic foxes, patrolling the lower slopes of the valley, and dozens of geese. At sea, eider ducks are common, puffins slightly less so, but you will see them from time to time, flapping alongside the boat. They seem to work hard to stay in the air, unlike the elegant Arctic terns that soar high above.

We saw seals, too, lounging on little icebergs, and reindeer, both from the boat, as they meandered along the shore, and on land, as we hiked to a walrus colony. Our most memorable encounter was with a pod of minke whales. We had, in theory, finished sightseeing and were motoring back to the lodge when a gyre of gulls caught our guide’s eye. Soon we saw fins, and then a whole head lurching out of the water in front of us, its throat swollen with seawater and fish. We spent an hour with them, watching them dive and then surface again in some unexpected place. The backdrop was spectacular too: black hills in the distance under billowing clouds.

A seasonal adventure

Summer and winter deliver two different Svalbards. In one, you will cross dark, frozen seas by snowmobile and race through valleys with a pack of huskies. In the other, the dogs pull a wheeled cart rather than a sledge, and you have to stick to gravel tracks – but you can kayak in the shadow of a glacier, dodging the remnants of the pack ice.

One constant is the promise of a sauna (and an icy plunge) at the end of the day. The other, at Nordenskiöld Lodge, is the glacier. Just a few hundred metres from the cabin, it’s your constant companion – and impossible to ignore. Sometimes it was the creak or rumble of ancient ice that caught my attention, but I was drawn to it when it was quiet too. Each time I looked it seemed a little different: the packed snow deeper blue or brighter white, the ice cliff more or less forbidding.

Hiking high on to its plateau revealed previously hidden textures. Crags barely visible from the ground reared up above us, and deep crevasses fell away below. With spikes strapped to our boots and icepicks in hand, we climbed ridges, followed frozen streams and rested by an eerily blue lake.

The sun was obscured by leaden clouds, but the glare was strong. Night would not return to these slopes until the first, fleeting sunset of the autumn, six weeks later. By then the glacier would have received a fresh coating of snow, the sea temperature would be falling again and the residents of Svalbard would be readying themselves for the long polar night.

Holden Frith was a guest of Basecamp Explorer. The company’s seven-day signature summer adventure is £7,450 / $10,090 per person, based on two people sharing, including all meals, activities and boat transfers.

Wiltshire: Bowden Hill House, Chippenham

A Grade II country mansion dating from the mid-19th century and set above the picturesque village of Lacock. In all about 34 acres, including dilapidated outbuildings. The house requires extensive renovation, with potential to be reinstated to its former glory. 21 beds, 7 baths, 5 receps, 2 kitchens, cellar, gardens, disused swimming pool. OIEO £1.5 million; Carter Jonas.

Kent: Chainhurst Farm House, Marden

Substantial Grade II* home with an abundance of period features, offering the buyer the flexibility to update and add their own touch. Master suite, 5 further beds, 2 baths, 5 receps, kitchen/breakfast room, gardens, paddock, around 4 acres. £1.45 million; Jackson-Stops.

Berkshire: Rippling Waters, Marlow

Charming Victorian boathouse dated c.1880 that has come to the market for the first time in over four decades. 2 beds, 2 baths, 2 kitchens, 2 receps, 1-bed annexe with potential for enlargement, mooring. £1.7 million; Knight Frank.

Surrey: Red House, Frith Hill

A substantial Grade II* residence dating from 1889, which combines the genius of Sir Edwin Lutyens with the horticultural influence of Gertrude Jekyll. Set on high ground (about 0.75 acres in all) above Charterhouse School, the house is a rare opportunity for buyers to acquire an important piece of the Arts & Crafts movement. 12 beds, 4 baths, 4 receps, kitchen/dining room, gardens. £1.35 million; Knight Frank.

Pembrokeshire: Eaton Hall, Dale

A Grade II grand residence (white building, centre) in a prime waterfront position with spacious gardens and an adjacent “reading room” building. Having recently undergone external renovation work, the three-storey property with larger cellar has vast potential for modernisation. 6 beds, family bath, kitchen, 4 receps, utility, large garden. £795,000; Country Living Group.

Wiltshire: The Red House, Church Street, Lacock

An attractive, unmodernised detached family home dating from 1778, with original floors and stone fireplaces. It would benefit from being updated. Master suite with dressing room, 5 further beds (1 en suite), 3 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, summer house, garage, garden room, garden. £1.1 million; Savills.

Lincolnshire: The Priory and The Dower House, Eastgate

The Grade II house The Priory was built as a private residence but most recently served as a hotel; it is no longer in operation and requires refurbishment. The Dower House is a well-maintained 4-bed home with expansive gardens and views over the surrounding parkland; 3.5 acres in all. £1.25 million; Fine & Country.

Wiltshire: Thompsons Hill, Sherston

A pretty Grade II detached Georgian cottage, on a 0.65-acre plot, that is conveniently situated on the edge of the village. Would benefit from some updating and modernisation. 3 beds, family bath, office, kitchen/breakfast room, 3 receps, gardens and orchard, car port, outbuildings. £695,000; James Pyle & Co.

A “completely new design” built on a fresh platform, the Compass is “ground-up new”, which is a relief because the previous one was “largely rubbish”, said Car Magazine.

There are three electric versions on offer: two front-wheel drive with a range of 311 and 419 miles respectively; and an all-wheel drive 4xe with a range of 377 miles. This is “a refined, well-equipped and unashamedly family-friendly electric SUV”.

Jeep’s first electric Compass appears “refreshingly different”, with proper off-road “attitude”, in a sea of “samey SUVs”, said The Independent. The steering is “capable and reassuring”, but there’s “noticeable lean” on twisty roads; it has traded some “polish and precision for a more rugged, substantial feel”.

Overall, it’s a “useful” family car with a “real Jeep flavour”, although “ride comfort, efficiency and value stop it from beating the very best”.

The interior isn’t plush, but feels “sturdy” and well-equipped for family life, with plenty of space, “wetsuit-like upholstery and rubberised switches”, said What Car?. The elevated driving position means good visibility; there’s a sharp 10.25-inch driver’s display, plus a “responsive” 16-inch infotainment screen.

The Compass has “impressive off-road credentials” and a practical interior, but “poor road manners” let it down.

Many shows from this summer’s Edinburgh Festival and Edinburgh Festival Fringe are being staged elsewhere in the UK this autumn. Here’s our pick of the best...

Evita Too

Sh!t Theatre’s non-Lloyd Webber production tells its own version of the extraordinary story of Isabel Perón, the former go-go dancer who became the first female president of Argentina, leading the country for 18 months before being ousted by a military coup. It’s a “rad-fem riot of a show”, said Neil Cooper in The Herald – a heady mix of song, dance and naked roller-skating.
Tours to Ipswich, Bristol, Canterbury and Salford, 6 November-9 January; judithdimant.com

Bryony Kimmings: Bog Witch

The performance artist’s latest show turns her ironic eye on her decision to relocate to a tumbledown cottage in the countryside. The subject is a familiar one, but she “makes it fresh, organic and akin to a vital ritual of renewal”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Telegraph. Having begun lightly, the story “spirals into a tempest of upset”, before ending in a place of “fragile wellness”. It is “lovely stuff”.
Tours to Lancaster, Cardiff and Leeds, 11 September-1 October; bryonykimmings.com

John Kearns: Tilting at Windmills

Kearns’s “scintillating” show relates the end of his 12-year relationship with the mother of his child, in the form of a travelogue inspired by T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land’ – all delivered while wearing dodgy false teeth and a loose-fitting tonsured wig. It sounds strange, and it is, but it’s also a “joy from start to finish”, said Dominic Maxwell in The Times. “When I wasn’t laughing out loud, I was beaming at the skill and nerve of it all.”
Tours to Tunbridge Wells, London, Canterbury, Corsham, Poole, Lancaster, Liverpool, Salford, Aberdeen, Carlisle, Norwich, Faversham, Newcastle, Glasgow, Durham, Taunton and Cardiff, 10 September-6 November; johnkearnscomedy.co.uk

Bigfoot Ripped My Dog in Half I Saw It

This “brilliantly conceived” show from New Yorkers Xhloe and Natasha is about two teenagers who stage fake Bigfoot sightings in their Appalachian town. When a neighbour’s dog is found torn to pieces, it starts a panic. Combining deft acting with “intense acrobatic athleticism”, this is “one of the sharpest, most significant, and most breathtakingly executed physical theatre shows of the year”, said Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman.
Soho Theatre, London, 7-26 September

Crybabies: The Scaring

This “fantastic” horror pastiche from the BBC Radio 4 trio is a tale of demonic possession that combines chills, jump scares, laughs and illusions, said Brian Logan in The Guardian. “Set in a guesthouse that makes the Overlook in ‘The Shining’ seem five-star by comparison”, it’s packed with smart gags, and its plotting is twistier than Regan’s neck in “The Exorcist”.
Soho Theatre, London, 3-23 September

Pedro Almodóvar has explored his own profession before, said Helen O’Hara in Empire, notably in “Pain and Glory”, in which Antonio Banderas starred as a suffering film director. But, in his new movie, in which he looks at the way artists cannibalise the lives of those around them – to the detriment, perhaps, of their own relationships – there is an added sense of self-flagellation.

The film opens over Christmas in 2004, with Elsa (Bárbara Lennie), a sometime filmmaker and commercials director, being hospitalised with an appalling migraine. Fortunately, she has a supportive boyfriend (Patrick Criado), a firefighter who moonlights as a stripper. We later learn, however, that Elsa is actually the fictional creation of Raúl (Leonardo Sbaraglia), an urbane filmmaker who is drawing heavily on incidents in his own life, and that of his long-time female assistant (Aitana Sánchez-Gijón).

A “witty and sensitive mea culpa”, the film will delight Almodóvar fans, said Vanessa Thorpe in The Observer. While the tension between fiction and reality is a theme, “Bitter Christmas” is also an examination of profound grief, and a “belated, guilty tribute to all the older women who do much of the caring and facilitating of artists’ lives”.

This drama has many fine qualities, said Donald Clarke in The Irish Times, but its postmodernist structure drains it of a certain “emotional weight”. At times, it “feels like an exercise: a challenge the director has set for himself”. And yet, Almodóvar still delivers an “attractive package”: the shots “flow with poetic discipline”; the locations are bleakly beautiful. Even when he is coasting, Almodóvar “cannot help but charm and entertain”.

The British and Americans have been making big-budget films about the Second World War for decades, said Ed Potton in The Times but, “Gallic cinematic triumphalism has been more muted”. So “bravo” to Antonin Baudry for producing this “entertaining, and sometimes moving portrait, of Charles de Gaulle”.

The first part of a two-part epic (the second comes out later this month), it is focused on his flight to London in 1940, and the founding of his Free France movement, and culminates in a lavish recreation of the Battle of Bir Hakeim. Simon Abkarian plays the general, steering a “delicate path between pathos, comedy and dignity”; Simon Russell Beale once again takes the role of Winston Churchill (speaking mainly in French).

Perhaps because its source is a biography by a British historian – Julian Jackson – “this very enjoyable and gallopingly eventful” biopic has an “element of amused detachment”, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian. It is naturally sympathetic to the “lofty” and faintly preposterous general who refused to accept the dishonour of Vichy France’s capitulation to the Nazis; Churchill, his great supporter and, in some ways, creator, found him exasperating but also saw in him a kindred spirit, “a romantic maverick and patriot”.

For reasons that become clear, the film’s narrative is split between de Gaulle and the resistance fighter Fernand Bonnier de la Chapelle. This “lumbers” the film with another story to tell, and leaves less time to explore de Gaulle’s “strange, dislocated life in wartime London”, said Phil de Semlyen on Time Out. As a result, the future president remains an elusive figure. Hopefully, part two will focus more on the man, and less on the myth.

The chemical compound 5-MeO-DMT, secreted by the Sonoran Desert toad, has been dubbed the “Everest” of psychedelics, said Olivia Goldhill in New Scientist. Whereas LSD creates hallucinations, the “god molecule”, as some call it, “completely shatters all perception”. A trip lasts no more than half an hour but “creates a total obliteration of the ego”.

Smoking 5-MeO-DMT has been a fringe practice since the 1980s but it has recently become better known – with adherents including Mike Tyson, who in 2019 described taking the drug as “almost like dying and being reborn”. In “The Ego Trip”, the journalist Kimon de Greef charts its history, with a particular focus on one of its main popularisers, the Mexican doctor Octavio Rettig Hinojosa. The story de Greef tells is “often dark” but his book is “compelling”.

Rettig Hinojosa – or Octavio, as he prefers – “burst onto the Silicon Valley scene” in 2013, when he gave an online talk describing how 5-MeO-DMT had helped him kick his crack cocaine addiction, said Kristen Martin on Bloomberg. Presenting “smoking toad” as an “ancient Mesoamerican ritual”, he claimed to have been introduced to it by the Seri tribe, who live in the Sonora region of northwestern Mexico. Often dressed in “Seri garb”, he went on to “serve toad” to thousands.

“If you’re familiar with the guru playbook, you know where this is going,” said Susannah Cahalan in The New York Times. Octavio “bragged about the number of clients he had bedded” and dosed children as young as five with his “medicine”. He was filmed “kicking and slapping a terrified man”, forcing him to take more hits of toad. At least two people have died after attending his ceremonies. De Greef offers an “enthralling and galling travelogue into the deeply weird underbelly of the psychedelic renaissance”.

“A different writer might have been tempted to go gonzo, to smoke toad himself, and to come back with stories of ego death, the space-time continuum and the rest of it,” said Oliver Bullough in The Guardian. Mercifully, de Greef resists that temptation. He remains “clear-eyed” throughout “The Ego Trip” (except when Octavio dupes him into trying an “essential oil” which proves to have been laced with an LSD-like substance). As well as charting Octavio’s story, de Greef offers “entertaining digressions”, including into “how pharmaceutical companies are harnessing 5-MeO-DMT for their own ends”. The result is a “highly enjoyable” book that sheds light on some extremely “grim” practices.

Great Yarmouth’s Britannia Pier bagged the top prize at the National Piers Society’s annual Pier of the Year competition – and it’s easy to see why. With a rich history dating back to 1858, the pier has recently undergone a serious renovation and now features two on-site pubs, food stalls, various rides and one of the country’s few surviving pier theatres. But there are plenty of other piers for a fun family day out. Here are some of our favourites.

Llandudno Pier, Conwy

Last year’s Pier of the Year winner was this “splendidly Victorian” structure in north Wales, said The Sunday Times. Stretching 2,295ft into the Irish Sea, it “takes a fair bashing” from the elements. There’s a Ferris wheel at the landward end and benches dotted all along it for visitors to contemplate the “beauties of the bay on one side and the massive limestone headland of Great Orme on the other”.

Clevedon Pier, Somerset

If it’s beauty you’re after, head to Clevedon Pier in north Somerset. Opened in 1869 “to receive paddle steamer passengers from Devon and Wales”, it’s England’s only Grade I-listed pier made with “discarded wrought iron railway lines shaped into eight arches” almost 15 metres high, said The Guardian. “Clevedon without its pier would be like a diamond with a flaw,” the then poet laureate John Betjeman said during a campaign to save it from demolition in 1980.

Southwold Pier, Suffolk

Southwold remains “delightfully unspoilt”, said Cambridgeshire Live. Expect “colourful beach huts”, a working lighthouse and an Edwardian pier stretching into the North Sea that’s “packed with entertainment, shops and eateries”. It’s perhaps one of the UK’s “most eccentric” piers thanks to the arcade of “wacky” slot machines designed by inventor Tim Hunkin that provide “endless seaside fun”.

Blackpool piers, Lancashire

Blackpool is the “proud home” of three piers, said The Guardian. The oldest surviving is the Grade II-listed North Pier, which features an “art-deco theatre, a two-tier carousel, bars and an arcade”. On the Central Pier you’ll find the big wheel and a bar with live shows, while the South Pier promises a “high-octane funfair” with a rollercoaster and reverse bungee ride. Just watch out for seagulls when you stop for fish and chips.

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The Mediterranean is a place, a mood, a cooking ethos. Twenty-two countries border the cherished body of water, each with its own specialized manner of feeding their people. These books are no comprehensive consideration of every kitchen in the Mediterranean. But they sure are an exhilarating starting point.

‘The Food of Morocco’ by Paula Wolfert

Wolfert’s original book on Moroccan food was published in 1973, far ahead of its time in its insistence on the proper way to cook the food of the North African country. In 2011, she published an even more deeply considered version of that landmark book. “The Food of Morocco” is “hardly the quintessential Paula Wolfert cookbook,” said LA Weekly. “This book is Paula Wolfert.”

Her influence in the intervening decades was immense. The popularity of clay pots for cooking and the ubiquity of preserved lemons in many an American kitchen are all Wolfert’s doing. With “The Food of Morocco,” tagines of all sorts, lively salads with touches of flower water, and the proper way to make couscous can become second nature in American kitchens far from the shores of Rabat and Tangier. ($60, HarperCollins, Amazon)

‘The Food of Sicily’ by Fabrizia Lanza

Italy points its finger well into the Mediterranean Sea, but you could argue that the region most influenced by that body of water is the island of Sicily. Lanza runs a cooking school in Palermo, and “The Food of Sicily” (2023) sings a song many Americans know well, being that so many Italian immigrants to the U.S. were Sicilian.

But no entire cuisine travels with its migrants, so “The Food of Sicily” is loaded with surprises, too — swordfish stuffed with garlic and mint, octopus salad, and watermelon pudding included. Sicily has “always been at the crossroads of the Mediterranean,” said Lanza to Monocle magazine. “It’s a place where people have brought their own unique customs to enrich our table.” ($40, Artisan, Amazon)

‘The Glorious Foods of Greece’ by Diane Kochilas

Love your Greek salad and gyros to your heart’s oregano-laced content. There is a world of Greek food most Americans have never experienced. A “landmark for Greek cooking in the U.S.,” Kochilas' seminal 2001 book, “The Glorious Foods of Greece,” is the result of eight years of research across the country’s varied regions, from the mountains of Macedonia and Thrace in the north to Greece’s six main island groups, and “displays a deep grasp of history,” said Publishers Weekly.

The 400-odd recipes include savory pies of all stripes, a mind-boggling array of uses for many styles of cheese, and boundless vegetable dishes. Moussaka, you are adored, but Kochilas will have you seeing Greek cuisine in colors beyond blue and white. ($40, ThriftBooks, Amazon)

‘Istanbul and Beyond: Exploring the Diverse Cuisines of Turkey’ by Robyn Eckhardt

Turkey, a sprawling, varied country, in the hands of Eckhardt and the photographer David Hagerman, is a “picaresque portrait of a country that doesn’t really have a national cuisine at all; it has dozens,” said Max Falkowitz at Saveur. There are the famed Urfa chiles of the country’s southeast, the seafood, greens and corn in the north that edge the Black Sea, and the grand amalgam of influences in Istanbul.

“Istanbul and Beyond” (2017) is organized according to a number of Turkey’s regions, so you acquire a sense of place as you deepen your knowledge of Mediterranean cooking. Corn and creme fraiche biscuits, brown butter scrambled eggs, sun-dried tomato and pomegranate salad, and herbed fish cakes — this is Turkish food in its truest, most varied form with an aperture in every recipe. ($22, HarperCollins, Amazon)

‘Lebanon: Cooking the Foods of My Homeland’ by Anissa Helou

In “Lebanon” (2026), a book both personal and anthropological, the famed Beirut-born author Helou “returns to her girlhood roots, examining the country’s regional cooking as she makes her way from place to place,” said The Boston Globe. She learns aspects of her native cuisine she had never fathomed. Imagine, then, what we nonnatives glean.

Yogurt is everywhere, from dressing fava bean fatteh (bread salad) to wee meatballs. Vegetables, like chicory, plus artichokes and potatoes, are braised in extra-virgin olive oil. Zucchini and cabbages are stuffed; fish is cooked with tahini. This is Lebanese cuisine in all its familiar, surprising brilliance. ($50, Ecco, Amazon)

‘The New Book of Middle Eastern Food’ by Claudia Roden

Be not fooled by the title. The Middle East is a construct created by people in the West. Across 500-plus pages, the “great cook” and “captivating food historian” Roden captures the foods of countries like Greece, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey, said the blog Cooks Without Borders. What do all these countries have in common? Yes, they abut the Mediterranean Sea, just not the well-trod Mediterranean of the average American tourist.

In the book’s 16 central chapters, Roden wanders from central categories such as yogurt, egg dishes, breads and pickles, showing how the countries of this region prepare stunning variations of common foodstuffs. Your kitchen repertoire will mature as handily as your new lens on geography will if you take an open-eyed tour of “The New Book of Middle Eastern Food” (1985). ($55, Knopf, Amazon)

‘The New Spanish Table’ by Anya von Bremzen

All the hits are here — Spanish tortilla, patatas bravas, various kinds of paella. But “The New Spanish Table” (2005) is also a snapshot of the revolution in cooking that happened across Spain during the early part of the 20th century, an era in which Spanish cuisine began “rapidly usurping the culinary dominance of Italy and France,” said Publishers Weekly.

Von Bremzen spent decades traveling across and writing about Spain. There is both modernity and history in this book. The text profiles the cooking of such influential figures as the Catalan chef Ferran Adrià and the Basque Country’s Juan Mari Arzak and provides recipes for centuries-old dishes from Madrid. ($25, ThriftBooks, Amazon)

Anticipation for Grand Theft Auto VI reached a fever pitch in August when developer Rockstar Games finally released a first look at gameplay. But while the long-awaited project is widely expected to have the biggest premiere in video game history, there is also concern about what it means for the gaming industry’s future. Some say it could be the industry’s coup de grace; others are more optimistic.

Gaming’s ‘time of tumult’

GTA VI is expected to be a slam dunk for Rockstar financially, projected to generate up to $5.2 billion in sales by the end of its first launch week this November, according to gaming analytics firm Newzoo. But the game’s release also “comes at a time of such tumult for the gaming industry as a whole,” as “open-world games are arguably tired and online multiplayer games with $200 million budgets can crash and burn the moment they are launched,” said Troy Farah at Salon.

Part of the problem is that this game is “such a big release that it’s scaring off other studios from releasing their own games around the same time in November” lest they fail because “everyone is spending their cash on Rockstar’s latest,” said Farah. GTA VI’s $80 base game price and $100 ultimate version may “just seem like typical capitalist extraction, but the end result will likely be a narrower industry that squeezes creatives and makes things a lot more miserable for players.”

With the “cost of living crisis that’s eating every last penny of disposable income out of average household budget, it won’t take much to turn a chorus of Champagne corks into a firing squad aimed directly at the games industry’s already-exposed guts,” said Jim Trinca at IGN. The “real issue here is that so much of the games industry finds itself both scared by and dependent on the success of one single project.” Gamers should prepare for the “possibility that GTA VI, rather than being the savior of the video games industry, might trigger its next big crash.”

A ‘halo effect’

Despite some nerves about current trends in the industry, Rockstar hopes its upcoming blockbuster will “retain cultural influence for another decade,” said Christopher Byrd at The New York Times. Many are hoping a strong debut from Grand Theft Auto VI will also “boost the struggling console market, which has seen higher prices due to the rising cost of memory and storage,” said Jenni Reid and Alex Buckmaster at CNBC, though this game is only being released digitally.

Many insiders also hope the game will have a “halo effect for the entire industry,” said Rob Fahey at gaming news outlet GamesIndustry.biz. If it succeeds, GTA VI “will be a rising tide that lifts many other boats around it,” as the effects from the “biggest media launch of the decade being a video game will be very significant.” It could also cement a “reaffirmation of video games’ position on an equal footing with other media in the flow and transfer of styles, influences and ideas.”

Even amid industry falterings, GTA VI is the “type of game that can pull a lot of people back into gaming and even convince them to buy a new console to play it,” Dan DeFrancesco said at Business Insider. But the jury is still out on what the full effect of the release will be. “Big fires burn bright, but they need a lot of oxygen to grow.”

His Ali G character is “a cover to laugh at Jamaican culture”, said media-monitoring site NewsCord, as it launched a campaign for cinemas not to show Sacha Baron Cohen’s new film. Returning to the screen after 20 years, Ali G “is a white man pretending to be Jamaican”, so he “smokes weed, is a misogynist, and does nothing meaningful in life”. And while “the world laughs at Ali G”, the “real butt of the joke are Black people”.

‘Fun police’

“Ali G: Who Iz I?” is due for release in October and the trailer features “some of the escapades and pranks” in Baron Cohen’s second feature-length comedy “starring the academically challenged west Staines rude boy character”, said The Guardian. “Sporting new dreadlocks”, Ali G says that in the two decades since we last saw him, “the world went to crap: there was Covid, wars and Ed Sheeran”.

Within days of the trailer’s release, activists responding to NewsCord’s urgings had sent more than 40,000 emails to 15 major cinema chains. “The fun police are already out in force” with their efforts “to cancel the leader of Da West Staines Massif”, said The Telegraph’s culture writer, Liam Kelly. The letters of complaint are “AI-generated” and “tweaked” for each cinema chain but “one thing is consistent: Ali G is beyond the pale”.

It’s the British Board of Film Classification which “ultimately” decides whether a film is “fit to be shown on the UK’s big screens” and “it would be a massive surprise” if this one “were not given a certificate”. So all this outrage is “ludicrous”.

Cinemas are not censors, Phil Clapp of the UK Cinema Association told Variety. “They are there to engage and entertain the widest possible audience”; they are not “arbiters of public taste”.

‘Moribund culture’

“Any sensible person” can “see straight away” that Baron Cohen “does not depict or intend to depict Black men of any description”, said Zimbabwean author Masimba Musodza in The Times of Israel. He’s actually “poking fun at white youth” who have “consumed caricatures” of Black British masculinity in popular culture and “mistaken them for reality”.

There’s something “uncomfortable” in the assumption that “reproducing those stereotypes” in order to ridicule the person reproducing them “constitutes an attack upon Black people themselves”. Besides, “the answer to bad ideas in art” isn’t always censorship; “sometimes, it is simply to watch the bloody thing and understand the joke”.

Baron Cohen himself has acknowledged the censoriousness of today’s culture. “In an age where a comedian’s career can be ended by a single un-PC joke, I thought I’d play it safe and bring this guy back”, he said on X.

For others, though, Ali G’s return is less shocking than tedious. It’s “nah, you’re alright thanks” news, said Laura Martin in Esquire. When the vintage comedy character “crashed” Wimbledon fortnight this summer, “claiming to be the tournament’s official weed dealer” and joking that the royal box has nothing to do with the “queen’s punani”, the “three-decade-old gags” had not “aged well”.

The reappearance of the “bling-bedecked denizen of the West Staines Massive” is a “disquieting symptom” of a “moribund culture” that’s stifled by the grip of “ultra-progressive cliques” and “the dead hand of Bluesky thinking”, said Gareth Roberts in The Spectator. “We just have to go patiently through, however long it takes, and hope that the big film of 2052 is not Ali G in a retirement home.”

A “tangled web of 60-somethings” juggle “friendship, divorce, bust-ups, romance”, and the “decades of baggage” they “quietly carry on their backs” in this Australian six-parter, said Phoebe Loomes in The Senior. But the “charming and surprising” series shows that people in their 60s have “no appetite to slow down”.

It’s a “mood piece” and an “array of portraits of characters who have actually lived some life” and been “formed by meaningful experiences”, who are introduced to us at a “later stage” than we usually see on our screens, wrote Lucy Mangan in The Guardian. “They and we are only better off for it”.

“Beautifully written” and directed with “requisite subtlety”, the Paramount+ show stars Hugo Weaving as a “bonhomous retired cameraman”. A reunion of his old friends sparks a “feast” of “hilarious and heartbreaking” storylines shot through with the type of “irreverence and honesty that makes you instantly devoted to the whole endeavour”.

The characters’ history is “part of the attraction of the story”, with “marriages, children, careers, mistakes” and “decades-long friendships” that make their choices “more complicated, not less interesting”, said Scott Podmore on Starts At 60.

And they’re “not old old”, said Anthony Morris on Screen Hub. Yes, they are nearing retirement, but while some of them seem to have everything “worked out”, others are “unsure of themselves, questioning their choices” and “trying to figure out where they’re heading”. The “Sydney backdrop” makes “everyone’s troubles” seem “just that little bit more glamorous”.

“Even if you’re not in the target audience”, this is a “witty, thoughtful and often funny drama” that is well worth a watch. But if you are older and you’ve watched other shows by father-son producers John and Dan Edwards, you “finally” get the chance to “see your generation complain about aches and pains and talk about the good old days”.

Set beside the “cobalt” Moray Firth, a half-hour drive east of Inverness, Nairn is “arguably Scotland’s finest seaside town”, says Robin McKelvie in The Telegraph. Its beaches are beautiful, with their “starched white” sands, and its high street is “as elegant as any in the Highlands”. It is “alive with independent businesses” including bijou galleries, “old-school bakers” and “Instagram-friendly” artisan cafés.

Try the ice cream at James’s (the “creative” flavours, such as almond croissant, are a delight) and the Scottish seafood at Strathnairn Beach Café. The “classiest” place to stay is the Golf View Hotel – “a Victorian palace where time stands gloriously still”. And there’s much to see nearby, including Cawdor Castle (of “Scottish play infamy”) and wild places such as Culbin Forest, where scenes from Christopher Nolan’s recent “The Odyssey” were shot.

A wild coastal walk in New Zealand

At the northern tip of New Zealand’s South Island lie the Marlborough Sounds, a maze of deep, jagged ocean inlets and forested peninsulas. Tracing the length of one of these wild, winding promontories is the glorious, 46-mile Queen Charlotte Track, says Helen Pickles in The Times.

It’s one of the country’s most spectacular long-distance hiking paths, and the only one on which tour operators (such as Wilderness Guides and Marlborough Sounds Adventure Co) offer daily luggage transfers, typically included in a four-day package with nights in lovely, remote lodges. There are some steep climbs, but the highest point is only at 475 metres, and it’s all worth it for the “breath-catching ridge-line views”, sense of isolation and “dazzlingly empty” beaches along the way. Go between October and April, but note that the weather is always “capricious” – so pack sturdy waterproofs and plenty of spare clothes, including shorts and T-shirts.

Brescia’s amazing Roman remains

Long known mainly as an industrial city, Brescia isn’t touristy – but it’s a handsome place, says Mia Aimaro Ogden in The Sunday Times, and worth visiting especially for its “extraordinary” Roman remains. They include amazingly vivid temple frescoes and one of the finest surviving Roman bronzes, the 6ft-high “Winged Victory of Brescia”.

While in town, be sure to see the frescoes by Giandomenico Tiepolo (son of Giambattista) in the church of San Faustino, and the “marvellous” Santa Giulia history museum, which occupies a monastery dating back to AD753. Stay if you can at Lenel, a stylish new boutique hotel housed in a “surprisingly lovely” old electricity substation; eat at El Licinsì, an excellent osteria; and note that Lake Garda lies only 15 minutes away by train.

I’ve never been as excited by fossilised monsters as I am by living creatures, says Ruaridh Nicoll in the Financial Times, but my four-year-old son is crazy about dinosaurs. Not only can he tell an Opisthocoelicaudia from a Micropachycephalosaurus, he can actually pronounce their names. So I decided to take him on holiday to Utah. With an array of “major dino-sites”, this state is arguably the best place on Earth to entertain a “dinosaur-mad” child, and it has enough glorious wild places to keep most parents happy too. We flew in to Salt Lake City, in the north of the state, and drove three hours east to Vernal, which sits at the top of the Dinosaur Diamond – a roughly diamond-shaped, 486-mile highway loop that passes close to all the places we wanted to see.

In Salt Lake City, we visited the Natural History Museum of Utah, where Santiago was thrilled by some “Tyrannosaurus gnashers” and a whole herd of Allosaurus skeletons “bringing down a massive, similarly unfleshed Barosaurus”. And Vernal itself was fun, with big fibreglass dinosaurs in front of half of its cafés, petrol stations and hotels, including our own, the Dinosaur Inn & Suites. More thrilling, however, was the Dinosaur National Monument, a reserve 30 minutes’ drive away through the foothills of the Uinta Mountains, “a rubble world glistening with every mineral colour imaginable”. Here, in 1909, the palaeontologist Earl Douglass dug up more than 350 tonnes of fossils, including Diplodocus and Stegosaurus, but left many more: there is a covered gallery where 1,500 bones “still poke from the dirt”.

At nearby Green River, we spent an idyllic hour paddling in the cool mountain water, then went kayaking and fishing at Red Fleet Lake, where we saw the footprints left by a Theropod on the rocky shore. Among other highlights were the Utahraptor State Park, the Prehistoric Museum in Price and – my favourite – the wonderfully remote Nine Mile Canyon, where ancient petroglyphs depicting animals and “spooky trapezoidal people” adorn the towering rocks.

I dream about clafoutis for breakfast every day, says Alice Kelly. I can’t make a pancake now without wishing it was a clafoutis instead. Something about its sugary crust, creamy centre and the tangy blackberries won’t leave my head. If you make this, I am almost certain it will be one of your favourites too.

Ingredients (serves 8)

• 30g (2 tbsp) salted butter, melted
• 150g plain flour
• 125g caster sugar
• 3 medium eggs
• 250g whole milk
• 1 tsp vanilla bean paste
• 125g blackberries for the topping
• 50g caster sugar for the topping
• To serve: vanilla ice cream or warm custard

Method

• Preheat the oven to 190°C. Brush the melted butter all over the base and sides of a large (approx. 30.5cm) ovenproof frying pan.
• Put the flour, sugar, eggs, milk and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Using an electric mixer, beat until smooth, then pour the batter into the buttered pan. Scatter the blackberries evenly over the top, then sprinkle over the caster sugar.
• Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, until the clafoutis is golden brown around the edges and set in the centre.
• Serve with a scoop of vanilla ice cream or with warm custard.
• Tip: the clafoutis is best eaten on the day it’s made, but if you want to make it ahead of time, store the baked clafoutis in the fridge and reheat it in the oven before serving.

Taken from “Scratch” by Alice Kelly, published by Nine Bean Rows at £30. To buy from The Week Bookshop for £26.99, visit theweekbookshop.co.uk to place your order, or call 020 3176 3835 to speak to a bookseller.

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West Sussex: Three Oaks Farm, Ifold

Impressive, modernist, architect-designed home in over six acres of rewilded grounds. 3 suites, kitchen/dining room, 2 receps, self-contained detached suite/office, garden, parking. £3.4 million; Strutt & Parker

Northumberland: Station House, Fourstones

Elegant Grade II Georgian house with wraparound gardens. 4 beds (1 en suite), family bath, study, recep, kitchen/dining room, garden. £650,000; Finest Properties

Somerset: Priory Lodge, Halse

Picturesque village house between the Quantock Hills and Exmoor. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, garden, garage. £515,000; Greenslade Taylor Hunt

Perthshire: Walled Garden Villa, Blairgowrie

A striking, architect-designed contemporary house set within a former walled garden with easy access to Blairgowrie Golf Club. 2 suites, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, open-plan living/dining room, garden, garage, workshop. OIEO £895,000; Strutt & Parker

Cornwall: Down End Cottage, Talland Bay

A lovely rural cottage perched in a spectacular coastal setting with breathtaking 180-degree views across the Atlantic Ocean, stretching from Bolt Tail in the east to the Lizard Peninsula in the west. 4 beds, 2 baths, kitchen/breakfast room, recep, garden room, garden, garage. OIEO £1.5 million; John Bray Estates

Surrey: Petworth Road, Chiddingfold

Charming country cottage dating back to the 1800s. The property is located in a highly sought-after Surrey Hills village and nestled in mature gardens. 3 beds, 2 baths, kitchen, 3 receps, garden, outbuildings including a summerhouse and workshop, parking. £699,950; Savills

Somerset: Nettlebridge, Oakhill

Handsome Bath-stone villa designed in a period style but built in the 1950s. The property includes a two-bed self-contained lodge. 4 beds, 3 baths, kitchen, 2 receps, orangery, garden, gym, garage. £1.15 million; Hamptons

Norfolk: Riverside Barn, South Creake

An exceptional Victorian barn conversion on the banks of the River Burn in an idyllic rural location with fine views. 3 beds, 3 baths, study, kitchen/dining room, recep, garden, parking. £825,000; Sowerbys

Produce shelves are becoming sparser and featuring fewer options. Economic, cultural and environmental factors have reduced the variety of vegetables available to consumers. Prioritizing the same produce can have negative health effects and could make crops more susceptible to climate change.

The same stock

Vegetable diversity is “declining due to market homogenization, land-use change and other threats,” and its “current conservation is insufficient,” said a study published in the journal PNAS. There have been “substantial declines in the range of traditional vegetable varieties grown over the past century, while almost one-quarter of assessed wild relatives of major vegetable crops are threatened with extinction,” said a release by the World Vegetable Center about the study.

“Vegetable biodiversity is one of the world’s greatest assets for improving diets and adapting agriculture to a changing climate,” Colin Khoury, the global conservation lead at the crop diversity preservation nonprofit Crop Trust, said in the release. “But we’re losing it at exactly the time we need it most.”

Several factors have reduced vegetable biodiversity. Initially, “humans selected only a portion of wild plants for cultivation, and then the variety narrowed even further due to the industrialization of agriculture, globalization and the spread of mass production,” said the news publication BB. As a result, traditional varieties of vegetables and “their wild relatives have fallen out of favor, leaving just a shrinking selection of tamed vegetables on supermarket shelves,” said IFL Science.

Also, agricultural practices like “monoculture, the practice of growing a single crop variety across vast areas,” are a “risky business, both economically and ecologically,” said IFL Science. If a “disease takes root in one plant, it rapidly spreads through the entire identical field like wildfire.”

Underrated options

People “consume nearly 40% fewer vegetables than recommended by the World Health Organization,” said the release. Low vegetable consumption is “among the five leading dietary risk factors contributing to the global burden of disease.” In addition, “relying on the same familiar crops,” like “standard varieties of eggplant, kale, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, onion and tomato,” may “not be enough to meet the climate challenges ahead,” said Food & Wine. The good news is that there are 1,480 known species of edible vegetables, most of which are underused.

“The solution isn’t simply to grow more vegetables,” Maarten van Zonneveld, who led the research, said in the release. “It’s also to grow more kinds of vegetables.” Many nutrient-rich vegetables, like “spider plant, slippery cabbage and other dark-green leafy vegetables, receive little breeding attention due to their lower commercial value compared to crops such as pepper and tomato,” said the study. The less-consumed vegetables also “carry traits that could help breed new varieties better able to withstand heat, drought, pests and disease,” said IFL Science.

Unfortunately, these underutilized crops “receive only a tiny fraction of the research, breeding and conservation efforts devoted to globally traded vegetables and staple grains,” said the release. The study highlights the need to “strengthen breeding capacity among both public and private organizations, combined with investment in participatory breeding with farmers,” said the study.

“Much of the vegetable biodiversity we need is still out there,” Zonneveld said in the release. The “urgency is to conserve it properly so that we can use it wisely to diversify diets amid climate change.”

“Has any actor, especially a glamorous former ‘EastEnders’ star, embraced the grotesque on stage as admirably and wholeheartedly as Tamzin Outhwaite,” asked Nick Curtis in The London Standard. Following her “utterly un-vain” performance as Kath in “Entertaining Mr Sloane”, Outhwaite now reprises her “monstrous” turn as Beverly, the “egomaniac” hostess from hell in Mike Leigh’s 1977 comedy “Abigail’s Party”.

“In a diaphanous orange frock and ratted Farrah Fawcett wig”, she gives a “tour de force” star turn in Nadia Fall’s assured revival: “every gesture, every wag of her sandalled ankle, reeks of self-satisfaction and command”, even as her drinks party descends into chaos. And there’s fine support from Kevin Bishop, deploying a roster of “sitcom harrumphs and double-takes” as Beverly’s “pretentious, prating” husband, Laurence.

“Revitalised by a crack cast, this is a party you won’t want to miss,” agreed Kirsten Grant in The Telegraph. Casting two Asian actors in the roles of new neighbours Angela and Tony adds edge to certain lines about the local area (in suburban Essex) going downhill. Lauren Patel is “deliciously tactless” as the prattling Angela. As the taciturn Tony, Omar Malik winces with “embarrassment and pent-up frustration”.

And Pandora Colin is “superlative” as Sue, said Fiona Mountford in The i Paper. A divorcée whose teenage daughter, Abigail, is holding her own party a few doors down, she’s an “unassuming woman who would just like some proper dinner”.

“Abigail’s Party” has often been accused of snobbily punching down on the aspiring working classes, said Clive Davis in The Times. In fact, like “The Diary of a Nobody” – of which Mike Leigh is a huge fan – the play is a brilliant study in “how we construct facades”.

The only flaw in this show, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian, is that the darkness of the ending does not quite land. The play has all been so enjoyably comical that the switch to tragedy leaves Beverly “speechless and at sea, for once”. Otherwise, Fall’s production “proves that this period comedy of manners is eternally resonant”.

Harold Pinter Theatre, London SW1. Until 19 September.

The first series of the BBC’s “affable cosy crime saga” “Ludwig” was “almost irresistible”, said Rebecca Nicholson in the Financial Times. David Mitchell starred as John Taylor, a famous puzzle setter known as Ludwig, who has a knack for solving “seemingly uncrackable” murders.

When his detective twin brother, James, disappears, Ludwig impersonates him to help his sister-in-law, Lucy (Anna Maxwell Martin), solve the mystery. Series two continues in the “same lively vein as the first” with each episode combining a murder-of-the-week mystery set against the overarching storyline about James’ disappearance.

I was worried that the new series couldn’t possibly be as good as series one, said Anita Singh in The Telegraph. “Relief: it is.” The script is “cracking”, Mitchell is “great”, and the supporting performances, including Sian Clifford as a slippery lawyer and Mark Bonnar as a local newspaper editor, are “faultless”. The first crime, featuring an elderly woman stabbed to death, is “a belter”: John’s method of unmasking the killer “made me squeak with delight”.

How you feel about series two will depend on your tolerance for cosy crime, said Annabel Nugent in The Independent. “Ludwig” remains “as light as ever”, and the murders, though plentiful, are still bloodless – they are “cases lifted from a ‘Cluedo’ board” that are often “barely plausible”.

Still, it is a solid comfort watch for autumnal nights – “best enjoyed like a mug of milky tea, sipped down easily and without much thought”.

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” is “a title so good you feel the film to which it’s attached should really have to earn it”, said Robbie Collin in The Telegraph, and “happily it does”.

Starring Gillian Anderson as “fading horror queen”, it is both “extravagantly funny” and “recklessly bizarre”. Hannah Einbinder plays Kris, an “earnest yet self-loathing” director who has been asked by a Hollywood studio to reboot “Camp Miasma”, a fictional 1980s US slasher franchise.

The original is now regarded as “embarrassingly non-PC”, chiefly because its villain, Little Death, is the spirit of a gender-nonconforming child killed by other campers. As a celebrated, self-styled “queer filmmaker”, Kris is just the person to make the rebooted film: she’s a horror nerd who has been obsessed with the original since childhood, particularly with Squeak, its “final girl” (the last female character left alive). She tracks down Billy Presley (Anderson), who played Squeak and now lives, in creepy “Norma Desmond-esque” seclusion, at the former summer camp where the original was filmed.

As Kris tries to convince Billy to appear in the reboot, the pair form a bond, said David Sexton in The New Statesman. And as their relationship deepens, fiction and reality begin to blur, and the film turns into something both “sexy” and “slaughterous”.

“Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma” “won’t be to everyone’s taste”, said Larushka Ivan-Zadeh in the Daily Mail – the title gives a fairly good sense of whether it’s for you or not. “It gets messy. It gets pretentious.” And it’s not particularly scary (the violence is “almost cartoon-like”). But it is beautifully shot, funny and “marvellously camp – in both senses of the word”. “Either way, Anderson is terrific.”

Kazimierz Moczarski, the author of this “astonishing” book, was a Polish Resistance officer in the Second World War captured by Stalin’s secret police in 1945, and declared an enemy of the state and incarcerated for 11 years in Warsaw’s Mokotów Prison, said Frances Wilson in The Telegraph.

While there, he “endured 49 different types of torture”, one of which was to share a cell for 255 days in 1949 with the former SS Commander Jürgen Stroop, an “architect of the Holocaust and liquidator of the Warsaw ghetto, now awaiting execution”.

Moczarski, who had once tried to assassinate Stroop, discovered that his cellmate was entirely unrepentant, and willing to discuss his crimes freely. Lacking notebooks, he memorised what he was told and later used those memories to produce “Conversations with an Executioner” – a book first published in a censored edition in Poland in 1977, and only now fully translated into English. Composed largely of dialogue, it offers a unique perspective on the “narcissism of Nazism” – and deserves to be considered a “masterpiece”.

Moczarski, a trained journalist and former law student, “grasped that he had been handed the opportunity of a professional lifetime” when he was forced to bunk up with Stroop, said Roger Boyes in The Times. Guided by Moczarski’s promptings, Stroop told him everything: about his rise through the Nazi ranks; about his time setting up Jewish labour camps in southern Poland; and finally, about how he oversaw the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, which he still regarded as a “career high”.

With relish, Stroop recalled “tucking into steak and pommes frites” after spending the day watching flame-throwers being “blasted at Jews in hiding”. Asked if he ever pitied his victims, Stroop replied: “Praise be what hardens.” Superbly translated by Sean Gasper Bye, this book will “gnaw at you like a prison rat”.

Because Moczarski was forced to rely on memory, questions have been raised about the reliability of his account, said Jo Glanville in The Guardian. He argued that imprisonment had so intensified his recollections “that he could replay his conversations with Stroop as if they were a tape recording”. While writing the book after his release in 1956, he “fact-checked Stroop’s version of events” – and found that everything the SS general had told him seemed true. Moczarski died in 1975, two years before his book was finally published. It offers a “remarkable insight into the genesis and mindset of a Nazi war criminal”.

The Week is partnering with Stratford Literary Festival and Dorchester Literary Festival

Autumn is the busiest season of the publishing year, with new books by Richard Osman, Marlon James and Barbara Kingsolver set to hit shelves. That means it’s time to start planning which literary festivals to visit. The UK is home to an array of events where you can meet your favourite authors, attend talks and workshops, discover rising stars and, of course, come away with plenty of reading to keep you busy right through the winter. Here are some of our top picks.

Cheltenham Literature Festival

Launched in 1949, Cheltenham Literature Festival is still going strong over seven decades later. The revered author of “Empire of Pain”, Patrick Radden Keefe, will be discussing his latest book about the mysterious death of a 19-year-old in London with The Sunday Times chief literary critic Johanna Thomas-Corr, and Mary Beard will be making an appearance to examine the surprising ties between antiquity and the present. Budding writers can also book a lively two-hour workshop that will help them finally write their first novel.
cheltenhamfestivals.org; 9–18 October

Durham Book Festival

Pet Shop Boys icon Neil Tennant will join Durham University Chancellor Fiona Hill to talk about how growing up in Newcastle shaped his music, as part of the festival’s “Forged in the North” series. And if you’re interested in life writing, join Louise Doughty and Nicola Wilding to find out how they used letters and photos to examine the complex lives of family members for new memoirs. Bestselling author Susanna Clarke will also be introducing her historic novella, “The Bishop of Durham Attempts to Surrender the City”.
newwritingnorth.com; 9–11 October

Dorchester Literary Festival

Dorchester Literary Festival returns in October for an exciting week of star-studded talks, debates and live events covering everything from poetry to politics. Highlights include Jung Chang discussing the follow-up to her epic memoir, “Wild Swans”; the creator of “Downton Abbey”, Julian Fellowes, reflecting on his glittering, multi-decade career; and bestselling author Victoria Hislop sharing details of her thrilling new novel set in post-war Greece. Don’t miss the literary walk hosted by Mark Chutter, chairman and academic director of the Thomas Hardy Society, followed by a cream tea.
Tickets are on sale from 31 August, and The Week readers can receive a 10% discount using code T4YVJSDM (valid for a maximum of 10 tickets bought before 30 September). dorchesterliteraryfestival.com, 17–24 October

London Literature Festival

Dua Lipa has curated this year’s festival at the Southbank Centre. The pop star and founder of the Service95 Book Club will be hosting a series of conversations with her favourite writers including Zadie Smith. Other literary stars to look out for include “Noughts & Crosses” author Malorie Blackman and the Sudanese Canadian poet Mustafa.
southbankcentre.co.uk; 20 October – 1 November

Stratford Literary Festival

Expect another jam-packed line-up at Stratford Literary Festival this year, with fascinating talks by the likes of Celia Imrie, Greg James and Marina Litvinenko. Baroness Margaret Hodge will be discussing her memoir, “Battle Axe”, and Bonnie Garmus will be talking about her new novel, “Peck and Peck”, about a young man whose life is turned upside down when he lands a job at a prestigious poetry journal. Neill Cameron will also be discussing the latest instalment of his bestselling kids’ graphic novel series “Donut Squad”.

The Week is the Festival’s media partner and there is an inclusive discount on tickets to some events for The Week readers with the code SLFW26A on checkout. stratfordliteraryfestival.co.uk, 29 October–1 November

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” said a hiker as Jamie Richardson climbed the final steps to reach the summit of Snowdon. Alongside a friend, he was scaling the mountain to raise funds for a motor neurone disease charity in May, Richardson said he was “getting booed”, and a man “physically tried to stop” him from bypassing the line of people waiting.

This month, Marc Screeton went viral after he posted a video of himself being heckled for queue-jumping. “I haven’t endangered anyone or ‘shoved or barged’ past anyone,” he said. “Imagine queueing on a mountain.”

Hikers have been up in arms over Wales’ 1,085m summit for years, with mixed views over the etiquette of accessing Snowdonia’s best views.

Like ‘insulting Paddington Bear’

Queuing is what Britain is known for doing “better than anyone else”, said travel editor Alice Murphy in Metro. It is part of an “unspoken” social contract, Johann Go, assistant professor of ethics at University College London told the outlet. If you were to jump the queue, you are effectively saying “to hell with them” and “my time is more valuable”.

At Snowdon, also known as Yr Wyddfa, if people just “barged past each other”, there could be serious consequences, etiquette expert Jo Hayes told the paper. “People could potentially fall” or be “crowded in like sardines”, and it would be “unpleasant, and very likely, unsafe”. Some say it should be “different strokes for different folks”, said Murphy. If you are just wanting to touch the top to complete the hike, “fire ahead”, but if you’re “doing it for the ‘gram”, then “get in line”.

Queuing on Snowdon may be “frustratingly long”, said The Guardian, but what do you expect? As one of the “most beautiful parts of the UK”, it is “bound to attract crowds – so people should expect to queue”. This debate has been going on for a “decade and a half”, and recent queue jumpers have added to the outrage. “Skipping a queue is the least British thing of all time. It’s like insulting Paddington Bear.” Blame over-tourism and social media all you like, but “if you want to climb a mountain in 2026, expect to join a line”.

Queues ‘ruining’ the climb

Sorry, this is “Snowdon, not Chessington World of Adventures”, said Carol Midgley in The Times. This episode is an example of “taking docile queueing too far”. “Yes, it’s nice to be polite and wait your turn, blah blah, but what next – waiting in line to enter the sea at Bridlington?” The reason there are so many queues is because “morons tit around at the top” taking their “stupid selfie for their stupid social media post that interests no one”.

Screeton probably “secretly” made his fellow hikers’ day. The only thing Brits enjoy more than “meekly joining the end of a pointless queue” is “bitching about people who disobey that pointless queue”. However, queuing is essential in “supermarkets, cash machines and public lavatories”. Failure to do so is always an “outrageous violation of the social code and a recipe for a fat lip”.

Mountain summits have traditionally been associated with “achievement, community, and endurance”, said Portia Jones on Wales Online. But in recent years they have become “akin to a tourist attraction, subject to queuing rules and hostile public policing”.

Additionally, experts say that in extreme conditions, whether hot or cold, stationary queuing can create “safety concerns”. The practice is “absurd”. The “real achievement” is reaching the summit, not taking a “staged photo”. “If you want to wait in a long line, may I suggest Alton Towers instead of our wild and precious mountains and stop ruining them for the rest of us.”

“Standing in an orderly line is the closest thing we have to a national hobby,” said The Times’ editorial board. But it “has its limits”. Snowdonia (Eryri) National Park Authority’s refusal to intervene – advocating a policy of “self-policing” – is a “refreshing departure from nanny statism”. “Good.” And regardless, there are many other viewing points in the park from which to “admire its majesty”, instead of waiting an hour at the top on a “mindless quest for social media fodder”.

Filmgoers love sports movies for the same reason that networks linger on players celebrating championships after the big game, then cut to the losers to capture their heartbreak: Sports narratives are innately moving. These nine superb dramas keep audiences riveted because they are about much more than winning or losing.

‘Bang the Drum Slowly’ (1973)

John D. Hancock’s largely forgotten “Bang the Drum Slowly” is the story of a friendship between New York Mammoths star pitcher, Henry Wiggen (Michael Moriarty), and his unsophisticated catcher, Bruce Pearson (Robert De Niro), a frequent target of his teammates’ cruelty who receives a terminal diagnosis and plays brilliantly through it for one last season.

“From here on in, I rag nobody,” Henry announces at the end of this quiet, moving character study, a mantra more people could stand to adopt. Its “mixture of fatalism, roughness, tenderness and bleak humor” hit home despite the lack of “telegraphed big moments on the field,” said Roger Ebert at the time. (Prime Video)

‘Rocky’ (1976)

For a niche sport, boxing has produced an outsized share of the greatest sports movies, including “Rocky,” a movie that still inspires countless people to run up the stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Sylvester Stallone (“Rambo”) is Rocky Balboa, a down-on-his-luck Philly boxer who gets an unexpected shot at greatness when reigning champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) chooses him to fight in the exhibition bout that comprises the film’s final set piece. A movie that features “some of the most wildly exciting fight footage ever put on the screen,” its most winning element is Rocky himself, a “character of enormous appeal and charm,” said Arthur Knight at The Hollywood Reporter. (Netflix)

‘Raging Bull’ (1980)

The turbulent life of boxer Jake LaMotta gets the biopic treatment in director Martin Scorsese's instant black-and-white classic. Robert De Niro plays LaMotta as almost tortured with kinetic jealousy and bottomless insecurity, at one point pummeling another boxer in front of his wife, Vickie (Cathy Moriarty), because she had said he was handsome.

“Raging Bull” is also a groundbreaking film in the depiction of domestic violence, one of the first commercial films to take the scourge seriously. This “brutally nihilist tale” is told in a “stunning, dreamlike series of episodes in and out of the ring,” with the boxer ultimately “brought down by his own toxic machismo,” said Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian. (MGM+)

‘Hoosiers’ (1986)

Gene Hackman delivers one of the best performances of his long, storied career as Norman Dale, a fallen college basketball coach who steps in to lead the high school basketball team in tiny Hickory, Indiana. Tasked with transforming a motley crew of unseasoned players into a contender, he hires the recovering alcoholic Shooter (Dennis Hopper) as assistant coach, and the team gels and starts winning.

“Hoosiers” sounds like a hundred other sports films. But its attention to detail sets it apart, produced in large part by casting mostly unknown local actors as the players. In director David Anspaugh’s film, the “emotions it asks us to feel are genuine and fairly achieved,” so its “artful familiarity becomes a balm instead of a stumbling block,” said Kenneth Turan at ESPN Classic. (YouTube)

‘Bull Durham’ (1988)

Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) is a baseball groupie who picks one ballplayer a year on the minor-league Durham Bulls to sleep with and tutor. She picks the gloriously named Nuke Laloosh (Tim Robbins), a fireballer with an unfortunate lack of depth and wisdom but comes to prefer the aging veteran Crash Davis (Kevin Costner).

Full of timeless observations like Crash noting that “strikeouts are boring and besides that they’re fascist,” it is uproariously funny but also succeeds as both a romance and a baseball film. Written and directed by former minor-league ballplayer Ron Shelton, it is a “long, smart kiss to baseball” with the “loping narrative rhythm of a baseball season,” said Richard Corliss at Time. (Mubi)

‘Million Dollar Baby’ (2004)

After spending the bulk of his career on Westerns and vigilante films like “Dirty Harry,” Clint Eastwood underwent an astonishing transformation into a widely respected directing auteur. Here he also stars as Frankie Dunn, an aging, dyspeptic coach who agrees to take on the unpolished Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), as she seeks to rise through the ranks of women’s boxing.

The film’s turning point is a tragedy during a fight arranged by Frankie, making its second half more of a dirge than a sports film. A “rueful rumination on sin and absolution,” Eastwood’s “striking framing has the muscular simplicity and directness of Ernest Hemingway's prose,” said Colin Kennedy at Empire. (Paramount+)

‘Moneyball’ (2011)

A movie about the data analytics revolution in baseball is an unlikely contender for one of the best sports movies, but director Bennett Miller’s take on Michael Lewis’ 2003 book gets it done. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the woebegone Oakland Athletics, who hires data wizard Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) to revolutionize the team’s scouting and gain an edge over the team’s better-funded peers. Featuring a “sharp, sleek script,” it is as much about a “fundamental cultural shift and the rise of the information elite” as it is about baseball, said Manohla Dargis at The New York Times. (Netflix)

‘The Fire Inside’ (2024)

Ryan Destiny (“Grownish”) anchors “The Fire Inside” as Claressa Shields, the two-time Gold Medal-winning boxer from Flint, Michigan, and her coach, Jason Crutchfield (Brian Tyree Henry). Written by Barry Jenkins (“Moonlight”) and directed by Rachel Morrison in her feature debut, it is both an unflinching look at the obstacles faced by a community that would soon be plunged into a national news-worthy water crisis and an unusually well-shot sports film whose boxing sequences jump off the screen. It asks a question rarely posed in sports films: “If you don’t come from privilege, what happens when you fight your way to the top, only to realize that it looks a lot like where you started?” said Alissa Wilkinson at The New York Times. (MGM+)

‘Marty Supreme’ (2025)

One of the only feature films about the niche sport of ping-pong, “Marty Supreme” is a character study of the distinctly unlikeable antihero Marty Mauser (Timothée Chalamet), one of those people who leaves a wake of chaos, heartbreak and destruction wherever he goes. He also happens to be a truly gifted table tennis player who pursues his dream of becoming the world’s top-ranked with savage self-interest, running cons on everyone from his own love interest, Rachel Mizler (Odessa A’zion), to Gwyneth Paltrow’s depressed, aging film star Kay Stone. Buoyed by Marty’s “endless slippery charm,” it is also a “very unconventional coming of age story,” said Kieran Battams at Voice. (HBO Max)

What happened

Dolly Parton, the country music superstar who wrote and recorded iconic songs like “I Will Always Love You” and “Jolene,” died Tuesday in Nashville, Tennessee, after “bravely facing a brief battle with cancer,” her publicist said. She was 80. Over her six-decade career, Parton wrote more than 3,000 songs, sold more than 100 million records, and won 11 Grammys, along with numerous other accolades. She also gifted more than 300 million books to children worldwide through her Imagination Library program.

Who said what

From “hardscrabble beginnings to glittering stardom,” Parton’s life was the “stuff of make-believe,” said The New York Times. Her songs “vividly captured details of her impoverished Appalachian upbringing” and “shared her views on love, faith, loss and regret,” said Rolling Stone. Parton’s “curvy physique, massive blond wigs and skin-tight outfits” served her “self-deprecating wit,” The Associated Press said, and she was the “rare celebrity whose appeal transcended generations, geography and politics.”

Parton’s legacy is “not celebrity but humanity,” Country Music Hall of Fame CEO Kyle Young said in a statement. She was a “champion of equality and literacy” and a “picture of dignity, even when dressed outrageously.”

What next?

“At Dolly’s request, a small, private service will be held for immediate family,” Parton’s family said in a statement. “In lieu of flowers,” fans and friends can donate to Imagination Library.

Spearheaded by “Jolene”, her 1974 hit that has been covered more than 90 times, Dolly Parton’s extraordinary back catalogue has “long taken on a life of its own outside country music”, said Alexis Petridis in The Guardian.

Right up until her death this week, Parton “seemed as present in pop music in the mid-2020s as she had been in the late 70s”, having been a notable influence on Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Sabrina Carpenter in particular.

“A world without Dolly doesn’t feel possible, real, or right,” said Taylor Swift on social media following Parton’s death yesterday. She will leave an “everlasting” legacy for younger artists and fans. Beyoncé, who recorded a reimagined version of “Jolene” in 2024, said Parton was the “barometer” and “north star” of the industry.

‘Cocktail of mixed emotions’

“The country music icon amassed countless hits and accolades,” said USA Today, “but few songs have stood the test of time quite like her beloved tune ‘Jolene’”. The song first appeared on Parton’s 13th studio album, of the same name, released in October 1973, and reached No. 1 on the US chart in February 1974. It was inspired when a “red-haired bank clerk flirted” with her late husband, Carl Thomas Dean.

The song has not only become “one of the most renowned songs in country music”, but has also “transcended genre lines”. In 2004, it was No. 217 on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” and No. 63 on the revised list in 2021. “Jolene” has become a “constant presence throughout pop culture, with multiple generations discovering, covering and falling in love with the tune”.

A large part of the song’s appeal is how “open-ended” and relatable it is, said Annie Zaleski on The Boot. We may know how upset the “inadequate” protagonist is, but “we're not quite sure how her story ends”. Some of the final lyrics – “I had to have this talk with you / My happiness depends on you” – can be interpreted as “breezy, a stern warning shot or downright passive-aggressive”. In just three minutes, Parton digs into a “cocktail of mixed emotions – jealousy, anger, sadness, fright – that to this day captures the complicated dimensions of the human condition”.

Given that ambiguity, what’s curious is how different artists have interpreted the core messages of “Jolene” in recent years, said David Honigmann in the Financial Times. At its heart, the song “walks the line between dignity and desperation”. Tellingly, this has usually led male artists to replay Parton’s “quiet dignity as hysteria”, while women tend to be “more sympathetic”.

In 2018, rapper Stormzy “embarked on a lengthy exegesis” of the song on social media, saying that he wished Parton had “more self-love and confidence or the strength to just leave my man cah it ain’t really Jolene’s fault”. David Rotheray of The Beautiful South wrote in a 2013 blog that it “always sounded to me like a delusional ‘low self-esteem’ song”.

Yet women artists, such as Laura Marling and Strawberry Switchblade, have tended to refrain from judgement, while Parton’s god-daughter Miley Cyrus (Parton was a close friend of her father, Billy Ray Cyrus) has recorded a “splendidly tougher, more assertive version”.

Musical ‘blueprint’ for artists

“Jolene”, as well as other major hits such as “I Will Always Love You” and “9 to 5”, shows a “skilful musician who knew how to blend the story of lyrics with the drama of music”, said creative arts academic Wendy Hargreaves on The Conversation. Her lyrics are known to tell the story, but, importantly “her music matched it”.

The chords “pound out an appropriately bleak minor key, ascending to higher chords with each dramatic call of the name ‘Jolene’”. Underneath the accompanying vocals, an “intriguing, rapid-fire, finger-picking guitar” maintains an “incessant motion that not only adds tension but draws admiration for skilful playing”.

In a technical sense, “Jolene” also “lends itself to malleability”, said Zaleski on The Boot. For Parton, the song’s simplicity is a “big plus”, with her “proud warble” up front, supported by “genial acoustic guitar augmented by occasional whispers of pedal steel and strings”.

It strikes a perfect balance, at once “galloping” enough to be “effective” as a folk song, but also “skeletal enough” for subsequent artists to use it as a “blueprint or guiding sketch” for their own vision. This is what has made the song “timeless”; “there’s nothing in the production or instrumentation to tie it to a particular era or musical movement”.

This summer, Dominic Sessa stars as a young Anthony Bourdain in “Tony”. The “coming-of-age” film set during a summer restaurant job which “helped shape the beloved late chef and TV host into the icon he ultimately became”, said Deadline.

Alongside his work as a chef and presenter, Bourdain was also “one of the best food memoirists of all time”, said Izzy Titherington in The i Paper. His “seminal” 2000 book “Kitchen Confidential” opened readers’ eyes with an “unfiltered” portrayal of “work in professional kitchens”, including everything from poor food practices to his own “struggles with drug use”. Here are some of our other favourite culinary memoirs.

‘Blood, Bones, and Butter’ by Gabrielle Hamilton

“If Bourdain wrote like a rock star, Hamilton writes like a poet,” said Abhya Adlakha in Esquire India. She rose to fame at the helm of Prune, which she described as a “tiny restaurant with 30 seats and a kitchen the size of a school bus”. Bourdain called her “magnificent” book “simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.” The sentences are “so beautiful you forget to be impressed that she's also feeding people”. The opening to her work, describing a lamb roast in a New Jersey field, with her “bohemian mother in espadrilles” is “one of the great first chapters in American memoir, full stop”.

‘The Devil in the Kitchen: Sex, Pain, Madness and the Making of a Great Chef’ by Marco Pierre White

This memoir is simply “exhilarating”, said Titherington in The i Paper. White gives us an insight into the “obsession and sacrifice” behind his journey as the “youngest-ever chef in the UK (and the youngest anywhere at the time) to earn three Michelin stars – and then the first to give them all back”. We follow him through his working-class upbringing in Leeds, dealing with the death of his mother when he was six, and his subsequent “rise as one of the culinary world’s original rock-star chefs”.

‘Cellar Rat’ by Hannah Selinger

“If you harbour romantic ideals of what it’s like to work in a fast-paced, high-pressure restaurant, here’s a reality check,” said Jim Webster in Smithsonian Magazine. Hannah Selinger’s memoir explores her years working in some of the “most recognisable temples of gastronomy” in New York. For all the adrenaline, in a professional kitchen “drama can be more like trauma, and a lot of the actual romance falls far short of ideal”. She tells “raw” stories, “names names” and “takes responsibility for many of the things that happen along the way”, in adventures that are “as believable as they are heartbreaking”.

‘Accidentally on Purpose’ by Kristen Kish

Having grown up as a South Korean adoptee in the American Midwest, Kish “interlaces kitchen anecdotes, the rigours of culinary school and restaurant life with deeper reckonings about identity, belonging and love”, said Saskia Kemsley in The Standard. Still only 42, Michelin‑trained Kish won the 10th season of “Top Chef”, and, most recently, became the “Emmy‑nominated host of the show she once watched as a young child”. She writes “candidly” about coming out, the “pressures and pleasures of professional kitchens, and how comfort can take shape in both food and relationships”. This is not just about the prodigal rise of a chef, but a “reflective account of how an unpredictable life can resolve into purpose on its own terms”.

‘Salt, Sweat & Steam: The Fiery Education of an Accidental Chef’ by Brigid Washington

In Washington’s “fast-moving coming-of-age” memoir, there are “injuries, flirtations, squabbles, name-drops, and dishes gone awry”, said Bettina Makalintal in Eater. It has been described as “‘The Devil Wears Prada’ for the ‘yes chef’ generation”. The work explores her “gruelling” days at the Culinary Institute of America, where she “reluctantly chose to enrol after a breakup pushes her to get out of North Carolina”. She reconstructs “vivid scenes” and recalls distant characters “with a sense of ease”. This book will appeal to “anyone who’s been curious about culinary school but hasn’t made the commitment themself. You might even learn a few things.”

Imagine being thrown into No. 10 Downing Street and being forced to contend with a “public that is always fuming, a press that is consistently hostile, a cabinet that behaves badly, and backbenchers who never stop moaning about something”, said GQ Magazine. No, it’s “not one of Starmer’s recurring nightmares,” but a mobile game that has “skyrocketed in popularity”.

In the last fortnight, the average daily userbase of “No. 10: Full Confidence” has “leapt from 300 to 21,000”, propelling it to near the top of the UK paid-games leaderboard. “Absurd, nihilistic, so-tragic-it’s-hilarious – the perfect allegory, you might say, for British politics in 2026.” And its popularity, along with other similar apps, reveals a lot about the “current political mood in the UK”.

‘Close to the bone’

The game – which costs £2.99, with the option to pay extra for a “special adviser pack” – suggests that “becoming prime minister isn’t the difficult part, it’s staying one that’s tricky”, said Metro. The current average term achieved by players is two years and 11 months (in game time), which is “longer than the last three real prime ministers, and only a little shorter than the reigns of Theresa May and Boris Johnson”. Released in May, in a case of “excellent if accidental timing”, the “jury’s still out on whether this will make people more sympathetic to former PMs” such as Keir Starmer, but historical precedent suggests it seems “very unlikely the new incumbent will be able to beat the game’s high score in real-life”.

The app’s creator and developer Benjamin Brewis told GQ that the game is meant to focus on “satire rather than political advocacy”. All 350 potential scenarios are tailor-made, and some are influenced by real events, from both sides of the political divide. “Scarily”, when I speak to people in politics or the civil service, they say how “close to the bone it is”, Brewis said. Especially in scenarios where decisions need to be made quickly, and “chaos just ensues and then nothing gets done in the end”.

The first decision is selecting a chancellor. Players must decide between Harriet Voss, a “former investment banker who has ‘never expressed a political opinion in public’”, or Reginald Forthwright, who advocated for “a flat tax of 3% on everything” and “has written a book described as ‘dangerously coherent’”. While people tend to only last a couple of years, the record is “1,885 months, which is a long time. 157 years”, said Brewis. And at that point, “that’s no longer a democracy at all”.

First among equals

“Full Confidence” is not the only game based around Westminster “wheeling and dealing”, said the BBC. “Fantasy Parliament”, designed by Evan Roberts, is a “browser-based game”, where players can draft a “fantasy league” of real-life cabinet ministers and MPs, who score points based on their real-world media coverage. And later this year, Black Cannon Games is scheduled to release “UK Politics Simulator”, which is “built on real UK data down to ward level”.

The success of such apps suggests that the “dramatic recent ebb and flow of Westminster may have inspired a popular new sub-genre”. Dr Russell Foster, a lecturer in British and International Politics at King’s College London, told the broadcaster that the “churn of prime ministers” and “growing presence of politics on social media” could also explain the burgeoning popularity of such games.

This game shows us the “depressing” environment that has been “co-created by us, the unforgiving voters”, said Zoe Williams in The Guardian. Prime ministers are “evasive” because they don’t trust the reaction of the electorate, who in turn “lose trust” in their figurehead.

“Westminster hasn’t been so united by an app since the early 2010s, when everyone was trying to figure out what David Cameron saw in ‘Angry Birds’.” But “Full Confidence” is also a “useful corrective”, challenging dissatisfied voters to put themselves “in a prime minister’s shoes”.