Many National Trust properties are "put to bed" in the winter months, to allow time for repairs and conservation, and just to give them a rest from the impact of more than 20 million visitors a year. But some stunning houses looked after by the charity open their doors at this time of year – do check opening times, as they vary.

Here are five of the best National Trust houses to visit this winter.

Chartwell, Kent

In the village of Westerham on the Kent-Surrey border, this was home to Sir Winston Churchill. He is said to have been moved to buy it "thanks to its peaceful location and the panoramic views across the Weald from its windows", said Great British Life, with easy access to London an advantage. He "bought Chartwell with his wife Clementine in 1922, and it remained their family home until his death in 1965". At this "former family seat", arranged and decorated as it was in the 1930s, you can "peek into the private world of one of Britain's most influential leaders", said CN Traveller. The atmosphere is "incredibly intimate". In the visitors' book, "scribbles from Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier and President Truman fill the pages" and Churchill's studio is "jammed to the rafters with his paintings". Outside, take a look at the lakes, "designed by the former prime minister himself", and a treehouse, "inspired by the one Churchill built for his children".

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2 Willow Road, London

Near Hampstead Heath is the 1930s family home of Hungarian architect Ernö Goldfinger, "all ribbon windows and rationalist red brick", said the London Evening Standard. At its centre is a spiral staircase "illuminated by a circular skylight", designed by Danish engineer Ove Arup "to save on superfluous landings". A "modernist mecca", it stands out among the surrounding Victorian villas, and was controversial when it was built, and "so horrified neighbour Ian Fleming that the fallout produced a Bond villain". Today, the "controversy seems an absurdity". Inside, it's "warm, timber-clad and uncluttered", said The Telegraph, and "folding doors and sliding partitions create flexible spaces". It also contains an impressive art collection: "a bonus, especially seen so close-up, with works by artists from Man Ray to Bridget Riley".

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Lindisfarne Castle, Northumberland

This remote castle "had over 500 years of history from its beginnings as a defensive fortress to becoming a holiday home", said The Sun. It's set on Holy Island, connected to the mainland "via a long causeway, which is only accessible at low tide", so you need to "check the crossings on the day". Perched on a rocky outcrop above the shoreline, it has recently been restored to how it was in the early 1900s, "when it was given a makeover by the future Cenotaph architect Edwin Lutyens for Edward Hudson, founder of Country Life magazine", said the Daily Mail. The interiors are arranged "just as they would have been when Hudson gave a house party in 1918". There's also "300-year-old graffiti left by the long-gone garrisons that awaited Scottish invasion here", and the kitchen "where Hudson's kippers were fried on a huge range". From the dining-room window – where Lutyens added a stepped niche "so that children could clamber up too" – look out on the walled garden designed by the acclaimed gardener Gertrude Jekyll.

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Hill Top, Cumbria

Beatrix Potter bought the 17th-century farmhouse retreat "with the royalties from 'The Tale of Peter Rabbit'", said Radio Times, and it was the "setting for five more adventures". The interior "feels oddly familiar" with "instantly recognisable" corners, including "the stove where Tom Kitten hides, and a dresser which Anna Maria scurries past – a rat in a pinny carrying a wodge of stolen dough. Crouch down and you'll spot a mousehole and an oak table leg gnawed by tiny teeth." The house is "furnished as she left it when she died in 1943", said The Telegraph. "In the entrance hall are her straw hat and clogs, in the bedroom are the bed hangings that she embroidered."

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Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire

One of England's most popular National Trust properties, and built by Bess of Hardwick, four-times married and "once the second-wealthiest woman in the country", said The Telegraph. Its generously glazed appearance is honoured by the local rhyme: "Hardwick Hall, more glass than wall", because "all three storeys of the stately home are almost entirely dominated by windows", said Great British Life, "which grow in size as the building soars upwards". It was designed by Robert Smythson, who was the "first master stonemason in England to be recognised as an architect". Explore the staterooms and apartments of one of "Britain's grandest stately homes", including the "fantastic" Long Gallery, occupying the whole east front. Measuring 50 metres long and eight metres high, it is the "largest surviving Elizabethan gallery in England" and is "sumptuously decorated" with a large collection of paintings and the vast 16th-century Gideon Tapestries, recently restored after 24 years of work.

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A street in Liverpool has been left without post for nearly six months after Royal Mail suspended deliveries because one of its workers was bitten by a dog. Deliveries to the Ash Vale cul-de-sac’s 26 properties were put on hold after a postman was chased and bitten by a dog in September, noted the Liverpool Echo. Royal Mail said that the animal remained at the address, meaning that it was unsafe, but residents said this caused them to miss important letters, including cancer test results and hospital appointment messages.

Japan has 7,000 more islands than thought

Japan has discovered it has 7,000 more islands than it previously realised. The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan used digital mapping to recount the islands and found there to be 14,125 islands in Japanese territory, more than double the figure of 6,852 that has been in official use since 1987. The technology used previously was “not able to distinguish between small clusters of islands and larger individual islands”, explained Gizmodo, “meaning thousands of these islands were counted as one”.

Woman eats scones at every National Trust site

A widow has completed her challenge to sample a scone at every National Trust location that offered them, in tribute to her late husband. Sarah Merker, 49, began her tour in 2013, and has enjoyed 244 scones around England, Wales and Northern Ireland. She completed the challenge this week at the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. “It’s all very emotional,” she told The Times. “It’s been a weird experience. I don’t know what I’d call it — it’s more than a hobby.”

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1. Azeem Rafiq might have lost a career to racism, but his crucial legacy is playing out in real time

George Dobell for The Cricketer

on a turning point for the game

Anyone who saw Azeem Rafiq representing Yorkshire a decade or so ago “might well have presumed he had a great future in the game”, writes George Dobell in The Cricketer. But sadly, “it wasn’t to be”. Now, at 30, “when he should probably be somewhere near his peak as a cricketer”, Rafiq “runs a fish and chip shop”. Perhaps, continues Dobell, he “lost his way as a player” precisely because he suffered racist abuse. Either way, “it seems his real legacy is being played out before us at present”. Early evidence suggests that Rafiq’s story “is the tip of a very large, very ugly iceberg”, says Dobell. “It is becoming increasingly clear, from dozens of calls from other former players, that non-white players have largely suffered in silence for years.” We can’t forget, concludes Dobell, the toll this process has taken on Rafiq. “He is exhausted. He has felt excluded. He is grieving both a lost child and a lost career.” But his intervention “really could prove to be a turning point for our game”. If we don’t make cricket more inclusive as a result, “we will have missed a golden opportunity”, says Dobell. “All of us who love cricket – even those who just value inclusivity – may well look back on this episode and conclude we have much to thank him for.”

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2. In politics apologies just make things worse

Daniel Finkelstein for The Times

on insincere sorries

When, a couple of weeks ago, the Royal Court Theatre issued an apology for giving the Jewish-sounding name Hershel Fink to “a money-grabbing, power-hungry billionaire” in one of its plays, Daniel Finkelstein watched “with interest”. “At the very same time, people were calling for Boris Johnson to apologise to MPs for his misjudgment in the Owen Paterson affair,” he writes in The Times. Comparing the two “reinforced” Finkelstein’s reaction: “that of course Johnson should be sorry but it is not at all clear he should say so”. Why? “Because the majority of political apologies don’t work,” he continues. “If Johnson publicly apologised for his mistake over Paterson would anyone believe he was truly sorry? That he really meant it? No.” He continues: “Would they feel irritated that he expected them to forgive him now he had apologised? Absolutely. Would it reduce his support, even among those currently inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt? It would. And would it make the issue go away? Certainly not.”

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3. Britain is plagued by organisations that hate their most loyal supporters

Madeline Grant for The Daily Telegraph

on ‘making a mountain out of a dog stool’

The National Trust has a “novel solution” in the face of a “proverbial problem”, writes Madeline Grant in The Daily Telegraph. After the bins at a popular beauty spot in East Hampshire started regularly overflowing “due to a recent influx of dog-walkers”, the Trust took what Grant describes “a somewhat counter-intuitive step”: removing dog-waste bins altogether. “Ingenious” solutions to the problem – which the Trust “apparently failed to consider” – include “adding more bins, or emptying them more regularly”, she continues “Perhaps I’m making a mountain out of a dog stool here, but the Trust’s petty, anti-people (and anti-dog) response to this problem is the latest in a series of baffling decisions which could have been designed to provoke its core supporters,” says Grant. In fact, the “entire country seems in the grip of organisations that give every impression of disliking those whose interests they claim to represent”, she continues. This includes the British Medical Association, Church of England, the Labour and Conservative parties, the BBC, Stonewall and “even the Girl Guides”. “The question is, are there any organisations left that don’t hate their own members?”

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4. Trans inclusivity in sexual violence services is perfectly achievable – these organisations are leading by example

Jeevan Ravindran for gal-dem

on safe spaces for trans people

Over the last few years, we’ve seen “a tidal wave of transphobia sweep the UK”, writes Jeevan Ravindran for gal-dem, a magazine that shares perspectives from people of colour of marginalised genders. Among the “most high-profile debates” has been “the question of whether trans people – particularly trans women and transfeminine people – should be allowed to access single-sex spaces for survivors of sexual violence”. The “hypervisibility” of the gender-critical movement “would make it all too easy to believe that there are no longer any safe spaces for trans people in the [violence against women and girls – VAWG] sector”, continues Ravindran, but “thankfully that’s not the case”. “Many sexual violence services have been quietly trans-inclusive for years, or even since their inception.” Trans-inclusive VAWG organisations include Brighton-based Survivors’ Network and Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre, says Ravindran. “Organisations are recognising the lack of safety for trans people in many spaces across the VAWG sector,” she continues, “and are actively trying to highlight the visibility of the places where trans people can go to heal.”

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5. Adele’s divorce from Simon Konecki reminded me that the secret to a happy marriage is a very unromantic one

Esther Walker for the i news site

on putting up with irritating habits

This week, there’s been “a lot of talk” about marriage and divorce, writes Esther Walker for the i news site. First, 24-year-old Malala Yousafzai revealed she has married the Pakistani cricket board executive Asser Malik. Then, when speaking to Oprah, Adele shared “some truths about the breakup of her marriage to Simon Konecki”. “Adele’s comments about her marriage are interesting,” continues Walker. She called Konecki “stable”, adding that he “probably saved my life”. So why did their relationship end? It “seems likely” that there’s a “straightforward and common” explanation, writes Walker: “that they found each other annoying or boring or both, in ways that didn’t quite fit”. “If my diagnosis is correct,” she continues, “then it’s a miracle that my husband and I haven’t divorced each other six times over already”. But in Walker’s “limited experience”, the key to staying married is “less about finding someone with the right good qualities, and more about identifying someone whose irritating habits – because we all have them – you can just about put up with”.

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God help the National Trust, said The Guardian. Ever since it published a “sober” academic report last year, detailing its properties’ links to slavery and colonialism, it has become a battleground in a vicious “culture war”. The Trust’s critics believe it has become too “woke”, and should stick to looking after Britain’s historic homes and gardens. Restore Trust, a rebel alliance of 6,000 current and former National Trust members, has been formed, and is seeking to take six vacant seats on the charity’s council at its annual general meeting next week. The group, backed by right-wing Tory MPs and including one fundamentalist Christian lobbyist, claims that it wants to return the Trust to its founding principles. It is vital to see this for what it is: a small group of unrepresentative obsessives trying to “push a reactionary agenda”.

Actually, said Clare Foges in The Times, Restore Trust has a point. Many members have been irritated that volunteers have been told to wear lanyards to celebrate gay pride, and to complete diversity training, lest they be “inadvertently sexist while explaining the provenance of a Chippendale dresser”; and that school-children have been sent into Trust properties to “reverse-mentor” septuagenarian volunteers. Last year’s sloppy report was the last straw. It casually indicted various much-loved places of historical crimes: Wordsworth’s house, because his brother captained an East India Company ship; Winston Churchill’s home, Chartwell, for his opposition to Indian independence. The rebels were right to call this out.

The Trust has to move with “changing tastes and opinions”, said Simon Jenkins in The Guardian. There was no way it “could stand aloof from the debate over how to present controversial periods in British history”. Some of its houses, such as Speke Hall, were built on the proceeds of slavery. But it addressed the debate clumsily, giving the job to “a group of partisan academics talking a private language”. This needlessly provoked the anti-woke brigade. Nevertheless, with members now nearing six million, the Trust is in sound health. “It will get over this latest dust-up – and learn.”

1. Stately homes are a refuge not a battlefield

Clare Foges in The Times

on disputed history

“The good old National Trust has been a tonic for millions of souls,” writes Clare Foges in The Times, but the 126-year-old organisation “now faces a battle for its own”. Ahead of a vote to elect its council, the charity has a “de-pinned grenade whistling towards it” in the form of a group of “heritage traditionalists” called Restore Trust, who present themselves as members “disgruntled at the trust’s capitulation to wokeness”, Foges writes. While many paint Restore Trust as being “old bigots beating against the tide of progress”, their “central charge”, that “the National Trust is in danger of losing sight of what it was created for” is “right”, she continues. The National Trust is intended to be “a custodian” of country houses, preserved for members of the public who have no country home, “not a campaigning organisation”. “Large organisations such as the National Trust talk often about changing their offer lest they look fusty and out of touch, but a lot of us are attracted to the trust experience precisely because it changes little,” writes Foges. “We do not want the trust to reflect the modern world but to be a refuge from it.”

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2. We shouldn’t let a few bad statues spoil our taste for public art

Jane Shilling in The Telegraph

on merit in mediocrity

Described as “dreadful” and “an insult” by critics, a new statue of “Greek diva” Maria Callas unveiled in Athens last week “was not met with universal acclaim”, writes Jane Shilling in The Telegraph. While the “monumental sculptors of the Renaissance or classical Greece and Rome may have felt that theirs was an honoured calling”, to be a public artist today “is to run a gauntlet of cruel scrutiny from the armchair critics of social media”, Shilling writes. But “the intention of public art is generally virtuous; the fact that so much of it is mediocre is not a reason to give up”, she continues. And while “an encounter with a meretricious artwork can sour your day as reliably as a badly cooked meal” one finds that “in art, as in cooking, the memory of the good tends to efface the bad”.

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3. For Uber and Lyft, the rideshare bubble bursts

Greg Bensinger in The New York Times

on falling unicorns

“Piece by piece, the mythology around ridesharing is falling apart,” writes Greg Bensinger in The New York Times. “Uber and Lyft promised ubiquitous self-driving cars as soon as this year,” he writes. “Heck, they even promised flying cars,” amid a litany of other pledges. “Well, none of that has gone as promised” and “now a new study is punching a hole in another of Uber and Lyft’s promised benefits: curtailing pollution”. While it might be “tempting” to “chalk up” many of these broken promises “to marketing and typical corporate chest thumping”, these companies have “skirted laws for years to help drive growth and along the way have made drivers pawns in their race to the bottom”. While it may be true that they offer a “useful service” in some aspects, such as “access to transportation in underserved areas”, it’s clear that “after years of bluster, it’s hard to believe them about much else”.

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4. The gap between reckless Brexit promises and reality will soon be too big to ignore

John Harris in The Guardian

on ‘a cruel deceit’

“What must it be like to be in the inner circles of this government, watching the economy bounce from crisis to crisis?” writes John Harris in The Guardian. “I wonder: in cabinet meetings and ministerial get-togethers, do they laugh at the apparent absurdity of it all, or anxiously exchange estimates of when the roof might finally start to fall in? After all, the central political fact of life in the UK could not be more stark,” Harris continues. “In England and Wales, the contrast between the realities of life outside the EU and what we were promised seems like some cruel deceit at the heart of a family or marriage: silently acknowledged and understood, but so far largely unspoken,” he writes. “Looking to the future, one big political question surely demands to be asked: what happens when some watershed point is reached, and the fact that people were conned becomes inescapable?”

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5. Treating viruses like atomic bombs would help prevent pandemics

Tom Tugendhat in the Financial Times

on valuable lessons

“The first atomic explosion revealed a power that transformed our world,” writes Tom Tugendhat in the Financial Times. “Covid-19 has exposed a similar shared risk – and the gaps in our defences,” says the Conservative MP, who is also the chair of the foreign affairs committee. “We need new global public health powers that can access sites around the world, perhaps modelled on the nuclear sector,” Tugendhat writes. We can learn “valuable lessons” from the atomic industry, he continues. “Scrutiny, peer pressure and the sharing of safety standards are the best protections we have.” While the pandemic “could have been worse”, the “alarm could not have been louder”, says the MP. “We need greater transparency if we are to prevent the local outbreaks of the future from becoming something deadlier.”

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A South African pastor who breaks wind on the heads of his congregation has claimed that he is merely demonstrating “God’s power”. Pastor Christ Penelope of the SevenFold Holy Spirit Ministries in the South African province of Limpopo says his windy ritual helps his flock become wealthy. According to reports, some of his followers wait for months for their chance to be farted upon.

Chocolate bar from Queen Victoria found

A 121-year-old chocolate bar with regal links has been found in the attic of a National Trust property. The bar, which was part of a batch commissioned by Queen Victoria for British troops during the Boer War, was discovered in its tin in a Boer War-era helmet case at Oxburgh Hall in Norfolk. A National Trust spokesperson said: “It no longer looks appetising and is well past its use-by date - you wouldn’t want it as your Easter treat.”

Woman cannot pronounce husband’s name

A woman has confessed that even after several years of marriage, she still can’t correctly say her husband’s name and has instead just been calling him “baby” for the last three years. In a TikTok video posted by @maybebrea, she says: “Okay, so I’ve been calling my husband baby for the last three years because I don’t know how to pronounce his Swedish name.” The video has been watched more than 13 million times.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Walter Isaacson in The Washington Post

on the breakthrough the world has waited for

I was part of a trial for Pfizer’s covid-19 vaccine. It’s a miracle for genetic medicine.

“Even after we defeat Covid-19, new viruses will come along. When that happens, it will take only days to code a new RNA sequence to make a vaccine to target the new threat. Tools made with RNA will enable us both to edit our genetic material and to devise easily reprogrammable vaccines. It’s been a miserable pandemic amid an annus horribilus. It’s nice that both appear to be ending with RNA - the fundamental molecule that probably spawned the existence of life on our planet a few billion years ago - giving birth to a new era of biotechnology.”

2. Nicole Hemmer on CNN

on triumph over voter suppression

Democracy didn’t win. It survived

“Democracy is more than elections, and the assault on democracy goes much further than the ballot box. Efforts to overturn the results of elections have been a hallmark of GOP politics in certain states. In 2018, a majority of Floridians voted to re-enfranchise people who had been convicted of felonies and served their sentences. The governor of Florida could not stop the law from being enacted, but he did require the payment of a series of byzantine fines and fees - in essence, a poll tax - for re-enfranchisement, meaning most of the disenfranchised remained that way. In North Carolina in 2017, after Democrat Roy Cooper won the governor's race, Republican legislators quickly tried to strip the governorship of its power.

3. Charles Moore in The Daily Telegraph

on insurgent leftism

Why is the National Trust still falling for Black Lives Matter?

“The problem with the trust is naivety. It has been rolled over by extremists who care nothing for the membership or the collection. At the angry virtual AGM on Saturday, many NT members protested indignantly at the disrespect shown to former occupants of trust houses, such as Winston Churchill. They attacked the trust for seeming to accept the agenda of Black Lives Matter (BLM), following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. In reply, Tim Parker, the trust’s chairman, defended BLM as ‘a human-rights movement with no party-political affiliations’. Mr Parker is beside the point. No one has ever accused BLM of party affiliations; and I fear that almost all pressure groups invoke human rights. The general point about BLM is that it is a hard-Left campaigning organisation, committed to defeating capitalism, ‘defunding’ the police, destroying the ‘nuclear’ family and rejecting white people’s capacity to understand racism – a view which is itself racist. BLM is an extremist movement which flirts with violence.”

4. Eliot Wilson in City A.M.

on the reliable world of PPPs

Cronyism and incompetence: The government is undermining trust in the private sector

“It is rare that officials from government agencies become household names, but you are likely familiar with both of the above. Dido Harding and Kate Bingham have both, in their own way, become bywords for incompetence and cronyism. The principle behind their appointments is sound. Whitehall is bad at managing major capital projects and is often prone to delays and cost overruns. In the case of tackling Covid-19, losing time can mean losing lives, as well as the obvious economic and social cost. So short-circuiting the traditional processes with an injection of urgency and can-do spirit from the private sector makes sense. (For how badly public sector projects can be managed, one only has to look at the Ministry of Defence’s record on procurement.)”

5. Louise Perry in the New Statesman

on the commodification of sex

How OnlyFans became the porn industry’s great lockdown winner – and at what cost

“The sex industry is booming, by which I don’t just mean the straightforward buying and selling of real-life sex. The online porn industry has grown ever larger as it has come to offer more and more extreme content, the sexualisation of entertainment and advertising continually pushes new limits, and businesses such as the high street retailer Ann Summers have successfully monetised the mainstreaming of BDSM. We are seeing this rapid growth and diversification of the sex industry partly as a consequence of the digital revolution, and partly as a consequence of business innovation.”

At least 93 properties under the management of the National Trust (NT) have links to slavery and colonialism, the conservation charity has revealed.

The full “list of shame” has been published in a new report on the findings of a review launched in June amid Black Lives Matter protests across the world.

Dr Corinne Fowler, who led the project, says that visitors to NT sites “will be increasingly confronted with uncomfortable truths at Britain’s historic properties”, while “staff and volunteers will be urged to educate the public about the imperial exploitation which has propped up many heritage sites”.

Sites on the list include Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, which was “built using family wealth related to slavery”, and Bath Assembly Rooms, which was “connected to the wider colonial and slavery economies of the 18th century”, the BBC reports.

Powis Castle in Wales, the former home of Robert Clive - aka Clive of India - also features. Clive helped establish British rule in India and “was a vicious asset-stripper”, according to historian and author William Dalrymple.

Winston Churchill’s Chartwell residence in Kent is included too, owing to the former prime minister’s “role in the Bengal famine and his opposition to Indian independence”, says The Telegraph.

Among the other properties on the list are Bateman’s, the former home of writer Rudyard Kipling, who was an “influential apologist for imperialism”, adds Reuters.

NT members have “threatened to cancel their membership” in response to the list, adding that historians have accused the trust of being “unfair”, reports the Daily Mail.

“Critics have accused the ‘out of touch’ trust of ‘woke virtue signalling’ and ‘alienating’ fee-paying members who say the organisation is simply jumping on the Black Lives Matter bandwagon,” the newspaper adds.

The National Trust is urging locked-down Britons to reconnect with nature by taking part in a new springtime tradition based on a Japanese custom.

The conservation charity is encouraging anyone who sees a tree in bloom - whether from their home or during the once daily trip out to exercise permitted under coronavirus containment restrictions - to share the experience on social media using #BlossomWatch.

So what is the #BlossomWatch campaign?

The National Trust wants to encourage people of all ages to “take a moment to pause, actively notice and enjoy the fleeting beauty of blossom”, and to “share our blossom images on social media, using #BlossomWatch, for those who can’t see it for themselves”, says Country Living magazine.

Andy Beer, a nature expert at the charity, said: “It’s really easy to take this moment in nature for granted. Celebrating blossom is a pivotal, seasonal moment that can often be all too fleeting and we want to do all we can to help people and families at home to enjoy and take stock of a special moment in the calendar.

“At a time when people are being asked not to travel, blossom trees can be seen on city streets, in gardens and in public parks. There are many spectacular orchards across the nation, including those owned by the National Trust, but the awesome spectacle of blossom is on display in the neighbourhoods of many lucky people.”

People nationwide can “share the joy” by posting pictures online of the blossom that they spot, says Beer.

“With the southwest of the country typically a bit warmer than the north, we are likely to see wave after wave of the different types of fruit blossom sweeping across the country over the next three months,” he added.

The National Trust is also asking #BlossomWatch participants to tag their location, so that the charity can launch a blossom map next year.

The #BlossomWatch initiative is part of the National Trust’s “Everyone Needs Nature” campaign to help people become more connected with the outdoors.

Research commissioned by the organisation has found that only a small proportion of Britons – just 7% of children and 6% of adults – often celebrate key events in nature’s calendar such as the first day of spring, the solstice or harvest.

Where does the blossom-spotting idea originate?

The National Trust’s new initiative is inspired by hanami, “the Japanese custom of relishing the fleeting sight and scent of blossom”, says The Guardian.

A big event in the Japanese calendar, hanami celebrates the arrival of spring and springtime blossom, and centres around flowering cherry trees, or sakura, which reach peak blossom in late March and early April.

“Hanami can be just a stroll in the park, but it traditionally also involves a picnic party under the blooming trees,” says Japan-guide.com. “Hanami parties have been held in Japan for many centuries, and today are held in public and private gardens and parks across the country.”

The National Trust has come under fire for covering up artwork featuring men inside a Northumberland country house hosting an installation highlighting the lives of 19th century women.

Busts and paintings depicting male subjects were draped in sheets at Cragside, near Rothbury, formerly the home of Victorian industrialist Lord William Armstrong, as part of an art project called the Great Cragside Cover-up.

The installation, the work of Newcastle artist Kate Stobbart and art PhD students Rob Blazey and Harriet Sutcliffe, was intended to focus on the life of his wife, Lady Margaret Armstrong, as well as other female relatives and women employed at the house.

Sutcliffe said before the opening that “by concealing some of the male objects and artefacts within the house, it might shift the lens slightly so these women would have the space for three weeks to shine”.

A notice duly informed visitors that artworks featuring men had been veiled to “draw attention to the lack of representation of women at Cragside”, says the Northumberland Gazette.

However, the Trust was “inundated by complaints from visitors to the house, which has a large collection of works including celebrated pieces from the 17th and 18th centuries”, The Times reports.

One disappointed visitor, who paid £49.50 for a family ticket, said he was baffled by the decision to cover up artwork featuring men and that “an extra exhibition recognising the achievements of women would be more constructive”, the Daily Express reports.

However, the National Trust said the nature of the exhibition “was well publicised and visitors should have been aware prior to entry”, says The Guardian. The organisation also denied that the decision was the result of “political correctness”.

“This temporary student exhibition at Cragside was not about censoring art or being politically correct, but to encourage people to look at the collection differently and stimulate debate,” the Trust said in a statement.

However, a spokesman acknowledged that the installation had been met with “a mix of positive and negative comments” and that the organisation would take visitor feedback into account.

The three-week exhibition, which ended on Sunday, was funded by part of a £114,748 government grant awarded to the Trust to promote its Women and Industry project.

Olly Mann joins The Week's Jamie Timson, Anna Dubuis and Ashley Wassall to delve behind the headlines and debate what matters from the past seven days.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on iTunes, SoundCloud or wherever you get your podcasts. It is produced by Matt Hill and the music is by Tom Mawby.

The National Trust has been accused of being "insensitive" for charging visitors to park near the site of the Levant Mine disaster in Cornwall after the BBC's Poldark boosted the location's popularity.

A new ticket machine will be fitted at the mine after a group of vandals pulled the first one out of the ground.

However, locals say the National Trust is profiting from the growing numbers visiting the site, where 31 men were killed in 1919, and have called the move "insensitive", says the Daily Telegraph.

In an open letter on Facebook, resident Ian Cooke says: "We don't want Levant Mine to be treated as a Poldark attraction.

"The National Trust have still not taken on board public feelings about the new charges as applicable to Levant, but hope they eventually see sense and abandon this policy as it applies to the very special case of Levant due largely to the disaster of 1919 when 31 local miners were killed in a shaft less than 100 metres from the car park."

The National Trust said the parking fees would help maintain the site.

A spokesman said: "A terrible tragedy happened in 1919, where 31 men lost their lives there.

"We know people still come to pay their respects, those that descend from the miners that lost their lives, and we don't want to prevent that from happening in any way.

"Those people are able to park for free and while they're with us we want to hear their stories and hear their memories of the place."

Visitor figures have risen by 50 per cent since the new version of Poldark first aired in 2015, says the conservation charity. Around 100,000 people have gone to the site in the past two years.

Poldark, which is based on novels by Winston Graham, tells the story of Ross Poldark's efforts to make his family's Cornish copper mines work.

The National Trust offers Poldark Walks, which take visitors past sites used in the series as well as areas "rich in mining and Cornish history".

One of the art world's longest-running arguments has finally been settled with confirmation that a Rembrandt self-portrait was indeed painted by the Old Master.

For nearly 50 years there has been doubt over the 1635 painting, which depicts a young Rembrandt wearing a black cloak and a feathered bonnet. At the time he was a 29-year-old artist living in Amsterdam, gradually acquiring the reputation that would later see him hailed as one of the greatest painters in history.

Though the portrait bears Rembrandt's signature, the Daily Telegraph reports that in 1968 Rembrandt specialist Horst Gerson argued that "areas of the painting were not accomplished enough to be the work of the Dutch painter".

Despite the accusations that the work was not genuine, and more likely to be by of one of Rembrant's pupils, the National Trust acquired the painting in 2010 when it was bequeathed them by the estate of Lady Samuel of Wych Cross.

The NT decided to subject the painting to scientific analysis, a £20,000 project funded by the National Lottery, in the hope it would be authenticated as an original Rembrandt. Now, reports the Telegraph, after months of analysis at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridgeshire, which included "visual examination under magnification, infra-red reflectography, X-rays, raking light photography and pigment and medium analysis", the painting has been verified a self-portrait. It will now form part of the Rembrandt Revealed exhibition, at Buckland Abbey in Devon later this month.

Painting conservator Christine Slottvedd Kimbriel explained that analysts removed layers of aged and yellowed varnish to examine the painting's pigments. This revealed that colours such as blue mineral azurite and blue cobalt were consistent with those used by Rembrandt. But it was the signature that provided the biggest clue.

"The signature and date of 1635... had been considered problematic in previous assessments as it was thought that the style and composition was much more akin to the artist's style slightly later in his career," said Kimbriel. "[But] the cross-section analysis left no reason to doubt that the inscription was added at the time of execution of the painting."

Prof Van de Wetering, the world's leading Rembrandt expert, declared himself "satisfied" that is authentic.